Hi, this is against everyone with Connor Habib, a weekly podcast featuring my conversations with

countercultural figures and presenting complex, philosophical, spiritual, and political ideas in an

engaging and accessible way. Well, I'm so excited to share this conversation with media analyst,

prolific author and host of the podcast, Teen Human, Doug Rushkoff, with you.

I want to start by talking about sort of what we talk about, which are the problems that we

are facing right now. One of those problems is a sort of increasing presence, at least in the way we talk to each other or the way we frame

the problem of fascists, of skinheads, neo-Nazis, proud boys, whatever, and the way that seems to be normalizing.

And for me, this is weirdly, I would say, not much of a change in the sense that I grew up in an area of Pennsylvania that had a huge concentration of neo-Nazis,

where I grew up in just over the Jersey border, I think at the time was actually the highest concentration of neo-Nazis, where I grew up in just over the Jersey border, I think at the time,

was actually the highest concentration of neo-Nazis in the U.S.

And as a result, it was so normalized.

I mean, there were kids that had like swats because drawn on their notebooks.

There were KKK marches down the streets of my hometown. There were people who, I remember I went

to school with a kid who would argue why Hitler was great and the teachers would be like,

wow, he's got some great points, you know. And also because it was so normalized and because I

liked punk rock and the Nazi kids skinheads like punk rock, we were friends.

Even though I'm Arab and I, well, I wasn't out as identifying as gay at the time, but I was attracted to guys and I was terrified that they would find out.

And there were friends with my other mixed race friends as well.

And I always sort of wondered what the fuck was going on with that.

Was it just because they liked punk rock and we like punk rock?

Was it because they were lonely? The more I think about it,

the more I believe that it has to do with the fact that they were seeking a sense of meaning.

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