The Exploits of Play

Weird Economies
  • 5.0 (9)
  • TECHNOLOGY

Against the Fascist Game is the second season of The Exploits of Play, a podcast about games and capitalism. Join host Max Haiven and producer Faye Harvey as they interview game designers, critical theorists and grassroots activists struggling with games to understand, confront and abolish the rising threat of fascism in our times. We ask questions including: how is the far-right around the world using games as platforms for ideology, recruiting and violence, both close to home and around the world? How have vicious reactionary politics emerged from a form of capitalism where most people feel trapped in an unwinnable game? What do fascism and antifascism mean today? And what role, if any do play and games have in confronting the fascist threat and creating a new world? The Exploits of Play is a production of Weird Economies, a platform for exploring the intricacies and excesses of our economic imaginaries, in cooperation with RiVAL: The ReImagining Value Action Lab. Credits: Weird Economies founder and organiser: Bahar Noorizadeh Weird Economies organiser: James Elsey Host: Max Haiven Producer: Faye Harvey Sponsor: Canada Council for the Arts For more information please visit weirdeconomies.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

  1. Rulemakers and Rulebreakers with Vicky Osterweil

    5D AGO

    Rulemakers and Rulebreakers with Vicky Osterweil

    In this episode we discuss the contradiction within games between gender play and fantasies to control and order; video games as reproductive technology; the playfulness of the far right which could be characterised as play without pleasure; how rulebreaking and gamebreaking play out in liberal democracy and fascism; and the possibilities of play and protest in antifascist practices and riotous revolution. Vicky Osterweil is a writer, worker and agitator based in Philadelphia. She is a founding member of the anarchist writing collective CAW, which can be found at cawshinythings.com She is the author of In Defense of Looting and the forthcoming book The Extended Universe: How Disney Destroyed the Movies and Took Over the World. Against the Fascist Game is the second season of The Exploits of Play, a podcast about games and capitalism. Join Max Haiven and Faye Harvey as they interview game designers, critical theorists and grassroots activists struggling with games to understand, confront and abolish the rising threat of fascism in our times. We ask questions including: how is the far-right using games as platforms for ideology, recruiting and violence, both close to home and around the world? How have vicious reactionary politics emerged from a form of capitalism where most people feel trapped in an unwinnable game? What do fascism and antifascism mean today? And what role, if any do play and games have in confronting the fascist threat and creating a new world? The Exploits of Play is a production of Weird Economies, a platform for exploring the intricacies and excesses of our economic imaginaries, in cooperation with RiVAL: The ReImagining Value Action Lab. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    1h 29m
  2. Fight Fight Fight with Jack Bratich

    AUG 18

    Fight Fight Fight with Jack Bratich

    In this episode, we discussed the concept of microfascism, which refers to everyday life practices, and intersubjective relations that establish power dynamics and form the organisation of desire. The yearning for and supplication to power is at work in everyone and must constantly be guarded against, for these are easily amenable to fascist organisations and movements. As the saying goes: “Kill the cop in your head!” We also discussed martial masculinity as it manifests in combat sports such as Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) and Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC), as well as figures of such franchises such as Dana White, who is a close associate of Trump and many other fascist personalities. Jack Z. Bratich writes about the intersection of popular culture and political culture. He applies social and political theory to such topics as social movements, craft culture, patriarchal subjectivities, and the cultures of secrecy. He is professor of journalism and media studies at Rutgers University and author of On Microfascism: Gender, War, Death (Common Notions, 2022) and Conspiracy Panics: Political Rationality and Popular Culture (2008). His latest publication is “What Can a Body Do(om)?: Fratriarchy’s Affects and the Capacities to Break Together” (2025) in Capacities to: Affect Up Against Fascism. Against the Fascist Game is the second season of The Exploits of Play, a podcast about games and capitalism. Join Max Haiven and Faye Harvey as they interview game designers, critical theorists and grassroots activists struggling with games to understand, confront and abolish the rising threat of fascism in our times. We ask questions including: how is the far-right using games as platforms for ideology, recruiting and violence, both close to home and around the world? How have vicious reactionary politics emerged from a form of capitalism where most people feel trapped in an unwinnable game? What do fascism and antifascism mean today? And what role, if any do play and games have in confronting the fascist threat and creating a new world? The Exploits of Play is a production of Weird Economies, a platform for exploring the intricacies and excesses of our economic imaginaries, in cooperation with RiVAL: The ReImagining Value Action Lab. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    1h 16m
  3. Fanatical Fun with Adrienne Massanari

    JUL 18

    Fanatical Fun with Adrienne Massanari

    In this episode we talked about how we got from Gamergate to the far right fascist politics we’re seeing unleashed today. Gamergate refers to a strange phenomenon that occurred in 2014, where a group of video game fans used online platforms - from Reddit to 4Chan to Craigslist - to create a harassment campaign against feminist gamemakers and critics, making tactics like doxxing and shitposting widespread. Gamergate is a signature moment in the ascendency of the new far right. We spoke with Adrienne about how Silicon Valley and its economic framework gave rise to the platforms implicated in fascist movements like Gamergate; whether we are embroiled in the normalisation of dark play; and what the Left should be doing in the face of our servitude to privatised digital infrastructure. Adrienne Massanari is an Associate Professor at the School of Communication at American University and affiliate faculty with the AU Games Center. Her research interests include digital culture, platform politics, game studies, pop culture, and gender and race online. Her most recent book, "Gaming Democracy: How Silicon Valley Leveled Up the Far Right" (MIT Press, 2024), discusses the connections between the far right, Silicon Valley, and gaming culture. She is also the author of "Participatory Culture, Community, and Play: Learning from Reddit" (Peter Lang, 2015). Against the Fascist Game is the second season of The Exploits of Play, a podcast about games and capitalism. Join host Max Haiven and producer Faye Harvey as they interview game designers, critical theorists and grassroots activists struggling with games to understand, confront and abolish the rising threat of fascism in our times. We ask questions including: how is the far-right around the world using games as platforms for ideology, recruiting and violence, both close to home and around the world? How have vicious reactionary politics emerged from a form of capitalism where most people feel trapped in an unwinnable game? What do fascism and antifascism mean today? And what role, if any do play and games have in confronting the fascist threat and creating a new world? The Exploits of Play is a production of Weird Economies, a platform for exploring the intricacies and excesses of our economic imaginaries, in cooperation with RiVAL: The ReImagining Value Action Lab. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    1h 9m
  4. Played by Plutocrats with Danny Dorling, Meghna Jayanth and Max Haiven

    JUN 5

    Played by Plutocrats with Danny Dorling, Meghna Jayanth and Max Haiven

    This episode was recorded as part of a live panel event at Pelican House on the 13 April 2025 celebrating the London launch of Max’s board game Billionaires and Guillotines, published by Pluto Press. In this episode we talked about the role of games and play in the coming revolution; the game mechanics of Billionaires & Guillotines and what its format might offer players; why Max chose the guillotine as the instrument of abolition; and we even played a game role-playing a war profiteer, an aristocrat and a tech overlord. Danny Dorling is Oxford geography professor and bestselling author of books including Seven Children: Inequality and Britain's Next Generation and Peak Injustice: Solving Britain’s Inequality Crisis. Meg Jayanth is an award-winning narrative and game designer whose credits include 80 Days, Sunless Sea and Horizon Zero Dawn. Max Haiven is Canada Research Chair in the Radical Imagination, writer of books including Palm Oil: The Grease of Empire and Revenge Capitalism: The Ghosts of Empire, the Demons of Capital, and the Settling of Unpayable Debts. Against the Fascist Game is the second season of The Exploits of Play, a podcast about games and capitalism. Join host Max Haiven and producer Faye Harvey as they interview game designers, critical theorists and grassroots activists struggling with games to understand, confront and abolish the rising threat of fascism in our times. We ask questions including: how is the far-right around the world using games as platforms for ideology, recruiting and violence, both close to home and around the world? How have vicious reactionary politics emerged from a form of capitalism where most people feel trapped in an unwinnable game? What do fascism and antifascism mean today? And what role, if any do play and games have in confronting the fascist threat and creating a new world? The Exploits of Play is a production of Weird Economies, a platform for exploring the intricacies and excesses of our economic imaginaries, in cooperation with RiVAL: The ReImagining Value Action Lab. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    1h 6m
  5. Foul Freedoms with Alberto Toscano

    MAY 15

    Foul Freedoms with Alberto Toscano

    In this episode, we talked about how fascism transforms itself in and across different historical conjunctures; how the far right uses race and gender as key points of articulation and why we should be engaging with psychoanalytic theories of fascism alongside radical anti-fascist thinkers; our current moment of transition as one of systemic instability, uncertainty and reorientation; and how in the contemporary moment of resurgent fascism, migration must be thought together with carcerality, especially when deportation has become the emblem of the Trump administration. Alberto Toscano is the author of Fanaticism: On the Uses of an Idea (Verso, 2010; 2017, 2nd ed.), Cartographies of the Absolute (with Jeff Kinkle, Zero Books, 2015), La abstracción real. Filosofia, estética y capital (Palinodia, 2021), Terms of Disorder: Keywords for an Interregnum (Seagull, 2023), Late Fascism: Race, Capitalism and the Politics of Crisis (Verso, 2023), and Communism in Philosophy: Essays on Alain Badiou and Toni Negri (Brill, 2025). He is the co-editor of the 3-volume The SAGE Handbook of Marxism (with Sara Farris, Bev Skeggs and Svenja Bromberg, SAGE, 2022), Ruth Wilson Gilmore's Abolition Geography: Essays in Liberation (with Brenna Bhandar, Verso, 2022), and Georges Bataille's Critical Essays, vols. I and II (with Benjamin Noys, Seagull, 2023 and 2025). He is series editor of Seagull Essays and The Italian List for Seagull Books, and a columnist for the magazine In These Times. He has also translated the work of Antonio Negri, Alain Badiou, Franco Fortini, and Furio Jesi. Against the Fascist Game is the second season of The Exploits of Play, a podcast about games and capitalism. Join host Max Haiven and producer Faye Harvey as they interview game designers, critical theorists and grassroots activists struggling with games to understand, confront and abolish the rising threat of fascism in our times. We ask questions including: how is the far-right around the world using games as platforms for ideology, recruiting and violence, both close to home and around the world? How have vicious reactionary politics emerged from a form of capitalism where most people feel trapped in an unwinnable game? What do fascism and antifascism mean today? And what role, if any do play and games have in confronting the fascist threat and creating a new world? The Exploits of Play is a production of Weird Economies, a platform for exploring the intricacies and excesses of our economic imaginaries, in cooperation with RiVAL: The ReImagining Value Action Lab. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    1h 46m
  6. Property Pieties with Luce deLire

    APR 21

    Property Pieties with Luce deLire

    In this episode we talked with Luce about her latest work on digitalised tyranny. About how private property structures the terms of the contract and gives rise to ever more terms; how the far right are both breaking the rules and playing by the rules to break the game; and about the overall structure of desire across society and what it’d mean to exit the transsexual contract of libidinal intelligibility, towards a horizon of hospitality and indeterminacy, driven by joy. Luce deLire is a ship with eight sails and she lies down by the quay. As a philosopher, she publishes on the metaphysics of infinity and early modern philosophy but also on art, queer theory, anti-racism, postcolonialism, and political theory. In her performances, she embodies figures of the collective imaginary. She is currently an assistant professor at the department of philosophy at Humboldt University, Berlin. For more (including booking), see getaphilosopher.com and IG :@Luce_deLire Against the Fascist Game is the second season of The Exploits of Play, a podcast about games and capitalism. Join host Max Haiven and producer Faye Harvey as they interview game designers, critical theorists and grassroots activists struggling with games to understand, confront and abolish the rising threat of fascism in our times. We ask questions including: how is the far-right around the world using games as platforms for ideology, recruiting and violence, both close to home and around the world? How have vicious reactionary politics emerged from a form of capitalism where most people feel trapped in an unwinnable game? What do fascism and antifascism mean today? And what role, if any do play and games have in confronting the fascist threat and creating a new world? The Exploits of Play is a production of Weird Economies, a platform for exploring the intricacies and excesses of our economic imaginaries, in cooperation with RiVAL: The ReImagining Value Action Lab. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    1h 13m
  7. Our Moves and Movements- Jay Jordan and Isa Fremeaux on playfully subverting capitalism

    07/17/2024

    Our Moves and Movements- Jay Jordan and Isa Fremeaux on playfully subverting capitalism

    What is the anti-capitalist game? For several decades, Jay Jordan and Isa Fremeaux of the game-changing Laboratory of Insurrectionary Imagination have been using play and games as methods of class war: from the disruptive frivolity of Reclaim the Streets marches to a Carnival Against Capitalism that shut down the London Stock Exchange; from the Climate Games that crowdsourced playful interventions against greenwashing to the Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army. On the final episode of "The Exploits of Play" we speak to Jay and Isa about their past “work” as well as their current activities, including at the ZAD: the autonomous “zone to defend” at Notre Dame de Landes, near Nantes, France, the subject of their 2021 book We Are Nature Defending Itself. Jay Jordan is co-founder of Reclaim the Streets (1995-2000) and the Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army, and co-author of We Are Everywhere: The Irresistible Rise of Global Anticapitalism (Verso, 2003) and A User's Guide to Demanding the Impossible (Minor Compositions, 2011). Isabelle Fremeaux is a popular educator and action researcher. She was formerly Senior Lecturer in Media and Cultural Studies at Birkbeck College London. Along with Jay Jordan, she is a coordinator of The Laboratory of Insurrectionary Imagination. Together, they are the authors of "We Are 'Nature' Defending Itself: Entangling Art, Activism and Autonomous Zones" from Pluto Press in 2021. That book details their role in the struggle for the ZAD: an autonomous community in Western France that for decades fought back against state repression and is today a beacon of hope for radical ecological activists in that country and around the world. For full transcript and show notes please visit weirdeconomies.com. Credits: Founder and organizer of Weird Economies: Bahar Noorizadeh Host: Max Haiven Producer: Halle Frost Sound editor: Faye Harvey Sponsor: Canada Council for the Arts Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    1h 14m
  8. The Singularity Bluff - Christian Nagler on Silicon Valley's Dangerous Dreams of Cheating Death

    06/25/2024

    The Singularity Bluff - Christian Nagler on Silicon Valley's Dangerous Dreams of Cheating Death

    What if we handed some of the most consequential decisions about the future of humanity and the planet to a bunch of game-obsessed nerds? From artificial intelligence to the future of money, from the way we find love to the way we come to know our bodies and communities, Silicon Valley has become one of the most revolutionary and transformative forces of our times. What games do they play? In this episode Christian Nagler helps us understand with a deep dive into the ideology and fantasy of the “longevity community” seeking to leverage unimaginable wealth and technological utopianism to beat death at its own game. Christian Nagler is a writer and artist. His work looks at (and performs) the imbrications of embodiment and global economics both in his everyday life and in projects like Market Fitness, and Yoga for Adjuncts he researches critical ethnography, political theory, and media and cultural studies at UC Berkeley. For full transcript and show notes please visit weirdeconomies.com. Credits: Founder and organizer of Weird Economies: Bahar Noorizadeh Host: Max Haiven Producer: Halle Frost Sound editor: Faye Harvey Sponsor: Canada Council for the Arts Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    1h 32m
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5
out of 5
9 Ratings

About

Against the Fascist Game is the second season of The Exploits of Play, a podcast about games and capitalism. Join host Max Haiven and producer Faye Harvey as they interview game designers, critical theorists and grassroots activists struggling with games to understand, confront and abolish the rising threat of fascism in our times. We ask questions including: how is the far-right around the world using games as platforms for ideology, recruiting and violence, both close to home and around the world? How have vicious reactionary politics emerged from a form of capitalism where most people feel trapped in an unwinnable game? What do fascism and antifascism mean today? And what role, if any do play and games have in confronting the fascist threat and creating a new world? The Exploits of Play is a production of Weird Economies, a platform for exploring the intricacies and excesses of our economic imaginaries, in cooperation with RiVAL: The ReImagining Value Action Lab. Credits: Weird Economies founder and organiser: Bahar Noorizadeh Weird Economies organiser: James Elsey Host: Max Haiven Producer: Faye Harvey Sponsor: Canada Council for the Arts For more information please visit weirdeconomies.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Information

  • Creator
    Weird Economies
  • Years Active
    2024 - 2025
  • Episodes
    16
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © Weird Economies
  • Show Website
    The Exploits of Play

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