Episode 1 of On Offense is here!
You’re seeing it as soon as I got the final cut back from my editors and was able to upload it—before the audio goes live on the RSS feed.
I can’t thank you—the paying subscribers who made this happen—enough. This absolutely could not have happened without you. I’m deeply grateful you chose to invest in On Offense.
This show is for anyone who’s sick of being told to “defend democracy” while fascists run the field unopposed.
It features a guest I think everyone should hear from right now: public historian and Army veteran Tad Stoermer. Tad’s made it his mission to expose the sanitized myths that make Americans passive in the face of authoritarianism. As Ken Burns drops another big-budget, feel-good PBS series on the American Revolution this week, Tad is here to offer a sharp corrective: real resistance, real violence, real consequences. And real relevance to what we’re living through now.
Too many people treat the state of American democracy like an interesting academic debate, or a puzzle that smarter people will eventually figure out. That’s not what this show is for. On Offense is for organizers, activists, veterans, and anyone who understands that we’re in a fight right now—and that we’re going to have to win it together.
In this episode, Tad and I talk about how the Founders understood tyranny before the word “fascism” existed, and how modern authoritarians still use the same old playbook. We talk about how weaponized nostalgia and patriotic myth-making—including the kind you see in mainstream media from folks like Ken Burns—distort our understanding of history, and make us easier to control.
If you care about fighting fascism in America, this is the place to start.
Watch the full video episode above, available exclusively for paid subscribers the night before it’s published anywhere else. (Update: Paywall removed as we’re at release day). The audio version will drop on Wednesday on Apple and Spotify. I’ll remove the paywall on Substack as soon as I post this episode publicly on YouTube.
Paying subscribers will also get early access to Episode 2—featuring Ken Casey of the Dropkick Murphys—as soon as editing is complete.
Now, if you want to help make this show a success, I’ll need your help.
Here are three actions that you can take to give us a boost, break through the algorithms, and make sure that everyone who would benefit from the lessons of On Offense gets access to it:
Share this episode. Text it to a friend, post it on Threads, repost on Bluesky, drop it in your organizing Discord—anything to help this gain traction.
Subscribe on Apple and/or Spotify and give the show a 5-star rating. That helps us break through the noise.
Follow On Offense on all platforms and share our work. All our links are here: https://linktr.ee/OnOffensePod
Thanks for being here. Let’s go on offense.
—Kris
