In this episode of Stitch Please, host Lisa Wolfork tackles a critical conversation about anti-fascism, anti-racism, and anti-blackness within progressive craft communities. Prompted by her experience in an anti-fascist knitting subreddit, Lisa addresses the Norwegian Red Hat of Resistance (Melt the Ice pattern), the problematic response to a Black woman's critique, and why anti-fascism without anti-racism is like "a dog chasing its tail." This episode is essential listening for understanding why Black women's critique is not dismissal but observation based on extensive lived experience in predominantly white creative spaces, and why it is so important for us to have our own spaces.

Hosted By: Dr. Lisa Woolfork

Senior Producer: Krystal Hill

Producer: Mike Bryant

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Dr. Lisa Woolfork is an associate professor of English specializing in African American literature and culture. Her teaching and research explore Black women writers, Black identity, trauma theory, and American slavery. She is the founder of Black Women Stitch, the sewing group where Black lives matter. She is also the host/producer of Stitch Please, a weekly audio podcast that centers on Black women, girls, and femmes in sewing. In the summer of 2017, she actively resisted the white supremacist marches in her community, Charlottesville, Virginia. The city became a symbol of lethal resurging white supremacist violence. She remains active in a variety of university and community initiatives, including the Community Engaged Scholars program. She believes in the power of creative liberation.

Instagram: Lisa Woolfork

Twitter: Lisa Woolfork

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My core concern that brings me here is I am concerned about an anti-fascism that is not

anti-racist, and I am concerned about an anti-fascism that is anti-black.

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And I think that if one gets involved in an anti-fascism that is not anti-racist, it is

like a dog chasing its tail.

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You are just going to be running in circles.

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Hello, Stitchers.

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Welcome to Stitch Please, the official podcast of Black Women's Stitch, the sewing group

where Black Lives Matter.

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I'm your host, Lisa Wulfort.

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I'm a fourth generation sewing enthusiast with more than 20 years of sewing experience.

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I am looking forward to today's conversation.

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So sit back, relax, and get ready to get your stitch together.

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Hey friends, hey, it's Lisa from Black Women Stitch and the Stitch Please podcast.

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And as I say every other week, this is a very special episode because actually I didn't

really want to do this episode, but I was on Reddit and I was doing a little bit of

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research to feed my curiosity about the Norwegian Red Hat of Resistance, which indeed took

me to Reddit because that's where you can find lots of information.

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That trip to Reddit was...

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an adventure where I felt at almost any time I could have been hate-crimed.

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It's really weird over there.

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It's y'all have you ever been to Reddit?

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Like, ugh.

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But I went to the anti-fascist knitting thread convinced that of course, as opposed to

like the regular Reddit knitters, I would find the anti-fascist knitters and it would be

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cool.

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It was not.

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Because...

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As I was scrolling and reading and learning about people's feedback and responses to this

Norwegian red hat of resistance, I found a post that had been prompted by a black woman

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and her critique of the red hat.

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A black woman maker had said that she found the red hat to be performative and she found

it to be virtue signaling.

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As a result of that, this post went on for about

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300 comments.

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And of course me, being a nerd, I read every single one, every single one, looking,

reading.

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that's interesting.

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And then I find that they mention this woman by name.

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Who, who was the person they were asking?

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Who was the person that didn't like the hat?

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Who was the person that said it was performative?

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Who was the person that said it was virtue signaling?

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And then they put her name in there.

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which is exactly how I find her when I go to Instagram.

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And I thought, and I said this in a comment, I said, this is foul.

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You are wrong for dropping her name in here and not tagging her.

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This is wrong to be talking about her behind her back like this.

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Ultimately, a few days later, I saw that her name had been removed, but not after being on

that post for 19 days.

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so that people could have found her and said all types of nonsense her way.

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And what it reminded me of was in some ways the exact reasons I ended up creating Black

Women's Stitch.

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That even in spaces that are meant to be progressive, that are meant to be for the

liberation of all, we find that the opinions of black women are unwelcome unless we are

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celebrating what is already being done.

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And unless we are applauding

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We must be enemies of progress.

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That is not true.

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And today's episode is going to talk about why.

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I started Black Women's Stitch because I did not feel safe in a quilting community.

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This was a community of people that I had been with and had known for about 15 years.

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When my father died, suddenly they made me a quilt.

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When my kids were born, they sent me a quilt.

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However, when I started organizing with Black Lives Matter,

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and standing up to the white supremacist incursion that was invading the community of

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after rally, when I stood shoulder to shoulder with folks in my community and a white

supremacist drove his car down at full speed, murdering a woman and injuring 19 people

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right there in front of me, when my spouse and I woke up screaming for weeks from

nightmares.

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I made the mistake and went to a quilt retreat thinking that that would be a soft place

for my heart to land.

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I know that some black makers who are listening to this who have a very familiar or

similar story.

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All is to say, the folks that I thought I was in community with, it turns out I was only

in a type of provisional community.

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As long as I was the person they thought I was, I was welcome to stay.

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The minute I stepped out of how they had perceived me,

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and who they thought I was, I was no longer welcome.

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I had survived a white supremacist terror attack, and I can tell you I did not cry one

tear until I got the message that I was no longer welcome in that group.

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And I was no longer welcome because of my advocacy for the lives of black people.

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I then learned that that made them uncomfortable.

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And that was when I realized that discomfort is a lot worse than oppression for some

folks.

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So the reason I'm even here talking about the red hat, but not talking about the red hat,

is because I think it's an important reminder for black creatives, especially those black

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creatives like myself who have platforms where we are trying to move forward for the

cultivation of joy.

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of liberation, of documenting the records of Black creativity.

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I think it's important that these platforms be seen and recognized for the work that

they've already done.

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Let's get into that red hat.

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Let me tell you a little bit about that.

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Now, the red hat is called Melt the Ice.

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It is a pattern that was created by Needle and Skein, which is a very progressive yarn

shop in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

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The pattern is based on a Norwegian hat.

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The Norway

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folks are known for their colorful resistance to Nazi occupation in 1942, which involved

wearing these hats, which were banned.

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Because there's Scandinavians in Minnesota, the, needle and skein people decided to create

this pattern, sell it for five bucks on Ravelry, which is where knitters go to get their

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patterns.

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And I think fight with each other, but this was designed as a fundraiser.

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And so,

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It has been successful as of when I last checked, think they've got up to $800,000 that

they've raised for selling this pattern.

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The challenge becomes that the hat has become a sign for some people of your willingness

to care about anti-fascism.

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So let's talk about this red hat, though we're not really talking about the red hat.

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The red hat is something that comes to us from Norway.

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It is specifically about a moment in Norwegian history in 1942 when the Nazis invaded and

were taking over.

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Norwegians expressed their protest against the regime by wearing red hats.

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The regime didn't like it and on February 26, 1942, banned red hats.

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Fast forward to 2026, February 26, also the same day, a Thursday.

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They want folks to wear red hats in solidarity with the same anti-fascist move that was

done in Norway, which was wearing them in protest.

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A Norwegian company called the Red Hat Company, along with Needle and Skein, a progressive

Minnesota-based yarn company, are collaborating to celebrate this particular action on

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February 26th.

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There's something I want to tell you really useful about the red hat.

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What I want us to think about is this action on February 26 and what the red hat is meant

to represent.

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It's meant to represent unity, democracy, and a unique principle that I just want y'all to

indulge me telling you all about because I'm a word nerd.

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I'm so sorry.

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I'm a word nerd, but this is a great word, mneskaverd.

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Mneskaverd.

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And it means the value of a human being

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simply for being human.

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It is a beautiful word and concept and there is no word for it, no single word for it in

English.

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And I know, cause I spent like 50, 11 years in school learning English, you know, like me

and my PhD could not find an English word for Minescovert.

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If you know it, email me at black woman stitch at gmail.com.

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One word though, don't get cute.

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Don't give me a phrase.

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Give me one word, Minescovert.

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The thing about Minescovert,

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and the value of a human being simply for being human is that that idea is fundamentally

incompatible with America.

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It is fundamentally incompatible with America.

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Our origin story is not the story where every single human person is invested with

Mneskaverd and that we respect the Mneskaverd of every single person.

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Our nation was created in terms of a declaration of our independence by someone who said

they valued and that we as a nation should value that all people are endowed by their

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creator with certain inalienable rights.

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And among those rights are

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the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

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They then proceeded to quickly alienate the shit out of those rights for black people.

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We thought they were supposed to be inalienable, and we got totally alienated, all right?

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Totally.

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My point is, what American history teaches us, and black history in particular teaches us,

is that there have been things done to black folks that have tested the boundaries of what

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American democracy can handle.

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And this is now why we have the policing apparatuses that we have today.

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This is the reason why we even have a US Marshal Service that was part of this fugitive

slave law.

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All of these things are, you you really like you scratch a little tiny bit of almost any

American institution.

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And there's some anti-black racism back there, like credit score, anti-black racism.

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All of that are things that have been done to black people specifically through laws that

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absolutely minimize the value of our human worth.

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My purpose here in having this conversation is because I went into an anti-fascist

knitting thread thinking that I would actually be talking with people who were actual

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anti-fascists and that their anti-fascism was mature, that it was robust, and it turned

out to be neither.

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In fact, their anti-fascism was kind of knitting.

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And if you didn't want to knit the things that they wanted to knit, then I guess you were

a fascist, even if you were a black woman who had been doing this work for years and

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years.

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And that is, I think, the challenge that I want us to talk about is these crafting spaces

show themselves again and again and again, whether it's a Facebook knitting group,

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or a Facebook crochet group, or an anti-fascist knitting thread, there routinely are ways

in which black women find ourselves in the crosshairs of something hostile and gross, only

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to be victimized by it, and expelled and critiqued, rather than listened to, rather than

being heard and having people make more informed decisions.

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I think what the Reddit thread showed me and what I've learned with just my brief time um

on the internet and almost on the planet is that anti-fascism does not equal anti-racism.

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And if your anti-fascism is not anti-racism, if your anti-fascism is not anti-racist, I

don't want it.

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And if your anti-fascism is also anti-black, you will go nowhere.

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Anti-fascism that is also anti-black is really like a dog chasing its own tail.

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Because in America, that is where a lot of this is fed from.

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There are reasons that we have chains in museums that were made for toddlers.

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That is anti-blackness.

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part of it that has been in the DNA of this country and that in the DNA of black people as

well.

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I think something I'm also really wanting to kind of put my arms around black women about

is like, I don't know how many ways we can tell you the same thing.

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I don't know how many ways we can say, it just feels to me like it's always listen to

black women until we say something you don't like.

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It is okay if a black woman who has been engaged in this work for quite some time thinks

that knitting a red hat and wearing it on a particular day is performative or virtue

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signaling.

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That doesn't stop.

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anybody from making it.

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It's not meant to be a ban or a moratorium.

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It is an observation.

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It does not mean that this person is all of a sudden a fascist and doesn't want to take

down the regime.

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I think what I'm wishing for is more grace and more of the benefit of the doubt to be

given to Black makers.

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But I also want

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Blackmakers for us to also remember that we have the power to create and build the things

that we need and that we don't have to accept anybody's crumbs.

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We don't have to accept the discipline or reprimands of people who wouldn't listen to us

in the first place.

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On August 12th, 2017, I was standing with a group of counter protesters when a white

supremacist drove his car through the crowd.

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He killed one woman.

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and injured about 20 other people.

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In the resulting chaos, the group that I was organizing with decided to get off the street

to minimize our risk and exposure to any white supremacists who might be lurking.

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The suggestion was made, and I'm not sure how, that we should turn our shirts inside out.

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Our shirts all said Black Lives Matter.

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And by turning them inside out,

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that was meant to minimize our risk.

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I thought it was silly.

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I'm sure I did it.

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It was a very scary time.

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But me turning my shirt inside out is not going to hide me from a white supremacist who

wants to harm me.

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It doesn't matter what my shirt says.

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It matters what my skin says.

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And my skin has already told my story before a white supremacist knows who I am.

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Now, there was somebody who did

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switch his shirt inside out and was able to change his experience entirely.

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And this is a white supremacist.

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A white supremacist was photographed marching with the crew of white supremacists that had

come to the town early in the day.

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Later on in the afternoon, that same man is photographed among us, among the counter

protesters, in a shirt that he has turned inside out.

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He was able to extract himself from the white supremacists and attach himself to the

counter protest simply by changing his shirt.

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So to wrap up, let's talk about the hat, but we're also not talking about the hat.

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Congratulations to.

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Needle and Skein, the yarn shop that has done this amazing effort selling this pattern and

raising so much money for much needed mutual aid.

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That is absolutely laudatory and worth celebrating.

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And it is not possible to have all of your anti-fascist energy stitched into a hat.

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The black women makers that I know who are leveling critiques.

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those who have felt comfortable or felt like speaking out publicly, are leveling them not

based on hostility to a hat.

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They are leveling these critiques based on their extensive experiences of working in

predominantly white creative spaces and feeling unsafe and being unsafe, feeling unheard

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and being unheard.

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Black critique is not a dismissal.

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It's not erasure.

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It is not meant to shame at all.

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It is an observation based on experience, based on lived experience, both within the craft

industry, craft communities and beyond.

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Let me just say this as we, know, the slogan of the Stitch Please podcast is that we will

help you get your stitch together.

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The advice that I'm going to help us get our stitch together is this.

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We've got a long ways to go.

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This fight, this struggle is a marathon and not a sprint.

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And it is important that if something makes you uncomfortable, and I'm speaking

exclusively here to those folks in the anti-fascist knitting circle, in the anti-fascist

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knitting Reddit, in these places that want to do the right thing, your discomfort is not

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an actionable offense.

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Your discomfort is a fundamental step toward growth and moving differently.

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Sometimes you have to sit with the critique.

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That's how we learn.

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And if you're not willing to learn, if you're not willing to listen, then how are we gonna

get out of this?

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I'm not counting on them to get me out of shit.

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I'm just saying.

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yeah.

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Black women, y'all.

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I love us.

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I'm so grateful to be in creative community with y'all.

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And you know what?

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Y'all know it.

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Being black is lit.

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It's kind of dangerous, but that shit is lit.

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Happy Black History Month.

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You've been listening to Stitch Please, the official podcast of Black Women Stitch, the

sewing group where Black Lives Matter.

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We appreciate you joining us this week and every week for stories that center black women,

girls, and femmes in sewing.

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We invite you to join the Black Women's Stitch Patreon community with giving levels

beginning at $5 a month.

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Your contributions help us bring the Stitch Please podcast to you every week.

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Thank you for listening.

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Thank you for your support and come back next week and we'll help you get your stitch

together.