The Stories Fascism Fears Most feat. Jessie Gender

00:01

Elia: Hi everyone, Elia here. This is a rather special episode because it's the first cross post between The Fire These Times and Resistance is Fertile. Resistance is Fertile is

this podcast that I have recently launched with my good friend carla joy bergman on Star Trek, anarchism, the importance of political storytelling, and everything in between. We will do our best to you know try and be as regular as we can but ultimately we're doing this because it's fun And also because we feel like we need to! Long-time listeners of TFTT may know by now that I consider myself a big Trekkie, I talk a lot about Star Trek when I can get away with it and especially DS9 and TNG and on this podcast with carla we will be talking about all of these things and more.

I had Jesse on The Fire These Times before we actually launched Resistance is Fertile. But as Jessie Gender is best known on YouTube for her Star Trek videos, although she also does a bunch of other things as well, I decided for this episode to be cross -post instead so that we introduce Resistance is Fertile to The Fire These Times listeners and vice versa.

01:12

EA: You will hear at the beginning of this episode, especially me referencing a first episode, that's because Jessie was on The Fire These Times a few years ago. That's what that reference is. So while Resistance is Fertile is a podcast by the two of us, carla and I, this episode is unique in the sense that it's just me this time around. This will not be a regular thing, it's really mostly just this one time. carla and I will do all, if not at the very least, most of the podcast's episodes together.

The topic of our conversation is the stories that fascism fears most. This is a topic that carla and I will also be exploring a lot on Resistance is Fertile, hence why I decided to also put it here. Jessie will introduce herself at the beginning of the episode anyway, so the only thing that's left for me to do is to tell everyone that if you want to hear more podcasts on Star Trek and anarchism and sort of this radical side of science fiction and the political importance of storytelling, you can head over to patreon .com /resistanceisfertile. The fight these times, as those of you who know know, is part of From the Periphery Media Collective. To support FTP Media Collective, the best way to do so is also on Patreon at patreon .com /fromtheperiphery. As always everyone, thank you for listening and take care.

02.25

Opens with Hugh and Picard from The Next Generation

“They will resist us

Resistance is futile

Resistance is not futile”

Elia: Hi, I'm Eliah Ayoub

carla: Hey, I'm carla joy bergman

Elia: And you're listening to Resistance is Fertile a podcast about Star Trek

carla: and a little bit of anarchy And a little bit of autonomy and a whole pile of fun!

Elia: Yeah, yeah, we get into DS9, TNG, Voyager, all stuff Star Trek, for trekkies and non-trekkies.The intention is that we are going to convert you and It will be a lot of fun.

00:45

Elia: Hi, how are you Jesse?

Jessie: I'm doing good!

00:50

EA: Introduce yourself to our listeners in case they haven't listened to the first

episode, which they should and if they haven't they're not good people.

JG: Yeah, yeah, they're terrible people. I'm judging you from across the podcast feed! No,I'm a youtuber. I do video essays on basically queer topics and also science

fiction nerddoms, pop culture. That's sort of stuff. I'm a huge Trekkie. That's sort

generally stuff like that. I also do news reviews and stuff like that on my

secondary channel, and I'm a filmmaker. I believe since we last talked my movie

Identities came out, which is a science fiction film that stars John DeLancey from

was recently a honoree at the: 2025

EA: Congrats! Amazing!

JG: - Yeah, yeah. And, and yeah, I'm directing an episode for Nebula's series coming up that we're filming this summer. I'm not sure when the release date is, but it's

called Subliminal. So, yeah, it's been doing pretty good. And then I have a

book coming out hopefully some next year that is basically a queer history of Star

Trek. So that's amazing.

EA: Okay. Well, I'm gonna have you a third time on then

JG: Yeah, yeah, I'm in the thick of writing it right now. So we'll see when the release date is, it’s been fun, it’s been nice.

EA: I am definitely looking forward to that one. Jessie, and for those who don’t know, I don't know if I told you this but you are the one who got me into a DS9, which…

JG: Good good!

EA: To this day my favorite Star Trek. I know you said I need to last time actually said this I need to watch Lower Decks and I still haven't done so I will do it at some point

JG: Lower Decks is my second favorite.

EA: I know I know. Well, I'm actually rewatching Star Trek because I'm doing a, I'm gonna start doing a podcast at some point with my friend carla joy bergman on all things Star Trek and we both are rewatching DS9 at the same time.

5:16

JG: Perfect! Yeah, no, I love DS9…. the book I just mentioned, the whole sort of conceit of it is just arguing that the first half of the book is basically arguing like Star Trek is this kind of push and pull between wanting to imagine a better future but then someone's being pulled back to the present and then this sort of turn in the book is when I get to Deep Space Nine where I talk about Deep Space Nine being sort of a queer centering of the future in the sense that it's a people who are ostracized and marginalized. So it's such a wonderful series. I like Star Trek, I love it generally but DS9 I think just captures everything I love about Star Trek.

EA: I completely agree and that's why the podcast is going to be called Resistance is Fertile as in not futile, of course. And yeah we're going to do a lot of DS9.

JG: Oh I like that!

EA: Thank you. We're very proud of the pun.

So the video essay: The stories fascism fears most, I've noticed that you've been doing quite a few episodes or a couple of your videos rather on storytelling, on the importance of storytelling, which is of course, I mean, a lot of tricky stuff anyway. How would you describe the moment that led you to making this specific video, if that makes sense?

06:27

JG: Well, I mean, the reason that I made this video was kind of frustration out of the election here in the United States, Trump getting elected. And, you know, the video itself is kind of

An evolution of a StarW ars video that I did a few months ago, which was talking about how Star Wars is the this sort of American monolith sort of like the, Joseph Campbell like here's the story of America and how Hollywood especially sort of centers on this sort of monomythical framing. Even if you sometimes break it and they sometimes change the rules a little bit, they still all center on this like hero who goes out and returns. And it centers this very individualistic understanding of our history as well as when Star Wars is very much

this push and pull between fascism and neoliberal style democracy and this constant critique of like individuals get to decide for us whether we fall to fascism or whether we fall to you know neoliberal style democracy and then everyone else sort of gets othered around that so Star Wars constantly others others, you know, Asian cultures, Jewish people, like pick your group and they've, they've othered them. Indigenous cultures in positive and negative ways, but in a way that sort of constantly centers that. And I made that Star Wars video, and it was sort of talking about that and wanting to discuss stuff like Star Wars Andor, or a video I

wanted to do it after, it was like discussing Star Wars Andor, and or a couple of other things that have done within the Star Wars franchise sort of pushed towards more collectivist storytelling of like, how do we resist? How do we create new futures? How do we build new ideas of the world? And then on top of that, I did a recent video called The Dreaming of a Queer Internet, which is a video I'm really which is a video I'm really proud of, which is about how the internet has been this place that used to be this queer frontier where people found themselves, were able to articulate identities beyond, like build a digital self that was kind of in some ways truer to who they actually wanted to be than they were. And then how it's slowly been corporatized over time as we've seen and I use sort of film history to sort of discuss that. David Cronenberg and you know Ready Player One and one of my favorite movies of all time, Hackers, movies like that, The Matrix.

8:40

JG: And so looking at those two things and then seeing the election happening and happen and just getting very frustrated that people not understanding that a lot of why Trump won in my opinion is the story he's telling and the story he's telling is one that is relying on this monomythical framing of America one that leans into fascism because there's sort of this there's been this push for understanding the more collectivist understanding the United States more understanding that there's not necessarily one this sort of postmodern view of the world of like there's not one overriding myth, people getting different cultures, different stories, and they all tell their own stories that make us more diverse and more inclusive because we are stronger by understanding that humanity has many different things and I think that's a really beautiful thing. And so, you know, fascism trying to pull back into this very

modernist perspective of like there's one overriding story, one overriding myth, and

we need to use um, gather rhetorical violence, physical violence, institutional violence to re -assert these, the, the story that we've been telling. Because all of this, the story that we've been telling is always ingrained in a lot of the, in in the assumptions that we make, uh, whether it be the heroes generally white, cisgender, straight, which have a very heterosexual culture, that sort of ingrained cis -heteronormativity, all of these things.

10:00

JG: So the, the, the video kind of came out and it's a two -part video, the first video was sort of a reiteration of the Star Wars video just without necessarily overly focusing on Star Wars. And then the second video was being like okay it was taking what I was gonna do with that Star Wars Andor video and just extrapolating it out further, and being like here are stories that are trying to tell a new version of the story, and trying to tell a new way of how we can think about these things. And I centered queer stories first, queer and trans stories, mainly, because that's the story that I know. And that's how I enter into this more collectivist thinking, because that's kind of what I wanted to replicate in the thing, is like there's many different stories, but ultimately what it leads to is we need to have solidarity with each other, connect up with other people, and we can create these linking ideas. But we have to do understanding, you know that everyone has their own stories and differences that they're going to be telling. And so I found that by being like I'm trans that's what got me to escape the monomythical storytelling that America has. And then from there I started to link up and understand other stories from there.

JG: The video is basically kind of running through that as a concept, just sort of guiding people through my journey without overtly stating that but basically joining them along the same journey that I have. But then also at the same time, people don't understand that still and how a lot of our media literacy in a lot of stories with media today, people keep trying to pull the stories back to the monomyth and keep trying to frame it in their conceptualization of the world that sort of centers sort of America constantly in the conversation. And how my end basic point is like, here's the journey I laid out for you, but I also told you how everyone, like at every single point of the way, people misinterpret it. And so how do we go forward? And the way to go forward is to stop constantly going back and trying to explain to these people over and over and over again. And it's not necessarily trying to be antagonistic to them. But we spend so much of our time being like, oh, look, this person said some ridiculous fucking thing about trans people today. And now we just waste our time responding to that. It's like, if we end up doing that, we constantly center them. We constantly center that noise. And It's like we need from just a film like storytelling perspective. I'm bored of that. I'm bored of it. I want new stories; I want to hear new things. I want to be gauged intellectually and emotionally and then in terms of political movements, we need to start thinking of how we collectivize and how we connect with people because I feel like one of the biggest problems that face us faces us today is how we atomize ourselves and we segment off ourselves, especially on the internet. It has become very much, I don't want to say impossible, very difficult to have any conversation about our own individual feelings and needs because ultimately then it ends up getting thrown into an antagonistic conversation. It's like, "Oh, you're talking about trans women. Why are you not talking about this? Why are you not talking about this?" And it's like, I'm not necessarily trying to override that, but we can't all talk about these things. We need to talk about these things in unison, but not necessarily that they're the same exact thing. And I think we're all trained to sort of be like, everything needs to be everything for everybody. Because our culture has told us to consume everything for everything needs to be consumed by everybody. And it needs to be, no, we need to understand each other, be empathetic towards each other, come to learn from each other, but understand we need to be having conversations across differences, not necessarily trying to create one overriding myth that we all need to sort of shove ourselves into. That's the sort version of the video.

13:22

EA: What you're saying kind of made me think of I think it was the first compilation of soar punk stories. It was published in Portuguese in Brazil years ago. And the editor, and I had quoted him in an article I wrote for New Lions a few years ago. And he said like why did he choose solar punk? He said that because Brazil's fantastic literature biosphere was already quote unquote polluted with coal. And so the way he kind of thought of it was explaining it is that it's not that there aren't good stories. For example, that was cyberpunk because he was asked that why not do cyberpunk because you know that's that's what has been dominating the future in terms of the stories we were telling. And he's like, it's not that there aren't good

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