Marc Maron, king of the 'fascist'-fighting hacks



Marc Maron is a hack. His politics are hack. His comedy is hack. Marc Maron is a hack’s hack.

“Beware,” comedian Freddy Nietzsche warned me one night at an open mic in Echo Park, “that when fighting hacks, you yourself do not become a hack.” That’s why I’m trying not to gaze too long into the Maron, but rather steal a glance here and there. The algorithm helps, throwing clips my way from Maron’s latest podcast appearances and comedy specials. Little bites. Not big enough to choke on.

To be fair, 'End Times Fun' came out five years ago, so I was ready to let it slide, but then a fan of mine said that Maron was giving him Doug Allen vibes.

The one that kicked it off for me was a recent appearance Maron made on "Howie Mandel Does Stuff," where Maron went after “anti-woke” comedians.

Maron has a number of problems with the anti-woke — like the way they've brought back an offensive slur (let's just call it "the R-word") for those with intellectual disabilities. As an outspoken progressive, Maron is adamant that every person has a right to be treated with dignity and respect — after a "cool-down" period during which their mothers choose whether or not to abort them, of course.

If anything, people with Down syndrome and the like deserve extra dignity and respect, seeing as up to 85% of them in America don't make it past this competitive first round. (In Iceland, it's closer to 100%.) It takes a special person to beat those odds!

Your move, Mr. Drumpf

But the one Maron grievance that stood out to me was that he accused the anti-woke comics of being hacks — that is, they’re all doing the same tired material.

I found it ironic to hear Maron accuse others of being hacks when I had just watched a clip from his 2020 Netflix special, "End Times Fun," that was so heavy with hackiness that Maron had to sit down on a stool to deliver it.

Trump is probably the most horrible human that ever lived in any capacity, doing anything. Not a political statement. That is observational. Completely observational.

To be fair, "End Times Fun" came out five years ago, so I was ready to let it slide, but then a fan of mine said that Maron was giving him Doug Allen vibes.

For those who don’t know who Doug Allen is, back in 2017, Donald Trump was such hacky material that writer Luke Spallino and I developed a fake comedy persona named Doug Allen, whom we sold as the only comedian brave enough to make fun of Donald Trump and the only comic with the guts to take on the most protected class — the one thing you are not allowed to make fun of — straight white men.

(Watch our fake trailer for Doug Allen’s comedy special "Edgy" below, and be sure to scroll through the comments to see who did and did not get the joke.)

So three years after Doug Allen “spoke truth to power,” Maron was hacking away. And now in 2025, the guy’s still hacking it.

Hit-ler or miss

This time, in a clip from his new HBO special, "Panicked," Maron takes on comedian Theo Von for having had Donald Trump on his podcast, "This Past Weekend," before the 2024 presidential election.

The stool is on stage — it might be the same stool from his other special — but somehow Maron, older but still looking five years younger, manages the strength to stand and deliver this: "I think if Hitler were alive today, he’d probably appear on Theo Von’s podcast …"

Von is used as an avatar for Maron’s nemesis, the anti-woke podcaster. I have to admit the bit itself is pretty good — I actually would be interested in hearing Von talk to Hitler about meth — but comparing Trump to Hitler is about as hack as you can get. C’mon, Maron.

For a decade, it’s been so bad that when a prominent advocate for people living with Trump derangement syndrome switched it up with a reference to OG fascist Benito Mussolini, I tried to nominate the poor guy for a Mark Twain Prize.

I’d love to see more Trump/Il Duce comparisons. Or at the very least, if you’re going to insist on calling anyone Hitler, how about you include the year too? Like, are we talking 1939 Hitler or 1944 Hitler? I mean, no one gets compared to art-school Hitler enough!

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Frazer Harrison/Getty Images

Power hour

Marc Maron — perhaps himself acting a little bit like art-school Hitler — is upset with the power he claims anti-woke comedians and podcasters wield. It’s similar to power that Maron himself once had. Do you remember in 2015 when President Obama sat down with Maron in his garage to record an episode of Maron’s insanely popular podcast, "WTF"?

It was an interesting episode. Maron’s goal was to connect with the president as a person, which he did. Maron wasn’t there to talk policy — even though President Obama spent a good portion of the episode defending his policies, with no pushback whatsoever from his gracious host.

I get it. Maron respected Obama, supported him, and they were recording days after Dylann Roof carried out his mass murder at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina.

It would have been awkward for Maron to bring up — well, all the issues I had with Obama. But at no point did I think it was his job to do so. They could have talked about cocaine, though. Which would have been a good listen, considering Maron’s tales of partying with Sam Kinison. (Personally, I’d rather do cocaine with Obama than meth with Hitler.)

At the beginning of the episode, Obama says it “would be a problem if the president was feeling stressed about coming to your garage for a podcast.” It’s a funny moment. I mean, why would the president be stressed about talking with Marc Maron? Maron saves his probing for truly evil men like … Gallagher.

Anti-woke ... or anti-joke?

Speaking as an anti-woke comedian, I credit Marc Maron and other members of his faith for showing me the way. While they spent years going after the same safe subjects, it gave me the opportunity to take on their sacred cows.

Now I’m not saying all jokes about Donald Trump are hack or all jokes about trans people are funny. It’s my job as a comedian — even when I’m not getting paid for it, which is often — to hold myself accountable: to go for the funny and be original. There are still strong punch lines yet to be created — they can be “anti-woke” or even woke.

But the idea, according to Maron, that the anti-woke won — that the culture and even policy have decidedly become anti-woke — is ridiculous. While Maron complains about Joe Rogan’s guest lists and scoffs at Ricky Gervais, male criminals are still serving their sentences in women’s prisons, anti-white racists still have well-paying jobs at the New Yorker, and those who don’t know history are doomed to compare everything to Hitler.

So yeah, there’s still so much woke stuff to make fun of that it’s R-word.

Leftists' favorite F-word — and why they'll never drop it



I notice to my profound disappointment that two of my major scholarly projects landed with a thud. Despite years of research and two books on fascism and antifascism, my findings have been ignored by both the left and the right — including the so-called conservative media establishment.

That’s a pity, especially with so much loose talk about “fascists” running around Washington these days.

Fascism, as it existed in the 20th century, is dead. Antifascism, as it is wielded today, is a political weapon that thrives by manufacturing enemies.

My argument is straightforward: Fascism was a popular European movement in the interwar period, shaped by several conditions unique to that era — returning soldiers who saw themselves as a “front generation” after World War I, economic turmoil in countries like Italy, France, Romania, and Spain, disillusionment with corrupt parliamentary systems, and a “cult of the leader.”

Fascist movements also fed on fears of the Soviet takeover of Russia. Unlike the communists, who worked to spark revolutions across Europe, fascist groups pushed a revolutionary nationalist ideology.

The most representative example was Benito Mussolini’s Italian movement, which came to power after his March on Rome in October 1922. Italy was the only country to establish a full-fledged fascist government, although fascist or fascist-like parties held influence in coalitions elsewhere. The Italian regime blended a cult of the leader with corporatist economics and nostalgia for imperial glory.

Contrary to the later alliance with Hitler, Mussolini’s government initially drew support from patriotic Italian Jews and between 1934 and 1936 led European opposition to Nazi Germany, denouncing its anti-Semitism as barbaric. The 1938 anti-Jewish laws came only under heavy German influence.

Nazism was not “generic” fascism. Hannah Arendt was right to classify it as totalitarian and genocidal. While Hitler borrowed certain trappings from Latin fascists, Nazi Germany drew far more from Stalin’s Soviet model — particularly in its use of terror, secret police, and propaganda to remake reality.

Equating Mussolini’s authoritarian nationalism with Hitler’s genocidal regime is intellectually lazy, even if Mussolini’s disastrous decision to ally with Nazi Germany at the 11th hour paved the way for the comparison.

My critic Jacob Siegel accuses me of drawing this distinction to “sanitize” fascism. Not so. I do not treat it as an archaic movement out of nostalgia but because it is irrelevant to the contemporary West, which is dominated instead by a woke, bureaucratic left.

Antifascism, however, is another matter. It began with Marxists — and later communist regimes — branding capitalist nations that resisted revolution as “fascist.” The Frankfurt School and its American heirs expanded the label to cover ideas and movements far removed from Mussolini or Hitler. By the 1950s, an “F-scale” was used to screen government employees and teachers for supposed fascist sympathies.

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Photo by JOAQUIN SARMIENTO/AFP via Getty Images

Today, “antifascists” slap the term on anything that conflicts with their politics or lifestyle. Esteemed Yale professors Timothy Snyder and Jason Stanley insist our current president is not only a fascist but possibly a Nazi. In their view, opposing any part of the feminist or LGBTQ agenda puts one on the road to Hitlerian tyranny.

This rhetorical game serves a purpose: It shields the accusers from the obvious countercharge that they are the true totalitarians. In my book on antifascism, written as Antifa and Black Lives Matter riots engulfed American cities in 2020, I documented how the American left and its European counterparts mobilize with the same discipline and ruthlessness as the Nazis before they took power.

The difference is that today’s left faces no organized counterforce comparable to the German communists — and enjoys the support of a compliant media. That media not only excuses leftist violence but portrays it as justified. This mirrors the Nazi and communist tactic of claiming to be under siege even while holding power, using the manufactured threat as a pretext to crush dissent.

Fascism, as it existed in the 20th century, is dead. Antifascism, as it is wielded today, is a political weapon that thrives by manufacturing enemies. And the left is using it with remarkable success.

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