• AncomCosmonaut [he/him,any]
    ·
    edit-2
    3 years ago

    Online I’m seeing previosly lib popular figures with millions of views flashing theory briefly on video and talking about leftist shit when previously they didn’t fuck with socialism.

    Awesome. Link?

    (Edit: To be clear I'm not being flippant or disbelieving, I just really like to see that kind of thing. If it was already posted, I missed it).

    • Ideology [she/her]
      ·
      3 years ago

      In hindsight my sleepy brain inflated the numbers by an order of magnitude. But these people tend to line up with my impression of RL zoomers who seem better educated on intersectionality and vague anti-liberalism.

      CJ the X is a little confused but they've got the spirit. I'd consider them a decent entrypoint for newbies because they like post-marxist/modern junk, but they're kinda reactionary in a weird spiritual way. It's just a lot less toxic than Vaush and PatSocs.

      FD Signifier is becoming a big name in the space. His goal on youtube is to carve out a niche in the algorithm for anti-establishment black men. He talks a lot about the toxicity of black masc/patriarchal culture and the hypocrisy of liberals who appeal to black identity. I've seen him show up in videos/streams with ancom breadtubers (like thought slime) and while he's stated historically that he's iffy about communists (because racism on the left), he seems to be warming up to them and borrowing anti-imperial talking points.

      Khadija Mbowe has actually been doing black video essay content for a bit longer. Her focus tends to be on feminism and queering relationships. Like Signifier, she platforms other users for alternative perspectives (she made Signifier popular as he is now). And some of these channels are a lot more left of her. I think she is reading some stuff off the anarchist library because her recent video on romantic relationships featured quotes from a manifesto that I found mainly on anarchist websites.

      The general trend I've seen is that the more fucked things get, the more they read, and the more socialist talking points they put forward in their work. And a lot of that change has been within the past year. On top of that, you can add the anti-cop and anti-work rhetoric that's been in 'the culture' for decades and is now filtering upward into the agitprop-creator intellectual class when they were previously solidly lib.

      • AncomCosmonaut [he/him,any]
        ·
        3 years ago

        Thank you. I've watched FD Signifier before and appreciated some of his analysis, so it's great to hear he might be leaning further leftward. Haven't heard of the others at all, but I'm always happy to see lib/breadtube 'stars' turning genuinely anticapitalistat the very least, so I will check those out. (Thoughtslime is pretty good, and their Scardey Cats channel is a guilty pleasure of mine. I've been watching Matt/Mildred for a few years now).

        The general trend I’ve seen is that the more fucked things get, the more they read, and the more socialist talking points they put forward in their work

        Here's fucking hoping that's representative of a trend not just on lefty (bread) youtube, but across the working class. With all the hopeless bad news, the rise in, for example, unionization is beautiful and heartening to see. The spread of actual leftist ideals in popular culture gives me some hope for this bleak-ass fucking reality we're in. Anything that points to, as you said, that filtering upwards of anti-cop, anti-work rhetoric into anything even slightly more mainstream, is a kind of emotional/mental sustenance to me. Thanks.