All leftist video creators are overrated, leftist authors less so but there’s still a huge contingent of them that are just co-opted by their main topic of critique. I don’t think this is a failing on the creators themselves but a feature of the market.

When you get down to it, no matter how ideologically ‘pure’ you manage to be, once you’re earning money for something - even if it’s not your primary income - your ability to affect the change you’re talking about becomes limited. You don’t want to risk your income. You don’t want to get ‘cancelled’ by your peers. For some this comes down to mindful self-censorship, but for most they don’t even realize that they’ve started down the algorithmic intellectual death spiral.

But! I think this is very okay and for our purposes can be leveraged. I absorbed endless amounts of this content when I was feeling the full effects of alienation. Alone all day, underappreciated and working my body to the bone in a warehouse. The reason I read ML theory at all is because of some of these chucklefucks - ThoughtSlime, The Deprogram, even broader liberal-types like Hbomberguy. They were friendly voices to listen to and fueled an inherent rebellious nature most of us have within.

But content cycles, your interests peak and change, and if you walk away from ““breadtubers”” having absorbed any actual theory, your admiration turns somewhat to scorn, and you begin to feel frustrated with the endless complaining and no actionable solutions. You’ll either fall back into liblight or your exposure to theory will grow into a larger revolutionary sprout.

That’s when you’re pushed out of the content mill and become exposed to the dreaded ideas that YouTubers can’t actually say due to ad revenue concerns. Getting to this stage of radicalization, especially in the west, used to be like pulling teeth. You’d need serious organizational power to spread the education needed.

Now it can be achieved by listening to freely accessible (and even semi-mainstream) content slop and letting well-known parasocial elements play out in a listener. Learning, admiration, surpassing the teacher, and finally finding your revolutionary spirit.

The Depgrogram guys. I was much more hopeful about them back when they started out, but over time It’s become apparent that they’re way too afraid to say anything that would scare off their extremely broad “leftist” audience. They’ve ended up cultivating what seems like a bizarre coalition of ultras, revisionists and U.S libs as a result. I’d say Yugopnik’s channel is probably the one that’s least affected by this, but overall I feel like all three of them used to be way better individually before they started the podcast.

I don’t expect much from broader leftist YouTubers like hbomberguy, Shaun, philosophytube, so it doesn’t disappoint me when they do a liberalism, and their content is otherwise fine.

But I actually really dislike the couple “actually socialist” ones like Second Thought because they do the exact same thing as the previous ones (pointing at the problem with no perspective for solution) but are lauded as some heroes of Marxism-Leninism. The only video of his that I find minimally ML is the one telling people to get organised. He barely advertises US parties (keeping in mind that’s his main audience) or points to what can be done, and wastes too much effort on “production values” over agitation. If he refuses to join any party, the very least he could do is make a video explaining all of them to help out his followers. Effectively, he’s an anti-capitalist/pro-China agitator at best, and I’m tired of USAmericans hopefully waiting for China to fix everything. The other deprogram lads fit the bill too, but I don’t even bother watching them.

English-language YouTube is generally really bad at agitation (clarifying the contradictions of singular notable events), specially due to the “monthly video” model. There’s a huge space for short daily news analysis being ignored. But there are some really good propagandists, so I’d like to recommend RevLeft Radio for current events and Red Pen for understanding theory. Besides that there’s also Socialism for All for commentated reading of theory, though he is MLM.

Sorry forgot to add this to the post:

I mainly dislike BE because of his “beef” with bayarea415, his “enlightened anti-campism” and his tendency to get into and escalate internet fights for very little reason (see the bayarea415 thing). So I think a lot of leftists give him a lot more slack than others would get for similar behavior

kkkontrapoints

I have literally watched zero BE content but always read his posts. Top tier attacker, one of the best haters in the business, but that’s about all I get from him, and what ive seen of his own conclusions are far from watertight.

I dont get too much into the podcasting sphere because most of them just shit me off.

I have issues with Roddric Day of Redsails but most of that is an issue with his personality/writing style. He does “acktchewallly” arguments way too often and sometimes feels like he starts with his conclusions and works backwards. Sometimes I disagree with his conclusions but most of those disagreements are irrelevant because the truth of the matter will work itself out in practice. Other times his analysis is right on the money.

Underrated podcaster/writer I have to give a shout out to is Justin Podur and his substack The Anti-empire Project. His Civilizations series is a really good in-depth leftist analysis of modern geopolitical history. His Gaza sitreps were also really good during the active fighting phase. The whole Tankie Therapy crew are based as fuck.

True anon is annoying as fuck.

Trillbillys is boring

Redscarepod hosts should be in prison

Trashfuture try too hard

I don’t really like to listen to anyone, to be honest.

V*ush

I dont really watch people like this much but i was reading it and seeing names i dont know and thinking “man if only this were a list of good ones instead of over rated ones.”

So instead i will include a source i like. Idk if exactly leftist but very good source for info on the US empire. Ken Klippenstein. https://www.kenklippenstein.com/

Does some pretty decent reporting. Altho these days in the west that bars extremely low.