Would you consider interviewing leftist“gender critical” (there is no term for this that I fully endorse) thinkers? Or is that too controversial? The leftist GC to RW pipeline is real and people need to hear about it IMO. I’d also love to see Varn interviewed about the concept of PMC. I’m a big fan of both him and Liu. Cage fight?
This is very important and no one wants to face it. I'm gender critical and consider myself on the left and I was starting to be pulled right by gender critical content. October 7th was a defining moment for me when many turned hard right supporters of Israel, I of course did not. I'm still not on board with the gender movement but I can see it was being well used as a wedge issue by the right
Hello ❤️❤️❤️. I feel like we were the canary in the coal mine for the right-anti/woke pipeline but nobody on the left gave a shit cause it was women. I’m extremely bitter and disgusted.
My husband and I found your YouTube channel because we follow Channel 5 and Andrew Calihan really closely. The first non-andrew episode of Doomscroll we listened to was filled with words we didn't know. In the last two months or so we've been diving into your channel and the books/podcasts it references, and we've both learned so much. It's a data set of two, but your pipeline is working.
I don’t think it’s a mistake at all. Also — I am not on the left at all so this may be wrong but it feels to me like you’re the only one who’s done a good genealogy of the Online Left. Everyone wants to map on the Online Right, inside and out. Huge blindspot in this space.
Massive blind spot because the moralizing/ massive number of liberals (me included) who are in the media space often struggle to comprehend the soup they swim in. It's a lot easier for academics to dissect outsiders as the inherent structure of the thing is learned from a curiosity instead of a framework with which to see the world.
I think there is also a lot of sneering from those people to point out how "bad" and "dangerous" many of these groups are, when a lot of the boy calling wolf makes it hard for us to see the real dangers in some of the ideologies.
I would even go a step further and say much of academia has done a poor job @ mapping these spaces.
A big part of why is that the immersion is requires is not possible in academia. Plus in Internet Studies, theory often obscures rather than elucidates.
It almost can only be done by people like myself & Josh who have one foot in and one foot out. Who are both of & not of each space.
I feel like in 2017-18, I had some naive faith in the non-profit industrial complex to map these spaces. But soon realized (and was also just directly told this by people who quit the field) every conclusion they draw is hamstrung by the big donor funding model.
No non-profit will ever come up with economic redistribution as a solution to the online extremism problem bc the rich donors will then cut the funding.
I'm sure a similar thing applies to academia. For example, it would be hard to imagine an academic arriving at the conclusion that "out of touch elites" are part of what causes online extremism bc there an institutional mechanisms to punish them for saying it
Do academics really cause online extremism? I can’t tell if this is a hypothetical throwaway or a real example. Most academics I know don’t have social media at all. The liberal ones think ‘polarization’ is bad, but even the left-liberals recognize that economic despair historically causes ideological bifurcation among the masses
Is that because academia can't or won't? I ask because I often don't know.
I'm currently taking a class on Urban streams and the professor called out new scientist on not taking the time to interact with streams and, instead, become more and more specialized in their techniques. I'm not sure if our institutions being wrapped in a "number go up" mindset and looking for economic value or if it's a cultural problem they won't solve.
Hm I should amend and say that the real poverty of good scholarship is in the political space.
There are many many great scholars in Internet Studies, Andre Brock, danah Boyd, and Judith Fathallah immediately come to mind as favorites. The list is a mile long. But there are a few areas that just don’t work in institutions & political subcultures online is chief among them
Endless video essays on third rate lol cows and random 4chan events from 10 years ago. Subcultures are less "fun" to study because they're not personified.
Now if you can find a way to "lolcow" or mystify "rabbitholeify" more online subcultures subculture, like Qanon, then you might get people more interested. The history of the internet is written antagonistically, rather than from an objective or "victorious" perspective.
Probably because the internet is still seen as niche interest not worth of rigorous study/ the study of political science majors since the internet is seen as fridge weirdos in their offices/ mom’s basement right?
The more I type the more I also come to the realization that the radicalization of our youth is so specific to their algorithm that it makes it difficult to categorize into neat groups as well. That doesn’t help the scholarship.
What's your theory of change, then, Default Friend? Hive-mind reasoning by people who are good on the computer that will solve each and every problem (of the ecological commons) between technocratic solutions and defining who gets to be a subject (and live)? Oligarchic munificence. Patchwork Anarch-Cap. Witchcraft?
Unless you want to classify China as on the Right, I don't think there's a Right-coded or Liberal project , either national or 'network' or federation, that has a future-centered project outside of firefighting (whilst engaging in a rat-scuffle for resources and symbolic capital) and/or bunkers and seasteading.
I’m not sure what this has to do with me commending this project as a piece of Internet anthropology. (It’s obviously many other things too, but that’s my interest!)
I’d really like to see a clear mapping of the so-called “woke left.” They often seem like a kind of boogeyman by the likes of Chibber and Liu, especially in the wake of elections, but rarely are specific individuals named—aside from the usual examples like Robin DiAngelo or Ibram X. Kendi. Are these more of these people or is doing it enough justice to talk about the broader institutional tendencies? It reminds me of when Žižek asked Peterson, “Where are these postmodern neo-Marxists?”
The Portland, OR city council and Oregon governor Tina Kotek are woke left, as are most West Coast Dem politicians if you need specific examples.
Woke left is soft on crime, big on raising taxes for social services, uncritical of immigration, and pro dysphoric, entitled males in female spaces. It’s a toxic brew of neoliberal economic policy, PMC NGO grifters, and anti-straight/white/male identity politics.
Yes! I think generally speaking the woke left consists of a decentralized network of mini-celebrities, which does make it hard to reference them, since so many are only known within their particular geographic region or identity-based community. Not to mention they’re constantly being denounced. But even this structure—and the way it influences the type of thinking that happens within it—is well worth discussion.
Fully support this and honestly think it is necessary as the old progressives of the 2000's are zombified and irrelevant to future politics.
One thing I beg of you, can we get more explicit mention of what class actually is in your discussions and questions? People don't actually know explicitly what is meant by Capitalism and the capitalist class: how they make their money off investment, vs. the Proletariat making their money off of selling their labor. How their profit is maximized by exploitation, in Marxist terms.
It is disheartening to hear people think they are against or for Capitalism but cannot define in in regards to Capital and its function in political economy. Your platform could help out huge just recovering the basics, especially for young people. The more these things are made explicit, the more we win, because letting Capitalism just mean "market economy" makes it sounds completely rational and natural.
I wanted to drop some feedback, both as a way to show appreciation and in the spirit of helping save on costly analytics, to help you compete against the powerful resources of the media giants. So here’s a mini-profile on who is finding your content:
I’m in my mid-30s, rode out the 2008 recession by going straight from undergrad to a master’s in a medical-adjacent field. I spent about seven years in healthcare and hated it for the profit-driven care. I was lucky to pivot into higher education, but now, nearly seven years in, I’ve come to feel that it’s not much better. I no longer believe what I offer students is worth the debt they take on, especially knowing the promise doesn’t hold up like it did anymore, even for jobs in healthcare.
The recent election cycle pushed me into some unexpected explorations. I’ll spare the long version of how I got here, but it’s hard for me not to look at things without a critical lens of capitalism. Everything seems broken and shittier than when I was younger. I feel like Simpson’s picture of the grandpa yelling at the cloud. But I also don’t think I’m wrong. There is some absolutely wild stuff going on in our country. I believe we can leverage the idea that capitalism is sucking everything good from our society and redirecting it to a tiny sliver. We need to get that message out there in creative ways so that we can navigate the next few years with some serious working-class solidarity.
I’m digging into more of your work and looking forward to it. But I’d love to be more involved than just reading. I’m in a fortunate position to work part-time, and I’ve been using the spare time to experiment with building a third-party-style effort for the 2026 House elections. That said, I know the odds aren’t great and I’m not entirely delusional (yet). I want to spend less time reading about big ideas and more time doing something with them. I’m done with my job in about a year, and I’m actively looking for where to focus that energy. This space, broadly speaking, feels like the right place.
If you’ve read this far, thank you. And I’d appreciate a recommendation or two. I don’t have people in my day-to-day life to talk about this stuff, but I genuinely believe there’s little more important right now. Based on what I shared, where would you spend your efforts if you were in my shoes?
Also, the Gateway tapes series was wild. I listened to it last weekend, but I had saved the tapes on my computer a couple of months back. I’m leaning towards giving it a go.
it's kind of a sincere embrace of JREG's attempt to label you "the Joe Rogan of The Left", no? Except unlike Rogan, conscious of and forthright about what you're doing.
Wow. I should of read the comments section before commenting. I wasted my breath and breadth on folks who are probably post literate new Left trans humanist woke jokers. I don't always agree with you Josh but I appreciate your willingness to have discourse that's nuanced and diverse. If only the hyper algorithmed zoomer pseudo leftists could truly be as tolerant as the claim. Their intersectionalism is a very limited intersection. Their liberalism is illiberal, inclusiveness =exclusive and tolerance: intolerant. Keep up the excellent work. Even if I don't always agree. "I didn't leave the left, the left left me"
Have you tried to get Slavoj Zizek to come on? I guess he is a pretty busy guy so getting him in person may not be easy. But I’m sure that he sees and appreciates what you’re doing to build a real left discussion space and would be happy to be interviewed.
In the interest of expanding beyond what is conventionally left, have you heard of Keegan Kjeldsen and the Nietzsche podcast? It is fantastic and really well researched, serious and comprehensive. He has extremely deep knowledge of Nietzsche. While he avoids politics, he is adjacent to a lot of left Deleuzians like on Acid Horizon (a bunch of potential guests there too). I think it would be an extremely interesting interview to discuss Nietzsche’s views and critiques of morality (and by extension, socialism).
If it’s not possible to get Keegan on, what about Devin Goure, co-host of Moral Minority, who goes by Left Nietzschean on X? He has deep knowledge of that thinker also but takes things in a left direction and his project kind of is to rebuild morality after the devastating Nietzschean critique of it. I think that would be a fantastic interview as well.
I enjoy your podcast and it's conversations but I think as with many terms and political ideologies they've completely lost their meanings. As an old school leftist today I find more simpatico with someone like Dave Smith than Vaush or whomever. Identity politics basically ruined everything. Socialism, Anarchism, Communism and Libertarianism all are utopian ideas. They all have similar core beliefs. When there's no room for a free speech and anti war left I have no issue with working with Libertarians on common ground principles. We all have, deep down an antagonist relationship with coercive government. For posterity and the record.
"In the mid-19th century,[11] libertarianism originated as a form of anti-authoritarian and anti-state politics usually seen as being on the left (like socialists and anarchists[12] especially social anarchists,[13] but more generally libertarian communists/Marxists and libertarian socialists).[14][unreliable source?][15] Along with seeking to abolish or reduce the power of the State, these libertarians sought to abolish capitalism and private ownership of the means of production, or else to restrict their purview or effects to usufruct property norms, in favor of common or cooperative ownership and management, viewing private property in the means of production as a barrier to freedom and liberty.[20]"
"Anarchist communist philosopher Joseph Déjacque was the first person to describe himself as a libertarian[11] in an 1857 letter.[154] Unlike mutualist anarchist philosopher Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, he argued that "it is not the product of his or her labor that the worker has a right to, but to the satisfaction of his or her needs, whatever may be their nature".[155][156] According to anarchist historian Max Nettlau, the first use of the term libertarian communism was in November 1880, when a French anarchist congress employed it to identify its doctrines more clearly.[157] The French anarchist journalist Sébastien Faure started the weekly paper Le Libertaire (The Libertarian) in 1895.[158]
Sébastien Faure, prominent French theorist of libertarian communism as well as atheist and freethought militant"
Libertarian Communism+paleo Marxism=the way forward.
Would you consider interviewing leftist“gender critical” (there is no term for this that I fully endorse) thinkers? Or is that too controversial? The leftist GC to RW pipeline is real and people need to hear about it IMO. I’d also love to see Varn interviewed about the concept of PMC. I’m a big fan of both him and Liu. Cage fight?
This is very important and no one wants to face it. I'm gender critical and consider myself on the left and I was starting to be pulled right by gender critical content. October 7th was a defining moment for me when many turned hard right supporters of Israel, I of course did not. I'm still not on board with the gender movement but I can see it was being well used as a wedge issue by the right
Hello ❤️❤️❤️. I feel like we were the canary in the coal mine for the right-anti/woke pipeline but nobody on the left gave a shit cause it was women. I’m extremely bitter and disgusted.
My husband and I found your YouTube channel because we follow Channel 5 and Andrew Calihan really closely. The first non-andrew episode of Doomscroll we listened to was filled with words we didn't know. In the last two months or so we've been diving into your channel and the books/podcasts it references, and we've both learned so much. It's a data set of two, but your pipeline is working.
I don’t think it’s a mistake at all. Also — I am not on the left at all so this may be wrong but it feels to me like you’re the only one who’s done a good genealogy of the Online Left. Everyone wants to map on the Online Right, inside and out. Huge blindspot in this space.
Massive blind spot because the moralizing/ massive number of liberals (me included) who are in the media space often struggle to comprehend the soup they swim in. It's a lot easier for academics to dissect outsiders as the inherent structure of the thing is learned from a curiosity instead of a framework with which to see the world.
I think there is also a lot of sneering from those people to point out how "bad" and "dangerous" many of these groups are, when a lot of the boy calling wolf makes it hard for us to see the real dangers in some of the ideologies.
I would even go a step further and say much of academia has done a poor job @ mapping these spaces.
A big part of why is that the immersion is requires is not possible in academia. Plus in Internet Studies, theory often obscures rather than elucidates.
It almost can only be done by people like myself & Josh who have one foot in and one foot out. Who are both of & not of each space.
I feel like in 2017-18, I had some naive faith in the non-profit industrial complex to map these spaces. But soon realized (and was also just directly told this by people who quit the field) every conclusion they draw is hamstrung by the big donor funding model.
No non-profit will ever come up with economic redistribution as a solution to the online extremism problem bc the rich donors will then cut the funding.
I'm sure a similar thing applies to academia. For example, it would be hard to imagine an academic arriving at the conclusion that "out of touch elites" are part of what causes online extremism bc there an institutional mechanisms to punish them for saying it
Do academics really cause online extremism? I can’t tell if this is a hypothetical throwaway or a real example. Most academics I know don’t have social media at all. The liberal ones think ‘polarization’ is bad, but even the left-liberals recognize that economic despair historically causes ideological bifurcation among the masses
Good point. Have heard quite a few horror stories from cve folks
Is that because academia can't or won't? I ask because I often don't know.
I'm currently taking a class on Urban streams and the professor called out new scientist on not taking the time to interact with streams and, instead, become more and more specialized in their techniques. I'm not sure if our institutions being wrapped in a "number go up" mindset and looking for economic value or if it's a cultural problem they won't solve.
Hm I should amend and say that the real poverty of good scholarship is in the political space.
There are many many great scholars in Internet Studies, Andre Brock, danah Boyd, and Judith Fathallah immediately come to mind as favorites. The list is a mile long. But there are a few areas that just don’t work in institutions & political subcultures online is chief among them
Endless video essays on third rate lol cows and random 4chan events from 10 years ago. Subcultures are less "fun" to study because they're not personified.
Now if you can find a way to "lolcow" or mystify "rabbitholeify" more online subcultures subculture, like Qanon, then you might get people more interested. The history of the internet is written antagonistically, rather than from an objective or "victorious" perspective.
Probably because the internet is still seen as niche interest not worth of rigorous study/ the study of political science majors since the internet is seen as fridge weirdos in their offices/ mom’s basement right?
The more I type the more I also come to the realization that the radicalization of our youth is so specific to their algorithm that it makes it difficult to categorize into neat groups as well. That doesn’t help the scholarship.
Internet studies has been a field in some form or another since there was an Internet so idk
What's your theory of change, then, Default Friend? Hive-mind reasoning by people who are good on the computer that will solve each and every problem (of the ecological commons) between technocratic solutions and defining who gets to be a subject (and live)? Oligarchic munificence. Patchwork Anarch-Cap. Witchcraft?
Unless you want to classify China as on the Right, I don't think there's a Right-coded or Liberal project , either national or 'network' or federation, that has a future-centered project outside of firefighting (whilst engaging in a rat-scuffle for resources and symbolic capital) and/or bunkers and seasteading.
I’m not sure what this has to do with me commending this project as a piece of Internet anthropology. (It’s obviously many other things too, but that’s my interest!)
I’d really like to see a clear mapping of the so-called “woke left.” They often seem like a kind of boogeyman by the likes of Chibber and Liu, especially in the wake of elections, but rarely are specific individuals named—aside from the usual examples like Robin DiAngelo or Ibram X. Kendi. Are these more of these people or is doing it enough justice to talk about the broader institutional tendencies? It reminds me of when Žižek asked Peterson, “Where are these postmodern neo-Marxists?”
The Portland, OR city council and Oregon governor Tina Kotek are woke left, as are most West Coast Dem politicians if you need specific examples.
Woke left is soft on crime, big on raising taxes for social services, uncritical of immigration, and pro dysphoric, entitled males in female spaces. It’s a toxic brew of neoliberal economic policy, PMC NGO grifters, and anti-straight/white/male identity politics.
Yes! I think generally speaking the woke left consists of a decentralized network of mini-celebrities, which does make it hard to reference them, since so many are only known within their particular geographic region or identity-based community. Not to mention they’re constantly being denounced. But even this structure—and the way it influences the type of thinking that happens within it—is well worth discussion.
A lot of people have done this. I think James Lindsay and Helen Pluckrose map out some of it. The Daily Wire affiliated people largely fail.
I think Yascha Mounk mostly traces it correctly. It's more critical legal studies than post modern, and no "neomarxists".
Fully support this and honestly think it is necessary as the old progressives of the 2000's are zombified and irrelevant to future politics.
One thing I beg of you, can we get more explicit mention of what class actually is in your discussions and questions? People don't actually know explicitly what is meant by Capitalism and the capitalist class: how they make their money off investment, vs. the Proletariat making their money off of selling their labor. How their profit is maximized by exploitation, in Marxist terms.
It is disheartening to hear people think they are against or for Capitalism but cannot define in in regards to Capital and its function in political economy. Your platform could help out huge just recovering the basics, especially for young people. The more these things are made explicit, the more we win, because letting Capitalism just mean "market economy" makes it sounds completely rational and natural.
Yes we are doing this one but it won’t come out for a long while
Is it genius? Or post-Klein cope? Either way I will give you money
I wanted to drop some feedback, both as a way to show appreciation and in the spirit of helping save on costly analytics, to help you compete against the powerful resources of the media giants. So here’s a mini-profile on who is finding your content:
I’m in my mid-30s, rode out the 2008 recession by going straight from undergrad to a master’s in a medical-adjacent field. I spent about seven years in healthcare and hated it for the profit-driven care. I was lucky to pivot into higher education, but now, nearly seven years in, I’ve come to feel that it’s not much better. I no longer believe what I offer students is worth the debt they take on, especially knowing the promise doesn’t hold up like it did anymore, even for jobs in healthcare.
The recent election cycle pushed me into some unexpected explorations. I’ll spare the long version of how I got here, but it’s hard for me not to look at things without a critical lens of capitalism. Everything seems broken and shittier than when I was younger. I feel like Simpson’s picture of the grandpa yelling at the cloud. But I also don’t think I’m wrong. There is some absolutely wild stuff going on in our country. I believe we can leverage the idea that capitalism is sucking everything good from our society and redirecting it to a tiny sliver. We need to get that message out there in creative ways so that we can navigate the next few years with some serious working-class solidarity.
I’m digging into more of your work and looking forward to it. But I’d love to be more involved than just reading. I’m in a fortunate position to work part-time, and I’ve been using the spare time to experiment with building a third-party-style effort for the 2026 House elections. That said, I know the odds aren’t great and I’m not entirely delusional (yet). I want to spend less time reading about big ideas and more time doing something with them. I’m done with my job in about a year, and I’m actively looking for where to focus that energy. This space, broadly speaking, feels like the right place.
If you’ve read this far, thank you. And I’d appreciate a recommendation or two. I don’t have people in my day-to-day life to talk about this stuff, but I genuinely believe there’s little more important right now. Based on what I shared, where would you spend your efforts if you were in my shoes?
Also, the Gateway tapes series was wild. I listened to it last weekend, but I had saved the tapes on my computer a couple of months back. I’m leaning towards giving it a go.
it's kind of a sincere embrace of JREG's attempt to label you "the Joe Rogan of The Left", no? Except unlike Rogan, conscious of and forthright about what you're doing.
What’s with the “unwavering support for the state of Israel“ bit at the end?
That entire sentence is sarcasm.
Phew
I was wondering the same
@Grok is this real?
Wow. I should of read the comments section before commenting. I wasted my breath and breadth on folks who are probably post literate new Left trans humanist woke jokers. I don't always agree with you Josh but I appreciate your willingness to have discourse that's nuanced and diverse. If only the hyper algorithmed zoomer pseudo leftists could truly be as tolerant as the claim. Their intersectionalism is a very limited intersection. Their liberalism is illiberal, inclusiveness =exclusive and tolerance: intolerant. Keep up the excellent work. Even if I don't always agree. "I didn't leave the left, the left left me"
Have you tried to get Slavoj Zizek to come on? I guess he is a pretty busy guy so getting him in person may not be easy. But I’m sure that he sees and appreciates what you’re doing to build a real left discussion space and would be happy to be interviewed.
In the interest of expanding beyond what is conventionally left, have you heard of Keegan Kjeldsen and the Nietzsche podcast? It is fantastic and really well researched, serious and comprehensive. He has extremely deep knowledge of Nietzsche. While he avoids politics, he is adjacent to a lot of left Deleuzians like on Acid Horizon (a bunch of potential guests there too). I think it would be an extremely interesting interview to discuss Nietzsche’s views and critiques of morality (and by extension, socialism).
If it’s not possible to get Keegan on, what about Devin Goure, co-host of Moral Minority, who goes by Left Nietzschean on X? He has deep knowledge of that thinker also but takes things in a left direction and his project kind of is to rebuild morality after the devastating Nietzschean critique of it. I think that would be a fantastic interview as well.
Xenofeminist manifesto is the biggest, most pretentious garbage I've ever read
Can you elaborate on that?
Will you ever interview hardline Communists? If not, why not?
This is MAGA communism but boring
I enjoy your podcast and it's conversations but I think as with many terms and political ideologies they've completely lost their meanings. As an old school leftist today I find more simpatico with someone like Dave Smith than Vaush or whomever. Identity politics basically ruined everything. Socialism, Anarchism, Communism and Libertarianism all are utopian ideas. They all have similar core beliefs. When there's no room for a free speech and anti war left I have no issue with working with Libertarians on common ground principles. We all have, deep down an antagonist relationship with coercive government. For posterity and the record.
"In the mid-19th century,[11] libertarianism originated as a form of anti-authoritarian and anti-state politics usually seen as being on the left (like socialists and anarchists[12] especially social anarchists,[13] but more generally libertarian communists/Marxists and libertarian socialists).[14][unreliable source?][15] Along with seeking to abolish or reduce the power of the State, these libertarians sought to abolish capitalism and private ownership of the means of production, or else to restrict their purview or effects to usufruct property norms, in favor of common or cooperative ownership and management, viewing private property in the means of production as a barrier to freedom and liberty.[20]"
"Anarchist communist philosopher Joseph Déjacque was the first person to describe himself as a libertarian[11] in an 1857 letter.[154] Unlike mutualist anarchist philosopher Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, he argued that "it is not the product of his or her labor that the worker has a right to, but to the satisfaction of his or her needs, whatever may be their nature".[155][156] According to anarchist historian Max Nettlau, the first use of the term libertarian communism was in November 1880, when a French anarchist congress employed it to identify its doctrines more clearly.[157] The French anarchist journalist Sébastien Faure started the weekly paper Le Libertaire (The Libertarian) in 1895.[158]
Sébastien Faure, prominent French theorist of libertarian communism as well as atheist and freethought militant"
Libertarian Communism+paleo Marxism=the way forward.
I enjoy watching Doomscroll, I hope you have Natalie Wynn/Contrapoints as a guest one day. Thank you for your work.