The Online Left is Falling Apart.

Digital Natives Come of Age

The failures of the Bush years were many. Disastrous and costly wars abroad. Financial cataclysm resulting in the global financial crisis in ‘08 and ‘09. The rapid loss of civil liberties under a new mass surveillance regime. Just some highlights to name a few. Obama was the anti-Bush. Smart, accomplished, youthful and sincere. False bravado was replaced with genuine swagger. No more seat of the pants Texas-style leadership; only cool, calculating policy precision.

And yet, the unifying force of generational candidate Barack Obama failed to morph into a unified movement. Partly because it was all promise and no platform.

In Obama we found a movement in a man, not a man at the head of a movement. We were so desperate to stop the bleeding that we were willing to check foundational leftist principles at the door. So when people like Cornel West and Chris Hedges criticized the obvious doubling down on neoliberalism and corporatist policies, many on the left were unable to listen to the critiques. We heard them, but weren’t listening. And all the right needed to do was play the role of the loyal opposition and stonewall anything that looked or sounded promising to the masses.

During this time the world became more attuned to online sources. The online 9/11 conspiracy documentary Loose Change came out toward the end of the second Bush term and introduced a generation of digital natives to conspiratorial information that had no place in mainstream media. Dark places developed online as conspiracies circulated in far left and far right circles and the web became a free-for-all for shadow information that was largely uncredited and unvetted. YouTube had just launched and podcasts were soon to come as well.

Over the next 15 years the online pundit class exploded and matured to the point where the Joe Rogan podcast became one of the most widely consumed media sources in the United States, and certain YouTubers have larger monthly viewership than some cable news networks.

Today the right is more than just Fox News. The online space is dominated by several notable figures with enormous financial backing. PragerU, The Daily Wire, Turning Points USA and the constellation of influencers such as Ben Shapiro, Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, Charlie Kirk, Dennis Prager, Steven Crowder, Matt Walsh and, yes, Joe Rogan have enormous footholds in the public consciousness. It’s not that the left doesn’t have comparable numbers on places like YouTube, it’s that the right has superpowers of message amplification that the left has yet to figure out.

Here’s what I mean.

When the right takes on an issue, it goes all in. With complete solidarity. Disputes arise around contracts and egos—as in the case of Candace Owens splitting with Ben Shapiro, or everyone abandoning Steven Crowder—but when it comes to messaging they are incredibly disciplined. There are very clear funding sources to many of their enterprises that keep them focused on specific issues. Like the Wilks brothers who poured millions of dollars into building the Daily Wire and PragerU. Then there’s the platform aspect to consolidate and circulate information such as Rumble, Truth Social and now X. And the mainstream cable outlets play their part by cross promoting certain individuals and ideas.

You see, it’s less about the size and number of the platforms, and more about their organization and message discipline. Every nail gets hammered in the same way at the same time and in the same place. Immigrants. Bam, bam. Trans people. Bam, bam. Markets good, government bad. Bam, bam. The right is playing three chord country music in 4/4 with familiar hooks and the left is playing Blue Rondo à la Turk in 9/8.

Gone are the days of Gore Vidal versus William F. Buckley. It’s billionaire funded think tanks generating ideas and promoting them seamlessly through right wing mouthpieces on multiple platforms against a left spectrum that ranges from platformed Marxists to well intentioned corporate democrats. To be clear, I’m talking about platformed voices on the left. There are public voices and thought leaders on the left out there from Cornel West and Tavis Smiley to Noura Erakat and Rashid Khalidi to Yanis Varoufakis and Naomi Klein. I’m not talking about the left intellectuals.

Let me name check just a few to illustrate my point.

David Pakman, F.D. Signifier, David Doel, Ben Burgis, Briahna Joy Gray, Owen Jones, Mehdi Hasan, David Sirota, Paris Marx, Hasan Piker, Brian Tyler Cohen, Sam Seder and Emma Vigeland, Marc Lamont Hill, Cenk Uygar and Ana Kasparian, Kyle Kulinski and Krystal Ball, Abby Martin, Thom Hartmann, Francesca Fiorentini, Lance of the Serfs, Zoe Baker, Mike Figueredo, Zac and Gavin from The Vanguard, Amy Goodman, Danny Bessner and Derek Davison, Brad Onishi, Nick Hanauer, Laura Flanders, Ryan Grim, Olay Olurin, Jeremy Scahill, Juan González, Brad Friedman, Lee Camp, Katie Halper, Ben Meiselas, Hal Sparks, John Fugelsang, Stephanie Miller, Chris Hedges, Matt Binder, Jared Yates Sexton, Matt Lech, Nathan J. Robinson, Benjamin Dixon, Jordan Chariton, Jessiah from Pondering Politics, Leeja Miller, Destiny, The Chapo Trap House crew, Trae Crowder, Cody Johnston, some guy named Jon Stewart, John Iadarola and Richard Wolff just to name some folks that are in my personal headspace. And there’s a bunch more.

Point being, no one is pulling the strings on this side. Now, I’ll argue that there was some semblance of effort in this election to align messaging around Kamala Harris. There are a few names on this list that checked their leftist bona fides at the door, swallowed hard and got on message with the establishment. (They know who they are. I didn’t even bother putting the Pod Save my place in society fellas on this list.)

Now this doesn’t even get into the politics-adjacent conversations happening on other popular online platforms. For example, I would bet more young people are tuning into Theo Von, The Brilliant Idiots or The Breakfast Club during peak political moments. The audience capture in these mediums is enormously influential even if they only crack the surface of wider discussions. Infotainment is just as influential these days as pure political punditry even if we don’t realize the impact it’s having on the culture.

But back to the left. The larger point about conversations in left spaces is that they are as diverse as the hosts themselves. Like I said, with the exception of some transparently deliberate efforts on behalf of some of these figures to carry water for the DNC during the election cycle, there are some thoughtful and productive conversations happening all around us and all the time.

And therein lies both the beauty of the left and the inherent problem.

But here’s the thing: There’s nothing new about it. Have we lost some erudition and meaning along the way? I think so. Go back and watch James Baldwin pummel William F. Buckley at Cambridge University to get a sense of what we’ve lost in the discourse. On the flip side, the discussions are more abundant and accessible these days. I don’t think political discourse should be the exclusive purview of the elite thinkers. The barroom philosopher king or queen has a great deal to offer to the conversation from a place of reality and lived experience.

But the explosion of thought, nuance and tribalism on the left has also led to infighting. Again, nothing new but there are certain gaps that need to be closed if we’re to mount a counteroffensive to the right wing narratives that have taken hold in our society.

In many ways, the aftermath of the election has surfaced our disagreements in petty ways that are fun to watch. And I’m guilty of it myself. Take The Young Turks (TYT) for example. Right now the online left is ablaze over what appears to be a deliberate turn to the right by the leaders of TYT. I mentioned Zac and Gavin from The Vanguard who have been hammering away at TYT and comparing their new approach to previously documented right turns by figures like Dave Rubin and Jimmy Dore (both of whom were part of TYT in the beginning). The fact of the matter is that the online left owes a great deal to TYT for establishing the online left in the early days of YouTube in particular. It led to a cottage industry of pundits like Emma Vigeland, Francesca Fiorentini and John Iadarola, who are now prominent figures on the left.

But the two main faces of TYT—Cenk Uygar and Ana Kasparian—have made a discernible shift in their approach to appeal to right wing audiences by appearing on shows like Tim Poole, Charlie Kirk and Glenn Beck. These appearances are being made under the auspices of an olive branch, an attempt to find common ground. But that’s not really how it works in these spaces and several online leftists are having none of it, accusing Cenk and Ana of trying to cozy up to the monied sources behind many of these right wing shows. To be real about it, the financial success of people like Rubin, Dore and Poole is undeniable and the idea that Cenk and Ana are somehow going to infuse leftist values into their hate mongering venue is misguided at best.

The only image I have in my head is Cenk and Ana dining with Farris Wilks like Cypher enjoying a steak with Agent Smith in The Matrix.

Watching Zac and Gavin get under their skin is somewhat of a guilty pleasure to me right now so I won’t deny the appeal of this moment. But my greater hope is that we exit this post-election blame game phase and get down to business sooner than later. The task at hand is to find common ground on the left, not the right.

In the not-so-distant past, the left in the United States flirted with something resembling cohesion. The Bernie Sanders movement of 2016 and 2020 briefly united progressives, socialists, and disenchanted liberals under a banner of economic justice, healthcare reform, and systemic change. But as Sanders’ momentum waned, so too did the tenuous alliance of factions within the left. What remains now is a splintered spectrum of ideologies—from establishment liberals clinging to the framework of the New Deal, to radical leftists advocating for an overhaul of capitalism itself. The fractures are deep, and the online left has devolved into circular firing squads over issues ranging from Israel/Palestine to labor, identity politics, immigration, and the role of the state.

The divisions aren’t new. This might seem like a stretch but in fact, these disagreements bear a resemblance to the debates that plagued the first and second Internationals of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Figures like Karl Marx, Mikhail Bakunin, Leon Trotsky, and Karl Kautsky all grappled with questions of ideology, strategy, and praxis. And just like then, these divisions threaten to undermine the collective power of the left at a time when unity is desperately needed. Perhaps by examining the past, we can illuminate a path forward for today’s fractured left.

The Online Left: A Digital Tower of Babel

On one end of the spectrum are the establishment liberals, the heirs of the New Deal legacy. These are the folks who believe in a capitalist framework tempered by worker protections, public safety nets, and regulated markets. Their vision is a kinder, gentler capitalism that borrows from FDR’s playbook: industrial development paired with a robust welfare state.

On the other end are leftists who argue that capitalism is mutating into something far more insidious. Drawing on the technofeudalism theories of Yanis Varoufakis, we can see a system where traditional capital accumulation is supplanted by platforms, data monopolies, and an unprecedented concentration of power in the hands of tech oligarchs. For them, the New Deal framework is not only insufficient but actively complicit in perpetuating exploitation. They argue for a radical departure from the status quo—whether through abolishing private property, dismantling police forces, or envisioning entirely new forms of governance.

Digging back into history, during the First International (1864–1876), Marx and Bakunin famously clashed over the role of the state in achieving socialism. Marx’s camp argued for using the state as a tool to transition to communism, while Bakunin’s anarchists warned that any state power—even in socialist hands—would inevitably lead to tyranny. The schism ultimately led to the International’s dissolution.

The Second International (1889–1916) saw its own fractures, especially over the question of reform vs. revolution. Figures like Karl Kautsky advocated for a gradual, parliamentary path to socialism, while Rosa Luxemburg and Lenin criticized this as opportunistic and insufficiently radical. The outbreak of World War I further splintered the movement, as nationalistic tendencies overrode internationalist solidarity.

The takeaway? These divisions weren’t just ideological—they were about strategy, power, and the practicalities of organizing diverse factions. The Internationals ultimately failed to maintain unity because they lacked a framework for reconciling these differences.

If we think about our current situation in historical context, there’s a lot to learn; but it also shows just how far we’ve strayed from having these important discussions.

If the left is to rebuild its alliance, we need to acknowledge our legitimate differences and occupy forums where we can grapple with them to produce frameworks to move forward. Agree to disagree on some aspects but align on central themes: think coalitions rather than parties. Thinking in these terms allows us to disagree in online spaces but align on fundamental issues that turn from agreements into alliances when it matters politically. There’s a time to be ideological and a time to be transactional.

The problem we face on the left is that we haven’t aligned on the transactional elements that make us an immovable bloc during elections or legislative periods. Just because we have a two-party system doesn’t mean that we can’t move in parliamentary circles.

I bring up the First and Second Internationals not as a source of inspiration but as a cautionary tale. Many of the most important issues they faced at the time were left unresolved at crucial moments of global transition in labor, revolution and hyper nationalism. And these are the parallels I see in today’s world. Artificial Intelligence is set to revolutionize labor domestically and abroad. That’s something we’re going to unpack in great detail in the new year. The upshot here is that the economic dislocation among laboring classes will be unlike anything we’ve experienced in living history. Not only are we unprepared to meet this moment, we’re not even talking about it in the right way. And then there’s the looming reality of Project 2025 being implemented with blinding speed, which will lead to further social divisions and feed the flame of nationalism, again in ways we haven’t experienced in nearly a century.

Bakunin was ultimately proven to be right in his assessment of the International movement. But was he right because of human nature or circumstances that got away from the incrementalists? A whole other discussion that might seem anachronistic but I promise it strikes at the heart of the modern moment we face.

Unf*cking the Left

So what does such an alliance look like? That’s the trillion dollar question. My contribution is simple. To quote The Bear, we need to find our non-negotiables. Mind you I’m speaking about the United States only here and there are inherent flaws even in that construct as any good Marxist will tell you. But I see it as a starting point.

Here are my non-negotiables:

Universal healthcare.

It’s one of the simplest fundamental right we can agree upon that also has a definitive and existing policy prescription. Medicare for all must become a uniting principle on the left. The fact that the vast majority of the country is demonstrably in favor of it and that the Democratic Party didn’t even speak to it is a travesty.

Labor.

The right to be and feel productive and be fairly compensated. What does this look like in practice, especially within a system that favors “right to work” union busting behavior? A civilian core. We’ll talk more about this concept in the new year but it’s nothing new and will be more important than ever to consider if what I think is going to happen to the workforce comes to fruition.

Climate justice.

This one touches nearly every aspect of decision making. By centering climate in all of our think tank and policy discussions and carrying out ideas to their logical climate impact solution, we can more carefully guide a future that mitigates the impact of climate change.

Shelter.

There’s been a great deal of work on welfare and poverty alleviation issues that show that social service interventions and assistance are anywhere from impossible to moderate, but rarely if ever complete, when people are unhoused. The “housing first” initiative is one that we can all agree upon, particularly when you consider the sheer number of unhoused children that live in the wealthiest nation on the planet. It’s unconscionable.

Speech.

Money cannot be protected as speech. The range of issues that stems from this fundamental concept is staggering. For every pet project on the left, it’s easy to draw a straight line to the wallets of the billionaire class in this country. If we don’t eliminate Citizens United and reform campaign financing, few of our issues will ever be resolved.

The stakes are too high for petty squabbles and purity tests. Whether the left can unify around shared principles or remain mired in division will determine its ability to challenge the systems of exploitation and oppression that define our age. And if we can’t unf*ck the left, we might as well hand the keys to Bezos and Musk and let technofeudalism run its course. Here endeth the lesson.