The world is burning and everyone knows it. The far right is co-opting it and the liberals don’t know what to do. The conspiratorial fascists are the only ones claiming to be pro-working class, against corporations, anti-establishment, anti-MSM, and so on. They can pull radicalizing people in a terrible direction. This is what Naomi Klein calls the doppelganger effect, but it seems Lemmygrad doesn’t like podcasts. Most people can see they are evil, so the establishment liberals can say the only way to want change is to be them and neutralize many people.

Those that actually want to do something about the many crises are fragmented and co-opted. The liberal ideology leads to this. A key part of metaphysics is believing everything is separate and atomized, alienated. This leads liberals to see politics as a buffet of issues where they don’t know which to pick. I heard a liberal podcast a while ago which stuck with me because they were talking about how all the different causes seem paralyzing. Should one fight for abortion rights? Against book bans? For the environment? They know democrats won’t do shit, but they gotta keep voting because the GOP baddies are worse. They concluded everyone should just pick an issue and start doing something and hope things work out.

This is where Marxism comes in. We understand the interconnected nature of these problems and what we need to do to overcome them. We can show conspiracy minded people what the real problems are and what they’re really covering up. We can explain to the liberals how they can try to influence all their issues at once.

My question is should we do this in an organized fashion and infiltrate liberal groups to try to pull “converts?” These are the politically active people after all. Should we try to do a CPC working inside the KMT thing? Are groups already doing anything like this? Should we just try to organize a vocal alternative and get noticed by people who want change on social media and in communities?

  • albigu
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    1 year ago

    One issue I have with many leftist podcasts I’ve found is that they’re more like round-table talk shows than educative/entertainment. @nephs@lemmygrad.ml mentioned soberana.tv, that has something like that with their “Revolushow” one that picks a specific subject per episode to delve into, and I think Hexbear’s Deprogram is kinda like that too, but I don’t think they’re enough.

    One of the most radicalising works I’ve found in my life was Mike Duncan’s Revolutions Podcasts, even if the author is a socdem. It was very entertaining and binge-worthy, but also helped a lot normalise the idea of revolution and desmistify a bunch of propaganda. I think we could only stand to win from building similar projects that mix entertaining narratives and educational value.

    In order to agitate we have to be where the workers get their info. In Russia it was the newspapers, in Cuba it was the radio, nowadays a lot of it is in internet audiovisual media.

    Brazilians here please consider a “Revoltas” podcast that’s similar to Mike Duncan’s one but for Brazilian insurgencies, revolts and attempted revolutions

    • Looming mountain
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      1 year ago

      Revleftradio is incredibly informative on all marxist subjects. He also hosts Guerilla radio and another podcast Red Menace. All are madsive sources of information. He once did a 3hour podcast on Stalin from an ML perspective. It’s still the most informative thing on Stalin I’ve ever heard.

    • QueerCommieOP
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      1 year ago

      One issue I have with many leftist podcasts I’ve found is that they’re more like round-table talk shows than educative/entertainment.

      ? I’ve found shows like TurnLeftist and Trash Future rather informative and entertainment. The Deprogram which is not affiliated with hexbear is very educational, diving into different subjects each episode.

      I’ll check out the podcast you mention.

      If First Thought got big enough it could serve the purpose you mention.

      • Looming mountain
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        1 year ago

        Check out revleftmedia. Incredibly informative and in depth. I like it even better than the deprogram. Bhret had been on the deprogram though.

        • QueerCommieOP
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          1 year ago

          They’re so good. The Deprogram is funny, but I agree revleft is better.