I think that the cohesion of the “dirtbag left” peaked around 2018, but has since began to fracture into other (closely related) cliques such as “stupidpol”, “irony left” (this one would be closest to “Orthodox dirtbag-leftism” IMO), and “communist debate nerds” (that’s a lot of Hexbear users, but there is still plenty of overlap with other groups, it’s all a spectrum and people will fall into more than one camp). I’d be interested to see if anyone could identify any other poles.

A lot of the online left was united behind Bernie 2020, but now that that’s over, it will be interesting to see where things move from there. obviously a lot of liberal leaning people are happy enough that Trump’s gone and aren’t a factor at all. I think a lot of people are shifting gears from the ironic detachment that was fostered with Trumps antics (both humorous and abhorrent) to becoming more sincere. The real bridge to cross is channeling that sincerity to actual organizing. I think that that’s accelerating a bit, but I don’t think it’s very likely to “actually” happen.

One other aspect is the rise of “anarcho-Bidenist” socdems who appropriate both Marxist and (more commonly) Anarchist terminology, but don’t provide an actual analysis. Frankly, this is kind of a good thing. I went through a phase of this myself a few years ago, and I’ve come a long way in my knowledge since then. The big difference was that my “sink” was agreeing with P_K on the sub, and it wasn’t hard to pull myself out of that orbit. Nowadays, you have more Youtubers and Twitter people who are motivated to create popular content, rather than develop their ideals and knowledge. This could be a more difficult cultural sink to break out of, but we will see if these people are still relevant in 3 years. I have a feeling that a good chunk of them will be pipelined left over time in views, though I still am not convinced that it will translate to very much IRL.

Amber.