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I know multiple people in real life who’ve been through ideological transitions on this scale, and during the more ‘happening’ periods of European politics (especially 1890 to 1939) it wasn’t common for public intellectuals to jump between traditionalist religious, fascist, socialist, liberal, social democratic, anarchist, Christian socialist and other ideologies.
Spencer’s ideological transition is overstated. I guess maybe he’s somewhat aligned with Hanania now, in that he likes trolling the ‘orthodox’ dissident/alt right, but then again so does BAP. Have his views actually changed? The main trigger seems to have been his divorce (?) and then going all in on Ukrainian nationalism, but it’s not there isn’t a substantial hard-right pagan/SS LARP element to Azov etc, even if ‘as a whole’ the hard right is probably pro-Russia.
This isn’t true at all. Different podcasters interact all the time in that weird debating verse around the streamer Destiny. There’s a direct through line from the DSA through to Chapo Trap House, Cumtown and then Red Scare. The language used is the same, the style of comedy / the bits are the same, the slang is all descended from chanspeak, memes use similar or identical templates and go through the same phases. Almost everyone on avowed, unrepentant tankie communist communities like TrueAnon, GenZedong etc knows about figures like BAP and Moldbug and Sailer. Many even know about this place. When they’re not discussing political programs they have a lot of the same takes or bugbears with popular ‘liberal’ or ‘mainstream’ culture (marvel, games, funkopops, consoomerism etc).
The ‘very online’ community is essentially one contiguous zone, there isn’t a hard border and you often see figures on the far left and right comment on each others’ tweets even if derisively, which they wouldn’t do if they never saw them.
I wouldn’t really say “same takes” so much as inverted or mirror images.
E.g., with all those you’ve got one side — the left in case of these specific examples — with almost a parody level enthusiasm for marvel/funkopops/etc and the other side with some over the top curmudgeonly hatred for some harmless hobby (in this case literally plastic trinkets).
It goes the other way as well. There’s no shortage of ultimately harmless right coded interests/products — NASCAR, bodybuilding, country music, etc — that seem to get treated like punching bags for the left.
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No one on the alt right / far right / whatever term we use now watches or cares about Destiny. Destiny has his own unique audience and a culture centered around debate, and some of them (they’re all teens I’d bet) will wind up being persuaded by a given speaker, but to say that online rightists share a space with Destiny is to misunderstand how it all works. Yeah, they might tune in to see Fuentes debate Destiny, just like an Andrew Tate fan will see him debate Piers Morgan, but they exist in entirely different social ecosystems. (Ask some of the far rightists here if they know anyone who watches Destiny. I don’t know for sure, but I’d bet they don’t.)
The “break” is really just red scare, Chapo is firmly left and cumtown is firmly center left, none of these people would ever consider voting right or throwing themselves in with the right generally.
This tells us nothing, even in contentious revolutionary France the members of the opposing side knew the primary thoughtspeople of the other side
This containment zone is more influential on the public than whatever happens in Academia. You have the internet and you have Academia, and I’d say that academia is the containment zone whereas the internet is what has been changing opinions since ~2008. JBP the academic maybe influenced 500, JBP the viral internet guy influenced 5,000,000.
Red Scare’s hosts aren’t particularly reactionary in their own lives and the subreddit isn’t majority conservative, and certainly not majority dissident right, though. I think it’s genuinely ideologically diverse, and there are absolutely a lot of StupidPol users who have drifted rightward over time.
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Like coffee_enjoyer said, yes there are hard borders. I never see Chapo Types on DR telegram, and I never see DR rhetoric on those breadtube subreddits. There is absolutely a hard border, with Twitter being the only real opportunity for interaction, which is why Musk's acquisition may have a real impact on political dialogue.
I’ve seen both on the RedScarePod subreddit.
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