a YouTube channel¶

Multiple people have suggested I start a podcast or a YouTube channel to share my political theories, perhaps believing that I would somehow be the only exception to the rule that all streamers are politically incoherent clout chasers? The thing is, I actually would retain my principles and I wouldn't modulate my positions to appeal to the broadest audience.

Which means I would literally be kicked off whatever platform I use and/or face actual state repression, while simultaneously floundering in obscurity. The forces that drive "audience growth" and the forces that drive movement building are mutually opposed. The more popular you are as an "internet presence," the less revolutionary you are and vice versa. Not because revolution is "unpopular," but by the very nature of the forum. This is the same dynamic when you try to build a "revolutionary faction" within a liberal organization, or try to use "mass politics" (elections, unionism, etc.) to spread a revolutionary message. In these spaces, true revolutionary theory is DOA, so you temper your rhetoric. You observe that dilution working to expand your reach, so you dilute further. You integrate more and more theoretical concessions to widen your tent, and you notch each moment of growth as a "win," even as you drift farther and farther from your original conception of victory. All the while, you continue to see yourself as characteristically different from "those liberals," because of your (now-distant) original conception. You are a revolutionary, therefore what you do is revolutionary. Pragmatic triangulation, rather than capitulation. And it becomes frustrating to see "ultras" characterize you as being in the same camp as the liberals you're trying to win over. They're the ones being unreasonable while you make progress! You're the one making sacrifices and putting in the work while they criticize from afar. Having been with yourself the entire time, you are in the worst position to objectively view your trajectory. Each step felt like a necessary maneuver to make your principles more appealing to your target audience, each version of yourself still the same revolutionary. Which came first -- the chicken or the egg? The egg, obviously. It was laid by a creature that was infinitesimally less "chicken" than what would hatch. Thousands of generations from wild junglefowl, each indistinguishable from the previous, all leading to the liberal chicken. It never starts as a "grift." It simply has to slowly evolve or go extinct -- at least, in that environment.

Meanwhile, revolutionary traits are able to flourish in the proper environment. Instead of trying to adapt or die in a liberal ecosystem, find a revolutionary biome.