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/395/ A Coup From Within the Computer ft. Benjamin Studebaker (Patreon)

Published:
2024-03-05 07:00:04
Edited:
2024-03-05 22:26:14
Imported:
2026-06
Tags:

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Content

On media and the Millennial Left.

[Patreon Exclusive]

Continuing the retrospective on the millennial left's failures, we invite political theorist Benjamin Studebaker back on. We discuss:

Was left-populism a media event?

Was the Millennial Left just a moment in internet history?

Having bought into the internet's possibilities, can we abandon it?

Does it make sense to speak of a "millennial" left?

Faced with so many dead ends, do we need to "go monastic"?

Links:

The Millennial Left as a Moment in Internet History, Benjamin Studebaker

Omelets with Eggshells: On the Failure of the Millennial Left, Alex Hochuli, American Affairs. Additional comments on Alex's Substack

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Comments

Davka Smolah Collective

It's always great to hear from Studebaker, but I have one really strong disagreement with his analysis here: the smothering-to-death of the Millennial Left was an inside job. It was Millennial-on-Millennial violence, however you periodize. Sure, you can associate the politics that did the smothering with Gen Xers somewhat more, but Ben, as a fellow 90s computer kid, the people we fought and to whom we lost were fellow Millennial 90s computer kids. The sectarian Trots? The DSA radlibs? The woke Clintonites? The Avakian and PSL anti-imps? All our own generation. We completely failed to organize ourselves sufficiently to declare independence from our political rivals among our own generation. College vs noncollege may honestly be a much more accurate polarization.

Remo

As an 80’s kid who vividly remembers Gen X leftism, I was surprised to learn we were the social justice warriors who put the millenial materialists in their place. These generational discussions are always a guilty pleasure but this one was a little too vibe-based. Would love to hear a bit more evidence to back it up.

Surface Envy

Great episode. It's pretty clear from Studebaker's tone that this isn't cold blooded sober analysis but rather an attempt to find a dimension to the Millenial Left autopsy that hasn't been covered, brought to us by someone who grew up and fought on the front lines. Yes, there are all sorts of caveats, as there always is with generational analysis, but I think he's still picking up some interesting angles that other discussions on this topic misses. Overall, the rapid speed of communication technology change from 1990 to 2010 means that any attempt to categorise the people who grew up in this time needs to cater for the quite strikingly different experiences of childhood, college and early work that these people experienced.

Blake

The idea of the millennial left as dominated by a very specific generational segment that "thinks in text" and attributes an undue political significance to thinkpieces is something that never occurred to me before but makes a lot of sense. Sam Kriss would be the ultimate example of this kind of writing. At this point both the online left and right are still circulating a lot of thinkpieces through substack but these are for the most part very personal or focused on niche topics, nobody is under the impression that they might reach a mass audience.

Daniel L

Interesting and quite plausible take. But very American-centric... Re. the bit at the end about free healthcare / university, those existed (or still exist in some cases) throughout the rest of the Anglosphere and swathes of Europe. Some actually came from the top-down, but even from bottom up they don't/didn't necessarily equate to radicalisation more broadly

Jonas Kyratzes

There's something uniquely disorienting about this American obsession with generational politics. Instead of a sober analysis of class and material conditions, we get this semi-disguised autobiography in which the author's personal resentments and aesthetic opinions (who's cool and who isn't) determine how political events played out. He recognizes the failures of the Left and the delusional importance placed on the internet, and that's good, but I've rarely heard a less rational explanation for how this process actually worked. Doubly so because he neglects all the related events happening in the rest of the world under very different cultural conditions. Ultimately his account is almost entirely apolitical - in fact, he is still entirely caught in the internet mindset!

Cheryl Hudson

Angela Nagle noted the failure of the internet left about 6 years ago. This does not seem to be a new analysis and has not developed Angela's understanding at all. In fact, it seems to go backward in claiming that "if only all the real world nonsense wouldn't happen, or even just not be ascribed to millenials, we might have created a gorgeous utopia online." This falls short of Benjamin's other work which I have often found insightful.