How the Left Can Reclaim Digital Dominance and Rise Again
In the concluding instalment of this series, we examine how internal divisions have torn the left apart in the digital sphere while the right has prospered – and explore how some progressive voices are beginning to reverse this trend. Robert Topinka, a reader in digital media and rhetoric at Birkbeck, University of London, provides expert insight.
The Digital Political Divide
There exists a clear distinction between politics before the internet and politics after its widespread adoption. Liberals currently find themselves struggling, the right is flourishing, and the left? It is in a profoundly precarious position. This is particularly striking given that the central political challenges of the last ten years – escalating inequality and the ongoing cost of living crisis – are issues that leftist ideologies purport to address effectively.
The core difficulty lies in the ability of reactionaries and right-wing commentators to command the online narrative. They adeptly disseminate messaging that attributes structural societal problems to convenient scapegoats, often drowning out more nuanced progressive analyses. A significant factor in this dynamic is the fundamental shift in social media platforms. Originally designed to connect users with friends and followers, these platforms now primarily funnel content engineered to provoke strong emotional reactions, prioritising engagement over discourse.
The Lost Progressive Advantage
During an earlier era, when Twitter was still celebrated as a digital "town square" and Facebook was a simpler "social network", progressives held a distinct advantage. From the Arab Spring to the Occupy Wall Street movement, voices marginalised by mainstream media and traditional politics could leverage online networks to build real-world connections. At their most powerful, these digital movements translated into street-level protests that challenged regimes and held capitalist systems to account. It appeared the scattered masses were coalescing into a networked collective, empowered to confront entrenched power structures.
However, the original model of friending and following inherently limited reach and engagement. There was a time, now hard to recall, when one could actually reach the end of a Facebook or Instagram feed – our connections only had so many daily moments to share. To sustain user attention, platforms needed new strategies. Instagram pioneered "suggested posts" from accounts users did not follow. TikTok advanced this logic dramatically: users could simply sign up and start swiping, with no need to cultivate a friend network. This allowed creators with small followings to achieve viral status through compelling content, immersing everyone in a boundless stream of short-form videos. Competitors like Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts swiftly entered this burgeoning market. Meanwhile, on the platform X, Elon Musk's reinstatement of far-right accounts and algorithmic changes transformed the "for you" feed into a hub for divisive rhetoric, racism, and hate speech.
The Shift to Emotion and Immersion
In essence, platforms once offering spaces for debate and thoughtful deliberation have pivoted decisively toward emotion and immersive experience. Reactionary and right-wing narratives, which pinpoint blame for the daily struggles of late capitalist life, have adapted perfectly to this new environment. Their emotionally charged stories featuring elite villains and perceived dangerous minorities resonate powerfully within algorithmically curated spaces designed for endless scrolling through a state of permacrisis.
Conversely, liberals have often remained focused on legacy media platforms such as newspapers and broadcast debates, alongside follower-centric new platforms like Bluesky. The left, for its part, remains wedded to residual media forms, frequently launching new print and online journals. It performs a delicate balancing act, appearing on traditional media outlets while simultaneously critiquing them – a relationship that is undeniably symbiotic, whether the left acknowledges it or not.
Critique Versus Construction
Progressive critiques are frequently incisive and politically significant. Figures like Novara Media's Ash Sarkar bring rare left-wing wit to televised panels, while publications like Jacobin provided essential groundwork for campaigns by offering a space to develop democratic socialist ideas in climates where socialism remains a contentious label. Even influential podcasts like Chapo Trap House, a hallmark of the US's "dirtbag left", dedicate considerable airtime to roasting mainstream outlets like the New York Times. While this can be cathartic, it scarcely matches the cohesive, alternative media ecosystem constructed by the right.
The political right has successfully established its own parallel media universe. It largely bypasses conventional news, instead weaving compelling narratives about shadowy elites – referred to as the Cathedral, the matrix, or cultural Marxists – who allegedly control media narratives and seek to dictate public behaviour. This reactionary online subculture extends beyond xenophobia, racism, and misogyny; it also fosters camaraderie, promotes alternative diets, natural remedies, and fitness regimes, all delivered through modern communicative forms like memes and live streams.
The Scattered Left and the Attention Economy
Rather than building a robust, collaborative new media ecosystem and amplifying each other's work, the left often appears more focused on internal competition than its right-wing counterparts. As the right convenes broad coalitions like the intellectual dark web and the manosphere, left-wing digital media frequently resembles a fragmented landscape of independent Substacks and commentators migrating from X to Bluesky. The relentless demands of the attention economy exacerbate the left's historical tendency toward factional infighting – the stakes are not merely ideological purity, but often economic survival in a precarious digital marketplace.
Consider the case of Natalie Wynn, known online as ContraPoints, one of the left's most intriguing creators on YouTube. She has elevated video essays to an auteur art form, blending cinematic production, French critical theory, camp aesthetics, and sharp political analysis. Yet, she is often placed on a pedestal only to be swiftly criticised by others within the left. Disagreement can quickly morph into accusations of "selling out", sometimes spawning entire "drama" video series dedicated to the critique.
Furthermore, while the centre-right often engages constructively with ideas from its own flank, liberals and the left frequently recoil from substantive ideological exchange. The current tussle in US Democratic circles between traditional socialism and the emerging "abundance" agenda is illustrative. More energy has been expended on posting detailed teardowns of the latter than on focusing on the significant common ground: advocacy for state intervention in the economy. Whether welcomed or not, the "abundance" framework has created a political opening that the right would likely exploit for momentum. The left, however, often seems predisposed to hunt for flaws.
Signs of Life and New Strategies
Despite these challenges, there are emerging signs of vitality and innovation within the online left. Irish comedian Frankie McNamara, styling himself as a "toxic spirit guide", has transformed the social media vox pop into a vehicle for deadpan satire of cultural archetypes, from "hot new dads" to "wellness warriors". The Elephant Graveyard's YouTube documentaries, which dissect the cult of Joe Rogan in the evocative, humorous style of Adam Curtis, demonstrate that disdain and satire can be more potent weapons against the manosphere than moral outrage.
There are even promising indications that the pathway from online posting to tangible policy influence can function for progressive causes. Palestinian-American influencer Kat Abughazaleh is directly translating arguments about Maga, ICE, and the crisis in Gaza from her TikTok platform into her surprising frontrunner congressional campaign. Regardless of the electoral outcome, her campaign underscores a crucial lesson: the real power of online politics lies in contesting how people perceive the world and what they deem politically achievable. The online right has concentrated on this ideological battle for over a decade. Now, a growing number on the left are setting aside internal conflicts and stepping decisively into the fray.
