Doing sociology and philosophy in real time by looking at developments in contemporary Western politics and culture, from a Moral Libertarian perspective. My mission is to stop the authoritarian 'populist' right and the cultural-systemist left from destroying the West.
Why BreadTube is a Left-Wing Rabbit Hole | Re Caleb Cain (Faraday Speaks) | BreadBusting
Welcome to BreadBusting, where we attempt to examine the problematic ideas that come out of BreadTube, and the ideology of Breadism more generally. Basically, it's like Myth Busting, but for Breadism. Today, I'm going to talk about the political journey of Caleb Cain, aka Faraday Speaks, who used to be a far-right fellow-traveller for a while, but is now a left-winger. His story first came to prominence when he made a video about his journey a few months ago, and I have actually been following what he had to say since then. About two weeks ago, New York Times had an article about him, which caused even greater discussion.
Basically, as I understand it, Caleb started out as your average liberal young man, who got exposed to some right-wing ideas on YouTube. It all started when he became a fan of Stefan Molyneux. But then, the YouTube algorithm also introduced him to other right-wing channels, including both mainstream conservatives like Ben Shapiro and Steven Crowder, and other, much much further right channels. But it all changed when he got into creators like Destiny and ContraPoints, which pulled him back towards the left. But now, he's gone even further left than before, leftier than your average American liberal, although I don't know exactly where he stands on the issues. Towards the end of the NYT article, the journalist stated his concerns that Caleb, having just crawled out of a right-wing rabbit hole, may be falling into a left-wing rabbit hole. Caleb apparently doesn't share that concern very much.
The problem is, BreadTube is indeed a left-wing rabbit hole. Behind the fun and games, BreadTube creators are introducing people to very radical ideas. Ideas like how everything we know is socially constructed, how we don't actually have that much individual agency after all, and, in some cases, how everything we know and love, from families, to religion, to the liberal notion of individualism, is only here to serve capitalism. A good example is how, Breadism would have you believe that homophobia is due to the existence of the nuclear family, which in turn is due to the capitalist demand for workers. Honestly, this sounds like a conspiracy theory. And if you look at Breadist ideas, they ultimately all point to one theme. Everything you have come to know is evil, and is responsible for racism, sexism, homophobia, and every other social ill. Every traditional social institution stands in the way of your liberation. And social engineering to abruptly change everything is hence justified. Any resistence to this agenda is the exercise of oppressive power by the privileged, and if you don't see that, you must have false consciousness caused by cultural hegemony. I know that's a lot of jargon to take in, but that's Breadism, also known as Critical Theory and Postmodernism, in a nutshell.
The problem with BreadTube is, they've got some very controversial ideas, and they need to promote these ideas while not turning people away. Critical theory and postmodernism have been around for decades, but they had been widely rejected until recently. Some BreadTubers apparently believe that it is the serious attitude of thinkers like Adorno, or the academic jargon they use, that's unpalatable. That's why they dress their message up as entertainment. My concern is, if people take the messages of Breadism in this way, they may be less critical of what the message actually is. The problem is, we are generally less critical of entertainment than of serious lecturing. But if you think about it critically, it's not just the academic jargon in Breadism that's unpalatable. In fact, it's the ideology itself that's unpalatable. An ideology that calls for the dissolution of everything we know and love is inherently unpalatable. An ideology that encourages minorities to adopt a victim mentality is going to be rightly opposed by supporters of real social justice, as it used to be defined before 2010. BreadTube may have dressed Breadism up as entertaining and harmless, but if you scratch the surface, you will find some really problematic stuff.
That's all for today. I hope you subscribe if you are interested. See you next time!
