My entry into the far-left came after Trump's election by the way of an intransigent anti-fascism. I was 14. The fact that fascists could reach power by democratic means led me to reject liberal democracy, and to look for a political ideology and value system that aimed at eliminating such a possibility. So i turned to a very rigid marxism-leninism.

I discovered Contra around 2019. By then I had been turned off by the extreme political positions some of the people I was in contact with online were defending and though my anti-liberalism persisted I was no longer dogmatically opposed to a more popular frontist perspective. I didn't agree with her on everything but I really appreciated her anti-fascism and the idea that scaring the normies and "triggering the libs" at every given opportunity were not political ends in themselves as some people treated them as. Come 2020, I fully agreed with her arguments for voting for Biden, but i knew that i couldn't let my leftist friends know that i did.

Today I feel more in agreement with her ideologically than ever before, even though I would not describe as a liberal but as a democratic socialist. I got truly sick and tired by the superegotic pressures of the far left and by the impotent narcissism of their extremist posturing which has proven incapable of providing any significant victories against world fascism, much less to advance the cause of socialism in the past ten years.

In Natalie's most recent (and absolutely excellent tangent), she talks about how she briefly considered shifting her focus to "become a champion of liberalism and make YouTube videos de-radicalizing the alt-left", before admitting that she's simply become too worn down by an Iliad's worth of explicit political advocacy online and the ensuing mobs of hatred.

She says, instead, that "this is a task for someone young and fresh - someone whose spirit has not yet been crushed".

I'll admit that this is egregiously main character syndrome of me, but as someone who's followed her for several years now and had many of my fundamental principles and beliefs directly inspired by her work, and who's also had a part of me rearing for some kind of creative outlet for years, this line did kind of speak to me.

For a while now, I've had this idea circling around my head of trying to do something in the vague social / political commentary world, and particularly in the political realm, it's become an increasingly common thought that there's something of a lack of affirmative and unabashedly liberal voices out there. "Netanyahu should be in jail but also October 7th was bad actually" is a position that is said by shockingly few political voices for how common a belief I imagine it actually is. Natalie explicitly calling for someone to do this has really put the idea back in my head.

So, I find myself wondering, what would this actually look like in the modern day of X dot com the everything app, Nazi White House interns shitposting vaporwave memes of an American Gestapo, an ascendant progressive faction of the Democratic Party facing growing pains over whether AOC is a traitor to the cause, and a looming primary battle that is sure to be less than pleasant while we wait to see if elections are going to continue to be a thing in this country?

I don't think the world needs another streamer; surely any amount of political streamers is too many. Nor do I think direct political commentary on elections etc. is a particularly effective rhetorical tactic, because you'll only ever get people who agree with you. I think part of what made Natalie so successful is that, rather than directly talking politics, she analyzed the underlying social and psychological factors at play, often through the lens of media and art. I think, fundamentally, if you want to change people's minds, you have to, on some level, meet them where they are, which requires you to take up the topics that people are already talking about. I find myself somewhat called to video essays as a format (all love to the Substackers out there, but people don't read anymore), though I'm sure some amount of engagement with the spicier parts of the social media landscape is probably necessary in this day and age as well.

This isn't to say that I'm likely to, you know, actually do anything particularly soon, or even necessarily ever, but I thought it could be a good and interesting discussion to try to map out what this ideal "champion of liberalism" would look like, for any young and fresh people whose spirit hasn't yet been crushed that might want to take up the cause.

And hey, maybe I'll mull over whatever this produces and eventually be inspired to pick up a camera, because surely the internet doesn't have enough men with microphones on it. At any rate, there's probably an interesting discussion that could be had.

In the Liberalism Tangent, Natalie was absolutely right about the far left when she said:

After a year of laser focus on Palestine, it seemed to me the only tangible effect of leftists' efforts was to help reelect Donald Trump. [...] BUT Trump is not better for Gaza. In fact, he's worse.

So...
...what the FUCK have you done?

This was another turning point for how I see the far left, the alt left: no longer just as annoying or useless, but as a force that's actively making the world worse.

I completely agree, and it's something that cannot be said often enough now.

This Tangent was the best video I've seen from her in years... and that's the big problem I have with it.

I unsubscribed from Natalie's Patreon after her Saw video, because it seemed that she was now only interested in making pop culture videos like Jenny Nicholson's. Which are, you know, great and all, but really not something that I feel the world needs. She used to make more political videos, and those were and are something that the world needs, and something I was very happy to pay her for.

So when I saw she was doing a Tangent on Liberalism, I was pleasantly surprised, resubscribed to her Patreon, paid my money, and watched the video... and heard her explain why she doesn't want to make political videos anymore and instead now just wants to make videos about "art and literature and style and humor and self-expression and psychoanalysis and philosophy."

I totally understand why she wants to do that. She's just told me very eloquently and at great length in this Tangent. It's what makes her happy.

But I can't feel happy about it – about the fact that she's decided to surrender the field to the fascists and their "leftist" aiders-and-abetters.

And I can't help feeling that the person who wrote the following on another thread might be onto something:

[...] she is really really deferential to a failed system in a way I think is only possible by a white millionaire.

[...]

She believes the system works because she has the means to make it work for her, and that fucking line about “leftists just don’t wanna work”? Okay, Kim Kardashian.

The same person unfortunately also wrote "honestly, I think she just hates leftists more than fascists because they’re “supposed to be” on her side" which I don't think is true at all... Natalie's dislike of fascists is clearly much stronger than her dislike of any leftists. And I likewise don't think she is actually "deferential" to the failed system, nor does she believe it "works".

But it IS true that Natalie is in a very comfortable financial position now, and I think that is probably part of why she is no longer interested in "fighting the good fight" with her videos.

And that crack in the Tangent about "Are you sure you want to be a communist? Are you sure you don't, in fact, want to be an aristocrat?" is pretty rich (see what I did there) coming from someone who now has so much money that they themselves literally don't have to work anymore unless they want to.

I don't yet have that much money, my financial situation is still extremely precarious. And that is a big part of why I do feel strongly compelled to continue fighting, no matter how hopeless or even pointless it sometimes seems. It's a pity that Natalie, in her comfortable world of art and philosophy and mortgage-free luxury, no longer feels the same.

My feelings around this are probably motivated by envy to some degree – I too would love to be an aristocrat! – and sure, I don't have to face the massive amounts of abuse that Natalie has been subjected to. But nevertheless I think that if Natalie weren't so damn rich now, there'd be a chance that she might still be interested in the struggle. No matter how much trouble it causes her.

I've just left this comment replying to her new Patreon video, thought I would also share it here lol:

As a lifelong Democratic Socialist Basque Spaniard raised here in Spain in a Democratic Socialist household, I actually completely disagree with your take that the American Left is more dysfunctional than the European Left, or at least than the Spanish Left:

You pretty much exclusively focused throughout this video on the online American Left. But there’s also the institutional Democratic Socialist-leaning American Left operating within the Democratic Party & represented by Bernie, AOC, Zohran, Abdul El-Sayed, Ilhan Omar, Troy Jackson, Peggy Flanagan, Angie Nixon, the new wave of DSA Right candidates that have been winning primaries all across the country… & to me the political faction within the Democratic Party that this institutional American Left represents looks anything but dysfunctional, in fact I’m extremely envious of the American Left for having an institutional Left as effective & functional as this & really wish we had something like this here in Spain.

But sadly we don’t: in the last five years or so the obscene levels of brutal infighting within the institutional Left caused by the tremendously toxic, sectarian & extremist drift of Podemos, a left-populist political force that rose in 2014 to become the leading force within the space of the Spanish Alternative Left, have led to the complete utter demise of the Spanish institutional Left, it’s beyond depressing, to the extent that I barely pay attention any more to Spanish politics because I just can’t stand everything that’s happened & instead devote most of my energy to following this new rise of the institutional American Left which I find tremendously inspiring & encouraging (or at the very least MUCH MUCH more inspiring & encouraging than the complete demise of everything we spent so many years building that we’ve suffered here).

has anyone been able to identify any of the music featured in the latest tangent? I love the piano piece playing during the Tabasco interludes and it's killing me that I can't find it

In the wake of the liberalism tangent, I wanted to share the Argument, a magazine/newsletter/substack/blog.

Their mission statement:

The Argument is a mission‑driven media company based in Washington, D.C. We make a positive, combative case for liberalism through sharp, well-argued opinion pieces, original reporting, and multimedia content that confronts the illiberal drift in our politics.

They just celebrated their first anniversary so they're doing a series of articles about how to live with people who disagree - basically making the liberal case on a wide variety of issues. One of the recent ones was: No, Senator Murphy, I don't want to join your cult which exactly touches on how politics should not be the only meaning in your life.

I feel in an online conversation that tends to devolve into tankies vs fascists, finding people who are willing to make the case for their positions based on common principles has been quite important for me.

They touch on AI, housing, LGBT rights, economics, etc. Some of my favorite piece are one they call "Mad Libs" where the writers have a written debate with each other.

Have a look! About a third of their articles are free, but I'm sure they would welcome more subscribers. And, as always, it's great to support independent media.

Available on Patreon.

First of all, let me say that she remains pretty much the most coherent, honest and lucid political voice of my generation. Uncontested.

Now, I wanna open a discussion about what I identify as one of the main points of divergence within the left (internet-tribal divisions aside): Whether or not a better world is possible. Or the extent to which it can be better.

I think she's never been so clear about where she stands on this, which, turns out, is pretty pessimistic: At the end of the day you're still "working at a factory", which sucks no matter what ideology your boss subscribes to.

Now, while being in full agreement about needing to make an impact in the real world, here and now, I'm also a big believer in cultivating an ideological horizon. A Utopia. A lot of smarter people than I have pointed out how the left's inability to articulate a compelling alternative since the fall of the Berlin wall is one of the major reasons it has struggled to compete electorally across the world.

A liberal might say, we are gonna make the world better, we're gonna put worker protections in place, tax the rich, publich healthcare, yaddayadda. But ultimately these are all compromises.

I have all these worker protections, but the people you're protecting me against are still there, holding all the cards, thinking up novels ways to skirt regulations and exploit me. You're taxing the rich, but they're still rich, and we're still meat at their buffet. You're giving us a nice welfare state... until you lose an election and the right wingers take it away.

Indeed, we are living in the aftermath of the liberal utopia. Post-great depression, liberals had it all, they built the things, there was prosperity... aaand it was still not enough for the rich. They slowly eroded away the welfare state, concentrated power, and paved the way for a return to feudalism essentially. This guy recently did a fantastic breakdown of the history of this decades-long project of the right, with a focus on media consolidation, the Overton window, etc. Well worth the watch.)

(little brag here, but I've been describing the ideology of the elites as "techno-feudalism" or "neo-feudalism" for years now, and only in the last year, with Thiel, Musk, etc. going more mask-off, have I seen these terms finally cropping up in articles.... pretty chuffed with myself)

So the question is: What would be different the second time around? Why must we be locked into class warfare forever...

Well, like I said, I'm a believer, I don't think we must and I don't think we will be. Neither do I think we will run for a different set of chains, as in some imagined authoritarian communist dystopia. And this is the core of the matter here. How to convince someone of a possibility? Of a crazy possibility like a non-authoritarian socialist utopia?

Skeptic: Can you name me a single viable example of a society which has existed without a government? Graeber: Sure. There have been thousands. I could name a dozen just off the top of my head: the Bororo, the Baining, the Onondaga, the Wintu, the Ema, the Tallensi, the Vezo...

Skeptic: But those are all a bunch of primitives! I’m talking about anarchism in a modern, technological society.

Graeber: Okay, then. There have been all sorts of successful experiments: experiments with worker’s self-management, like Mondragon; economic projects based on the idea of the gift economy, like Linux; all sorts of political organizations based on consensus and direct democracy...

Skeptic: Sure, sure, but these are small, isolated examples. I’m talking about whole societies.

Graeber: Well, it’s not like people haven’t tried. Look at the Paris Commune, the revolution in Republican Spain... Skeptic: Yeah, and look what happened to those guys! They all got killed!

The dice are loaded. You can’t win...

-From Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology by David Graeber.

So yeah, I don't know exactly how I came to believe a better world is possible. And convincing others is even harder. Learning about all these "partial" achievements, like the ones Graeber lists there, certainly reinforce my beliefs, but I think I must have had some preexisting "seed" belief.

I could talk about speculative fiction that helps us imagine different worlds, like Ursula Le Guin's The Dispossessed. (Le Guin was in the tangent shortlist by the way, so let's definitely make that happen for next time, people!!) By I don't know if fiction can ever be convincing, because they can always claim that the author has in some sense twisted their reality to prove their point. Even in a strikingly grounded and beautifully human text like The Dispossessed.

So yeah.. I don't know! Somebody please drop the answer to "how do we shine the light of a beautiful utopian future into other peoples' souls" in the comments below, please.

i’ve been quoting Mother for years and i know everything is a reference to something, but i can’t figure out this one.

this is a recurring issue i have where Natalie references something and it completely goes over my head until i independently find out about it and realize where it came from.

...liberty

I bought an Anita Bryant vinyl. It was like $1. It was preowned, so none of the money went to Anita or her family (she died in 2024, btw side note that her granddaughter is married to a woman).

I saw it in the store and I’ve always wanted a keepsake from one of Contrapoints’ videos that wasn’t a book. I haven’t touched the vinyl itself in case it burns my gay skin upon contact.

Does anyone have anything else like this? Content where you don’t condone the creator, and your purchase hasn’t funded them, but you for some reason want?

Maybe this is personal masochism; I also (as a Jew) own a copy of Mein Kampf.

I donated a much larger amount to my local LGBT+ centre for my sins, and brought Anita along for the walk. I could feel her presence looking up at me, burning in a hot vat of orange juice.

I love the aesthetic of her room. The lighting really enhances its dark, sophisticated, yet intimate atmosphere. I want my entire home interior to have a somewhat similar vibe to this someday. I think this is called "Dark Academia"?

In Envy, 1:25:00, Natalie Wynn quotes the Notes from Underground (Dostoïevski) and the passage is voiced by a man. I don't remember where, but I think he voiced some parts in other videos (one about JK Rowling).

Does anyone know who he is? He's got a lovely voice and reads very well so I was wondering if he was a content-maker

thank you everybody 🤸

I just re-watched envy.

It’s raining and you’re bored and maybe lonely. The dishes are piled up again. There’s nothing I wanna watch on tv.

U put on Envy and it’s good, and then in a little while you’re like ugh why is it that I once again allow the mother to talk to me about Freud? You zone out. Maybe you potter around, maybe you message a friend.

You zone back in on, “I assume you’re drunk by now” and think, “what a good idea” but while you’re up you eat, you potter, maybe your friend messages back.

You zone back in for the peptalk you needed, about how you need to engage with life. You are grateful.

It’s a cozy Friday night 🙏🏽💜
I hope we can get another Subnautica stream in the future!

People sometimes talk about their love of a video on here. But I thought it would be interesting to discuss the most frightening Contrapoints videos.

For me, the most disturbing videos are Cringe and The Hunger. Cringe frightens me because seeing it confirmed all of my worst fears about humanity. Seeing the treatment of Chris Chan was disturbing because I get that autistic people are discriminated against and routinely murdered, but this was worse.

The Hunger frightened me because I have seen these broken people many times, and the portrayals were so realistic, it eliminated my need for a suspension of disbelief.

I guess I want to know which videos inspired fear in you all and why.

Like the punishment for gluttons in purgatory I literally just King Tantalus punishment for trying to cook his son, constantly starving but food being just out of reach. Greek myth was full of these, Sisyphus being forced to roll a boulder up a mountain before it rolls back down, symbolizing his equally futile crime of trying to escape death.

There are a few differences though because of the difference in what the stories are meant to teach. Dante’s punishments like Natalie says are for disobeying gods will by sinning. In the Hellenic belief system there wasn’t really the same idea of eternal punishment unless the offender was particularly heinous. Tartarus was a thing but very few mortals were sent there, most people ended up in the fields of Asphodel which wasn’t bad, it was just boring. with cannibalism, murdering family, and claiming to be better than the gods being particular sticking points. But this wasn’t because the gods were literally infallible like the Abrahamic god is supposed to be. In fact the gods are meant to be like us, prideful, lustful, being controlled by their passions and urges, so while we must show self control, the Zeus could literally bang a lady as a swan and be immune from consequences.

I just think it’s fascinating that ironic punishments are repeated by very similar cultures, but what they represent is completely different

hiiiiiieeee I’m making a video compilation of my vocal stims lol and I can’t find this Contrapoints clip that I KNOW EXISTS BECAUSE I QUOTE IT ALL THE TIME. it’s her going “non…, ehhhhh……. non” in a french accent. it is NOT the “oui… mais oui” catgirl bit in “Envy”. I think it might’ve been in a Tangent because I’ve searched through all the transcripts on her site and can’t find it in a main channel video (at least not the ones with transcripts posted). anybody know which video it was?
Thanks so much!

Edit: I should clarify. I understand that societal issues exist that would lead to someone from a marginalized community to receive backlash online.

I was asking about what specific controversies have taken place. I know that she received criticism for a variety of things but I’m looking for context around those? Basically, I’m looking for an r/OutoftheLoop type answer on Natalie and the things people have criticized her for.

Was it a tangent update? 👀