this post was submitted on 26 Jul 2026
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I sometimes think the whole leftist podcaster/YouTuber phenomenon is a way for a very small minority of left leaning people to cash out and not much else. A lot of them are micro celebrities and their popularity is sustained massively by an unhealthy parasocial element. Very few put out rigorous academic level content and mostly it's just vibes.
Like with trueanon, what the fuck are they talking about half the time lmfao. And hakim from deprogram is highly educated but being a religious communist is entirely contradictory. My own path to becoming a wannabe communist (because I am just a capitalist subject that wishes they weren't ) was abandoning my own religion first which allowed space for me to actually begin understanding how the world works. But just a few examples. These days the only lefty YouTubers or podcasters I listen to is academic videos like critical workshop theory on youtube. I find it so much more interesting.
Not true at all
It is strictly contradictory in the most widespread sense of "religion". Religion most often implies a metaphysical working for the universe, which is incompatible with scientific materialism. Abstract cultural and ritual practices are of course not incompatible with Marxism, but that's more culture than it is religion in the strict sense IMO, boils down to definition of words.
The guy youve named urself after said theres no contradiction lol. Cuba lets catholics into the party.
Keep in mind I said "strictly". Political practice is all but strict, and a revolutionary movement born in Cuba is obviously necessarily inclusive of Catholics. This doesn't mean that Catholicism is compatible with materialism, being materialist actually requires discarding the metaphysical aspects such as miracles, any event of godly intervention on Earth, and the cores event of Christianity which are creation, immaculate conception, resurrection, and the existence of souls and afterlife.
Marxist political movements are full of concessions that are contrary to ideology but necessary in practice. The Soviets absolutely understood that peasants wanting land ownership was a negative thing compared to collective ownership, and the ideal practice was the Sovkhoz (agricultural state companies operating under economic planning) rather than the Kolkhoz (private agricultural communes operating to an extent under the profit motive). However, in order to satisfy peasant desires in 1929, the collectivization had to be carried out majorly in the latter form. This is an example of good revolutionary Marxist practice which directly opposed strict theory.
I'm a huge Hakim fanboy (he was mentioned in the main comment of this chain) and I respect him probably more than any other socialist currently alive in terms of theory, he's educated me more than anyone else. I still can respect him as an incredible Marxist agitator and educator and believe that I have opinion differences with him regarding religion in the particular sense of metaphysical claims (and not about cultural practices and rituals as I said).
This term doesn't mean what you think it means. Jesus' conception is called the Incarnation. "Immaculate Conception" refers to Mary being conceived without original sin, it's something only Catholics believe in.
Thanks!
Cuba used to uphold that marxism was contradictory to being a catholic; their allowal of catholics into the party is a more recent (last 40ish years afaik) thing, resulting in part from the catholic church in cuba becoming less reactionary and partly from the party no longer worrying about these sorts of unproveable metaphysical debates. Being materialist requires, first and formost, starting from the premise of actual living people who must producr food before they can think, and secondmost investigatig the actual conditions and experiences before drawing a provisional conclusion, not a final conclusion for all time and certainly not adherence to this or that dogma as absolute truth.
For context, i come at this sort of topic with a lotta concern about how these sorts of views have resulted in chauvinist policies against indigenous peoples (including unfortunate examples of residential schools in the ussr to "exterminate superstition"). For all societies before europe in the 1600s, spiritual "metaphors" were the entire way they understood the empirical world; that is why, for example, so many of the life saving drugs stolen by western pharma from indigenous peoples, have "spiritual" stories attached to them to explain use, location, etc. When instead of examining the specific claims made by real people we dismiss them bc they dont align with dogma we fail to be materialists and pass into a phony idealist materialism that often makes us miss out on actually useful discoveries, as well as being chauvinistic.
Yes, I fully agree with everything you said in your comment. I specifically addressed the difference between rituals and culture because of this, my point isn't "let's be cringe Reddit atheists and dunk on all religion all the time", it's simply that metaphysical claims should be systematically discarded as much as revolutionary practice allows.
Not it's very true
You need to get off the online atheist crap and realize that there are multitudes of ways communism can and has been driven in the world with a religious lens
Religion describes a worldview as does Marxism. The two eventually will conflict. And the atheist movement is just an anti Muslim racism campaign that almost definitely has Zionist funding because it is a huge justification for that genocidal entity. So please don't smear me when you don't know what you're talking about. Even as a former Muslim I am the target of the atheists movement
Just wanted to add that by Zionist funding I mean all Zionist funding. From Zionist sickos like the Ellison's to Mossad, CIA and other intelligence agencies. We know the biggest people in the atheist movement were great friends with the king of pedos Epstein and absolutely not a mossad agent because he said so in his emails
Religious is about personal choice and idealism. Marxism is for analyzing material conditions and working towards tangible changes in society.
The two can absolutely co-exist when you realise your ideal beliefs don't have to be institutionalized in society.
I had my doubts as well, but Hakim and Lady Izdihar are far more educated in theory, have far more experience with Praxis, and still are in touch with their religion because their entire personality isn't about being a communist.
I think it's worse than that, since they don't even as much as put out things that are well-researched. In my view, the best and really only service done by TrueAnon and Chapo (and I guess deprogram) is that they do have some good interviews with figures who do know what they are talking about and put out well-researched work on important issues.
Being a religious Marxist is contradictory, so his stance is, but it's worth mentioning that there are non-Marxist religious communists whose stances are much more coherent, even if they are still wrong and in reality we need a materialist understanding of the world to not kneecap any ability to engage with our conditions.
Being a subject of capitalism isn't the same as being a liberal, just like being subjects of feudalism didn't prevent those liberals revolting against it from being liberals. It's normative participation in being a capitalist subject that makes you effectively a liberal, i.e. something you can change.
I realize all three of my points could be read as quibbling over word choice, so sorry if it comes off that way.
Yes that's the issue. Eventually the contradictions will compromise the Marxism.
So the thing is even by not being an active supporter of the capitalist system you still massively benefit from it if you live in the imperial core. So I just view that as being an involuntary capitalist subject.
That's why the "revolting against it" part is important and what I distinguished from "normative participation." Trying to say beyond that that one "isn't really a communist" because they live in the imperial core or whatever is, ironically enough, more like a theological stance than a useful assessment of someone.
I get what you mean. My understanding was just that if you live under a capitalist system you are definitionally a capitalist subject. Maybe semantics on my end
And, like Marx when he abandoned deism, you concluded that all class societies (including capitalist society) are religious because they operate via fetishism, veiled relations between person and person and people and nature, and that struggling against religion means abolishing the conditions that give birth to it rather than any idealist conception of it being a matter of spreading the truth to combat false gods, right?
Do you want to make a point or be sarcastic? Maybe decide that before you write something
Can you answer the question you were asked, or do you just like asking rhetorical questions to deflect?
But if you wanna serious take with no snark, Marx argues all the gods have existed insofar as people have believed and acted as they existed; this is a consistent line in his writings from his doctoral dissertation through to his death. Capitalism itself is a religion, with people acting as though things like "value" have real transhistorical existence rather than, treating commodities fetishistically ("personification of things, thingification (reification) of people" etc). The state too, in all its forms, is a religion, with people only recognising each other as people through it. The replacement of one religion for another doesnt take one any steps closer towards emancipation from religion. (Cf. "On 'The Jewish Question'" in particular marx's rejection of bauer's idea that jews move closer to emancipation by leaving judaism). These religions arise from the material and social relations in society. Until these material realities are upended, people will continue to consume religious opium, whether its sourced from the catholic church or from obama or from trump. There are no benefits to struggling against religious claims except and insofar as they are sources of oppression struggled against by many of the religionists themselves. To engage in the struggle of ideas, to think one has moved towards emancipation by replacing one idea for another, is idealism.
firstly someone already responded to you
secondly nobody is arguing that fighting religion is going to lead to a change in material conditions or that religions do not arise from the material and social relations in society. The worldview provided by religions is patently wrong form a material analysis/viewpoint and many religious worldviews are literally roadblocks or counter to forces that want to change material conditions in a Marxist direction (Judaism is an ethnosupremacist religion as is Hinduism with its caste system). And I don't care one bit about religious reformation, its simply an attempt by these institutions to adjust to maintain relevancy, whatever the motivations are to maintain that relevancy.
I’m not sure I understand what people here are looking for. Expecting TA or Chapo to provide a “service” beyond as they say themselves entertainment is putting a lot of faith in media to change society. Like hippies getting upset at rock bands for not making everything groovy. But damn I guess I just gotta get home from my Work Proletariat Industry Man Job and then silently pray over the driest of Socialist Realist Proletariat Art so that I may some day be pure.
well I got a bit off track lol. my point was simply not to be too invested in these podcasts, youtubers and the surrounding communities. If you are entertained by these podcasters cool, keep at it. If not move on because you won't really be missing out on much.