Why your son doesn't have a left-wing Jordi Wild

The far-right's victory on social media is so overwhelming that an overly defeatist narrative about the internet is taking hold. In the United States, people have been asking for years why a left-wing Joe Rogan doesn't emerge, and our equivalent would be asking the same question about Jordi Wild. These are two extremely popular podcast hosts among teenagers, featuring long conversations with diverse guests and blending entertainment, curiosity, and politics, always with a strong bias in favor of the new right's arguments. Rogan's numbers in particular, and the male-dominated online sphere in general, are so large compared to progressive alternatives that a significant portion of the American left has blamed this digital world for Donald Trump's reelection, just as here, every time Vox gains ground in the polls, we see editorials blaming Elon Musk's algorithms. This past week, these talking points resurfaced following... the Army Awards gala presented by Santiago SeguraThese anti-awards ironically recognize internet personalities and the most viral moments of the year, and have sparked controversy because several nominees left the event denouncing the unbearably fascist atmosphere.

To begin with, media coverage of this world has for years focused too heavily on the insidious design of social media and ignores the socioeconomic factors that lead people to respond to this type of content. Radical messages have existed in all eras and formats, but they depend on real political crises to find a receptive audience, and while it must be acknowledged that the architecture of the platforms is a contributing factor, it should not be mistaken for the root cause to the point of believing there is a metaphysical incompatibility between the internet and the formation of a political class. If so many young people are losing faith in liberal democracy and the welfare state, it will have more to do with lived experience than with the siren songs of [unclear - possibly "the internet" or "the social media"]. YouTubers picturesque.

I want to emphasize "identity formation," because another mistake we often make—those of us who conduct our conversations within the realm of serious journalism—is thinking that there's a problem with fake news that can be combated with a mix of censorship and verified content. But Antoni Bassas can't be an alternative to Jordi Wild because we're talking about completely different languages and roles. The world of far-right influencers and podcasts isn't that of stable adults who produce and seek clear and rigorous discourse, but rather an uncontrollable maelstrom of adolescents in transformation searching for identity, community, and meaning.

Artist and cultural researcher Joshua Citarella explains that the internet functions "as an ecosystem of gradual radicalization, not as a space where people suddenly become extreme," and uses the metaphor of the funnel, a slippery slope with varying degrees of radicalization that begins with a teenager seeking apolitical entertainment, emotional resonances, and far-right themes that are initially taken as a joke until, eventually, they fully identify with them.

Citarella's brilliance lies in the fact that, despite being a left-wing activist, or perhaps precisely because of it, he is highly critical of how the left has abandoned subcultures and adopted an institutional and bureaucratic language, treating people as problems to be managed and offering criticism devoid of belonging, joy, or myth. "The left needs to produce compelling aesthetics, take irony, humor, and ambiguity seriously, allow for contradiction and experimentation, accept that online politics is messy and not everything can sound like an NGO's talking points," he writes in his Substack.

All of this is important because the prevailing notion is that a left-wing Jordi Wild is either unnecessary or impossible. But the truth is, no matter how often I read that the battle on social media is lost because the left is inherently complex and rational, while the right is essentially simple and emotional, that argument never convinces me. From my perspective, what distinguishes the far right from decent alternatives is nothing less than systemic analysis, the explanation of the true causes of our problems and what the solutions would be, whether the blame for our woes lies with immigrants conspiring to replace the culture of the countries that receive them or with the elite who keep it for themselves.

Naturally, I've crafted this last dichotomy in a simplistic, effective, and self-serving way, which is exactly the tone of the argument that right-wing digital activists have been building machines to socialize teenagers for decades, and that the left, incomprehensibly, believes it cannot and should not combat them with the same weapons. Having lost the internet battle in recent years shouldn't lead to surrender, but rather to fighting better.