Author
: ziq
Title
: The Breadtube to Conformity Pipeline
Subtitle
: Algorithms and the Erosion of Anarchy
Date
: September 24, 2025
Source
: https://raddle.me/wiki/breadtube_pipeline
Journalist Maria Ressa recently
explained how the rise of the authoritarian right
has been directly caused by social media algorithms which hack our biology and change the way we see the world.
The algorithms targeting leftist audiences can be equally insidious. Breadtubers like "Non-Compete" guide impressionable young anarchists into a feedback loop that gradually shifts their perspectives towards a bland and safe amalgamation of democracy and Marxism, presented with a superficial anarchistic veneer. As a result, they manage to strip the beautiful idea of all its potency and successfully gentrify it.
A marked ideological shift takes root in the audience as they consume this content that gently critiques capitalism while advocating for a blend of democratic socialist and Marxist solutions. These solutions are misleadingly presented as historically anarchist, gradually reshaping their beliefs and steering them away from the core tenets of anarchism. Ultimately, this trajectory leads them towards state socialism, which is the inevitable
outcome of Marxism
.
By framing their messaging in a way that resonates with the marginalized identities of their audience, Breadtubers can obscure the authoritarian implications of their ideology, making it easier for followers to adopt these views without fully realizing the departure from anarchist principles they've embarked on. As these people become increasingly conditioned by the denser and denser Marxist ideology the algorithm feeds them, figures like Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Deng and Xi start to look like natural extensions of their Marxist beliefs, further entrenching them in an ideology that contradicts their original values. This gradual shift can lead to a profound transformation in their worldview, initially without their conscious awareness.
The appeal of belonging to the community that forms around these influencers, along with the desire to adopt a shared ideology to gain the acceptance of the wider fan club, further entrenches these ideological shifts. This sense of belonging can obscure individuals' awareness of the gradual evolution of their beliefs, making it incredibly challenging for them to recognize how far they've strayed from their original anti-authoritarian perspectives.
Non-Compete is an example of a Breadtuber who claims to synthesize elements of anarcho-communism, democracy, classical Marxism, and Leninism, while actually rejecting everything about anarchy that makes it anarchy. He frequently glorifies authoritarian government, especially heaping praise on the Vietnamese government as an American expat living in that country. He's eager to promote
dialectical materialism
as "science" and he even proposes building what he calls a "democratic police force", claiming the problem with policing is that we don't hold elections to choose who gets to police us. He insists these absurd ideas are him being "pragmatic". Many of his videos are wildly off-base, yet thousands of viewers continue to watch and embrace his distorted ideas as truth, then come into anarchist spaces and insist anarchy is when Marx and Kropotkin and Lenin and Obama have a big sweaty orgy.
You simply cannot reconcile authority with anti-authority; any attempt to synthesize authoritarian and anti-authoritarian ideas ultimately negates the essence of anti-authoritarianism. There is nothing "pragmatic" about suggesting that authoritarian ideologies and anarchy can be mashed together when a century of history shows otherwise. Authoritarian communists have systematically persecuted anarchists, from imprisonments and forced labour to torture and murder, and have frequently allied with fascists and the police to violently suppress anarchist movements.
To be an anarchist means to oppose all forms of social hierarchy, not to endorse it when convenient, as seen in his fawning over the Vietnamese government, the USSR, or democratic cops. His ideology is not a synthesis of anarchy and archy; it is simply authoritarian socialism. The moment one embraces the authority of the state, they abandon the principles of anarchy.
The anarcho-Marxist sphere fomented by Breadtube violently conflicts with anything I recognize as anarchy. Within this echo chamber, pro-government or …