In the past few years there's been serious splits and disputes in a bunch of organisations over these issues and I don't think many yet have figured out a coherent way to solve them or to mend fences (if they should be mended at all).Īdmittedly I haven't read as much of Fisher's work as other people have but I don't think these people are misappropriating what he says too much, not like someone liking the Communist Manifesto just because of nationalisation.

I've been meaning to write something about this, as the polarisation between 'idpol' and 'class-based' leftists has been weighing on my mind, as it doesn't seem to be going away and in fact is increasing in severity. The best example I can think of recently is the absolutely bizarre dispute between the Red Scare podcast (+ Amber Frost) and Current Affairs/Nathan Robinson - the Red Scare people in particular seem to have mainly arrived at their positions by being as cynical and contrarian as they possibly can towards what they perceive to be the mainstream left. I see that phenomenon as well, twitter and reddit have a lot of these people. I'm most familiar with Capitalist Realism but not so much his other writings. Ironically, some of these figures are some of the worst people online I've ever seen so its hard to take seriously.

I think they sympathize with some of Fisher's critique of online identity politics and leftist behavior online. What they have in common is they are 'very online', which I think Fisher was, too. Chapo Trap House, Jacobin, various figures associated with DSA, etc I've seen all cite or mention Fisher positively. Not sure if this is the best place to mention, but I noticed that Mark Fisher is mentioned quite a bit by the 'new' Social Democratic Left in the US.

Capitalist realism by mark fisher