Hi Thomas,
First off, thanks for engaging with my work and leaving a meaningful comment on it!
Definitely give Doomscroll a listen, Josh is a very good interviewer and gets the best out of his myriad of interesting guests.
Now, to answer your question as to whether Citarella is making a difference in the way young people think about politics and culture, I can only speak for myself as a 22 year old guy, but Josh's podcast episode with Matty Healy of The 1975 (mentioned above) really got me thinking and made me actually start reading the cultural theorist and pop philosopher Mark Fisher (yet again, I highly recommend searching out some of his work - he had a blog called K-Punk, which I have linked in this article, which inspired me to pick back up my pen/laptop and start writing columns again). I had previously heard of Fisher and his theory of capitalist realism (the idea that we are in a time where we are conditioned to believe there is no alternative to capitalism) in passing elsewhere, but it was really Healy and Citarella's long-form exegesis of his work on the podcast that inspired me to pick up Fisher's books - which, in and of itself, has completely changed my way of approaching not just politics and culture, but also my part to play in it. If you check my medium account, you'll see I took an almost 4-5 year break between articles - not just because I was busy earning my undergrad and masters, but because I felt dejected and demotivated. I didn't see the point of continuing to write my pieces. Fisher and Citarella revitalised that passion in me, and taught me that we all have a part to play in keeping left wing ideas alive, especially in the form of agit-prop.
As for the impact the podcast has had on other young people, it's hard to say as an outsider looking in. What I will say is that Citarella began his internet career by interviewing young political radicals/extremists, on both ends of the political spectrum, but especially those on the far-right. We're talking 13 year old Neo Conservatives. Throughout these interviews, Citarella essentially proposed two these. First, that the Overton Window (the range of socially accepted beliefs on the political spectrum), which many had thought rested generally over the centre, had now fractured down the middle - political radicalisation and extremism on either pole was increasing. And this radicalisation was finding community on the internet. But more than that, these internet communities were actually able to influence mainstream politics, as was seen in the 2016 election - 4 chan and Reddit users basically created MAGA and Qanon over night, and won Trump the election. The second thesis was that young people, as avid users and early adopters of the internet and social media, were particularly acute to this increasing polarisation. In the summer of 1989, only a few months before the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the USSR, scholar Francis Fukuyama wrote an essay titled The End of History, wherein he predicted that, given Soviet communism’s seemingly inevitable demise and fascism’s seemingly permanent defeat in the 1930s, capitalism and liberal democracy will come out as the final form of human governance and the only viable political economic model for modern life. Fukuyama, following the dialectical idealism of Hegel, saw history as the progression of warring ideas for pre-eminence — hence, capitalism and liberal democracy’s victory over communism and fascism marked, for Fukuyama, the end of history. However, Fukuyama has recently suggested a revision to his thesis: HISTORY 2! Numerous crises have placed increasing strain on the liberal democratic model — market and institutional failures make headlines seemingly daily, standards of living fall while costs of living rise, and the reality principle that capitalism, albeit imperfect, is able to provide for the vast majority of its subjects is increasingly losing currency. Most political commentators are now aware of the evident collapse of the liberal democratic consensus, but Citarella said that the internet-age young people knew about it way earlier than the grown ups.
I think someone online who maybe is impacting young people's views on politics in a more direct and accessible way than Citarella (and that's not to slight the work he does), is probably Hasan Piker, or Hasanabi as he is known on Twitch, the platform where he streams for 8 hours straight. Piker has also been dubbed by some as the left's Joe Rogan, though, like Citarella, he rejects this title. Still, I think the muscle-bound Piker is another good male role model on the left and is certainly influential (he is one of the largest Twitch streamers on the platform).
In regard to your reference of alternative art institutions, I would say, not to toot Citarella's horn too much, but he's working on this as well. As I mention in the beginning of the article, he is also the founder of a non-profit arts organization called Do Not Research - which brings together artists of all sorts of fields and mediums, but with a very left field, left-leaning, internet-age style. Worth a look if you're interested.
Anyway, I've prattled on far too long, but I'd just like to thank you again for engaging with my work so diligently :)
