Into the Bunker(chan): An Examination of /leftypol/, and its Place in the Modern Left Landscape

When I was around 13 years old, I stumbled upon a Youtube video by the user ‘Bat’ko,’  an “anarchist shitposter” and prominent user of the website /leftypol/. 

The year was 2018; it was a scary time for me. Two years ago, I had watched my mom cry as the presidential election results slowly rolled in. I had grown up in the Obama Era as a nerdy brown child in a majority-minority Californian city. I did not take it seriously. I did not know, nor did I have any way of knowing, what the long term effects of such a presidency would be. As far as I knew, he was a clown and he’d be gone in 4 years. The Democratic Party would protect us.

A year later, I watched Heather Heyer get brutally run over by a neo-Nazi on television. The Charlottesville Riot, or Unite the Right, was a wake-up call to many and I was no different. I was shaken to my core, and in a moment all the disappointments in liberalism and the failures of the ‘center-left’ Democratic Party I had known all my life bubbled over. Something in me broke fundamentally, and I had shifted from an optimistic nerdy child to an angry and pessimistic teenager.

This is not a unique story, and in fact at the time there were thousands upon thousands of teenagers having a similar radicalization cycle that would funnel them into various online pipelines. Everyone knows about the alt-right pipeline, that insidious online infrastructure that took thousands of young men and molded them through YouTube videos, blogs, Twitter accounts, and perhaps most importantly right-wing imageboards like 4chan, into unrepentant neo-Nazis.

Adjacent to these spaces, however, were a smattering of smaller ones trying to make the opposite happen. To take righteous anger and funnel it into something more constructive, without sacrificing the need to have a dark sense of humor. In the face of the terrible sludge that runs through the ‘Alt-Right Pipeline,’ that radicalization funnel so acutely tuned to latch onto these young grievances at the time, who would create its antithesis?

The video was called ‘You Don’t Hate (Blue) Mondays.’ It is not a video essay, or breakdown of theory and praxis. It starts as a compilation of anarchist posters from various eras, before cutting to a different compilation of anti-austerity riots in Athens, fighters of the EZLN in Chiapas, Black Bloc attacking the Trump inauguration, and soldiers of the YPG in Syria taking ground. In the background is a remix of the song ‘Blue Monday,’ and it shattered one illusion for me. The illusion that there were no other options than decaying liberalism and its fascistic endpoint. There are movements out there that reject both, that seek to build more, and that have a long and arduous history.

Similar to many right-wing memes that broke out into the mainstream, like Pepe the Frog or Gamergate, it came from an imageboard. /Pol/, or 4chan’s ‘Politically Incorrect’ board was around the height of its cultural influence at the time. The difference here is that it came from its antithesis, /leftypol/.

It was here that I dug in, scanning my own memory, articles from the past, and talking to contemporary users of the board.

History

/leftypol/ got its start as part of the kaleidoscope of many boards on 8chan. For those who need a refresher: 8chan is 4chan’s younger brother, founded ostensibly as a techno-libertarian alternative. Built on ‘free speech absolutism’ with only one rule, do not share anything illegal in the U.S., 8chan quickly spiraled into a cesspit of Nazism and pedophilia while becoming the premier place for mass shooters to post their manifestos. Anybody could create a board, no programming knowledge or even firm moderation required.

In this, the internet’s worst jungle juice, /leftypol/ founded a place for those messageboard users who did not fall into the reactionary trap.

Founded in 2014, it immediately began a frayed and hostile relationship with nearly every other board on the site. It also sheltered a big tent of left-wing thought spanning Anarchists to Marxist-Leninists, Egoists, Hoxhaists, National Bolsheviks (or Nazbols) and Posadists (although the extent to which the last two were jokes is dependent on who you ask). It contained similarly irony poisoned humor (I say this with love) to the rest of the ‘chan’ space, while fundamentally rooted in positions that kept it far away from the cesspit that was the rest of that internet village. The board has held up various ‘manifestos’ throughout its different iterations, but they’ve all kept the same line. The most recent “/leftypol/ Manifesto” reads thusly.

“The mission of /leftypol/ at leftypol.org is to provide a fun and enjoyable space for the working masses around the world, as an anonymous community of non-sectarian leftists united in common cause against the forces of capitalism, fascism, and liberalism.”

“We aim to be the negation of /pol/; anti-fascist, materialist, better read. Our mission, above all, is to learn, and help others learn, the philosophical tools necessary to elucidate the interrelated and ever-increasingly complex space of self, society, and politics, from the local to the global scale.”

/leftypol/ upheld one other commitment, an opposition to liberal identity politics. In the late Obama period, and its immediate deterioration into Trump 1, the rejection of liberal identity politics in favor of upholding the primacy of class struggle, originating from a place of vulgar Marxism, was more scandalous to most liberal commentators and onlookers than the site it was hosted on. It was on this rock that they would build their platform of left unity.

In a world devoid of, and even actively hostile towards, class consciousness and under bombardment by a liberalism seeking to co-opt the movement of the progressive masses, /leftypol/’s predisposition to buck social norms allowed them to be one of the few places left waving that flag.

In the 4chan-esque oeuvre /leftypol/ was forged in, however, this commitment would often devolve into pure class reductionism. Users who would whine about the need for protestors of color to cease their struggles and instead take up the mantle of “No War But Class War,” as if the working people of this country were not contemporaneously shaking the nation to its foundations in the name of Black lives. A blind spot cultivated due to the mostly white userbase of the site, and one that would keep it that way.

In 2017, amongst a divide in the user base over whether or not to support the Syrian Democratic Forces in the Syrian Civil War, the original board owner known as ‘Che’ went on a banning spree. This specifically targeted pro-SDF users, most of whom were anarchists, libertarian socialists, and other non-Marxist-Leninist tendencies.

Kerfus, a former moderator and longtime user of the board, described some of the history, “It's a pretty standard thing in the radical politics milieu: splits, purges, etc. But it had a lasting impact on the ideology of the userbase. Pre-purge, the user base was very diverse, from social democrats to Marxist-Leninists, Maoists, Bordigists and council communists, to anarchists of various tendencies, including primitivists, nihilists.” 

He continued,
“Post-purge and the failure of /leftpol/, the board became increasingly more ML, the kind to talk endlessly about geopolitics and Soviet history, to label every protest as a color revolution. Che (an original board owner) was apparently a Marcyite, which would explain quite a few things, as I've heard they are a rather sectarian tendency in American Marxism.”

In 2019, Cloudflare and the rest of its internet providers dropped 8chan, kicking it off the clearnet. During this time, /leftypol/ migrated to a backup site known as Bunkerchan. Due to administrative issues, and an influx of combative “MAGA Communists,” a split occurred in Bunkerchan. This was the most consequential of many major conflicts that happened throughout the history of the board.
From this, the modern “leftypol.org” would spring forth. It retained the vast majority of users and original moderators.

Analysis

Imageboards in general are an antiquated, old-web form of communication. It’s a complete wonder that sites like 4chan and 8chan accumulated as much cultural cachet as they had (and still have, to an extent) 4chan was the site of a ‘Great Meme War’ during the first Trump campaign, one which launched the site into unrivaled cultural relevance as the barrage of crowdsourced, fascist talking points and slogans created the foundation of Trump’s young, radical base.

As Politico put it, “There is no real evidence that memes won the election, but there is little question they changed its tone, especially in the fast-moving and influential currents of social media. The meme battalions created a mass of pro-Trump iconography as powerful as the Obama “Hope” poster and far more adaptable.”

According to numerous documents released in the Epstein files, 4chan’s owner Christopher Poole met with multi-millionaire banker and international sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein multiple times in 2011, a few months before /pol/ was brought online as a board on 4chan. There’s no hard evidence to prove that Epstein directly told Poole to create /pol/, but since then it’s no secret that plenty of influence operations and astroturfed campaigns have gotten their start on 4chan.

What is known, though, is that since 2015 the site has been de-facto moderated by a mysterious manager known as ‘RapeApe.’ In lieu of intervention from 4chan’s current owner, Hiroyuki Nishimura, the site has been consistently pushed towards and molded into far-right beliefs. Where once /pol/ was meant to be the containment board for racists, it is now the head driving the site. According to an investigation by Vice, this is the design of RapeApe.

From Gamergate to those hundreds of memes generated to gin up support for Trump in the run up to 2016, /pol/’s politics have been used to reinforce the class interests of the rich and famous. Many of the influencers to come from it, too, have become fairly wealthy themselves.

At the same time, many right-wing influencers begged to get /leftypol/ taken offline.

According to a Twitter post from Fredrick Brennan, the now-deceased former owner and operator of 8chan, “/leftypol/ was, by far, the board I was most commonly asked to delete as 8chan's admin. BY FAR. In person, over Skype, it seemed like every right-wing e-celeb would ask me to.”

He continued, “They fucking hated you guys. I learned that a lot of my so-called libertarian friends were anything but. They'd send me "evidence" that /leftypol/ was "breaking the law".”

Through this saga, /leftypol/ maintained its own type of edgelord culture. Jokes about Posadism, the belief of Argentine Trotskyist J. Posadas that the world revolution would be heralded by communist space aliens and intentional nuclear hellfire, the popularization of the term Anarkiddie, the unapologetic embrace of the term ‘Tankie’ by some members.

You might remember the ‘dirtbag left’ contemporary to the 2016 Bernie Sanders American socialist zeitgeist. Mostly white, male left wing personalities embracing a vulgarity and shock-jock attitude that was empowering to some and alienating to others. Well, where else could these people find a perfect home?

One user of the site gave me a note on an early draft of this article, one that stuck with me: “There’s honestly a need to mention the brutality and crudeness of the “dirtbag” left. That’s what made /leftypol/ stand out, not mere humor, but the willingness to yell NAZBOL GANG in a thread about historical materialism [...] and other diagonal ideas that appealed to those attracted to imageboard politics.”

Discomrade, a former tech developer of leftypol.org from 2021 to 2023 put it like so: “/leftypol/ was effective because it filled the real desire for a dirtbag left space, and answered many of the questions that edgy meme-loving nerds were left wanting once blaming da joos stopped being funny and started being honest and pathetic.”

They continued, “There is real value in having creative social spaces where socialists can be publicly edgy, blunt and unapologetic, in stark contrast to the standard whiny student protests, sensitive language-policing and mind-numbing dry critiques [...], and worst of all, liberal rainbow capitalism that serves to recuperate revolutionary ideas. There is real shock value in breaching the assumed values of "socialism".”

Default.Blog put it succinctly, “A young male communist who grows up in the same internet spaces where all the other degenerate gamers, anime fans and other hobbyists congregate will probably never truly sit comfortably within the politeness of woke society in normal social media, and /leftypol/ remains one of the few places where they don't have to. There is also a sort of memetic rivalry to the broader reactionary imageboard community, however, of wanting to be more sophisticated but also worried about appearing as “soft” and thin-skinned as the woke internet outside.”

So the board is filled with Albanian bunker memes, catgirls, and threads laughing at failed Nazi rallies. Yet, it maintains a genuine undercurrent of curiosity and a commitment to something approaching reason. You can watch various world events through ‘Happening’ threads, where users congregate to stay up-to-date on whatever contemporary crisis is happening at any given time. I saw more links to actual news sources and an interest in OSINT than similar threads on 4chan.

For heaven's sake, the site maintained and continues to maintain a board for the dissemination of free information. /edu/ (education) is where you can go to find discussions on theory, on praxis, dense texts, and lessons on argumentation. Here you will find the phenomenon of “effortposting.”

As described by Kerfus, “When people take time to articulate their thoughts on a complex subject. I have learned a lot by reading them.”

Contemporary Relevance

It’s easy to write all this off. /leftypol/ is, on many levels, a lot less active than it used to be. It did not win any popular meme wars, etc. On the other hand, however, it did and continues to do so much with so little. /leftypol/ is up against the gargantuan, and status quo friendly /pol/. They’ve undoubtedly gotten under their skin.

According to 4plebs, a 4chan archiving site, there are over 40 pages worth of posts mentioning /leftypol/ in 2025 alone. Most of which are conspiracy-mongering about various users secretly being agents of /leftypol/ or screeching about how ‘sensitive’ their members are (all laden with the requisite amount of slurs).

There is nothing revolutionary about the reactionary beliefs that spawn out of 4chan, yet /leftypol/ does exactly what it says it wants to do. It served (and continues to serve) as a base for the revolutionary-minded, those on the left who have a sense of humor. Kerfus explained, “One important thing is that /leftypol/ was created as an answer to the fascist politics of the 4chan and 8chan /pol/ boards. Some of us pre-2016 4chan users were leftists or anarchists and simply liked the anonymous format. /lit/ created the Stirner memes after all, and my ex-favorite board /mu/ used to be into indie/alternative music, which is a pretty left-wing milieu. The story goes that /leftypol/ started as a /lit/ offshoot actually, since everyone could create their own boards on 8chan.”

And even underneath the long shadow of /pol/’s cultural influence, /leftypol/’s own influence has not disappeared. Aside from memes such as the anarchist catgirl Alunya and capitalist Porky the Pig, the aggression and zeitgeist of young socialism still draw their inspiration from that board.

“My favorite aspect of /leftypol/, one which I hope we can recover, was how it faced our absurd dystopia with a resolve rooted in even greater absurdity.” Moderator Baphomet told me.

“You can still see some of that today, whether it be the ironic praising of the actions of "JDPON Don" or treating Zohran Mamdani as though he's a revolutionary Maoist junta leader rather than a social democratic mayor. The world is irrational, might as well embrace it and fight fire with fire. At least that's my opinion.”

I asked users where they saw the board heading in the future. There was a healthy dash of pessimism and uncertainty; one user, Sputnik_, said “I have no idea. Maybe it'll get bigger, maybe it won't, but regardless it truly is a website.”

On the other hand, many noted real potential in the board to build itself into something greater.

Baphomet explained, “If we can strategically prune low quality bait and bad faith arguments with rigor, while avoiding falling into the trap of sectarianism, we just might have a chance of pulling ourselves out of this rut. Since becoming a mod I've learned just what a tedious and thankless task it is, haha.”

When prompted to imagine where they wanted the board to be in the future, the ideas were a tad more uplifting. Discomrade wrote, “I want /leftypol/ to be in a position where people who need it can find it. People disillusioned with the manosphere and incel culture, with culture wars, with whiteness politics and electoralism. Infamy is our biggest asset, we get free advertising every day from people wondering who the hell this /leftypol/ is that /pol/ keep blaming everything on. Do nothing, keep winning.”

Another moderator told me what they saw as the purpose of the board, “To function both as an internet agitprop laboratory and a dialectical counter-hegemonic apparatus: contesting the right-wing’s capture of the online cultural, linguistic, and memetic terrain, while developing autonomous forms of political subjectivity, collective intelligence, and cultural production capable of intervening in, and eventually transforming, the digital, and even material, landscape itself.”

‘You don't hate (blue) mondays (Student Palestine Protest)’ is a recreation of its original source updated for the modern day, with photos from across the world (including some from my campus, PSU.) The way that the original video gave its original thesis statement in the posters and juxtapositions, here one screenshot in the beginning cuts through all the noise. A simple definition for ‘imperial boomerang.’

Undoubtedly, /leftypol/’s spectre is still haunting the internet.