Best of joshuacitarella.substack.com on Kiwi News
Most upvoted by Kiwi News readers
13 stories from joshuacitarella.substack.com have been shared on Kiwi News since 10 December 2023, with 23 upvotes and 5 comments in total. The latest was shared on 28 November 2025. They are listed below, most upvoted first.
Text under a title is an AI summary of the linked article.
- CEO Murder & the Dark Enlightenment
The author argues that the killing of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson in New York City on December 4th marks a decisive political shift, with legal legitimacy eroded across the spectrum. Citing online celebration of the shooting, the piece says the internet from both left and right cheered it, and that a Facebook post by United Healthcare about the death drew over 23,000 laughing emojis before removal. It argues that Alvin Bragg's Trump prosecution, the Trump conviction and Joe Biden's pardon of Hunter Biden have made law appear a political tool, and that liberal Enlightenment values, which the piece describes as a victory of the left, may be abandoned as power politics returns.
- All Books Mentioned on the 1st Year of Doomscroll
This post lists the books mentioned across the first year of the Doomscroll podcast, and the author says it may be incomplete and will be updated with reader additions. The list runs from Vladimir Lenin's The State and Revolution (1917) and Jacques Derrida's Of Grammatology (1967) to Quinn Slobodian's Globalists (2018) and Crack-up Capitalism (2023). It was compiled after the author revisited all previous episodes to map the show's ideas before planning year two, which the author says will expand into topics such as climate restoration and automation.
- Manosphere vs. Zynternet
The newsletter argues that media coverage conflating "the Manosphere" with "the Zynternet" is a mistake, and that the two should be distinguished. It says the early Manosphere was a corner of the internet with pick-up artists and reactionary voices, including a political faction seeking to reverse women's liberation, while the Zynternet is a loose ecosystem of largely apolitical entertainers such as The Nelk Boys, Theo Von, Logan Paul and Adin Ross. It cites Max Read's term "the Zynternet" and says the male audience of these channels is politically independent. The author proposes "Bro Populism" as a name for the emerging anti-establishment media ecosystem that currently supports Trump.
- "Proof of Body"
The essay argues that social media has fragmented shared reality by replacing trusted institutions with self-validating proof, and that the result is a lack of trustworthy institutions rather than simply corrupt ones. The author, who spent a year testing "extremely online" health practices such as a high-egg diet and mewing, says that bodybuilder physiques serve as "proof of body" for fitness claims, much as activists' embodied identities serve as proof on the left. The piece traces this to neoliberal-era elite capture, platform advertising incentives, and examples such as Liver King's steroid use and InfoWars' lead-tainted ashwagandha.
- Tech-Right Meltdown
Josh's Sunday newsletter covers recent right-wing infighting on Twitter, including a feud between the Tech Right, represented by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, and Nationalist Right figures over H-1B visas. It also highlights a Reuters-cited report that the Pentagon ran a secret COVID-19 vaccine disinformation campaign in the Philippines during the pandemic. According to the article, the campaign deployed over 300 sock puppet accounts to counter China's influence, and the Philippines had the worst inoculation rate in Southeast Asia in 2021, at less than 2% of its population.
- Against Platforms w/ Mike Pepi
Mike Pepi's book "Against Platforms" argues that digital technologies are not neutral tools but carry hidden ideology that must be dismantled before technology can serve the fullest expression of humanity, according to a quoted passage from Pepi. The episode, hosted by the article's author, discusses a new institutionalist critique of emerging technologies and platforms that the host and Pepi have developed together since the 2010s. It argues that the rapid expansion of platforms during that decade, which now encompass nearly all aspects of social life, was a blind spot for the political left, and traces this to 1960s counter-culture and the New Left's embrace of libertarian philosophies.
- Are We Seeing a Political Realignment?
The article argues that politics is undergoing a realignment driven by a split within the capitalist class, between finance-capital and productive-capital, rather than by the culture war alone. It traces the roots to the 1970s stagflation and the neoliberal turn under Reagan, Thatcher and Paul Volcker, whose high interest rates restored profitability for a time. It says Republicans now represent manufacturing interests and Democrats finance, and cites Thomas Piketty's finding that the rate of return on capital exceeds economic growth. It also says the 2024 election showed historic margins of working-class votes for the Republican party.
- Doomscroll 12: Daniel Keller
- “The Biggest Red Pill is Just Reality Itself”
The author argues... no, rather: the central point is that the everyday experience of reality, not any meme or online idea, is radicalizing young people, according to an essay drawn from a series of 20 Interviews with 15 to 22-year-olds from the left and right. The interviews, conducted over several years, were anonymous and aimed to identify influences such as content creators, videos, books and memes on young people's ideology. The writer argues that deradicalizing young people from the far right has received more attention than asking what they should be deradicalized into, and that radical politics today is needed, though not from the far right. The piece also cites a 3-hour TrueAnon episode on Luigi Mangione's political ideology.
- Doomscroll: Peter James Fowler
Doomscroll episode #06 features comedian Peter James Fowler discussing his political meme account, which had 10,000 followers when he ran it at age 11. The host says the conversation covers how anonymous child commentators gain adult audiences, the rise of "new atheism" and early internet culture wars, and how personal and political forces shape worldviews. The host frames the wider project as tracing how irony and online trolling can shift into sincere political belief and fringe ideas moving into the mainstream.
- Doomscroll: Trevor Paglen
Episode #05 of the Doomscroll show features artist and geographer Trevor Paglen, whose work the host says links new technologies to largely hidden political issues. The discussion covers the CIA's history with magic and mind hacking, the emerging idea of "psyops capitalism" as an extractive media environment that generates individualized content from user inputs, and early UFO reports and disinformation as an analogy for social media today. The show is listener supported, and the episode is titled "Mind Hacking, AI and Psyops Capitalism."
- Doomscroll #04: JJ McCullough: Are Millennial Leftists Aging into Right-Wingers?
This episode of Doomscroll features a long-form conversation between host Doomscroll and YouTuber JJ McCullough, a former Sun News commentator who has written for the National Review and served as a Washington Post columnist. The episode covers generational shifts from left to right, the role of alternative media and declining trust in the mainstream, and the cultural and material origins of right-wing populism. The host says the discussion grew from an ongoing dialogue with McCullough and Jreg over several years, and that McCullough's Washington Post article "Are Millennial Leftists Aging into Right-Wingers?" was a starting point. The episode is available only on YouTube.
- The Vampire Squid from Hell
Vilem Flusser's 1987 book Vampyroteuthis Infernalis, written with artist Louis Bec, uses the deep-sea vampire squid to argue that humans and cephalopods are dialectical opposites and that human social life is a product of evolution. The author presents Flusser's view that evolution tends toward socialization, with humanity progressing toward greater socialization in which intelligence struggles against biological hierarchy. Flusser contrasts this with Jordan Peterson's lobster hierarchy, which the author says reflects ideas popular in the Intellectual Dark Web. The text describes the squid's society as "a hate movement," and concludes that utopia is the defining feature of humanity.