The rise of doomers, preppers, and antinatalists on the Left reveals something deeper than the hollow posture of rebellion: a collapse of belief in tomorrow. A Left that chants “No future” isn’t just demoralized — it’s unserious, misanthropic, and bound to lose.
Tldr: How do you inspire people to work for a better tomorrow if you don’t believe tomorrow can be better? Trump and the American right have a vision of a future America that they claim will be great and glorious. The American left - and the global left - have lost sight of the future entirely. Instead of promising a bright future, they merely seek to endure the crises of the present - and some on the left have given up even that.
The article speaks to the desperate need for hope - for a clear, compelling, leftist vision of the future to serve as a guiding light for left-wing activists and politicians.
And hey, what political slash environmental slash aesthetic movement focused on a hopeful future just got its instance back up?
(Welcome back, everybody!)
Solarpunk for me has always been, at its roots, an anarchist ideology that espouses the tenants of mutual aid and bottom-up, horizontal community structures to build a self-sufficient, sustainable society. That’s the “punk” part of solarpunk.
That’s the beauty of prepping solidarily: people understand it right away (especially in the context of climate crisis and as a form of civil disaster relief or protection) but are not scared by „dirty words“ like anarchist or communist. They’ll learn it eventually.
Build it, let them experience the results of praxis first hand, give them a chance to be a part of it to get a see internal politics in action, then it becomes hard for them to deny the validity of the ideology behind it after they put the dots together.