Anthem: "/leftypol/, We Revere You!"
Slogan: | |||||||||
| Preceded By | 8chan's /pol/ | ||||||||
| Launch Date | 21 September, 2014 | ||||||||
| Reason For Creation | Backup board for leftists banned from /pol/ | ||||||||
| Official Language | English | ||||||||
| Demonym | /leftypol/etarian, /leftypol/ack | ||||||||
| Ruling on NSFW Material | Full NSFW with tags, with some exceptions | ||||||||
| Unique Posters | 1605 active users (9/2017) | ||||||||
| Average Traffic | ≈2400 posts/day (9/2017) | ||||||||
| Affiliations | 8chan, USSC | ||||||||
| URL | https://leftypol.org/leftypol/ | ||||||||
/leftypol/ (Full name: Leftist Politically Incorrect) is a politics-themed, discussion-oriented chan. As a board on 8chan, it was a member of the USSC until the dissolution of the latter. /leftypol/ joined the United Chans with the formation of the USSC, with the three other founding boards already having been members.
Creation[]
/leftypol/ was first created on 8chan in 2014 because /pol/ is a right wing echo chamber unfit for legitimate political discussion of any type that isn't ebin meme spouting and circlejerking. They made their own board where, despite being more focused on leftist politics, bans are fairly hard to get unless you shitpost and spam wildly, so naturally /pol/acks still manage to get banned since that is their normal mode of communication.
Memes[]
/leftypol/ memes have been of profound influence on the online left, giving us classics such as Porky, Nazbol Gang (and the X GANG meme in general), and political catgirls.
Additional /leftypol/ memes:
- References to socialist leader Enver Hoxha (and the multitudes of bunkers he built during his reign in Albania)
- References to communalist theorist Murray Bookchin
- References to German egoist philosopher Max Stirner, particularly his concept of 'spooks' (Stirner proposed that most commonly accepted social institutions, including the notion of the state, property as a right, natural rights in general and the very notion of society, were mere illusions — "spooks" or ghosts in the mind)
- References to Marxist computer scientist and economist William Paul Cockshott and his theory of cybernetic socialism (frequently memed from 2017 onwards). Often called the immortal scientist (itself a reference to the "immortal science of Marxism-Leninism" meme), or by other puns on his inadvertently sexual last name (ex: dickblast, penisblast, etc.).
The USSC[]
Main article: USSC
Mentions of GETchan on /leftypol/ and vice versa took place from time to time after /leftypol/'s creation, but real contact between the two boards did not occur until /leftypol/ began being raided by desu spam. GETchan's staff announced an official stance of solidarity with the /leftypol/acks. Soon afterwards, 8chan began to experience extended periods of downtime, culminating with its domain being confiscated. In response, GETchan created a /leftypol/ board on its own chan for the /leftypol/acks to go while their home chan was down. After 8chan returned to normal, a song of friendship called "GETchan! /leftypol/!" was created to celebrate the newfound friendship between the two boards. The "/leftypol/ Sings" project was even renamed "GETchan and /leftypol/ Sing" when several GETchanners, after the failure of GETchan Sings, decided to lend their voices to the project. Eventually when plans for a unified leftist chan were announced, /leftypol/ considered its options. After days of discussion over the issue, /leftypol/ decided to join the USSC as an off-chan board, meaning that it would remain on 8chan, but stay an official member of the USSC with a spot in the topbar. With the creation of the USSC, /leftypol/ was officially accepted as an observer of the United Chans.
The Union remained a loose confederation rather than merging and the project eventually collapsed on 31 August 2015. This in combination with the effects of the Era of Stagnation resulted in GETchan being temporarily shut down. However, upon its revival, the two boards have continued their cordial relationship.
First Internal Conflict[]
In mid 2017, the number of /leftypol/ users saw a steep decline when the original board owner at that time purged many /leftypol/etarians who supported the YPG in Syria, and generally implemented much stricter ideological controls. This was the event which caused the creation of the short-lived splinter board /leftpol/. Some major events in this period included the wiping of every post on /leftypol/ by a moderator who defected to /leftpol/, and the handover of the board owner position of /leftpol/ to Space_, who is also the owner of Bunkerchan. Under Space_ /leftpol/ had a very low level of moderation in the opposite extreme from /leftypol/, leading to reactionary/Nazbol spam and its slow decline in number of posters. The original board owner of /leftypol/ who was responsible for the strict regulations would later resign in 2019, after which they were no longer enforced.
Exodus to Bunkerchan[]
In August 2019, following the total and complete shutdown of 8chan due to the El Paso shooting, /leftypol/ migrated to Bunkerchan. This was credited with an uptick in new users, presumably due to the fact that these events coincided with some major left wing subreddits being shutdown or quarantined (the Chapo subreddit) as well as the fact that Bunkerchan was not blacklisted by Google as 8chan was, presumably allowing people to find /leftypol/ using normal Google searches. Futhermore, this also ended the first internal conflict as /leftypol/ and /leftpol/ were reunited in Bunkerchan.
However, the nature of the arrangement where /leftypol/ was hosted on Bunkerchan did not ultimately satisfy the moderation team of /leftypol/ who were unhappy with the poor technical situation and an incompatibility between _Space's desire to be the sole webmaster of the site and their own horizontal structure, which made it impossible for the needs of the /leftypol/ technical team to be met.
Second Internal Conflict[]
Main article: The Second Exodus of Leftypol
In December 2020, after disagreements between the moderation of /leftypol/ and the owner of Bunkerchan about the latter's refusal to grant server access to perform much needed updates and maintenance to the site software, and their intention to sell users' data to Google for server costs, the /leftypol/ moderation was forcefully removed and went into exile on another /leftypol/ board on the website leftypol.org which they had been preparing in anticipation of the possibility of such an event. Meanwhile, Bunkerchan's /leftypol/ was seized by the owner of Bunkerchan, putting his loyalists in charge, once again splitting the board into two and initiating the phase in Bunkerchan history known as "Occupied Bunkerchan".
After this event, most official sources recognised the new /leftypol/ board established on leftypol.org as the legitimate successor, and many concerns were raised about the intentions of the new junta in power on Occupied Bunkerchan. On January 9th 2021, there was a major escalation in this conflict when every post on Occupied Bunkerchan was wiped by a defecting moderator. The site was restored to a month old backup, which led to much criticism of the competence of the Spaceist Junta with regard to site management. Following this, Space_ would resign as the owner of Occupied Bunkerchan and hand it over to d011ars who was one of his followers. In the months following this, Occupied Bunkerchan experienced massive decline and stagnation of its userbase. Meanwhile /leftypol/ had its userbase grow in size as users migrated there from Occupied Bunkerchan. Despite this, d011ars, the current owner of Bunkerchan, initially rejected the idea of reunifying the board.
However, in April 2021, it was revealed by d011ars that he had a plan to revive Occupied Bunkerchan through means which were initially unknown, leading to much speculation. Shortly after this, d011ars came forward with an offer to redirect Occupied Bunkerchan to /leftypol/ if his demands including the addition of himself to the /leftypol/ moderation team were accepted. His plan was revealed to be the release of an article published by Foreign Policy about Occupied Bunkerchan, which he planned to use as leverage for this offer. Negotiations were later opened. As negotiations proceeded, another Occupied Bunkerchan moderator who was previously added as a /leftypol/ mod was given control of the Occupied Bunkerchan domain by d011ars to ensure that it remained in neutral hands. Following the domain transfer, the /leftypol/ side repeatedly insisted that d011ars should concede and step down as a moderator. However d011ars refused this every time, insisting that he should be a moderator in the reunified site, leading to a breakdown in negotiations. Due to this, the moderator who was given control of Occupied Bunkerchan was contacted by /leftypol/ team, and this moderator proceeded to redirect Occupied Bunkerchan to /leftypol/ on 1 May 2021. This finally brought an end to the conflict as well as the chan itself, in a victory for the member chans faction.
This was the end of the Junta's occupation of Bunkerchan, the coup attempt having failed in the end. With the end of the chan itself and the Bunkerchan staff in exile having found a new home on /leftypol/'s new site, Bunkerchan as a whole has effectively ceased to exist. The legacy of Space_ was forever tarnished following these events, being seen as his third failure at running an online community after /leftpol/ on 8chan and his own Spacechan. The Foreign Policy article ended up being published the day Bunkerchan was shut down, which did not much other than temporarily direct some trolls to the site.
2021 coup attempt[]
Main article: 2021 Leftypol coup attempt
In August 2021, various internal tensions culminated in an impromptu coup attempt of the server by three of the fourteen staff members, leading to a counter-coup by the remaining staff four days later. This resulted in a short-lived conflict between Leftypol and the newly-formed Leftychan, until it became unmistakable that the main userbase were uninterested in the drama, leaving the site with only its staff and a handful of users banned from Leftypol's /siberia/ board. While the coup attempt was squashed and Leftychan rapidly faded into obscurity, it led to a notable loss of users from /leftypol/ altogether, a sharp decrease in reactionary content and drama, moderator stability, and minor ongoing raids attempts from Leftychan staff (as of 2023).