# Heterodox Media **Heterodox media** is the loose network of journalists, podcasters and small outlets that came out of liberal or left-wing institutions, went independent after about 2016, and built paying audiences by attacking the Democratic establishment and the mainstream press. Many of them now share platforms, guests and causes with the populist right. Whether that makes them converts, dissidents or something else is the question this page maps. "Heterodox" is the group's own word: it means departing from the accepted views of one's own side. Critics prefer "contrarian" or harsher terms. The wiki uses the label for a sector of the media, not as a verdict on it. ## What they have in common - **Where they started.** Salon, The Nation, Rolling Stone, [[The Intercept]], [[The Young Turks]], [[New York Magazine]], the Bernie Sanders campaign. - **How they are paid.** Directly by readers and viewers through [[Substack]], [[YouTube]], [[Rumble]] and Patreon, and for a time the audio app [[Callin]], co-founded by [[David Sacks]]. There is no editor and no advertiser. The audience is the only boss. - **What they are against.** A shared list of grievances with [[Legacy Media]] and the [[Democratic Party]]: coverage of the Trump-Russia investigations they call [[Russiagate]], including the [[Mueller Investigation]] and the [[Steele Dossier]], the suppression of the [[Hunter Biden Laptop]] story, content moderation as exposed in the [[Twitter Files]], pandemic policy, and U.S. wars. - **Each other.** They appear on one another's shows and publish one another's work. In 2026 [[Jimmy Dore]] hosted [[Glenn Greenwald]], [[Max Blumenthal]] and [[Briahna Joy Gray]]; [[Matt Taibbi]] published [[Michael Tracey]]; [[The Free Press]] hosted Tracey as well. ## The lanes The label covers people who disagree sharply with one another. Five rough lanes: | Lane | Examples | Where it leads | |---|---|---| | Liberal dissenters | [[Jesse Singal]], early [[Bari Weiss]] | Criticism of progressive orthodoxy from inside liberalism. Weiss went on to build [[The Free Press]] into an institution of the center-right. | | Civil-libertarian crossovers | [[Glenn Greenwald]], [[Matt Taibbi]], [[Michael Tracey]] | From the anti-war, anti-surveillance left to right-populist platforms and allies. | | Populist broadcasters | [[Jimmy Dore]] | From left-populist comedy to causes and guests shared with the populist right. | | Anti-imperialist left | [[Max Blumenthal]], [[The Grayzone]], [[Ben Norton]] | Toward the side of governments opposed to Washington, including [[Russia]], [[China]] and [[Iran]]. | | Stayed left | [[Briahna Joy Gray]] | The same platforms and the same enemies, with socialist politics intact. | An earlier wave, the [[Intellectual Dark Web]] of 2018, followed a similar arc with a different cast. The [[Dirtbag Left]] podcast scene supplied some of the style. ## Two explanations **"We did not move."** The participants' account, put most clearly by Greenwald, is that their views on war, surveillance and corporate power stayed fixed while liberal institutions changed around them, allying with intelligence agencies and embracing censorship. On this view the right simply became the only place willing to air the critique. **The audience did the steering.** The critics' account is that a subscription business rewards giving a distrustful audience more of what it distrusts, and that the most reliable growth comes from attacking one's former side. The [[Horseshoe Theory]] page notes the asymmetry that supports this: moves from left to right are common, moves from right to left are rare, which points to money and infrastructure on the right more than to any natural meeting of extremes. The most pointed testimony comes from inside. In 2023 [[Ben Norton]] accused his former partner at [[The Grayzone]] of deliberately courting [[Donald Trump]]'s supporters. Both can be true of the same person, and the mix differs by lane. ## Where it splits - **Israel and Iran.** The [[Gaza War]] and the [[Iran War 2026]] divided the network. Weiss's Free Press has been strongly supportive of [[Israel]]. Greenwald, Dore, Blumenthal and Gray have been among its fiercest American critics, and the Iran war turned several of them against the Trump administration they had been accused of flattering. - **The state bites back.** In July 2026 border agents seized Blumenthal's phones on his return from Iran, a reminder that proximity to the populist right bought no protection. - **Epstein.** Tracey and Taibbi argue the [[Jeffrey Epstein]] scandal has been inflated; Dore's show treats it as a cover-up still being exposed. - **Gender.** The dispute over youth gender medicine that defines Singal's career barely registers for the anti-war wing. ## Why it's on the map This sector is one of the main routes by which audiences that began on the left came to trust voices on the right, and by which right-wing platforms such as [[Rumble]] acquired credibility as homes for dissent. It also shows the weak points of creator-funded journalism: dependence on a single audience, exposure to payment platforms that can cut off income without explanation (see [[Debanking]]), and, as the [[Tenet Media]] case showed on the right, vulnerability to money whose source is hidden. For the wider landscape see [[Media Ecosystem]] and [[Right-Wing Media Timeline]]. ## Connections - [[Horseshoe Theory]] · [[Intellectual Dark Web]] · [[Dirtbag Left]] · [[Populism]] - [[Substack]] · [[Rumble]] · [[Callin]] · [[YouTube]] · [[Twitter Files]] - [[Legacy Media]] · [[Media Ecosystem]] · [[Right-Wing Media Timeline]] · [[Kremlin Disinformation]]