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"Underground rappers xaviersobased and phreshboyswag dance in giddy circles, arms swirling while an on-screen caption reads, "Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 found footage upscaled to 4k." "Is Phresh Trotsky?" someone asks in the comments. Another clip flashes between gameplay footage, music videos, and a "Free George Santos School Walkout" meme, overlaid with an anime girl wearing a Soviet cossack hat who meditates on the difficulty of committing to radical politics in our brain-smushed modern era."
"Over the last few months, there's been a surge of similar and even more surreal edits. Hop into the abyss and you'll find people comparing the Arab Umayyad Caliphate to the Ghaznavid Dynasty like they're sports teams, to the tune of bashing jumpstyle music. There's Xi Jinping mogging Bibi Netanyahu while deafeningly aggro phonk bludgeons away; hype montages paint Marx as history's greatest theorist and pair Zohran Mamdani quotes with Playboi Carti Die Lit cuts."
"Maybe the biggest and most fantastical motif in this new clutch of comslop is Shambhala, not to be confused with the Canadian DIY electronic festival full of "Shambhalove." It's an idyllic kingdom in Tibetan Buddhist mythology that's supposed to be the birthplace of Kalki, the final incarnation of the god Vishnu. The concept dates back centuries but took on a new life in the twentieth, when Russian theosophist couple Nicholas and"
Underground rappers xaviersobased and phreshboyswag appear in viral dance edits over captions claiming Bolshevik Revolution footage upscaled to 4K. Clips splice gameplay, music videos, memes, and anime avatars to reflect on commitment to radical politics amid modern distraction. A recent surge of surreal edits compares historical empires like sports teams, pairs political leaders with aggressive phonk or jumpstyle, and elevates Marx through hype montages. Creators oscillate between sincerity and shitposting while attempting to forge a leftist culture. A recurring fantastical motif is Shambhala, a mythic Tibetan kingdom repurposed within this bricolage and linked to twentieth-century theosophical reinterpretations.
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