Breadtube is a portmanteau of the words Bread and YouTube, and refers to leftist YouTubers. While this word may seem unusually unrelated, it's a reference to anarchist political philosopher Peter Kropotkin's The Conquest of Bread. These Breadtubers may range from educational to just entertainment.
Balkan Odyssey is a Balkan Communist and ex-nationalist who focuses on Socialist education to help bring people to Communism. While some of their titles and thumbnails may seem jarring, his explanations are calm, focused, and thoroughly convincing.
Hakim is an Iraqi Socialist who often oscillates between education and entertainment leaning with his videos, though largely focuses on the education side. Hakim's videos are extremely well cited, though this sometimes results in large, unread text blocks which you have to pause to read, but given he frequently takes sponsors to ensure his editor can be paid fairly, this extra labour ultimately doesn't negatively affect his videos.
Inneundo Studios, otherwise known as Ian Danskin, is a self-aware leftist video essayist who studies the alt-right for a living. I personally recommend his landmark series, The Alt-Right Playbook, in which he explains how the alt-right operates, as well as some occasional analysis of how to respond to them. Potentially the single most important video in this series is The Alt-Right Playbook: How to Radicalize a Normie, where he describes the process of how rightists recruit people, and emphasizes that the left need to actively reach out to these people before the fascists find them.
NonCompete, largely operated by E.J. and Luna oi!, is a self-described content collective making Communist propaganda. NonCompete attempts to merge both entertainment and education together, and has an absolutely brutal analysis of modern capitalist conditions.
Philosophy Tube is a philosophical channel operated by proudly transgender political philosopher, artist, and actress Abigail Thorn. Her video AI is an Ethical Nightmare is one of several landmark videos I could recommend from various YouTubers analyzing the anti-environmental, white supremacist, and even fully fascist nature of LLMs, LIMs, and similar generative technologies.
Tom Nicholas is a British political, historical, and cultural video essayist whose videos meticulously analyze real-life problems, even going so far as to record from inside the environmentalist protest group Just Stop Oil in his video I went UNDERCOVER with JUST STOP OIL. His channel includes another excellent video discussing the horrible impacts of generative AI in How AI Theft is Killing Free Speech.
Any Austin may not initially seem like a Breadtuber with his humorous videogame reviews, but listening to his dialogue - especially in his employment, economics, and jobs series - he demonstrates a clear leftist philosophy in his material analysis of fictional realities, often comparing them to the capitalist conditions within which we live.
Folding Ideas, otherwise known as Dan Olson, is a Canadian Breadtuber who creates long, well-edited, well-sourced video essays - better described as documentaries - about a variety of subjects, though the past 2-3 years of videos have largely focused on economics, especially in cryptocurrency, blockchain, metaverse, AI, gold, and other hypercapitalist spaces with a realist perspective, often demonstrating how shallow these scams are in the most polite way possible.
hbomberguy, sometimes referred to as Harris, is an entertainment Breadtuber who hilariously became aware of his status as a Breadtuber without context of the term's meaning from 2023-2024. hbomberguy describes himself as a gaming YouTuber, though is more accurately described as an art historian as his videos often focus on the social context and effects of artistic media, such as comics, movies, television, and video games. As far back as his first video in 2015, however, hbomberguy has often made political videos, and during 2023-2024 was often humorously referred to as a world-famous detective for his work identifying major plagiarism scandals across the videos ROBLOX_OOF.mp3 and Plagiarism and You(Tube)
illymation is an autistic ToonBoom animator who makes high-quality animated videos, largely about her life history and how it can relate to other people. While, like Any Austin, she may not initially seem like a Breadtuber, her views are largely very progressive, and her discussions about unions in her video Minimum wage jobs demonstrates an understanding of Socialist philosophy, though I can't speak on her awareness of this fact.
Jacob Geller is quite possibly one of my favourite video essayists, who might be better described as a sociopolitical artist. He's a Jewish Breadtuber who analyzes the meaning and effects of art in all forms: sculptures, videos, paintings, games, books - he covers it all. My recommendations for his leftist analyses are the series on Call of Duty, the series on Wolfenstein, and The False Evolution of Execution Methods.
Leadhead is a profound transgender philosopher whose videos have turned from philosophical videogame analysis to philosophical real life analysis. I honestly can't recommend videos here as it might just end up being a list of the majority of her uploads: I empathize with her far too much, even her analysis of how many people develop parasocial relationships with artists. Her videos hurt in the best way.
Shanspeare is a black video essayist with an intentionally dramatic flair. Her videos often cover real-life developments, from TikTok's developing tendencies towards transmisogynoir and white supremacy, to a constant pushback against the farces used to justify patriarchy. I will warn, however, she often changes the titles and thumbnails of her videos - I would advise waiting about two weeks before attempting to cite her videos, lest the title/thumbnail no longer match. I personally recommend 'Oppressed' by Choice: Tradwives Against Feminism.
YUGOPNIK is a Slavic Socialist whose videos often focus on the more entertainment side of Breadtube, albeit he does try to provide educational information amidst his humour. His video The Left Youtube Pipeline - The Good, The Bad, and The Hot is a bit bizarre, but helps encompass this dichotomy between humour and education as he analyzes how various Breadtubers guide people to Socialism.