Why We Need More Leftist Fiction Authors

Broadly speaking, I believe there are two ways of politically influencing people: direct and indirect. The direct approach is to begin and end with politics. A political commentator, for example, would only be utilizing the direct approach.

The American political left, as my coalition defines it, has already covered the direct approach. If you look at the “Notable Far Left Media Figures” and “Notable Far Left Outlets” sections of my article about the two opposing factions of the American left, you’ll see a solid list of names. All of these people are growing their audiences. Many of them are political nonfiction authors.

Conversely, the indirect approach does not begin with politics. This strategy is to start with another topic, literally anything else. Imagine that you follow a food influencer. Around the time of an election cycle, this influencer announces they are supporting a certain candidate. Or maybe they post a few videos that tie their food background to political ideology.

Every adult participates in politics, but not everyone actively consumes political content. Because of this reality, the indirect approach is a crucial activism and anti-propaganda tool. Every topic is a potential window into political issues that directly impact media consumers.

Literature, of course, is one of these topics. At The Rauch Review we are transparent about our goal of connecting literature and leftism. We hope to gently and respectfully persuade centrists, progressives and conservatives over to our post-duopoly, populist attitude.

The challenge is that very few American literary authors are leftists. To estimate just how few of us there are at the moment, let’s roughly sum the number of people who voted for Jill Stein, Cornel West and Claudia De la Cruz in 2024. By my crude calculations, that figure is not even a million people.

Of those hundreds of thousands of voters, how many do you think are fiction authors? Of the few who would label themselves as such, how many have a large enough following to significantly impact public opinion? From my experience being in these circles, I feel like right now there are only a few hundred leftist literary authors in the entire country, and only several dozen with medium to large followings.

If we are to stand a chance of leaving the two-party system within this century, we need more content creators to assist with the indirect political influencing approach. Literature is a wonderful entry point because it usually connects naturally to leftist politics. All we need to do is further that connection.