Leftist novels:

• A Grain of Wheat by ngugi wa thiong’o (about anti-colonialism in British Kenya)
• Memed My Hawk by Yasar Kemal (about peasants in 20th century Turkey)
• From Wonso Pond by Kang Kyeong-ae (about peasants in Japanese Korea)
• La Debacle by Emile Zola (depicts the Paris Commune at the end but in a traitorous liberal way, I still like Zola though, especially for L’Assommoir and Germinal, both of which are truly great novels)
• The Sorrow of War by Bao Ninh (about the Vietnam War from a North Vietnamese soldier’s perspective—the memoir is great even if the author is a lib)
• Kindred and Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler (great, fun, easy-to-read anti-slavery, anti-capitalist novels)
• The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka (famous depiction of a worker’s alienation under capitalism)
• And Quiet Flows the Don (nothing really leftwing about it but it’s a Soviet classic, really fun to read, super horny, and totally ignored by Western literature experts—it also beat the reactionaries Nabokov and Borges to win the Nobel Prize in Literature)
• The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin (a great, fun read, many people mention it as having radicalized them)

Leftist films / TV shows:

• Battleship Potemkin (showed it to little kids and they loved it, so what’s your excuse?)
• Strike (interesting and innovative but way too long, the story of workers striking at a factory, proof that Eisenstein invented cinema and that cinema is a Soviet invention)
• Modern Times (Chaplin waves a red flag)
• Prey (Native Americans fight aliens and kkkolonizers)
• Battle of Algiers (anti-colonial classic I think about constantly—it’s basically a guide to destroying colonialism, The Wretched of the Earth as an entertaining drama, often featuring actors who were involved in the actual struggle)
• Star Trek: DS9 (the Federation is about being trans, communist, and militant)
• Spartacus (anti-slavery epic written by a communist, the newer TV series is also good)
• Farscape (highly underrated series about a bunch of misfit “fugitives” fleeing the evil Peacekeepers across the galaxy, not 100% leftist though)
• War and Peace (the Soviet version is incredible and fun. Not really too political but mildly radicalizing in that it shows what Soviet cinema was capable of)
• Che 1 & 2 (absolutely fantastic and apparently popular in Cuba)

I have a big list of left films, I keep track of them and can post them later, I’m just busy today. In the meantime this thread had a bunch of good recommendations, also in c/movies there used to be a link to a torrent folder with tons of left flicks, not sure where it went

At the risk of tooting my own horn, my novel Space Corps is about what if a global communist revolution succeeded and began exploring nearby stars with FTL ships? I also have a new fantasy series being released chapter-by-chapter about a slave / worker / peasant uprising in Byzantium. Both the links I provided there are free.

Decided to just make this into a thread hahaha

Cane Fire is a really wonderful, heartbreaking documentary about the US overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom and subsequent subjugation of the native people. It is about the filmmaker’s search for a censored movie about a peasant revolt on a Hawaiian plantation. Really highly recommend.