TrueAnon Saw How Twisted Politics Were About to Get

Brace Belden, Liz Franczak, and Steven Goldberg (a.k.a. Yung Chomsky), are loitering awkwardly outside of a brownstone when I find them on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. The minds behind the popular leftist podcast TrueAnon—Belden, the gonzo Communist; Franczak, the analytical Scully to his Mulder; and their enterprising producer, Goldberg—have asked to tour the Nicholas Roerich Museum, a tribute to the famed Russian painter and theosophist. Inside, the walls glimmer with foggy mountain crests and hyperreal colors designed to hypnotize you. Roerich and his wife, Helena, were known in part for embarking across Tibet in search of a mythical land called Shambhala; more recently, Shambhala has become a motif in brainrot videos made by young Marxists pining for a communist utopia.