What the Left Can Learn From Homesteaders

Since the pandemic, social media feeds have been quietly bearing witness to a small but revealing homesteading revival. For many, the grocery shortages, supply chain disruptions, and economic instability of 2020 exposed just how fragile our industrial systems were. Helped by the rise of remote work, they took their cue to flee the metropoles to buy and cultivate land and raise livestock, even producing their own energy. A Homesteaders of America survey conducted in 2023 found that a quarter of homesteaders began in the last three years and nearly half are Millennials or Zoomers. Predictably, they have turned their new lifestyle into an aesthetic—racking up hundreds of thousands of views on YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok, marketing an off-grid lifestyle while being terminally online.