Postliteracy Reshapes Politics and Minds

TL;DR

Sam Kriss argues that declining literacy is reshaping cognition and politics toward concrete, sensory thinking.
US literacy peaked around 2014, with 40% of fourth-graders now below basic reading levels.
Postliteracy may yield conservative, tribal politics via streamers like Hasan Piker and Nick Fuentes, not ideological madness.[[1]](https://samkriss.substack.com/p/reading-is-magic)

The story at a glance

Sam Kriss's essay in Jacobin's "Teen Jacobin" issue examines how literacy decline alters thought and politics. He draws on Soviet psychologist Alexander Luria's 1931 tests showing illiterates favor concrete over abstract reasoning. The piece is reported now amid falling US reading skills and youth politics shifting to streamers. This ties to broader concerns over youth disengagement from text in a screen-dominated world.[[1]](https://samkriss.substack.com/p/reading-is-magic)[[2]](https://jacobin.com/2026/03/politics-after-literacy)

Key points

Literacy enables abstract thought: Luria found illiterate Central Asians grouped objects by function (e.g., circles as "moon," squares as "windows") and rejected hypotheticals like syllogisms, while new literates handled geometry and logic.[[1]](https://samkriss.substack.com/p/reading-is-magic)
Lenin in 1919: "Without literacy, there can be no politics -- only rumours, gossip, and prejudice," as writing fosters ideal forms for envisioning change.[[1]](https://samkriss.substack.com/p/reading-is-magic)
US reading proficiency peaked in 2014; now 40% of fourth-graders cannot extract basic meaning from text, worsened by smartphones and AI tools.[[1]](https://samkriss.substack.com/p/reading-is-magic)
Elite students struggle with complex prose, like Bleak House's opening, seeing metaphors literally.[[1]](https://samkriss.substack.com/p/reading-is-magic)
Streamers like Nick Fuentes (right) and Hasan Piker (left) dominate youth politics with oral-style repetition and formulas, echoing illiterate speech patterns per Walter Ong.[[1]](https://samkriss.substack.com/p/reading-is-magic)
Postliteracy risks "global village" conservatism: politics as tribal patronage, gender wars over sensory experience, not grand ideologies.[[1]](https://samkriss.substack.com/p/reading-is-magic)

Details and context

Kriss references Luria's work in remote Uzbekistan, once a literary center under figures like Ulugh Beg, to show literacy's cognitive shift during Soviet campaigns. Illiterates stuck to empirical reality, dismissing puzzles contradicting senses (e.g., camels drinking all water from a 3-liter bottle then fitting 5 liters). Literates embraced abstraction, aiding but also enabling grim policies like Kazakhstan's 1930-33 famine.[[1]](https://samkriss.substack.com/p/reading-is-magic)

Historically, printing boosted Europe's mystic revolts, like the 1534 Münster Anabaptists' revelations-driven commune. Today, screens and AI revert minds to orality: redundancy to combat forgetting, low curiosity. Russia stays literate yet authoritarian, proving literacy alone does not guarantee democracy.[[1]](https://samkriss.substack.com/p/reading-is-magic)

The essay warns against simplistic fears of fascist demagogues; instead, expect pragmatic, image-driven caution amid AI fakes and intimate divides.

Key quotes

"Postliteracy won’t replace reason with madness, but it might give us madness of a new and different type."[[2]](https://jacobin.com/2026/03/politics-after-literacy)

"In the US, literacy peaked around 2014 and has been sliding since."[[1]](https://samkriss.substack.com/p/reading-is-magic)

Why it matters

Literacy underpins abstract democratic debate; its loss could entrench conservatism, tribalism, and patronage over revolutionary change. Readers and activists face eroded reasoning skills, with politics turning sensory and streamer-led, complicating left organizing among youth. Watch youth engagement metrics, streamer influence, and literacy data cautiously, as tech like AI may accelerate or alter trends unpredictably.[[1]](https://samkriss.substack.com/p/reading-is-magic)