starting with gamergate and ending with the adpocalypse, there were a series of popular alt-right and fascist youtube channels dominating the political and commentary scene in youtube. in response some libs and leftists started making their own videos.

they weren't really popular until after the adpocalypse which i suspect youtube tweaked its algorithm to stop promoting racists. i guess the trump backlash helped too. anyway after that the video essay format and debunking videos really took off so a lot of people started making them. the most popular ones were grouped together as "BreadTube". it's a play on the name of the book conquest of bread. some of them were anarchists and socialists for sure but most of them were your average progressive. to me it always felt like an outsider label mocking them but people owned it and eventually a community formed around it.

today there's really no such thing as breadtube and it's almost certainly used as an insult every time. it's basically the equivalent of calling someone woke but on youtube.

the right wingers tanked and most of them have just stopped. as for breadtubers the good ones moved on to greener pastures or went on to produce high effort videos. the lazy ones kept leeching off that patreon money, and the worst ones pivoted to streaming and debating.

off the top of my head the most popular breadtubers were hbomberguy, three arrows, shaun, contrapoints, PhilosophyTube, innuendo studios, non compete, red mouse or something?, thought slime (im not sure if they were ever considered breadtube, good channel though).

there have been some late comers like vaush, destiny, adam something and lonerbox. and well look how great that turned out.