It could be the leftwing alternative to the alt-right’s Breitbart News – a subversive, humorous, politics-focused podcast that has attracted a devoted following on both sides of the Atlantic.

Last week, Chapo Trap House burst into mainstream US media after a dispute erupted between the podcast’s provocative, hard-left commentators and a stately institution of polite neo-liberalism. In a take-down of Chapo and what is called the “dirtbag left”, the century-old New Republic magazine took issue with a phrase used by the podcast’s hosts as suggestive of a demand for an act of sexual submission by Hillary Clinton supporters.

In a recent edition, Chapo co-host Will Menaker accused – and not for the first time – Clintonist liberalism of being the architect of its own defeats. He issued a command: “You must bend the knee to us. Not the other way around. You have been proven as failures, and your entire world view has been discredited.” The phrase “bend the knee”, was soon interpreted through the prism of gender and identity politics – a realm into which Chapo hosts like to throw grenades.

The contretemps, which was picked up by the Washington Post in an article headlined “The millennial left’s war against liberalism”, might have gone no further had it not defined divisions in the US left that have been growing hostile as the new, young left seeks to strip the movement of its Clintonist, neoliberal influences.

Menaker and co-hosts Matt Christman, Felix Biederman, Virgil Texas, and Amber A’Lee Frost declined a request for comment. But their message has developed an enthusiastic audience of supporters they call “grey wolves”. Chapo subscriptions have grown rapidly, now numbering 16,000 and bringing in $70,000 monthly.

The group, aligned with the Brooklyn arm of the Democratic Socialists of America, met on Twitter, where they gained followers for their offbeat humour and views on what is termed “left Twitter”.

That led to a series of podcasts on the popular Street Fight Radio before they launched Chapo Trap House, named after the Mexican cartel head Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, who is currently awaiting trial in New York, and the hip-hop term for a drug house.

John Mason, professor of political science at William Paterson University, says this counter-reaction has been building for a decade. “They are very anti-establishment, and believe neoliberalism as a doctrine has failed, and they want centrist Democrats to acknowledge that it was their failure that destroyed the working class and allowed this atrocity to take place in the White House.”

He adds: “It’s the feeling that the new liberal agenda resulted in a whole generation of young Americans being shafted, locked into a gig economy, loaded down with student debt and no access to healthcare. A reaction has been building against Democrat politicians of the 90s who tried to make a compromise with corporate capitalism and then defined liberalism around cultural issues of diversity, immigration, women’s rights and so on, while riding along with the shafting of the working class.”In a recent edition, Jezz In My Pants, Chapo hosts cited the success of Jeremy Corbyn’s social democratic platform in the UK as proof of the potency of “dirtbag” politics. “It’s the beginnings, or the contours, of something else, like a shaft of light.”

Despite being lauded as the “vulgar, brilliant demigods of the new progressive left,” divisions, expressed along gender and generational lines, are becoming more apparent in the US left.

Mason observes the rise of a social democrat movement with strong green accents around energy and climate change. “Who is the most popular politician in the United States right now? Bernie Sanders! The ground has shifted and this is really the centre of the Democratic party. The people who have been , especially after this defeat, are those who belong to the Clinton-Obama wing.”If Chapo Trap House and its political brethren are the rising stars of Democratic politics, there is also anxiety, believes Mason.“The fear is we’re going to do ’68 over again and that’s the argument the Clintonists will make – that a battle within the Democratic party will help elect a conservative militia that will then, despite being a sociological minority, craft the institutions so they can remain a political majority.”