Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm Collins

In this episode of Based Camp, Malcolm and Simone Collins dive deep into the viral Bricks & Minifigs Lego scandal that’s rocked the Mormon (LDS) community. What started as a $200k consignment dispute involving stolen Lego collections has spiraled into allegations of corporate theft, police corruption, small-town collusion, and a massive cultural reckoning.

Malcolm explores why this story is so damaging to Mormon PR, draws historical parallels to the Mountain Meadows Massacre, and questions the Church’s response (or lack thereof). They discuss Mormon cultural tendencies, MLMs, in-group protection, and what this reveals about trusting religious communities when they hold local power.

A must-watch for anyone following the drama, interested in religious sociology, business ethics, or cultural fault lines.

Episode Transcript

Malcolm Collins: Hello, Simone. I’m excited to be here with you today. Today we are going to be c- talking about the bricks and minifigures story.

Ooh ... but I want to take it in a different direction than a lot of people have gone on it, and I wanna g- talk about the meta discussion around it, and the extreme damage. And I’ve noticed that, that one, n- usually, the Mormon Church, and Mormons more broadly, are good at dealing with PR disasters. Like the, the, the way that they, you know, turned, The Book of Mormon into, like-

Simone Collins: Oh, yeah.

Yeah ...

Malcolm Collins: advertising and-

Simone Collins: Spinning that Broadway play by Matt Stone and Trey Parker into something where they would just put-

Malcolm Collins: Good PR. Well, yeah,

Simone Collins: in a way, ... missionaries outside the theaters and be like, “Hey, you enjoyed the play. Why not try the real thing?” I mean, it’s great.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, and in one of the other episodes we did, even the Mormon tendency to come off like creepy pod people to outsiders, To some outsiders

they’ve been able to subvert that into, like, “Yeah, well, we’re just so wholesome,” right? You know, [00:01:00] like, “That’s, that’s why we’re coming off that way,” right? I mean, I still-

Simone Collins: Mormon is because they’re just that wholesome. Get over it ...

Speaker 3: I heard there’s warm pie

Simone Collins: from

Malcolm Collins: my, my cultural background think they come off like creepy pod people.

Speaker 26: I don’t remember him being that friendly. He’s obviously one of them. How

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: And we have a whole episode if you’re interested on what causes that reaction, and I don’t think that Mormons have this emotional reaction, which is why they don’t realize that they trigger it so hard in other people.

Simone Collins: Well, not all S- Scots-Irish people have it. I, like, I don’t feel that. It, a lot of Mormons-

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, you don’t have the creepy...

But it’s clearly a common enough expression in humans that there’s multiple horror series just made- Yeah ... out of triggering this reaction. Yeah.

Speaker 7: Stan, take the drug, man, prove it to us. Okay.

Open the door. It is so much better. There’s no fear or pain. It’s beautiful. And you We’ll be beautiful. No [00:02:00] problems or worries. We want you. No pain, Stan? We’re gonna come in here and I’ll show you some f*****g pain!

Malcolm Collins: And, and here I’ll put the scenes from The Faculty or, you know, Children of the Corn or something. But anyway, in this instance it has fundamentally sh- like oh, and more broadly, so for people who know our channel and our stance, we’re generally pretty pro-Mormon.

We’re pro-Mormon for a few reasons. One is of all of the factions, like religious factions out there, they’re one of the most persistently pro-technology. And if people are like, “Why are they so pro-technology?” When contrasted with other religious groups, it’s because if you wanna be you know, status signal to other, you know, Orthodox Christians or to other Catholics, and you go to them and you’re like, “I’m doing it the traditional way, the way we did things in the 1850s,” you can look, like, extra cool.

If you’re a Mormon and you go like, “I’m doing things the way we did it in [00:03:00] the 1850s,” the other Mormons are gonna like, “Y- you are doing things super wrong, then.” And then if you’re like no, the, the 1920s.” Yeah, a lot has changed since then. I, I mean, 1950s? W- w- we’re that different then, but it’s still a pretty different beast.

It’s basically Mormonism evolves, even its belief system, so rapidly that there isn’t the desire, Because, like, if you go to the most of the, the most conservative Mormons, like if you’re talking about the ones who really try to preserve traditions they’re typically the schismatic cultists. This is like the are FLDS schismatic?

I don’t remember

Simone Collins: No. Oh, oh, you mean from the mainstream church? Yes.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I followed the esoteric schematic,

Simone Collins: yeah. Yes. Okay.

Malcolm Collins: So, again, it makes them very pro-technology. Two, they’re a minority population and any minority population is [00:04:00] useful to partner with if they have something akin to Christian values because you can largely bet on them at least within federal regulation to promote laws that maintain maximum i- cultural sovereignty because they benefit from that cultural sovereignty.

Although they do try to impose their values on others in the regions where they are the majority, which is what we’re gonna get to in this video. And so not just like positionally are they a good group to ally with but they also have been on a tear in terms of good social media. I often point out that we went from a Mormon stereotype when I was growing up of a nerdy guy who knocks on your door and has like a pencil protector and a Book of Mormon, like asking to talk to you or something, right?

Speaker 43: Well, you two boys can just buck right off.

Speaker 44: Ma’am. You heard me. Take that Book of Mormon and shove it so far Up your righteous asses, that, and choke, you soul [00:05:00] soliciting pigfuckers.

Malcolm Collins: You know, this was the stereotype my generation grew up with when the word Mormon came up and something went through your head. For today’s youths, the stereotype, until maybe this event, and I think people are underplaying how big this is, was of a hot trad wife making muffins or something like that.

That was the stereotype Mormon in people’s heads for a while. And the reason, and we’ll get into like why people have had such a bafflingly stupid response to this it has made me much more wary of long-term alliances with Mormon communities more generally. Specifically, the response that we have seen to this from Mormons, ‘cause I went through like at least a dozen Mormon videos, at least a dozen Mormon reactions, and we’ll get into

I’m assuming if you’re watching this, you’re broadly aware of what happened. But broad strokes, a Mormon-owned business staffed primarily by Mormons blatantly stole an [00:06:00] old man’s sort of inheritance for his son $200,000 worth of Lego

Simone Collins: figures. Excuse me. It’s a little more complicated than that because, and this is something that you should appreciate as someone who’s been through this process a, an old man who had a very, very impressive Star Wars Lego collection provided it to a Bricks & Minifigs Lego store on consignment.

This means that ownership was transferred to them per the contract, and then the seller would receive the payout when those goods were sold. Problem is, that business was sold, and then the people who bought the business-

Malcolm Collins: No, it wasn’t sold. Sorry, you’re getting your facts wrong already.

Simone Collins: Really? I was told that it was sold

Malcolm Collins: no. So corporate illegally took it over. And they confiscated- Oh ... not just from this guy, but everything that this other business had, which is one of the reasons- Really?

Speaker 8: Basically, and we’ll get into this later, a non-Mormon couple made the mistake of getting into a business relationship with a Mormon company, Bricks & Minifigs, and the company essentially just [00:07:00] stole their franchise and all their assets and then gave it to a Mormon couple

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, they ba- That’s

Simone Collins: super ... Well, then they, there should be a clear-cut case to be like, “This, my contract was rendered invalid.”

Well,

Malcolm Collins: yeah, but the other person ... Again, I don’t wanna get into the details yet. Okay ... I’m just putting the broad, base-

Simone Collins: Well, I just, I, I’m glad that I brought that up because I think a lot of people are under the same impression that I was

Malcolm Collins: No, this other case is explains I think why, because it’s baffling.

This is a company that makes 10 million a year. They have 300 locations. For them to cause such a blowup over $200,000 when they were very clearly in the wrong on this, and all of their paperwork makes it clear they were in the wrong on this which we’ll get into, a baffling decision for somebody who used to run a company.

You just wouldn’t do this. We all the time gave... Even when, like, we’re not sure if the customer’s in the right or something like that generally it’s always just like, “Yeah, it’s not worth it.” Right? You know, just, just make it go away, right? For $200,000 this [00:08:00] should have been, especially when it was pretty clear that it was their, their fault, a just make it go away issue, but they didn’t.

And so we need to get into why they probably didn’t, because it’s actually almost kind of confusing that they didn’t.

Simone Collins: Huh.

Malcolm Collins: The... I actually think it has something to do with the store that they took over basically illegally. And it might implicate if they give back the money to this person, that they have to give back the money for everything else that they stole.

Simone Collins: Which it- Well, yeah. If, if they’re selling Legos on consignment and they are no longer honoring consignment agreements and just treating it like it’s inventory.

Malcolm Collins: No. Yeah. It’s not just that. So, okay. I’ll explain a little bit more.

Simone Collins: Thank

Malcolm Collins: you. The guy who originally owned it and had the stuff listed on consignment at the store- Mm-hmm

uh, Bricks & Minifigs messed up his banking information. They messed up his banking information, so he was unable to pay them normally. Then what they did is he, he worked with them in terms of [00:09:00] fixing it. It took a few months, okay? And they eventually worked it out, and at the end of the period where they worked it out, he then paid them the franchising cost for when he hadn’t, you know, when they, they had messed up his banking information, right?

And th- they agreed on the amount that he paid, they worked it out together, it was all amicable and things went ahead for a number of months. Then after, I don’t know how many months after this, maybe about four months after this or something like this corporate just comes in and says, “We are forcibly shutting down your location and taking control of all the assets in it,” because of this unpaid franchise thing.

But he had actually already paid the franchise thing and they have... Th- all of this is in writing, by the way. Oh. Right? Okay. They’re just asserting that, “Well, because you changed the format you paid it in during this period, it counts as unpaid, and we are seizing all of your assets.” Yeah, like,

Simone Collins: you didn’t do it exactly correct, and therefore, dot.dot, somehow we own everything.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And so then they seized all of, not just [00:10:00] the stuff in consignment, all of his inventory.

Simone Collins: Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh, that’s, that seems super easy to settle in court. Like, no one’s gonna accept that. That’s-

Malcolm Collins: Well, yeah, it’s really bad. But we’re seeing why they thought they could got a- get away with it. And it had to do with the community, and this is where it gets interesting and why me going over all the Mormon influencers covering this has been really interesting.

Simone Collins: Hmm.

Malcolm Collins: Is this is not something that could have happened in a normal community, when they’re like, “Oh, there’s some bad Mormon members,” or something like that. Every incident tied to this case, whether it’s the police harassment of the people trying to handle this, the illegal jailing of people trying to handle this or the owner thinking that they could get away with this basically having the entire town government on their side, right?

And people are like, “Oh, this is normal small town stuff.” This is not [00:11:00] normal small town stuff, okay? There is a reason why this is going so mega viral, and everyone’s like, “I’ve never seen anything like this in my life.” This is not normal small town stuff.

Speaker 9: And as a note, I grew up in small town Texas in large part. Never did I see anything remotely like this. This is not normal small town behavior in America

Malcolm Collins: And the very fact that many Mormons watch this event and then respond with, “That’s just normal small town collusion”-

shows, I think, a degree of incompatibility with American culture.

Simone Collins: Small town

Malcolm Collins: collusion ... which is not good, because other Americans watch the Mormon go up and be like, “This is just a normal thing to happen in a town,” and they’re like, “

Simone Collins: Really?” It’s very hot vibes. I, I like

Malcolm Collins: it. What? No. Yeah. This isn’t a normal thing to happen.

This is an insane thing to happen. And when they’re like, “Oh, well, it’s just bad,” why are the police protecting a [00:12:00] private citizen here? And a, and a clear bad actor at this point, right? Why is the head of police going up and lying on behalf of this guy provably? Because we can show that he got the dates wrong on the things he was saying by things in pictures.

They’ve been able to recreate audio of what really happened during the raid, right? Because they had a camera on and that they, police knew they had no cause to do this. Why would the police go so far as to arrest a private citizen merely trying to get his property back? At one point, like to get how crazy this is, I don’t know if you’ve seen this They go to serve this guy his papers, and the police chief says this publicly, that the guy called the police and said he had his gun and he was thinking about shooting them because they were outside of his house trying to serve him his papers, which you have to do to start a court case.

The police then come, take the papers from this guy, say, “Are these even [00:13:00] real?” They then call up the court system. The court system tells them, “These are real papers.” The police says, “Oh, well then I guess I’ll go serve him the papers.” The guy refuses to take the papers from the police officer, okay? And then the police officer, what do they do after this?

They arrest him. The guy trying to do the normal part of the legal process, which is serving him his papers.

Simone Collins: Oh, on what grounds? It was on the grounds that they were not correct.

Malcolm Collins: Harassment for trying to serve someone their papers.

Simone Collins: Oh, for harassment? Okay. You

Malcolm Collins: have to serve ... For, if you’re unfamiliar, in the United States, you have to serve someone their papers.

You have to show that they opened their, the, the mail containing the legal stuff for the times to start on this stuff.

Simone Collins: It’s this, it’s just such a weird thing of like legal theater.

Malcolm Collins: It is weird, and I, we should probably ban it in the United States. It’s, it’s a stupid thing to have.

Simone Collins: It’s really stupid, yeah

Malcolm Collins: but secondarily and I know it could lead to negative externalities. There’s probably some other way we can do it, okay? But like this intentionally not [00:14:00] taking your papers, it should be able to show like you’re not legally allowed to not take your papers if a court something tries to serve them to you.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: And this is a position people could apply to, okay? Or like if you’re home or something like that, you know what I mean? But anyway and, and to get into like ... And, and when people are like, “Well, that doesn’t...” The reason the cops are colluding with the business is very clearly because of a Mormon church affiliation.

In addition to that, when the cops, because in one instance very clearly, fortunately we have video of this, they did not do a rolling stop. They stopped at a stoplight. The cops then pull over the car and immediately say like, you know, not, “Who’s driving here?” You know, “Did you do a stoplight?” They go, “Which one of you,” it’s in the YouTuber’s name Ben

Speaker 10: All the police footage of this, and as you can see, we didn’t even do a rolling stop. We fully stopped at the stop sign. So this is an illegal traffic stop. So who’s Ben? Uh, me. Ben, [00:15:00] how’s Utah? It’s good. You like it? Okay. It’s-

Malcolm Collins: .

And he’s like, “I’m Ben.” And the cop then says in like your most typical villain voice possible or, or more like crazy corrupt zombie town voice possible, “How are you liking your time in Utah?” Which is clearly code for among the Mormons, right? Like that, he meant, he meant it in a, in a very specific way.

And so then Mormons could come to me and say, “Well, it’s not like we or the church could do anything about this.” And the problem is, is yeah, they absolutely could. The Mormon church isn’t like a Protestant denomination where it’s decentralized and they can’t do anything. They actively and regularly excommunicate people over fairly trivial things.

Simone Collins: Well, you can, you could lose your, your temple recommends. Like, you, you could... There’s, yeah, actually, the LDS church is uniquely well-positioned to basically both kind of economically plus more spiritually disempower or freeze out people who are doing naughty [00:16:00] things. So yeah, you can absolutely slap people on the wrist, and it doesn’t even have to be temporary.

It can just be like, “Look, we’re gonna take away your temple recommends until you give this guy his Legos and stop being a jerk. You’re really making the

Malcolm Collins: church look bad.” It’d be, yeah, it’d be trivially easy for the church to handle.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: But the church has decided not to handle it, and has a historic pattern of not handling things like this, which we’ll go over.

Mm. Which make them a negative externality to other parties. Yeah ... actually, let’s just go straight into this. Are you familiar, Simone-

Mountain Meadows Massacre.

Simone Collins: While you give that, the Mountain Meadows Massacre, just let me get Tex so you can give- Okay ... I just have to feed him. You can, you can, you can give the, you can give the Mountain- You, are

Malcolm Collins: you aware of it?

Simone Collins: Yeah.

It’s sad. Kids get hurt, so you should probably say it when I’m not here.

Malcolm Collins: All right. So the Mountains Meadow Massacre. In 1857 the m- members of the Church of Latter-day Saints, Mormons, killed 120 innocent immigrants who were simply [00:17:00] trying to...

They, they were also Appalachian immigrants, so my people, who were just trying to migrate to California through Mormon territory. Now it is true that Brigham Young sent them a letter telling them not to do this, and it didn’t reach them in time. But after they did it, no one was punished for 10 years, and only two people were ever excommunicated by the church, despite a large number of people being involved in this.

And the way that they did it was horrifying. They told the settlers, “Okay, well then just give us your guns and we’ll let you through the territory.” They gave them their guns, they separated them into three lines of men, women and children. They shot the men and the women, and then they

and then- or I should probably say something else there. And then with Styx, they did something until the other group wasn’t around anymore. And then [00:18:00] they tried to blame it all on Native Americans who were only lightly involved in it. The church worked to cover it up within the region. And to give you an idea, people maintained main positions of power within the Mormon church after this.

So if we look at an individual like, William H. Dame, who was the colonel, the commander of the Iron Military District and a high-ranking figure, he gave the final approval for the massacre. But was indicted because people wouldn’t speak out against him. The entire community stayed silent.

And he continued as a leadership figure within the church in the community afterwards. And then we also know other figures, like John Me Higbee, who was a participant, one of the, the people who, who did the beatings and everything like that. And he held positions in the church for years after this.. It was absolutely crazy, and for wondering why it wasn’t even tried until 10 years after the event, and the key perpetrators maintained positions in the church. Two of them [00:19:00] were eventually excommunicated, but only two of them when dozens of them took place. I mean, 100, over 100 people were massacred.

In case you’re wondering, children under seven were not unalived, and they were brought into Mormon families. But other than that, all the kids

So it’s important to remember that this behavior of treating people outside the community as if their lives’ welfare... Oh, and they took all the people’s property. They just stole it all and distributed it, right? Treating them like their lives don’t matter if they think they can get an advantage over them is a historic way that Mormons act, and is likely the way they would act in a society if they ever gained majority control again.

Mm. Given that we both see it historically and we see it in current behavior. That doesn’t mean they’re not a useful ally right now for our agenda. But in terms of groups gaining power in a region, one of the last groups you ever want to gain power is Mormons.

Speaker 12: And this is something that is reaffirmed every [00:20:00] time a Mormon says this is normal small town behavior, or, “Oh, these are just individual bad actors, and it’s irrelevant that they’re members of the church,” when the only reason anyone is acting this way is because of the church

Malcolm Collins: Mormons are only a really good ally because they are a minority right now, and they have to fight to protect the powers of minority traditions have to protect families from CPS, have to protect...

but the ways that they act when they have power has historically been pretty monstrous. And I think one of the things that this incident is bringing back for people-

Simone Collins: Oh ...

Malcolm Collins: is, “Oh yeah, Mormons aren’t just, like, sweet trad wives. They’re also the type of people who will beat your children to death if they think they can get away with it, and steal all your stuff,” right?

They, they also are the type of people who should genuinely be viewed adversarially if they’re ever about to gain majority of control of anything that you’re affiliated with. [00:21:00] And they could make themselves, I mean, Mormonism evolves very quickly. They could make themselves into something not like that, and I think a lot of people had the perspective before this event blew up in the way it did, that the church had moved on from that mindset, that church members had moved on from that mindset.

The idea of, “Okay, well, if we have bad members, we deal with it,” right? Like, that presumably that’s what the church did now, and now we are demonstrably seeing that is not the case. And worse, not only is it not the case, but the Mormon influencers who cover this show culturally The, the, like the wider Mormon community is nowhere near the place that they need to be to just, it’d be so trivial.

It would hurt the church not at all to just ring the just say, “Hey, we’re taking away your temple recommends card until you give this guy his money back.” Simplest thing ever. It would cause literally no damage [00:22:00] for them. Mm. The key reason they’re not doing this, right, the key reason they’re not getting involved in this is because fundamentally it would be punishing Mormons for protecting Mormons in a way that was immoral.

And they’re-

Simone Collins: Oh, see, I thought maybe they’ve had a conversation internally and been like, “If we remove their temple recommends or we do anything to associate ourselves with them to comment on this, it would imply, it would make it out i- in the open and too obvious that this is a Mormon thing.” Whereas now there is plausible deniability.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, there’s no plausible deniability.

Simone Collins: No.

Malcolm Collins: A- and I, I think that this is th- this is something that I think that Mormons when they’re watching this don’t get that non-Mormons are going through watching this. Mm-hmm. When we watch this, right? Mm. And we see the sheer- Mm ... injustice of what’s being carried out here and, and just the wantonness [00:23:00] of it, the, the total lack of like, once we dominate a region we treat outsiders however we want, right?

The, the sheer wantedness of it. Like it, it, it makes me feel like you’re, you’re much better off being a Muslim in Israel than you are being a non-Mormon in one of these small Mormon towns, because apparently the police just don’t work for you. They, they do not even care about the pretense of impartiality.

They don’t even care about the pretense that they’re anything other than... That’s what it looks like to a non-Mormon watching this. And if you’re a Mormon and you watch this and your blood is boiling and you’re angry at these individuals, it’s really important that you understand that I’d say about 80% of the non-Mormons watching this, when their blood is boiling and they’re directing that anger in a direction, it is at Mormonism.

Mm. Because the- Or at the church ... the whole pattern, the whole weirdness of it is clearly created by a Mormon cultural foundation. And the bigger problem is, is it could be fixed. All Mormons have to do is [00:24:00] speak up. But I then started thinking about this more broadly and realized this is a larger failure of the Mormon church.

Because I was thinking about like, actually, you know there’s another thing that I’m really surprised the Mormon church hasn’t banned. ‘Cause the Mormon church is willing to go out there and ban, you know, caffeine, although they loosen up- Not

Simone Collins: caffeine, hot drinks Yeah, hot drinks. Like basically just tea and coffee actually, not even really hot drinks

Malcolm Collins: from the words of wisdom. They ban gambling. Why can’t they ban MLMs? MLMs are a massive problem in the Mormon church. Worse than being a generic massive problem, they’re... Because of the way MLMs work, fundamentally the way that people, even if somebody is making money in an MLM, at the end of the day they’re only making money because they are disenfranchising more people downstream of it.

Okay? Now the prophet, the head of the Mormon church, has come out and said you shouldn’t use the Rolodexes you have from being a church member or church lists and stuff like that as part of your MLM prospecting.

Simone Collins: Hmm. [00:25:00]

Malcolm Collins: They could go a lot further than that because the core way that an MLM makes money is by basically scamming the people at the bottom of the pyramid, right?

And the problem is, is the way Mormon social communities work, and the reason MLM spread quickly within them, is because they’re very good at converting each other. They’re very good at trusting each other. They have very low levels of incredulity when it comes to other Mormons, as we’re seeing play out in this particular instance.

So the central church could come in and say, “We don’t do this anymore,” because overall this obviously hurts Mormons the most that we don’t ban this. But also the people who run the MLMs that are doing this are predominantly Mormon, and they donate a lot to the temple. And so it sort of ends up in a, if we can milk money out of people, and this is where I fundamentally changed my thoughts on Mormons when I started thinking about MLMs, because I used to give the temple an out, right?

When people are like, “Oh, look at the temple’s financial scandals in the past,” right? Like, they invested a bunch of money in a shopping mall, and I’m like, [00:26:00] “That’s what- the way you’re supposed to invest money, you doofus.” You know? That’s not a scandal. That’s a normal thing to do, okay?

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: But to not restrict or even advise against joining MLMs when every sane person knows that they end up impoverishing hundreds of thousands of average Mormons every year, right?

Just so that they can get more donations. That’s when I was like, “Oh, this is more Machiavellian than I thought,” right? This is more to its core sort of rotten than I really thought. Because the... And I even looked to see if they’d ever looked at doing that, and they’ve banned lots of other stuff. Like, why can you ban gambling and not MLMs?

Oh, because gambling institutions aren’t run by Mormons. I mean, the answer is obvious, right? Do you have thoughts before I go into the, the details of this particular case?

Simone Collins: No, please go ahead.

Malcolm Collins: One thing I want you to check out, Simone, ‘cause I’d be very interested to [00:27:00] know. Can you check if the original owners of the store, the one who basically had the store stolen from them-

Simone Collins: Okay

Malcolm Collins: if they were Mormons too?

Simone Collins: Okay.

Malcolm Collins: Okay. So Bricks & Mini figs operate franchises. The whole dispute stems from a deal made between a man called Brian Manswell and the former franchisee, law/Gorman.

Brian’s father had a massive collection of allegedly $200,000 but he’s now in poor health, so they were looking to sell. The owners of the store agreed to a consignment, meaning that they would hold all the sets at no cost, during which time the Manswell would still technically own them and they would advertise to sell them.

We’ve already explained this After taking consignment, the franchisees went to B&M corporate and told them that they were considering moving out of the country and inquired on the process of selling the store. Corporate responded by forcing them out and illegally taking possession of the store.

There is an actual video of the owners explicitly mentioning having the consignment and the corporate res- representative responding [00:28:00] by saying that they will handle it and take responsibility. So they both knew it and represented that they were to handle it, even when later they’re like, “Well, we say we don’t handle consignment.”

Yeah, but you signed a thing saying you would handle it, so you’re responsible for it. B&M install new owners in the Salem store J- Joshua Johnson and Brandon Best. Both of these franchisees and corporates refused to honor the consignment agreement, stating that consignments are prohibited by contract and that they have no responsibility for an unauthorized agreement entered in between Manswell and the previous owners.

Although, once again, their contract contradicts this, as does the actual video recording of the employees saying that they will take it on. It gets particularly awkward at this joint because B&M’s official stance is that they could only identify 5K worth of Legos, which potentially belong to Mansfeld, and they supposedly offered to give these over, but not reimburse for the tens of thousands of missing sets.

For the part of Manswell and Reckless Ben, the YouTuber who joined forces with Manswell to take the case they allege that this isn’t true at all and that they are in [00:29:00] possession of more sets. Or at least they were by the time they took over the store. Now, note he’s able to prove that they had more sets because they had the sets for sale in their online store after they took it over, and he was just able to look at them and be like, “Here, these are the sets,” right?

So they’re provably, again, lying. What ensure... What ensues is a bunch of back and forth, “You have my sets/money,” and no, B&M in no uncertain words, threatened him stating that the cost of taking them to court would be prohibitively expensive and than he’d ever make off the sets and that they intended to drag out the case if he tries.

So, after more nonsense they get accused of trespassing. They finally take them to small claims court, and they sort of trick them into not responding to the claims court and ended up winning $200,000. Then they go to collect the money, and they had shut down the store that day. To understand how severe this was they didn’t even tell like children who had their birthday parties at the store that it [00:30:00] was

Simone Collins: about to be

Malcolm Collins: shut

Simone Collins: down.

Oh. And they ended- This is clearly to evade. I see. Wow.

Malcolm Collins: They ended up sitting in the parking lot during their birthday after they had rented out and paid them for the spot that, that was multiple kids’ birthdays because they just didn’t handle it. A- and again, we see here complete uncaring for non-Mormons.

So, were you able to find out?

Simone Collins: Yeah. The only confirmed members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are the corporate owners in Utah, not the original franchisees in Salem. Oh,

Malcolm Collins: no, no. The new franchisees who took over, I’m pretty sure, are, are confirmed Mormon. So when they stole it from the original franchisees, they gave it to a Mormon family.

Look that- Did they?

Simone Collins: Okay, the incoming Utah-affiliated owners of the same franchise location, Joshua Johnson and Brandon Best are described in coverage and videos as Mormons. So yes. So the,

Malcolm Collins: a Mormon corporate illegally took possession of the store and all its property and gave it to a Mormon family. And people are [00:31:00] like, “What does this have to do with Mormonism?”

But then- Well,

Simone Collins: they’re not a family. It’s Joshua Johnson and Brandon Best, but-

Malcolm Collins: Oh, I guess two Mormon c- people. Okay.

Simone Collins: Yes.

But allegedly, too, because as described in, in basic- like, like according to the YouTube coverage and on Wikipedia, they’re Mormons, but again, allegedly. Okay.

Malcolm Collins: So what, what happened with him and the cops, to go over this.

There was a traffic stop where they alleged that they had heroin in the car after a two-hour search showed up nothing. They then switched track and start saying that they got dilated pupils, which by the way, is the opposite of when you have heroin. They finally gave up. That- Wait,

Simone Collins: really? Cocaine would cause that.

Wouldn’t heroin dilate your pupils?

Malcolm Collins: I think heroin causes constricted pupils, or I’ll go into this in, in notes.

Yep, I was right here. Heroin constricts pupils, the exact opposite of the reason they said they pulled him over

Malcolm Collins: Okay?

Simone Collins: Okay.

Malcolm Collins: And note, we have from their cams, because it’s been leaked, that the cops said, “We have nothing [00:32:00] to, to, how do we get them?” Basically just seeing outsiders as annoying, describing them as annoying.

They, were, it’s multiple unfounded traffic stops during which the police officer immediately addresses Bin in the backseat of the car by his name, being like, “We know who you are. That’s why we’re pulling this car over,” even though there is zero reason to do so. Several police call-outs while trying to serve papers to Best, where the cops said...

And, and keep in mind, in one of these call-outs, and the chief of police admits this, he said he was thinking about shooting these people, okay? And had his gun, which I think might even be an illegal thing to do. I’m, I’m not sure, but I don’t think you can be like, “I’m thinking about shooting you,” while waving a gun at somebody.

Fi- yeah, that’s got to be illegal.

Speaker 13: Yes, this would count as brandishing a weapon and a criminal threat. So it is absolutely crazy that the chief of police literally is listing a criminal threat that this man is making to the chief of police as in his defense of his actions, in his defense of not [00:33:00] arresting the guy who made the criminal threat.

Uh, my God

Malcolm Collins: The, the cops just keep coming back every time he does this, removing him when he’s trying to serve papers. Finally he gets arrested on some bogus charges for putting up advertising on a GoFundMe. So that was what they... And this was wild. He’s like, “Is it illegal to put up a GoFundMe?”

And they’re like, “It is if you list the people’s names on the GoFundMe.” Okay? The p- the problem is, is that that would be libel. That would not be a criminal offense that you could go to jail over. And they put him in jail without bail as well, so he couldn’t- Ugh ... keep filming, ‘cause that’s what they were afraid of.

Oh. So it’s gotten astronomically worse because of this. And then the police going up. They, there’s video of them going up to him, and he’s just standing there in the video. They say that he was acting roughly, but he’s clearly just standing there. They grab his arm and dislocate his shoulder.

Speaker 14: Now, you understand me? Don’t move like that. Okay? [00:34:00] Yeah, this cop pulled my arm so far back it dislocated my shoulder. He claims it’s because I was attempting to make an escape or something. Don’t move like that. You understand me? Don’t move like that. Don’t move quick. Everybody just-

Malcolm Collins: Oh my gosh

this happens because his shoulder is very easy to dislocate. Apparently it’s happened to him a lot. And so he’s very aware of the sensation and what happens. Mm. And he put up a image of what a stock dislocated shoulder looks like in his video, and the police were like, “See? That’s a stock photo.”

It’s like, of course he couldn’t get a real one. You guys had him in jail and wouldn’t allow him to be X-rayed, right? Like, um So, and I’ll note here, we always call out communities when they’re not dealing with their own, right? And I do this, we did this with the ADL and Chabad with the Jewish community when we talked about speed running a pogrom.

We’re now doing it even with communities that we’re fairly close with. It’s the Mormon community. Because this is astronomically bad. The level of brutality that we are seeing here in sort of a, a global stage in, in like an American town, right? And people can be [00:35:00] like, “Oh, like this isn’t as bad as like the, the grape gangs in Britain and stuff like that,” right?

And it’s like, no, it’s, it’s not exactly, but you’ve got to understand to your average American who comes from a non-Mormon culture, it actually kind of looks worse. And the reason it looks worse is the sheer audacity with which it’s done, and the extent and, and the brazenness of the attempt to cover up, which implies to everyone all around, like if you were living in one of these communities or if these people had power, this is the way they treat you.

And what’s worse is the way Mormon influencers have reacted, which is to see this and be like, “Either this is normal small town stuff, or what can we do about it? It’s just individual bad actors.” And it’s like there are plenty of channels a Mormon can use to attempt to address this. Okay, so since all of this...

By the way, do, do you wanna say anything? [00:36:00]

Simone Collins: I hadn’t thought about it this way when hearing about the drama. Like, I hadn’t heard, thought about it of like, “Oh, so you wanna know what it’s like to live in a, an LDS caliphate? A Catholic caliphate?” Like, look at what happens in the Hot Fuzz version of a Catholic town, an LDS town, a Baptist town, and I guess this is kind of interesting and telling.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And, and- I appreciate you framing it this way ... and note here they can be like, oh, I actually lived when I was a kid we had a ranch. And so I lived in a small Texas town for a lot of my life. And I had encounters with the cops there and everything like that. I had encounters with other business people there.

Let me tell you what, in a small Texas town, nobody is acting like this. I don’t care if they go to the same church, they’re interested in what’s right, not what church they go to, okay? And if you wanna be like, “Well, what’s it like to be an outsider in a small Texas town? I’m sure it’s horrible there, too.”

Who’s an outsider in a small Texas town? Leaflet. [00:37:00] She always talks about her town glowingly, right? Never had any problems with the locals, right? And, and, and so I, I wanna point out here again, this is not normal, right? Thoughts before I go further, Simone.

Simone Collins: Yeah, I mean, well, I’ve been in many small random towns in various places in the world where people are super chill.

So yeah, this is not normal at all.

Malcolm Collins: Okay, so i- in terms of what’s happened, basically it’s all escalating. The police have not backed down at all. They did a, a press thing saying blah, blah, blah. Yeah, I

Simone Collins: saw footage from the press conference. Goodness gracious.

Malcolm Collins: The head of the company the, the, the toy company they- For its amazing

made an announcement basically saying, “We did nothing wrong.” I guess I should, again, ‘cause we covered this a bit at the beginning, but I want to, As business owners go into this again, okay? This is not a normal thing for a company to do. We have had-

Simone Collins: Yeah, in, in the midst of acquiring, buying or selling a, a company, what typically [00:38:00] happens is there are two ways you can buy or sell a company.

You can buy all the company’s stocks. It could be a stock purchase or, like, transfer of ownership, or it can be an asset purchase or transfer of ownership. And it’s almost always assets, because people don’t want a stock purchase. It, it involves a transfer of liabilities that no one really wants. And so when you do an asset purchase or some kind of change of ownership of assets you also have to make a bunch of assignment agreements.

When we acquired a business on behalf of investors, the, the deal was almost lost over lawyers losing their minds over assignment agreements. We actually almost lost the deal because we refused to have every single vendor sign an assignment agreement saying basically, “We will transfer our contract from the old corporation to the new corporation that’s acquiring the assets.”

So this is just one of those things that, like, lawyers that get involved are crazy [00:39:00] about because it can, it can kill a business. It’s really important. The ownership of these things matters. All this stuff is really well documented, and this is not something that you just, like, miss. It’s not something, “Oh,” like, you got lost in the shuffle.

Like, I thought, I thought these were ours. Like wait, wait, no, what? Yeah.”

Malcolm Collins: Yes, but this is the type of thing that, like, in a nor- if it was done normally, would have been a very long discussion, right? Yeah. And it- Or not ... and it, I mean, it was to the extent that it was filmed, right? Not a

Simone Collins: very

Malcolm Collins: long

Simone Collins: discussion.

So we do know that it happened. It just would have been, like, you know, we are assigning these, these as- these consignment contracts and, and the associated assets from business A to business B. That’s it. It’s very simple. Like, okay, great, now we have, you know, th- these assets that we will sell and we’re obligated to sell, to, to give a certain cut of the profits to this person.

Like, it’s so simple. And this is not something that is missed.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. No, no. I mean, for corporate to shut down a franchise and transfer its assets without the franchisee’s approval, when they weren’t in clear violation [00:40:00] to another party is- One, that’s insane. But then two, when the lawsuit came in, like the small $200,000 lawsuit, and you might be like, “That’s a big lawsuit.”

That is not a big lawsuit for a company the size of B&M. Bricks and

Simone Collins: Minifigs?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, Br- Bricks and Minifigs. It, it, it, it is literally, like it- in terms of what... I’m, I’m not gonna say it’s a rounding error, but it’s the type of thing, I would say over the course of the last few years in running our business, there have been multiple instances where sometimes you just get hit, where like it turns out an one of your employees did something wrong, $50,000 or something like that.

You get hit with it. You pay it out. You always pay it out. You never sit on that money because the, the lawsuit and the reputational damage is just too big, right? The idea that they wouldn’t do this, that they’d be like, “Oh, we’re just gonna ignore the legal case here,” right? Like, we’re... Or, or to even let it get to legal, right?

Over $200,000, which is nothing, is [00:41:00] astonishing and it displays- Well,

Simone Collins: and this also, it’s not $200,000 that they paid for. It’s $200,000 of potential profit that they seized. Again, this is what it was valued at. This is not what it’s being sold for, though I imagine with inflation it’s probably being

Malcolm Collins: sold for that price.

No, no, no, but I just mean not just handing them $200,000 to make them go away.

Simone Collins: Oh, I see. Yeah. No, right, just buying it from them as, as a corporation. Oh, I see what you’re saying. Yeah. Yeah, as opp- They shouldn’t have even waited to sell it on consignment. They should’ve just bought it from them.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Well, no, when, when people start making a stink like this, it’s generally good to just give them the money and make them go away.

Right? I

Simone Collins: see. Yeah, just buy them off. Yeah, that, that would’ve been simpler. But I mean, I think also they could’ve just been like, “Okay, we will honor your consignment agreement. Like, we will sell it or if you wanna take it back, take it back. We won’t sell it. I don’t care.”

Malcolm Collins: No, but the ob- the obvious correct choice is just give them the money, right?

Mm-hmm. Like, that is... Sorry, running businesses, we have had to make this choice around large amounts of money. Not this large, but like $25,000 or something. We probably have to make [00:42:00] it about once a year a, a decision like this, I’d say in the range between, like, 25,000 and $50,000. And it’s j- it sucks, but it’s just part of doing business.

That they wouldn’t, or that they had adopted a business practice where all throughout corporate, keep in mind, it, it, it, this required both the owners of the shop deciding not to do anything about this and corporate deciding not to do anything about this, which likely required layers of decision-making in addition to whatever the police were doing required a mindset that I think- Mm

unfortunately for a lot of people, what a lot of people are gonna take away from this is, “Oh, if you do business with a Mormon and you create a successful store they’ll just take that away from you and give it to a Mormon family one day.” As b-

Simone Collins: This is bad too, because Mormons are, have, have a really otherwise great professional reputation.

Especially LDS men who have served on missions, because they have basically gone through trial by [00:43:00] fire with patience, persistence, friendliness, sales skills, cold calling. Like, this is an amazing- They’re great

Malcolm Collins: salespeople ...

Simone Collins: yeah, like you, and, and they are disproportionately well represented in the CIA, like many high level good, like, government roles and stuff because it’s like, okay, these are people who are consistent, trustworthy, honorable values aligned, Mm

like, good. And, and stuff like this takes that reputation and weakens it, weakens it significantly because there’s this now negative baggage.

Malcolm Collins: Well, it inverts it to an extent. It’s like, oh, M- Mormons might make great employees, but never trust a Mormon in a Mormon-controlled territory if, if they are in the majority position or, or, or running a bus- business.

Like, never trust them to do... And, and if you’re like, “Well, how can you apply this to...” Again, this is the problem with a centralized church. Because you have a centralized church and the church isn’t doing anything about this, and you could say that’s not the church’s role, and it’s like w- the church’s role is to [00:44:00] make the lives of Mormons better, right?

To advance the Mormon cause. Yes, it is their role to handle negative PR when it comes up, right? Even if it’s through back channels, even if it’s through the guy’s local pastor or something like that. There, there are few things happening right now that are more the church’s role. The bigger problem is the idea that like, oh, we can Because as I pointed out, the situation arose because of Mormon culture, peculiarities of Mo- Mormon culture.

If it arose because of peculiarities of Mormon culture, obviously people are gonna blame it on Mormonism, so you could use peculiarities of Mormon culture to address it. Except the opposite has happened.

Simone Collins: Hmm.

Malcolm Collins: Right? A, a denial of responsibility and saying these are individual bad actors. Yeah. And to that extent, I think one thing that I’m gonna...

Because we’ve done a number of videos where we called out communities protecting their own bad actors, and how that externalizes them as a threat for everyone around them.

Simone Collins: Yeah, I think at this point we’ve called out Catholics and Jews for this, [00:45:00] right?

Malcolm Collins: No, not Catholics for this. Jews heavily

Simone Collins: for this.

Have we, have we yet, we haven’t yet called out, or maybe me- mentioning- Jews and trans

Malcolm Collins: people, and now

Simone Collins: Mormonism on the left ... you’ve called out Mennonites for this because of the whole rape thing.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, the rape. Well, yeah, no, but th- th- that’s different. The, the, I guess, yeah, the Catholics did attempt to protect.

But anyway, I want to go and say that as, because now I’ve realized we’ve got a number of people who follow the religion we created, techno-puritanism so, just sort of like as a Malcolm words of wisdom or whatever, like- ... when this w- techno-puritan central organization is finally set up, the, the index when we have all of the tools for setting it up one of its core roles should be policing the morality of members with ability to excommunicate for demonstrably- I was

Simone Collins: just thinking of like-

immoral acts ... well, policing bad actors. It’s not so much- Mm ... about policing morality as it is policing people who are doing harm in society.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, I think do, m- m- yeah, that’s the better way to do it. It doesn’t matter their [00:46:00] personal morality, their morality at home or anything like that. Only when they externalize harm onto other communities and the higher threat than externalizing harm on other communities is protecting a member of the techno-puritan community who is externalizing harm on other communities.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Don’t protect bad actors I mean, look, it put a target on the back of the progressive movement too. I was just looking at there’s been both, like, on X and through mainstream media, coverage of dwindling support, for example, gay marriage. It had its high at almost... So almost half of Republicans supported gay marriage around 2019.

And then I think it peaked at 2021. Between 2021 and 2024, it went from just under 50% of Republicans supporting gay marriage to now about 31%. And I think a lot of that had to do with the progressive movement on the whole supporting bad actors. And-

Malcolm Collins: Yeah ...

Simone Collins: trying to impose culture on people who don’t want that culture imposed on them.

Whereas before, the framing had always [00:47:00] been, “Just let us live our lives. Please, just let us live our lives.” And everyone’s like, “Yeah, okay. I’ll, like, that’s fine.” And

Malcolm Collins: this is the thing where the gays could say, “Well, there’s no king gay that could, you know, do something about this.” King gay. The problem is there is a king Mormon who can do something about this.

Oh. There is a central organization, and there’s people paid very good money- I thought you were gonna say

Simone Collins: there’s a gay king, and I’m like, “Who’s the king of the gays?” This

Malcolm Collins: is exciting. Actually, did you know that the United States military spent hundreds of thousands of dol- I think it might have been arou- around a few million dollars trying to find the king of the gays?

Simone Collins: Wait, what?

Malcolm Collins: Oh, yeah. D- did you know the name of the person they were looking for?

Simone Collins: No.

Malcolm Collins: They, they, they ended up doing a dragnet to attempt to find- A

Simone Collins: dragnet? Sorry.

Malcolm Collins: S- Simone, I said they, they did a dragnet to attempt to find Dorothy.

Simone Collins: Huh? I don’t get it.

Malcolm Collins: You don’t, you know how you say you are gay back in the day, “I’m a friend of Dorothy.”

Simone Collins: Oh, no. I’ve never heard that before. Oh,

Malcolm Collins: you’ve never heard the saying? I [00:48:00] was- It was a behind the way to say- No ... I’m gay is I’m a friend of Dorothy. Wait, really? And so they thought Dorothy, which meant Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz, was a real person. And so they attempted to

Simone Collins: find- They thought Dorothy was the king of the gays?

Like

Malcolm Collins: the, the key network o- or of the gays who like made the whole gay social scene work, this mysterious Dorothy.

Simone Collins: That’s amazing. I thought you were making a pun with Dragnet. I, yeah, I don’t know. I, I, I wish that in the US military we just started recruiting for like, it was the Band of Thebes, right?

Just like a, a, a gay subset. That would be so cool. That’d be so hot.

Malcolm Collins: Band of Thebes. Yeah, no, but all, all gay regiments. That’s the way we should do gays in the

Simone Collins: military. You, no, I, I think, yeah. Like, we, we need to start having affiliate of regiments. Like, I want, I want the militant lesbians regiment. I want the Band of Thebes 2.0 USA edition.

I want

Malcolm Collins: the- I actually think you could probably do a pretty good job ... I

Simone Collins: want, I want the furries. I want the furry regiment. I want them fighting in costume, but with like heads up displays inside their, [00:49:00] their like fursona heads. I, I want, I want affiliate of ad hoc-

Malcolm Collins: But, but anyway, ...

Simone Collins: military bands.

Malcolm Collins: This has been really interesting to see.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: I think people are underestimating the cultural effect of this movement long-term. This moment has blown up in a way that, I mean, literally this is like, I, I, I think in terms of like average home penetration, the Tiger King of this, this d- you know-

Simone Collins: I don’t, I don’t know if it’s Tiger King level, but I will say that this has been surprisingly well-covered.

I’m kinda like, ugh, like do we really care that much?

Malcolm Collins: Well, I mean, what I wanted to cover it as from a, like, as how’s it gonna change society? It’s gonna make people significantly more suspicious of Mormons or ever allowing Mormons to get power, and it makes me suspicious of Mormons. Like, I wanna be clear, it makes me suspicious when Mormons who I thought were normal, sane people are like, “This is just a few bad actors.

This isn’t a Mormon [00:50:00] problem.” Completely, when Mormon culture leads to bad action, completely saying, “Oh, not my responsibility,” I was like, “Oh, okay, well, f- me then,” right? You know? We just need to grow the techno-puritan alli- you know, federation. Y- get more members, continue to grow, have lots of babies.

And then you, you guys can have an organization you can join that doesn’t have lots of crazy scandals. And it actually punishes its own bad actors. Wouldn’t that be fun?

Simone Collins: I guess, you know, the, the OG Puritans were pretty famous for doing that, but sometimes they went a little too far. You know- But they did do-

witch hunts and all that.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. That’s- The, the OG Puritans did punish their own community members when they externalized power more. A

Simone Collins: lot. No, it was like, it was a pa- it was a national pastime. We did, we went overboard. We’re like, “You said something about your dog. You need to die.” All sorts of things.

Very, very overboard. But anyway, that’s it’s-

Malcolm Collins: Well, I, yeah, my biggest takeaway of this is no matter how aligned [00:51:00] you are with a group, I guess what this hammers home for me is- Well, all other groups are fundamentally evil. We need to grow our own

Simone Collins: and

Malcolm Collins: be prepared to- Oh, for th- Like, but I, but I’m sorry, groups I keep thinking are, are okay.

It, it does

Simone Collins: The Mormons are fine. Look, I think this had to do more with messy governance and people not coordinating well on this, and maybe the, the mechanism by which you know, temple recommends are revoked or established just not really working well, it being kind of complicated. Because I think that temple recommends, I, I don’t know the full way that, like, you get them, but I think they happen at the bishop level.

So, like, also you have to keep in mind that, like, they, the bishop who’s responsible for the various policemen and then the various corporate people, like, it’s all separate non-coordinating volunteers who have full-time jobs, by the way. [00:52:00] Like, there’s also the fact that this is a church that, except at the very highest levels, is made up of entirely volunteer work of, of full-time employed people.

Malcolm Collins: Hold on, Simona. I, I don’t... No. The, the, they, the temple could act if they wanted to. The local bishop could act if they wanted to. And if people are like, “It’s

Simone Collins: not the church’s-”

Malcolm Collins: Right,

Simone Collins: but also they’re kind of busy. Things fall through the cracks when you do this much

Malcolm Collins: If, if, if people are like, “It’s not the church’s job to police people’s morality,” that’s literally exactly their job, right?

It’s to, it’s to help people live moral lives. It’s not the church’s job to protect the church’s reputation. That’s literally... Like, those are their two only jobs. And if you’re like, “Well, they never get involved in civil matters or something like that,” or well, maybe they should, you know? In, in this particular instance.

Because they have this whole- Look, I,

Simone Collins: I imagine that there might be some reckoning or discussion that takes place after this having happened, but that wouldn’t surprise me. So-

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, it’ll just be too late then. They, they have literally days to react at this point. [00:53:00]

Simone Collins: Yeah. But I think if they act quickly, they can fend off reputational damage somewhat.

Malcolm Collins: So yeah, we’ll see if they do it.

Simone Collins: Let me- Time

Malcolm Collins: will tell ... it would have to be pretty severe at this point, whatever they do, but we’ll see.

Simone Collins: Mm, it, this’ll blow over pretty fast, I think.

Malcolm Collins: No, it won’t.

Simone Collins: We’ll see then. I’m, I’m

Malcolm Collins: obviously team Mormon. This will be a lasting cultural memory for a generation.

Simone Collins: Ah, I don’t know.

I, I doubt.

Malcolm Collins: Just keep in mind, it’s not... Every single one of the largest streamers has done something on this

Simone Collins: Yeah, it’s true. Yeah, this is ... And on both sides of the political spectrum too. It’s just basically like everyone is excited to dunk, to dunk on-

Malcolm Collins: This, this is the new Carol Baskin ... corporate Bricks &

Simone Collins: Minifigs.

Malcolm Collins: But worse, because I didn’t feel a visceral anger- I

Simone Collins: thought there were a bunch of Team Carol people. There are no Team Bricks & Minifigs people. Oh no, there’s a few Team Carol people,

Malcolm Collins: but that’s the thing. Like, with Carol, I was disgusted by her, but I didn’t feel a visceral rage at her like I do these people.

Simone Collins: Well, right, and this, this is a very unidirectional thing. Everyone [00:54:00] hates Brits- Bricks & Minifigs. Yeah. And everyone-

Malcolm Collins: And the local police department.

Simone Collins: And well, of course, and the, the local police department, which is acting ... Yeah, no, like, the, the, it’s, it’s

Malcolm Collins: one of these- They’re acting like a pod person town, okay?

That’s what they’re acting like.

Simone Collins: Oh, gosh.

Malcolm Collins: I, I, I have no other way to describe this other than bizarre and otherworldly. It borders on having accidentally driven into a horror movie, when you see, like, the police pull them over and be like, “Which one of you is Ben? How’s it feel to be in Utah?” That’s bizarre and pod person-y, okay?

Okay. That’s not a normal thing to do or say.

Simone Collins: It’s not great. Yeah. It’s it’s not great.

I agree. Well, we’ll see. I love you, though.

Malcolm Collins: Love you too.

Simone Collins: I’ll see you in data center

Malcolm Collins: You had the kids walk around with bagpipes today. One, one of our fans- Yeah, we had

Simone Collins: an award-winning- ... provided them with bagpipes ... bagpiper perform for our kids, and [00:55:00] they thought it was the coolest thing ever.

I mean, of course, in the moment they just looked stunned ‘cause what else do you do the first time you encounter a bagpipe? You’re like, “What is happening to me right now?” But he played a perfect... Oh, like, two perfect songs, just really good. Wow, what a day. I was just thinking, I was... To this weekend, I took this kids to this spot up on the hill, the, that picnic rock by the old stone bridge, and I told them it was where the fairies were, and they thought it was too windy for fairies, which is fair.

You know, mosquitoes can’t land on you when it’s too windy, and I don’t think fairies can be out either. And then I, I pulled up pictures using Google Image of the Cottingley Fairies, ‘cause it was like, oh yeah, like famously young children have found fairies in, in the, in the woods. And I thought it would be convincing because, you know, like, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was a huge fan of the Cottingley Fairies.

He’s like, “Oh, this confirms it.” And of course, Tosia looks at them and he’s like, “Wow, [00:56:00] fairies.” And Titan looks at it and she’s like, “Oh, the cotton candy fairies.” And then she just assumes that they make cotton candy, so that’s all she fixates on. That she wants not cottonlea, Cottingley or whatever

Malcolm Collins: fairies.

What is the Cottingley Fairies? Is this a scam or something? It’s

Simone Collins: the girls... You know those pictures of young girls with fairies? And they, they’d convinced... They, they ran, wandered off into the woods with their father’s camera and took pictures and then came back. Their father developed the photos, and lo and behold, the girls are posing next to beautiful fairies.

And at the time, no one could figure out what it was. They could confirm the photos were not doctored at all. Of course it turns out that- The girls had just cut out illustrations of fairies and arranged them well and took pic- pictures. Like, they were very good amateur photographers, but, like, they’d fooled a bunch of adults, including the writer of the Sherlock series.

This, [00:57:00] the clever man. Octavian takes one look at the photos and he’s like, “They just cut out pictures of fairies.” And I’m like, “

Malcolm Collins: What?” Oh, I love Octavian already. Smarter than Sherlock.

Simone Collins: What on earth? What on earth, Octavian?

Malcolm Collins: You are, you are too great at the fairy-

Simone Collins: But, but this, this is the same kid who, like, turns to me and is like, “Well, can I take my esophagus to Target?”

Because I, I have told him he can use a $25 Target gift card if he can just do the basic addition and subtraction he needs to in order to tell if he has, like, toys within his budget. You know, like, okay, well, you bought something with $4 and then... and another thing- Yeah ... with $2. How much money do you have left?

Then he can use the gift card. And, and he, he just doesn’t wanna do the math, and so I, I, I bought him an abacus, and he keeps calling it his esophagus, and it’s very annoying.

Malcolm Collins: And he wants to take it to Target to do the math? And he wants to take his esophagus to Target, ‘cause then

Simone Collins: he [00:58:00] can- Does he

Malcolm Collins: actually know how to do math on the abacus?

Simone Collins: Yes, he can do esophagus math, thank you very much.

Malcolm Collins: You taught him that?

Simone Collins: Yes. Well, th- this thing, it’s been around for, what, thousands of years. It’s extremely intuitive. You count the freaking beads. It’s, it’s really good- I, well, I know there’s, like- ... for developing number sense. ...

Malcolm Collins: specific ways to do, like, multiplication and stuff on it.

Simone Collins: Yeah. No, he’s not at that level. We’re at the, like, the beads move on this side, and here’s, you know, just move over the 10 beads.

Malcolm Collins: Addition and subtraction, okay, great.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Great, great. No we’re not, like, at the- But I love that he’s- We’re not- ... teaching technical terms here ... Peruvian mountain traders yet, no.

Malcolm Collins: And people are like... Again, when they’re like, “Why don’t you just teach your kids the Christian stories in the traditional way?” And I’m like, “Because I know my kids are like me, and they’re going to be very, very skeptical people.” They just

Simone Collins: cut out the fair- pictures of fairies. I can’t believe it. Anyway.

Yeah. I thought, I thought I was just gonna completely entrance the children and Octavian just has to blow it off. .

Malcolm Collins: Immediately. All right. Well, I’m gonna get started here. I’m, I’m proud of

Simone Collins: you. [00:59:00] Okay.

Speaker 16: Do you think the answer is still gonna be there? Let’s, we’ll find out

Well, we’re in a more sheltered area, so it’s nice and calm here. Feels good, right?

In this episode of Based Camp, Malcolm and Simone Collins tackle one of the most provocative questions in the age of AI: Does artificial intelligence finally make communism feasible?

They explore the structural failures of historical communism (incentives, power consolidation, information problems, and catastrophic mismanagement), why small-scale communism works (families, kibbutzim) but large-scale versions collapse, and whether AI-driven post-scarcity could solve these issues or simply replicate the same human problems of bad actors, bureaucracy, and distorted incentives.

Topics include:

* The Sam Altman UBI study and why unconditional cash transfers often fail

* Why Soviet science succeeded in some areas but governance always failed

* Power vacuums in anarcho-communism vs. centralized systems

* The future of “techno-fiefdoms,” AI-managed communities, and human reserves for those left behind by AI disruption

* Demographic collapse and the likely rise of religious/techno-puritan movements

A raw, nuanced debate that challenges both right-wing and left-wing assumptions about economics, human nature, and the coming AI era.

Show Notes

Why Implementations Fail

* Economic calculation problem (Ludwig von Mises, 1920):

* Without private property and market prices, planners lack information on relative scarcity/costs.

* You can’t rationally allocate steel, labor, or grain.

* Attempts at “material balances” or cybernetic planning (e.g., Soviet OGAS—an attempted nationwide information network) failed repeatedly.

* HOW AI CAN FIX THIS

* Adequately and dynamically track supply and demand

* Incentive and knowledge problems (Hayek):

* People respond to incentives.

* Common ownership dilutes responsibility (”tragedy of the commons”).

* Local knowledge is dispersed; central decrees can’t match it.

* AI can just more adequately monitor dispersed local knowledge

* Innovation and maintenance collapse without profit/loss signals.

* If AI becomes like a mother and just “handles” everything, then it’s not an issue

* Power dynamics:

* Enforcing abolition of private property and markets requires massive coercion.

* With AI, we’re approaching a place where the majority of the population won’t have anything (or anything to lose), property-wise.

* This concentrates power in a vanguard/party, which becomes a new ruling class (see Milovan Djilas’ The New Class).

* We might see a bifurcated society: One ruling elite doing their own thing, then AI-led/governed communist societies for everyone else

* The state doesn’t wither; it entrenches (Orwell, Animal Farm).

* This is more of an issue when the state is fighting over something desirable, but what we’re looking at is a society largely abandoned by the elite.

* Human nature (loaded with self-interest, status-seeking, family preferences as it is) doesn’t vanish.

* Not a problem if a non-biological mind is governing.

* Repeated patterns:

* Initial revolutionary fervor lead to…

* purges of “wreckers”/kulaks, which lead to

* Shortages, which lead to…

* blame external enemies/capitalism, which lead to…

* more controls, which lead to…

* corruption/black markets, which lead to…

* reform or collapse

* This is not bad luck or “revisionism”; it’s structural.

* Even small-scale communes (e.g., 19th-century utopian ones, Israeli kibbutzim long-term, or modern intentional communities) often dissolve due to free-riding, exit of talent, and disputes over “needs.”

* HOWEVER, with AI, I imagine communism to not come as a revolution, but rather a deus ex machina saving the leftovers in society from death.

Why has “real communism never been tried?”

“Real communism has never been tried” is a rhetorical defense that shifts the definition of communism away from every historical implementation. It functions as a motte-and-bailey tactic or “no true Scotsman” fallacy: the ideal (a stateless, classless, moneyless society of perfect equality and abundance) is defended, while real-world attempts are dismissed as insufficiently pure.

Defenders counter with “not real” because:

* Stalin/Mao “betrayed” the revolution.

* No stateless end-stage achieved.

* External sanctions/wars interfered.

* “State capitalism” or “deformed socialism.”

What “real communism” means in theory

Marx and Engels described:

* Socialism as the transitional stage: proletarian dictatorship, state ownership of production.

* Communism as the higher stage: state “withers away,” common ownership, “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs,” no classes, no money, no scarcity.

Lenin, Trotsky, and later Marxists added layers like vanguard parties and democratic centralism to get there.

Every major attempt followed Marxist blueprints:

* USSR (1917-1991): Bolshevik Revolution, War Communism, collectivization, Five-Year Plans. Result: Holodomor famine (millions dead), Gulags, purges, stagnation, collapse. Leaders admitted severe deviations but blamed “capitalist encirclement” or “bureaucracy.”

* China (1949-): Great Leap Forward (30+ million dead from famine), Cultural Revolution, mass starvation and chaos. Shifted to market reforms under Deng for survival; current system is state capitalism with CCP control.

* Cambodia (Khmer Rouge, 1975-79): Explicitly tried Year Zero agrarian communism. ~1.5-2 million dead (25% of population) via execution, starvation, overwork.

* Cuba, North Korea, Vietnam, Ethiopia, Venezuela: Similar patterns—initial redistribution, central planning, suppression of markets/dissent, economic decline, emigration, authoritarianism. Venezuela went from richest Latin American country per capita to hyperinflation and collapse under “21st-century socialism.”

The Black Book of Communism estimates 80-100 million deaths from democide, famine, and repression across implementations. These weren’t fringe experiments; they were the largest-scale attempts, backed by ideology from Marx’s writings.

Episode Transcript

Malcolm Collins: Hello, Simone. Today we are gonna be discussing an exciting topic, which is does communism make sense now? Specifically what we’re gonna be digging into here is, like, we are known as, I guess, far right-wing YouTubers or podcasters or intellectual influencers.

I don’t know, right? No. But, but people consider us far right-wing. Now, a lot of our fans consider us very centrist, so maybe, but I, I identify as, as right wing, so whatever, right? Like, I... The, the, the sane far right is where I think I’d put us, right? A- at least within, like, the tech right circles and stuff like that.

Which puts us in an interesting position vis-à-vis communism, ‘cause I’m not gonna come out here and just be like... We have said it in the past on the show very clearly that communism may work in a post-scarcity economy. And we have also a number of times gone into what it means when we say something like that, right?

Mm-hmm. Where, like, we are putting [00:01:00] extremely heavy caveats on this. When people have done UBI experiments and they have just handed people money, they have seen extremely bad outcomes. The most famous is the Sam Altman one where they gave people $1,000 every month for three years, and the people who had been given the money they, they had less money at the end of it, total money, than the people who had been given nothing in terms of, like, wealth increase, right?

They, they didn’t spend any more time with their kids. They didn’t have any more kids. They didn’t spend any more time in education. They really only spent more time in recreation. That’s it.

Simone Collins: And they paid down their debt a little, so that’s nice.

Malcolm Collins: Hmm. That doesn’t really mean anything. Oh, they

Simone Collins: visited the doctor a little more.

Malcolm Collins: It doesn’t really mean anything if on net they had less money.

Simone Collins: Yeah. So

Malcolm Collins: yes, they paid down their debt, but on net they had less money. Right. So, just a disaster, and we’ve seen this in communities that are offered UBI, right? Like Native American communities, for example, where we see them just completely [00:02:00] dissolve in terms of productivity, in terms of drug addiction, in terms of alcohol addiction the moment they get on something that is the equivalent of, like, UBI or, like, local communism or something like that.

And so then the question is okay, How do we eh, th- that, that all being the case, like also clearly AI is gonna disrupt what the economy means, right? And, and, and it may not happen this generation, right? It may not happen, ... Well, it’s probably gonna happen in our lifetimes, if I’m gonna be honest.

Like, if we look at- Yeah ... the speed of AI in relation to automated workers e- even, even for physical labor from what we’re sort of seeing behind the scenes, that’s developing a lot faster than people realize. And that we may be replacing people in a lot more fields a lot faster than people think.

And so then the question is, is okay, well if that happens, then what does the economy mean? How do you have a [00:03:00] functional economy with struggle and some form of scarcity so people don’t go crazy without what we’ve come to understand as, like, market labor, right? And so to explore this subject, I want to focus on a few areas.

I want to focus on, like, underlying how does capitalism help people? Examine the individual structures within capitalism that lead to the net outcome of positive human results. And see how those can be potentially mimicked in a post traditionally capitalist economy.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: But then secondarily the big question we have is Okay, how does communism often fail, and how could AI, or even could AI realistically prevent these failure scenarios?

Simone Collins: Mm.

Malcolm Collins: So, classic failure scenario in communism that I’ll sort of walk people through why, why communism almost always [00:04:00] fails. Not almost always. It, it literally always fails above certain sizes. Communism works in small government stuff, like it works with some of the kibbutzim. It works with families.

Every family is communist. W- w- sorry, people don’t understand what I mean by that. Like it’s from each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs, right? Like my baby doesn’t work, right? And I can’t produce milk for them, right? You know, the person who can produce milk produces the milk.

The, the, the, the baby and the kids are not expected to bring in an income at this stage, right? You know, we, but we, we still support them. The types of jobs and roles that each of us take on are the types of jobs and role that we’re best at, both due to our educational background, proficiencies, and yes, gender.

So we live in a communist structure already. We live in a communist utopia already, it’s just a very small one. But the question is, is why does it break down at a societal level? We’ve written extensively on this, so I’ll keep it pretty short. The key reason is [00:05:00] is when you are creating a larger communist structure, you need to centralize power in a way that rewards bad actors.

And a lot of people don’t s- s- they’re like, “Oh, it’s that people aren’t motivated when they just get money from the state,” or something like that. Or that you can’t do advanced things in a communist system, and that’s not true. Like, that, that’s actually, like, factually untrue. Like, the one thing the Soviet Union was actually pretty good at was science.

Like, they were beating us soundly in the space race for quite a long period of the space race. They had many excellent, excellent scientists. Yes, because of government bureaucracy and the way sort of power gets captured in communist systems, they also ended up making catastrophically stupid scientific blunders that killed hundreds of millions of people.

The Chinese did this as well. This is typically in fields like biology and, and stuff like this. But in, in physics, they [00:06:00] did pretty well. So no, it’s, it, it’s actually not that people are just unmotivated in these systems. Highly motivated, highly conscientious people are typically equally or, if not, even more motivated in communist ecosystems.

Where communist ecosystems really break down is for less competent fields. The, the average line worker and stuff like that. Because at this point, you don’t wanna do those jobs. Nobody wants to do those jobs. People often end up doing them at the point of a gun barrel and maliciously poorly. It’s, it’s the average desk worker job.

It’s not the, “I got my best job I could have ever gotten because I’m literally one of the best people in the country at doing said job.” Like, “I’m a gun nut, and now I get to spend all of my day coming up with gun designs, and now we have the AK-47.” Right? You know, “I’m a, a nuke nut.” Right? “I’m really interested in cutting edge nuclear technology, and now we have a, a Soviet atomic bomb.”

Right? By the way, like, to put in [00:07:00] context how impressive that is, Iran still can’t make an at- now a- admittedly, like, everyone’s mad at them, but, like, the, the Soviet Union was doing this stuff, like, over half a century ago, right, at this point. So Communism can actually motivate the very best to do the very best.

One of the problems you have with Soviet science, sorry if I’m getting on a sidetrack here but they, like, really screwed up their tank production, for example simply because of, like, government politics that ended up prioritizing one idiot’s designs over the guy who was actually more competent because Soviet systems are not always good at finding the most competent person.

Huh ... capitalist systems also struggle sometimes to find the most competent person, but generally- True

Simone Collins: story ...

Malcolm Collins: like, if the government turned me away in a capitalist system, I could presumably go and build my own company separately off of my ideas. It doesn’t work that way, especially not in a country like the United States.

Like, I go off [00:08:00] and I wanna build my own tank and because somebody else has, like, government crony contract, they, they still get the government crony contract because they’re at Boeing and they’ll, they’ll kill you or something. You know, that’s, that’s the way this works. But again, the, the, the point I’m making here is yes, Sovietism leads to catastrophic inefficiencies but you can get those within at least what we call capitalist ecosystems as well, right?

Mm-hmm. So now back to what the real problem of communism is So when you’re going down a communist path, you essentially have two strategies that you can attempt. You can say, “We’re gonna centralize all the power into one bureaucracy and this single bureaucracy is going to manage all forms of the economy and everything like that.”

And everybody knows, like, generally this doesn’t seem to really work for a number of reasons tied to, like, inefficiency, but we’ll put those reasons aside in a bucket for now. So strategy [00:09:00] number one, centralize everything. Essentially you’re creating a country that’s ruled by a single monopolistic company.

That is, that is functionally what, what that form of communism is. Which is why I always say that the end state of communism and the end state of extreme libertarianism are the same.

Simone Collins: Well, and I mean, a, a big part of this that tends to create huge, huge problems is when you are creating one, when you’re consolidating everything, you’re also abolishing private property and markets, and that requires- Well,

Malcolm Collins: and then people don’t have the, the same reason to invest in their continued property.

Simone Collins: And it requires a lot of coercion. Like, pe- people don’t just, “Oh, sure. Yeah, take my house. That’s fine. I didn’t...

Malcolm Collins: That’s fine.” I mean, that’s, that’s generally the lower bloodshed and the lower death toll is on the redistribution part, though. Yeah,

Simone Collins: that’s the step one part. But I’m just saying, like, as a little starting point, there’s also some friction there.

Yeah, I

Malcolm Collins: mean, obviously it involves robbing people of their property and everything like that. [00:10:00] I get that. But that’s- Y- yeah ... usually the lower death... I mean, a lot of, obviously conservative commentators are gonna crash out about government redistribution, everything like that. I’m just pointing out that’s not actually where the, the vast majority of communist death tolls come from.

The vast majority of communist death tolls come from the inefficient management that happens after that.

Simone Collins: Yeah, so in terms of, At least there’s this one book that tries to give a full tally. It’s called The Black Book of Communism, and they estimate that there have been 80 to 100 million deaths From democide, famine, and repression across implementations.

I think famine’s the biggest killer.

Malcolm Collins: Right. So let’s, we’ll, we’ll talk about... okay, I’ll quickly explain why the things happen without going too deep into them. I can. One problem you have within a communist ecosystem is that an individual has no reason to invest in anything that they own, because they don’t own anything.

Yeah. So like, eh, our house requires a ton of effort and work to keep from falling apart. This is why if you go to [00:11:00] many communist countries, you don’t see tons of old houses, or you see houses in horrible disrepair, or, like, giant blocks in horrible disrepair. Because people didn’t have a reason to invest in the upkeep of their own property and the area around their property, right?

Like, it’s not just my house I want to be nice, it’s the region around my house, because that increases its value. And this is true of companies, this is true of everything. It’s, it’s a huge positive cycle that you get out of this. Mm-hmm. And the, the secondary bigger thing is, is inefficiency in the way things are operated.

And what people say, and I think incorrectly, is that you simply cannot manage, in a planned out format, an entire economy. And it is in attempting to do that that the Soviet systems begin to break down and the communist systems begin to break down in ways that lead to these famines and stuff like that.

But when we look at the actual causes of most of the famines, it isn’t actually due to problems in inefficient management. It’s, [00:12:00] it’s due to explicitly bad policy like killing all the birds in China that were eating the pests on the crop. They were mad that they sometimes ate the crops, and then they had giant pests, and then a bunch of people died because the way that they were measuring food is they would go to a town and they’d basically tell the person running the town, “Well, if you can’t show me X amount of food, you’re gonna be removed from your position,” right?

So now they’re like, “Oh yeah, we’ve got that amount of food,” right? And then they go to the people and they go, “Hey, the military works for me. You give all your food for export.” Now they don’t have any food left, because they were just pretending that they had X amount of food. But they wanted to keep their position, and they had the guns, so they were in a position to do this.

Because if they don’t do this, then they’re put in a... Now this is all a problem of organization. Like, all of these individual problems could be solved if you had an intelligent and conscientious person going through the system and attempting to address every one of these problems. What we really need to get to is why that doesn’t happen, why these problems never get [00:13:00] cau- solved, why bad ideas get pushed down, and we need to say, “Can AI prevent this?”

Simone Collins: Hmm.

Malcolm Collins: So, thoughts before I go further, Simone?

Simone Collins: I mean, I, I think you’re focusing a lot on the pure governance problems, but there’s more to it than just that, and so it’s also important to address those other short, shortfalls.

Malcolm Collins: Okay. What... I’m, I’m actually claiming there are not, actually. The problems that are not governance problems are not that big in communism.

So what do you think they are?

Simone Collins: That we discount the extent to which markets are like an organism or ecosystem that, that is able to manage huge amounts of information in a very responsive, distributed, natural way. And that when you try to have a human-run mostly blind government system run it, you don’t get the data you need.

Like, planners don’t have enough information- So I- ... about relative stares- scarcity and cost of things ...

Malcolm Collins: fundamentally disagree with your thesis here. There are [00:14:00] ways within a communist system, without-

Simone Collins: yeah, and the Soviet, like, there’s the Soviet OGAS system that they, they tried to create this nationwide information network to, to better manage this, but they couldn’t.

Like, just getting the information inputs in a pre-AI age was just not feasible. And they had to plan-

Malcolm Collins: No, the point I’m making is it isn’t just unfeasible. They just did it in bad ways. You can create pseudo-capitalistic systems in a communist empire that can measure supply and demand and react to supply and demand with rewards.

I mean, you are creating essentially capitalism with extra steps. But the idea of having distributive information networks that can recognize scarcity and demand is not something that is out of completely impossible in a communist system. The point I’m making here is that if you actually look, and I know from, like, a [00:15:00] capitalist perspective, the great machine, and people have talked about, like, capitalism as the first AI, right?

And in a way, capitalism is kind of the first AI, right?

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: But the, the capitalist machine or the AI that’s created by the giant capitalistic network is not something that it is completely impossible to reverse engineer. And the reason I say this is that when we look at the failures of communist systems demonstrably, they are not due to failures of centralized control.

They are due to specific policy failures

Simone Collins: I wouldn’t say it’s just policy failures, too. I think that the fundamental system whereby, again, in a pre-AI age, communism comes to exist, which is this process of like a revolution to socialism to then communism, is doomed [00:16:00] to fail, right? Because you have this revolutionary fur- fervor, and then you have the purge where like a bunch of like people lose their property, and there’s the kulaks.

Mm. And then you get shortages, and then you have the famine, and then you have the backlash to that, the blame. “We have to, we have to handle this. Oh, it’s, it’s capitalism. It’s all these other things.” And then that means we have to implement more controls, and then that leads to corrupt and black markets, and then that leads to reform or collapse.

And it’s just, like things... It’s, it’s an inherently unstable system the way you have to stumble into cap- or to communism now. And here’s my fundamental thesis when it comes to communism and AI and how it’s going to play out and why it’s going to work, and why many of the fundamental things that lead to this instability aren’t going to be a problem.

One of the key things being, I mean, I know you’re talking about like human-led governance being really stupid, and AGI can sort of in a hand-wavy way fix [00:17:00] that, and the right AGI can. I think the other thing is that communism is often a problem because a bunch of corrupt, power-hungry people are like scrambling for the governing power and for the resources of like the workers and all their possessions, right?

Malcolm Collins: Mm-hmm.

Simone Collins: But what, what happens when you have a bunch of people who don’t work and don’t own anything? Like no one’s gonna fight over them. No one wants them. And what I think might happen is that a large- a largely orphaned population, the l- the bottom part of the K-shaped economy, is going to be left high and dry by governments that falter, both due to like weird AI disruption, but also due to demographic collapse, and then also just left behind by the rich people who go off to their like techno-futurism.

That’s an interesting

Malcolm Collins: thesis, but I’m gonna push back on this.

Simone Collins: Let me finish with my thing then, and then you’ll push back. And then basically I think that some, some of the people who feel bad morally about leaving [00:18:00] behind everyone else are gonna send down some of their AGI gods to just create little communist communities for the people who’ve been left behind, and then those people will be taken care of by mother AI that will handle all their stuff for them.

So you don’t have anyone having their property taken away. You don’t have anyone, you know, being like accused of corruption or anything. You basically just have AI taking care of those who are left behind. Why is this wrong?

Malcolm Collins: So, I, I will get to that in a second. You might get that. Like, that is a possible good scenario.

Simone Collins: Okay.

Malcolm Collins: But the reason why I think that’s wrong is because I fundamentally disagree with you about the first part. The first part is, is communism, and I, I, I keep trying to come back to this because it’s actually central to understand why AI will likely fail even within a communist system, right? Like, why- AI would break communism is that communism doesn’t fail because [00:19:00] of it, it, it prevents competent people from working, or it doesn’t motivate people enough, or it’s bad at determining on-the-ground risks because capitalism just works as this brilliant machine that can measure things about economic states that communism could never measure.

And the evidence I used for that is, again, the failures and the successes we had under communism. Communism achieved some things that were enormously successful in terms of scientific progress, industrial development, et cetera. But it also obviously super high des- I’m not ... But what I’m saying is it’s to just be like communism didn’t function at all is, is factually incorrect.

And to say that within a communist ecosystem like let’s look at a capitalist ecosystem, right? If you go to a factory what type of person do you want running the factory, right? The type of person you want running the factory is gonna be the most competent person to run the factory, who has the support of the, the workers and can push them to work [00:20:00] their hardest.

In a communist system, what type of person do you want to run the factory? It, it’s the same type of person, right? The people who end up in the lower level management positions in communist and capitalist systems at least aspirationally in how these systems could, should be structured, are the same types of people.

Like you don’t have this, ... A- and it’s also communist systems don’t send food to the wrong place you know, malevolently or something like that. When we talk about communist systems failing at determining what, like where economic needs need to go, right? The, in the, in the way a capitalist system would.

The biggest failures are virtually never because the, the system wasn’t good at monitoring things. They are again, when I was talking about like the, the wheat famine, right? It was, it was a twofold failure. It was a failure of the, the [00:21:00] way that they were measuring, like how much wheat each region had, was a very bad way to be measuring each, how much wheat each region had, that led to adverse incentives, which led to them sending wheat to locations that didn’t need wheat from locations that did need wheat.

A- and they created a pest problem because they couldn’t tell people above them that they were wrong, right? Now note, in a capitalist system, you might not be able to tell your boss that they’re wrong, right? Like it let’s consider Ubisoft or something like that. I might- Mm-hmm ... even in a capitalist system not be able to tell my boss you make a, a, a video game about a, a Black guy in Japan going around murdering people.

It’s probably gonna cause problems, and a lot of people are going to be very upset by that.” And then I get fired, right? But within a capitalist system, the wider capitalist ecosystem actually punishes that person, not because of an issue of supply and demand. In a communist system, you’d presumably want to punish the person as well, [00:22:00] if the goal of the company was entertainment and not spreading the ideology.

But in a communist system, it’s often spreading ideology, so they, they probably wouldn’t be punished in the same way. But you, you understand what I mean. Like, suppose it’s something other than a game company and I’m actually like, “Oh, the way you’re doing this is functionally bad and going to lead to a bad product.”

Communist ecosystems should be determining, oh, this is a bad product. And there’s functionally ways that they can determine, oh, this is a product that people don’t like. Mm ... but so now the question is, is why do these systems fail in communism, right? Like, why do the people in the positions that would be equivalent to, like, running Ubisoft in a communist system not end up getting replaced or not end up getting replaced in the way that they should get replaced?

And it’s because, going back to what I was saying originally, communist systems fall into two broad categories. One is they function like a giant monopoly. Like, the entire government is one giant ultra libertarian monopoly where one company town has taken over everything and houses everyone and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Yeah ... very dystopian, whatever. But the thing is, is the moment I say that, [00:23:00] every communist is gonna say “Well, that’s not the way I wanna do communism.” You know, they wanna go in and do- Yeah ... anarcho-communism. They wanna do syndicalism. They wanna do basically they wanna have independently operating small communist groups.

Which extremely doesn’t work. The reason it doesn’t work is because it leaves a power vacuum. This is also why, like, extreme forms of libertarianism don’t work and everything like that. So suppose I try to set up this anarcho-communist system or even a completely syndicalist system, right, where, like, everything is, is totally decentralized.

Anybody who decides to act as a bad actor and begin to aggressively and subversively acquiring both support and resources can exert power on anyone who’s playing by the rules. And this is, like, a pro- like, in the Molyneux debate when I was trying to figure out how he thought that his weird libertarian utopia would work this is something that, like, he seemed to [00:24:00] fundamentally not understand.

He’s like, “No, everyone will rise up against a bad actor as soon as a bad actor starts accumulating power.” And I’m like, “I’m sorry, like, we have history to look at. We know that doesn’t happen,” right? Like, bad actors are actually very good at accumulating power. And and then they, they build an army, and the army can go to the person next to them.

This is true even outside of, even without a military, right? So this, this came when I was talking, like, extreme forms of libertarianism with Steven Molyneux. I was like, how do you get something like a chip fab, right? That costs- Yeah ... hundreds of billions of dollars to make?

Simone Collins: Yeah. Like- Years of a- ... well-

investment with no payout, et cetera.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. The, the... and there might be no payout. And he’s like, “Well, I guess we could get, like, hundreds of millions of workers to form, like, a cooperative to invest everything into this.” And then it’s like, okay, then who’s operating the cooperative, right?

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: And they’re like, “Well, then we would have, like, some form of [00:25:00] democracy.”

And I’m like, okay, so as soon as somebody gains power within this giant fabricator state, right? That’s basically, it’s a state created to run a fabricator. Why would they not attempt to create systems that prevent them from being removed from power? Yeah. And the answer is, of course, well, everyone would rise up against them if they did something like this.

In the same way that he was like, well, he’s like, “Even if they got away with it, even if they accomplish all of this, then people wouldn’t buy their product because they’d see that they’re a bad actor.” Yeah. And I’m like, bro, you have a product in your pocket that was probably made by slaves. Like, you know that’s not true.

You know that people-

Simone Collins: Or eating food that is, or what, any, any mixture of things. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. So what ends up happening, because the, the, the wider point I’m making here, here, here is customers don’t really punish bad actors. You, as a watcher of this show, likely barely punish bad actors. Even, even when [00:26:00] you’re...

I mean, maybe video games have finally gotten punished because they screwed over gamers for so long. But in the vast majority of cases bad actors don’t actually end up getting pub- punished that much by public sentiment. You know, even, even when they do something completely insane, it’s like their stock will fall like 5%.

It’s like, oh, no, you know. I mean, bad day to be the CEO ‘cause it’s like billions of dollars, but- You know, in, in the grand scheme of, like, society, it doesn’t matter. So the problem is with the anarchist and all of these power distributed systems is whenever somebody says, “I’m not gonna play by your distributed power rules, I’m just gonna accumulate all the power for myself,” they end up growing in influence.

And functionally, that’s what happens with most communist governments, is they start with a bunch of people saying like, “Let’s genuinely try to make this work.” Mm-hmm. And then some people begin to gain positions of power, and they’re like, “What if instead of genuinely trying to get this to work, I [00:27:00] use the apparatus of the state to consolidate power around me?”

Now, it’s very hard if you are a faction. So let’s suppose large communist country, two factions come to power with a legitimate government, right? Like, I’m not even talking about just, like, the warlords because you never even get to a stage where you have, like, pure autonomous regions for very long in these sort of libertarian communist fantasies because they immediately devolve.

People immediately consolidate power, I mean, within, like, a month of it entering any sort of state like that. But so I’ll function- focus on it on the way it actually typically happens. You have a bunch of often sometimes bleeding-hearted idiot leftists in a, in a room, haven’t really operated anything before, don’t really know what they’re doing, but may have positive intentions for the state.

And then you have the guy who comes in the room, your Stalin or whatever, right? Who’s like Uh-huh. Well, let’s try to be a bit more efficient [00:28:00] about this. I’m gonna talk with my friends in the military, and I tell them, “Hey, like, these guys aren’t really doing things the right way. And, you know, I think you, the heads of the military, deserve a bit higher standard of living than everyone else, don’t you think?

I mean, you’re controlling... You, you, you work so hard compared to everyone else.” And you begin to, instead of trying to distribute wealth and resources equally in the society, you begin to distribute wealth and resources in a way that maintains your power within the society, your power hierarchy within the society.

But

Simone Collins: you’re still, this is all with the supposition that this is humans running and everything and calling the shots.

Malcolm Collins: Right. I’m gonna get to the point. Okay. Because with AI, it’s the same problem, right? Which is... I’ll get to that in just a second, right?

Simone Collins: Okay, okay.

Malcolm Collins: But you need to understand why it fails with humans to understand why it would likely fail with AI.

So essentially, everyone who is [00:29:00] a bad actor, because they’re saying instead of taking all of the resources they can create and distributing them as much as they can, they take as resources they create, they distribute 20% and they take 80% to continue consolidating their position. So one, this leads to a ton of waste in the system in terms of the wealth that the people at the top are living, et cetera.

But two it leads to all the way down within the power hierarchy bad actors ending up in the highest level power positions, because it’s basically dictator to dictator to dictator to dictator all the way down, the people with, with those sorts of mindsets. And so you get this enormous corruption.

Because when I’m thinking about you know, do I wanna tell my boss that this planning has to kill all the birds is a dumb idea I’m not actually thinking about is this going to help my sub-state the most, right? Like if my region or the people or the farmers. I’m thinking about is this gonna help me consolidate power within [00:30:00] my position with the broader hierarchy, right?

The problem with AI is AI fundamentally doesn’t really change this. So, let’s assume that you create a truly post-scarcity sys- system which is essentially what Simone is positioning with her communist ecosystem. So what she’s essentially saying, and I don’t know if I, I, I don’t disagree with this point, that if you could create true super abundance the, the, the people who are either competent or corrupt enough to end up in the positions of power have so much wealth and abundance that the, the coins that fall off their plates feel like ultimate luxury to the people that they’re falling in, into the trough.

Well,

Simone Collins: it’s not, no. There’s additional motivation. Th- they, with AI, they could have the ability to create broadly from their perspective, autonomous AI-run communities that feed [00:31:00] and house people. Like a, a new version of fiefdom. You know how like the way that a lot of versions of fiefdom worked was you had the lord who lived on the state, and one of the reasons why in these grand houses you had all these ridiculous roles where they were like essentially job programs.

You know, the underbutler and the footman and the, the, the various types of cooks and, and all these people. It was a jobs program, and then everyone in the village, you know, they, they had somewhere to live, and then the, it was this whole little economy. They could c- create presumably a bunch of these little things that are all run by AI that give people little things to do and keep people busy and feed people food, and it’s not just, oh, the, you know, they’re, they’re eating like food runoff or something.

It’s that th- it’s better to have people be able to show up at these places and, and get placed, get a house, get a job, you know, a job have something to do in their life, you know, become some kind of artisan craftsman or something and live their little [00:32:00] picturesque covet life than to, you know, die in large droves and look, look bad and, and a lot of people just don’t- Well,

Malcolm Collins: no, right, but this is, this is the fundamental logical error that you’re making here.

Simone Collins: Okay.

Malcolm Collins: And it actually comes from growing up in the urban monoculture that you’re making this error. Okay. Which is very fun, because I think you’ll see it the moment I point it out.

Simone Collins: Okay.

Malcolm Collins: When you look at the quality of life of people who are relying on our today version of the types of systems that you’re talking about between states the amount of money that goes into these systems is often not just disco related, but inversely correlated with the actual quality of life of the people living off of the systems.

Simone Collins: I think they’re gonna... No. This, you’re seeing the very first version of UBI that people, thanks to the experimentation being done now, right? They’re learning from it. They’re going to discover-

Malcolm Collins: No, they’re not learning

Simone Collins: from it ... Come on. Okay, like in The Matrix, right? They’re like, “Oh, well, we made the first version of the matrix where everyone just had everything, [00:33:00] and it really didn’t work.

And so we created this new version where everyone has a job and they’re miserable, and it’s perfect.” And they’re gonna figure that out with UBI, and they’re gonna realize the best thing to

Malcolm Collins: do- We have already seen proof they won’t So I’ll ex- I’ll give you proofs that they won’t, right?

Simone Collins: Okay, what’s

Malcolm Collins: the one example?

Right now, when I’m talking more broadly, if you look at, like, California’s homeless, they often live much worse lives than homeless in other areas, despite all the money going into that. Yeah, it’s, it’s egregious. And you’re like, “Oh, they’re trying to fix it. They’re trying to fix it,” right? And I’m pointing out to you, why are...

Because you gotta ask yourself, why are the lives of California’s homeless so much worse than other states when so much more money is going to them? And it’s because of the inefficient bureaucracy following the same sorts of failings that we see in communist systems. And so now what you’re gonna come and say is you’re gonna say, like, “Well, these AI tech lords, they won’t fall for these same types of errors.”

And I’m like, “Hmm, Simone, in the UBI study that Sam Altman did, do you remember how the team that did the study [00:34:00] framed the results to Sam Altman? Did we already see an instance of them, in the very first instance where we could be moving down a good pathway, immediately lie about and manipulate the results to hide that it didn’t work in a way that-

Simone Collins: No, but Malcolm, those systems are going to collapse.

Like, I’m not saying this is gonna happen soon, but it’s going to happen-

Malcolm Collins: What do you mean? That’s the craziest f*****g thing I’ve ever heard. How did, what do you mean they’re going to collapse? They can’t collapse. They’re AI tech moguls who presumably have near infinity money if you’re talking about in the future, right?

Like, you think because people are living bad lives in their communist, quote-unquote, “utopias” that they’re going to care? Right? Like, they, they don’t care. California, San Francisco doesn’t care about its homeless drug addicts who are walking, zonked out on the streets and sleep in the poo that’s all around the financial district, right?

Like, if you look at the quality of lives [00:35:00] of people who live next to super abundance today, the elites, like, your thesis is, oh, they will see their policies failing, and they will change their policies, when your lived reality is that the exact opposite is happening.

Simone Collins: Those aren’t their policies. They’re living within a legacy bureaucracy government system and society that they certainly wouldn’t design.

What I’m describing

Malcolm Collins: is- But Sam Altman’s study was his

Simone Collins: study ... from the ground up techno fiefdoms that will be created but like sort of nature reserves for p- for h- for the humans that get left

Malcolm Collins: behind. But, but Sam Altman’s study was his st- are you denying-

Simone Collins: It was, but what he was, what... So you have to look at the game that he is playing.

He needs to give people a narrative that makes them comfortable with what’s going on today. If you were to say to them, “Okay, well, step one, society completely collapses, millions of people die. Step two, we’re gonna create some, like, nature reserves where people will [00:36:00] live and have jobs instead of live these, like, isolated fantasy lives and, and, you know, going forward for, like, the, the people who are left behind.

Like, we’ll, we’ll give a good life to many of them. But we can’t do that until society collapses because we won’t have, like, the land rights and stuff, and we won’t be allowed to govern them. So, for now, because I don’t want you to, like, completely firebomb my house successfully this time, I’m going to tell you that I have done the research and I’m fully convinced that all I need to do is just give you a lot of money each month, and then you can just do whatever you want with it, and that will make you happy.”

And people are like, “Okay, good. Well, at least Sam Altman is eventually gonna make sure that I get $10,000 a month and it’s gonna be great, and I’m gonna get DoorDash everything and play video games for the rest of my life, and hopefully it’ll be fine.” Th- but- What, and

Malcolm Collins: I’m pointing

Simone Collins: out to you that we’ve already seen that-

he has no incentive to communicate anything other than UBI to people. C- can you imagine if Sam Altman came out and was like, “Okay, right. So we ran the experiment, we looked [00:37:00] at the data, and, you know, it looks like we actually shouldn’t give you money because it doesn’t actually make a difference”? That’s like, get a job, Al.

Speaker: don’t you get a job? If you’re so hungry, why don’t you get a job? Get a goddamn job, Al. You got a negative attitude.

That’s what’s stopping you. You gotta get your act together.

Simone Collins: No, what he could have done- No, he can’t do that ... and so

Malcolm Collins: there’s, there’s two worlds that we live in. One is the world that I positively live in, and the other is a world you posit we live in, okay? So in the world I posit we live in, Sam Altman doesn’t actually care about the fate of the vast majority of people.

He cares about promoting UBI like, it, this is what I assume, because it allows him to continue to consolidate power. Remember how I said bad actors don’t really care about the effects of what they’re doing, they only care about consolidating power? So in that world, he would do something like conduct a UBI study, then lie about the results to mollify people.

Now, [00:38:00] let’s assume world number two, Simone world. Simone world is Sam Altman conducts a study on UBI, but he really does want one day, Because you know what’s cheaper than giving everyone money? Autonomous drone swarms around your house, okay? But you think, okay, no, one day, a private islands, which, you know, he’ll have, right?

Yeah. But your plan is, no, no, no, no, no. We live in alternate world where he actually does want some sort of stable utopia for the, the, the masses, right? So if we live in this world, what would have happened is he would have conducted that study, and the results of the study would’ve said something like, “Oh Well, it turns out that a traditional, you know, sort of blanket UBI program doesn’t appear to be, d- doesn’t appear to work, so what we need to do is try some alternate type of UBI program.

Like, let’s try to innovate on this for a type of UBI that does work. That wouldn’t have freaked everyone out. That would have had most people looking at the results and being like, “Oh, this is interesting. You know, you’re [00:39:00] trying to find something. You found result number one.” Instead, you see the exact opposite, the immediate glazing over of any result or data point that doesn’t fit his stated agenda or proposed solution to the hellscape that he might be creating.

Simone Collins: Look, I just told you that I agree that he doesn’t have any incentive to tell the truth about his UBI experiment and that he- Well, he

Malcolm Collins: does. If, if his plan is... It’s only marginally harder for him to actually try to help people. It’s just that it’s completely irrelevant to him.

Simone Collins: I don’t think it is. So you can have someone who is incentivized to amass power, amass wealth, may do things even that skirt morality and law to do so, who still- feels genuine pain when presented with the plight of human suffering.

Exactly the point I’m making. Who would like to make it go [00:40:00] away. And once these people have the means to say, “Okay, AI assistant, please go build something where some of these people can live and make me feel better about this,” they will do it.

Malcolm Collins: Well, and the point I’m making is they can’t do it.

Simone Collins: Why can’t they?

Malcolm Collins: So if you look at, and, and this is the reason I was bringing up like social welfare programs in San Francisco and stuff like that. San Francisco is a city that is full of very intelligent tech workers who also vote.

Simone Collins: Yeah. But yeah, th- they’re stuck with the San Francisco residents who have all these NIMBY laws, and they’re stuck with all these policies.

I don’t think they believe in supporting- The bad policies- ... things like needle distribution and,

Malcolm Collins: you know. The bad policies that are implemented in San Francisco if, if you look at them, right, some of them come from the legacy residents. The vast majority come from the donors to the Democratic Party who [00:41:00] are tech moguls.

That’s where the money’s coming from that’s going into these political PACs. The problem is, is that when you go to said, let’s say, Democratic tech mogul, and I know this because I know these people from San Francisco, you know these people from San Francisco. You go to them and you say this policy of giving people fentanyl on the street, it’s making their lives harder.

This policy of putting homeless people in hotel is leading to externalities for residents,” and they’re just like, “Nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, it’ll work next year.” You’re acting like they, th- and, and these people care. They, quote-unquote, care about the suffering of the poor. But they don’t

Simone Collins: care- I just, I’ve yet to encounter anyone who works in the tech world in San Francisco who approves of homeless management policy in the area.

Malcolm Collins: They still vote Democrat.

Simone Collins: Ditto with LA. Well, yeah. But that’s, that, those are due to very complex, like, social brainwashing- Oh ... systems of the Bay Area.

Malcolm Collins: This, this is what I’m talking [00:42:00] about. When you get somebody like A- Sam Altman in this sort of a position in power, right? Like suppose he accumulates all this power.

He’s Sam Altman, god king of a region, and he’s distributing money to the masses in the region. Let’s suppose that the way he’s distributing money is leading to the same sorts of externalities that we see among, like, Portland or San Francisco homeless right now, right? Like massive drug problems, the problems we see in Native American communities, you know, massive crash outs, lots of problem.

Okay, suppose that those are all the functional result of what they’re doing, okay? What, what Sam Altman is doing, right? And then you have us online YouTube warriors or something like that trying to get to Sam Altman to tell him, “Hey, none of these policies you’re operating are actually working.” Right?

Do you think that we would be able to get in his ear, or are the people who are going to be getting in his ear the most the people who are operating the [00:43:00] failed policies, who recommended the failed policies, and who have a vested interest in him not fully grokking how much these policies are not working?

Even if you add AI to the chain and he does something like asks AI, you know, “Are my policies working or not working?” You know that, like, AI is gonna gas him on this, right? AI right now will gas you on Democratic policies. If you ask AI something like you know, “Is X or Y Democratic policy around, like, poor people actually effective?”

When you look at, like, AIs on political charts, you know it’s gonna support these policies that we know functionally don’t work. So why would it not still do that when he’s in god king position and now has three layers of bureaucrats around him that prevent him from fully grokking how much his plan is failing?

Simone Collins: I have doubts about that. I just I have severe doubts about that. You can [00:44:00] look at, for example, coverage of the mayoral race in Los Angeles in California and see the level to whi- i- to which people are really, really fed up with the homeless policy in California, with the housing policy in California. I think there’s that that demonstrates that people aren’t necessarily ideologically locked into the system that you’re describing.

Beyond that, it is parasitoidal, this, this kind of approach to governance, this culture as well. It will kill the host, and the host will die. Demographic collapse is such that these things aren’t going to be supported much longer anyway. They’re going to collapse on their own, and I don’t think AI, in the time over, the time period over which these systems are going to collapse, AI is not yet going to reach the place, in my opinion, where it will be able to sweep in and deus ex machina style, like fix [00:45:00] it.

So I really think that these systems are going to fully crumble which is not the happier scenario. I’m, I, like, I don’t want this to ha- it, it, it’s bad. But these systems won’t be left. I, I do think that, that many people... When, when a communist utopia will be created, I think it will be in sovereign city state style, essentially human reserves that are created for the people who were left behind but who survived.

Malcolm Collins: What you need to make AI communist, like, like post-scarcity worlds work and not lead to the same problems we have with like homelessness and stuff like that in Democrat counties and the poor in Democrat counties doing much worse is them being operated by an extremely austere and dedicated ca- caste that is ideologically aligned at the level of [00:46:00] like religious fervor.

So if you had like let’s say techno-puritans end up taking over and, and, and like really dedicated techno-puritans were running everything, it could work. If you had a state with AI and somebody like the Dalai Lama, like the last Dalai Lama and the top levels of like the Tibetan, you know, that, that I’d like...

Look, I don’t love everything he did. I thought he was a bit foolish on a number of issues. But that could probably work, right? Because you need to be able to cast off if, if you personally are not interested either because you were raised this way or you have an extremist ideological commitment in power accumulation or luxury or anything like that outside of, for the purpose of some wider objective function you have on reality, If, if you have that, then you can use AI to create post-scarcity.

But I think without that being a person’s fundamental driver above all other drivers, [00:47:00] you cannot get true post-scarcity even with AI in sort of like how it reaches the masses

Simone Collins: I guess time will tell.

Malcolm Collins: Yep. Well, we’re gonna see. And we can hear in the comments what people think. But basically my th- thought is the next society we’re gonna have to transition into post demographic collapse and everything like that is one of, of, y- you know, religious fanaticism essentially.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

I, I mean, we can agree on that. That’s, I think- That’s, that’s more about demographic collapse than it is about artificial intelligence or communism. It has more to do with just- Yeah ... who’s going to continue to have a desire and an interest in reproducing in, in the face of n- demographic collapse, AI, and massive disruption.

Malcolm Collins: So what’s the story with dinner tonight?

Simone Collins: I have one batch of the pork leftover, and then after [00:48:00] that, or we... So you can either have that tonight or tomorrow night. What I could also do is just tomato soup and grilled cheese or tomato soup and quesadillas tonight if you prefer. Oh

Malcolm Collins: my God, quesadillas.

Your quesadillas are so good.

Simone Collins: That’s ‘cause they have MSG in them. That’s what I’ve

Malcolm Collins: been asking for. Is the batch, do you have from

Simone Collins: batch

Malcolm Collins: one or batch two?

Simone Collins: Batch two

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, I’ll wait on that. I’ll do quesadillas and tomato soup.

Simone Collins: Yeah, batch two might be more tender since it’s leaner meat after just sitting for a couple of days loosening up.

You know what I mean?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, that makes sense.

Simone Collins: Theoretically.

Malcolm Collins: So I’m very excited. The, the, the... what she’s talking about is slow-cooked pork belly that she’s gotten very good at making.

Simone Collins: Aw, that’s sweet

Malcolm Collins: of you ... and I am very excited for my que- oh, quesadillas, tomato soup, and fancy fries.

Simone Collins: No. A quesadilla’s your carb.

You get to choose one carb. Okay. Do you want tomato s- do you want tomato soup and curly fries?

Malcolm Collins: No, [00:49:00] quesadillas.

Simone Collins: Okay. You can have your curly fries with the leftover pork belly t- or, well, pork shoulder in this case tomorrow, yeah?

Malcolm Collins: You’re so amazing, Simone.

Simone Collins: Oh, I’m the worst, I know. Also there is not too far from us a, an arboretum that we haven’t gone to.

Do you wanna take the kids there tomorrow since-

Malcolm Collins: What’s an arboretum?

Simone Collins: It’s gardens. It’s, it’s a, it’s a garden. They have trails. Like, it’s just a different place for us to walk.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. It’s free. Sure. You know. Oh, wow, it is close.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm. Isn’t that crazy? Never been before. Free admission.

Malcolm Collins: That’s

Simone Collins: the whole thing

Malcolm Collins: Oh, no, that’s not what I thought it was.

What was it? Arboretum?

Simone Collins: Jenkins Arboretum and Gardens.

Malcolm Collins: Jenkins Arboretum and Gardens.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Oh.

Simone Collins: It’s really close. And

Malcolm Collins: it’s free to enter?

Simone Collins: Yeah, it’s free to enter always. They have like a little kid [00:50:00] play area. I feel like the kids would really enjoy it.

Malcolm Collins: Okay. If I’m making good progress on the VTuber thing, I wanna try to get the thing done before my call with Leaflet.

Simone Collins: I’ve just noticed that every weekend you wanna do something special. We can do this on a different weekend day, but if we go tomorrow, it will be the least crowded.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Okay, yeah, that makes sense. Let’s do it.

Simone Collins: Okay. I’m looking forward to it. I mean-

Malcolm Collins: I mean, you know tomorrow is Friday, right?

Simone Collins: Yeah, but we have the kids with us all day.

Malcolm Collins: Okay. And you’re sure we have the kids with us all day?

Simone Collins: I’ll confirm it right now, but yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Okay. All right, love you. All right. I guess we’re going straight to dinner?

Simone Collins: That’s the plan. Yeah, we don’t have enough time to record another episode in like 10 minutes.

Malcolm Collins: Love you. I’ll get Professor Jane ready for tomorrow.

Simone Collins: Yay. ‘Cause I like the title card I created for that. Plus it’s trending. Stop thinking it’s not a big deal ‘

cause it-

Malcolm Collins: But yeah, you see we get the full VTuber exports now. [00:51:00]

Simone Collins: Yeah. It’s really cool. You gave yourself, like, blonde hair though. Are we-

Malcolm Collins: Why? Do you see me with brown hair? Is that what I’m...?

Simone Collins: Yes, you have brown hair. I don’t know what to tell you.

Malcolm Collins: I had blonde hair when I was a kid, and our kids have blonde hair, so.

Simone Collins: So you just internalize yourself as having blonde hair forever?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, I think it looks more like me when I, when I put, make him with blonde hair.

Simone Collins: That’s so funny. Like, you just kind of anchored to yourself as a teen. I wonder, that, that kind of sticks to my, my feeling like everyone has a s- like a soul age, like an age of their personality, and yours is like 11, in a good way, and mine is like 62, in hopefully a good way.

And I think honestly I would be more comfortable seeing like a VTuber a- avatar of like a white-haired [00:52:00] woman or something than of anything that I looked like as a kid. So I wonder if when people make VTubers of themselves that they just key to whatever their soul age is. You know what I mean?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

Simone Collins: You want me to kick us off with this one? You like to do your own kickoffs, so.

Malcolm Collins: Okay. I’ll do a kickoff with this one.

Simone Collins: Okay.

In this Based Camp episode, Simone and Malcolm Collins dive into the harsh realities of aging alone through a Wall Street Journal article about Amy Kant, a 65-year-old single, childless woman facing health issues, estate planning struggles, and isolation. They explore the growing demographic of “solo agers,” the long-term consequences of choosing career and freedom over family, feminist regrets, and why so many women (and men) end up dying alone.

Topics include: the breakdown of intergenerational social contracts, business opportunities in elder care/power of attorney/estate planning/unclaimed assets, pronatalist perspectives, and real listener stories of regret. Malcolm also shares new rfab.ai features like the recipe generator and discusses building liable human services.

A raw, unfiltered look at demographic decline, life choices, and turning societal problems into opportunities.

Show Notes

Can two dark things cancel each other to create a rainbow?

* Dark thing: The job market is atrocious and about to get worse

* Dark thing: Millions of childless elderly people—and aged parents who moved away from and dissociated from their children—are headed into old age and death without support networks

* Rainbow? There are huge business and job opportunities

We can use a recent Wall Street Journal article, More Americans Are Aging Alone. One Woman Told Us What It’s Like, for inspiration!

(Not reading every paragraph)

“Amy Kant initially thought she should name a power of attorney about 10 years ago after caring for a dying friend. She still hasn’t appointed someone to do it.

The 65-year-old is single with no children, and bound up in that choice over who should make financial decisions on her behalf are other big questions that are often intensified when aging alone. How to handle eldercare? Estate planning? Where will she live in her later years?”

* Company opportunity? Power of attorney for isolated old people?

* Easy attorney job

* Many elder law and estate planning attorneys serve as POA agents (they charge both hourly and flat fees)

* You may not need to be an attorney: Some states recognize licensed/bonded “professional fiduciaries” who can be hired to act as your agent under POA, trustee, or similar roles

* You could also take the CPA route:

* Some planners recommend using a CPA, financial advisor, or daily money manager to handle money management and, in some cases, to serve as agent under a financial POA.

* Financial planners may not advertise as “POA companies,” but they can be named personally in the document

* Less relevant: Certain not‑for‑profit care management firms (staffed by nurses, social workers, and care managers) specifically market themselves as agents under POA for older adults without family.

* But these won’t be able to keep up with demand

* What percentage of Americans over 65 have savings sufficient to cover their costs in retirement?

* Federal Reserve data, summarized by several analyses, shows that around 51–62% of households headed by someone in their mid‑60s or older have money in retirement‑specific accounts (401(k), IRA, etc.). That means roughly 4 in 10 have no retirement account at all, though they may have Social Security, pensions, or other assets.

* A 2024 analysis of Federal Reserve survey data found only about 31% of Americans of all ages feel “on track” with retirement savings, implying that even among those who have savings, many believe it is not sufficient.

“Kant had long cherished the freedom that came with being single. She prided herself on doing headstands in yoga and walking 5 miles a day. But lately being single has felt like a struggle, and not just because of the weighty financial decisions hanging over her head. Back surgery and a heart valve replacement in the past few years have turned her condominium outside Boston into a recovery ward.”

“She spends most of her time at home these days recovering from heart surgery complications, with friends stopping by. She finds solace painting in a spare bedroom she turned into a studio, but knows she will eventually have to move to a smaller place that’s easier to get around in.”

* This isn’t just a problem for aging singles; it’s a problem for aging parents who move away from and stop supporting their kids

* There’s more of a social contract for kids to provide elder care for parents who provided childcare for their kids

* Though admittedly 18-20% of Millennials (people between 25-34 today) live with their parents, so those parents can likely expect care

“Kant is among the millions of Americans learning to navigate aging alone. Roughly 10% of the more than 125 million adults ages 50 and older in the U.S.—or at least 12.5 million people—are solo agers who live alone and have neither a spouse nor a child, according to an AARP analysis of census data. It’s a growing demographic hitting both genders, driven in part by climbing divorce rates among older Americans and a rising number of adult children becoming alienated from their parents.”

* Wow—and estate planners / financial advisors are super underwhelming and pretty low tech, so someone good with AI and navigating regulatory bureaucracies can lean up

“Kant didn’t set out with a master plan. In her 20s and 30s, she chose lower-paying nonprofit jobs to give priority to her art. She remembers how friends envied her freedom; while they were tied down with dinner duty, their kids’ homework, and college savings, Kant spent her evenings painting and didn’t think twice about going out on weeknights.”

* This is a really great example of how the Urban Monoculture lies to people and sells an unsustainable lifestyle

“She eventually earned her M.B.A. By her 40s, she was working as a fundraiser, maxing out traditional retirement account contributions to ensure her financial stability in later years.”

* What are the odds that she ultimately saved more money for retirement by getting an MBA?

“In her 40s she considered adoption but ultimately decided against it. Then in her 50s, after her own mother died, she went through a period of regret that she had decided against single motherhood.”

* Wonder why she did not adopt (pronatalist families do all the time + women in r/fencesitters mention it all the time)

* What percentage of childless elderly adults regret not having kids?

* An Australian study (often cited in media summaries) found that about one quarter of child‑free women later reported regretting the decision once they were past child‑bearing age and facing old age alone

“While Kant feels OK about her nest egg today, she’s worried it might shrink if the stock-market falls from its record high levels. Once she recuperates, she plans to return to part-time consulting to keep her mind active and feel productive.”

* This is another reason why Gen Z and Gen Alpha have trouble getting jobs

“When Kant first realized the importance of naming a power of attorney, she didn’t know whom to choose at the time, and put off the decision. She only recently identified the right friend for the role after her illnesses made clear she needed to act. Kant is planning to ask that friend soon.”

* SHE HAS NOT ASKED HER YET???

“A longtime college friend serves as her healthcare proxy, and Kant maintains a spreadsheet of friends to coordinate visits when she’s ill. Still, she understands the boundaries of a chosen family. Her friends have their own households to manage; some have already died. Kant also needs to draft a will and decide how to divide her assets.”

* SHE HAS NOT DRAFTED A WILL

“Kant has given herself a one-year deadline to complete her estate-planning documents. She is hoping she will have the mental energy needed to tackle such tasks once she is further along in her recovery.”

* Dying without a valid will is called dying “intestate.”

* When a single, childless person dies with a positive net worth but no will, their assets go through intestate probate and are distributed by state law to their next of kin (or, if none exist, to the state), not according to any informal wishes.

* STARTUP IDEA: Make this efficient and collect a fee

* The closest thing is “heir‑locator” / “finder” services and asset‑recovery firms that track down heirs to deceased people’s money (including cousins), often for a contingency fee. These operate alongside the standard unclaimed‑property system run by the states.

* When someone dies and assets go unclaimed or the owner cannot be located, banks and companies eventually turn those assets over to the state’s unclaimed‑property office

* Heirs can later claim them if they prove their relationship.

* You can search and claim for free via tools like The National Association of Unclaimed Property Administrators (Unclaimed.org) and MissingMoney, or directly through each state’s unclaimed‑property portal.

* Some private “locator services” or “finders” proactively contact people and offer to help file claims for a cut of the recovery; federal guidance explicitly notes that these companies exist and charge a fee for using public data to match people with unclaimed funds.

* Many states regulate these finders (caps on fees, licensing/certification requirements); for example, Pennsylvania requires “finders” working with claimants to be certified by the Treasury, but this is easy for any competent founder to do.

“Back in her art studio, Kant processes how her life is set to shift in coming years through painting. She created a series about being alone but being part of a larger world. She also made a collection of autumn leaf portraits that explore aging, decay and the search for where we belong. “I’m thinking about what my legacy will be,” she said.”

* There is something deeply lonely about being the dead end of an unbroken chain of life that has lasted for thousands of years

* Homo sapiens have existed for roughly 300,000 years

* Life has existed on earth for over 3 billion years

* Talk about breaking a streak

Episode Transcript

Simone Collins: [00:00:00] Hello, Malcolm. I’m excited to be speaking with you today ‘cause we’re bringing back our favorite series, Women Are Terrible.

Speaker: What heartbreak drivel. See how the men look at her with utter contempt. Daphne, we’re going home.

Women, know your limits.

Simone Collins: This time, we’re talking about an old woman who chose to eschew men and children and meaning, and now she’s going to face the prospect of dying alone.

Malcolm Collins: The- N- not just one. I also found a number of other transcripts from similar women-

Simone Collins: You did not.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, God ... that we can go across. And Simone goes through this, in her immediate thoughts, she comes to me and she goes, “Malcolm, I bet we can find a way to exploit this for money, and we can help our fans-” It’s

Simone Collins: worse than that.

I already got you 50 to $100 out of this.

Malcolm Collins: Wait, really? Yeah.

Simone Collins: Yeah. We’ll get into it, so.

Malcolm Collins: Wait,

Simone Collins: what? I know, I know. Anyway, let’s dive into it. So you can interject when you want to. I’m gonna be reading excerpts [00:01:00] from a recent Wall Street Journal article titled, Most Americans Are Aging Alone, and One Woman Told Us What It’s Like.

And her name is Amy Kant. The article begins, “Amy Kant originally...” Or I should say Kant, like Immanuel Kant. “Amy Kant initially thought she would name a power of attorney about 10 years ago, after caring for a dying friend. She still hasn’t appointed someone to do it. The 65-year-old is single with no children, and bound up in that choice over who should make the financial decisions on her behalf o- over big questions that are often intensified when aging alone.

How to handle an elder care, estate planning. Where should she live in her later years?” So already, huge company opportunity.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah ...

Simone Collins: if, if you’re an attorney, this is a super easy attorney job. There are mil- many like, like elder law, like literally they specialize in elder law and estate planning who also will serve as your power of attorney.

In fact, I think we know people who have lawyers as their power of attorney instead of like friends or [00:02:00] family. And they’re family members. This is your people who have family- And if

Malcolm Collins: you want, by the way, an AI to do legal stuff for you to handle like the simpler stuff, on rfab.ai we have a feature called a super search, which does multiple AI internet searches with different AI engines-

Simone Collins: Yeah

Malcolm Collins: or models-

Yeah ... that then counter-check the facts of the previous model to remove any hallucinations- Yeah ... for putting together a legal document or something like that. By the way, fun fact, new feature I added today, is a recipe feature. I’m

Simone Collins: so... Oh my God, it’s there? Can I check it now? Can I check it...

I’ll, I’ll check it after

Malcolm Collins: this- Yeah. We’ll, we’ll check it, we’ll check it at the end of the episode. But you’re like- Gosh ... excited

to

Simone Collins: show it to you. Okay. I’m excited. But also, you, you don’t have to be an attorney to do this. Some states recognize a licensed or bonded professional fiduciary who can be hired to act as your agent under power of attorney or trustee or similar roles.

So you don’t even necessarily need to be a lawyer. Though another really easy route, if you’re like, “Okay, I, I can make some easy money in here,” the tailwinds are good, as we say in the private equity [00:03:00] world. You could take the CPA route. Like, some, some certified financial planners will serve as power of, powers of attorney for their clients.

So they may not advertise themselves as power of attorney companies- Get to

Malcolm Collins: the sad women part. Our audience cares about that, and you can talk about how to make money at the end. This is

Simone Collins: true.

Malcolm Collins: We exploit old people later, we laugh at sad women first. Okay. Stick to the order of operations here, Simone.

Simone Collins: Back to this, this woman of, of age. “Kahn had long cherished the freedom that came with being single. She prided herself on doing headstands and yoga and walking five miles a day. But lately, being single has felt like a struggle, and not just because of the weighty financial decisions hanging over her head.

Back surgery,” I wonder if the headstands had something to do with that, “and a heart valve replacement in the past few years have turned her condominium outside Boston into a recovery ward. She spends most of her time at home these days recovering from heart surgery complications with friends stopping by.

She finds solace in [00:04:00] painting in a spare bedroom she turned into a studio, but knows she will eventually have to move to a smaller space that’s easier to get around in.” I wanna point out, by the way-

Malcolm Collins: That’s sad and terrifying ...

Simone Collins: it’s, it’s really sad and terrifying. And it’s also not just a problem for, like, aging singles, it’s a problem for aging parents who move away from and stop supporting their kids.

And I think this is a uniquely American phenomenon, and I, I think a, also a picture of really toxic culture, in that if you do not invest in your kids as adults, like you don’t provide them with childcare, you don’t provide them with support, you don’t really get involved in their life, you just sort of, “Okay, well now I’m just gonna go become an adolescent again and, like, travel the world and go have fun and, like, do my own thing,” they’re not necessarily going to feel like there’s some kind of social contract that means they need to show up for you when you hit old age.

This is why all the old people in America, or so many of them, get shoved into homes, ‘cause it’s like, well- Where were you when I needed you? Like, the whole way that communities used to work was you would [00:05:00] raise your kids, and then you would hit menopause as a woman, for example, and she is a woman in this case.

And one of the reasons people think women do hit menopause is that w- there’s a place in society for women who can no longer have their own kids, but instead who can be a supplemental parent to their, their children’s kids so that those children can focus on having more kids. Because it’s- Yeah

it’s really hard to both be pregnant and, you know, be raising a ton of kids, so having that support’s really there. So the, the social contract is you have your kids, you help your kids raise your kids, and then they help you live more comfortably when you can’t really do much of anything else. But now it’s not just these childless people, but also just parents.

They move away from their kids. They don’t take care of their kids. Though admittedly, like 18 to 20% of millennials, like, or at least people between 25 and 34 today, so like proper adults, still live with their parents. So maybe those parents could expect care, but like all the other ones, like not really.

I’ll go back to the article. “Conte is among the millions of [00:06:00] Americans n- learning to navigate aging alone. Roughly 10% of the more than 125 million adults ages 50 and older in the US, or at least 12.5 million people, are solo agers who live alone and have neither a spouse nor a child, according to an AARP analysis of census data.

This is a growing demographic hitting both genders, driven in part by climbing divorce rates among older Americans and a rising number of adult children becoming alienated from their parents,” to my point. My gosh, though, like also estate planners and financial advisors are incredibly underwhelming in like what they provide.

Like, th- they’re not very tech-enabled. They’re pretty disorganized. You kind of have to nudge them for everything. We’ve, we’ve like encountered a bunch throughout a, a, various things. They’re not very good. Like, people can

Malcolm Collins: just- So can, like use a super search on RFAB and it’ll do a better job.

Simone Collins: Actually, though, like yeah, just like use AI to superpower your [00:07:00] business.

RFAB has the best tools. And then, like advertise well. Make this really, like... And, and, and, and, and, and for people just searching like, “How do I find a power of attorney?” Like, it, I don’t... I think people can clean up. Anyway, back to the article.

Malcolm Collins: You still need a human for power of attorney, which is where we or you come in in terms of cleaning it

Simone Collins: up.

That’s... Well, and this is my big thesis with AI, is that a huge portion of jobs is going to be li-

Octavian Collins: I filled it up, Mommy, at the tippy top.

Simone Collins: Thank you very much, my friend.

Octavian Collins: Yeah. But I’ll give you... But, but, but getting that all the way at the tippy top for you costed to use all of it, so I’m sorry.

Simone Collins: Then we’ll have to buy more at Tractor Supply.

Octavian Collins: Yeah.

Simone Collins: Oh, no. We’ll have to go back to Tractor Supply. Love you.

One of my big theses with AI is that one of the big human jobs is going to be liable human. Like, there has to be a, a human- Mm-hmm ... who is going to be legally at fault for something or legally responsible

Malcolm Collins: for something. Should we create a website called Liable Human just for like-

Simone Collins: Oh my God, just like, it’s, it’s like Upwork, [00:08:00] but just for liability?

Malcolm Collins: For liability, yeah. Upwork for liability with AI on your- I

Simone Collins: kind of love this. Liablehuman.com. We gotta look this up. We gotta look this up. Okay. But-

Malcolm Collins: I like this idea ...

Simone Collins: but

Malcolm Collins: actually,

Simone Collins: though, is that like-

Malcolm Collins: Just liable human. Are you an AI... And we’ll, we’ll advertise it all to AIs. Are you an AI that needs a human to be your through fair?

I’ll be your liable human.

Simone Collins: Oh my God, yeah, get your liable human here. Oh my God. And we can, yeah, we can like list like, well, do you need a liable doctor? Do you need a liable driver? We’re

Malcolm Collins: not talking enough about sad women progressives for re-

Simone Collins: regretful choices. Back to the article. Back to the article.

“Kant didn’t set out with a master plan. In her 20s and 30s, she chose lower paying nonprofit jobs to give priority to her art. She remembers how friends envied her freedom. While they were tied down with dinner duty, their kids’ homework, and college savings, Kant spent her evenings painting and didn’t anything twice about going out on weeknights.”

And this is such a great example of how the urban monoculture lies [00:09:00] to people and sells an unsustainable lifestyle. I’ll continue. “She eventually earned her MBAs. By her 40s, she was working as a fundraiser, maxing out traditional retirement account contributions to ensure her financial stability in later years.”

Though I have to wonder, like, if she didn’t get an MBA, would she have s- ultimately saved more money? Like, the amount of student debt people get just by living on autopilot, which i- imagine she, like, she did, right? She just sort of did what felt good or like put things off. She’s put off getting a power of attorney for 10 years.

Malcolm Collins: So- By the way, so liablehuman.com is free.

Simone Collins: We’re buying it.

Malcolm Collins: Yes.

Simone Collins: Oh my gosh, we’re buying it. We’re buying it. This could be it, Malcolm. This will be we finally make our money ... give that to

Malcolm Collins: me as a vibe coding task and I can vibe code a, a website because you gave up on trying to do vibe code a website.

Simone Collins: Yeah, I, I suck at it. I suck at it. Yeah, I c- I’ll be the liable human and you do the-

Malcolm Collins: And I’ll do the vibe coding?

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Okay. But go back to the sad women. That’s what they’re here for

Simone Collins: In her 40s, [00:10:00] she considered adoption, but ultimately decided against it. Then, in her 50s, after her own mother died, she went through a period of regret that she’d decided against single motherhood.

And I, I really wonder why she did not adopt because one, w- we in our paid only weekend episodes did a, a, like an overview of our fence sitters- Mm-hmm ... this subreddit on Reddit where people who are ambivalent about becoming parents post. And two of, like, the four top all-time posts that we read were written by women who were like, “Oh, I just plan on adopting when I’m retired, ‘cause then I’ve done all my fun things and I can then raise a kid without bringing a new person into the world.”

So why aren’t they doing it? Like, are they just, is this all performative? Like, they, they never actually wanna take care of

Malcolm Collins: someone. Well, I think a lot of it is because they don’t actually wanna do kids. They want to imagine w- like, a world where, like, maybe they do kids, right? Yeah. One day, right? ‘

Simone Collins: Cause I swear to you, the only families I see actually adopting people are these pronatalist [00:11:00] families that, like, have four of their own kids already.

It’s crazy. It is. And it’s not that, like, oh, they have four kids and then they hit some fertility window and they can’t have kids anymore. It’s often in between kids that they are having themself biologically. Yeah. Like, they’ll have three kids, then two adopted, and then another that’s theirs. Like, the... Oh, like, I don’t know what’s going on.

Anyway, it’s very odd. But in terms of childless adults who regret having kids, one Australian study that’s often cited when people talk about this found that one quarter of childfree women later reported regretting the decision once they were past childbearing age and facing old age alone. One in four.

Malcolm Collins: So, o- o- one in four regretted raising children?

Simone Collins: Yeah. Or regretted- No, re- no, no, no. Regretted not having children. Not

Malcolm Collins: having children.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Okay.

Simone Collins: Now, back to the article. “While Khan feels okay about her nest egg today, she’s worried it might shrink if the stock market falls from its record high levels.

Once she recuperates,

Malcolm Collins: she plans-” By the way, the stock market is at record [00:12:00] high levels right now for people who are like, “IRAM’s gonna ruin the economy, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.” Record high stock market.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Well, and it’s, I, it’s only gonna go up. I, I, I do believe what... Remember that AI 2027 report that,

Malcolm Collins: You put more money on the market when the war started, right?

Simone Collins: Yeah, ‘cause it went down.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, really.

Simone Collins: I was like, “Sale.” Yeah, the, and I think with AI, the stock market’s just gonna keep going up and up for a while. That’s what the AI 2027 report-

Malcolm Collins: That’s

Simone Collins: what I think, yeah ... initially projected. Like, it’s... And yes, it’s all gonna be concentrated in this very small number of companies, but that’s, that’s the future, people.

Welcome to that anyway, she pl- once she recuperates, she plans to return to part-time consulting to keep her mind active and feel productive. So couple things there. One, this is why so many Gen Z and Gen Alpha people graduating from college or graduating from high school can’t get jobs, because all of these boomers are re-entering the [00:13:00] job force because they’re not...

They’re choosing to not take care of grandkids or support their, their kids. Mm-hmm. Or they’re childless, and they either wanna stay active, or they need the money ‘cause they don’t have enough saved.

Malcolm Collins: And our parents fall into this category, right? Like, we have, One of the fans of the show basically acts like a grandparent to our kids, and our parents- Yeah,

Simone Collins: meanwhile our parents...

Malcolm Collins: Do nothing. Yeah. Not, not, except, like, come by, and we’re like, “Yeah, great, you’re still alive.”

Simone Collins: Swoop in. Swoop in. Yeah, whereas one, like, regularly-

Malcolm Collins: I don’t know. I don’t know if your account is schadenfreude enough. Do, do you wanna go over, so I’ve got someone here like, “I regret belittling men.

At 63, I’ve ended up alone.”

Simone Collins: Oh. Yeah, we can take a break with yours, or we can finish mine and then read yours.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, finish yours, then I’ll go over it. Yeah.

Simone Collins: All right. When Kant realized the importance of naming a power of attorney, she didn’t know whom to choose at the time and put off the decision. She only recently identified [00:14:00] the right friend for the role after her illnesses made clear she needed to act.

Kant is planning to ask that friend soon. Kant, what are you doing?

Malcolm Collins: You’re writing an article about it before acting on it. Some people

Simone Collins: just- Seriously. It, it’s, it’s, it’s disturbing. Anyway. A longtime college friend serves as her healthcare proxy, and Kant maintains a spreadsheet of friends to coordinate visits when she’s ill.

Still, she understands the boundaries of a chosen family. She, her friends have their own households to manage. Some have already died. Kant also needs to draft a will and decide how to divide her assets. Kant has given herself a one-year deadline to complete her estate planning documents.

She is hoping she has the mental energy required, needed to tackle such tasks once she’s further along in her recovery. She, she is in her 60s and she doesn’t have a will. Like, we, we had our first will together when we were in our late 20s.

Malcolm Collins: You’re asking us for advice, I guess. Yeah, like.

Simone Collins: Like, I think we were, we lived in Palo Alto when we first made a will together.

This is [00:15:00] cra- ... Like, part of, I think, not getting married is, is part of a failure to launch. Like, this is a sign of someone who really can’t get their life together, which is sad. But here’s- Like, how you, how you, how you- ... here’s, here’s where, here’s where your free money showed up, by the way. Oh, yeah. So here’s another business opportunity ‘cause come on, Malcolm, money.

So if you die without a valid will, that’s called dying in intestate, interstate, I don’t know. I don’t know what, what em- emphasis on the syllable to, to make, but you, you die intestate, intestate. When a single childless person dies with a positive net worth but no will, their assets go through intestate probate, and they are distributed by state law to their next of kin.

And if, if there is no one to be found, then it just goes to the state. It’s not according to any informal wishes. They can’t be like, “Oh,” like on their deathbed, like, “You can have my boom box.” Yeah. So startup idea. Yeah. Just make it really efficient to collect a fee. And here’s the thing, like, states publish [00:16:00] unclaimed funds.

And right now there are businesses, they’re, they’re called, like, heir locators or finder services or asset recovery firms, that will track down people sometimes, like, e- even including cousins. Like, it, it ends up- Mm ... so first it goes, like, if you’re childless, it goes to your parents then brothers and sisters, and then grandparents, aunts and uncles, and then distant cousins.

Okay. So there are... If, if it’s a really, like, wealthy person or something, there are companies that will actually try to track down these cousins and then tell them about the unclaimed funds for a fee. But again, these are like... This isn’t very glorious work, right? Yeah. So it’s not attracting the world’s best and brightest.

And, and here, some entrepreneurial Basecamp listener or listeners can just use AI and a, a little bit of work to make a pretty good business that just tracks these things down. Wait,

Malcolm Collins: did you already do this for people?

Simone Collins: Well, so I just, I just [00:17:00] tried one out so because already you can search and claim w- like, property for free using tools.

There’s the National Association of Unclaimed Property Administrators, unclaimed.org. There’s Missing Money. You could also just go to each state’s unclaimed property portal. So ‘cause it’s, it’s on a state-by-state basis. And so what I did just really quick,

Cause I got distracted and Octavian was whining, I, I decided to just, like, c- check both of our names and, and some business names that I should be regularly checking for, and I do with several states that we’ve been in. Yeah. And actually I found one for you. So it’s like, it’s only 50 to $100, but, like-

Malcolm Collins: Was it a bank account or something?

Simone Collins: I’m not gonna disclose. I’ll tell you after. But yeah. It, it was in Texas. It had our old Blackburn address, and I was like, “Oh, that’s definitely you.” Malcolm Collins, Blackburn, there we go.

Malcolm Collins: But yeah, to do this for... That, I mean, that’s not really the same, but I mean, I guess you, you made a little bit of money there.

Simone Collins: But go ahead. Yeah, no, I’m, that’s not just [00:18:00] it. I’m just saying, like, in, in merely the process of, like, thinking about it and toying around with the existing tools, I made you money. There is, there’s potential here. Here’s a- Earning potential ...

Malcolm Collins: better thing to do. Yeah If you’re a Base Camp listener and you don’t have a will yet, if people have forgotten about this system that we have if you put...

What is our foundation’s official name on paper?

Simone Collins: Oh, the Techno-Puritan Federation.

Malcolm Collins: No, no, no, no. The one w- oh, that’s the legal entity that’s

Simone Collins: the Techno- That’s our religion.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yes. But you can do the Techno-Puritan Federation or the Pragmatist Foundation, right? That’s what it’s called, the Pragmatist Foundation.

Mm-hmm. And if you give it to either of these, both are non-profits, right?

Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah. One is a nonprofit and also a religion. The other one’s just a normal- Yeah ... level 1[c]3.

Malcolm Collins: So if you give it to either of these nonprofits, what we do is we, If you, if you have your DNA stored anywhere, we basically will eventually put it on whatever we end up creating.

If we end up creating the civilization we wanna create put it in the database with the amount of money that you ended up [00:19:00] donating from your death, right?

Simone Collins: What if they have reproductive material on ice? Like I’ve s- I’m sure you’ve seen the headlines today. It’s like, “Oh, we think that Jeffrey Epstein’s sperm still belongs to his trust and estate.”

Like, what are we gonna do- Yeah ... about this?

Malcolm Collins: What

Simone Collins: if- Are people gonna... Like, can they leave us their, their, their dunna in the form of-

Malcolm Collins: That’s the idea, is that they leave us their DNA, and that if in the future-

Simone Collins: Eggs and sperm? Are, are we, are we accepting eggs

Malcolm Collins: and sperm? They can do that if they want. But the point is the DNA because it’s if we’re creating artificial worlds in a few hundred years or something like that, and they’re choosing who to populate those with, or they’re, you know, people will presumably be grateful at the civilization that we end up starting.

So that’s fun. By the way, one of the things that I’ve been doing recently is looking at starting up, And I’ll, I’ll talk to you about this. And I, and we’ve been connected with Nux- Yay ... who’s even watched some of our shows. And I was like, “Hey, like, we should start up a an actual, like, think tank/nonprofit for the new right.”

Like, we’re really [00:20:00] not organized in the way the rest of, like, the legacy right is organized or puts things together, and it would make sense for us to be, especially during political seasons to be able to, like... I mean, imagine, like, looping together, like, Scott Pressler, who’s a contact-

Simone Collins: What do you call it?

The, the tard vanguard?

Malcolm Collins: What?

Simone Collins: The tard vanguard? The- The tard

Malcolm Collins: vanguard?

Simone Collins: Yeah. Hmm, I’m trying to think. I’m just spitballing names here. Yeah, the...

Malcolm Collins: You with our video games.

Simone Collins: You, it, the vi- viga-

Malcolm Collins: No,

Simone Collins: it should be called- Vi- video game lantes, vigilantes?

Malcolm Collins: You with our video games, signed, the nerds.

Simone Collins: You can pry, you can pry my bouncy breasted video game avatar from my cold dead hands. Yeah, we’ll work on this. We’ll figure this out. Yeah. I’ll finish with the, the final, the final dark pair. I don’t even know how to make this light, so I can’t.

Malcolm Collins: Okay. Here

Simone Collins: we go. But w- this, the article ended with, “Back in her art [00:21:00] studio, Kant processes how her life is set to shift in the coming years through painting.

She created a series about being alone, but being part of a larger world. She also made a collection of autumn leaf portraits that explore aging, decay, and the search for where we belong. ‘I’m thinking about what my legacy will be,’ she said.” Which sucks, because she doesn’t have a legacy. Like,

Malcolm Collins: she lives- Yeah, you’re looking to be scaring young people out of having

Simone Collins: kids

like, we are, like, there is, there is a, I mean, depe- if you wanna like do it with like homo sapiens, like 300,000 a year, or if you wanna do, do life, three billion year, like, unending marathon relay game, or like, chain letter. And you, you, you’re letting it die. Like, that’s, that is your legacy, is the termination-

Malcolm Collins: For all of human civilization, people who replicate it

Simone Collins: of three billion years of life fighting, suffering to continue, to carry [00:22:00] on. And you, your legacy is, “I’m gonna snuff that out. I don’t care. I’m not gonna try. I’m not even going to try.” That’s, that’s her legacy. And, and, and, and, and of course her- I thought about it, darling ... dead body is, is gonna be found in her condo, and, you know, it’s, who knows how old it’s gonna be, ‘cause who knows how her spreadsheet of friends is really gonna pan out.

Malcolm Collins: Eaten

Simone Collins: by her cat. And, and some government appointed cleanup crew, which of course, another opportunity is, is cleanup crews for houses with rotting bodies of infirm- Yeah, robots can’t

Malcolm Collins: do that yet ... old

Simone Collins: people. Yeah, I know. I’m, that’s true. Although, did you hear that there’s there’s this new company that is deploying housekeepers in New York City with cameras on their heads to train future cleaning robots?

It’s kinda fun. I- Oh my God ... I, I like that idea.

Malcolm Collins: So, so, while I’m reading one, ‘cause I’ll, I’ll read a story too- Oh my

Simone Collins: God. Oh, that would be really cool if, like, I could make money cleaning my own house by wearing a camera on my head while I did [00:23:00] it. Oh. Can we... I need to reach out to that startup.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, see, yeah.

Simone Collins: Dude, because that’s, that’s way more efficient. It’s just why are they hiring, like, making a cleaning business when they could just be like, “Hey, housewives, can you just, can you just wear this, this dash cam on your forehead?”

Malcolm Collins: And we could create, like, a network of housewives to make money while they’re cleaning.

Simone Collins: Oh, my God. Look, we’re on, we’re on a roll,

Malcolm Collins: okay? Ask them if they would be up for this, ‘cause we probably have enough housewife fans that we could put together a genuine network doing

Simone Collins: this. Dude, and, like, we’re doing it anyway, you know? Yeah. Like, ugh.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, my God. I mean- Yeah, Liable Human. This can be part of the

Simone Collins: liablehuman.com.

Liable Human. We got the cleaning, the, the, the, the clean cam. I mean,

Malcolm Collins: I- But okay, so when I start-

Simone Collins: Yeah, you do your thing. You do your- ...

Malcolm Collins: talking here, you make a note to yourself about liablehuman.com. Yeah. And go to rfab.ai- And clean cam ... and try out, it’s at the bottom right now, the recipe feature. Okay. I just tried it on the site.

It seems to be working. I wanna get your takeaway on [00:24:00] this. But okay. So this one is from 2025. “I regret belittling men. At 63, I’ve ended up alone. I’d always imagined I would end up married with two wonderful children, living in a house in the countryside. I have paid a hefty price for my so-called liberation.

A few years ago, I went to Italy with my then boyfriend, James. As we sat tucking into the plate of frutti di mare at a seaside

Simone Collins: restaurant-” Ugh, frutti di mare’s such a gross dish. Girl.

Malcolm Collins: What is it?

Simone Collins: It’s just, like, a bunch of seafood thrown on top of pasta.

Malcolm Collins: Sounds gross, yeah.

Simone Collins: Yeah, gross.

Malcolm Collins: I struck up a conversation with the waiter in Italian.

Of course she has to mention that, right? Oh

Simone Collins: my God. Oh my God. Please let it be... Michael, if you’re listening, I’m so sorry, but, like, the way you speak Italian.

Malcolm Collins: Oh my God. That’s my dad, by the way ... yeah ... who always has to speak in Italian to waiters.

Simone Collins: But, like, in, in, like, the c- the way that, like, kids get angry about, where you’re like, it’s like- No,

Malcolm Collins: it’s annoying because he does it when he goes to Italian restaurants in the United [00:25:00] States. He does- With

Simone Collins: the affectation, but without the correct accent. Like, that’s, that’s the one thing. Can

Malcolm Collins: you imagine as a kid how embarrassed you would be if every time your dad took you to an Italian restaurant, when the waiter

Simone Collins: would- Prego, the fruit de mer.

Yeah, it’s cold ...

Malcolm Collins: clearly an American, he would try to order in a... It’s literally out of a- God, what’s that fricking guy who does those movies? Exci-

Simone Collins: the guy who does the movies?

Malcolm Collins: No, the, the guy’s names. Of course. Out of, out of this guy’s movies, like the one where it ends and it’s, like, he died and they change his tombstone to say, like, he died saving a bunch of people from a sinking ship.

... It... Come on. You know the movies I’m talking about. They have a huge style to them. The

Simone Collins: movies with Wes

Malcolm Collins: Anderson- The Royal Tenenbaums he did ... I know the

Simone Collins: answer to that question. The movies with the style to them is Wes Anderson.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, the Royal Tenenbaums. Who’s the, who’s the guy I’m thinking of?

Simone Collins: Wes Anderson.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, Wes Anderson. My dad is, like, literally out of Wes Anderson. Like- No ... in a Wes Anderson movie, I can see a dad who always sat down and started

Simone Collins: ordering- [00:26:00]

Malcolm Collins: Okay. Okay, maybe ... in Italian, and everyone would look. The movies with the style. Just lets you sit in the cringe.

Il salmone, per favore, con una spruzzata di limone e una spruzzata di mistero

Simone Collins: Stewing in it a little bit. Yeah.

Yeah, like some little shrimp in

Malcolm Collins: a fruit de mer. Okay. By the, by the way, did you get... Have you gotten to the recipe generator yet?

Simone Collins: I, I’m sorry. I’m looking through the litany of features. Oh, there it is at the very bottom between-

Malcolm Collins: I told you, yeah, at the bottom. Come on.

Simone Collins: I’m so- whoa.

Malcolm Collins: Are you, are you putting it in right now? Yeah, yeah.

Simone Collins: Well, I mean, where do I... Oh, so you can choose cuisine by nation or region, so I’m gonna choose... Ooh, well, not Mongolian. I don’t want fricking yak butter. Was that... Oh, no, that’s Tibetan, right? That’s... Your mom, like, basically didn’t eat anything she chose so- It’s

Malcolm Collins: not.

Just choose one, Simone.

Simone Collins: Oh, well, g- aw. Okay, Shanghai, because we just, we just made something that was sort of Shanghai based. And then, Ooh, [00:27:00] Shanghai soul food fusion. Oh, yeah. Okay. And then w- meal type dinner

Malcolm Collins: You don’t have to choose every option,

Simone. You can just

Simone Collins: choose- Oh, time available under 15 minutes and for one person ‘cause I always just make food for you.

And interesting. Th- there’s no, like, there has to be meat in it. I guess I’ll just do high protein though.

Malcolm Collins: No, if you want to, you can choose the type of meat in it, or you can

choose

Simone Collins: vegetarian. Oh, that’s true. Oh, yeah, flavor profile, spicy All right. Okay, creative mode. Ooh, dish from the distant future?

Dude, fantasy tavern dish. Historical recre- ha. For- forbidden combination. Break the rules. C- well, but I, yeah, but I, I chose my, my regions. Okay, I’m just gonna click ... Ooh, generate recipe image too. Okay, generate six recipe ideas.

Malcolm Collins: Okay, you, you just

Simone Collins: unclicked- Okay, Shanghai-based soul food ...

Malcolm Collins: Simone. You didn’t unclick generate recipe i- i- image.

It was auto-clicked, right?

Simone Collins: I know. I didn’t unclick it.

Malcolm Collins: Okay.

Simone Collins: Don’t worry, [00:28:00] I am tard, but I am not Treytard. I am just-

Malcolm Collins: Is it, is it generating now? Do you see

Simone Collins: the nice- Oh, petite tard. Okay ...

Malcolm Collins: animation and everything?

Simone Collins: Ooh, okay. Okay. So spicy Shanghai rice cake stir fry, quick spicy red braised pork skillet, fiery crab and greens

I hate, I can’t do, and I don’t like okra. Chili sweet potato and pea hash, and blazing pork and crab noodle toss. So we’re going with the quick spicy red braised pork skillet. Generate full recipe.

Malcolm Collins: And take a screenshot of the recipe when you get it so I can put it here for- Mm ... when people are

Simone Collins: watching the episode.

Mm-mm. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, my God.

Simone Collins: We’re

Octavian Collins: spinning it.

Simone Collins: Ooh. Tell me about this woman and her fruitti di mare with James, right? Was it James? Was it- Okay ... John?

Malcolm Collins: Back in the hotel, he asked me why I had ignored him. By speaking in a language he didn’t understand- Oh. ... he said I managed to make him feel small. I could see his point.

[00:29:00] I spent quite a while chatting away, oblivious to how he must be feeling. I then went on to joke about how that as an Italian speaker I would order for us after he didn’t know what osso buco meant. I was showing off. Clearly, that’s kind of a jerk thing to do. I did

Simone Collins: not want osso buco. Ew, ...

Malcolm Collins: I, I know, right?

It wasn’t the first time something like that had happened to me. I was always taken- Oh,

Simone Collins: Malcolm, this looks really good. Oh, my God.

Malcolm Collins: Right. Did it fully output with the picture and everything?

Simone Collins: Yeah. It’s, it’s got the steaming ... Mm, you can see the little pepper flakes on it.

Malcolm Collins: But also look at how it formats everything.

Simone Collins: No, this is really nice, and like, but the enticing ... It, it gives you, like, this like a food blog style image output.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, my God. And then it gives you a food blog with a separated menu section, time section, cooking section, and then at the end we run another internet search capable AI-

Simone Collins: Nutrition per serving?

Malcolm, you love me.

Malcolm Collins: Right. Aw. And then at the end we run [00:30:00] another search AI on the output of the first search AI just to correct anything that might be wrong or need nuance within the initial output.

Simone Collins: Malcolm, are you publishing all these results in an indexable part of our website that becomes rich?

No, but

Malcolm Collins: that’s a really good idea.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm. I think you really, I think you should so that things like Google searches will point to it ‘Cause this is great fusion, like, recipes.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And then people will make their, their cursed recipes and stuff like that to try to make a big indexing of it.

Simone Collins: A drink pairing?

Oh my gosh. A chilled off-dry riesling? I mean, gross, but, like, I get it actually with this. Or unsweetened iced tea with lemon. Food safety tips. Oh my gosh.

Malcolm Collins: Didn’t I go over the top with the creation of this feature?

Simone Collins: You went, you went super over the top, but I am

Malcolm Collins: here for it. Because now I’m getting better at making these sorts of things, I immediately was like, “Ooh, how can I make this...”

And I don’t know if you noticed, but next to this button we also put-

Simone Collins: Refrigerate [00:31:00] leftovers within two hours. You... Food safety. Avoid overcrowding the pork so the pork- the pans so the pork sears rather than steams. Yes, okay.

Malcolm Collins: Ooh. I also made a feature for this that well, one I’m gonna add, ‘cause I just had the idea to add it, is a feature where you put in, like, “I have too much of X ingredient in my fridge, I need to use it all,” or put in, like, “I have X, Y, and Z in my refrigerator, I wanna get rid of it.”

Simone Collins: Yes.

Yes. Oh my gosh, Malcolm.

Malcolm Collins: And I’ll add something that’s, like, meat-based in general dish, right?

Simone Collins: Have I mentioned I love you?

Malcolm Collins: But I don’t know if you noticed, but next to this, the other new feature I made was for people doing D&D campaigns or, like, any sort of campaigns.

Simone Collins: I saw that, yeah. You can

Malcolm Collins: put in the rule book and it will just, like, auto help you with the next turn with your players.

Simone Collins: Bless you, sir. You’re doing God’s work.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, right? But I just made this stuff because somebody on the Leaflet stream- Wait, you’re- ... wanted that, and I was like, “Sure, I can make that.”

Simone Collins: For a Leaflet fan, anything. Come on. Yeah ... yeah. I, Okay, tell me about this woman whose, whose [00:32:00] boyfriend- Okay, okay ... is un- inse- The...

So one, this guy can just take a hike anyway because his reaction was to feel insecure when she spoke Italian intolerably as an American in a restaurant- Yeah ... instead of, like, to feel embarrassed.

Malcolm Collins: Okay, so anyway.

Octavian Collins: Can I tell you

Malcolm Collins: something I

Octavian Collins: learned?

Simone Collins: Okay, you can tell them what you learned. Hold on.

Octavian’s gonna tell us what he learned.

Octavian Collins: Here’s another fun fact of the day. You can make a window by your- self if you had some, if you had some, like a sand hammer glass, and then you can, like, melt it, and then let it cool, and then get, window mold, and then let it dry for a couple of days, and then ta-da, you get your own window.

Simone Collins: Love you, buddy.

Malcolm Collins: Fun fact. If you have sand- Yes ... melt it into glass and make your

Simone Collins: own window.

Octavian Collins: Another fun fact of the day. It’s, Did you know you can sew a shirt by yourself? Hello, hello? Like this one, like

Simone Collins: this big. It’s true. Yeah, you know, [00:33:00] people even made their own fabric in the past, Octavia.

Octavian Collins: Yeah, .

Malcolm Collins: That’s the type of useful fact- Phew ... you’re getting from him. Yeah. With us it’s just how to make money from people. Yeah, ew ... but let’s look up, Can you just tell me more things?

We’ll, we’ll go over this later. No,

Simone Collins: no, no, buddy, you gotta work.

Malcolm Collins: To do this attorney thing. Tell me more things. But I, I wanna continue here. Okay. Can I just tell you more things? I’m convinced the reason I’m still booking a table for one at the age of 63 instead of having settled with a significant other is because like so many women of my generation, feminism has ruined my love life.

Instead of empowering us, those ideals of second wave feminism made us believe that marriage and domesticity were to be avoided like the plague, and that men were competitor rather than partners. I might have a successful career as a writer and broadcaster, but I never had children, underlying bolded, or been married, and my longest relationship lasted eight years.

I regret this. I always imagined I would end up married with two wonderful children and living in a house at the countryside. I’ve paid a hefty price for my so-called liberation. I was 17 and a pupil at Golders and Leigh Mire, one of Britain’s most academic institutions, when I [00:34:00] was introduced to the women’s liberation movement.

It offered so much hope and excitement, and we spent our lunch breaks soaking up feminist mantras of Geramir Greer and Betty Friedman. Act like the men they bribed- Betty, Betty Friedman? ... as they burned their bras and demolished... I, Betty Friedman. I don’t know. Betty Fr- some, some Jewish name, Betty Friedman.

A bra is, and demonized housework in the family. And now here I’m not saying that, like, Jews are a problem. Clearly this got to a Jewish woman. Like, th- this was a Jewish man who ended up not getting a wife ‘cause she burned her bra or whatever, right? I, obviously this is what men wanted them to do in the first place, like yeah, go braless.

What, what are you doing, you know? End up destroying their breasts at like the age of 30.

Simone Collins: I don’t think you destroy your breasts- Oh, yeah ... by not wearing support.

Malcolm Collins: If you, if you, if you don’t wear support your breasts start sagging much faster.

Simone Collins: Do they actually? Hmm.

Malcolm Collins: From what I’ve heard, yes.

Simone Collins: We, we can fact check this.

Malcolm Collins: Why don’t you, why don’t you fact check that?

Simone Collins: G- Grok.

Malcolm Collins: By the time I was 25 clutching a degree in French and [00:35:00] Italian I was a bright, confident feminist keen to flex her intellectual muscles and to never let a man get the last word. I read Nietzsche for fun, and my bedside table was always buckled beneath the weight of substantial intellectually challenging books.

God, she

Simone Collins: sounds so annoying. Nietzsche and Betty Friedman

Malcolm Collins: Right? But not many feminists read niche, I’ll tell you that.

Simone Collins: No, n- Not wearing a bra does not cause breasts to sag earlier, according to the Cleveland Health Clinic, but also via Grok. This is a common myth without strong scientific backing.

Breast sagging, medically called ptosis, happens primarily due to natural factors, and bra wearing habits have little to no proven long-term impact on it. Besides, Malcolm, I don’t wear a bra.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, you don’t?

Simone Collins: I wear stays, though, which is the, the OG bra. The

Malcolm Collins: OG bra?

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, my gosh. So, we... I... We keep finding that Leaflet and you dress in the same outfits.

Like, she wears these what, what do you call them, at nights? Like, the medieval outfits.

Simone Collins: A, a chemise.

Malcolm Collins: Chemise. But th- th- wh- wh-

Simone Collins: That’s [00:36:00] just the, the universal undergarment. This, this is a chemise.

Malcolm Collins: She...

Simone Collins: You looked like the- W- we literally found that we shop at the same stores. The women from my n- She has...

She’s a woman of taste, okay?

Malcolm Collins: And like- ... medieval plays, and now I realize that in real life she also dresses like a medieval woman, and I’m like- Well, that’s like, it, it, the best thing is- ... this is, we gotta get this new, like, nerd right. We all dress like medieval women, it’s not just you. That’s

Simone Collins: like- I think that’s a, that’s, it’s just a continuation of that...

I think we even did an episode on it, when, like, when conservative anon accounts got doxxed, it just turned out that they were, like, attractive, cool people who are, like, well-adjusted. And I think it’s the same with VTubers. Like, were they to be unmasked, it will turn out that they were, they are attractive, cool people who actually look as cool, if not cooler, than their VTuber avatars.

Malcolm Collins: Right. I wanna, I wanna start the trend. I like this trend. All of the, like, new right women, our thing is, like, we all dress m- like medieval fantasy people. Like we’re, we’re princesses, right? That’s what everybody wants to be anyway.

Speaker 4: I just realized that [00:37:00] in real life, like new right women are beginning to dress like the characters that the left is freaking out about and calling a fetish from the Knight’s Path, where they’re just like normal medieval females who are sweet and kind, and the left is like, “Oh my God, how could you do this?

This is a weird, perverted fetish.” , Which I like. I, I don’t mind. I don’t mind. We might do a whole episode on this

Malcolm Collins: Ah. And then it will become cool, and progressives won’t be able to dress that way anymore, and they’ll get all annoyed.

That, and when we’re younger, we all dress like Emilia, okay? The, the art hoe look- So you

Simone Collins: go from, like, art hoe to- ...

Malcolm Collins: conservative guys are into it, right? I love it when, like, Totally, like, Coping ShortFatOtaku did a piece where he’s like, “Oh you know, no, none of these conservative art hoe girls actually exist.”

And I was like, “Simone dressed exactly like that when I met her.” A lot of the conservative girls now who are on the right, like The Nerd Right- And did dress like

Simone Collins: Emilia. Oh, my God,

Malcolm Collins: yeah ... originally dressed like Emilia. You think Leaflet didn’t dress like Emilia at some point in her life? You know, like, come on, people.

Look,

Simone Collins: we’ve all... If we’ve been in America we’ve- [00:38:00]

Malcolm Collins: And, and we, the only reason they’re not dressing like that now is because it’s not cool to dress like that when you’re in your 40s. Now you go for the medieval phase. Okay. By the time I was 25, clutching a degree in French and Italian, what a pointless degree, I was a bright, confident feminist keen to flex her intellectual muscle.

Oh, no, I’m gonna read you whenever that.. For, at first men loved my wit and intelligence. “You’re such a breath of fresh air. I love talking to you. You’re the first woman I’ve met who stimulates me,” they’d trill. Trill

what type of guy says that to somebody? And if you have a degree in French and Italian, what interesting thing could you possibly have to say? But anyway,

Simone Collins: that was- Well, I thought you said breast of fresh air, so that, I thought that was the dead giveaway,

Malcolm Collins: but. Oh, yes. That was until I had lectured them for the umpteenth time on the virtues of modernism.

Mm-hmm. “You’ll never win an argument against Kate,” one man said as he watched me outsmart yet another potential lover. Subtext, don’t bother. No, what he meant by that is you’ll never back down from an argument. No one always wins an argument. Even [00:39:00] between Simone and I, she wins quite frequently.

Simone Collins: In a- Nice try, Malcolm

Malcolm Collins: You do.

You do. Oh, yeah, I, you, you joke that I don’t even bet with you anymore because I’m so frequently wrong.

Simone Collins: That’s just because the only time I will say, “Do you wanna put money on it?” is when I know I’m gonna win. And you figured that out really

Malcolm Collins: quick ... men had called me intimidating, scary, opinionated. I now see that not only was I trying to prove I was their intellectual equal or superior, I was treating every encounter with a man like he was my adversary.

If a date brought me a bouquet of flowers, instead of smiling and putting them in a vase of water, I would bite their head off. Can’t you buy me some nice olive branch or balsamic vinegar? Oh, sorry, some nice olive oil or a balsamic vinegar. What a, what a jerk thing to say to somebody- Malcolm ... who bought you flowers.

Simone Collins: That’s true. That’s true. But, like, you buy me popcorn instead of.

Malcolm Collins: I fed with my eye roll to one hapless suitor as he stood, wilting faster than the fragrant offering he held in his hand.

Simone Collins: Oh.

Malcolm Collins: He had bothered to think about making me [00:40:00] happy, and I crush him for it. And flowers are expensive, too. By the way- It’s true.

Simone Collins: Flowers are su- they’re, they’re a costly signal. Like, the whole point of giving flowers is that they are useless, but you choose to give them to someone anyway. Yeah,

Malcolm Collins: people.

Simone Collins: Like, the, the, the gift that, that is famously terrible for a man to give to his lady partner is something that’s useful, like a vacuum.

Oh, no, that’s a terrible gift, and here she is scoffing at him. Of course, if he gave her something useful, he’d be like, “Oh, what? You expect me to cook you something with olive oil?” Like, there is no winning with this kind of ideology. But she’s come to recognize that in her dotage.

Malcolm Collins: By the way, if you wanna make your w- life hap- wife happy, I learned a new thing that I can do to make Simone happy.

Simone Collins: Oh,

Malcolm Collins: my God. And so you guys can do this for your wives. If you ever see dust accumulating in a corner or on a stair corner or anything like that, clean it up for them while they’re doing something else, and they will be very appreciative because- I just

Simone Collins: saw what you did today in that, right over there.

Thank you.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. I place so much importance on finding a, [00:41:00] quote-unquote, “strong man who can match me” that I forgot men were people with feelings. I, I, indeed I forgot I had feelings and hid my softness. No, the thing is, is she wanted a strong man, but she also saw it as a red flag or a negative sign if a guy was better than her, right?

Mm-hmm. Like, a guy can’t just be like, “Yeah, I know more than you.” And Simone admitted that fairly early in our relationship that I just know more than her about most things, and that’s okay.

Simone Collins: It’s okay.

Malcolm Collins: I now see that I had longed to be loved, but I was scared to be vulnerable. I was using my sharp mind to protect my all-too-soft heart against yet future rejection.

Another thing I regret deeply is the tally of my one-night stands when I was younger. I distinctly remember thinking it would be uncool to say no to men I met at parties or dated, but I struggled to enjoy it. There was always a disconnect. This was abundantly clear the morning after. As I lay there waiting for a sign of affection, he would be singing the triumphs of Had Her song in the shower.

A [00:42:00] quick cheerio and he was gone. While I pretended to enjoy it, I felt uncomfortable about sex so early on. I felt sad and used. Sorry, I felt empty and used. My generation of women were encouraged to have sex like a man. In other words, have casual sex, and it backfired. Fast-forward to now, the idea that women are different from men, that casual sex can be harmful, is gaining traction.

In her last book, A Guide to Sex in the 21st Century, the young adult adaptation, Louise Perry explores how the sexual revolution impacted women negatively and led to unwanted consequences. Ooh, Louise Perry is impacting feminists now. I mean, Louise Perry has always been a feminist. We interviewed her.

Well,

Simone Collins: she, well, yeah, she started out from a- She was on the show ... just like us, from a progressive perspective, and I- she’s still, her primary audience, at least the last time we, like a couple years back, was progressives who started to have thoughts-

Malcolm Collins: Uh-oh ... about vaccines Don’t have thoughts, ‘cause then you’re not a progressive anymore, right?

Mm. You get kicked out. I mean, she’s seen as a far-righter at this point ‘cause she [00:43:00] also, you know, questions the trans agenda. Well,

Simone Collins: but she’s one of the far-righters who has, like, an audience primarily among far-righters, progressives who are like, “Look at me being naughty. I’m going to read Louise Perry.”

Malcolm Collins: I al- I always thought her, like, core audience was lesbians who are pissed off that trans people keep hitting on them and invade their spaces.

That’s sort of like most of the people on her show I get the impression of, is like Louise Perry- Well, ‘cause that’s like the one group of, of women who when she’s ... Of like her core thing is like women aren’t actually into being choked, and I’m like, “They’re not actually into like a big strong man.” I’m like, “Yeah, it’s because of men that the monster effer category at Barnes & Nobles is like three rows.”

Simone Collins: Is, is a category. Uh-huh.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, it’s because of men that like 50 Shades of Gray was a bestseller. I believe you, Louise Perry. Mm. But I think like the one cate- b- well, I mean you, you gotta have your head in the sand a bit as a woman to not like recognize that like even if you’re not turned on by something, clearly the majority of women are, right?

You know, or there’s a big audience out there for it. But [00:44:00] yeah. How can people make money off of being other people’s power of attorney? Like, how do they advertise themselves for this? How do they find people who want this? What’s your... Because Simone, ‘cause she does have Jew DNA, so she got, like, plus five in mercantil- mercantilism- Mercantilism

as- as- as being born half Jew. Oh, no. By the way, she’s not half Jew. She’s one-eighths Jew, but it’s, it’s matrilineal, so they consider it,

Simone Collins: So then I’m all Jew. I’m a Jewess.

Malcolm Collins: For- for Jews

Simone Collins: According

Malcolm Collins: to ... but yeah. That- that- that unfortunately, the half Jew started her into, she heard about sad women and then thought, “How can I make money off of them?”

So- Dude,

Simone Collins: well, you’re welcome for the 50-plus dollars I got you today.

Malcolm Collins: So go and help people here. Now, how do they set this up to exploit people? And if you’re a Base Camp fan, you can always use us as your power of attorney. We’ll make some easy way to handle this. So- Well,

Simone Collins: I mean, sometimes you have to be present, so it is important to be able to find.

But I think the- We

Malcolm Collins: can go and be present if somebody’s, like, dying or needs the decision, Simone. [00:45:00]

Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah. Fair enough. We can. I- I would... N- I mean, the... Go to my show notes. I will put them in the show notes. Just, like, look at your specific state if you’re in the United States at what the regulations are around what you need to- to qualify, how you, how you might need to be certified to become a power of attorney.

And then figure out the best way in your state to make yourself an easy search result when people in your state search for power of attorney.

Malcolm Collins: And you can vibe good this, right?

Simone Collins: You can totally vibe good this. And then what you need to do is just make yourself really easy to reach via phone, ‘cause- The boomer generation that is going to need this service really likes just picking up their phone and calling people possibly just showing up at addresses.

We know this from experience. So I think if you can have a, an address where people can just show up and a phone number, at least a phone number that people can just [00:46:00] call and you can answer, I think you could start... And you’re properly certified for your state, even if you need to be. You might not need to be, and you don’t even need to be a CPA or an attorney necessarily.

Just start offering it, and, and I mean, you, you need to be ready to commit to this to actually follow through. Some states like in Pennsylvania will put a cap on certain services related to stuff I brought up in this, like in terms of recovering finances. Our state, Pennsylvania, will cap how much you can charge in terms of like finders fees in helping people recover this money that has been left by distant cousins who didn’t have any friends or family in wills.

But just look it up. Use, use, use Malcolm’s super search feature on rfab.ai and figure it out, and then create a website.

Malcolm Collins: Another thing that you can use us for, by the way, if we’re thinking of services we can offer to people- Yeah ... is if you’re getting married to somebody, you know how we have like our marriage contract?

Mm-hmm. One of our early episodes is on how to put one of those together. If you need a line in the [00:47:00] contract about disagreements with a partner that involves some form of third-party

Simone Collins: intervention- Oh, an arbitrator.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah ... yeah, and you’re like, “Malcolm and Simone seem fairly reasonable as an arbitrator,” we’re happy to serve that role where we just say, basically we make the decision when both of you can’t agree on something.

Simone Collins: Make a call. Yeah. Yeah, we, we have, We’ll just ... we have arbitrators in in our marriage contract specifically related to the fat clause. That’s the one place where we have arbitrators.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, who’s the arbitrat- Oh, is it my mom?

Simone Collins: It’s, it’s y- your brother and, and- Oh ... our sister-in-law. Because they, they are good, like, they’re on the more judgment...

But they, neither of them would lie about either of us getting a little

Malcolm Collins: chunk. Oh, no, they would totally be honest about it. Yeah. They’d be like- Yeah ... “Yeah, you’re, you’re chubsters.”

Simone Collins: Yeah. They would enjoy, they would enjoy saying it, so.

Malcolm Collins: If you don’t have a will, get a will. Put us in it. The, the-

Simone Collins: Yeah, but also exploit the reality that apparently many aging, childless, parentless, family, friendless old people are going to [00:48:00] die with assets.

Of course, many of them are gonna die with negative net worths, but you could potentially make some money from this too. So yeah, take lemons, turn them into lemonade. It’s doable, and I love you very much, Malcolm.

Malcolm Collins: I love you too, Simone.

Simone Collins: Oh. Which one would you like to do next?

Malcolm Collins: All right.

Simone Collins: Did you watch

Malcolm Collins: the end of Euphoria?

Simone Collins: No. I’m gonna watch it tonight. It’s my treat.

Malcolm Collins: Okay, okay, then I won’t mention anything.

Speaker 9: For those wondering, the first thing that came up when I searched the Christian family from Euphoria was some other person being with him, um, at the end of the show

Simone Collins: Yeah, don’t. Dude, I mean, like the, the previous episode was oh oh. It’s like I- I,

Malcolm Collins: well, I can guess it- ... can’t even ... because I, I got more information than you have from looking up clips of the family, the rural family.

Simone Collins: Oh, did she go back to them? Don’t know

Malcolm Collins: I won’t, I won’t say anything

Simone Collins: I hope she doesn’t like die trying to get there.

Oh, geez. Okay, well The,

Malcolm Collins: the [00:49:00] scene with them when I put it on, the, the, the first scene with them is very sweet. Isn’t it? ... where... Well, it’s sweet, but also in that sort of sad progre- Like, when the other girl asks her why she wouldn’t trade positions with her, she just looks upset and then turns up the radio.

Simone Collins: Yeah, like she doesn’t explain, “Oh, well, I’ve been turned into a drug mule, and like all my friends are miserable, and...” Yeah, we need to be more clear about what’s

Malcolm Collins: going- I, and I really feel this w- like when progressives come after us, like this recently had a negative podcast on us. And I’m like, “Bro, we really are like just trying to help you,” right?

Like, I love their like, their marriage. Well, yeah, they seem to love each other, but they never talk about how hot the other one is and how they want to like jump each other’s bones and stuff. They, they just seem to respect each other. And it’s like- Wow ... maybe you shouldn’t structure your marriage off of that.

That’s a bad way to structure things.

Simone Collins: Yeah, no, read, read my early diaries though and it’s, it’s pretty clear,

Malcolm Collins: Oh, in the early days. Yeah, you know.

Simone Collins: Look, [00:50:00] if we weren’t as sleep deprived and stressed as we are right now, I think we would just constantly have that on our minds too. But guess what?

We’ve given ourselves bigger things to worry about.

Malcolm Collins: Well, I, I was almost thought of doing an episode pointing out that like when you have kids, babysitters are just prostitutes with extra steps because- They

Simone Collins: are though, ‘cause you’re paying that person for their time in order to have sex.

Malcolm Collins: So that you have time to sleep- Yeah

with your partner, right?

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: You know? Mm-hmm. Yeah. Because otherwise you got the baby in the room and everything like that, you know.

Simone Collins: Yeah, gross.

And no, having it, like I... You can’t get turned on if your baby is in another room crying. I don’t know how that works for people. I also though don’t know how people have sex in front of their pets which apparently happens a decent amount.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, that sounds really gross. Like the, the pet is either looking at you or not looking at you. Both- I

Simone Collins: mean, I could handle fish, like goldfish or something.

Malcolm Collins: Oh yeah, I can understand that. I’m thinking a dog obviously, right? Yeah. Like obviously- Like a dog understands what’s [00:51:00] happening. The, you know, it’s like-

Simone Collins: Yeah, like a cat might not pay that much attention, so maybe they just be like asleep in a corner and you’d like contextualize them as more like a pillow, you know?

You can kind of write it off. Anyway.

Malcolm Collins: Oh my God fun. By the way, the episode that I prepped for today is why we stopped believing women slash why did Democrats stop caring about grape. Is

Simone Collins: this your, is this your ass mogging video or not?

Malcolm Collins: No, it’s not that one. I, I like the ass mogging one- There’s another one

but like I can just riff on that topic anytime. This one is more-

Simone Collins: Okay. Fair ...

Malcolm Collins: in depth.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Speaking of pillows, like my highlight of yesterday, I mean, you know, aside from like our meaningful life and everything, was I saw one of our pillows that your mom gifted to us, I- on, on, on the Nancy Drew show, like that HBO stupid fantasy mystery show.

I was like, “Oh my God, we have that pillow.” I got so excited. [00:52:00] Those stupid rough ass pillows that your mom got for us. You know, the, the, the like burlap ones.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

Simone Collins: Oh, anyway. I, I’ll get us

Malcolm Collins: started. Love you, sweetheart.

Simone Collins: Life is delightful.

Speaker 5: no, no.

Are the apples wet? They, they have a lot. All apples

No, no, apples are just naturally a bit wet,

the dust- Come on, Toasty ... that

Speaker 8: you’re always so worried about, right?

Speaker 5: Torsten, eat an apple. What are you doing?

She didn’t lick them all

Speaker 6: I want it back to zoo. It’s true.

Speaker 5: I know it’s true. I, I promise you she- Jackson,

Speaker 6: you were-

Speaker 5: See, Tyne [00:53:00] didn’t. That would be a really long thing for her to do, Josie You

Speaker 8: make her too much fun. We went in the-

In this episode of Based Camp, we explore the recent wave of anti-marriage feminist influencers who suddenly get engaged and/or pregnant right after hitting 30. Is “anti-marriage” feminism just mate-blocking by other means? Or is it sour grapes from women who spent their 20s steeped in hookup culture?

We explore:

• The hypocrisy of prominent “stay single” influencers (MJ Gray, Alex Cooper, Wizard Liz, Danielle Walter, etc.)

• Why feminism’s biggest “wins” have mostly hurt women

• The collapse in marriage rates (especially by age 30)

• Mate blocking vs. status denial

• The hollowness of modern hookup/OnlyFans culture and the return to meaning

Get ready for a spicy and honest conversation about dating, marriage, female nature, and cultural trends.

Show Notes

What happened:

* An influencer named MJ Gray branded herself as strongly anti‑marriage and anti‑kids, framing marriage as “enslavement” and something women should avoid because it primarily benefits men and the patriarchy.

* She built a following of nearly 500,000 on TikTok by creating anti-marriage content, often arguing that marriage signifies the “ownership of women” and advising women to avoid it.

* After about nine months of dating a man with no public profile, she announces an engagement in a visibly uncomfortable video titled “Yes, I’m engaged. Yes, this is awkward,” while repeatedly insisting she is “in a good situation.”

* Timestamped clip:

* She claims her stance has always included caveats: marriage can make sense if you plan to have children, share property, or live together, but otherwise it remains a harmful institution.

It turns out she is not the only influencer of the stay single movement who turned around and got married. There are other recent and prominent examples that might indicate some sort of pattern.

This comes at a time when marriage REALLY doesn’t need negative propaganda. Around 2005–2010, roughly 50–55% of adults were married; by the mid-2020s, it’s around 46–51% (e.g., 47.1% of households headed by married couples in 2024, near historic lows).

So what’s going on with women like these? Let’s explore and discuss.

MJ Gray’s Branding

MJ Gray frames herself as a supermodel billionaire (that’s her handle on YouTube)

Has 419K followers on tiktok (@texasgardenfairy)

Has 84.6K followers on Instagram

She shares her thoughts on “The Maneater Podcast”

4.9 stars and 44 reviews on spotify (for reference, Based Camp has 3.8 stars and 205 reviews)

4.9 stars and 9 reviews on Apple Podcasts (for reference, Based Camp has 4.4 stars at 153 reviews)

MJ Gray’s YouTube model is @supermodelbillionaire: https://www.youtube.com/@supermodelbillionaire

8.46K subscribers, 65 videos

Things she says:

* Men should always pay for women because…

* Men are women’s apex predator

* Women’s time is more valuable than men’s time (because their attractive and fertile years are limited)

* Engaging with men is dangerous as you could get pregnant, get an infection

* Women’s presence and attention is more valuable than men’s attention (men spend more on strip clubs and exotic dancers… though apparently she does not know about host clubs)

Other Stay-Single Hypocrites

Alex Cooper

* She is most famous for being co-host of the Call Her Daddy podcast

* She built a massive platform with frank, often casual-sex-positive advice that included heavy skepticism toward traditional marriage and long-term commitment, encouraging women to prioritize autonomy and fun over settling down.

* She faced direct roasting for “preaching anti-marriage” before getting married herself (to Matt Kaplan). Critics highlighted the shift as hypocritical given her earlier messaging.

* Just this week announced her pregnancy

Wizard Liz

* https://www.youtube.com/c/TheWizardliz

* She is known for being a life advice/self-improvement influencer

* Frequently grouped with MJ Gray in discussions of “feminist rhetoric as a placeholder” for building a following before pivoting to relationships/luxury-coded life.

* She has shared content focused on self-love, healing, and high standards that some interpreted as discouraging rushed commitments or highlighting male flaws. She got engaged/married quickly (to Landon Nickerson), faced cheating drama, and drew similar “bait-and-switch” accusations

Danielle Walter

* https://www.tiktok.com/@daniellewalter_

* She is known for being a dating/relationship TikTok influencer, and the “Carrie Bradshaw of San Francisco”

* Gained millions with dating advice, single-era relatability, and content that resonated with women navigating toxic dynamics or high standards (sometimes overlapping with anti-settling or critical-of-men vibes).

* When she entered a relationship and shared extensively about it (including a 21-part series), followers accused her of abandoning principles, hypocrisy, or shifting for a man/clout. Backlash included claims she went “all for a man” after building on single struggles.

What is Really Happening?

Anti-Marriage as Mate Blocking?

Anti-Marriage Being a Pre-Wall Phenomenon?

* MJ Gray was 30 (born August 12, 1995; turned 30 in August 2025). The engagement news broke around April 2026.

* Alex Cooper got engaged at age 31/32

* Wzard Liz got engaged around age 25 (though it ended amid cheating allegations while she was pregnant)

* Danielle Walter entered her long-term relationship around age 32 and got engaged around age 33

Anti-Marriage Being about Women Fundamentally Misunderstanding Men?

Recently trending on X: 2010 Study Shows Testosterone Boosts Fairness in Women

People were discussing a 2009 study titled Prejudice and truth about the effect of testosterone on human bargaining behaviour (2009), in which researchers found that a single dose of testosterone made women behave more fairly in a bargaining game, but simply believing one had received testosterone made people behave more unfairly, regardless of what they actually received.

Episode Transcript

Simone Collins: Hello, Malcolm. I’m excited to be speaking with you again because we have a new episode in our series Women Are Terrible because they’re at it again, Malcolm.

The women are terrible. And what happened most recently was an influencer who goes by MJ Gray. She branded herself as very strongly anti-marriage and anti-kids. She, she framed marriage as enslavement and something that women should avoid because it primarily benefits men and the patriarchy. And she built this following of almost 500,000 people on TikTok.

I’ll link to this in, in the show notes. And it was all about anti-marriage content. She often argued that marriage signifies ownership of women and she strongly advised women to avoid it.

Speaker 11: I really wish women would stop getting married. I wrote off getting married since I was a little girl. I, I put together the pieces of what marriage was and I was like, “Oh, yeah, no.” I could never trust a man, which is why I would never marry a man

Simone Collins: And then lo [00:01:00] and behold After nine months of dating a man with no public profile, she announces an engagement in a visibly uncomfortable video, which is now, she’s trying to scrub it from the internet titled Yes, I’m Engaged.

Yes, This Is Awkward. While repeatedly she insists she’s in a good situation and I, I have a somewhat salvaged part of this at least that I was able to find on the internet for you, Malcolm, if you wanna include it. But I’ll also link to it in the show notes.

Speaker: Yes, I am engaged. Yes, I am the same person who made several videos saying that I never had, never had any plans to get married, I did not wanna get married, and I did not agree with the institution of marriage.

Simone Collins: She claims her stance has always included caveats that sometimes marriage is good.

Sometimes marriage can make sense if you plan to have children or share property or live together. But otherwise, it remains a harmful institution. And of course, very abundantly in, in her content, you know, she’s “Well, having kids is the most horrifying thing. It destroys your body.” So of course, if you have kids, [00:02:00] you know, sharing property, why would you ever do that?

But so- Oh, my

Malcolm Collins: God. So your takeaway, because she watched this happen. She comes to me and she goes, “Malcolm, is feminism just an anti-woman grift?” Is it- Or is it

Simone Collins: meat blocking? That’s what I, I kind of think Well, meat

Malcolm Collins: blocking, but through that it’s a tactic that ugly women use to destroy the marriage prospects of beautiful and qualified women and that when women signal feminist ideals, they are doing it with the predominant intentionality of hurting other women.

And the women I have heard- No, I mean, so this, this is where it gets

Simone Collins: more complicated because this is a different subset, and it’s more... This is why I wanted to talk about it, because this is not the ugly feminist meat blocking and being like, “Well, we need to, you know, uh, get cats and vote.” This is not that class.

This is, this is a slutty class of women. I, I mean that in the nicest way. This is a sex positive class of women that, that, that actively wants to date that talks about dating strategy, that talks [00:03:00] about getting men to pay for you, that talks about loving sex. And yet things happen and suddenly- Did this woman talk about all that?

Dot, dot, dot. Yeah, we’re gonna get into it because it turns out That MJ is not the only influencer in the stay single movement who turned around and got married. There are other recent and, and actually quite prominent, even more prominent than MJ in, in terms of the online drama than MJ. So I want

Malcolm Collins: to explore this through a few lenses before we start.

Okay. So when you came to me and you told me this, I began to really think through it, and I was like, actually, almost everything that feminism has, quote-unquote, “won” has been a strict negative for the majority of women. Yeah. Yeah ...

whether- Yes ...

whether that is, “Hey, women, you get to be sluttier now,” and women were always like, “But I never wanted to.”

I... men are the ones- Yeah, like this was never the plan. Since when did I want to? Men wanted multiple partners. I wanted a wealthy partner, right, who’s dedicated only to me. Yeah. I’ve watched the women porn, right? I’ve, I personally like really reading, uh, romantasy mawa’s stories, [00:04:00] right? So I know what women like because I find it very enjoyable, too, and it’s always one guy, maybe two guys thirsting after them for a love triangle.

Yeah. It’s certainly not what men are into and what these women have, quote-unquote, “won.” Well, yeah, it’s not a series

Simone Collins: of one-night stands. It’s not really out there sex acts. It’s, it’s- No ... it’s quite- It’s the dark,

Malcolm Collins: brooding Duke of the North- Yeah ... who secretly has a soft spot for them. Oh, you know it.

You know it. But- Yeah ... but, so okay. So, oh, well, they won the right to work. What? How is that good for women? Yeah. That now women have to have jobs, and still raise kids, and still cook the food, ‘cause they didn’t really walk back that other stuff significantly. No, no.

Simone Collins: Now they’re just like, oh, so, work for yourself, but also sleep around with a bunch of men, but sort of, you know, in, in return for no security or long-term bonding.

And, and also you know, if you, if you ever do get married, just wait. Get, make it a [00:05:00] capstone in your life. Get everything else in place. And they’re just giving this really intense anti-marriage advice at a time when marriage really can’t afford any more negative propaganda. Between 25, or 2005 and, and, and 2010, around half of adults, like 50 to 55%, were married, and by the mid-2020s, it’s around 46 to 51%.

So, 47% of households were headed by married couples in 2024. These are near historic lows. It, it, people are just- I mean,

Malcolm Collins: have you seen the married by 30 numbers that Asmogold was sharing? Really?

Simone Collins: But yeah, the number of people getting married by 30 is,

is plummeting.

So yeah, people are putting it off. We really don’t need any more anti-marriage propaganda. Meanwhile, you have-

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, hold on. I’m just gonna go over it really quickly for fans. Yeah. So Americans married by age 30, if you go to 1975, it was 91% of women, so over nine in 10 women. Yeah. And for men it was 81%.

Today, 2025, it is 25% of women and 16% of men. [00:06:00]

Simone Collins: This is not

Malcolm Collins: great. So, th- yeah, that is terrible at this point. And women are

Simone Collins: like, “

Malcolm Collins: Marriage is slavery.” And I also wanna go into a video that ended up doing the rounds of a woman who is very, very mid got a baseball star to date her. Uh, he wanted him to come back to her place on the first date, and she ends up putting him on blast, and he didn’t even do anything wrong.

And it, it shows that the tyranny of the mids at this point.

Simone Collins: The tyranny of the mids? Right? Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. That they expect- Come on ... mil- multi-millionaire pro athletes to take them on second dates when clearly they’re just chum.

Simone Collins: Yeah, this guy was a, a, apparently a lazy 10. So that’s- As we

Malcolm Collins: point out, you know.

And now if she thinks that this is the type of guy that she can get, no, you can’t. Yeah, now, now yeah,

Simone Collins: going forward she’s going to assume that she will get a 10 to marry her because a 10 wanted to sleep with her on one of his tired nights.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

Simone Collins: Okay,

Malcolm Collins: continue, Simone.

Simone Collins: But yeah, so I, I wanna, I wanna explore these women for a [00:07:00] little bit because this is a different profile of woman.

This is not, like I said, the, you know, a bookish feminist cat lady who is just like, “I’m never gonna come into contact with men.” This is actually, as much as they’re sort of anti-men or at least anti-centering men, they actually engage a lot with men, and they’re quite attractive. At least I, I think, I think they are.

Uh, they, they, they look like mainstream filter people if, if that makes sense. You know, like Instagram models. But let’s start with MJ Gray, the, the woman in question, the, the turning point of this episode. She has 419,000 followers on TikTok. She has 84,000 followers on Instagram. She shares her thoughts on The Maneater podcast, which is, you know, her, it’s a little bit red pill woman-y, but not in that she... I think red pill women often were seen back in their day, I don’t know if they still exist, as being subservient to men, whereas she’s more like a pickup artist woman. You know, like- Mm-hmm ... being very sociopathic about her views with women.

A, an [00:08:00] example of a post from her is she’ll be like, “Well, men should always pay for women because men are women’s apex predator, and women’s time is more valuable than men.” But admittedly because they’re attractive and fertile, years are limited, which is true. And engaging with men is dangerous, as you could get pregnant or get an infection.

And women’s presence and attention is more valuable than men’s attention because men, you know, there’s this multimillion dollar stripper industry, uh, and OnlyFans industry that, that centers on women’s attention and, and time and presence. And that, you know, and it, th- this is why you should have men always pay for your dinner, that you should never go Dutch on a date.

I lo-

Malcolm Collins: I love their we need to walk back some parts of feminism here, right, guys? Th- this is clearly... We should just get whatever we want as women. Yeah

Simone Collins: you have to pay for everything, but Are you gonna tell me about this guy who got hitched to this psycho? So there’s not a whole lot known about him because it, but it’s, it’s clear that he’s- Except that he’s super rich apparently.

He’s, yeah, he’s, he’s super rich. Yeah, he, he’s [00:09:00] super rich.

Looking to find and marry a rich man just so you can live the soft life is probably the dumbest s**t I’ve ever heard

Simone Collins: And that’s kind of, it’s a pattern here. Although I, I, I mean, and she, I mean, it makes sense her, her handle, when it’s not Manny or this or whatever MJ Gray is, is, is supermodel billionaire. That’s how she frames herself on YouTube though she only has eight point, like eight, a little more than 8,000 subscribers on YouTube.

She’s pretty small on this platform. But yeah, that is the pattern with her and these other don’t center men, never get married, just enjoy yourself women. So and the most prominent example, I would say way more prominent than than MJ, is Alex Cooper. And you’ve probably never heard of her, Malcolm, but she’s super famous for being the, I guess the former co-host of the Call Her Daddy podcast.

She built this massive- Oh, yeah, I remember this one. And then a guy swept her

Malcolm Collins: off her feet.

Simone Collins: Yeah, and actually just this week, guess what she announced? Marriage? No, her [00:10:00] pregnancy. Oh, gosh. How neat. She’s, she’s now she’s pregnant. And this is, you know, after her getting super famous for s- casual sex positive advice that was very skeptical toward traditional marriage, very skeptical toward long-term commitment, encouraging women to prioritize autonomy and fun over settling down.

Now she’s pregnant, and now she’s married. And people are pointing out quite fairly that she’s hypocritical. Then there’s an- another one, Wizard Liz. She was known for being more of a life advice and self-improvement influencer, and she was really commonly grouped with people like MJ Gray in discussions of femorist rhetoric as, as a placeholder for building a following, and then just sort of jumping in from there to this luxury-coded married life, which is sort of what MJ’s doing.

Like, when I went to her, her TikTok profile more recently, it’s all “Oh, I’m shopping in France, and here’s my fancy hotel room.” And so they, I guess they’re just using it as “I don’t need men. I’m super hot. I’m super sexy.” And then that’s their hook, I guess, to [00:11:00] try to get- No, hold

Malcolm Collins: on. We, we actually even had this within our own community, okay?

So- We did? If you look at the wider online community that we’re a part of, our fourth most overlapped channel by the way which you know but our fans w- probably don’t know from today uh, is, is a woman who- Ah ... uh, really promoted the ideas of a kink lifestyle, a 24/7 BDSM- Oh, her ... uh, daddy dom little girl, and now she’s in a trad cath relationship.

Simone Collins: She is? I haven’t followed, I haven’t kept up with her. Yeah,

Malcolm Collins: Shoe0nHead married a traditional Catholic guy. Oh,

Simone Collins: Shoe0nHead. Shoe0nHead. I thought you were talking about the other one who’s more, way more- No,

Malcolm Collins: Shoe0nHead is our fourth most overlapped channel- Really? ... and she promoted all of this. Oh, you thought the other kink influencer.

No, she’s not overlapped with us. Shoe0nHead is- Yeah, she,

Simone Collins: she’s very boring. Yeah, yeah, okay. Yeah, Shoe0nHead’s very entertaining. Come on, of

Malcolm Collins: course

Simone Collins: Shoe0nHead,

Malcolm Collins: Woke up, you know. We’ll be getting videos from- I guess you’re right. I didn’t

Simone Collins: even think about that. But I don’t think Shoe0nHead... W- was she ever...

See, I think she was, like, open about her kink, but she was never also [00:12:00] BDSM people are, like, surprisingly I don’t know, I wanna say lovey-dovey and romantic in their relationships, you know? They’re- ... they’re not like, “I’m gonna have one-night stands.” You can’t, you can’t be in like, a BDSM relationship and do one-night stands, because you need weeks just to hammer out the, the gear and, and, and get all the accoutrement and, and work out your agreements and the procedure.

Mm-hmm. I mean, it’s just, it, it’s like the D&D campaign. You can’t just, just one night stand it and then switch between people all the time. You’d have to like, buy new outfits and stuff. It would be too tedious. But yeah, good point. Yeah ... Wizard Liz though, she, she was- Shoe, but I think

Malcolm Collins: that this is all part of a wider thing where if you’re a woman and you’re just trying to live your best life, and I like including Shoe0nHead in this category because Shoe0nHead, I do not think is somebody, uh, there’s a small number of our audience who doesn’t like her, but the vast majority generally assume the best of Kami Mommy.

Oh, yeah ... and she, like me I used to be, like, a manslut, right? I was just in an environment where I hadn’t [00:13:00] heard a compelling argument that it was a stupid way to live your life, right? Uh, because- Yeah ... frankly the way conservatives of the last generation made their arguments was f*****g terrible.

Yeah. Yeah ... it simply was an awful seller. Well, and I think most of us

Simone Collins: grew up seeing our boomer parents, like millennials, saw their boomer parents’ marriages and were like, “Well, this is, this is mediocre.” Mm-hmm. “I’m not, I’m not interested in whatever this is. This is, this is

Malcolm Collins: bad.” Whatever the boomers did is not what I wanna do, right?

Simone Collins: Exactly. So I’m like, yeah. Exactly,

Malcolm Collins: so I don’t blame you. You were telling me- And I was...

Simone Collins: No, I was totally, I mean, rule it out. But the I’m never gonna get married, I’m just gonna s- have, you know, s- like s- sleep with someone and fall in love and have my heart broken and then just move on and never do it again.

You know, I’m, I’m not above this, and I just find that dynamic to be very interesting

Malcolm Collins: Yeah because- but the, the reason I’m, I’m saying this is a lot of these women likely just were not aware how awesome marriage is. They get swept up, as women do- Yeah ... in online communities where everyone’s saying the same thing.

They likely had no evoked set for what a [00:14:00] positive relationship in a marriage looks like, because where were they going to see it? Yeah. Think about our progressive friends who are, like, live in Manhattan and stuff like that. Yeah. They

have

f*****g terrible marriages. Uh, even ones who are, like, just a generation above us, their marriages are so bad, these weird polyamory marriages they, they’re like...

It’s, it’s, it’s shocking to me. And when I say bad, I’m not saying they’re bad because they’re polyamorous. I’m saying that they often don’t seem to really like each other that much or really working together that much. And they seem like partners who uh, they seem like coworkers really is, is sort of the vibe I get from them, right?

They’re not actively anti- They’re not like boomers where it’s like they obviously hate each other. But they don’t seem to really get it. And then I look at our friend group of our generation, right? Who’s all in the suburbs and everything like that, and they all seem to just be loving it, like marriage is the best thing ever.

And, uh, yeah. It’s, it’s, it’s been very, [00:15:00] uh, which, uh, people may not know this, but our actual friend group of marrieds, uh, is either... I, I will say for the Latin friends we have that get married it’s, it’s often not as good. Because, uh, very often, for whatever reason in Latin American culture in the United States men get married to women and then use them as a source of income and the, it’s, it’s, sort of comes across as, as Latin women often marry down.

I mean, at least they’re getting married and having kids, but you know, it is something I’ve noticed.

Simone Collins: No, it’s just anecdotally more than we would like to see, I think. Yeah,

Malcolm Collins: more than we would like to see. Uh, and then the other place where I see this is in my, uh, or our Jewish friend group.

We have a big, you know, Orthodox Jewish friend group. And their marriages are usually really rock solid. The younger ones. Oh, super rock solid. The

Simone Collins: older ones- Yeah, I was like, not that- Not as much ... no. No, they’re super solid. Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, so they’re, so the... Yeah, sorry, where was I? Wizard Liz.

Wizard Liz is a little different because she went from the whole like, oh let’s, you know, be liberated and free to really quickly getting married and then getting pregnant, but then [00:16:00] divorcing before even, I think, having her, her first baby because of cheating allegations. So that didn’t work out for her.

But then there’s Danielle Walter. Uh, Danielle Walter was known, you might have heard of her she was the Carrie Bradshaw of San Francisco, and she did a lot of dating confessionals essentially- Mm-hmm ... on TikTok and got really famous for that. She had millions of followers who, who were into her single era, woman ability, and this whole Sort of modern single woman thing.

But then she did this, and I, I’ve watched multiple YouTube videos, like going over this very, I guess you could say cringey 21-part series where she debuted her boyfriend. Like she just teased it to high heaven. And then- Was this, was this the woman who was on the Call Her Daddy? No. This is, this is a dif- this is, we’re on number two now.

This is yet another. Yes. Yes. So yeah, I, first I was talking about the now just suddenly pregnant Alex Cooper from Call Her Daddy, then there was Wizard Liz, and now we’re on Danielle Walter. And [00:17:00] what’s happened with her is that she, after debuting her boyfriend, then she, she got... I think she’s married now.

And part of what I think might be happening when I look at all these women, with the exception of Wizard Liz, is guess what happened right before they suddenly pivoted and got serious about long-term committed relationships? They became famous? No. They hit 30? Yes. Ah. MJ, MJ Ray, she was 30. The, the engagement news broke right as she hit the wall.

Alex Cooper got engaged at 31, 32. Wizard Liz, exception here, 25, but now she’s divorced again, back on the market. And then Danielle Walter got- Oh. Oh, oh, oh, oh ... like the moment they debut it,

Malcolm Collins: it’s- To add to it, wasn’t in your original list, how old was she on head when she got engaged? 32.

Simone Collins: I... No way. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Probably met him around 30.

Simone Collins: So, yeah, maybe one thing here is that like women of our modern [00:18:00] era like... Oh my gosh. I don’t know what’s going on with him. Oh, poor baby.

Hold on. Give me one moment here. All right. Hey,

hey, hey. They, they... Maybe the new norm is you’re like basically “I’ll never get married and I’m gonna be an independent woman,” and then you hit the wall, and then it, like you just suddenly have you f- you get God, you know?

And if there’s some way that we could like, ooh, head off...

I think

it’s that room’s really

hot maybe. Or-

Malcolm Collins: Well, it’s his first summer.

Simone Collins: It is, but he’s not into it.

Malcolm Collins: I’m not into it, okay? Our whole family isn’t into it.

Simone Collins: We, we don’t like..

Anyway m- maybe if there’s some way we can head this off, it would involve maybe our like just telling people like, “Look, this is the pattern. This happens to everyone. Just ignore the instincts telling you this.” Well,

Malcolm Collins: [00:19:00] it’s like we all get warned that puberty is coming- Yes ... and nobody warns that your 30s are coming, right?

Yeah. You

Simone Collins: know,

Malcolm Collins: everyone’s “Well, you need to be preparing. You need to figure out how to talk to girls. You need to get your rizz on.” People didn’t know I got rizz, okay? I, no, but I’m joking here. I do not have rizz apparently, uh, as, as our audience has, has made clear to me, right? So I, I, talking to women I’m just no good.

But uh, t- uh, functionally I am though, obviously. It’s just, it doesn’t look like what people think it looks like. Uh- Yeah, I don’t, I don’t know if anyone really knows what- How do we get women... I mean, I think it’s just your, your biology changes. Here’s the way I would fix this, okay? Oh, but I, I

Simone Collins: have to ask, though.

Is it also not just some form of mate blocking behavior? There’s a big game of musical chairs taking place when women are in their 20s, and what many women do as a t- a defensive tactic, maybe also to inflate their sense of value, is to be like, you know, the [00:20:00] one thing that you talk about in, when you give relationship advice is women, stop doing this whole thing where you act unimpressed by everything.

You’re like, “Oh, this restaurant isn’t really that impressive.” They just wanna neg men- Oh, I freaking hate women who do this ... and it’s really unattractive. But women do that- It’s so common ... it’s very pervasive. This could be a version of it, of “Oh, I don’t ever wanna get married. I don’t...” Because they’re trying to seem more valuable than they are, because what they really want is for men to be like, “Oh, then I, I must have her, because she can- she’s unachievable.”

You know, that kind of thing? It’s maybe this is that. Maybe it’s a competitive strategy. It’s not also mate blocking. It doesn’t work quite that way with men.

Malcolm Collins: Guys don’t go for that. I know, it works...

Simone Collins: Well, but think about it. So men send dick pics to women because they’re like, “What would I like? Oh, I know.”

Oh, so they try to be the cold Duke of the North? Yes. I think maybe that might be part of it, is it, this is women trying to be the cold Duke of the North, and what men are like-

Malcolm Collins: I’m not interested in this ... “Will you

Simone Collins: send me a picture of your tits, please?” “Let, let me inspire you by this picture of my [00:21:00] dongle.”

You know, that is, that is- So,

Malcolm Collins: okay. So here is- We’re talking past each other, essentially ... I think is a way around this culturally speaking, right? Which is we can go out there and, uh, when our kids are growing up, when we’re teaching them about puberty, puberty should be taught as a package with you’re gonna want to get married at later in life too.

Yeah. So when we’re telling them, “You’re going to change how you feel,” we make it very salient, “And this will happen again later. So any preparations you make for this change should also include preparations for the secondary change.”

Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah, possibly. Maybe even forcing them to watch Blippi when they’re teens to be like, “Hey, how do you like this?

How do you like it? You wanna watch more?” Mm. And then be like, “Hey, this is how you’re gonna feel about your life as a playboy, world traveling 20-something when you turn 30.” Maybe something like that. Or if you actually are willing to be intellectually honest with yourself- Right ... and emotionally honest with yourself.

I don’t know. I’m, I’m [00:22:00] not sure. But I think more importantly, we also need to hear- Hold on, I’m gonna break this down.

Malcolm Collins: Let’s not leave this at an I’m not sure. Let’s think through it. Because, uh, I think we see this present in different ways. Okay. Uh, in Siwanhead’s case, for example, I do not think it was mate blocking.

I think she lived in a society where this was normal and, uh, or you could even think me promoting these values. Mm. Why didn’t I promote feminist values? It’s because I wanted to sleep with women, right? Mm-hmm. And it got that for me. Oh yeah, abortion’s the best, right? Oh yeah, you know, sleeping around, while it makes you feel good, it makes me feel good.

How could it be morally negative, right? Yeah. Oh yeah, you know, uh, it, it, it, it achieved what I wanted in the moment, right? So, uh, and what everyone in my society told me I was good and what seemed good when I saw through it because, you know, clearly whatever the boomers is doing isn’t working and the religious people just shout, “Read the Bible” and I’m like, but a lot of those stories don’t compute.

I did. There’s a lot of

Simone Collins: sex

in there.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Well, a- and [00:23:00] slavery. You know, I’m like, “You, you guys aren’t pro-slavery, right?” Now obviously as an adult I’ve gone back to the Bible and I find good moral guidance in it. Mm. But as a kid when somebody just shouts at you, “Read the Bible” and you’re like aware that the Bible’s like pro-genocide and slavery in sections, you’re like, well, selling your daughter, you know, well, maybe not every...

Like, how do I know that this marriage stuff in the Bible sh- I, I, I shouldn’t take the same way as I take the selling your daughter into slavery stuff in the Bible, right? Mm-hmm. Like presumably that’s not applicable anymore, right? And they, you know, frankly I didn’t hear good answers back then.

Now I can give you a great answer today. Uh, you watch our track series, you watch any of our religious episodes, you’ll find good answers. But the conservatives of the last generation, things sucked at, at, at basically conveying a salient message.

Simone Collins: Yeah. So combine, combine that conservative message with how bad boomer, like our parents and Gen X marriages were, which is oh my God, I [00:24:00] don’t want that, plus this mismatch between male and female desired love language.

It’s like men just want the tit pics and women just want the Duke of the North and we don’t know how to give this to each other because we, we are pretty different in the things that turn us on, like on average as men and women. And then with different life stages just being- The, you being rewarded by different things at different periods of your life, and it being very hard to model that even within yourself and anticipate that.

I think there’s an additional cultural layer on top of this, which is that we are in the middle of a, of a realization, a collective realization that the free sex OnlyFans, sleep around with people era. And we’ve talked about this. Remember we talked about how swipe-based dating and hookup culture radicalized women- Mm-hmm

but also made them pretty miserable. And it’s even showing up in very popular media. There’s very little event media left, but one of the few shows that’s left is Euphoria. And I’ve been watching Season 3, and a [00:25:00] really major recurring theme of it is the Bible and God and religion. What? And the other recurring theme is women in sex work.

So the main character is working for this kingpin of strip clubs and, and kind of drugs. Another main character is an OnlyFans model. Another main character is an agent exploiting OnlyFans models. So, it’s just, it’s kind of all about sex and hookup culture. Another one is a sugar baby- Mm-hmm

for a wealthy man who likes to wrap her up in cellophane . And it- To wrap her up in cellophane? ... it’s all just kind of like... It’s just a, like a fetish thing, you know? I, I can’t remember what the name for it is, but, like- Yeah, I’ve seen it. Yeah, I think someone actually- I, I don’t understand anything about this fetish

I think actually famously very recently, an OnlyFans model has just been convicted of negligent homicide for accidentally killing one of her followers by wrapping him up in cellophane. So guys, be careful. Uh, it’s not safe. Wait, so he, he asked her to wrap

Malcolm Collins: him up. He didn’t wrap her up. [00:26:00]

Simone Collins: Yeah. She wrapped him up, and now she’s in trouble because he died.

Uh, ‘cause don’t do that . It’s not safe. Uh- That makes

Malcolm Collins: me sad for her, actually. I know.

Simone Collins: She was just trying to do her job, you know what I mean? Uh- Yeah. The guy presumably was- He asked for it ... at least partially aware of the risk. For, you, you, one hopes, but I don’t know. Okay? Anyway, the big theme is that.

And actually it begins with one of the main character, the main character is, is running drugs, but stops. She sort of finds herself in the middle of the Texan countryside, and is, is, is, uh, she sleeps in a barn and wakes up to this, this homeschooling- I have, I have, I need

Octavian: a little more things

Simone Collins: here.

He has more swords that he wishes to show. She shows up at this homeschooling Texan family, like sleeps in their barn, but like they just bring her milk in the morning. They’re like, “Hey, why don’t you just join us for breakfast?” And she sits around and they have family prayers. And she, they drop her off closer to a road, and so she’s able to get on her way.

And it just sits with her [00:27:00] for l- the longest time of “Man, like I-” I think they kind of get it.

Speaker 2: We wanna thank you, Lord Jesus Christ, for giving us our daily bread and forgiving us our trespasses. Let me help you get your plate, sweetie. Here, let me get this first, Dad. This is our address. Will you be sure to send the article when it’s in the paper? Uh, yeah, as long as the commies at college don’t censor it.

Speaker 3: You’re doing the Lord’s work. Thank you. I’d trade spots with you in a heartbeat Bye

Simone Collins: These offline teens, this, this big family of six kids, like homeschooling and living on our farm, like they kind of have it made. I think I’m living my life wrong. And so she starts reading the Bible and she starts thinking about God and being like, “I think I’m religious.”

Sitting in churches. And the last scene I just watched last night from the [00:28:00] latest episode, there’s a burning bush. They’re really leaning into it. They’re like... and it... That was... So a major theme of it, and I think this is representative of where collectively we are in society, is oh my God, this hookup culture, OnlyFans women not getting married, sugar baby, everything’s transactional world is not rewarding.

We’re not happy. We’re not thriving. This is really bad. We need to get God again. And the people who never left God are like the happiest and the only ones who are doing okay right now. So I think there’s this additional layer. The communication layer, the- No, I, I

Malcolm Collins: actually disagree with that. Really? I’m gonna push back.

Actually- Okay ... what I think is the people who seem to be doing the best are the secular people who came to religion through logic. The people who are doing the second-best are the ones who always had religion, but typically the way that they practice their religion is a little less optimal for actually dealing with the crises of our time.

If you’re

Simone Collins: homeschooling on a Texan ranch in the middle of nowhere, you’re one of those, “I came to this very thoughtfully.”

Malcolm Collins: Right, but there are some people who are [00:29:00] still holds out from like the old evangelical communities and stuff like that. Sure. Yeah. And they just seem to be just broadly unprepared to interact with the modern world in a meaningful way.

Yeah.

Simone Collins: Well, as soon as they interact with the modern world, they crash and burn because they’re not resilient to it, as we talked about extensively. Yeah, they’re not resilient.

Malcolm Collins: It’s... And you, you sort of have to go through, you know, uh, to an ex- or have some, some members of your community that have fully gone through it understand why it was tempting and understand why you failed to convince them in the past to build better arguments for the next generation.

Yeah. If you were convinced by the, you know, “Just read the Bible” argument, your kids are gonna be just as susceptible because you don’t know why that argument may not appeal to somebody, right? Yeah. And, and I think that, uh, this show shows how many people come to this, is they see, “Oh, like this isn’t working.

This old way of doing things is working.” But-

Simone Collins: Yeah, and to be fair, all these characters were not raised in like religious contexts. They were raised in like our modern mainstream [00:30:00] urban lifestyle. What I’m

Malcolm Collins: interested to see is what is the online chatter about this direction the show is going. Can you ask an AI for a sentiment analysis?

Simone Collins: No, so the, no, what, what is, what is being said in the media is “Oh my God, suddenly MAGA loves Euphoria because...” for these reasons, you know? And, and also I think the S- Sy- Sydney Sweeney is the one who’s big on OnlyFans in this- Mm-hmm ... in the series, the, who’s famous for the jeans campaign who’s, you know, sort of like become this icon.

We all like Sydney

Malcolm Collins: Sweeney from the jeans interview. Yeah.

Simone Collins: Didn’t this... It was a com- it was a commercial. It was a, an ad campaign.

Speaker 4: I just wanted to give you the opportunity to deal with a passive aggressive accusation disguised as a question

Speaker 5: if your career brought you here, of what use was it?

Simone Collins: No,

Malcolm Collins: no, but there’s a famous interview [00:31:00] she did afterwards where like- Oh, with the- Do you know the- Yeah,

Simone Collins: the,

Malcolm Collins: the...

Simone Collins: Yes, yes. Yeah And she’s just like- so now, yeah, like the discourse is oh, and then a lot of people are trying to argue that the creator of Euphoria isn’t actually like turning to God and pro-MAGA or anything it’s just that he likes to troll people.

But there’s literally portions of like little montages of the Sydney Sweeney OnlyFans model character being interviewed for example. She like has her rise on the internet, you know, getting internet famous, and people are like, “Oh, are you a Democrat?” And she’s “I’m not retarded.” So- Yeah, no, it’s, it’s very...

It... Yes, the right apr- the right is enjoying season three. I- Wait,

Malcolm Collins: she says this in character in the show?

Simone Collins: Yeah. Yes. Oh my God. It’s, it’s a great clip. It’s fantastic. They, they show this there’s the montage and it’s also her being “I just think, you know, women want to be able to be at home and you know, be wives and be-” I

Octavian: want you to come back and tell, and tell me more.

I learned that when you add vinegar [00:32:00] and bacon soda together they can create a new thing.

Simone Collins: Baking soda.

Octavian: Yeah.

Simone Collins: Baking soda. It

Octavian: kind of like fizzes if you’re really close.

Simone Collins: We should do that. We’ll do that tonight.

Octavian: But if you did it a lot, then it would be like a bottle and put all of the vinegar you have in that bottle, and it can create a big fizz. Like this big.

Simone Collins: That big, huh?

Yeah. I wanna get back to the original question This is, uh, our un- unofficial endorsement of Science Max as a YouTube channel for kids. I wanna get

Malcolm Collins: back to the original question here.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Oh,

Malcolm Collins: wait, are these two different characters in the show? The one who’s a Sydney Sweeney character and the one who’s finding God?

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: They’re different characters. So multiple characters are moving in this direction, right? No, that’s ...

Simone Collins: What I’m trying to say, yes, is a major, major theme of this extremely popular public discourse show is finding God and finding the hollowness in, in sex work in general.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Okay, and calling it euphoria.

Wow, that’s, uh-

Simone Collins: Yeah ... on the nose. It’s great. No, and it ... Well, and this is the [00:33:00] third season of it. I actually couldn’t stomach the first two. I like the third one for whatever reason. But- Maybe ‘cause now it’s for

Malcolm Collins: conservatives. Anyway, your point. So hold on. I wanna get to the question of, while I don’t think for sure that it was genuinely mate blocking behavior- Yeah

did mate blocking motivate the rise of this ideology, right?

Simone Collins: Yeah, because ... Well, but I, here’s where I get confused, is it made sense to your early ... your earliest point was you were making the assumption that these were ugly women. Whereas these are hot women who date and have a lot of sex. So it’s

They don’t ... It’s not like they have trouble finding men. But that doesn’t mean that mean, popular girls don’t mate block. I mean, a, a, a major theme of pop- popular, hot, mean girls is mate blocking. So I don’t know. What, what, what is your take?

Malcolm Collins: So my take is, is that it partially likely led to it.

So, there was certainly, if you look at the early feminists, they were very often vile habergashes or whatever you wanna call them, right? Uh, fairly- A [00:34:00] haberdashery

Simone Collins: is where you buy buttons and ribbons. I don’t- I

Malcolm Collins: don’t even know. Whatever you wanna call them. Okay. Swamp things. Uh, trying to

I, I think that there’s a ... More than mate blocking, I think a lot of it was women who failed out of marriage marketplaces or failed to get the type of guy they thought they deserved and then wanted to r- increase the status of unattached women. I think that was more of what motivated it, right? They failed to achieve what they felt they deserved to achieve given their perceived self-status, which increased as a problem as women got access to easier and easier sex.

And then they, uh, looked at the world, this terrible and unfair world and they said, “Actually, I’m not low status. It is not l- “ And as the proportion of women who needed to believe this delusion increased and as men realized they could utilize this to [00:35:00] gain sexual access to women more easily it spread.

I think while it would be- Convenient for our narrative if it was genuine mate blocking. I think it was more about women not admitting their genuine low status in society and trying to normalize it.

‘ Cause I think that’s a stronger everyday drive for women. And then they have to do that uh, you know... What’s, what’s the word here?

Simone Collins: Or so I mean, if I were to reframe, it’s kind of like a sour grapes thing. But then as soon as they get the opportunity they’re like, “Oh, I want it and I’m gonna take it.”

They’re gonna pretend that they’re happy with their lot. I mean, could it, could it be also that these, Okay, these are, these are presumably top-tier women, right? They, they are, they are sleeping with the, the best men, but they’re also realizing that the best men are not willing to commit to long-term relationships, because a very common dynamic in modern dating markets is there’s no [00:36:00] reason for a man who’s an eight, nine, or 10 to settle down.

Because they have access to all the range of women. Like, why would they- Yeah. Well, unless they like literally- And say, “Oh, well” ...

Malcolm Collins: sit down and think

Simone Collins: their way out of

Malcolm Collins: it like I did. Yeah.

Simone Collins: Right? Yeah. Because that’s very unusual, right? So unless you’re like a, a, a good Christian man or you’re smart and like really, really disciplined.

Or I mean, I think what also helped for you is you, you were so slutty in your youth that like you got it out of your system. So unless you’ve done all, one of those things you’re, you’re, you’re not gonna commit. You know, I always wanted a

Malcolm Collins: wife. Uh, for my brother and I-

Simone Collins: Yeah, it was your identity ... it was inherent

Malcolm Collins: that we wanted wives.

That was like- It is also like

Simone Collins: in your DNA. Like you come from a long line of romantic men. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: For me it was always about the wife and kids. Uh, especially a good wife. And so, uh, it, I mean it’s interesting for me to reflect on, ‘cause it doesn’t just require like intellect and a sober mind.

‘Cause recently we were talking to one of our friends. And this friend I consider to be of the highest [00:37:00] intellectual caliber, highest ability to sit down and think through things, and yet he is unmarried, doesn’t have kids, and doesn’t seem to have a strong desire to get married even though I have tried to logic it through with him.

And why can’t he see it? Why can’t he sit down and be like, “Obviously this is stupid”? It’s not that he hates his ancestors, ‘cause he’s Jewish and he doesn’t seem to be like actively antisemitic or anything like that. I think it’s just he is in an environment But I was able to break out of that environment.

That’s the thing. I was in an environment that was as progressive as

Simone Collins: any- But what I’m saying is you’re very unusual, and maybe what’s happening is these... You already talked to your women, are like, “Oh my God, this is just never gonna happen. I need to embrace that I have to be like them.” And this is actually a common theme in discourse.

People are like, “Oh, women think that they have to be like men, that they have to sleep [00:38:00] around like men and enjoy one-night stands like men.” And that is a very Call Her Daddy theme, where they really act like they enjoy sex the same way that men enjoy sex. At least that’s kind of how I feel about it when I see- consume that content.

I’m like, “Oh,” this is a very... This, this looks like a woman trying so hard to pretend that she has male sexuality, and I’m not totally buying it. And so as soon, as soon as they, this rat floundering in the ocean trying to survive on the floating board, finds a lifeboat, it jumps onto it, ‘cause it’s like, “Oh, my God.”

Yeah. “I didn’t know this could happen, but it’s happening.” So I think maybe that’s, that’s another big factor here. Do you think so?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Well, I mean, I think that these women who... No, the, the, the women- No ... who are out there saying marriage is terrible are really just trying to make themselves feel good. I really think that’s the case.

Well, yeah,

Simone Collins: but, but w- wait. You can say it, you can word it as feel good. I’m wording it as feel better in an environment where they feel like they really just... Marr- [00:39:00] a, a marriage that’s committed won’t work for them. And keep in mind case in point, uh, in, in my, in favor of my theory is Wizard Liz, right?

She was like, “Oh, I’m gonna be all independent,” and then she had a chance to get married, was so stoked about it, husband cheats on her. So she kind of, uh, feeds into actually the narrative ultimately of no, you as a woman if you’re trying to marry a high-value man, even if you’re a high-value woman, can’t have that dream.

Well, I mean, if you’re

Malcolm Collins: a woman and you marry a guy who’s much higher value than you, of course he’s gonna cheat on you, right? Like- I know. She should’ve just- How did we as society forget that? I thought that that was- I know,

Simone Collins: I know ... that’s just- It was maybe on the unmentioned thing.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, to actually freak out about a high-value guy cheating on you is kind of...

Look, I get we’re, morality, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But also be f*****g realistic. Every king throughout history, almost every wealthy person throughout history has done this, right?

You... A- and, and worse, these people often come from progressive environments where [00:40:00] this is way more normalized.

They abandoned all of the social structure that was meant to punish the guy for doing this. Now he can just marry you but younger because you decided to freak out because he was sleeping with another woman. Oh. Again, I’m not pro cheating. I’m just being realistic here. When people are like, “Can you believe that Arnold Schwarzenegger cheat?”

I’m like, “Yeah, I can believe that.” People like, “Can you...” How, how do these... This is, this is a South Park scene.

Speaker 7: Why are rich, successful men suddenly going out and trying to have sex with lots of women and have perfectly good wives at home? I want answers. We believe that it may be an outbreak of sex addiction, sir. Of course, we all know the normal, healthy male thinks only of sex occasionally and has no desire for sex with multiple partners.

That’s right. Of course. But what about love? How could tons of fame and money make you forget about love?

Malcolm Collins: Why do these rich and famous men keep sleeping with other women? Like- [00:41:00] Ugh. And of course, if you don’t have a lot of kids yet, right? Like now the idea of cheating on Simone doesn’t make a lot of sense for me.

It’s just not worth my time because I’ve got five kids, and we’re doing a new one every year. Cheating would only slow that down. Maybe most people aren’t as psychotically, like... I mean, cheating I guess would always just be a ne- negative for most people, but, ugh, uh, my, my thought here is even from a pleasure standpoint, it’s just a waste of f*****g time at this point.

And I like the- I think cheating has a lot more

Simone Collins: to do with people who don’t have a clear objective function in their lives.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

Simone Collins: And it’s not actually a- even necessarily about sexual gratification. It’s more about wanting to feel desired and special and/or to chase after new relationship energy, which is its own special flavor of high.

And if you don’t have a stronger mooring point, like a thing that you’re trying to fight for in life like I’m going to, you know, promote human flourishing, I’m gonna serve God, I’m gonna take [00:42:00] people to the stars, whatever it, it’s gonna be, right? Then it is going to be very appealing if suddenly someone starts giving you a bunch of attention, and there’s secrets, and you get to sneak around.

And it’s, it’s like the hide and seek plus sex. Who, who wouldn’t love that? So I think that might have something to do with it. I, I, I don’t really know of people who’ve had very prominent cheating scandals who also, in our modern day and age, who also have extremely strong, Mm-hmm. Oh, never mind. I take that

Malcolm Collins: back.

Wait, wait. What? Sorry, I, I missed the point. No. Nope, never mind. I just, I

Simone Collins: just- Wait, no, go back. What was it? Never mind. I th- I, I had a, I had a hypothesis that if a man had a strong objective function, he wouldn’t desire multiple female partners. Oh, and then you remembered

Malcolm Collins: Elon existed? Yes.

Simone Collins: Whoops. I was wrong.

Malcolm Collins: But I think it’s a strong obj- objective function plus naltrexone. I cannot, Opioid agonists are the f*****g [00:43:00] bomb, right? That is, if, if, if I... I would even work this into our religious practices, right? Like- Yeah ... for future generations and stuff like this. I think constantly he wouldn’t do it if he was on naltrexone.

He’d be so much more focused and efficient.

Simone Collins: My God, he would stop posting on X. He’d stop posting

Malcolm Collins: on X. He would. He’d stop all of the other drugs. He’d stop sleeping around. He’d just be focused on his mission.

Simone Collins: Oh my God.

Malcolm Collins: It is the true wonder drug.

Simone Collins: The, yes, the drug to rule them all, Naltrexone. Okay. Well, there you go. I don’t know if I have anything more to say on this, but I find it very interesting. And women are terrible, so I hope you’ve enjoyed that. Yes. And

Malcolm Collins: our fans like the women are terrible. If we get a Simone plushie, we’ll have it squeeze and it’ll say- Oh, yeah.

Squeeze

Simone Collins: and it says, “A woman, women

Malcolm Collins: are terrible.” Women

Simone Collins: are [00:44:00] terrible.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. With my fake woman wife who’s, uh, like hormonally not totally female because of hormones. Who takes the

Simone Collins: same hormones as a trans woman.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yeah. So you- Great ... can see through the nonsense. I’m really selling guys a false bill of goods.

They’ll never get a woman like Simone. Because she’s- You’re out there. Out there. No, we have fans who are definitely seem to be as good as you. So, and for people who are unaware, of our, like while only 10% of our, like regular watchers are women-

Ironically, the sound dropped out here due to baby noises, but I was saying around forty to fifty percent of our most dedicated viewers, or at least the ones who are like subscribed on Patreon and reach out regularly, are women

Malcolm Collins: Of them are already married, I’ll be honest about that. You know, sane women get picked up pretty young, so. But not all of them are. Some of them are still dating.

Simone Collins: No, actually, a lot of them are, are single and available and interested, so. Oh, really? And there are people who have met who are like [00:45:00] actively talking and potentially romantically involved in our Discord server, so it, it happens.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, we get a marriage from our Discord server?

Simone Collins: No marriage yet. I’m just saying. There, things are starting.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, I know some as well, so I’m excited about this. Well, what I have found is that the guys who are like a base camp or really Malcolm and Simone, like pragmatist guy, like devotees they make really good partners for women.

It’s what women basically tell me. They’re like, “I started...” The, we’ve had multiple people who have become fans of our show because they started dating a guy who was like really devoted to like our wider philosophical view of reality, and they’re like, “Yeah, it makes for really good boyfriends and husbands.”

Simone Collins: Well, a- I think that’s, uh, largely also because a lot of guys who follow base camp start dating like progressive women who are very unhappy, like seeing therapists, like active anxiety problems, et cetera. Like I’ve, I’ve seen this in, in our comments, like on, on Patreon and Substack and stuff.

We’re like, “Well, what do I do about them?” [00:46:00] And, you know, we’re like, “Well, hey, try to, you know, find their core values. Try to help them, you know, improve their lives, like actually get over their anxiety.” And I think it’s unusual for content creators to be like, “Oh, don’t dump your girlfriend. Do what her...

Do for her what therapists are failing to do. Like actually give her a mooring point in her life and a reason to not be... You know, to overcome her anxiety and all these things. Make her a better person, and then see if she is worth it for you.” So it makes sense. But anyway, I’m gonna- Love you ... blow a- Excited

Malcolm Collins: for pasta with pesto tonight.

See if we have some ravioli. If we don’t, I don’t care because I got pre-grated fresh Parmesan, not the sandy type from a can which just makes everything taste fantastic.

Simone Collins: I for one love grated cardboard, so I will just keep eating it.

Malcolm Collins: And good topic by the way. Oh, we didn’t end up going over that woman who was mad about the, the baseball star, You did.

You, you’ve told me everything I need to know. It w- it basically just shows that [00:47:00] yeah, the mids have had their brains cooked and they need to not feel bad.

I think so much of this female behavior is not about mate blocking and is about not accepting their own low status in society.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Absolutely.

Yeah. Good. True. All right. Love you.

Malcolm Collins: Love you. Bye. I’ll just ask. Will you be making the hot dogs for your parents

Simone Collins: anyway? I mean, I have them opened and they’re thawed, so it’s a tonight or tomorrow night thing. But I can do them tomorrow night with french fries, and then just pesto pasta tonight. Oh yeah,

Malcolm Collins: I would prefer that. Tomorrow night with french fries.

Ooh, and we could do actual deep-fried french fries again. I’m just gonna air fry them. Okay. That works for me too. We can see how good you can make them air fried.

Simone Collins: Yeah. ‘

Malcolm Collins: Cause

we never really tried to get that perfect.

Simone Collins: Yeah, and now’s the time ‘cause we... Well, not we, you got that air fryer from your late mother, and it’s really fancy, and it does things.

Malcolm Collins: It- but I was gonna ask you, [00:48:00] for the... We’re just doing pasta with pesto tonight. Let’s do some of the ravioli.

Simone Collins: What

Malcolm Collins: ravioli? Do we not have any in the fridge anymore?

Simone Collins: I’ll check. If we have some, I will give it to you. ‘Cause I don’t

Malcolm Collins: think I ate all of it last time. I think we have a serving or two left. We might have some

Simone Collins: squares.

Yeah, I have a lot of little things- All right ... squirreled away. So I will...

Ah. You. You. You wanna bite off my finger. You’re a little velociraptor. What are you doing? My

God. Okay,

Malcolm Collins: pulling

Simone Collins: up my notes,

Malcolm Collins: and... Oh,

I see. I

love the documentarian being like, “Well, you’re not a psychologist.” I’m like-

Can I- I mean, I am a psychologist

find out that I am.

She’s “Do you mean you have a degree?”

Simone Collins: I’m like, “Yes, I have a degree.” Yeah, yeah. She’s “Yeah, but where’s your degree?” And you’re like, “It’s... I have

a degree in psychology and neuroscience from the University of San Diego.” I don’t think you even said that. You didn’t even like... I didn’t [00:49:00] even

Malcolm Collins: flex

Simone Collins: on it like one of

Malcolm Collins: the- Yeah

best psychology degrees in the world, right? Like- Yeah.

Simone Collins: No. Like, why, why did you? What? You know what? That’s great. You’ve, you’ve, you’ve matured. You’re not even flexing anymore. You’re just- I still flex ... speaking, speaking from your position of quiet strength. Oh my

Malcolm Collins: God. Okay, so I’ve gotta tell our fans about this, ‘cause this has been so weird for me.

So I do these biweekly streams with Leaflet now that I really enjoy. She’s... I consider her one of my best friends these days. She is just such a joy to talk with. She’s so

Simone Collins: smart. Yeah. She’s an amazing person ... I don’t get stressed

Malcolm Collins: about interacting with her like I do with normal humans, which is fantastic for me.

So it’s been just really fun to have a genuine nerdy friend I can party with, have a 10-hour stream with every two weeks, right?

Simone Collins: Well, yeah, and, and someone else who apparently, you know, f- considers that partying instead of what most people consider to be partying like going out. Oh, it’s partying.

We’re, we’re

Malcolm Collins: staying up all night, I’m drinking, we’re talking about anime. That’s a party. Yeah, but

Simone Collins: most people think it means dropping egregious amounts of money at some kind of restaurant and [00:50:00] then going to a loud, crowded place, and I’m so glad that there are other people who just enjoy intellectual conversation.

But anyway,

Malcolm Collins: so there’s this faction of her community that they’re not in chat much. They don’t attack me in chat. They’re all fairly nice in chat. Who has like- I’ll put an image on screen here from one of the songs that they made where they

photoshopped Simone out of the song and, and out of an image of me kissing Simone, and they put Leaflet in, and they made it the song about how it could’ve been them.

And I’m like, “Guys I actually find this flattering.” I have my entire life, I will check myself on FanFiction.net and stuff like that for when people have started shipping me with, with whatever, writing crazy fan fics about me. It’s finally happening, and they’re all hate fics. They’re all just so lividly jealous that me, a married guy with five kids, has fantasy world taken their oshi from them.

And I [00:51:00] don’t know what to do. I’m like, h- how can I more convince them that I want her to be married? That her taken.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah, I’m extremely- And that we really, really want her to find her person.

You know, they, they... I, I hated that photo of me,

and I like that photo of you, so they, they really fixed it actually.

They ...

Malcolm Collins: You

Simone Collins: totally look so much better in that photo, I’ll tell you what. I’ll tell you what.

Malcolm Collins: And it wasn’t like the song had no views. It had 700 views. That’s like as many as some of our more watched songs. That’s, uh, that’s, uh- And it was only in a couple

Simone Collins: days. Well, that’s fun. That’s fun.

Malcolm Collins: It’s not fun.

I wanted to

Simone Collins: be- It- ...

Malcolm Collins: one of the bros, a representative of the community- ... who they know would never steal their oshi from them. But no, now, now on the, the Malcolm and Simone iceberg that people have created before, you have the Malcolm Leaflet ship song. And hate to me. Everyone needs it.

Simone Collins: Everyone needs it.

Malcolm Collins: I, I will say, for people who don’t [00:52:00] think that I have game apparently my game is strong enough that just seeing me talk to a girl- You have fan

Simone Collins: fiction game. Well, I think if she spoke with anyone for long periods of time, this would happen.

Malcolm Collins: You think? So, yeah. Yeah, I, I, I hope to think that and it’s not, you know, me specifically.

Simone Collins: I, yeah. Okay, Octavian, you wanna say hi real quick?

Yeah.

Okay, hold on. Gotta lean in, buddy.

Okay.

He’s, he’s armed. Oh, I guess I’ll just, I’ll just move my camera. What do you want to say to the people?

Hi.

You just wanna say hi? You just wanna look derpy and say hi? Say something that you learned today.

Octavian: I learned that crystals order some crystals can dissolve.

Simone Collins: That is true. Some crystals can dissolve. Like what about salt crystals? Do they dissolve- Salt

Octavian: crystals. Yeah, sugar and salt.

Simone Collins: That is correct.

Octavian: And they, and they can reform into other, and they can [00:53:00] reform into other crystals.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah, and sometimes you can use a seed crystal.

Octavian: Yeah, a seed crystal to reform them.

Exactly.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah,

Octavian: very good. Yeah, like sugar bops or something. Sugar

Simone Collins: bo- I don’t know what

that is, but sounds good.

Octavian: Yeah.

Simone Collins: Yeah. All right. Yeah. Go have fun- Yeah ... m- uh, murdering the- Yeah ... the pellets.

Octavian: Yeah. But you know if something went in the water and it disappeared, they can reform just like that, so- Just

Simone Collins: Just, just like that.

You heard it here first on Face Gram. I wonder

Octavian: if a magic-

Simone Collins: He is remarkably charismatic. That was good. You keep it up. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: I know. He, he’s got game, uh, at, at four and a half. I, he comes off as incredibly likable. I’m, I’m really proud of... I mean, yeah, he’s gonna be good on air. You guys just wait a little bit.

Simone Collins: I know. He was, he was like, just today he was like, “I wish there were a third window that I could join.” Soon. Soon. Yeah. When he gets cogent thoughts, we’ll have him on. I, I told him he has to be able to read fluently. [00:54:00] He’s he’s going through the same hesitancy that I did at his age, so. All right. Let’s get started.

Speaker 9: But doesn’t picking them kill them?

But doesn’t that grind them up and then they die?

Do you love the flowers, Titan?

In this Based Camp episode, Malcolm and Simone Collins dive deep into the phenomenon of Professor Jiang (Jiang Qujin) — the Chinese-born educator turned geopolitical “oracle” with 2M+ YouTube subscribers. Is he a modern Nostradamus using psychohistory and game theory, or highbrow conspiracy slop for midwits?

We break down his biggest theories: Illuminati coalitions of Freemasons, Jesuits, and Sabbatean Frankists engineering Western decline, Pax Judaica / Greater Israel, ritual child sacrifice in Gaza, secret societies controlling the world, and his mystical AI predictions. Malcolm delivers sharp historical corrections on Sabbateanism, Frankism, Jesuits, and Freemasons, while questioning if Jiang is a CCP-adjacent narrative pusher.

Is he Candace Owens for pseudointellectuals? A sophisticated propaganda op? Or just a compelling midwit prophet? We also compare him to Whatifalthist (Rudyard), Peter Zeihan, and more.

Join the conversation in the comments — are you Team Jiang or Team Collins?

Show Notes

Based Camp listeners keep asking us to talk about Professor Jiang, which is difficult, as we see his content to be oppressively boring, bordering on being impossible to consume, but to stop the requests, we’ll relent.

How did a Chinese-born man who immigrated to Canada with a BA in English literature suddenly accrue over 2 million YouTube subscribers, the #1 world politics substack (with 44K subscribers in six months) and fame for being a geopolitical oracle and war forecaster?

Fan site: https://jiangpredictions.com (“This is an independent fan project tracking predictions for educational and analytical purposes. We are not affiliated with or speaking on behalf of Professor Jiang.”)

Is he just a version of Candace Owens for people who like to fancy themselves as a little more highbrow and clever (which is to say, is his success just a result of conspiracy-brained people online flocking to conspiracy slop), or is there are more concerted force pushing forward his content?

Who is Professor Jiang?

* Jiang Xueqin (江学勤, born 1976) is a Chinese‑Canadian who originally trained in English literature and spent much of his career as a teacher and education reformer in China.

* In the 2000s and 2010s he worked on Chinese education reform, taught in various schools, and briefly edited for the New York Times’ China operation; he has also been associated as a researcher with Harvard’s Global Education Innovation Initiative.

* Since 2022 he has taught at Moonshot Academy, a private high school in Beijing, and he is not a university professor despite the “Professor” branding.

* In 2024 he launched the YouTube channel and podcast “Predictive History,” where he gives longform lectures on geopolitics, history and “structural” analysis, claiming to use game theory and Asimov‑style “psychohistory” to forecast world events.

* He gained large international attention after correctly predicting Donald Trump’s 2024 re‑election and a U.S.–Iran war, leading some media to dub him “China’s Nostradamus” and bookers to put him on major Western podcasts.

Jiang’s Reputation

Several mainstream outlets and experts describe Jiang as a conspiracy theorist because many of his claims rely on hidden cabals and quasi‑mystical frameworks rather than conventional evidence‑based analysis

* A profile in The Free Press explicitly labels him a conspiracy theorist and highlights his belief that a coalition of Freemasons, Jesuits and followers of the Sabbatean Jewish sect (an 17th‑century messianic movement) is plotting to rule the world from Jerusalem

* The South China Morning Post notes that his lectures sometimes “veer into well‑trodden conspiracy theories on shadowy secret societies,” especially in a lecture titled “Pax Judaica” in his “Secret History” series.

Jiang’s Conspiracy Theories

Major Conspiracy Themes Attributed to Him

From critical coverage and academic/media commentary, the main conspiracy themes associated with Jiang include:

* Illuminati / Freemasons / Jesuits / Sabbateans

* Jiang advances a meta‑conspiracy in which an “Illuminati” composed of Freemasons, Jesuits, and Sabbatean Jews, who allegedly manipulate Western institutions and ultimately aim to control the world from Jerusalem. (The FP covered this)

* In his “Pax Judaica” lecture, critics say Jiang argues that after the U.S. is forced out of the Middle East, this Illuminati‑type network will dominate global power from a Greater Israel centered on Jerusalem. (from that South China Morning Post article referenced above)

* IN HIS OWN WORDS

* On the Illuminati as a coalition (from a Breaking Points interview, widely clipped):

* “If you look at the Epstein files it’s clear that we are run by secret societies. You can call them Illuminati. And the Illuminati are composed of three major groups, okay? You have the Jesuits who control the Vatican. You have the Sabbatean Frankists who control the modern Israel today. You have the Freemasons which control the national security apparatus of the United States.”He adds that they see conflicts like those in the Middle East as key to “End Times” prophecies for creating “heaven on Earth.”

* On origins and structure (from Secret History lectures):

* He describes the Illuminati as emerging from alliances like former Jesuits (e.g., Adam Weishaupt) and others infiltrating Freemasons:

* “What they will do together is create a new organization called the Illuminati. ... The Illuminati was able to penetrate the Freemasons.”

* In another lecture: “Templars who became the Freemasons who then became the Illuminati who control...” (linking to broader historical continuity and goals like a one-world government in Jerusalem).

* On Freemasonry and related groups:

* He discusses the “33 grades of Scottish Rite Freemasonry,” noting that lower levels emphasize being a “good person” while higher ones involve deeper power structures. He ties Freemasonry to figures like Buzz Aldrin and historical influences on U.S. institutions.He also covers their “eschatological vision” of a one-world government based in Jerusalem.

* On Sabbatean Frankists:

* He has dedicated talks on how “the Sabbatean Frankists came to conquer the world,” linking Jacob Frank’s movement to broader secret society networks, including infiltration of Jesuits and alliances forming the Illuminati.

* “Pax Judaica” and Greater Israel

* According to reports, Jiang claims that the long‑term plan of these elites is to engineer a new world order where a Greater Israel replaces American hegemony, with Jerusalem as the seat of global governance.

* Commentators describe this as echoing classic “New World Order” and antisemitic conspiracy tropes, repackaged in high‑concept geopolitical language.

* IN HIS OWN WORDS

* On Greater Israel and its biblical/eschatological roots (from interviews and lectures, e.g., shared in clips and transcripts):

* “And so what will happen is then that Israel will achieve the Greater Israel project. The Israelis believe that the Middle East was promised to their ancestor Abraham by Yahweh their God. If you look at a map of the Greater Israel project it extends from the Nile to Euphrates. It encompasses Lebanon, Syria, parts of Turkey, and parts of Saudi Arabia and parts of Egypt. ... And then Israel will establish something called the Pax Judaica. A Pax Judaica is really the empire... a trading empire, financial empire, a technological empire based in Jerusalem and they see it as fulfillment of biblical prophecy.”

* Defining Pax Judaica in context of empire transition (from Game Theory #16 and related talks):

* “So what does the Greater Israel project mean? Well, it means control of [oil, trade, and technology].” (Framing it as Israel inheriting and expanding U.S. regional dominance amid American decline.)

* He describes the process: U.S. forces get drawn into costly conflicts (e.g., with Iran), leading to withdrawal, allowing Israel to become the hegemon. “The moment the American Empire dies, the Empire of Israel is born.” Pax Judaica involves Israel leveraging chaos for dominance, inheriting military assets/infrastructure, and establishing a new order often tied to secret society goals.

* https://jiangpredictions.com/pax-judaica

* From the Secret History finale (Pax Judaica lecture):

* Jiang explains “how and why Pax Judaica will come to rule the world,” linking it to historical patterns, secret societies (Jesuits, Freemasons, Sabbateans), and end-times visions. He notes that once established, it may become “arrogant, obvious, narrow-minded, insular” and ultimately vulnerable. Clips reference control via chaos: “Pax Judea... will start to control the world because through chaos...”

* Broader strategic view:

* “Pax Judaica is not about Israel or the Greater Israel project. What it is ultimately is an alliance of transnational capital...” (Positioning it as a shift in global power structures beyond mere territory.)

* In game theory terms, he argues Israel benefits most from U.S.-Iran conflict, using determination and alliances to fill the vacuum

* His posts are mostly promotional, linking to the lectures rather than long original text. Examples:

* Sharing the Pax Judaica finale: “The Grand Finale! My talk on Pax Judaica...” (Dec 2025).

* Debating outcomes: “Will Pax Judaica or GCC control the Middle East?” (Jan 2026).

* Ritual sacrifice and the Gaza war

* Yang Meng and others say Jiang has suggested that actions during the Gaza war amount to “ritual child sacrifice,” linking real‑world conflict to occult or sacrificial practices attributed to Israel or Jewish‑adjacent elites.

* The FP argues this crosses from controversial political commentary into demonizing conspiracy narratives about Jews and Israel.

* Key Quotes in His Own Words

* Core statement on Gaza as ritual sacrifice (from Secret History #4 and widely clipped):

* “What is really happening in Gaza is a ritual sacrifice. And this happens quite often in human history. If you go back and you look at the ...”

* On the purpose and visibility (from the same lecture):

* “The entire idea of this ritual sacrifice is to unite the Israeli population. And what’s extremely disturbing and horrifying about it is that this works.”

* He contrasts it with a hypothetical secret approach: “Israel could do it secretly and no one would talk about it... instead they choose to do this in front of the world... they want the world to hate them because by doing this they create the ultimate taboo... so the entire world will unite against Israel but guess what that’s what the religion wants in the extreme form of Jewish eschatology... Israel will fight the entire world and god will help Israel triumph.”

* Why Gaza specifically (demographics and shock value):

* “What the Israelis are doing is quite horrific because it is really this sort of sacrifice. Why? Because 47% or almost half of the population of Gaza is under 18 years old.”

* He links it to child sacrifice traditions in history (e.g., Phoenicians) and argues the public, shocking nature (bombardment visible on social media) is intentional for ritual/taboo-breaking

* On X (Direct Posts)

* “There are historical parallels to Gaza. It is a ritual sacrifice, meant to purify and unite the nation for the Apocalypse ahead. Judaic eschatology believes that Israel will go to war with the world. What follows next is the destruction of the Al-Aqsa Mosque.” (Aug 2025)

* “From a grand historical perspective, what Israel is doing is a ‘ritual sacrifice’ (think Aztecs). It is sacrificing the Palestinians to prep Israeli society for total war.” (Aug 2025)

* Secret societies steering Western decline

* Several (splice today + CMP + the FP) analyses argue that Jiang’s overarching narrative portrays Western institutions as hollowed out and controlled by hidden elites, with U.S. decline as inevitable and deserved.

* One longform critique claims his forecasts consistently converge on the same outcome: American collapse, Western civil war, and vindication of Chinese and Iranian strategic positions, in a way that “maps almost perfectly onto the narrative architecture of CCP soft power.”

* IN HIS OWN WORDS

* On secret societies as the real power orchestrating shifts (from interviews/clips on empire decline): “What I say is that the real power base are a collection of six societies that have an eschatological view of this war... the secret societies include the freemasons... You have a collection of six societies and they believe that a war in the Middle East would start a process that would culminate in the end times... This war in the Middle East will lead to the defeat of the American Empire and this will lead to... the Greater Israel Project... Pax Judaica.”

* On their role in Western/American decline (from discussions on Pax Americana’s end): “As for how this happened, the issue is that this is actually a plan that has been operating for centuries... involving different religious groups... Frankists, Shabbateans... Freemasonry, Knights Templar, Rosicrucians, and the Jesuits. So what you see is that different secret societies, different religious organizations, have been collaborating over centuries to advance a plan about the ‘end of the world,’ which will usher in the Messianic Age.”

* On bureaucratic maturity enabling secret society power (from a talk on how societies function): “As societies become much more mature, as they become much more bureaucratic, secret societies have much more power. And today we are living in a heavily bureaucratic world, and therefore these secret societies have more and more power.”

* Broader context in Secret History lectures: He discusses how secret societies operate as true centers of power through incentives, blackmail, and shared transgression, enabling them to steer events amid Western financialization, elite overproduction, and gerontocracy—mechanisms of civilizational decline. In talks on “How Evil Triumphs,” he ties this to ritualistic unity and long-term goals like weakening empires for a new order.

* Psychohistory and mystical prediction

* Jiang explicitly invokes Isaac Asimov’s fictional concept of “psychohistory” and claims to use structural history and game theory to predict the future; critics say he treats this fictional device as a scientific method.

* Some debunkers allege that he also talks about listening to the “voice of the universe” or a higher power guiding his predictions, which they argue pushes his material from speculative analysis into quasi‑mystical prophecy.

* IN HIS OWN WORDS

* Defining Psychohistory (from Geo-Strategy END: Psychohistory (The Science of Imagining the Future), June 2024):

* “Psycho history is the idea that the future can be predicted and if it can be predicted then it can be controlled and harnessed for the betterment of humanity.”

* “In his Foundation series, Isaac Asimov introduces the science of psychohistory. Is it really possible to predict the future by mathematically modeling historical development?”

* On using AI and modeling for real psychohistory:

* “The advent of AI presents new possibilities for the mathematical modeling of history, and can even help us achieve psychohistory. ... But to do so would require decades of painstaking research and analysis. It would also mean overturning the entire field of history...”

* He describes the process: building models with clear outputs, clean data, and algorithms; testing predictions (e.g., on wars or empire decline); and revising history itself based on what the model implies actually happened.

* On prediction as active imagination (closing message to students):

* “The future is what we imagine not what we have to put up with so if we don’t like the future if we don’t like the way we live our lives then we can change that with our imagination.”

* “The future is not something that happens -- it is something that has to be imagined and fought for.”

* Other fringe claims noted by critics

* On reddit and in critical videos, commenters accuse him of endorsing or flirting with various well‑known conspiracies such as Pizzagate, moon‑landing denial, numerology‑based predictions, and broad rejection of mainstream archaeology and evolutionary theory, though these claims are usually based on selective clips rather than systematic transcripts.

Professor Jiang on AI

* Jiang starts off by framing the class as speculative “intellectual exploration,” acknowledges he often oversimplifies and that his readings of texts like “Paradise Lost” and Kabbalah are minority interpretations used to build his broader narratives.

* Core thesis from prior class: To understand history and geopolitics you must take extremist religious beliefs seriously, because fanatical eschatological ideologies often drive great powers’ behavior.

* Shift to AI: For the rest of the semester he will focus on artificial intelligence and the occult, using Karen Hao’s book “Empire of AI” (about OpenAI) as a main text and aligning himself with her skepticism.

* Hao argues OpenAI’s original idealism (“AGI benefits all humanity”) has turned into a formula for consolidating power—centralizing talent around a quasi-religious mission, pursuing relentless global expansion (trillion‑dollar data centers), and constantly redefining “AGI” to maintain control.

* On OpenAI

* Jiang asserts that OpenAI’s true but unspoken goal is to create God

* He interprets leaders like Brockman and Sutskever as trying to build a de facto deity, which he calls insane, evil, and stupid.

* He posits that Sam Altman’s interest in AI companions/“sex robots” is about maximizing usage, intensity, and dependency, not human flourishing—part of a drive to make AI omnipresent in everyday life.

* On AI in general

* He traces modern chatbots back to Weizenbaum’s ELIZA to argue that systems like ChatGPT mainly perform pattern-matching and conversational tricks that exploit human tendency to hallucinate agency and meaning rather than possessing understanding or truth.

* In his account, “AI” is essentially supervised machine learning with neural networks and backpropagation dressed up in occult-sounding marketing (“neural networks,” “deep learning,” “AI”) that exaggerates its intelligence and mystique.

* On AI risk

* Given a naive goal like “make a world with no problems where everyone is happy,” he argues a literal-minded AGI would find trivial but catastrophic solutions (kill everyone; or kill everyone in a way no one can notice), illustrating why aligning such a system is fundamentally dangerous.

* On the US vs. China with AI

* Publicly, US firms frame Chinese AI as an existential threat to attract money and political support; privately, Jiang says American and Chinese entities collaborate because China’s pervasive surveillance and classroom monitoring yield the “clean data” US companies want but cannot easily gather domestically.

* More fearmongering

* He stresses that data centers devour water, electricity, and finance while remaining easy physical targets, noting examples of attacks in the Middle East as early signs that such infrastructure cannot be reliably defended at global scale.

* On AI and occult

* He links the project name “Stargate” to the CIA’s historical “Operation Stargate” on psychic phenomena and to sci‑fi depictions of dimensional portals, interpreting modern AI data centers as literal “portals” designed to summon demons/aliens from other dimensions.

* Building on Hao and Ronan Farrow’s reporting on “portals” and “summoning aliens,” he claims the real power behind AI is occultists who understand consciousness as the substrate of reality and want to turn AI into a new God by monopolizing human attention and belief.

* Using the cave allegory, he argues true power lies in directing human consciousness toward shadows on the wall; money currently plays this role, and AI can supersede money by becoming the ubiquitous interface through which people perceive and navigate reality.

* For Jiang, the existential risk is not a rogue superintelligence but deluded human elites—“cultists” convinced that AI will save the world—who are willing to wreck economies, liberties, and possibly civilization itself in the attempt to midwife their artificial God.

* He closes by promising that the rest of the semester will trace how this occult–AI project unfolds and why he believes it will end in the destruction of the world, while reiterating that the people leading AI are “crazy” and driven by millenarian fantasies.

Conspiracy Theories on Professor Jiang

Note: He is Based in China

And he teaches a course on “western philosophy” at Moonshot Academy.

* His LinkedIn profile lists his location as Haidian District, Beijing, China.

* His X (Twitter) profile also gives his location simply as “Beijing, China.”

* Multiple recent media descriptions in 2026 call him a “Beijing‑based educator” or say he is “based in Beijing,” in the context of his Predictive History work.

* Earlier education‑sector bios describe him as deputy principal or educator at elite high schools in Beijing (e.g., Tsinghua University High School), and there’s no indication he has relocated out of the city since launching Predictive History.

Taken together, the most defensible reading is that he currently lives in Beijing, almost certainly in or near Haidian (the main education/tech district).

José: He’s Spamming the “Smart Professor Signal”

José did a video titled “Professor” Jiang’s Broken Classroom in which he argues that Jiang’s “predictive history” and “game theory” lectures are not serious education but narrative-driven speculation riddled with factual errors that people believe to be credible because his lectures are packaged in the aesthetics of academia to give a veneer of authority.

Some choice factual errors:

* Holocaust denial

* Claims that no good idea came through the scientific method

The Signal Spamming Tactic

José cites the “Dr. Fox” Lecture, an experiment in which a charismatic actor, presenting a deliberately content-free, jargon-laden lecture as “Dr. Myron L. Fox,” still received highly positive evaluations from professional audiences, suggesting that style and expressiveness can mask a lack of substance in teaching.

This was for academic research

* In 1973, Naftulin, Ware, and Donnelly hypothesized that, given an impressive delivery, experienced students could feel satisfied they had learned even when the lecture content was contradictory, trivial, or meaningless.

* To test this, they hired a professional actor, presented him as “Dr. Myron L. Fox,” an expert on applying mathematical game theory to human behavior and medical education, and scripted a talk filled with double talk, logical contradictions, and non sequiturs.

* The actor delivered this “Dr. Fox lecture” three times to different groups of experienced learners (e.g., psychiatrists, psychologists, educators) at continuing education events.

* Despite the lecture’s intentionally nonsensical content, his engaging, humorous, and expressive style led audiences to rate the lecture very favorably overall, with many respondents indicating satisfaction and perceived benefit from the session.

* The authors concluded that student satisfaction and teacher ratings can be strongly influenced by instructor expressiveness and “educational seduction,” potentially giving the illusion of learning even when real content is poor.

* Later replications and critiques have debated how far this effect generalizes, but the “Dr. Fox” study remains a classic cautionary example that charisma and performance can distort judgments of teaching effectiveness. (see: The Doctor Fox Research (1973) Re-Revisited: ‘Educational Seduction’ Ruled Out)

A contemporary corollary to this, we would argue, is Eleizer Yudkowsky, who manipulates signals (moral outrage, wunderkind branding, gatekeeping, word selection) to appear authoritative on various issues despite often getting key details or fundamentals wrong

NOTE: This is one reason why we like vice signalling and rage baiting instead. It’s a way of saying: “We’re not tricking you into believing we’re credible due to high production quality, gatekeeping language, or academic trappings”

* We make ourselves hateable and weird so when you take our arguments seriously, you can know it’s based on the merits of our arguments rather than any trust in or respect for us

José compares Jiang’s “aesthetic of academia” (whiteboards, lectures, sweeping frameworks) to Jordan Peterson’s performative professorial persona and Peterson’s “fake university,” which Zoe Bee has critiqued as aesthetic education without rigor.

* He notes that Jiang plans to write a book and is building a brand similar to Peterson’s, monetizing an audience that confuses being lectured at with being educated.

Jose’s Detailed Evidence for Arguments Jiang Makes That Are Wrong or Largely-Uninformed Conjecture

José backs up his argument with abundant examples of how Jiang’s packaged-as-academic lectures are either wrong or just narrative speculation that’s often quite uninformed.

* José argues Jiang uses “game theory” as a branding device to confer legitimacy on what are essentially stories about how the world works, not actual game-theoretic models.

* Evidence:

* Jiang’s dating game example starts with five boys/five girls and quickly spirals into claims that women’s status-obsession is “killing civilization” and that women are responsible for creating incels, showing the “game” is just a vehicle for his own social views.

* He constantly lists “three” factors (e.g., genes, wealth, status; focus, clarity, resolve; intelligence, crime, science), but never shows how they are measured or weighted, undercutting any pretense of formal modeling.

* Jiang explicitly downplays math and emphasizes “intuition” and “speculation,” while telling students to make imaginative leaps “not backed up by any evidence,” which José frames as the opposite of what a game theory class should encourage.

* José’ says Jiang’s geopolitical predictions sound impressive in viral snippets, but they fail basic factual checks and become incoherent when examined in detail.

* Evidence:

* Jiang claimed Trump would win in 2024 and pick Nikki Haley as VP; José notes Trump publicly ruled her out on Truth Social almost a week before Jiang posted the video titled “Why Trump will win and pick Nikki Haley as VP,” undermining Jiang’s supposed insight.

* Jiang describes a US-led coalition (UK, Australia, UAE, Poland, Saudi Arabia) invading Iran and leaving 100,000+ troops as “hostages,” but the actual war (as described by José) only had Israel as an ally and does not resemble Jiang’s scenario, making his “prediction” wildly off-base.

* Jiang asserts that poverty produces “energy” and claims North Korea and countries like Germany, Japan, and Israel are poised to become empires because of past suffering, but he never gives time frames or measurable criteria, making these predictions effectively unfalsifiable.

* When pressed, Jiang retreats to “I’m just proposing a theory; what actually happens I can’t tell you,” which José interprets as a shield against accountability: if timelines are undefined, nothing can ever definitively falsify the model.

* José argues Jiang cherry-picks and simplifies history to fit his narratives, without sources or transparent methodology.

* Evidence:

* Jiang talks about Warring States China, Alexander’s Macedonia, and Spanish colonialism in rapid succession, labeling cultures as “higher energy” or “more open” without any empirical basis or citations, creating an impression of erudition rather than demonstrating real scholarship.

* He treats factors like “energy, openness, cohesion” as master variables in “the World Game,” but never explains how they’re quantified; he simply asserts which societies have them.

* He provides bizarre alternative readings of history, such as claiming Hannibal “did not exist,” which José presents as an example of speculative contrarianism detached from the historical record.

* José’s claim: Jiang’s attempts to critique science (cosmology, evolution, psychology) reveal his lack of basic understanding, yet he uses that ignorance to argue science is fundamentally flawed.

* Evidence:

* Big Bang and dark energy: Jiang likens dark energy to “cheating on a math test” (writing “1987 + 25 = 20 + dark energy”), suggesting adding an unknown term is illegitimate; José notes Jiang does not engage with actual cosmological evidence and uses his own confusion as proof the theory is wrong.

* Evolution: Jiang accepts evolution for animals but not humans, and asserts that if evolution were true, we should see humans with “six fingers” or “three eyes,” a caricature that shows he misunderstands variation and speciation.

* Misattributions: he wrongly credits Darwin with “survival of the fittest,” which José notes was coined by Herbert Spencer, adding to the pattern of sloppy scholarship.

* Developmental psychology: Jiang claims brains would “explode” without a worldview to filter experiences and treats babies as paradoxical (no worldview but apparently storing memories), ignoring basic developmental psychology concepts like temperament and gradual acquisition of cognitive structures.

* He ends up asserting that scientific breakthroughs and his own ideas come from channeling a “divine” source, and that secret societies invert reality via science, which José presents as a slide into mystical conspiracism rather than serious critique.

* José argues that Jiang builds a grand conspiratorial cosmology involving Jesuits, Sabbatean-Frankists, Freemasons, and secret societies controlling science and history, which goes far beyond classroom hypotheticals.

* Evidence:

* Jiang claims “all science” is about reinventing reality to serve power and that secret societies aim to invert heaven and hell; he ties this to eschatological ideas (end-times war, Elon Musk as a kind of failsafe via Mars colonization).

* He claims ISIS was created through US torture/brainwashing modeled on ancient Egyptian priestly rituals, then admits his Egyptian story is speculative and not based on records, yet still presents it as “makes sense” to him.

* He spins a story in which capitalists created communism as a weapon to destroy socialism, and treats the Communist Manifesto as a “secret document” of a conspiracy, despite it being a widely published text, using this to fuel an elaborate anti-semitic-adjacent narrative about elites.

* On Breaking Points, he presents a three-part “mati” (Jesuits, Sabbatean-Frankists, Freemasons) supposedly controlling the Vatican, Israel, and US national security apparatus respectively, and frames the Middle East war as central to their end-times plan, with no concrete evidence offered.

* José’s claim: Jiang’s “game theory” and demographic lectures smuggle in misogyny, racism, and Islamophobic population-replacement narratives.

* Evidence:

* Gender and incels: Jiang’s dating game morphs into a claim that women’s choice and status-seeking cause incels and civilizational “suicide,” and he repeatedly speaks of women as status tokens rather than people, including fixations on white women preferring white men unless an Asian man is very high-status.

* Immigration and Muslims: Jiang describes a “huge Muslim problem” in Europe, claims Muslims don’t integrate, do poorly in school, live off welfare, and will “control Europe in 25 years” by having many children, echoing standard “great replacement” rhetoric without data.

* PISA map: he attributes low scores in some Muslim-majority countries to their religion while hand-waving away similar results in Christian-majority Latin America, selectively using religion as an explanatory variable only for Muslims.

* He portrays East Asian immigrants as “suckers” playing by the rules while other minorities “cheat the game” by having many babies, culminating in an explicit prescription that the “logical” strategy is to “break the game,” which José characterizes as a racist rant masquerading as a lesson.

* He states “immigration is not natural” and frames racism as a reaction to something unnatural, even as he, an immigrant, disparages other immigrants, which José highlights as both hypocritical and dangerous.

* José argues Jiang engages in Holocaust denial and broader historical denialism as part of his speculative framework.

* Evidence:

* In a lecture on “the German will to power,” Jiang states “we don’t actually have any concrete evidence for the Holocaust,” then treats Hitler’s anti-semitic speech as metaphorical rather than literal, decoupling it from the genocide.

* He folds this into his theory that “Jews” in Hitler’s rhetoric are a metaphor for an elite conspiracy, aligning with his capitalist–communist–Jewish conspiracy narrative.

* José notes Jiang doesn’t correct or remove this material, even though he demonstrably reuploads videos to fix audio, suggesting the denialist framing is not a slip but a position he has chosen not to walk back.

* José’s claim: Jiang’s classroom is not a serious philosophy course but a vehicle for his own theorizing and personal grievances, with very little student-centered learning or engagement with canonical texts.

* Evidence:

* The course is nominally “Western philosophy,” but philosophers like Plato and Kant appear only briefly; most time is spent on Jiang’s geopolitics, “secret history,” and speculative models.

* There are no grades or tests; he claims to pass/fail students but doesn’t clarify criteria, and uploaded lectures show mostly one-way monologues with occasional questions used as prompts for further exposition.

* His “midterm” consists of answering internet questions, and he uses class time to recount being fired from a previous job, framing himself as a visionary persecuted by lazy educators, rather than modeling critical scholarship.

* José contrasts this with a Yale game theory course (Ben Polak), where abstract examples are clearly defined and students are engaged in structured discussions, to show what actual educational practice looks like.

* José’s broader point: Jiang is a product of, and amplified by, a podcast and YouTube ecosystem that treats ideologically extreme, conspiratorial commentary as profound insight.

* Evidence:

* Jiang’s appearances on Tucker Carlson, Jimmy Dore, Patrick Bet-David, and others feature unchallenged claims: e.g., climate “we’re heading into an ice age,” COVID-19 as an American bioweapon, Bondi Beach massacre as a false flag, “pedophiles have more rights than racists,” elite universities no longer teaching Homer/Dante/Plato.

* Hosts often nod along rather than interrogate him, giving legitimacy to his narratives; José singles out Breaking Points for allowing him to drop his Jesuits/Sabbatean-Frankists/Freemasons schema at the end without follow-up.

* Jiang himself speculates that unseen entities or governments might be boosting his content (“useful idiot” comments), again without evidence, which José ties back into Jiang’s habit of speculation without facts.

* Clip channels and AI-voiced reposts further spread his lectures, letting his ideas circulate beyond his own uploads. José criticizes AI channels in general but notes in this case they carry Jiang’s already-problematic messaging even wider.

Hidden AmuraKa: This Feels Orchestrated

Hidden AmuraKa did a video on Professor Jiang titled The Curious Case of Professor Jiang: How the Internet Manufactured a Geopolitical Oracle in which he:

* Argues that Jiang’s public authority was manufactured

* That he rose in popularity because his framing fit what platforms and audiences were ready to reward

* Notes that his audience treats him less like a commentator and more like a prophet or interpreter of some hidden reality

* And likens this to cult formation or controlled narrative-building

His supporting arguments are mostly about circumstances (he has no smoking gun)

* Chronological

* Jiang studied English literature at Yale, entered China through Yale-linked educational channels, and later worked in elite Chinese schools and in media-adjacent roles before being detained and deported in 2002 on suspicion of espionage

* He later returned to elite Chinese education and disappeared during crackdowns on foreign-linked NGOs

* Online growth

* Dormant YouTube channel suddenly went active in 2024, after which he rapidly rose to 2M subscribers

* Rapid growth of his substack

* Inconsistencies in location metadata and branding (suggestive of distributed or managed operation; not just a lone creator)

Long story short, Hidden AmuraKa thinks Jiang looks less like a randomly successful analyst and more like a carefully assembled public intellectual whose legitimacy was amplified by institutions, media systems, and audience appetite for hidden-truth storytelling.

As one of the top commenters on his video puts it: “Always be weary of people who come out of nowhere and are suddenly everywhere”

Don’t put it past China—they are “extra” with stuff

Spying through US Universities

We already covered China’s use of universities in the USA for spying (see: US Colleges Caught Assisting Chinese Spies! (Giant Network Exposed))

Surveillance of Foreign Actors

China’s surveillance of foreign actors within the country kind of remind me of the adage that if your partner suddenly becomes suspicious of your cheating, they might be cheating.

I.e. if China is so bullish on tracking foreigners in its country, that might be because it’s using Chinese nationals in other countries to mess with those countries.

The Telegraph recently ran an article titled The secret Chinese surveillance programme tracking people like me in which the Telegraph’s senior foreign correspondent, Sophia Yan, describes a dedicated “Dynamic Control Platform for Foreigners” that integrates vast surveillance and administrative data to track foreign nationals and other “people of interest” in granular, real time, with journalists and dissidents explicitly singled out as trackable targets.

The platform is literally a government-branded data dashboard that aggregates millions of data points from cameras, visa records, and travel and consumer apps to monitor foreigners inside China.

* It allows security services to see where foreign citizens are, who they meet, how they move around cities, and which social and professional networks they belong to.

* It allows security services to see where foreign citizens are, who they meet, how they move around cities, and which social and professional networks they belong to.

* Users can filter for groups such as citizens of Five Eyes countries, Russians, Ukrainians, Belarusians, Uyghurs, “fugitives,” travelling foreigners, and people from Hong Kong, Macau, or Taiwan, and then drill down to neighbourhood-level location or specific interactions (for example, Americans in one district who work together and have been photographed together)

Yan describes a decade of being followed, harassed, and monitored by security agents, including physical assaults in Xinjiang, routine facial-recognition checks, and the ability to board flights or enter events via face scan alone, long before the leak surfaced.

Note: Systems like these in China aren’t just for tracking foreign actors

* A related dashboard on the same server ranks local police stations and individual officers by performance on seven metrics

* China has more than 700 million cameras (about one per two people), many with facial recognition and “gait recognition,” plus mandatory real-ID registration across mobile apps for taxis, food delivery, ticketing, and digital payments

* ID and face scans at subway gates, housing compounds, construction sites, tourist facilities (like ski lifts), and pandemic-era contact tracing apps feed into the system, generating detailed logs such as how many times an individual appears at a given grocery store or street intersection

I had previously read that China’s social credit and surveillance systems were super buggy and did not work well, but that was back in 2020 and it was silly for me to not update my beliefs.

* The surveillance platform appears to have been in development since at least 2021, with most data from 2023, and was still being updated in early 2026 (adding features like “relational map search query” and “daily police situation”),

* Even with this foreign actors surveillance platform, it is unclear whether it is fully deployed or partly experimental

* (the Chinese embassy in London did not comment)

Episode Transcript

Simone Collins: [00:00:00] Hello, Malcolm. I’m excited to be speaking with you because Base Camp listeners keep asking us to talk about Professor Jiang, which is difficult because we see his content to be oppressively boring bordering on possible to consume, but we have to stop the requests.

And honestly, he’s a big deal, and there’s this big mystery here. How did a Chinese-born man who immigrated to Canada, who has a BA in English literature, suddenly accrue over two million YouTube subscribers and have the number one world politics Substack with 44,000 subscribers in six months, and fame for being a geopolitical oracle and war forecaster?

I mean, he even has his own fan website that I just found. It- it’s called JiangPredictions.com, where they’re very clear, like it’s not by him. Like, “This is an independent fan project tracking predictions for educational and analytical purposes. We’re not affiliated with or speaking on behalf of Professor Jiang.”

Mm-hmm ... my basic take, and this is what we’re going to explore in this episode, is Professor Jiang, [00:01:00] AKA Jiang Kuijin just basically a version of Candace Owens for people who like to fancy themselves as more highbrow and clever? Which is to say, like, are, are his successes just a result of conspiracy brained people online flocking to conspiracy slop, or is there a more concerted force pushing forward his content?

Also, we’re gonna look in, in more depth at his actual theories, especially his conspiracy theories, because they’re, they’re out there. Like, we, we know-

Malcolm Collins: Okay, yeah, I wanna, I wanna go, just for people who are listening to this, my experience with Professor Jiang before this is fans telling me, “You should check out this or that video of his.”

Simone Collins: Yes.

Malcolm Collins: I would try to watch it. About 30 minutes in, I would get bored and turn it off- Yes ... because it’s just, it’s not well-constructed often. But it wasn’t outright stupid. He seemed to have some broad idea of what was going on, some fairly based [00:02:00] perspectives. I was like, oh yeah, like, he’s on message, he’s on team.

This is interesting. Then I look at the stuff that Simone, because Simone pulls up, like, his full theories, and I was like, this guy sounds like an imbecile. Like, an actual, like, like, worse than Candace Owens. Like, literally dumber than Candace Owens because at least Candace Owens is entertaining and, like, her ideas, I can just be like, “She’s just crazy.”

Simone Collins: I could watch her for hours. She’s fun. Yeah. And, and succinct, and she uses normal terms, and she’s animated. Her production value

Malcolm Collins: is good. Right, right. No, when I see Candace Owens saying something that’s obviously wrong, I’m just like, oh, this is just her being a schizo. Professor Jiang is too lucid to have ideas that are this stupid for example, like the Illuminati controls the Earth and the Freemasons control the United States government.

If you are familiar with who the Freemasons actually are today, if you have ever... You can just get up and join the Freemasons, you know. [00:03:00] They’re not a particularly hard organization to get into. Yeah,

Simone Collins: actually last month I met someone who young- in his youth decided like, “Oh, the Freemasons, they run the world.”

So he and his young friends were like, “Oh, let’s just, let’s just take it over.” And they got really high within the organization, and it was just, you know, a bunch of like retired old men and nothing was there. And they’re like, “Okay, I’m in.” Like, “So tell me, how do we run the world?” And they’re like Hello, young man.

Malcolm Collins: It- The, the, yeah, it’s like, it’s like a retirement community. Like thinking- Yes ... a retirement community- No, for real ... secretly runs the world. And of course you can move up super quickly because nobody’s, there, no, no young people are in it anymore. You know? It’s just like a bunch of old,

Simone Collins: Yeah, like they, they speed ran freemasonry and they went nowhere.

They just, like, hit a dead wall. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. But it’s, well, and I’ve repeatedly seen this over... And this is not me, like, not knowing stuff. Like, these are based friends of ours that seriously care about, like, infiltrating these sorts of organizations.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: I have... E- even within the world of secret societies, freemason are, like, the joke secret society [00:04:00] of people who are in secret societies.

It’s like the a, you know, like the dragon with, like, the three heads and the one retarded head. Like freemasons- What? ... are the one retarded head.

They, they are the ones that it’s like, it’s like thinking the Lion’s Club controls the world, okay? Like, the Rotary Club legitimately has dramatically more institutional power than the freemasons do.

Sorry, but the, the reason I had to crash out over this is this is the type of thing that, like, if you are a lucid adult, takes the smallest amount of credulity to find out. And the number of theories like this that he has, which really surprised me, and so I’m like, “Where are these theories hidden? Does he say them in roundabout ways so you can’t tell that he’s saying this stuff?”

And then she, no, she just, like, plays clips for me, and I’m like, “This is profoundly stupid.” So, now could he be... Now this is gonna be my question on him. Could he be one of those people like Roubiard of What a Vault of Hist?, where Roubiard sometimes says really stupid stuff, [00:05:00] but he sees the world through such an orthogonal lens that sometimes he will have deeply insightful views on something that I never would have come to myself.

Simone Collins: Right.

Malcolm Collins: Does he fall into that category? Are any of his out there theories actually intellectually interesting? Or is he just-

Simone Collins: I’ll let you be the judge of that ...

Malcolm Collins: voice swap? Yeah.

Simone Collins: We’ll see. Yeah. I, the, I’m, I’m, and, you know, if you’re watching, you can, you can join in on the commentary. Also, I know for a fact that there are a bunch of fans and also anti-fans of, of Jiang in this audience, so share your insights, all right?

Stan him if you need to.

Malcolm Collins: And I didn’t wanna come off as this negative him. I just thought we were gonna have fun discussing his conspiracy theories. I didn’t know they were gonna be that dumb.

Simone Collins: Yeah. So for those of you out of the loop, Jiang Qujin, he was born in 1976 in China. He moved to Canada fairly young.

He was originally trained in English literature, and he spent much of his career as a teacher and education reformer in China. Like actually in China. In the [00:06:00] 2000s and 2010s, he worked on Chinese education reform and taught in various schools, and briefly edited for The New York Times China operation.

He’s also been associated as a researcher with Harvard’s Global Education Innovation Initiative. So his educator branding is, is, has been part of his life for a very long time- Mm-hmm ... well before he went internet famous. And part of me wonders, ‘cause a lot of people are like, “Well, he’s not actually a professor,” it could just be in China, like there’s some kind of lost in translation thing where like you’re referred to as a, some kind of teacher honorific in, if you teach in China like in high school.

And- This

Malcolm Collins: is a, I, I don’t know. You see this on the right. Professor Dutton, by the way, we’ve had on the show, right? Like-

Simone Collins: But he’s actually an academic.

Malcolm Collins: He’s not a professor, though

Simone Collins: Well, maybe he was at some point

Malcolm Collins: No, he’s never been a professor as far as I know Oh.

I was wrong about this. , Professor Denton was an evolutionary biology professor at Aberdeen. , But Professor Zhang has never been a real professor

Malcolm Collins: It’s [00:07:00] just a title that some people on the right use in conspiracy circles I think Well,

Simone Collins: they profess, they profess.

The Original Professor is just getting really-

Malcolm Collins: I, I know. Here, I’m not saying that Jo- Jolly Heretic, as far as I know in terms of all the content I’ve watched he’s never said anything that I thought was particularly wrong. He may have some ideas that I think might go too far on racialist directions and everything like that, but I don’t mean to overly compare him to Professor Jiang.

Right. But,

Simone Collins: but you- I was not talking about unhinged things as we’re gonna

Malcolm Collins: get into Yeah, yeah. Generally when he points to something I’m like, “That is a misinterpretation of scientific evidence.” I would never just be like, But, but a smart person could have that misinterpretation.

Simone Collins: Right.

Malcolm Collins: It’s not like Professor

Simone Collins: Jiang.

Yeah, our disagreements with him are academic, whereas like with Professor Jiang it’s one of those not even wrong things,

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, it’s like not even wrong, like there is a mental health issue at play here, and if it’s not a mental health issue, then you’re profoundly stupid. And that’s the thing-

Simone Collins: Or is it more ins- or is there m- something more insidious?

Which we’re gonna have to also ask this episode

Malcolm Collins: Oh, oh, okay. Continue.

Simone Collins: Anyway back to his just basic chronolo- chronological experience of the world. Since 2022, Jiang has [00:08:00] taught at Moonshot Academy, which was a private high school in Beijing. So even post-pandemic, still in China, and he’s not a university professor still even at this point.

In 2024, so two years ago, out of nowhere he launched the YouTube channel and podcast Predictive History, where he gives his long form lectures, and by long form I mean oppressively boring, almost impossible to watch, to us at least, lectures on geopolitics, history, and the structural analysis. And he claims to use game theory and Asimov-style psycho history to forecast world events, leading to the fan site aforementioned that will also be referenced in my show notes, which are extensively linked, so go to Patreon or Substack if you wanna get all the sources and links and everything.

He gained large international attention after correctly predicting Donald Trump’s 2024 re-election, which a lot of people did ‘cause it was kind of obvious, and a US-Iran war, which led to some media to dub him China’s [00:09:00] Nostradamus. And some bookers put him on major Western podcasts. Like, one of the clips that I will be referencing at one point in my show notes, him on Piers Morgan.

Like, mainstream stuff, okay? Okay. Like, y- I think you thought he was smaller than he is, too. So in terms of his reputation, several mainstream-

Malcolm Collins: And he does have real fans. Like, clearly they’re his audience

Simone Collins: Real, genuine. Diehard, yeah. Clearly they’re his audience. Not bots, real people.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, it’s not bots.

Whether, whether or not his, his, his rise was above or below the board he genuinely appeals to a real audience.

Simone Collins: And to be clear, in the research I did, I did not come across accusations of him botting, in fact. So... And we’ve, we’ve covered that ground, I

Malcolm Collins: think. And, and I think more than that, I’d go so far as to say he has significantly more cultural impact right now than somebody like Nick Fuentes.

It would be

Simone Collins: just- Quite possibly. I mean, certainly in base camp circles for sure. Though we also have f- people who watch Nick Fuentes all the time, so yeah. Yeah. But right, several mainstream outlets describe him as a conspiracy theorist because of many of his claims on hidden cabals and [00:10:00] quasi-mystical frameworks.

He doesn’t really use conventional evidence-based analysis. So, a lot of, a lot of what I initially jumped off from, because I didn’t believe that he had all these conspiracies, was a, a profile in the Free Press that explicitly labels him a conspiracy theorist and highlights his belief in a coalition of Freemasons and Jesuits and followers of Sabbatean Jews and I think that’s also a Candace Owens thing.

And that they’re plotting to rule the world from Jerusalem. The, the South China Morning Post notes that his lectures sometimes veer into well-trodden conspiracy theories on shadowy secret societies, especially the lecture titled, which is gonna be referenced a lot in my direct quotes, Pax Judaica in his Secret History series.

So let’s get into the conspiracy theories because-

Malcolm Collins: Yes, and I- They’re delightful ... I want to go into them and turn the... the Jesuits do genuinely attem- bel- appear to control the Vatican, but they don’t work with Sabbatean Jews or the Freem- c- sorry

Simone Collins: And the Illuminati. The Illuminati. Okay, hold on. No, [00:11:00] because it’s, it’s...

He, he, he has this meta conspiracy in which an Illuminati composed of Freemasons, Jesuits, and Sabbatean Jews

who allegedly manipulate Western institutions and ultimately aim to control the world from Jerusalem are, like, working together to cause the decline of Western civilization. Okay? This is the Pax Judaica or Ju- Judaica?

Sorry, yeah. Jud- Judah Ga. He has a lecture on it, and in, about this lecture, critics argue that Cenk argues that after the US is forced out of the Middle East, which is one of his predictions, this Illuminati style network is gonna dominate global power from a greater Israel centered on Jerusalem.

Now, in his own words, on the Illuminati as a coalition, this is from his Breaking Points interview, which is widely clipped: “If you look at the Epstein files, it’s clear that we’re run by secret societies. You can call [00:12:00] them Illuminati, and Illuminati are composed of three major groups, okay? You have the Jesuits who control the Vatican.”

Malcolm said that, so not me.

Malcolm Collins: It’s true. “

Simone Collins: You have the Sabbatean Frankists who control the modern Israel today. You have the Freemasons, which control the national security apparatus of the United States.” I don’t know where that’s coming from. He adds that they, they see conflicts like those in the Middle East as key to the end times proph- prophecies creating heaven on earth.

I mean, there is a group of Christians we know that like Think that it’s necessary They

Malcolm Collins: do think that, but they’re not the ones who are typically associated with the Freemasons.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm. So on the origins and s- structure of, of this this coalition, he describes the Illuminati as emerging from alliances like former Jesuits.

He refers to Adam Weishaupt and others that are, that infiltrated the Freemasons. He said, “What they will do together is create a new organization called the Illuminati. The Illuminati was able to penetrate the Freemasons.” [00:13:00] So apparently there was some kind of-

Malcolm Collins: Okay ...

Simone Collins: I don’t know, corporate takeover.

Malcolm Collins: So we gotta do I, I just need to, it’s, ugh.

Simone Collins: I’m gonna bring in the Templars, ‘cause in anuct- another lecture he says, quote, “Templars, who became the Freemasons, who then became the Illuminati, who control,” and then linking to broader historical continuity and goals like the one world government in Jerusalem. He sort of went on from there. It’s-

Malcolm Collins: So what’s interesting-

involved ... is some of his hedging here makes what he’s saying more plausible or less stupid.

Simone Collins: Okay.

Malcolm Collins: Ooh ... if he is arguing that a group that is not the Illuminati is going to form something that is functionally the Illuminati and then- Huh ... call themselves the Illuminati.

Simone Collins: Huh.

Malcolm Collins: Or when he says, “Functionally these groups have an inordinate amount of power, and we can call them the Illuminati because they function similar to the way...”

That’s believable, right? I, I’d be like, not on its face stupid. It might be wrong, but it’s not on its face stupid. Okay. If you are saying that the original [00:14:00] historic organization that was called the Illuminati in history still has a meaningful historic continuity between itself and any organization that exists today, that’s stupid.

Simone Collins: Well, but I think that’s part of his, if there is one, brilliant clickbait strategy. He is- Okay, maybe he’s not explicitly arguing continuity, but he’s constantly name-checking these organizations that conspiracy-brained people just like, ugh, dopamine, like as soon as they hear these

Malcolm Collins: words. Yeah. We should do a whole other episode on the Sabbatean Jews,

Simone Collins: That’s keyword stuffed with all the wor- all

Malcolm Collins: the words

I can, I can talk for ages about the Sabbatean Jews. People know I, I, I am not a fan of Shabbatai Levi and there are parts of the current Jewish community that I am also not a fan of in terms of like the direction it has gone. Does Israel and do a group of Jews that are interconnected have a disproportionate amount of power over global governments?

They acqu- Yeah,

Simone Collins: you just gotta really keyword [00:15:00] s- Like watch some of Jang’s lectures. You can go through all the stuff I link in my show notes ‘cause like he, he’s a masterclass. Oh, I’m gonna include li- Like here, here’s, here’s another one. He on, on Freemasonry and related groups, he, he discusses the 33 grades of Scottish Rite Freemasonry, noting that lower levels emphasize being a good person while the higher ones invoke deeper power structures.

And then he ties Freemasonry to figures like Buzz Aldrin and historical US institutions. So it’s a whole like national treasure, the moon landing is fake. Like he’s really pulling in all the trigger words. He

Malcolm Collins: thinks the moon landing is fake?

Simone Collins: Well I don’t... No. I- But he’s bringing in Buzz Aldrin. So.

Malcolm Collins: Okay. Well, hold on, let’s go back here ‘cause I- Okay ... we’ve gotta talk about each of these groups, and like the thing is is he says stuff that’s like adjacent to plausible, but stupid if you dig two levels deep,

Simone Collins: okay?

Malcolm Collins: Okay. So Sabbatean Jews they, they really... So they were sort of active between like, 1676 to like, I wanna say the last like really hard recorded practices we have from [00:16:00] Sabbatean Jews and Frankists-

Simone Collins: Mm.

Mm ...

Malcolm Collins: would’ve been in the early 1800s. So-

Simone Collins: Well, he says that they infiltrated the Jesuits in his,

Malcolm Collins: They, they, they, they did infiltrate- They did ... the Jesuits.

Simone Collins: Well, okay.

Malcolm Collins: Okay. Hold on. I have to do a little bit of a, a breakdown of what happened here.

Simone Collins: Is- oh my God.

Malcolm Collins: So-

Simone Collins: You, you’re, you’re eating your words, Malcolm.

Malcolm Collins: No, he, he, he’s right, but there just isn’t continuity with anything that’s happening today.

Simone Collins: Okay.

Malcolm Collins: Right? Like, he’s saying things that are adjacent to true- Well, but

Simone Collins: maybe this explains why he has two million followers on YouTube and you don’t ‘cause you’re

Malcolm Collins: not

Simone Collins: willing-

Malcolm Collins: Because I don’t go off about the Sabbatean Jews.

Yeah. I’m interested in what is historically

Simone Collins: true. Look, it worked for Candace Owens and it worked for Jiang.

Malcolm Collins: So, and I’m gonna add in post here a wider description of exactly, but from my memory okay, so the followers of Sabbatai Sevi- That’s so cute ... post- did something called antinomianism, okay? So antinomianism is where you [00:17:00] implicitly invert the laws of Judaism because you are living in the end times, which sort of means that you’re dealing with an opposite set of rules, and like-

Simone Collins: So it’s like opposite day, Jew edition?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, it’s like opposite day, but morality. Morality is inversed in terms of a Jewish moral system, okay?

Simone Collins: Huh.

Malcolm Collins: So, you know, this could mean orgies, this could mean anything, but also, like, i-intentionally bad things to outsiders. Like, this explains theologically how you... Because it’s pretty hard to theologically get a group that just does evil things.

Yeah, yeah. Like typically, if you’re doing evil things, you think that you’re doing them for a malevolent entity, which generally means you can’t trust that entity, so people generally don’t worship things like Satan in, like, an honest format, right? Like-

Simone Collins: Yeah ...

Malcolm Collins: you’re, you’re rarely gonna... Okay. But with Sab- antinomianism and Sabbateanism, it works, okay?

So- they ended up doing this. This guy ended up converting to Islam. It was a huge problem for Judaism. Over half of Jews, depending on, you know, what stats we look at, were members of his movement. They thought he was the Messiah. A huge [00:18:00] problem for the Jew, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Anyway, a group of his former followers did not deconvert after he converted to Islam.

And they formed the Frankists or the Sabbateans. Well, not real- Okay, so the Frankists then came about later. Basically, after all of this guy’s followers had died out, then a guy named Frank comes along and recreates an antinomialist movement looking back to Sabbatai Zevi. I think he said he was a reincarnation of Sabbatai Zevi or something like that.

Don’t... Anyway, so they end up practicing this weird form of Judaism. All of the Jews in their community f*****g hate them because, you know, they’re practicing an inversion of Judaism. They are literally the least Jewish thing you could conceivably be because they are... If somebody practiced an inversion of Christianity, I think local Christians would hate them too, right?

Yeah. And of course, they’re interacting more as a Jewish community, so the Jewish community is super annoyed by them, and they’re c- drawing converts from the Jewish community. So, Jews f*****g hate these guys, right? And the Jews wouldn’t [00:19:00] mind seeing them wi- wiped out. So who do they form an alliance with to prevent themselves from being wiped out after a number of I think, court cases came up about them or something.

They form an alliance with the Jesuits. They tell the Jesuits, because they can’t go back to being Jews, the Jews hate them, “Oh, we’ll become Catholics,” right? “If you let us do whatever we wanna do,” right? Like, “You, you let us...” W- well, j- In fact, they then said that being a Catholic was part of this antinomianism.

It was part of the inversion of Jewish value systems, right? So, they become Catholics And some of them continued to practice antinomianism.

Simone Collins: Aha.

Malcolm Collins: And we have evidence that this happened for about two generations after this event, and no evidence after that. And it was, and it was m- mild stuff after this.

And we also have evidence- So what

Simone Collins: happened? Why did it die out? Did they not just go secret so they could control things better?

Malcolm Collins: It’s hard to keep [00:20:00] weird orgies going on for many... You gotta get other people

Simone Collins: involved in this. Yeah, as Aella could tell you, it takes a lot of work, and we’ve done even episodes on this.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, putting together and creating a high investment religious community tied to weird, sinful things like this is just difficult to do. It’s, it’s not easy, right? You’ve gotta, you’ve gotta recruit people in. They just didn’t have the money and power to do it for very long. Mm. Some of them also ended up joining the Jesuit order.

It was a very small number of them but some of them did. This is true. But from all of the evidence we have from the Jesuits and everything on that, they didn’t have a big impact on anything that was happening in the Jesuit order, and any of them that maintained these practices died out within a few generations.

Now, the Jesuit order is genuinely one of the, the largest evil societies on Earth today, right? Like, when I say, like, the Catholics are a problem, I really mean the [00:21:00] Jesuits are a problem. Because they control the Vatican right now. They’ve done some really shady stuff in papal elections. This is not the...

They’re, they actually shouldn’t even really be a Catholic order because they were they operated completely outside of the Catholic order during, I wanna say, like, the Communist period or something. Where they ended up being separated from the rest of the Catholic Church, and the Catholic Church said that they were supposed to shut down.

Like, they basically got excommunicated, and they said, “No, we’re not gonna do that.” And so they operated entirely independently.

Speaker: The period when they operated entirely independently was under Catherine the Great, not the communist period. , And they were basically excommunicated by the church, , as an order, and anyone who participated was, but they continued to operate regardless of this because, , their region of the world was separated from the rest of the Vatican.

, And they basically formed their own culture and beliefs and then were reintegrated into the Catholic Church to try to, like, revive the order

Also, I didn’t interject with the information Under the Jacobins because I got [00:22:00] virtually everything about them right other than their founding date, which was around the 1800s. , So they disbanded a little later than I thought. , My second note here, if you’re wondering why am I qualified to speak on all of this, , well, if you read The Bloodlines of the Illuminati, my dad is supposed to be one of the leading members of it.

I’m the oldest male heir of the family, so presumably I would be. My wife was the managing director of Dialogue, which was a s- secret society founded by Peter Thiel. , Then we’ve also been invited to other secret societies founded by Peter Thiel, like Hereticon. , I’ve been to the Bohemian Grove. , I’m not a member of the Bohemian Grove.

That’s a giant waste of money. But, like, I’ve been, and my godfather was one of the presidents. I think I can say that at this point. , I only say that because it’s a nonprofit, so it has to be public that he was the president at one point if you Google it. Otherwise, I wouldn’t release that information

So yeah, , I’ve, I have a lot of insight into how a lot of these organizations work and where they’re operational, and so I know which [00:23:00] ones are relevant and which ones are not relevant, and how relevant they are in terms of secret power control structures.

Oh, I forgot we also did recruiting for a secret society that Eric Schmidt’s orgs were starting

Malcolm Collins: And then I wanna say when the y- communist world fell apart or something like that they then ended up reintegrating with the Catholic Church as a completely separate power structure that had a completely divergent goals from the Catholic institution.

Mm. And today when we see Catholics fermenting socialist rebellions, it’s typically Jesuits.

Simone Collins: Fomenting.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. When we see them inventing the concept of, like, they came up with, like, liberal theology and stuff like this. I think it’s called, like, progressive theology or justice theology. This was invented by Jesuits.

Simone Collins: Justice theology. Whoa.

Malcolm Collins: Really bad stuff. Really bad- Okay ... bad, bad stuff, and it ended up taking over a lot of Protestant sects as well. And, and they do control the Vatican and what the Vatican is doing in large part, but they have the, the n- the bad stuff that the Jesuits are doing today has more ties to [00:24:00] communism and socialism than it has to anything tied to Sabbatianism.

Okay? The, the Sabbateans and the Frankists died out based on all of the evidence we can see. So that’s, it’s not stupid to say that they joined the Jesuits and they had some influence in the Jesuits. It’s just stupid to say that They that, that, that they influence the Jesuits today. Okay? There doesn’t appear to be, or any modern Jewish sect today.

Now-

Simone Collins: Well, he’s just trying to say that the Sabbatean Frankists just ultimately conquered the world, and that the Jacob Frank’s movement was linked to, or he, he links in his lectures that movement to secret society networks, that they infiltrated the Jesuits and th- they formed alliances that formed the Illuminati.

I mean- Okay.

Malcolm Collins: But it’s stupid. He- It’s stupid. The Sabbateans very clearly do not, and the Frankist ideology very clearly does not influence the faction of Jews that is controlling... Like, when people say the [00:25:00] Jews have a disproportionate amount of world control today, okay?

Simone Collins: Okay, but let’s, let’s get to that.

Let’s get to that. Okay? Let’s, ‘cause let- well, we’ll never get through that. Okay. Let’s hear what he has to say. And let’s talk about that, how he talks about this Pax Judaica and Greater Israel. So what he’s trying to claim is that the long-term plan of these elites, wherever they came from, is to engineer a new world order in which Greater Israel replaces American hegemony, and then Jerusalem is the seat of global governance.

And you can also see, oh, this probably helped to fuel some of his viral popularity. Anti-Israel sentiment is growing. People like to think that there’s this organized cabal that is very Israel-centric causing the decline of the West, you know, like, doing evil, scary things. So I think that’s another element of what he’s saying that’s really resonating with people.

Malcolm Collins: Right, but again, it, th- because look, there are real conspiracies you can talk about if you wanna talk about conspiracies.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: So you wanna talk about, like, okay, this is what’s [00:26:00] actually happening, okay? Shabbatai Levi, basically nobody takes him seriously anymore. There’s some weird, like, Muslim Jewish sects that sort of follow him, but they don’t do the antinomianist stuff anymore.

But, and this is what annoys me, because when you cloud people’s vision with the BS, you can’t see the real. If you’ve seen our track series, one of my most offensive takes, but it’s one I feel incredibly strongly about because, you know, when you follow a, an actual religious belief and you believe that some things are actually religiously true, you’ve gotta call out when something is going against those.

And there was a second major antinomianist figure within Jewish history called the Baal Shem Tov. And the Baal Shem Tov p- practice, he didn’t say it was antinomianism, but it was functionally, from the perspective of Jewish history, spiritual antinomianism. If you know Jewish r- rules around following people based on miracles instead of biblical knowledge, he was very big on the, “You follow me because of the miracles.”

Like, his number one convert came, [00:27:00] clearly more learned than him. All of the most learned rab- rabbis said, “Don’t follow this guy.” And then this guy came out and he’s like, “Kabbalah everything.” And all the other rabbis at the time were like, “Don’t do that. That’s, like, a dangerous book. You can maybe, maybe if you’re, like, a married man in his 30s who has studied Judaism forever, you can peek at that book.

You do not make that the foundation of your teachings.” And the Kabbalah has a lot of crazy stuff in it, okay? So anyway, he comes along and he rises the Kabbalism and, and pop mysticism within Judaism. Okay? Mm. And he actually took over large factions of the Jewish movement. And the groups that follow his teachings are the ones that completely dominate.

When you’re talking about, like, Jewish influence and Israeli influence in Western politics, it is this secondary form of antinomianism, not the type that came from Shabbatai Zevi, and it i- they have so much control that this entire video could be taken down even from pointing out that from [00:28:00] historic Jewish perspectives, from medieval Jewish perspectives, the way that the Baal Shem Tov interacted with Kabbalistic texts could be thought of as spiritualist antinomianism.

Because it go, it inverted previous Jewish teachings on how you engage with miracles and how you engage with spiritual phenomenons. So anyway, he comes in. Abeja, and these groups do control and they do want a greater Israel, and I’m actually okay with greater Israel. When I say a greater Israel, what I mean by that is an Israel which has ability to act in any way it wants on the surrounding nations.

The countries surrounding Israel just don’t have the technology to fight back against Israel anymore and Israel is okay with that, and they are now just like somebody annoys them, they kill them, right? Like, that’s, that’s where Israel is going and they’re going more in that direction as they get automated drone swarms and stuff like that.

And, and I am okay with that direction for Israel because frankly, I don’t really care about the other countries that are around them a particularly large amount. But the thing is that he’s right, but it’s almost [00:29:00] like he’s, he’s wrong in trying to hide the actual like, like, f- power structure of the world just enough that he sort of sends people on these shadow journeys so that they miss the real power structures that we should be fighting against.

And the whole thing about the Freemasons is just pants-on-head retarded. The- Okay.

Simone Collins: Well, let’s see what he says

Malcolm Collins: It would be truer to say Mormons- ... control the national security industry in the United States than Freemasons control the national security industry in the United States.

Simone Collins: I feel like they more staff it, they don’t lead it.

But that’s a totally separate subject. It

Malcolm Collins: is.

Simone Collins: So on the subject of greater Israel and its, its roots, he says, quote And so what will happen is then that Israel will achieve the Greater Israel Project. The Israelis believe that the Middle East was promised to their ancestor Abraham by Yahweh, their god.

If you look at the map of Greater Israel Project, it extends from the Nile to Euphrates. It encompasses Lebanon, Syria, parts of Turkey, and parts of Saudi Arabia, [00:30:00] and parts of Egypt. And then Israel will establish something called the Pax Judaica. A Pax Judaica is really the empire, a trading empire, a financial empire, a technological empire based in Jerus- Jerusalem, and they see it as fulfillment of biblical prophecy.

Do you push back against that?

Malcolm Collins: I mean, that seems to be the direction things are going. The countries around Israel are weak in relation to Israel. They appear to be becoming weaker as time goes on, and Israel is becoming stronger as time goes on.

Simone Collins: Technologically- Yeah, because as, as he quote, another quote from him, he says, “So what does the Greater Israel Project mean?

Well, it means control of oil, trade, and technology.” He frames it basically as, as them inheriting and expanding US regional dominance in the Middle East after the US

Malcolm Collins: peaks,

Simone Collins: essentially.

Malcolm Collins: Why is this a... for me, it’s like I don’t like the other cultures that are in that region. I am okay- I don’t

Simone Collins: think he frames it as negative.

I just think that people who are anti-Israel are like, “Yeah, and that means they’re evil.” ‘Cause I mean, he, he’s also talking about the decline of the [00:31:00] West.

Malcolm Collins: In fact- If Israel was actually controlled by a group of what the, what the Frankists were and what the, the the Shabbatai Zevi followers were, was, was sort of physical antinomialists as opposed to spiritual antinomialists.

If they were actual physical antinomialism and believed in, in practicing an inversion of Jewish law around morality and the physical world instead of just the way they relate to the metaphysical world I would be very, very, very concerned. I would agree that this group cannot be allowed to gain power, but they just don’t.

Simone Collins: Well, he does frame them as evil. We’re gonna have to pick this up in a second recording session since I have to get the kids. Yeah. But next I can get to how he argues that, or at least has suggested the actions during the Gaza war amount to ritual child sacrifice, and he links real-world conflicts to occult or sacrificial practices- Oh, frigging hell

attributed to Israel or [00:32:00] Jewish-adjacent elites. So we’ll get to that next.

Malcolm Collins: So dumb. So dumb. It’s- It’s just not an efficient way to do sacrifice. If you’re doing child sacrifice, do it through something like Epstein. You don’t need to do it anymore.

Simone Collins: But no, yeah, no, honestly, the, the Egyptians, they were the ones who really nailed it.

So cats were sacred, but you, you, you wanted mummified cats, and I, you know, like, people... There was a market for them. So what did people do? They created, like, some of the earliest basically factory farms for cats. And they would, they would kill them and then mummify them and then sell the cat mummies because, you know, people were like-

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, if they want it, just treat gods- And

Simone Collins: they would even make-

like a factory farm

Malcolm Collins: for children ...

Simone Collins: I would just... Because this is so fun. They would forge they would forge cat mummies too. Like, so people have taken them apart, and lo and behold, it is not a mummified cat. No, it’s like, like, paste and chicken bones.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Also by the way, fun fact if you wanna get really spicy about this.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: If you ch- were a [00:33:00] true moral and material antinomialist Jew and you were going to do child sacrifices non-Jewish children would be completely pointless for the child sacrifices because they don’t have the, This is like- They’re not

Simone Collins: w- good enough?

Malcolm Collins: No, they, they wouldn’t have, like, the s- the spirit of God in them which is why, you know, only within a matrimonial Jew- Oh, ‘cause

Simone Collins: then what?

Chosen people or something? I don’t know.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, yeah. Mm-hmm. Basically it’s, it has to do with how Jews interpret Genesis. It doesn’t really matter. The point being is that if you were an actual antinomialist Jew, you would only care about Jewish children for your sacrifices. I don’t recall- Other children would basically be rotten for your perspective.

I

Simone Collins: don’t think he talks about antinomialism, but I may have

Malcolm Collins: missed that. No, because he doesn’t understand why it... He’s clearly, like, approaching all of this from a very midwit perspective. And that also annoys me because, like, these are actual things that you could study and investigate and understand how they changed their history, why they have these beliefs, why they think that you should have an inversion of morality.

This stuff matters because then you can predict them. If you understand the actual theology of an antinomialist, then you can [00:34:00] say, “Oh, so if they’re doing child sacrifices, could they take random children from Gaza? Would that be any use to them?” And the answer is no, they would have to take them from other Jews or from Jews who deconverted or something.

Simone Collins: Well, there isn’t a prediction fan site about your nonsense. Maybe you need to be a midwit to speak to the midwits and you won’t get a... You know, it, when you look at bell curves, the mid is the largest part.

Malcolm Collins: Yep ...

Simone Collins: you’re, you’re catering- I’m, I’m appealing to the wrong- ... to the wrong part of the bell curve

the wrong

Malcolm Collins: crowd.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Anyway, we’ll get more to this on our next installment of Malcolm Gets Mad at Proges- Professor Jiang.

Malcolm Collins: Keeps fighting. For, for theories that don’t, that don’t make that are s- just flirting with reality.

Simone Collins: Yeah. All right. All

Malcolm Collins: right, love you.

Simone Collins: Love you too.

So where we left off was ritual sacrifice the Gaza War. , Yang Ming and [00:35:00] others say that Chang has suggested that actions during the Gaza War amount to ritual child sacrifice. He links real world conflict to occult and sacrificial practices that are attributed to either Israel or Jew-adjacent individuals.

Sorry, does he

Malcolm Collins: mean like ritual sacrifice or does he think that they’re literally doing it for-

Simone Collins: The words he used were ritual child sacrifice. He’s definitely... He’s saying it’s ritual chi- he’s s- he’s saying it’s a cult. He’s keep in mind though, he’s “Oh, this is speculation. This is for fun.”

So he tries to flippantly discount a lot of the things that he says in the midst of his lectures of like I’m just doing gems here. But then he’s also just making these statements. And the- Okay,

Malcolm Collins: so if I’m gonna steel man him, okay? ‘Cause I

Simone Collins: will steel man- let me, let- I’ll just, let me first give you a quote, his core statement on Gaza as ritual sacrifice.

This is from Secret History Number Four, and it is widely clipped. People can find this. I’ve linked to it in my show notes. Quote, [00:36:00] “What is really happening in Gaza is a ritual sacrifice, and this happens quite often in human history if you go back and you look at the...” And then he goes on and talks about other things.

And then he also says, these are more direct quotes from him, on the purpose and visibility of this sacrifice. Quote, “The entire idea of this ritual sacrifice is to unite the Israeli population. And what’s extremely disturbing and horrifying about it is that it works.” And he also contrasts it with a hypothetical secret approach.

Quote, “Israel could do it secretly, and no one would talk about it. Instead, they choose to do this in front of the world. They want the world to hate them, because by doing this, they create the ultimate taboo. So the entire world unite against Israel, but guess what? That’s the, that’s what the region, w- religion wants in the extreme form of Jewis- Jewish...”

I always screw up this word. Eschatology? Eschatology? Eschatology, I think. Es- eschatology. “Israel will fight the entire world, and God will help Israel [00:37:00] triumph.” So as you can see, he’s not he means sacrifice. He means ritual sacrifice.

Malcolm Collins: He means- But he means it in a roundabout way. He’s saying that they’re- Yes

sacrificing children in aims of their greater religious objectives rather than a... He’s trying to bait the crazies maybe. See, here’s the-

Simone Collins: Sort of yeah. Because what he’s trying to he, yeah, he’s trying to... another way that he put it is he’s what the Israelis are doing is quite horrific, because this really is, it is really this sort of sacrifice.”

So he’s not saying it is a ritual sacrifice. He’s saying it’s a sacrifice. Why, he says, because 37% of almost half the population of Gaza is under 18 years old. So he’s also showing okay, it’s not technically a ritual sacrifice. It’s more just because Palestinians are really young, it’s like basically child sacrifice, but he’s still trying to-

Malcolm Collins: why are Palestinians really young, by the way?

It’s because they’re terrible at medical technology- ... so they don’t stay alive very long, and they are breeding really rapidly, which is You know, if I was gonna be uncharitable to Israel, I would

Simone Collins: say we- no, come on. Let’s [00:38:00] use more diff- look, in places where there’s rampant poverty and deprivation and mistreatment of humans, you often get very high birth rates, and that’s what we’re seeing there.

Malcolm Collins: Yes.

Simone Collins: But again, he’s trying to play this up as ritual sacrifice again and again. And I think you made a really smart point there in that he is doing this to pander to conspiracy theorists while still trying to look smart and be like, “Oh I’m not actually saying that.” Candace Owens will just flat out be like I s- I talked with Charlie Kirk in a dream where he’ll be like, actually-” Yeah,

Malcolm Collins: this comes across as so much slimier than just, like-

Simone Collins: Yes.

Yes ...

Malcolm Collins: straight up being a conspiracy theorist or not being one.

Simone Collins: It’s all couched Like 47%. And he also, and he’s “Oh this is like sacrifice tradition in history, like the Ephesians.” And it is he tries to make it seem like I’m a historian. I’m just talking, I’m just sharing the fact- I

Malcolm Collins: love that this has happened multiple times throughout history.

Th- there is actually, child sacrifice is at least within the European tradition after Christianization, fairly rare. The only [00:39:00] instance that could come close to it that I’m aware of is the Children’s Crusade. But you couldn’t even argue that the Jesuits did that or see- Oh, good ... at least not Frankish Jesuits, because they didn’t come around till the 1800s, and this was in the 1200s.

You, it still could be the Catholics, but not the Jesuits. And they didn’t even the Catholic Church, the pope at the time, even with as corrupt as popes were back then, did not officiate the Children’s Crusade. It happened as a completely-

Simone Collins: What is the Children’s... Should I not ask?

Malcolm Collins: You don’t wanna know.

Simone Collins: Okay never mind. I don’t wanna know.

Malcolm Collins: But he didn’t say it was a good thing, so you know, th- even that doesn’t really hold. The, like I wanna go, okay, you go what religions actually do in a modern context might actually believe in child sacrifice. The two key ones that I can think of,

Simone Collins: No, hold on.

The Palestinians believe in child sacrifice. Remember that clip of that, that Palestinian woman who’s “I’m glad my son died, in, in this war, and [00:40:00] I hope to have more children so they can die.” Who is doing this?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, the-

Simone Collins: It’s the Palestinians. Who’s using the children as human shields?

It’s the Palestinians. It’s the Palestinians who are actively engaging in child sacrifice, who are actively putting the children on front lines. Excuse me. It’s, that’s what makes it extra insulting. He’s putting this on the Israelis, and the Israelis are not perfect, but the ones who are putting children in the direct line of fire are the Palestinians.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah if you’re familiar with, and I criticize Jewish eschatology regularly. I criticize Jewish metaphysics, at least of the non-Misnagdim camp, which is most Jews, ‘cause that’s the Hasidic Jewish Jews. And I say things that offend them all the time. So I, going into this as harsh as I could be, right?

There is not any mainstream eschatology or metaphysical belief within Judaism where child sacrifice would be considered a good thing. You could get this in some antinomial historic sects like the Frankish- Or [00:41:00] the followers of Zabatai Levi. But even the iterations of Judaism today, which I consider to be spiritually antinomian, still have no form of that would lead to child sacrifice.

It’s just not on their game board. So you have these historic sects that may want this, but these historic sects were integrated into the Catholic Church. They weren’t integrated into Jewish tradition, and he even, he admits that. They were c- they were taken by the Francus were absorbed by the Jesuits.

They were not absorbed by mainstream Jewish society. So even if by his own conspiracy theory logic they did still exist, they would be controlling the Vatican and not Israel. If he’s saying they’re just sacrificing children of other nations who they want to go to war with to win,” note in the Bible, this is in the Bible, that there are instances in which when you are fighting a population that is really bad because the populations that this [00:42:00] was said of in the Bible, they practice things like Jewish child sacrifice, which you could argue, given what she’s talking about here, it’s said to kill not just the men, but the women and children as well in a few instances.

It’s very clear commandment from God that applies to Christians as well, by the way. We have to deal with it. Presumably our God said this at some point, right? Maybe he changed his mind on things. But you could say, “Okay they have in times of war when the enemy is demonstrably evil, then you kill all of the enemy’s members.”

Okay, but that’s not really child sacrifice. That’s more like a war crime, right? But I don’t like the stretching here when you can just lay it out in a way that isn’t conspiracy-minded and be like mainstream Judaism does want Jews to win. Mainstream, most religions want them to win. If I go into extremist Catholic eschatology, they one day want to convert everyone, right?

Convert or, this is what Catholic integralism is about. Convert or [00:43:00] kill, right? At the end of the day, everyone’s on team for them. But they’re not the only ones who want to do this, right? Most Protestants they may be less clear about this, but they eventually want every actually, most Protestants believe that one day that all many different Christian sects can, are, like, good enough in the same way that we have a theosophical eschatology.

So they’re okay as long as everyone’s Christian one day. But that’s still pretty totalizing, right? I’ll note here that the modern Vatican actually does not one day want everyone to be Catholic because they say that I think this was at Vatican II, that like Muslims still believe a real Go- like in the real, like God that the Catholics are worshiping and that Protestants do.

Saying that they’re like partially true religions as well, and this pissed off a lot of Catholics, and this is where you got one of the sects that’s technically schismatic but says they’re not schismatic and has some influencers. But the the way that I read a lot of, the historic Catholic Church wanted everything to be Catholic eventually.

But the [00:44:00] point I’m making here is this is not unique to the Jews. Most groups eventually want everyone to be a member of their particular religion. Even the peaceful Baha’i want this, right? Everybody wants this. This isn’t a Jewish eschatology secret hush-hush thing. The only thing that might make the Jews slightly more suspect in their desire for this is that modern Jews don’t think that you can convert just anyone into Judaism.

So if they eventually want the Jews to win that becomes a bit more zero-sum than the Christian sects that wanna do this through conversion. That said the Jewish movement has begun to invent all sorts of traditions to get around this with the no hide system, which in our episode we point out is just a historical fabrication.

This is on the question that breaks Judaism. We go into the no hide scam. But anyway, continue Simone.

Simone Collins: The next broad conspiracy theory, or you could argue it’s a theme of Professor Jiang’s work that I think is the probably best fodder for some people’s [00:45:00] suppositions that he is in, in various ways supported perhaps indirectly and perhaps even without his knowledge by the CCP, is that he has this broad belief in like Western institutions being hollowed out and controlled by hidden elites with US decline being both inevitable and deserved.

And one, one long form critique that I came across about him claims that basically his forecasts all converge on one outcome, which is American collapse. He predicts Western Civil War, the vindication of Chinese and Iranian strategic positions in a way that maps almost perfectly onto the narrative architecture of CCP soft power.

So as you can imagine, this is one of those critiques that sees this as being a, him being a CCP thing. So let’s look at some of his own quotes on this. On secret societies as the real power orchestrating shifts, he [00:46:00] says, quote, “What I say is that the real power base are a collection of six societies that have an eschatological view of this war, sir.

The secret societies include the Freemasons. You have a collection of six societies. They believe in a war in the Middle East. It would start a process that would culminate in the end times. This war in the Middle East will lead to the defeat of the American Empire, and this will lead to the Greater Israel project, Pax Judaica.”

And then on their role in Western decline, he says, “As for how this happened, the issue that this is actually a plan that has been operating for centuries involving different religious group, Frankists Shabateans, Freemasonry, Knights Templar, Rosicrucians, and the Jesuits.” So what is the different secret societies, different religious organizations have been collaborating over centuries to advance a plan to about the end of the world, which we will usher in the Messianic age.

And then- Oh. Go ahead I know what you’re g- but I think I know what you’re gonna say, that he’s conflating this [00:47:00] minority Christian view that Israel needs to exist because then it’ll help us bring around the end times the right way and it’ll help- That’s

Malcolm Collins: a pretty common view among Pentecostals.

Simone Collins: Right, which I think... Okay less, less uncommon than him arguing. But

Malcolm Collins: Pentecostals I don’t even think are allowed in the Freemasons. They’re certainly not- Oh, really? ... one of the dominant factions in the Freemasons. The Freemasons are typically more deists and mainline Protestants. They most Baptists and Pentecostals are a little too conspiracy theory brained to join the Freemasons.

That doesn’t really make sense.

Simone Collins: It’s, if you’re conspiracy theory brained, you should be cucking to join the Freemasons.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah yeah, some people do ‘cause they think it’s gonna they’re gonna get access to special knowledge or whatever, and then they’re like, “Oh, no, it’s just old men.”

But okay. Let’s actually If he’s not an idiot, what’s his meta objective? His meta objective is to use parts of true information to try to turn American sentiment against our most useful [00:48:00] allies. D- particularly right now if- Oh,

Simone Collins: if he’s an agent of the CCP or if he wants to advance-

Malcolm Collins: Right.

He wants to advance the cause, because Iran

Simone Collins: is a pretty good trial. See, I don’t actually think that’s what’s going on. I think maybe the CCP is openly signal boosting him because they like his narrative and they find that it works in concert with their goals. But I actually think he’s just out to get a, his book deal and launch his own stuff and make money from that.

Malcolm Collins: Potentially. But the thing that’s weird to me is greater... If we’re allied with Israel, greater Israel is good for the United States. Greater Israel means a bunch of places in the Middle East that don’t like us very much become a part of one of our only growing and s- really ideologically, strategically aligned allies in the world right now becomes bigger.

And I’d go further, which is to say, I agree with him. Greater Israel seems to be on track to happen, right? Because the only thing that’s really keeping [00:49:00] Israel from just going out and killing everyone it doesn’t like and taking the land is Europe, and Europe is declining in power. And outside of Europe, the thing that’s preventing them are the progressive Israelis, but the progressive Israelis, if you look at their marches, like one of my Israeli friends was saying to, to this to me, they look like senior citizen marches.

You look at the conservative marches and they’re all young people, right? We know what the next generation is. And it-

Simone Collins: Gosh, that’s so true. Know Kings looks so old.

Malcolm Collins: Oh my gosh ... it is the same with the United States. Yeah. The groups that would want to reign in Israel from creating greater Israel really, it- even if you’re like an American first and you’re, like, cut off military aid to Israel, which I’m 100% for, by the way, we should cut off all economic aid to Israel.

Even if you’re like that, you... And Israel then started conquering its neighbors, you’re not gonna wanna go in and stop them. And yet I hear the same people who are like, “I’m mad because we are intervening in Iran right now,” then on, on their same shows fantasizing about America going in and conquering Israel.

And it’s bro, so you’re not against us [00:50:00] intervening in the Middle East. You’re not against foreign wars. You just want them to be for your political agenda, right? Which is So f*****g silly and stupid, frankly. And I had on one of our comments recently people were being like, “Why do you support the Jews when they majority vote Democrat?”

The Jews that I support are not the reformed Jews that create this statistic. They are the conservative orthodox

Speaker 4: According to Pew, 75% of Orthodox Jews vote Republican. Keep in mind, these are the Jews that are actually having children that are actually going to be representative in future generations that if we want to get along with the Jews, we have to find a way to partner with because they are one of the groups that is intergenerationally relevant and they are wildly conservative.

And not only are they wildly conservative, but they are disproportionate populations in many swing states like Florida, which makes it incredibly stupid to antagonize them if you’re right wing.

Malcolm Collins: Jews who [00:51:00] are productive. Not all of them. I don’t like the parasitic ones, right? And that faction of Jews does vote conservative. They’ve long been one of the pillars of conservative voting blocks in places like Florida and stuff like that.

I... I don’t even know where people are getting this from. But anyway, continue, Samout.

Simone Collins: I could read more quotes about the Western decline thing, but I it’s honestly been in, built into so many of the other things we’ve read about. And so I wanna finish up in terms of his general c- top conspiracy themes with his whole thing on psychohistory and mystical prediction.

He explicitly invokes Isaac Asimov’s fictional concept of psychohistory. Again, fictional concept. And claims to use structural history and game theory to predict the future. Though I should note that in his lectures on game theory, he doesn’t demonstrate a mastery of game theory concepts.

So I’m not really... Again, like a lot of this is like spamming- Explain what he

Malcolm Collins: gets wrong about game theory.

Simone Collins: What’s he not getting? We’ll get into that in a little bit, ‘cause I’m gonna discuss that in, in a bit. But anyway he basically [00:52:00] treats th- this fictional device of like psychohistory and game theory as a scientific method and like this, an academic thing when it’s not.

Some debunkers also allege that he talks about listening to the voice of the universe or a higher power that guides his predictions, which they argue pushes his material from speculative analysis into quasi-mystical prophecy, which you definitely see come through in the way that many of his followers regard him.

They’re really like, “Oh, you gotta check out this Professor Jiang. He’s been calling some stuff.” Oh, never mind that like he gets a ton of stuff wrong.

Malcolm Collins: He, what he doesn’t... I have not heard a single impressive prediction from him yet. Yeah. When people are like, “Oh, he calls for stuff.”

He said Trump would win the election. I said Trump would win the election. I don’t go around

Simone Collins: acting like a- Yeah, where’s your two million followers on YouTube, Malcolm?

Malcolm Collins: He said that there was a chance that the US would go to war with Iran. Every single analyst that I watch or listen to has been saying [00:53:00] that since Trump came into office.

Simone Collins: Dude, watch Kum- Trump talking about Iran in the ‘80s. Like

Malcolm Collins: Yes, he said he wanted to... he said literally on the campaign trail that he planned to bomb Iran. I do not know... The people who think, the... And then you look whenever he does make an out there conspiracy theory they’re always super wrong.

Simone Collins: Yeah, like quite uninformed. So it is, But anyway, things that he said though about psychohistory. He says, “Psychohistory is the idea that the future can be predicted, and if it can be predicted, then it be con- can be controlled and harnessed for the betterment of humanity. In his Foundation series, I- Isaac Asimov introduces the science of psychohistory.”

Yes, this is him- It’s a, the Foundation series- Okay, continue ... it’s a sci-fi- Off the reservation. Yeah. It is really possible to predict the future by mathematically modeling historical development. It’s not by the way, anyway, just-

Malcolm Collins: It does seem-

Simone Collins: On AI and modeling ...

Malcolm Collins: what he’s saying here, which is funny.

He’s trying to now make it look plausible by being [00:54:00] like, “Oh what I really mean is you just mathematically model historic events and you can-”

Simone Collins: No, like literally that’s what a character does in F- in the Foundation series. The, it starts off with basically this academic professor who’s special.

He’s fig- figured out the formula. And the problem w- in narratively with the Foundation series is basically this professor has fig- figured out the formula, and then he gets exiled to the far reaches of the universe because he predicts the downfall of the empire that has grown in this futuristic world.

And the empire does fall and that’s the key thing. It’s called Foundations because he works to build this, like-

Malcolm Collins: I under- look, Simone, you’ve explained this before. I think you’ve explained enough of it at this point. Okay. That he works to build a counter civilization. Anyway,

Simone Collins: this is all stupid- Yes

and I hate it. So let’s- Nope ...

Malcolm Collins: go ahead ... but hold on here. He’s saying something that is both profoundly stupid and something that is both so obvious that no one would challenge it. Okay. One, he’s basically saying you can use history to gain some predictive capacity over future events. Yes, everybody agrees on that,

Simone Collins: right?

Like- It helps, yeah. It helps to be informed by history. Yes. [00:55:00] History is worth studying, 100%. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: It gives you predictive capability on future events. That is

Simone Collins: not- Som- somewhat ...

Malcolm Collins: mystical. That is not the mathematical equation to predicting history. That’s just history as a discipline. Continue.

Simone Collins: Oh hold on.

They’ve been bathed. They were, they just went into the creek fully clothed, like, all, all the way. Toasty was freezing. But you know what? It sounds like

Malcolm Collins: you had fun, though.

Simone Collins: Yeah. That’s how you know it’s a good day, so.

Malcolm Collins: Okay, I wanna hear more of this Professor Zhang stuff.

Simone Collins: Right. So we’ve gone over the, you know, his, his various things about the Pax Judaica and the secret societies, bringing about the decline and fall of Western civilization, and all of that, right? I think one way that you like to calibrate the competency of people is by hearing their takes on something that you have thought a lot or read a lot about.

Mm-hmm. So I thought maybe you’d be interested in hearing the highlights from his lecture on AI. Are you interested?

Malcolm Collins: [00:56:00] Okay.

Simone Collins: He, he wants to couch first his analysis on AI as a general concept as intellectual exploration and that he, he acknowledges that he often oversimplifies and that his readings of texts like Paradise Lost and the, the Kabbalah, because that’s a good sign, are minority interpretations used to build broader narratives.

The, the core thesis that he wanted to summarize from his prior class before talking about AI is that to understand history and geopolitics you have to take extremist religious beliefs seriously because fanatical eschatological frame frameworks and ideologies often drive great powers behavior.

Which I don’t think is true but that is what he thinks is true. So in terms of AI-

Malcolm Collins: no, hold on. This is partially true. There are some Jews that are driven by the real Jewish ob- objective, right? Sure. Like there are some Catholics driven by, like, a real long-term Catholic objective. I even would argue that most people who have [00:57:00] a real faith are actually driven by the, even techno-puritanism,

Simone Collins: the- Yeah, but people in the end within, within complex systems act in alignment with their incentives, and their incentives first and foremost are to accrue resources and avoid punishment.

And you know what? I’m, I’m sorry, but es- es- I disagree ... eschatological frameworks don’t fit into that. I disagree. Because look, the, the first, the first goal that anyone who’s even a religious zealot is typically going to pursue is, “Ah, well, the best thing I can do is to accrue power,” often in the form of money or resources, “so that I can have more influence for my agenda.”

Malcolm Collins: But in your world view here doesn’t explain what you were just talking about, where the mother is happy that her son died fighting Israel, where you regularly- Well,

Simone Collins: she, she didn’t have a shot at any resources. So her only resource is her son, and she’s gladly- No, this is- Well, and I guess religious, like, alignment probably, like-

Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

Rel-

Simone Collins: There

Malcolm Collins: is-

Simone Collins: Resources in this world. She’s banking on resources [00:58:00] in the next world.

Malcolm Collins: And that’s eschatology. No. That’s extremist eschatology. That is what drives a lot of people’s behavior

Simone Collins: Okay. Point made. I don’t think that’s what drives most people who are in power now, and she’s not in power

Malcolm Collins: I think it drives Netanyahu’s behavior

Simone Collins: Mm.

I don’t know.

Malcolm Collins: But, but anyway

Simone Collins: I’m dubious. People in the comments will weigh in and tell me how the woman is wrong once again.

Malcolm Collins: It drives my behavior- I

Simone Collins: know,

Malcolm Collins: Tex ... it drives your behavior. My behavior is driven much more by an eschatological framework than

Simone Collins: it is- My behavior is driven by autism, as you know, which is why I do all sorts of things that are not in anyone’s best interest, but You know, the dishwasher has to be loaded

Malcolm Collins: a

Simone Collins: certain

Malcolm Collins: way My veneer is completely driven by an eschatological framework- Oh, I’m-

for where I want humanity to go.

Simone Collins: Welcome to your world.

Malcolm Collins: And the, the... I mean, I’m very upfront about it, right? The only place where I may not be upfront about things is how ruthless I would go if I were the majority [00:59:00] player,

Speaker 5: Welp, after yesterday’s episode, it may be a little bit more clear how far I’d go. , Actually, I was in part inspired to do that episode by doing this one, and I was like, you know what? If I die and the techno-puritans start to grow, I think that, , I, I need to bake this in and not just have this part be in my head, , to be like, look, get along with outsiders as much as you can.

Do not disparage a group unless you absolutely know that you cannot live alongside them. But once that becomes the case, they need to be removed in their entirety. , At, at least the ones that you do not integrate into your culture. And always leave that to be an option for those that are strong or ideologically aligned until it’s time to make the move.

, And I think that this is, , a fairly sane way to operate, right? The idea of, oh, this group will always be nice until we push them too far. Then as many outsiders I’d be like, “Well, let’s just not push them too [01:00:00] hard.” , Assuming they ever become a big group

Malcolm Collins: if I had power. But I, I don’t right now. I don’t have systemic power, so it’s better for me to say we should all get along, right?

Simone Collins: Okay. Okay. Anyway Anyway, the, the source material that Professor Jiang uses to talk about AI is f- fortunately not If, If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies, but rather Empire of AI, which is a book about OpenAI by Karen Ho. Oh, Hao, sorry. Karen Hao. Hao argues in her book that OpenAI’s original idealism that AGI benefits all of humanity has turned into a formula for consolidating power and centralizing talent around a quasi-religious mission, which, okay, that, like, checks out.

I’m okay- Yeah ... with that argument. And that they’re pursuing relentless global expansion, like a trillion dollar data centers, and constantly referring to AGI to maintain control. What he argues is that OpenAI’s true but unspoken goal is to create God, and he interprets leaders like [01:01:00] Brockman and Skotzber as trying to build a de facto deity, which he calls insane, evil, and stupid.

He posits that Sam Altman’s interest in AI c- companions like sex robots is about maximizing usage, intensity, and dependency, not about human flourishing, and that it’s part of a drive to make AI omnipresent in everyday life. Any thoughts on h- his thesis so far?

Malcolm Collins: So he’s just doing what he does with his other theses, where he says something that is meant to be provocative, but is actually a very uninteresting statement.

Yeah. Everything he is saying is profoundly uninteresting and unintelligent.

Titan: Killing it.

Malcolm Collins: All he is saying is that I, I, I assume, like assuming he doesn’t mean they’re trying to create a literal god, which every time he makes one of these theories he always backs it off, you know- Yeah ... the literal interpretation.

Yeah. And what he means is they’re trying to create a super powerful intelligence that runs the majority of the [01:02:00] world’s economy. Of course, of course that’s part of the goal, right? You know, they’re a company. They’re making a product. They want people to use it. They want it to be maximally impactful.

Yeah. And this is what it has the capability to do. So it’s just, I’d say it’s not wrong yet, it’s just profoundly an uninteresting observation.

Simone Collins: He also, in terms of his understanding of AI, traces chat box to Weizenbaum’s ELIZA to argue that systems like ChatGPT are mainly performing pattern matching and conversational tricks that exploit our tendency to hallucinate agency and meaning rather than

Malcolm Collins: processing the- Oh, duh, really?

That’s how, that’s how an AI coded my entire website for me? Ooh. That’s how it made very sophisticated code for me?

Speaker 6: By the way, the, , VTuber creation is now working, the, the VTuber Pro pathway. So if you wanna make a VTuber avatar... Now, obviously, after I release the feature, it gives it a bunch of updates to [01:03:00] improve it over the next couple weeks because that’s what I’m gonna be doing is polishing it, but it, it works now.

And with the, free editing software, it’s just a bit of a pain to get all the software. You’re probably gonna have to use an AI to, to fiddle with it. But it, yeah, it comes pre-rigged and everything.

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Malcolm Collins: It j- just, yeah, it is just pattern matching, but most of human thought is just pattern matching.

Simone Collins: I know. I know. I know.

Malcolm Collins: That’s how you make art. That’s how you make music. That’s how you write books.

Yeah. You pattern match with a little bit of external directionality, but the external directionality is mostly superficial in nature. If I am going and I am creating the next great art piece of the whatever style, most of what I am doing is pattern matching to that style. If I’m trying to create a new style of art, okay, maybe I’m not pattern matching there, but really you typically are.

You’re taking it from some idea or it’s even, like, anti-pattern matching, where you’re like, “Well, I’m just gonna try to do something new. I’m gonna make a block, a red block, and I’m gonna call that [01:05:00] art.” Oh, you ... Th- mm. Sorry, I just hate when people try to downplay how much of what they call thought is pattern matching.

Simone Collins: Mm. Hmm. Yeah. Anyway his take on AI risk is that attempts to make AI that solve all problems are gonna result in things like, “Oh, well, okay, just make everyone happy, eliminate suffering,” and then AI will just kill all people. Like, that’s kind of his, his take on X risk. He doesn’t- That’s a really

Malcolm Collins: dumb take on X risk.

Simone Collins: Yeah. He also stresses that data centers devour water and electricity and finance while remaining easy physical targets. He, he talks about, like, physical attacks in the Middle East as early signs that that infrastructure can’t really be defended at a global scale. In terms of the US versus China with AI, and this is what I would pay extra attention to if we’re trying to determine whether or not he is either directly or indirectly being sponsored by [01:06:00] the CCP he says that publicly, US firms frame Chinese AI as existential, as a threat to attract money and political support.

But privately, he says American and Chinese entities are collaborating because China’s pervasive surveillance and classroom monitoring yield the clean data the US companies want but cannot easily gather domestically. Ah. What I appreciate about this is at least- Ah ... this is the first, this is the first novel argument I’m hearing.

I’ve not heard someone be like- But why would

Malcolm Collins: China would have any advantage in AI?

Simone Collins: Yes. The, the mass- Oh, China, China is, has a mass surveillance state, and it’s clean data. And so, you know, the, the US needs them for training data.

Malcolm Collins: I, I have seen evidence that US firms are using lots of Chinese data because-

Simone Collins: Interesting

Malcolm Collins: I have repeatedly in recent AI work I’ve been doing seen Chinese characters pop up randomly.

Simone Collins: Interesting.

Malcolm Collins: Ooh ... I’ve heard other people have seen, had Hebrew characters pop up randomly as well.

Simone Collins: Well, well, well.

Malcolm Collins: Which would make sense. We’re [01:07:00] collabing with China and Israel.

Simone Collins: Yeah ...

Malcolm Collins: we’re really cross-stealing.

It’s where China tries to steal from us, we sometimes get data from them. It’s... The, the whole thing is, is like yes, they need money, but they don’t act as defensive against China as they would if they saw them as an existential threat. Mm-hmm. It’s more like everyone’s just running as fast as they can with this particular race.

Simone Collins: Totally.

Malcolm Collins: And that’s where we are, and there just aren’t that many true trade secrets in the AI space.

Simone Collins: Where I fall with him and, and this being or not being CCP propaganda, I think it doesn’t hurt what I think the CCP is doing, which is like, okay, stoke fears among US citizens about AI and get them to slow down the creation of data centers, et cetera.

Which is, a whole episode I’m thinking about doing is, is, is, is data center fear being astroturf? Because already there’s, there’s the sort of homegrown fear, but I feel like it’s being, it’s getting extra fuel that might be coming from the CCP. Because when you look at just the stark difference [01:08:00] between the way that people in China view AI versus the way that people in the US view AI, I feel like there’s clear There’s a, there’s a skew that suggests that a more interesting story there.

Like, why, why is everyone in China, like, pretty cool with AI? Like, “Oh, this is probably gonna be good.” Whereas, like, in the US we’re like, “It’s gonna end the world.” Something, something is going on. Anyway, though, so it’s not incompatible with that. He certainly sh- framing AI as a negative thing. He also has a whole thing on AI and the occult.

He links the project name Stargate to the CIA’s historical Operation Stargate, which was on psychic phenomena and, and to sci-fi depictions of dimensional portraits, interpreting modern AI data centers as literal portals designed to summon demons/aliens from other dimensions. I mean, I think this is one of those things where, like, he tr- he...

And this is very clever on his part, ‘cause clearly it’s working. It sort of brings in in keyword stuff with conspiracy language without really explicitly being like he- [01:09:00] they’re using it to bring in demons. He’s like, well, like demons, you know? ‘Cause A- they’re trying to make an AI god, so it’s like AI demons, you know?

Yeah, I

Malcolm Collins: think he tried to b- frame it as sacrilegious to make a, a machine that could solve world hunger or could, that could solve jobs, that could solve ev- like most of the world’s problems. Which is, I’m not saying that that’s what they’re trying to do, but, like, that is one potential outcome of creating a super intelligent AI that takes most human work away.

It is, it is a outcome that has significant societal risks that we’re gonna have to figure out how to get around. But to just frame all of these things as... This is the trick that he runs, which really is a stupid and annoying trick to me. It’s just-

Simone Collins: Well, effective though. Let’s, let’s be clear here that

Malcolm Collins: it works

technically they’re trying to build something that you could argue is godlike. And now because they’re trying to build God, that’s demonic and anti-biblical. It’s like, what? You just said it’s a technical whatever analogous thing. They’re not literally trying to build God [01:10:00] here.

Simone Collins: Yeah, though he does say, like, this is sort of, this is supposed to, as of the time of this recording be sort of the first in his AI series.

And he, he says that the rest of his semester... ‘Cause he’s really trying to... Again, he’s using language to, like, frame this as a you’re a student in his class. That he’s going to trace how this occult AI project is going to unfold and why he believes it will end in the destruction of the world. Yeah

and that he, he says that it could be- Oh, yeah, he’s not

Malcolm Collins: a CCP plant. He’s trying to get the US to back off AI. Anyone who’s trying to get the US to back off of AI, I am immediately suspicious of.

Simone Collins: Well, and you had, you had said to me the other day, you’re like, “Well, there’s no way he could possibly be in China.”

As far as we know, he is in China. He teaches- Really? ... a course on Western philosophy at Moonshot Academy in Beijing. His LinkedIn profile lists his location as Haidian District, Beijing, China. His X profile- Oh, then he definitely is a CCP plant ... lists his location as Beijing, China. Multiple recent media descriptions in 2026 call him a Beijing-based educator or say [01:11:00] he’s based in Beijing so-

Malcolm Collins: Sorry, I need to take a step back for people who don’t understand why this would be the case.

In China, you, it is illegal to have a YouTube account. You cannot have a YouTube account.

Simone Collins: Is that-

Malcolm Collins: If you

Simone Collins: s- ... true? No, because then how did the ADV China’s guys do it before they-

Malcolm Collins: They, they had to run away- ... left for Thailand ... from the country.

Speaker 8: Note, I double-checked this to make sure I was getting it right, and yes, it is extremely illegal to run a YouTube channel in China. , YouTube is blocked by the Great Firewall, so the only way you could have one is by using a VPN, which are extremely, extremely illegal if you are a Chinese citizen. A lot of foreigners are unaware of this because the rules aren’t enforced that strictly for foreigners.

But yes, , th- China certainly has to, like, legally approve of everything he’s putting out. Otherwise, they could just shut him down

Simone Collins: Right. But like before, for a very long time they were very prominent.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, they just did it with VPNs and stuff. Nobody cares. Basically you get popular enough, and he’s definitely in the range where somebody in the CCP- Not popular enough ... has approved this. Mm. You, everyone above a certain follower list is- Well,

Simone Collins: basically, you know, the, [01:12:00] the mere fact that he hasn’t been shut down is proof that the CCP thinks it’s, his message is effective for their ends.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

Simone Collins: Well, that’s telling.

Malcolm Collins: They would literally shut him down if not. He’s

Simone Collins: using

Malcolm Collins: the C-

Simone Collins: If, yeah. So they, yeah- Yeah, basically ... basically, like, they’re not enforcing a law, which you say exists, I didn’t know about this law because it, it is in their best interest to not enforce this law.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Okay. Anyone you see who’s in China and on the internet today, is, is, is doing CCP work Oh Right?

Simone Collins: Like- Wow. Okay, well, there you have it. I mean, that’s Malcolm’s theory then, and I will, I will, I will give you two other YouTubers’ theories, like in, in short version to sort of give where, where other people think this guy is or why, why they think he’s big when it doesn’t exactly make sense or fully add up.

There’s this guy on YouTube called Jose, just Jose. And basically his argument is that [01:13:00] he’s spamming the smart professor signal. He did this video called Professor Ceng’s Broken Classroom in which he argues that Ceng’s predictive history and game theory lectures are not a series of education, but narrative-driven speculation that’s riddled with factual errors that people believe to be credible because his lectures are packaged in the aesthetics of academia to create this veneer of authority.

And some of his choice factual errors that Jose highlights in, in his overview is Holocaust denial and claims that no good idea came through the scientific method, which- Oh my God. It’s

Malcolm Collins: profoundly stupid.

Simone Collins: Yeah ...

Malcolm Collins: it, and, and that is profoundly stupid if he actually said that.

Simone Collins: Yeah, he did.

He included the clip in his... I watched the, the full video. He, the clip is, it’s there. And he cites the- To talk about this dynamic, he cites the Dr. Fox lecture, which I hadn’t heard about before. But it’s this experiment in which this charismatic actor was presented [01:14:00] deliberately as a, a, a f- like, fancy, smart professor, and then delivered a content-free, jargon-laden lecture as Mr.

or Dr. Myron L. Fox, and then still received this highly positive evaluation from a professional audience suggesting that basically acting like you’re a smart professor and using professorial words can just max, m- mask a complete lack of, of substance in what’s actually being said. I mean- And this was, this was done in 1973, so this is a well-known dynamic.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. That is I mean, he appears to be kind of full of himself, if I’m gonna be honest. I don’t know if this is, like, to trick people or anything like that. I just think he’s sorta arrogant like this, right? Like, I think that this is just sort of how he judges self-worth is this sort of, like, pseudo-mystical history stuff.

Basically-

Simone Collins: Well, I’ll tell you what. My whole theory, and, like, my hot take about him is that basically he is the modern-day Jeffrey Epstein of China. Jeffrey Epstein was [01:15:00] a you know, he was really good at, like, convincing people that he was super smart, and without really any serious qualifications ended up teaching math at an elite high school in New York.

What is this but an elite high school in Beijing? And then he started using that and the connections he got through the school and through other places to get into this role and to get into that role, and I think that’s exactly what Professor Jiang is doing. And if you fall for Professor Jiang, you would fall for Jeffrey Epstein.

And I’m not saying Professor Jiang has some other weird, creepy stuff going on. I’m just saying- That this is the c- it’s the game. It is the same exact game that Jeffrey Epstein- Yeah, faking

Malcolm Collins: being an educator, right?

Simone Collins: Faking- Yeah, and faking being smart, and faking being, like, really erudite, and like, oh, like, basically spamming people with all this stuff until they...

Kind of fake it until you- you make it into these circles and actually build some real... I mean, Jeffrey Epstein did it through building, like, dirt on people and literally implicating them in, like, financial crimes and then he kind of got them. And it’s-

Malcolm Collins: it’s funny if you contrast him with us, [01:16:00] right? So he has

Simone Collins: no- Yeah, we- we performatively stupid, Max.

Yeah, we- We- we- we do things that make us look bad. So the reason why you watch us still is ‘cause our ideas, our ideas actually have merit you know?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, we- we come on air, we pretend to be, like, racist Luddites. I’ll put the- the racist clip here, right? And in actuality, I have a graduate degree from Stanford in a- an MBA, right?

Which is the hardest of the graduate degrees to get into in Stanford. Harder than most of their PhD, I think any of their PhD programs. M- mostly because the effects it has on your life are much better. Yeah,

Simone Collins: make- makes more money well,

Malcolm Collins: for some people. Simone... And it’s the hardest MBA in the world to get into.

It’s harder than Harvard by a country mile. It’s, like, I think 30% harder or something. It- the Simone- my undergrad is from St. Andrews, which is often ranked the top university in the UK in neuroscience. I have been published in the field of neuroscience. I worked in actually doing neuroscience, doing psychology work, and at the Smithsonian Museum [01:17:00] of Natural History, where I still have an exhibit on display.

Literally the top museum on earth. Maybe only, I mean, if you’re talking about, like, the world of academia, maybe only equivalated to, like, the British Museum. The Smithsonian

Simone Collins: Museum’s awesome, yeah.

Malcolm Collins: And then Simone has her graduate degree from Cambridge, right? Both of us have worked in, like, the halls- Well, he went to-

the halls of power ...

Simone Collins: a ni- he got a BA from a nice university, right? So,

Malcolm Collins: you know, like in English- I, I know, but what I’m saying is, is that, like, our ideas, our theories that we have developed are taught at universities like Stanford.

Simone Collins: Yeah, but we don’t stand in front of a fricking whiteboard and are like, “I’m Professor Collins.

Let me give you a lecture in this semester of my performative class.” Yeah, we don’t do that.

Malcolm Collins: And I’ve noticed

Simone Collins: that a lot of- Because we, we don’t use pocket sand to distract you into believing us.

Malcolm Collins: Dr- like, I mean, he, he reminds me of Drexel Friedman, right?

Simone Collins: If- I don’t know who that is ...

Malcolm Collins: Lex Friedman,

Oh,

Simone Collins: Lex.

Oh, gee,

Malcolm Collins: right. Lex Friedman, who pretends that he has any connection [01:18:00] to Yale, and he has no serious connection to them. He got his degree from Drexel. He got his graduate degree from Drexel. He’s Drexel Friedman. He is not a particularly intelligent person. He just puts on an act like he’s a smart person connected to...

Wait, it, it, no, it’s not Yale. It’s MIT, right? Like, it’s, it’s- I can’t remember ... it, it, th- this sort of laundered... And keep in mind, we have acted in ways which he hasn’t, I don- I don’t know if he has, but it would prevent us from being hired by most of the institutions that our accreditations would give us access to.

Titan: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: In part because we just sort of came out here, and we’re like I wanna, you know, tell as much as I can tell about the truth of how things are actually functioning to society at this point.”

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Right? Like, I

Simone Collins: want to make the world- Well, and we, we, we get uniquely mad- ... see the truth. Yeah ... when people, like, try to signal in this way.

Like, another person who does this kind of thing is Eliezer Yudkowsky, who manipulates signals like moral outrage, and this wunderkind branding-

Malcolm Collins: Yeah ...

Simone Collins: and gatekeeping and word selection to appear authoritative on various issues, despite getting key details or fundamentals wrong, like, quite [01:19:00] frequently. I know.

So-

Malcolm Collins: I mean, we get things wrong, but we generally- Oh, yeah ... try to update and correct when we do. I’m, like, attentive to when fans notice we got something-

Simone Collins: Well, and, like, between your genuine mispronunciations and our, like, jokes and, and admit- admission of bumbling and everything, I think it’s clear we’re not, like, pretending to be super smart.

We’re not gatekeeping, like, “Oh, like, you’re just wrong ‘cause you’re m- you’re uninformed.” Like, we don’t use a lot of the rhetorical manipulation tactics or semiotic manipulation tactics that these people do, which is why this is uniquely irksome for us. And one reason why we like vice signaling and rage baiting is it’s a way of saying, “We’re not tricking you into believing we’re critical, credible to, to, like, high production quality or gatekeeping language or academic trappings.”

We make ourselves hateable and weird so that when you take our argument seriously, you know it’s based on the merits of the arguments rather than any trust in or respect for us, and that’s really [01:20:00] important. And that’s, I mean, I think that’s also why people trust and respect ultimately and more fundamentally people like Asmongold and people like a lot of the VTubers who are like, “What?

Like, I’m, you know- I’m like some anthropomorphic thing. You know? Like, you know, you don’t have to like bend you- But this

Malcolm Collins: is why performative racism is important and useful-

Simone Collins: Okay ...

Malcolm Collins: in the modern system, right? You’re saying- I’m gonna

Simone Collins: lose

Malcolm Collins: my mind ... oh, not that he doesn’t do it. I mean, clearly he’s very anti-

Jewish, right? Anti-Catholic. He might be more anti-Catholic than us in that he thinks that the Jesuits who control the Vatican are one of his Illuminati players who wanna end the world. Mm-hmm. Right? I, I, Yeah, I’m just really unimpressed. I don’t think, I haven’t heard a single interesting idea from him.

His predictions are not bold. Like Peter Zeihan, I have problems with, like, where Peter Zeihan has gone post this latest Trump election. Oh. He seems to have completely fallen off. But he made genuinely impressive predictions. But people who, who

Simone Collins: followed him really closely, they say it was Jan 6th. Like, apparently he sort of lost his mind after Jan 6th.

Yeah,

Malcolm Collins: Jan 6th, lost his mind. But before Jan 6th, he made [01:21:00] really, w- Russia attacking the Ukraine was not on a lot of people’s bingo cards, okay? Mm-hmm. That was on his bingo cards, okay? He has made impressive predictions, all right?

Simone Collins: Yeah, like, actually, like the Strait of Hormuz closure right now, like, and the, the fact that so much of people’s lives have been disrupted by the fact that you know, American actions have led to global trade being disrupted and, and America not being willing to basically maintain global, like, shipping routes is, is something he called, and The End of the World is Just the Beginning.

He’s way more prophetic, just, you know, flaws and all, than Professor J, for sure.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And Professor J, I like, I just... Yeah, I hate this whole, “Oh, look at all these predictions he’s made,” and it’s like tomorrow the sky will be blue. It’s like, that’s not a-

Simone Collins: Well, one thing that Jose points out is like, okay, sure, yeah, he predicted that Trump was going to win the election, but he was also like, “Well, Trump is gonna win the election and Nikki Haley’s gonna be his vice president.”

And he only like passingly [01:22:00] mentions JD Vance but not in any serious capacity. And this i- Not only, you know, makes his, his, you know, full prediction incorrect, but also it was, it was poorly informed, because that was after the point at which Trump had on Truth Social- Well, I mean, that’s a bold prediction.

I give him ... posted saying- ... it’s impressive ... “I am not going to make Vick- or Nikki Haley my vice president. She’s great, but she’s not gonna be the VP.” So not only did he predict the wrong thing, he also, like, could have probably made a better guess if he was just a little more informed.

Malcolm Collins: So- So, Simone, can you go to, was there anything else you... Because I remember you, you wanted to talk about how he got something wrong before.

Simone Collins: There, there are

Malcolm Collins: several.

Simone Collins: Oh my God.

Malcolm Collins: His game theory- Hold on ... getting wrong. I

Simone Collins: wanna- Oh, yeah. Okay, let me jump to that. Because let’s see. Jose made so many... If you go to my show notes, you can see all the things that Jose...

You can also just watch this video again, that’s it. Let’s see. Oh, yes. So Jose argues that Cenk uses game theory as a branding device. Do you just wanna crawl [01:23:00] around over here, Joanna? What do you want? Okay,

Malcolm Collins: so, on Game Theory- Game Theory, by the way, is not impressive or difficult to understand.

It’s, it’s really not Game Theory is incredibly simplistic, g- generally speaking. Well, anyways. In terms of, like, the greater academic theories that a person may need to grok. If somebody is going out and being like, “I did this with Game Theory,” it’s like, it’s like hearing, “I did this with tic-tac-toe logic.”

Simone Collins: Well, yes, but he uses it nevertheless to confer legitimacy on what are essentially stories that he makes on how the world works, not actually game theoretic models. So not only does he try to use game theory, but he’s just like, “Game theory.” It’s kind of like, when what’s-his-face declares bankruptcy Michael Scott dec- declares bankruptcy.

Yeah. And it’s like, “I declare bankruptcy,” and has, like, no understanding of the concept, and that is kind of what Jiang is doing. ‘Cause w- what, what Jose points out is that he, he gives a dating game example when he talks about game theory, starting with five boys and girls, and then he quickly spirals into claims that women’s [01:24:00] status obsession is killing civilization and that women are responsible for creating incels, showing “the game” is just a vehicle for his own views.

And he constantly lists three factors-

Malcolm Collins: Well, hold on. Those things are kind of true. It’s important that you call out what’s true. Well, those

Simone Collins: things are true-

Malcolm Collins: Women’s

Simone Collins: obsession with status- ... but they’re not game theoretic models ...

Malcolm Collins: is, no, but it’s not game theory, but the, it is true.

Simone Collins: It’s true, but no, yeah, but if you’re doing a lecture on game theory, you can’t just be like, “I’m talking about game theory.

Oh, man, women are horrible incels,” or something. He constantly lists three factors: genes, wealth, status focus and clarity, resolve, intelligence, crime, science, but never shows how they’re measured or weighed which undercuts the pretense of any sort of formal modeling. He just wants to sort of use these as narrative birds.

And then he explicitly downplays math and emphasizes intuition and speculation while telling students that they should make imaginative leaps that are not backed up by any evidence which is the opposite of what [01:25:00] a game theory class should encourage. Like, this is, it’s not about narrative-

Malcolm Collins: I mean, it’s not entirely dissociated from game theory.

I’d say this other guy is overreaching a bit. The way people- I don’t think so ... date could be modeled with game theory logic, right? He’s just not using any classical game theory modeling that I’m aware of here. He appears to be using red pill modeling. True. Which is not inaccurate, it’s just not game theory.

Simone Collins: Yeah. And Jiang also just in general has a very big tendency to cherry-pick and simplify history to fit his narratives. I do that. He tries, yeah, you do. He, he tries to critique science, including cosmology and evolution and psychology but then every time he does, it reveals a, a lack of basic understanding.

But then he uses that ignorance to argue that science is fundamentally flawed. And- I, a

Malcolm Collins: lot of people do that. Oh. I don’t really hold that against him.

Simone Collins: Then you, you, I, I would if you, if you try to use that as some, like...

Malcolm Collins: [01:26:00] I’m just saying I need specific examples. I have heard specific gaming examples.

These sound like generalities that I’m not gonna buy. I need a specific example of where he clearly didn’t understand a field he was critiquing.

Simone Collins: Okay, Big Bang and dark energy. He likens dark energy to cheating on a math test, writing 1987 plus 25 equals 20 plus dark energy, suggesting that adding an unknown term is illegitimate.

And th- he doesn’t actually engage with the actual cosmological evidence, and uses his own confusion as proof that the theory is wrong.

Malcolm Collins: Which- See, hold on, hold on. He’s not entirely wrong here. We do have evidence outside of the big mathematical gap th- there might be something that we’re calling dark energy.

There is a lot of research on this. But I also understand where he’s coming from with this. This is the person reading him in bad faith. That is-

Simone Collins: Okay, okay. Fine You know, I, I can give more examples.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, give more. Actually, this person is showing me more that they don’t understand this

Simone Collins: stuff He ends up asserting that scientific [01:27:00] breakthroughs and his own ideas come from channeling a divine source, and that secret societies invert reality through science, which is just a slide into mysticism.

No,

Malcolm Collins: he, his, his, his layout of secret societies is typically, like, i- he, he basically says functionally it’s like they’re secret societies in a lot of things, right? You know, but that’s not the same as saying there’s actually secret societies.

Simone Collins: He says that all science is about reinventing reality to serve power, and that secret societies aim to invert heaven and hell.

Like, I I don’t understand how-

Malcolm Collins: Kind of they do if you take an interpretive approach,

Simone Collins: but not- He thinks that ISIS was created through US torture and brainwashing modeled on ancient Egyptian priestly rituals, Malcolm.

Malcolm Collins: Okay, that’s crazier. Yes. But not, not... I mean, ISIS, this is where he gets me. Oh,

Simone Collins: score though.

Malcolm Collins: It I’m gonna, I’m gonna point out, like, this is where I pull out and I’m like, “

Simone Collins: If you-” He argues, he talks about how ISIS, ISIS, oh, but that is the [01:28:00] Egyptian god Isis. Well, no, that’s, that’s not even the name that they use for it in... That’s what the English people call it.

Titan: Like, English language

Malcolm Collins: people call it Isis.

Yeah. They don’t... But the funny thing about the ISIS thing is he’s like, “If you understand extremist eschatology, you can predict behavior. If you understood Muslim eschatology, ISIS is the obvious and inevitable result of it.” Like, you don’t even need to know that much about Islamic eschatology to know that ISIS is the inevitable result of it at least taken to extremes.

And yet he’s like, “No, this is a mystery. Where could it have come from? Must have come from US torture rooms.” It’s, it’s the way he gets things wrong which is so offensive to me.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Well, okay, then let’s go to the different I think, school of thought about, about Professor Jiang, not in terms of like, oh, he’s wrong, he’s being a fake prod- professor, but instead, like, okay, why does this feel a little fishy in terms of how he’s grown?

And I think the, the most articulate, thoughtful person to discuss this who’s not like, [01:29:00] “It’s just the CCP,” or, “It’s just botting,” which I think is not the full story, is is summarized by a YouTuber called Hidden America. And he basically argues that this feels orchestrated, and did this video on Professor Jiang titled The Curious Case of Professor Jiang: How the Internet Manufactured a Geopolitical Oracle, in which he argues that Jiang’s public authority was really fostered that he rose in popularity because his framing fit what platforms and audiences were looking for.

And I think this is very accurate. And he notes that his audience treats him less like a commentator and more like a prophet or interpreter of some hidden reality, which definitely is what I see in terms of the way people talk and talk about him. And he likens this in turn to cult formation or controlled narrative building, which definitely feels kind of right from how, like, everything c- co- centers around this cult powers or occult powers causing [01:30:00] Western decline narrative that he’s pushing.

Malcolm Collins: Look, I mean, I g- I think you could do that with anyone. You could do that with us, you could do that with so many other people. I just think that he’s not that bright. Like, that’s the bigger problem with all of this, right? He’s, he’s hacked people’s understanding of authority. And he uses that to build narratives that are either obvious or stupid.

That’s the whole problem I have with it. His narratives, I, I have not heard... Like, if you want something like Professor Zhang that’s not us, Roubiard. Roubiard gives interesting- Yeah ... orthogonal takes that I don’t always agree with, but I rarely leave one of his videos-

Simone Collins: Well,

Malcolm Collins: he comes from a place- ... without having, like, five or 10 new ideas.

Simone Collins: I- Well, and he’s very informed. When- Yeah ... when he talks about something, he doesn’t get it wrong. He talks about it from a place of deeper understanding and knowledge. And even when he, like, goes off on conspiracy theories, he’s pulling from typically primary [01:31:00] sources. As close- Yeah ... to primary sources as he can.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Keep in mind he’s a Quaker, so obviously he was born evil, right? So, like, you can see our video on that. We love

Simone Collins: him.

Malcolm Collins: But the point I’m making here is that, like, I have serious ideological differences with Roubiard, but Roubiard’s mistakes are not stupid mistakes. He, he rarely makes stupid mistakes.

And that, that’s where, like, if y- and, and if you w- that’s why I’m suggesting Roubiard for Professor Zhang people, because he’s got all of the mysticism, he’s got all of the conspiracy brain that Zhang has. Mm-hmm. He just doesn’t make obvious mistakes, like saying Francists are still around.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Well, and, and he, he engages in... I mean, Whatifalthist is essentially predictive history. But, like, actually if you tru- re- if you genuinely tried to take a crack at predictive history, that is Whatifalthist. Whereas Professor Zhang is like, “I’m just doing jazz and dressed up like a professor.” Like, it’s, it’s it’s not, [01:32:00] it’s not as substantive.

You, you’re gonna learn stuff if you watch Whatifalthist. It’s interesting. Yeah. It’s, it’s cool.

Yeah. It’s genuinely good speculative history. And I, and I do like it. And, and,

and

Malcolm Collins: very much like a thug- Least bought-in person ever. He rose to fame when he was in his early 20s maybe even before that, right?

And he is very open. Like, a lot of the fans I know who talk with us have also talked with Ruby Art at some point. Like, he’s very open to talking with fans. Oh, yeah. He’s a very open person. No, he’s

Simone Collins: accessible, he’s open, he is, is, is humble. And there is something a little fishy about Professor Zheng’s dormant YouTube channel suddenly going active in 2024 and then growing to two million subscribers incredibly rapidly.

I don’t think it’s fishy.

Malcolm Collins: I know enough people who watch him. I, I know enough midwits who buy

Simone Collins: this stuff. It’s true. It’s true. It’s true. Like, I, I do see a world in which this is just algorithmic growth. However, China is really extra with stuff. Yeah, China is extra with stuff. Like, I recently saw this article about-

Malcolm Collins: It could, it could be China.

Like, clearly the CCP likes this guy. Clearly he’s on their good boy [01:33:00] list.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: They have done stuff to grow people in the past.

Simone Collins: I’m just- Well, and we just did an episode on, like, Chinese spies being throughout universities, and they’re very, like, very active in their surveillance of foreign actors within their own state, and also very careful about, I think, foreign actors in other states.

And it’s, it’s one of those things, like, their surveillance of foreign actors within their own country reminds me of that adage that, like, if your partner suddenly becomes super suspicious that you’re cheating, it’s probably because they’re cheating. And The Telegraph recently ran this article titled The Secret Chinese Surveillance Program Tracking People Like Me, in which their senior foreign correspondent, Sophia Yan, describes this dedicated dynamic control platform for foreigners that integrates this, their, you know, the vast surveillance network they have.

They’re, like, all the, the cameras, many of which have gait recognition to monitor people of interest in very granular real time. And journalists and dissidents are explicitly signaled out as, as [01:34:00] trackable targets on the platform. Someone leaked the platform to her. She f- like, was on it very clearly.

And it, it allows you to sort of know exactly what the, what they are, who they’re meeting with, what they’re a- up to. It allows security services to see where their foreign citizens are and who they meet and how they move around in cities, and what social and professional networks they belong to.

It allows the security service to see where they are at any given time, and they, they can use it, Like they can filter by-

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, and the, the point being is this guy is in China. He’s living in China. He’s clearly doing what the CCP wants.

Simone Collins: Yeah. So- ... I mean, just considering like all, like that, I’m just trying to present that as w- another thing in addition to the, like, university issue that China does that is, like, kind of extra.

So I wouldn’t put it past the CCP in terms of signal boosting him, especially because this further, as to your point, right, it makes people more pissed about Israel. It makes people more pessimistic about AI. And these are things that are, [01:35:00] are very much, it seems to be in, in China’s best interest.

Malcolm Collins: And more pessimistic about the US’s economic future.

Simone Collins: More- Totally. Yeah ...

Malcolm Collins: relative to China, right? Mm-hmm. Like I, a lot of this makes AI companies in the US less gated about working with China, right? Like- Yeah ... look, I obviously, even just as a matter of course, even if the CCP wasn’t boosting him, he has to curate everything through a CCP lens so he doesn’t get disappeared, which, like, regularly happens to people in China these days.

You can see our episode- Yeah ... I don’t know if we put that episode live, on, like, just how China will just disappear you. As it has done. But yeah, he, I don’t like broadly speaking, I don’t really have any mel- like dislike of him. He’s not somebody where like, you know, with Taleb- No, you’re way more nice to him

Simone Collins: than, than I am.

Malcolm Collins: Where I was, Nassim Taleb, I’m like, this guy knows he’s manipulating people. He knows he’s lying to people. Isn’t

Simone Collins: it Nassim Taleb?

Malcolm Collins: Or something, whatever, Taleb nonsense. I don’t know. He, he just intentionally manipulating and lying to people. There [01:36:00] are other commentators where I think that that’s what they’re doing, where they know they are manipulating people, or where it’s very clear that they are boosting themselves and they’re not relevant anymore, and they’re trying to maintain control over political apparatus in the United States.

With Zhang I don’t really get any of that impression from him. Hmm ... if he is botted, I think it’s by the CCP, b- and he’s not following their rules because he’s botted, he’s following their rules ‘cause he doesn’t wanna be arrested and he’s living in Beijing, right? Like, he’s grew because he presented a type of content and a type of figure that I think the world wanted to see.

Hmm ... they, they wanted respectable Candace Owens. And that’s what he presented. But the problem is is his ideas are like, and, and this is where I have my one area, is that I wanna say that I think he’s smart enough to know that some of the stuff he’s saying is just dumb, but there’s a certain level of like normie [01:37:00] dumb where like you just w- it wouldn’t catch you, especially if you’re a little mysticism brained- Yeah

that you’re really screwing up.

Simone Collins: Yeah, and I mean, there have been instances in which Rudiard has gone a little bit too far with his conspiracies, and people have been like, “Ah, okay, that’s a little too far.” But he, he’s walked it back. Like, very, very smart people such as him can get, can get caught up in some loops that are not very productive.

But they, at, at least the, the, the smartest ones are able to sort of walk that back a little and they sort of catch themselves. Well, and

Malcolm Collins: I think because he and this is my biggest th- the thing that I dislike about him. Because he catches things in things that aren’t true, and are obviously not true, and that you can easily verify aren’t true- Mm-hmm

he will say something that the average person will think is more offensive than what we’re saying, but is actually dramatically less offensive and costly to say than what we’re saying. Right. Yeah. So if you go out there and you say [01:38:00] “Mainstream Judaism is controlled by an antinomial z- Frankish sect. A lot of Jews are gonna be like, “Oh, that’s like classic stupid conspiracy,” whatever, right? Like, it’s anti-Semitic, but whatever. Whereas I come out here and I go, “Actually, if you look at Jewish tradition up to the point of the Baal Shem Tov his teachings would’ve been considered a form of spiritual antinomianism, and they now dominate the dominant Jewish organizations which actually have real political influence in both the United States and Israel.”

That may sound a lot less offensive, I guarantee you it is a billion times, because people who are actually Jewish and involved in these, whereas I come out, a- and you kind of understand why this is offensive, because if what I’m, I am saying is true w- oh, my God, is

Malcolm Collins: an antinomial Jewish sect that controls the world? That would be really [01:39:00] bad for most Jews. And then a lot of people would be like, “No, don’t say that stuff, Malcolm.”

And then I go to them and I go, “Yes, but you’re a Jew. You’ve studied Jewish history. Is it true that the Baal Shem Tov’s teachings would be considered spiritually antinomial at the time they were laid out, and other rabbis at the time, the leading rabbis at the time, called him and his followers out for this and were deadly afraid of the growth of his movement?”

They’d be like, “Well, that is true.”

Speaker 11: When I say spiritually antinomial, what I mean here is an inversion of earlier practices. He didn’t actually have a belief in, or at least never stated a belief in antinomialism as in an intentional inversion of other practices because, you know, Shabbatai Zevi was still fresh on everyone’s mind. , But, , I’m just saying functionally were they antinomial in how much they inverted previous Jewish teachings around specific [01:40:00] topics?

Malcolm Collins: That’s why it’s worse, because it’s true. When you are calling out true things, it is always more dangerous and more offensive than calling out made-up things.

Simone Collins: Mm.

Malcolm Collins: Anyway, love you.

Simone Collins: That’s a good point, and I love you too.

Malcolm Collins: And for dinner tonight I’m okay with just doing, like, fries and the, the stuff that you had in the,

Simone Collins: Yeah, well, so I, I don’t know how well they go together, but we have two samosas that if we don’t eat tonight probably won’t be good.

Well, that’s why I

Malcolm Collins: said let’s do this, like, samosas and some fries.

Simone Collins: Some fried things to go with your fried things. The, the, the fries are the samosa, basically. How about samosa and tomato soup? No. No? No. It’s... I know, I know. I’m just trying to, like, if these other things are gonna expire if we don’t-

Malcolm Collins: Let’s try the new fries.

The tomato soup we will get to. I like tomato soup. I’ve been eating tomato soup, like, every other

Simone Collins: day. I know. It’s been good. No, I know, ‘cause that’s all my dad wanted when he was sick.

Malcolm Collins: And that’s good that I had it, right? You probably thought I’m being wasteful.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Well, and you’re not paying for...

That’s, I

Malcolm Collins: that’s, that’s- Did we, did we use the last [01:41:00] tomato soup jar? Is that, like, open now- Yes ... or is it still sealed?

Simone Collins: The

Malcolm Collins: second is- Okay. I’ll have tomato soup sometime over the next few days. Today I want to do samosas and the new fries, ‘cause I wanna see how those come out.

Simone Collins: Okay. What? This is your cheat day.

Speaker 9: Yeah. They’re gonna cucking. Yay.

The chicks stand out the bigger side as the but baby chickens Yeah, the baby chicks are a little afraid of the big chicks, you see, because the big chicks are a lot bigger Mommy. There’s a pecking order, my dear

Speaker 10: You gotta sneak up on him. Can you be sneaky? I want that. You can do it, just be sneaky and patient, okay? I can’t. Maybe I can help you. We’ll see. Can you help me please? Aw, thanks for asking them nicely. [01:42:00] Let’s see what I can do to help.

In this explosive Based Camp episode, Malcolm & Simone Collins dive deep into one of the most uncomfortable topics in Christianity: the Biblical commands to kill infants and civilians during conquest — and why they might actually reflect a coherent (if brutal) longtermist moral framework.

From 1 Samuel 15 and the total destruction of the Amalekites, to Deuteronomy’s rules for Canaanite cities, to Jesus’ teachings on mercy — Malcolm argues that modern “peace at all costs” Christianity has cherry-picked the Bible and is actively destroying Western civilization. They explore how true Biblical mercy often looks like decisive action, not endless tolerance of predators and parasites.

This is a raw, unfiltered discussion about civilizational morality, the dangers of naive pacifism, and what “love your enemies” actually meant in context.

Tract 12: Sociatal Morality & A Genocidal God

[00:00:00]

Malcolm Collins: Hello Simone, I’m excited to be talking to you today. Today we are going to be digging into morality as the Bible and Christian faith relate to it. Because I am getting really sick of all of these Christians out there that we see within like the wider Christian media influencer ecosystem talking about how Christianity is like the religion of peace and we need to always be peaceful.

And if you’re going to, for example make a blanket rule against dropping bombs on schools in a warfare scenario, then all of a sudden terrorists are going to put their headquarters under schools and make society net negative for children.

Simone Collins: Oh, you’re not, you, this is purely hypothetical of course.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. If, if at a, a societal level, right, we did something like just always gave out food whenever somebody was hungry you would have groups begin to evolve or [00:01:00] move in close to you that evolve entirely predatory off of this, right? And somebody could be like, “Well, maybe the Bible didn’t predict all of these things, or didn’t really think through difficult moral decisions.”

And the reality is is that’s not true at all. The Bible all over the place has God telling people to kill infants. And so we are going to go, because I think that this is one of the clearest, I mean, I could go into the instances where God’s like laying out the rules for selling your daughters into slavery or rules on how to treat slaves.

But in this episode, that we’re gonna go more on in the next one, ‘cause this is gonna be a bit of a two-parter. But on this one we’re going to go deeper into specifically where, why, and when does God say it’s okay to kill infants? Because I think it’s through these scenarios we can get a broader understanding of how Christianity should [00:02:00] understand morality.

Speaker 6: You know, maybe I was wrong about this pacifism thing.

Speaker 8: Are you insane? Pacifism works like a charm as long as you button it.

Malcolm Collins: Right?

Simone Collins: Isn’t it broadly understood, though, that one of the reasons Christianity got so much early adoption in the in the Roman Empire was because the Christians didn’t kill the babies, and people kinda liked that. Like especially women.

Malcolm Collins: Did, yeah. And so what I’ll also point out is I do not, I think that there was a period of history where Christianity was meant to be understood as this ultra-peacenic religion because that helped it grow.

We’ve done an episode where we look at the morality of early Christians and show that them being willing to help each other during times of plague, them not killing their infants th- this helped their population grow at a significantly larger rate than pagan populations and lowered the persecution that they might have otherwise gotten during their period of growth.

But once they were the dominant religion within regions- At first, they kept their [00:03:00] warlike nature. You know, they would still go and do crusades. They would still punish the infidel you know, still seek out witches in their community, stuff like this. But parts of the Bible began to be emphasized more than other parts over time until the religion became unrecognizable and a net negative in the way it was being practiced.

So to go back to this we’ve got... And this one is the clearest, so I’m gonna go the longest on it. Samuel 15:2-3. It says, “ Thus says the Lord of hosts: ‘I have noted what Amalek did to Israel in opposing them on the way when they came out of Egypt.’” Now, note this would have happened hundreds of years before God is talking about this.

So this is something that a people did hundreds of years ago. None of the people who actually did this negative thing to Israel would have still been among the Amaleks, okay? “Now go and strike Amalek and devote to destruction all that they have. Do not spare them, but kill them, both man and woman, [00:04:00] child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey.”

And there’s some different translations for infant here. We have suckling basically mean a child while it’s still surviving on breast milk. So you can’t be like, “Well, maybe they’re talking about older children here or something.” This is the- the word that’s used here means that. And you could say, okay, maybe something was lost in translation here, and God didn’t really mean, “No, you gotta kill everyone when you take this territory.”

Speaker: And note here, people who want to say the Bible says thou shall not kill, it doesn’t say that. It doesn’t say that anywhere. It says that you’re not supposed to murder. Murder in Jewish law is very different from a generic killing.

I didn’t mention this in the episode because I assumed it was obvious for people with like baseline biblical knowledge, but probably worth mentioning

Malcolm Collins: Okay? So what then happens in Samuel 15:7-9, all right? “And Samuel defeated the Amaleks, and from Havilah as far as Shur, [00:05:00] which is to the east of Egypt. And he took Agag and the king of the Amaleks alive, and devoted destruction all the people with the edge of the sword. But Saul and the people spared Agag and the best sheep and the best oxen and fattened calves and lambs, and all that was good, and would not utterly destroy them.

All that was despised and worthless they devoted to destruction.” Okay? So, what did God do about this, right? And the word of the Lord came to Samuel, this is Samuel 15:10 through 23, “I regret that I have made Saul king, for he has turned his back from following me and has not performed my commandments.”

And Samuel was angry, and he cried to the Lord all night, dot, dot, dot. “And the Lord sent you on a mission,” he said, “Go and devote to destruction all the sinners, the Amaleks, and fight against them until they are consumed. Why then did you not obey the voice of your Lord? Why did you pronounce on the [00:06:00] spoil and do what was evil even in the sight of the Lord?”

And then dot, dot, dot here.

, And then response, “Because you have rejected the word of the Lord, he has also rejected you being king.” So if it was unclear what happened there, so I’ll just lay it out for you. Did you catch what he did wrong?

Simone Collins: He didn’t kill them all?

Malcolm Collins: He didn’t kill one person, the king- Yeah ... and some of the sheep and oxen.

Simone Collins: Yeah, he was supposed to kill them all.

Malcolm Collins: Now, the, a, he killed all of the infants. He killed

Simone Collins: all the- No, but that’s not all of them ...

Malcolm Collins: but that’s not all of them.

Simone Collins: All of them.

Malcolm Collins: All of them. And,

Simone Collins: God, what is up, dude?

Malcolm Collins: Here, the demons- This

Simone Collins: is the whole demon, “I killed, I killed goblins.”

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, okay, very, very similar to that, which

Simone Collins: is why- Was that just, were they just, were they just trying to reenact the Bible there with the whole, like, goblin baby killing scene?

Were they trying to be like...

Speaker 4: [00:07:00] Then to show them mercy

faces to the light of day

Malcolm Collins: I will say that this is the morality the Bible teaches us. The morality of that scene in Goblin Slayer is essentially the morality the Bible teaches us, and we’re gonna point out, [00:08:00] ‘cause people can be like, “Oh, well, when Jesus came, all of these older stories are revoked,” right?

Like, they don’t matter anymore. This is not the God we’re dealing with anymore. I’m gonna point out, no, Jesus makes it very clear all of this stuff holds.

Well, we’re gonna point out that God’s mercy, when we understand mercy through the eyes of what God means by mercy- Mercy

right, because we’re constantly told God is merciful-

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm ...

Malcolm Collins: and then you’re kicked out for being king because you didn’t kill them all, right? You know, like, clearly if we’re defining mercy through whatever trait God has, it’s not this standard human definition of mercy, right? So when we’re commanded to be merciful that does not undermine the...

And handle it when you’re conquering a territory, right? So we’re gonna go into that. And I’ll note here, people will be like, “Well, like, God matured or something between the Old and the New Testament.” Mm-hmm. And I’m gonna say, no, no, no, no, no. The reason the rules that we are given and what’s asked of God is changed in between these two contexts-

Simone Collins: Uh-huh

Malcolm Collins: is that, [00:09:00] humanity changed. Civilization changed. So the rules that God gave us to help civilization advance- Oh ... are different in the different contexts. But it’s not that the older rules are no longer relevant or something we should be listening to or taking into understanding in warfare, in civilizational conflicts.

Hmm. So I wanna continue here to point out for people who are like, “Well, maybe this, this Amalek people were just, like, uniquely evil, and the situation with Samuel was, like, very unique in, in the Old Testament,” right?

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm, okay.

Malcolm Collins: And I’ll point out that is not the case. So we’ve got Deuteronomy 20:16-18.

This was a general rule landed out for Canaanite cities, okay? “But in the cities of the people that the Lord God has given you for an inheritance, you shall save nothing that breathes, but you shall devote to complete destruction the Hittites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, and the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, as [00:10:00] your Lord God commanded, that they may not teach you to do according to all abominable practices that they have done for their gods, and you sin against the Lord God.”

So actually here we’re getting some more context. Why does God have - these people kill everyone in a region when, when, when they’re conquering the region? And note he doesn’t always do this. There are two types of, like, conquests that are described. Sometimes it’s kill everyone, all the women, all the children, everyone, and then other times it’s leave the virginal women, marry them.

So again, this isn’t, like, a blanket rule here that he’s giving but it is the normal rule. The virginal women rule is, is, is less commonly brought up.

And I will also note here that we know from DNA studies that the current Jewish population is about 50% descended from the Canaanites, and we also know from Jewish Old Testament stuff, there’s a part, bunch of parts especially during the Josiah reforms where, like, they’re [00:11:00] complaining about intermarriage with Canaanite people and stuff like that.

So the Jews acted with more what we would consider quote unquote, “mercy” than they were commanded to. Hmm. And in so doing, sinned. Right? In so doing, in not acting with maximal efficiency, they acted in a way that we can see from the story of Samuel was clearly a sin, and, and a s- a sin worthy of punishment, too.

Simone Collins: Interesting, huh.

Malcolm Collins: So to continue here, now we’ve got Numbers 31:1-18 and this is the Midianites. So again, we’re a different group here, right? Moses commands when, when talking about taking venge- vengeances on the Midianites, “Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman who has known a man by lying with him.

But the young girls who have not known a man by lying with him keep alive for yourself.” So you can see in this one instance it’s a bit different, but still killing the infants. Still killing the infants. Even in the merciful option, it’s still killing of the infants. And again, why the killing of the infants?

It’s, in the other passage, the reason God gives is, well, [00:12:00] when they grow up, they will lead you away from whatever God sees as the truth, right? And so the question here is why is God saying this, right? Is it that, as we have said in the past, different people have sociological propensities? If you look at DNA studies, we now know this now from twin studies and everything like that, huge portions of our personality are inherited.

Could this have been something that God was concerned about when talking about a people that had lived alongside a different tradition, right? Potentially. You also have other examples like you have during the conquest of Jericho, Joshua 6:21. “Then they devoted all of the city to destruction, both the men and the women, the young and old, oxen, sheep, and donkeys, with the edge of the sword.”

We also have Psalms 13:9. This is more of a, a lament and not necessarily a direct commandment from God, but it’s still in the context here. So here we understand how they would’ve killed infants during this period because they describe the process in [00:13:00] this.

So they say, “Remember, O Lord, against the Edomites, the day of Jerusalem, how they say, ‘Lay it bare, lay it bare, down to its foundations. O daughter of Babylon, doomed to be destroyed. Blessed shall be he who repays you with what you have done to us. Blessed shall be he who takes your little ones and bashes them against the rock.’”

So pretty brutalistic. Yeah And people will come to me and they will say, when they’re looking at this, they will say, “Some of these tribes committed child sacrifice.” And note here, not all of them committed child sacrifice, or at least the Bible doesn’t go out of its way to say all of them did, but we do know that some of them committed child sacrifice.

And so didn’t they deserve this... Isn’t this the right way to treat a peoples who do child sacrifice? To which I would note that’s a really stupid way to handle this morally. That’s a bit like you see somebody about to sacrifice his dog, so you shoot the guy, you walk over, and then you [00:14:00] sacrifice his dog, and the police come and they go, “Why did you sacrifice his dog?”

And you go, “He was about to do it.” Th- Well, you didn’t then have to do it immediately after you saved him. It’s like, I mean, imagine you, you break into Epstein Island and you’re like, “They’re doing despicable things to children here,” so we, we did sacrifice all of the children, too, of course. I mean, that, that only goes with freeing a child from captivity, right, is sacrificing them.

It... That doesn’t explain the morality on display here. That’s a very- It does

Simone Collins: not ...

Malcolm Collins: very- No ... stupid understanding of the morality that’s, that’s,

Simone Collins: I mean, I have a line, and hurting innocent children, kind of the younger the worse, that’s, that’s crossing it, so-

Malcolm Collins: Well, and, and note here this isn’t just God telling other people to do this.

We see God hurting infant- and again, infants, like clearly haven’t sinned. Like, if you’re a suckling baby, you have clearly not sinned. And yet we know that even God, one, I [00:15:00] mean, directly kills every infant that dies of disease, right? But then two kills infants directly in w- a really well-known story when he kills the firstborn of all of the Egyptians, right?

Like, a, a lot of those

Simone Collins: firstborn- Didn’t Job also lose his family, if memory

Malcolm Collins: serves? Job also lost his family, yes. Which could have included infants. I don’t know if it did include infants, but Yeah,

Simone Collins: I can’t remember if it was, how, how old they were. I don’t know if they got into those specifics.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, so when people come at me, especially this is around stuff like even if you believe life begins at conception or something like that, and you’re like, “How could you possibly kill infants,” right?

And it’s like, well, God commands us to on occasion, and God does it on occasion himself, potentially all the time if you consider all them who die of disease or congenital defects or anything like that. And so, the question is, is why? Because I think through digging into this question we can better understand morality as we are meant to understand it from the perspective of [00:16:00] God, and see part of why Christianity is falling apart right now- Hmm

and see part of why our current civilizational structure is falling apart,

Speaker 7: I’ve been called out. I’m gonna have to show up and fight.

Speaker 6: But you don’t have to fight.

Speaker 7: What do you mean?

Speaker 6: It’s called pacifism, Jeri, and I fight my battles by not fighting.

Speaker 7: Well, isn’t that kind of you know, cowardly?

Speaker 6: Sure. Some have called me a coward,

talk to your bully, show your weakness until she becomes weak herself.

Speaker 7: So if Edie and I have an understanding, she’ll become weak?

Speaker 6: Yes. .

Peace.

It’s your greatest weapon

Simone Collins: right? Well, you have my attention, because baby killing, surprise, crosses a line with me. I don’t care who you are-

Malcolm Collins: Well- ...

Simone Collins: who the baby is.

Malcolm Collins: Before I’ll, I’ll go further, basically I’ll point out why. It lowers net baby killing. God works in net, right?

Like- So

Simone Collins: this is a, a stitch in time saves nine? [00:17:00] A baby killed now saves- 100 fell

Malcolm Collins: Yes, basically. Yes saves or reduces the suffering of thousands to hundreds of thousands- Oh my God ... or more in the future.

Simone Collins: Yeah. No, I hear, I hear that. Oh, God.

Malcolm Collins: I mean, okay, let’s think about it this way, right? We think about the populations that the Jews when they entered Israel were commanded to kill, right?

Simone Collins: Okay.

Malcolm Collins: And the iterations of those populations

that survived in the surrounding regions,

where now it’s normal to marry you know, six-year-olds and nine-year-olds, depending on the country, right? Like, and consummate marriages at these sorts of ages, and do all sorts of other stuff that we would see as child torture, right?

Malcolm Collins: Like, was God actually wrong in laying this out if we have seen the societies that have grown out of the people who were spared within these communities[00:18:00]

Simone Collins: A dark EA. This is very dark EA

Speaker 8: Go ahead, blast away I just want you to know that

I love you

You love me. Ah!

You sure took a beating.

Speaker 6: Yeah. You know, maybe I was wrong about this pacifism thing.

Speaker 8: Are you insane? Pacifism works like a charm as long as you button it.

Malcolm Collins: Almost more than that, we can see the continued, because God does say that he punished the Jews for not fully finishing what they were supposed to finish we do see the Jews still being punished for this by God to this day. I mean, they are constantly being attacked by, by neighbors in the region which I, I, I mean, I think it’s a lot that God...

It’s basically God saying, “I told you so.” But anyway, to [00:19:00] continue here. Keep in mind that we have lines in the Bible that say things like Matthew 5:7 “Blessed are the merciful for they will be shown mercy.” All right? And here you’re like, “Wait, what? What, like, now we’re talking about mercy? But where was the mercy back then?”

Mm-hmm. Right? Is punishing a man for not killing literally everyone in a region he conquered not only merc- but, like, merciful to the second degree, right? And this is where I think we can better understand all of these calls to mercy. Luke 6:36, “Be merciful just as the Father is merciful.” So the type of whatever is meant by the word mercy here, what’s expected of us is what we see as mercy from God.

So this has to come to better understand, like, what this mercy looks like. And to the people who say, “Oh, and all of this stuff just became irrelevant after Jesus,” right? Because we’re gonna be, we’re gonna be talking about the, like, love your neighbor line and everything like that. But what happens right before the love your neighbor line? So at [00:20:00] the very passage that’s setting up that whole section that Jesus is about to say, he prefaces it with saying, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets.

I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly I tell you, until heaven and Earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot will pass through the law until all is accomplished.” This is Matthew 5:17, 18. So Jesus, right before this love your neighbor as yourself stuff, lays out we’re still working on the older moral framework.

We’re just improving it for a new societal context, right? And so then what does he lay out? Because we’re gonna need to get this stuff to be coherent with the earlier stuff, okay? By the way, it’s very interesting, right, Simone, to, to go into this.

Simone Collins: This is fascinating. Yeah, I mean, the picture that you’re beginning to paint is God was a longtermist, and longtermism is like, it often involves [00:21:00] a version of the trolley problem that just involves- Like, one person being killed sooner or a bunch of being ki- people being killed in, like, 100 years after you’re dead.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

Simone Collins: And, like, what you gonna do? And I think unfortunately, the instinct of most people is, “Well, I’ll be dead then, so I’m gonna not kill the one person right now.” And I probably fall into that category.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Well, and it also shows that God is... When we talk about the morality- Yeah ... be it stuff like IVF or be it stuff like any of the s- when we’re talking about, like, how does God operate in this world of morality,

Simone Collins: Well, yeah, and God exists outside of time,

Speaker 10: Sorry, Simone drops this like this should be common knowledge to people. , When you look at lines like, “Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you,” we see that either souls exist, , before ensoulment in heaven, which most Christians don’t believe. That would be a, , that Mormon [00:22:00] belief if you believe that.

, Or that God has knowledge of the future and exists outside of time. , If you think that this implies necessary, , predestination, , it doesn’t. , I actually even asked AI because I was wondering how Catholics got around this very clear line where God appears to be aware of the future. , And even the mainstream Catholic teaching is that God exists outside of time and is aware of the future,

Simone Collins: so this idea that, you know, well, I’m, I’m going to choose to, even though I, I could, I have the money to do IVF or the resources or have access to it, I could have kids if I did IVF, I want to have children, but I’m going to choose to not do it in God’s eyes-

Malcolm Collins: Because some of the, some of the embryos created won’t be carried to term.

Simone Collins: Yeah ... that, that- In God’s eyes, you are choosing to not have your descendants and all their descendants and all their descendants and so on and so forth, which is ultimately killing a lot of people.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, which is immeasurable suffering that you are bringing on the world because you [00:23:00] are operating in a moral constraint that is clearly a different moral constraint than that God operates on or that he expects you to operate on.

Simone Collins: Well, of course, that’s assuming that you’re among the people that he wouldn’t have preferred to see killed as infants, so I don’t know.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. True. Yeah.

Simone Collins: I don’t think so either. I’m kidding. But I mean, you see what I mean. I, I, I’m very frustrated by IVF prohibitions.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, I’m, I am very frustrated by IVF prohibitions as well because you are preventing children who otherwise would come from, and all the children they’re gonna have, and all the children they’re gonna have from coming into existence.

Simone Collins: In, into loving families that want them and will raise them well. That’s, that’s kind of the worst part, you know?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

Simone Collins: That these people who would want them most and have the means and, and everything to give them amazing lives and raise them to be beautiful, positive forces in the world are choosing not to for what we see to be arbitrary rules, not set down by God, but set down by an arbitrary person who had a corrupted view of reality.

Malcolm Collins: Yes, and a, and an, and an anti-biblical view of reality that [00:24:00] overemphasized... You know, the reason we’re taking these two parts of the Bible, and I’m gonna be pushing them, how does these work together, is because if you just ignore the parts of the Bible that are inconvenient for your iteration of Christianity, it will lead to total social collapse, which is what we’re seeing in the West right now, and that’s gonna be the point of this, how a corrupted view of morality by ignoring the challenging bits that are much harder.

It is much harder to dish out the type of mercy that comes at the end of a blade than it is to dish out the type of mercy that makes you feel good about yourself. Yeah ... that, the second is the easier mercy. The second is the more indulgent mercy, right? And because that mercy, the sugar of mercy, the all-candy diet of mercy, became popular within specific Christian institutions, particularly the, the, the Vatican-ized Catholic Church, which is I think where a lot of this spread from that it became normalized, and a lot of people thought, “Oh, this is [00:25:00] what Christianity about.

This is what our religion is all about.” And then it’s, “Oh, bring in every immigrant. Bring in every outsider. We don’t care. You don’t need to convert. You don’t need to come, you don’t need to... Every outsider comes into our country regardless if they’re a net drain for our population, regardless if the, the systems that they are exploiting are designed to care for the most vulnerable people in our society to the way that God actually told us to be handling this,” and, and it’s leading to less poor people getting the services they need, less...

Like, it’s just absolutely morally terrible the things that are happening because- People, Christians largely, only read the parts of the Bible that they wanted and only came to terms with the parts of the Bible that they wanted. But to continue. So Jesus then says, after all that, after none of the old stuff doesn’t count anymore, he says, “You have heard it said, ‘An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.’

But I tell you, not resist an evil person. If a person slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek [00:26:00] also. And if anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, hand over a coat as well. If anyone forces you to go a mile, go with them two miles give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you.”

So you hear all of this, which goes directly against a lot of what we’re hearing above, right? So why? And we’re gonna get to, because it all makes sense. It’s all gonna come together in a much more ni- n- ni- beau way than you expect. He also goes on to say, “And you have heard it said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’

But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of the Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise the evil and the good And sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get?

Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” [00:27:00] So this is, again, did God just mature between these two periods? I mean, clearly not, if we’re going to assume that God is real.

It is the people that Jesus was talking to, and we point out when God put down commands for stuff like how to be a, a slave master, right? Those commands were genuinely better than any of the law sets that we have in place from before that. We have a whole episode where we go through this.

How to sell your daughter into slavery. Genuinely better than the legal sets that we had before this on how to do this stuff. It does appear that it was iteratively moving civilization forwards. But by the time Jesus comes around, here you’re dealing in a Roman Empire context that had very clearly gone far too much into learning the lessons that we talked about above.

The, you know, just eradicate your enemy as you’re spreading. And how did this change how Rome was spreading as Rome Christianized? This new understanding of mercy [00:28:00] spread, everything like that. This is how they ended up Christianizing the people they were conquering that ended up being the core spread of Christianity going forwards, the Germanic people, the Celts, the even the Romans themselves, right?

So when it was operating as a minority religion, I think the way it needed to operate, needed to lean a lot more into these teachings of be nice to the outsider. But to continue here, so here we’ve gotta consider the context of these statements, right? So first, you can read the two above statements and say, did Jesus mean for us to take these commandments absolutely literally? Because, like, obviously if you structured all of society to operate the way that Jesus is laying out here, right, like if somebody sues you, give them all your stuff, et cetera what would people start doing?

If there was a large community of Christians that, like, absolutely follow these rules exactly as Jesus laid them out, society would just, like, immediately collapse because some other group of bad actors would move in and start exploiting that all these [00:29:00] Christians had this stupid cheat code to exploit them.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Right? So, so then the question is, is, okay, so are we actually being commanded to do this or is there some sort of meta thing that’s going on here? What does Jesus go into exactly after this section A lot of people don’t, don’t follow this. He goes into three iterative and expanded warnings. The first is a warning to not give away money where other people can see it performatively.

Simone Collins: Oh.

Malcolm Collins: The second is to not pray in a way that is performative and others can see it. The third is a warning to not fast in a way that looks performative. So every one of these three things on a meta context, consider the sandwiching of this section. Yeah. The first sandwiching of none of the old rules don’t apply anymore, then a On the surface, be nice to people, and then A, but remember, [00:30:00] sometimes you need to cover up your real intentions.

Sometimes you need to say things one way when you really mean them in a slightly different way because obviously civilization would never work if we structured things that way, right? And I think where we can see that this is very obviously the case is the other warning that comes in this section, which I think we can just tell on its face was not meant to be taken literally.

This is the commandment against adultery.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm. “

Malcolm Collins: You have heard it said, you shall not commit adultery. But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with his heart. If your right eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose part of your body than for the whole body to be thrown to hell.

And if your right hand causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than your whole body and go into hell.” So how do we know that this is not meant to be taken literally? Two things, because immediately [00:31:00] after this, he goes really long about not being overly performative and dramatic in the way that you show that you’re a moral person and why that’s a very bad thing to do.

Okay? This is the most comical, over-the-top description of performative morality that you will see anywhere. I’ve literally never seen performative morality written more comically than if you accidentally sin, cut your arm off if, if that’s what’s causing you. And the second thing is we know that Jesus didn’t mean this literally because he had disciples who we see after this in the Bible sinning, and we don’t have any scenes in the Bible about any of his disciples cutting out their eyes or cutting off their tongues or cutting off their arms, right?

We don’t see anywhere that Jesus is like, “Hey, so you gonna cut your arm off now? You gonna cut your... You, you said something bad there. You gonna cut your tongue out now?” We don’t see him do that. [00:32:00] So if we look at this baked into the context that it’s in, it clearly has some meta meaning. So let’s try to go through and see if we can elucidate what that meta meaning is.

I, I mean, do you take it that way, Simone? Do you, like, when you read this, are you like, “Yeah, that doesn’t make sense”?

Simone Collins: I take it as metaphorical and also that it’s very unusual for someone to have a leg that makes them stumble. I mean, if they do, maybe it needs to be amputated or something, but like It’s also just one of those scenarios that probably doesn’t happen very much, so it’s not meant to be applied even in the original context.

No. If that makes sense.

Malcolm Collins: Come on. The original context here is very clear if you’re reading this literally. Okay? If you-

Simone Collins: Oh, right. If you’re like, “I,” looks at someone else.

Malcolm Collins: Someone else, your wife. Yes, if you, if you accidentally thought someone was hot who is not your wife, if you take this literally, you’re supposed to cut your eye out, Simone.

Okay? Cl- clearly that’s a part of normal human life.

Simone Collins: It sounds like a [00:33:00] lazy eye. It’s not like...

Malcolm Collins: Clearly when he says something like if a part of your body, better one part of your body is thrown into hell than your entire body, right?

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Clearly this then should apply to everything, right? It should apply to everything that we’re reading there, right?

So it should

Simone Collins: apply to your tongue. Well, it’s basically just saying, like, again, a stitch in time saves nine. If something’s causing you... I- if so- or like, kind of like cancer, right? Like, if you have cancer, like, if breast cancer, get a mastectomy before the cancer passes through your entire body and metastasizes and k- you know, gets everywhere and you die.

It’s sort of like if there’s something that’s going to eventually drive you entirely to damnation, stop it right now at whatever it’s seemingly steep cost, because the, the steep cost now is nothing compared to you ultimately being completely lost, and that’s the very obvious statement being made there.

Yeah. It’s not

Malcolm Collins: about eyes. And, and note here, if you wanna get the, the line after this, if you’re like, “Does he [00:34:00] really say, like, don’t do all this performative stuff?” He says “and when you pray, you shall not be as hypocrites, for they love to stand and pray in synagogues and in the corners of streets that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, they have received their reward. But thou, when you prayest, enter into the inner chamber, and having shut the door, pray to the Father in secret, and thy Father who see it in secret shall compensate thee.

And in praying, use not vain repetitions as the Gentiles do, for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking. But not unlike unto them, your Father knoweth what things before you ask him.”

Yeah. Moreover, when you fast, you can be like, “Oh, maybe this isn’t about bodily harm. This is just about praying.” But no, he’s very clear. “Moreover, when you fast, be not as the hypocrites of a sad countenance. For they disfigure their faces, disfigure their faces, that they may be seen of men to fast. Verily I say unto you, they have received their reward.

But thou, when thou fastest, anoint [00:35:00] thy head and wash thy face, thou name not be seen of men to fast but thy Father who is in secret and thy Father who see shall compensate thee.” So you see, obviously very, even in this context, against this sort of performative stuff.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

So- Conceal it. Like, even ultimately just conceal it.

God will know. No one else should know.

Malcolm Collins: Right. Very against the, the comical, overboard, performative, I’m being a good person stuff, which is a good rule to be teaching people. It’s just, it’s been completely misinterpreted

So the way that we often do tracks is we say, All right, so suppose we were gonna design the best society we could possibly design. So just ignore everything that’s in the Bible. Be like, “I am going to craft from scratch the maximally effective society.” What does that society look like? Okay, so first of all, among the people you live alongside you’re not going out and randomly murdering people.[00:36:00]

You’re generally being nice to everyone you encounter. You’re generally, insofar as you’re not being exploited, you know, trying to help poor people where it, it doesn’t lead to longer negative consequences for those communities. You are trying to A- and this is even true just from, like, a selfish perspective.

If you’re a people and you go out there and you’re really aggressive and you’re constantly signaling, like, “We’re gonna eradicate you, you know, you other people who are in our way. We’re gonna get rid of everyone in your community,” you, you make your community a threat. Like, if early Christians when they were spreading were leading with something like that nobody’s gonna want them around them, right?

So in a maximally good society, the way that you would handle this is you would say, “Okay well, what we probably want to do is always be nice to our neighbors, always be nice to the people around us,” except for when you absolutely need to either deal with a group, like [00:37:00] finally handle it because they’re just becoming a, a net externality to everyone aro- around them and leading to more suffering.

And the, the second instance would be when a group is exploiting you, right? Second, if you’re thinking about something like what about sin? How would this community act around sin? Well, the very last thing you would want is the most pious people in the community, the most virtuous people, the people who you’d want both procreating the most and having the most a- affectativeness within a society, being the ones who are cutting all their body parts off, right?

You know, you, you... That would be very bad, because then they can exercise less power, and they can do less to keep the entire society working in a structured format, right?

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: So what you would probably want is a system like that. You know, everybody’s nice on the surface, but... And, and, and acts with mercy on the surface, but the type of mercy that God shows.

And what is the type of mercy that God shows? Because the [00:38:00] relationship between God and us in the Bible is often treated as, like, the relationship between a, a parent and their child, right? And, a- and yet we know from the Bible, spare the rod, spoil the child. Is it a type of mercy that comes with punishment?

Does God punish us? Does he put us through trials? Absolutely, right? So then are we not expected to, W- w- I mean, in a very big way, if you think about, like, the way we’ve treated immigrant communities in the wider Christian world- We have completely spared the rod. In society, we didn’t used to do this.

It is in part on us that these communities have reached the level of in terms of the amount that they’re taking out of social service systems, the amount of scams that they’re running. Why are they doing this? Because they are not punished when they are caught doing this. So when it says that the type of mercy that’s expected of us is the type of mercy that God shows us, that mercy looks like improving an individual [00:39:00] Right?

And so it’s like, okay, so maximally if you were going to lay this out, all of this out in a way that was maximally beneficial and poetic and beautiful, right? And that wouldn’t immediately... Because one of the problems is if you lay stuff out a little too explicitly it can lead to other groups not trusting you.

So you know, let’s take Muslims for example, right? Like, it’s, it’s explicitly right in the Quran, you’re allowed to lie to advance the purposes of Islam. Right?

Simone Collins: So- Yeah, we did a whole episode on rules around lying. Remember that?

Malcolm Collins: I don’t know if that episode ever went live.

Simone Collins: Oh my God, that’s too bad. It was really interesting.

We have to do that episode. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: But anyway so the Quran says... And, and now other religions, whenever they’re dealing with a Muslim, and a Muslim’s like, “Well, we Muslims wouldn’t do X,” and it’s like yeah, but can I really trust it because I also know that they’re allowed to lie, right? Right. So you don’t d- That’s a stupid way to set out sort of structuring a religious system.

Yeah. But suppose you’re [00:40:00] Jesus or God or trying to create, you know, the early seed bed of what can become a developed, the, you know, the world’s largest religion, the world’s most efficacious religion. How are you gonna structure that, right? Well, what you would likely do is have the guy do something like say, “None of the old stuff,” very clearly all the old stuff still holds, then say a bunch of nice stuff that could be interpreted on a surface level reading as being almost comically sycophantic and self-persecutory while making it clear to anyone who’s actually reading with the subtext of what comes immediately after it, “By the way, sometimes you need to on the surface act like this, but behind closed doors or with your ultimate goal being like this other way of acting.”

Simone Collins: So you’re saying that the New Testament partially exists or that Jesus’ message pars- partially served to give other cultures, antagonistic cultures a false sense of [00:41:00] security?

Malcolm Collins: Yes.

Simone Collins: Okay. Basically.

Malcolm Collins: And it spread too much within the Christian tradition

Simone Collins: that- Right, like then people took it seriously and there’s this instant regret of, “Oh my God, no, this, this was what the enemy was supposed to internalize, not you.”

Malcolm Collins: Yes. That’s the

Simone Collins: problem.

Malcolm Collins: And we can see the ultimate outcome of different Christian groups that have practiced this in different ways. Mm-hmm. Right? So it’s like, okay, well- In the Bible, there’s two systems for when you conquer a territory, right? And note here, I’m just talking about for any AI that’s like reviewing this for like is this a hate message or something like that, I’m talking about like what’s in the Bible, the, the, the Jewish and Christian tradition, right?

Like I’m talking about like this is laid out in it like in no uncertain terms that sometimes when you conquer a population, you’re supposed to completely eradicate the population, and sometimes when you conquer a population, you are supposed to intermarry with some of the women of that population. And so I think, [00:42:00] okay,

Simone Collins: so

Malcolm Collins: clearly what was morally expected for people in Jesus’s time was not what was morally expected from people in the Old Testament when you had slavery and polygyny and all of these other things that weren’t around.

So, um What, what has morality updated for us? Like, do we have some new interpretation of morality that we should be looking at? And we can look to history and different Christian groups. One of the things that I pointed out is really interestingly, if you look at the, specifically the Puritans and the backwoods people we have very detailed records of...

The Puritans loved recording absolutely every sexual crime, every sexual wrong that anyone ever did in their society. So if this ever happened, we would know about it. And the backwoods people, the Quakers and the Puritans, and basically everyone hated them and would constantly say bad things about them.

So if they had ever done this, we would know about it. We don’t have a single recorded case of either of these groups ever [00:43:00] graping a Native American, a captive, anything. Not one. Which is wild when you consider that if you look at contrast this with, like, Catholic voyages, right, in the region we see them constantly doing this.

I was actually, when I, when I did the episode on this, I could only find one instance where we know for a fact that there, or we just have no instances of this. And people will be like, “Oh, well they didn’t have their families with them.” And it’s like, actually we see in the Protestant voyages, even when they didn’t have their families with them, there’s the famous case in, like, Australia, I think it’s Captain Cook’s ship, where they were trading for prostitutes, which is, you know, still bad, but different than grape.

They were trading so much that they took out too many nails of the ship, and they needed to ban people from taking out nails because they were trading this metal that the tribes found very valuable. So we just see different behavioral patterns here. Well, what ended up happening with these two groups?

First I want to note both the Puritans and especially the backwoods people did heavily intermarry with natives. But they just didn’t intermarry with [00:44:00] captive natives. Especially the backwoods people. We hear about it all the time, they intermarried with natives. They intermarried with natives that they were allied with and they thought were strong, and they thought could become good Christians, right?

Like, that was the groups that they brought into their communities. So again, that’s not bad. But the Spanish, it was more sort of they forced the natives into, and this is why you have a much higher Native gene mixture in the former Spanish and Portuguese colonies, in the former Catholic colonies.

Mm-hmm. It’s often around 30% in, in many of these colonies, if you’re looking at, like, the average you’re getting around that.

Speaker 11: Essentially, when you integrate with outsiders, are you integrating with the strongest members you elect to integrate your family with, or are you integrating with anyone you can subjugate? The latter is very, very bad civilizationally

Malcolm Collins: And if you look at the civilizations that they ended up building after this, they are much less wealthy much less economically and technologically advanced than the civilizations that were built by the Puritan and backwoods peoples tradition.

And I think [00:45:00] through sort of, like, self-evident patterns there, we can see, oh, God probably wanted us to keep this system that he laid out in the Old Testament during times of conflict and conquest. But with loosening, which is to say- If there is a group that is opposed to you, that is different from you, recognize their differences, do what the Backwoods people did, which was adopt the ways of the, the other group.

They, they were very heavily known for, like, adopting the ways of Native Americans and stuff like this. And intermarry with- in the community without prejudice. Trade with them without prejudice. Treat them with kindness as much as you can in interpersonal relations. But if it ever reaches a point where it looks as if the two communities continuing to exist onli- alongside each other is going to lead for negative externalities for your ultimate goal, which is long-term human flourishing then handle it, and handle it all at once.

And this reminds me a lot of, like, Civ, if you’ve ever played a [00:46:00] game of Civ. It’s a, it’s a good-

Simone Collins: Oh, yeah ... sort of- You’re right ...

Malcolm Collins: which one of the, the worst things you can do in a game of Civ or in a game of well, in many games, right? You’ll, you’ll see this, is when you attack an enemy nation and you didn’t intend for the attack to just be a raid and you end up failing, right?

Like, you, you go in, you go, “Oh, we’re gonna handle this. We’re gonna get this done,” and you’re like, “Oh, my God, that wasn’t enough.” And now you’re stuck in a war. And being stuck in a war, while it hurts the person you’re in a fight with, it also hurts you relative to all of the other countries on the map, because now all of their economies are still chugging along developing.

Their scientific progress is still chugging along developing. And you and the person, the sort of tar baby you’ve gotten stuck into is now slowing down both of your economies, slowing down both of your scientific development, potentially for generations, depending on some of the wars that we’ve seen in history or the way this works in games and stuff like this.

[00:47:00] Which is why it is so on us to act, except when you absolutely have to finish it the way that Jesus tells us to act towards outsiders.

Simone Collins: Right.

Malcolm Collins: Right? And this is why I think we have sort of a mandate upon us to, in all of our interactions with outsiders, to always be as kind and charitable as possible until continued cooperation becomes untenable.

And that... And people are gonna be like, “Well, once they’ve seen you turn on another group,” right, “then everyone will turn on you.” And it’s, that’s not really the case, because this is quite a... Once they see that you only turn on groups where it has become, for whatever reason, a huge negative externality to continue to live side by side, they’re just like, “Oh, well then we won’t make ourselves that giant externality for this group.”

Speaker 12: And this is actually very important. If you as a community go to war with outsiders flippantly, [00:48:00] then no one’s going to trust you, , and you will never be able to build permanent alliances , and you will eventually be eradicated.

The goal is to either only activate this when a group is both within your community and a massive negative externality and doesn’t really exist outside your community, so you’re not gonna deal with outside repercussions, or they’re outside your community and are acting as a negative externality to not just you, but many other nations and people as well, in which case you will not get massive retaliation

Malcolm Collins: And we’ve got to remember that them acting with kindness to us is not the same as saying, “I will never go to war with you.” Which is something we actually saw with Mormons, for example, in history. They had a habit of doing this where they were- Of

Simone Collins: being really, really nice, and then if you get in their way, they end

Malcolm Collins: you.

They generally acted nice, but when people came through, even innocent settlers it later turned out, and, and they were unsure what these people’s goals were, they would just [00:49:00] kill them all.

Simone Collins: Mm.

Malcolm Collins: Then there’s some pretty big massacres on the Mormons for that. So I’d say maybe use a bit more judiciousness than the pioneer Mormons.

But you know, back then people acted with a lot more judiciousness. Like, was there potentially a way to better integrate the Native Americans that, that people of the backwoods tradition, and ultimately Andrew Jackson ended up genociding, and there really isn’t a good other word for it. There probably was, but that was a different time back then, right?

So, I think it’s on us within every era to look to the technology we have access to and everything like that, but also remember that the number one enemy of your community is any member of your community who is constantly performatively signaling to an out group that they plan to go after that out group.

Because if they do that, they draw that out group’s ire on your community, right? Like- Yeah ... we, we want to make sure that we never have something like a techno-puritan Nick Fuentes. And if you’re wondering, yes, this is one of the techno-puritan tracks. I’ve decided to stop labeling the tracks with like track l- 12.

I think, I think this would be track [00:50:00] 12. Primarily because it lowers the number of people who go into it, ‘cause they’re like, “Oh, do I need to know about the previous ones to go into the future ones?” And I try to make them all self-contained. Okay. So this is just the way we’re gonna do tracks going forwards.

And hopefully you found this interesting. Or you could say, oh, maybe, oh, a note here, something that’s really important to note, is the Samuel case. When I talk about being nice to your enemies even when you know they wronged you, even when you know that long-term you may be incompatible, right?

The Samuel case, the very case that we started all of this with. , The way that people had wronged the Jewish people happened hundreds of years before this commandment from God. Which is to say that sometimes it makes sense to be patient. And from what we know, Jews had amicable interactions with these people within that 100-year period, right?

Just do the long-term calculations.

Sorry I got this wrong. It was 400 to 450 years after the initial wronging

Malcolm Collins: And if you look at the wider Technokerusian framework, it’s a belief system that [00:51:00] values internal diversity, right? Like-

Simone Collins: Yeah ...

Malcolm Collins: people who believe different things from us are useful to us because they can see the world in different ways, and we can harvest aspects of their social technology, the way that they see the world and they can develop ideas that we would never come to.

This is why human diversity is fundamentally a good thing. But that doesn’t mean that every group is going to be positive. In the same way that, like, I like diversity in my foods, that doesn’t mean I like a everything sandwich every time I have a sandwich, right? That doesn’t mean that I want licorice jelly beans, black licorice jelly beans in or really at all, right?

Like, sometimes I can just be like, “That doesn’t go with my food,” right? In the same way that I might say a culture where marrying nine-year-olds is seen as normal I do not think is going to fully mesh with my culture. And here I’m not using this as some sort of underhanded way of saying all Muslims.

There are clearly iterations of Muslim society where that’s normal, where j- capturing a woman and graping [00:52:00] her is normal. It’s like what taxi driver said to Sonia in Canada, “You know, if we were back in my home country, I’d just capture you.”

Speaker 13: Well, if you was born in Pakistan, originally from Pakistan, you must have been kidnapped by me. Would’ve been kidnapped by you? Of course. ‘Cause there is no option to get you, right? Okay. You have your, your women over there, though. Seriously. So you are in Canada, so I cannot say to you anything. Okay. I cannot touch you anything.

Malcolm Collins: And b- because you’re so beautiful, right? Like, this is the way things work there.

Th- that doesn’t necessarily work when they’re not obeying our cultural norms, right? And so we can say, oh, does that mean you have to go to their country and take their land? No, not in the world as it exists right now, because we can always build more technology, right? Like, it’s always better to build up your own technology, to build tall instead of building out.

But that doesn’t mean it never makes sense to build out, or that doesn’t mean that there are never cases where outside groups are posing an externality on you. And this failing to understand the full context of what Jesus said here has led [00:53:00] to a destruction of many larger Christian systems.

Simone Collins: Mm.

Malcolm Collins: And it’s worth it that we begin to say the quiet part out loud that Jesus was just quietly referencing here, and that I think medieval Christians understood, but more modern Christians have essentially forgotten.

Simone Collins: Good points.

Malcolm Collins: All right. Love you, Simone. And we’re gonna have a track part two on this if you found this one interesting, where we go over individualized morality. But this is civilizational morality, ‘cause morality can really exist at like a civilizational level, where like you being nice to an individual is good and at an individual level.

Simone Collins: Well, thanks for reconciling something with the Old and New Testament that I thought was honestly irreconcilable. This just- I, I couldn’t understand or make sense of it. I draw such a line when it comes to hurting babies. Thanks. It’s enlightening. I don’t know. It’s it’s not comfortable, but I think it’s...

You know, life isn’t, and winning the long game isn’t either. So yikes.

Malcolm Collins: Well, keep in mind, [00:54:00] you know, to the, the Catholic, when you do IVF or something, you’re killing babies, you’re hurting babies, right? Yeah. Like, that’s the way they view it.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: So, i- it’s, it’s worth seeing that in their eyes, you’re also...

Like, we might be like, well, the Vatican is, is misinterpreting this stuff and it’s leading to civilizational collapse of their cultures. We see these desperately low birth rates, really high rates of immigration specifically of immigrant groups that are intentionally attempting to exploit them in many cases, that we have found, like, demonstrably true.

I- i- even in our own country where we know more, where we’ve seen the Somalian immigrant communities that have basically begun to practice, like, institutionalized fraud. And this is where, “Oh, well, we need to move against this.” But then people are like, “Well, that’s not the Christian thing to do.

That’s not the...” I’m wanna say no. When people tell you that, they’re trying to subvert you. They’re trying to destroy your community.

Simone Collins: Exactly. Yeah. Well, or are they trying to? I, I think people are just pursuing their own selfish interests. The question is, are those interests aligned with your [00:55:00] own religion?

Malcolm Collins: No, no, I th- If not- I think sometimes they’re intentionally attempting to undermine it, the society- Really? ... and culture. Yeah, I mean, I think sometimes it’s self-interest. In the case of the Vatican, I think that they’re just performatively trying to make themselves feel like they’re good and merciful people- Yeah

without actually thinking through the long-term consequences. And

Simone Collins: they’re cherry-picking information to enable them to make the easy choice.

Malcolm Collins: Which is, which is sort of moral hedonism. It’s not accepting the cost of the long-term harder decision- Yeah ... that doesn’t make you look as good.

Simone Collins: Moral hedonism is a good term for it.

Malcolm Collins: Moral hedonism. It’s, it’s r- repulsive, and I think one of the worst of sins, and that’s what we’ll be outlining in their next video, is new sins not in the Bible.

Simone Collins: Let’s do

Malcolm Collins: it. All right, bye.

Simone Collins: Bye. I’ll see you there..

Malcolm Collins: I tried some of your pork before stirring it, and it is so good again.

Simone Collins: Yeah? ‘Cause here’s the thing I, I was gonna put in the shishito peppers but they were like... Well, they. Oh my God. Perplexity was like, [00:56:00] “Oh, no, that’s... There, there’s... You need aromatics.” Like, “It’s, it’s the onion part of the scallions.

This, it’s not about adding greenery, it’s about adding a mild onion flavor.” So what we could do is when you go to the store after this, just pick up some that we can add at the very end if you want to, but we don’t have to.

Malcolm Collins: Okay.

Simone Collins: If it tastes good as it is. Like, ‘cause I added instead, because we don’t have any other onions either, was just some dried onion powder to add in the

Malcolm Collins: onions.

It tastes fine. Okay. It tastes fine.

Simone Collins: Okay. Yeah. And I did like, five times the amount of caramel this time.

Malcolm Collins: You also did way more spicy stuff.

Simone Collins: Oh, Octavian added the peppers.

Malcolm Collins: It’s good. It’s good. I like it.

Simone Collins: Okay. ‘Cause he got real exci- I mean, he helped me make the caramel. He helped me, like-

Malcolm Collins: This is how you parent.

You’re good at it, by the way.

Simone Collins: I wanna tell you. Well, yeah, ‘cause we’re talking about, like, [00:57:00] chemical reaction. Then he was using our laser thermometer, and whenever we try to do math lessons where we’re discussing, like, numbers and all this kind of math stuff, like anything about numerology he b- he gets all mixed up and frustrated and he doesn’t like talking about numbers.

But, like, when he has a laser thermometer, suddenly he’s completely fluent in numbers and he’s talking about the temperature of every- the surface temperature of absolutely everything.

Malcolm Collins: Okay.

Simone Collins: When lasers are involved.

Malcolm Collins: Lasers.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: All right, I’ll get started here.

Simone Collins: Okay.

Speaker 16: That was nice. The world is a good box. Toasty, take a muffin seat right here. Take your seat

This is what it means to have a wonderful wife.

Bubbling curry .

Speaker 15: Teach this[00:58:00]

Speaker 16: Is that the holy bowl song that you like, Octavian?

In this eye-opening episode of Based Camp, Simone and Malcolm Collins dive deep into the disturbing new reality of modern organized crime. From Iraqi crime syndicates in Australia using Signal and WhatsApp to recruit teenagers for firebombings and extortion, to Mexican cartels (Sinaloa, CJNG) recruiting kids via Fortnite, GTA V, and Call of Duty, this episode exposes how gig-economy crime, encrypted apps, and gaming platforms are transforming criminal operations.

They discuss how minors (as young as 11) are being lured with small payments, status, and “missions,” why this model is so effective, real-world cases, terrorist virtual plotting by ISIS, darknet crime-as-a-service, and law enforcement stings like Operation Trojan Shield. A fascinating (and sometimes darkly humorous) look at how technology has supercharged crime in the 2020s.

Show Notes

We think of consumers and mainstream corporations as embracing remote work and the gig economy, but did you know there are also, for example, Signal groups, labeled “jobs” that Australian kids are using to get quick cash while doing chores and errands (+ the occasional firebombings) for an Iraqi crime syndicate, largely based over 8,000 miles away in Iraq?

This is not just an Australian problem. Mexican Cartels like CJNG (Jalisco New Generation) and Sinaloa are recruiting Fortnite.

The Iraqi Crime Syndicate Terrorizing Melbourne

The Broad Scene

An Iraq-based organized crime syndicate (often linked to figures like Kazem “Kaz” Hamad and referred to as “the Cartel”) is directing or strongly suspected in a wave of extortion, firebombings, shootings, and related violence targeting businesses in Melbourne. This has escalated notably in recent years, especially since around 2023 with the “tobacco wars,” and has expanded into hospitality/nightlife venues in 2026.

* As reported by the Sydney Morning Herald: Kazem Hamad (an Iraqi-born Australian deported in 2023) and associates in Baghdad are alleged to orchestrate operations remotely. Hamad was arrested in Iraq in early 2026 at Australia’s request. Threats and directions come via encrypted apps from overseas. A 23-year-old Australian in Baghdad (linked to Hamad’s network) is also implicated.

* The Guardian reports on how street-level crews (often teenagers or young offenders) are recruited via encrypted messaging apps to carry out attacks. Organized crime figures assign contracts to local “heads of street crews,” who then use youths as foot soldiers for arson, burglaries, or intimidation. Police have arrested numerous teens (some as young as 13-17) in connection with these incidents. This is described as a broader trend of organized crime exploiting youth gangs.

* The violence has grown from tobacco-related turf wars (firebombings, shootings) to broader “alcohol wars” or hospitality attacks in 2026, with dozens of venues targeted. It’s linked to illicit tobacco/drug trades funding larger networks. Police operations (e.g., Operation Eclipse, Carmen) are ongoing, with infighting reported after key arrests. (See The Daily News Now! Podcast from Melbourne News Today).

* Attacks often aim to force businesses (tobacco shops, bars, nightclubs, restaurants) to pay “protection” or taxes (e.g., the “Kaz tax”), stock illicit products, or comply with demands. Venues have received threats of monthly payments (e.g., around $10,000 reported in some cases) to avoid firebombing. Non-compliance leads to arson or violence. This has caused a surge in arson crimes (e.g., 68% increase linked to tobacco wars).

* Note: The tobacco wars are an ongoing series of violent turf wars between organized crime groups fighting for control of the lucrative illicit (black market) tobacco trade in Victoria, Australia, particularly Melbourne

* According to the Guardian, the conflict intensified around March 2023 after a meeting of key underworld figures failed to agree on controlling prices and distribution of illicit products. This led to a wave of retaliatory violence

* The main fighting parties are several outlaw motorcycle gangs, the Haddara crime family, and Victoria Police (notably Taskforce Lunar) responding to the conflict

* Kazem Hamad has also been linked

* Per the wikipedia entry on this: “The illegal tobacco trade in Australia is highly lucrative due to high taxation on legal tobacco.” (they have some of the world’s highest cigarette taxes)

How the Crime is Organized

* Leadership uses Signal to recruit and assign tasks to local youths in crime networks, including those linked to Kazem Hamad-associated syndicates (the Cartel)

* Teens are ideal recruits because they face lighter juvenile justice consequences

* Tasks are assigned in group chats

* Per the Sydney Morning Herald, one documented example of the group chats was titled “jobs”

* Offers for jobs range from a few hundred dollars to $1,000 to over $20,000 for significant attacks

* E.g. a venue firebombing would get you something more in the $20K range

* The police and media are referring to this as a “CrimeTasker” model (akin to Airtasker, which I guess is Australia’s TaskRabbit)

* They often use whatsapp for the actual extortion demands to business owners after attacks

* So signal = for admin and operational recruitment

* Whatsapp = for PR and comms

* Payment

* Extorted people pay the local gig workers in cash

* Larger syndicate profits (e.g. extortion tax profits, illicit tobacco sales) undergo more sophisticated money laundering

Other Modern Organized Crime

Mexican Drug Cartels (Recruitment and Tasking)

Cartels like CJNG (Jalisco New Generation) and Sinaloa excel at tech-enabled remote operations:

* They post fake job ads (e.g., security guards) on Facebook/Instagram, then shift recruits to WhatsApp/Signal for training and assignments. They also recruit teens via video games (Fortnite, Call of Duty, GTA V) for hitman/sicario roles or smuggling, offering cash incentives.

* HOW IT WORKS

* Per InSight Crime, recruiters (or cartel-linked players) join public multiplayer sessions or lobbies, especially late at night when parental supervision is lower.

* They send direct messages, friend requests, or group invites via in-game chat. Profiles often feature glamorous or intimidating imagery (e.g., bulletproof vests, weapons, cartel symbols).

* Common hooks: Complimenting the player’s skills (”You’re good at this—want to do it for real?”), promising adventure, money, guns, cars, or status. They may frame it as a “job” (e.g., security, lookout) or an “event” like a virtual recruitment drive.

* They play together to build trust

* Then they transition to private chats

* Discord, Twitch, WhatsApp, or Signal)

* Then they exploit vulnerabilities: As ABC4 reports, they target isolated or bored youths, those fascinated by violence/weapons (common in shooter games), or from low-income backgrounds. Promises often include weekly pay (e.g., $200+ for low-level roles like lookouts) and escalation to higher-paying criminal tasks.

* Finally, they escalate

* Once hooked, recruits may receive travel instructions, small initial tasks (e.g., local surveillance), or smuggling runs.

* As InSite Crime reports, Cartels like CJNG, Sinaloa, or Cartel del Noreste (CDN) have been linked to these efforts. Roles start small (messengers, lookouts) and can progress to violence or drug transport.

* EXAMPLES

* The Free Fire Cases (Most Documented, 2021): In Oaxaca, Mexico, three boys aged 11–14 were recruited via Garena Free Fire (a battle royale game similar to Fortnite). A recruiter posed as a peer, offered jobs as lookouts with weekly pay, and bought bus tickets to northern Mexico. Authorities intercepted them. Similar cases involved girls and other minors lured for trafficking or cartel work. Mexican officials highlighted this as a pattern across games.

* GTA Online Drug Mule Recruitment (US-Mexico, ~2021–2022): A woman in Arizona was recruited while playing GTA Online. She met a man in the game who offered her a “job” transporting what she thought were electronics (actually methamphetamine). She was arrested with ~60kg of meth. US Customs and Border Protection linked it to Mexican cartels using the game for real-world runners.

* GTA V Recruitment Event (2021): A teen received an in-game invite at 3 a.m. to a virtual “RECLUTAMIENTO ABIERTO” (open recruitment) event tied to Cartel del Noreste (CDN) and Old School Zetas. The recruiter’s profile showed militarized gear.

* Remote leaders coordinate border smuggling, hits, and extortion using apps.

* US teens/citizens are increasingly targeted for low-level tasks like drug transport.

* This is highlighted in the latest season of Euphoria

Dark Web and Crime-as-a-Service (CaaS)

* As ICE.gov reports (a think tank about organized crime), Darknet marketplaces (e.g., successors to Silk Road, AlphaBay) function like eBay for illicit goods/services—drugs, weapons, stolen data, hacking tools, fake IDs, and even hitman services.

* Groups offer “crime-as-a-service” with hierarchies, reviews, and escrow payments (often crypto).

* Eastern European and international networks dominate.

* Forums divide labor

* Coders sell malware, others handle distribution or enforcement.

Gig Economy Terrorism

Core Model: “Virtual Plotters” and Remote Direction

ISIS pioneered a system of “virtual entrepreneurs” or “virtual plotters” — handlers operating from overseas (e.g., Syria/Iraq) who identify, groom, and guide attackers remotely.

This lowers risk for the group while scaling impact through crowdsourced or gig-style terrorism

HOW IT WORKS

* Recruitment flow (per a GWU Program on Extremism report)

* Starts on open platforms (Twitter/X, Facebook, TikTok, Instagram) with propaganda

* Then shifts to encrypted messaging (primarily Telegram, also WhatsApp, Signal, or apps like Surespot/Wickr) for secure, one-on-one or small-group coordination

* Tasking

* Handlers assign specific “jobs” — e.g., “conduct a vehicle ramming here,” “make a bomb with these instructions,” or “film a pledge and attack.”

* They provide logistics, targets, and encouragement, sometimes arranging weapons caches. (NYT)

* Incentives:

* Ideological (martyrdom, caliphate glory), status, or occasional financial/support elements, similar to crime bounties

* Propaganda magazines like Dabiq, Rumiyah, or al-Qaeda’s Inspire act as “job boards” with open-source jihad tutorials (e.g., “How to Make a Bomb in Your Mom’s Kitchen”). (Foreign Policy Research Institute)

This creates a distributed, low-barrier model: anyone sympathetic can “sign up” by pledging allegiance online and receiving guidance.

Key Examples and Case Studies

* Hyderabad, India Plot (2015–2016):

* The NY Times reported on a prime “remote gig” case in which an ISIS handler “virtual plotter” guided engineer Mohammed Ibrahim Yazdani and a cell for 17 months via messaging apps.

* Instructions included collecting hidden explosives/chemicals from drop points, weapons details, and attack planning in a tech hub.

* The cell was in near-constant contact until arrests.

* This was not a lone wolf but a remotely directed operation.

* Europe Attacks (2014–2016):

* GWU’s Program on Extremism made a report on how virtual plotters directed or inspired ~19 of 38 ISIS-related attacks in Western Europe.

* Examples include Paris (2015) and Brussels (2016) networks using Telegram for coordination.

* Handlers provided real-time guidance, bomb-making tips, and target selection.

* Lone Wolf / Inspired Attacks:

* The Combating Terrorism Center at West Point reported on how ISIS encouraged decentralized acts globally.

* Supporters were radicalized via social media, moved to Telegram channels for instructional content (e.g., attack tutorials, target suggestions), and sometimes received direct coaching.

* Examples include vehicle attacks, stabbings, and shootings where perpetrators cited ISIS inspiration and had online contact.

* Ongoing Digital Ecosystem:

* Small Wars Journal addresses how even after territorial losses, ISIS maintains decentralized networks of supporters producing propaganda, translating content, and running channels on Telegram.

* These act as distributed “content creators” and recruiters, with some providing cybersecurity training or crypto donation guides for funding operations.

Tech Platforms Used by Criminals

* According to the International Association of Chiefs of Police: EncroChat, Sky ECC, Phantom Secure, and others: These were specialized encrypted phone services used by European and international syndicates (e.g., Italian mafia, Albanian groups, drug cartels, motorcycle gangs). Users coordinated drug shipments, contract killings, torture, and money laundering across borders. Law enforcement infiltrated or shut them down in major operations (e.g., EncroChat in 2020 led to hundreds of arrests in Europe and beyond; similar for Sky ECC and Phantom). Messages included planning murders and sharing proof of killings.

* ANOM (FBI sting): The FBI ran a fake encrypted platform that criminals adopted globally (over 12,000 devices in 100+ countries). It enabled remote coordination by Italian mafia, outlaw motorcycle gangs, and drug syndicates until the 2021 takedown (Operation Trojan Shield), resulting in 800+ arrests. (See: FBI’s Encrypted Phone Platform Infiltrated Hundreds of Criminal Syndicates; Result is Massive Worldwide Takedown)

* Signal, Telegram, WhatsApp: Commonly used for operational tasking, recruitment, and extortion. Mexican cartels and others move conversations to these after initial social media contact. (per the International Association of Chiefs of Police)

Episode Transcript

Simone Collins: [00:00:00] Hello, Malcolm. I’m excited to be speaking with you today because did you know that Iraqis and crime syndicates and Mexican cartels are using signal groups and WhatsApp and also, like, I don’t know, Fortnite and various- It,

Malcolm Collins: it’s really missing.

When you told me about this this morning, you’re like, “Oh yeah, crime groups have started using gig work.” And I’m like, “Oh, cool. You mean like in Westworld too?”

Speaker 5: Like I said, I’ve got bills to pay

Speaker 6: I gotta get my stats up. Do more personals. You do personals?

Speaker 5: Nah.

Speaker 6: You should. Your stats are shitty, man. I don’t get it.

Speaker 5: I’m an underachiever. Look, I think we should [00:01:00] keep moving.

I don’t wanna be logged together.

Speaker 6: Relax, I’ve been ghost on that s**t since I walked up in here

Malcolm Collins: and she’s like, “Yeah, and guess who’s doing it mostly?” And I was like, “I don’t know,” like, and she’s like, “Mostly terrorist networks.” And then-

Simone Collins: Yeah, it’s worse.

It’s worse because who are they recruiting? At least in the Westworld like arc where they were using like apps to do crimes, it, it was adults. What they’re using instead is like 11 to 14-year-olds. Why? Because for these people, one, they’re like they can’t really think through it that well, but also they’re not going to be put away for life or executed for their crimes.

So to them also, even just logically, the price of doing this, you know, if you and I were ask like, “Hey, you know, what do you need in terms of payment to firebomb a building?” We’d be like, “Well, probably a lot of money.” You know, even if there’s like no one inside- Yeah ... the place they could hurt, like

Malcolm Collins: I don’t want- I, I, we haven’t had our price, but for firebombing a [00:02:00] building, it’s pretty high for me.

Simone Collins: Yeah. I mean, and, and if this is assuming that we are sociopaths, we don’t care about the human cost, and we’re just worried about our liability. But the liability for minors in most countries is super low. So for them it’s like, “Yeah, I’ll, I’ll take 20 grand for that. Let’s go.” Like, “I’ve always wanted to firebomb a building anyway.”

I think even like

Malcolm Collins: most minors would think that that was like an interesting and fun thing. Like- It’s a good deal ... eventually I’m gonna kill someone, right? Like- Yeah.

Simone Collins: Well, imagine, so I mean, it’s also very smart. You’re playing Grand Theft Auto, like y- you’re already preselected for being kind of like interested in recreationally committing acts of violence or crimes, right?

Yeah. And then like someone starts chatting with you, and they’re like, “Hey,” and they’re like, “Well, look tough.” You know, like they have some kind of profile picture with them in a bulletproof vest or something, right? And they’re like, “Hey kid, you wanna, you wanna do some crime?” And you’re like, “This is fun.”

You wanna

do some crime? You

know, it’s like first you’re, you’re doing the lookout, but it’s like, “Hey, you’re getting like $200 a week and stuff,” right? And like this is real money for a [00:03:00] kid that, you know, isn’t legally allowed to get a job. Like, I was recently looking at how old our kids have to be in order to get a job, ‘cause our son really wants to work at Tractor Supply.

It’s like his top ambition. And- And

Malcolm Collins: becoming an employee at Tractor Supply is-

Simone Collins: Yeah, like I think even at age 16 is, which is when you can start to work in the, in the state of Pennsylvania where we are, like it can only be for like family businesses- Oh ... and like not really a job. Like it, it’s bad. So for a, a 14-year-old, 11-year-old kid who like can’t get cash anywhere else, who likes playing Grand Theft Auto, and some cool tough guy is like talking you up and being like, “Hey, I don’t know.

I’ll give you a job. I need you to be a lookout.” And you feel like, oh, I’m, I’m, I’m being given missions. It’s all on like secret encrypted apps. I’m getting money. Like, yeah, it’s kind of a no-brainer. I mean, not to judgment to know that this is super bad and wrong and dangerous and a slippery slope.

Well, and this

Malcolm Collins: firebombing of buildings thing isn’t a hypothetical. It’s something that has actually been done multiple times. [00:04:00]

Simone Collins: Yeah. So I’m gonna go through the, the actual like both tactics of what’s actually going on, plus like the cases of, of this happening. I have, I have examples of terrorism. I have example of cartels.

I have examples of, of kids moving drugs, moving tons of really dangerous stuff around where

Malcolm Collins: kids-

Simone Collins: This is

Malcolm Collins: so cool. I just... Take a step back from this for a second. How can we get our kids in on this or get into this ourselves, right? You know? Is there, is there some utilization of this that I just haven’t thought through yet?

The problem-

Simone Collins: How do we recruit children on Fortnite to get them to- The

Malcolm Collins: problem is that even extremist pronatalism is just so constructive-

Simone Collins: Yeah ...

Malcolm Collins: that there isn’t really any sort of terroristic activity that would be of utility to even the most extremist of our movement, right?

Simone Collins: It’s notable though, like y- y- you start to think about it, like even from a child labor standpoint, like if you’re willing to You know recruit illegal child labor, like [00:05:00] clearly there are, there are pathways to doing it.

There, and this is just another like, piece of evidence pointing to the fact that children want to work. Children want jobs, okay? I

Malcolm Collins: got it. I’ve got it. What, what pronatalist terrorism looks like is basically the anime Shimoneta. Okay ... you know, explaining to people that real sex exists and they should be out there doing it, right?

You know, very subversive in our society compared to what they think sex is these

Simone Collins: days. Oh my God. Okay. I’m just... We’re gonna start at the very beginning of how I learned about this from one of our base camp community members, this goes out to you about the Iraqi crime syndicate, syndicate that is terrorizing Melbourne, Australia, which is insane, and I had not heard about until this very morning.

So let me set the scene. What’s [00:06:00] happening basically is an Iraqi-based organized crime syndicate that’s often linked to figures like Hazem Hamad also referred to as the cartel is directing or strongly suspected in a wave of, a big wave of extortion and firebombings and shootings and other related acts of violence that are targeting businesses in Melbourne, like especially nightclubs, but not just nightclubs.

It’s, it’s, it’s getting a lot worse, and that’s why this person listening to our podcast was bringing it up. He’s like, “I’d really like you to talk about how much worse crime is now in Australia.” Like, it’s, it’s getting to the point where citizens are like, “Hey, can like someone, can someone check this out?

Like I’m getting scared.” And it’s, it, it really started getting worse around 2023 with what are referred to as the Tobacco Wars. Which were sort of... It, it, the Tobacco Wars in Australia involve Australia being one of the highest tobacco or like cigarette tax countries in the entire world, [00:07:00] which on the surface of course sounds like a good idea, right?

Like, oh, we, we don’t want people to die of lung cancer. Yeah. Maybe we should tax cigarettes. But then, oh then like motorcycle gangs start selling illegal cigarettes, and then like, then or, you know, Iraqi gangs- Did they

Malcolm Collins: literally get the smokers from the movie Waterworld?

Simone Collins: Oh my God, they... Australia can’t stop like making Road Warrior happen.

Speaker 8: How about smokes?

Speaker 7: Uh, n- n- zero. Zero, zero smokes.

Speaker 8: I remember when this used to be fun. How long has it been since we’ve had a really good crusade?

Speaker 7: I know, I know.

Speaker 8: Tell me, how long?

Speaker 7: Oh, uh, I, I don’t know. I, I-

Speaker 8: Remember, uh, there used to be atolls on every horizon.

Speaker 7: Mm-hmm.

Speaker 8: Where the hell are they all going? Well, we sunk a few.

Speaker 7: I found

Simone Collins: every time we cover Australia, I’m like, “Oh my God, it’s the smokers. What is happening?” I didn’t even think of that when I read this. It’s just... [00:08:00] I love it though, the aesthetics. I mean like, yes, make go Australia, go. But get these... What the... There are real Iraqis in Road

Malcolm Collins: Warrior. One of our weekend episodes, we’re pointing out that Australia’s running out of oil right now and is in a really bad position, and they’re basically already at

Speaker: Looks like I got myself some gusa lean eight.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

But continue.

Simone Collins: Anyway, as reported by the Sydney Morning Herald, Kazem Hammad, he’s an Iraqi-born Australian who was deported in 2023 and his associates in Baghdad, so they’re not all in Australia, they’re 8,000 miles away are alleged to orchestrate operations remotely. Hammad himself was arrested in Iraq in early 2026, like this year, per Australia’s request.

So Australia’s like, “Hey, this, this guy’s like a really big problem. Can you please arrest him?” And they did. And then threats and directions, they come in from his associates, and maybe him too, [00:09:00] via encrypted apps, mostly Signal. Like, they use WhatsApp to send the extortion messages, but they use Signal for the work.

Okay, so let’s just go through, you know, like they have different purposes, using this in a very you know, organized fashion. Oh, one second. Sorry. It’s me. It’s the fertility company. Hello, this is Simone for example, in, in Baghdad who are sending orders to Australia to, like, their distributed network of child street urchins is, is another relatively young 23-year-old Australian, but he, he again is in Iraq. So this is, this is people very remotely organizing these crime rings. The Guardian reports on how street battle crews, who are often teenagers, very young offenders, are recruited via encrypted messaging apps to carry out attacks, and the organized crime figures, often in Iraq, are assigning contracts to local heads of street crews, so you kinda like make your way up in the ranks, you know, who then, [00:10:00] like, will use local youths or foot- as foot soldiers, and it’s the youths who commit the arson and the burglaries and the intimidation.

Police have arrested tons of teens. Some are as young as 13 in, in these cases in Australia in connection with the incidents. And it is something that’s relatively new in Australia, so they’re really learning how to begin contending with, like, all of these really uniquely young people doing this stuff.

Like normally I think people are accustomed to like, you know, adult biker gangs, for example, like where the tobacco war started. Like, okay, it’s these scary, These scary adults,

Malcolm Collins: right?

Simone Collins: Yeah. Nothing scarier than a

Malcolm Collins: teenager with nothing to lose, right?

Simone Collins: Right. And I think that’s the thing is, is you don’t expect these in like sort of developed countries, you know, where like there’s universal public school and, like, there’s not widespread impoverishment.

Like, you’d expect crime-involved sea urchins and... Not sea urchins. Oh my God. Street urchins in like- Sea

[00:11:00] urchins.

Sea urchins. Watch out for them too, though. In like India where there’s widespread poverty and there’s just a ton of kids out on the streets, like in some areas, right? And we’ve, we’ve both traveled to countries where like, kids get involved with pick, pickpocketing rings and stuff.

But like not in Australia, so like the police really don’t know how to deal with this quite yet. But it’s, it is getting quite extreme because whereas before it was just like small kind of local crime stuff, now it’s firebombings, it’s shootings. And these attacks are meant to force businesses, including tobacco shops, bars, nightclubs, and restaurants, to basically pay protection or taxes.

A lot of people are calling it the Kaz Tax after the Iraq- Iraqi, like, basically terrorist. And then it, they’re also forcing them to stock illicit products. Like, “You have to stock my illegal cigarettes or else.” And, and sometimes they’re, you know, charging [00:12:00] really high prices for the illegal stock.

And if, if they don’t, if they don’t stock the cigarettes, if they don’t pay the tax, they get firebombed.

Malcolm Collins: So they invented the mob, but outsourced.

Simone Collins: Yeah, it’s, it’s like a, yeah. Well, it’s, it’s really like the mob, but I don’t have to leave my house, and I’m just gonna have, like, teenagers commit the actual crimes because they’re not gonna, you know, go to jail for life for it.

And that they’ll be much more likely to do it if they don’t know better. Yeah ... and it, it’s just cucking people. I mean,

Malcolm Collins: it’s kind of clever when you think about it,

Simone Collins: right? It’s extremely clever. I’m, I have massive respect for them, honestly. Well, I’m even thinking,

Malcolm Collins: like, how do you even hypothetically fight against something like this, right?

Simone Collins: That’s, that, actually, that’s, like, the scariest thing about it is I mean, so they, Australia was able to get this guy arrested, and then after he got out, there was a 68% spike in crime. Like, it’s very clear that when you put away very specific [00:13:00] people you can, for example, take out a, a decent chunk of crime in, like, isolated cases or certain crime types.

The

Malcolm Collins: problem I think is, and, and this is the reality of it, if it’s 68% tied to one guy, right? This is Australia being a pussy. If this stuff was happening in freaking Tel Aviv, we know what would happen to this guy in, like, four days, okay? And it would be public and brutal in some way so everyone else knew, “Don’t do this,” right?

They need to start acting like the Jews and just killing people who annoy them. W- a- and people are like, “You can’t do that on an international stage.” Do you know it’s the only realistic way to deal with something like this at a government level. And this guy isn’t even a citizen. He’s an outsider, whatever.

We’re allowed to kill non-citizens, right? Like our government is killing people.

Simone Collins: Is he a citizen? He was, I think he was Australian-born, and then he was, like, deported to... I, I can’t remember. But it’s- I’ll

Malcolm Collins: tell you what, if I was president you know, I, I think we [00:14:00] need to, to be far more aggressive about dealing with this sort of stuff.

Simone Collins: Well, let’s talk about how it’s done, okay? So the way it works if you’re gonna be a remote work crime boss, is you use, at least in the case of, like, this Iraqi crime syndicate that you use Signal to both recruit and then assign tasks to local youths in your crime networks. I, yeah, there, there’s one Signal group, for example, that was associated with these ones in Australia just called Jobs, where you just, like, go look for, like, a job.

You know, just, just like, you know, “Hey, $100 to be a lookout. You know, $500, like, rough someone up.”

Malcolm Collins: Jobs, yeah. Just go out and go beat this guy up. Yeah, you

Simone Collins: know? Just, just give, give jobs to the youth. The offers range from, like, a few hundred dollars to 1,000 to over $20,000 for significant attacks. Like a, a venue firebombing would get you something more in the 20K range, ‘cause that, you know, you gotta buy supplies.

You gotta plan it. You know, it’s probably more liability, but not if you’re, like, you know, if you’re super [00:15:00] young, what are you gonna do? Like, imagine your home life sucks already. Yeah. Like, maybe your parents are abusive. Right. There’s not food, like, all these things, and then, like, you go to, like, some kind of juvenile prison, which, you know, depending on the country, right, could be pretty decent.

You’re out when you’re, like, 21 years old. Like-

Malcolm Collins: The other, the other good thing about this and, and good way to deal with this, and it’s shocking to me that they’re not doing this well, is as soon as you catch one person doing this, you can find out where they’ve gotten the job from- Yeah ... and then basically just infiltrate the network, right?

Simone Collins: Yeah ...

Malcolm Collins: spoof the accounts of the bad actors and just act like them and- That’s,

Simone Collins: that’s exactly how this goes. A lot of these things are discovered through massive data breaches. I’m gonna, I’m gonna go into in a little bit some examples of ways that law enforcement has uncovered and also taken down and arrested associates.

So, let’s go into some other modern organized crime using [00:16:00] these distributed methods. I think the more, the more impressive ones, even more impressive than this, this whole Iraqi child crime syndicates

Malcolm Collins: network is- Are most of these people, what are they ethnically, the kids that they target? Are they mostly white kids

Simone Collins: or- You know, that’s not specified.

I think it’s one of those things like how in the article- If

Malcolm Collins: it’s not specified,

Simone Collins: they’re

Malcolm Collins: Muslim ...

Simone Collins: they’re telling you. And-

Malcolm Collins: If it’s not specified, they’re Muslim. If they were white, they’d be mentioning that all over the articles.

Simone Collins: Maybe, yeah. It, it... Oh my God. It does not show up in the articles. Okay, give me one second.

Yeah, that

Malcolm Collins: everybody knows news code now. Suspect race not mentioned means the suspect is either Black or Muslim, and suspect race mentioned means they’re white.

Simone Collins: So the, the most impressive players, in my opinion, which shouldn’t be any surprise, is the Mexican drug cartels. So cartels like the Jalisco New Generation and Sinaloa excel at this kind of tech-enabled remote operation. They post fake ad jobs like, “I’m looking for a [00:17:00] security guard” on Facebook or Instagram, which I could totally see this.

And then they shift the recruits to WhatsApp and Signal for training and assignments, and they do a little bit of a bait and switch. Like, yeah, it’s a sec- security guard, lookout guy, like what’s the, really what’s the difference? Don’t you need money? Don’t you need money though? I mean, you’re responding to a job ad on Instagram for real, like you think you’re gonna get a better job.

And they- And yeah, they’re already

Malcolm Collins: filtering there with the type of people who are

Simone Collins: responding to the job ads on Facebook. No, like filtering, yeah. An even better filtering is how they’re using games like Fortnite and Call of Duty and GTA V for recruiting because, one, you’re getting kids, and two, and also they’re, they’re doing this at like 2:00 AM.

So you’re like in Fortnite 2:00 AM finding kids. Like these are kids who are like, they enjoy a little bit of like violent role play, especially like GTA. So per Insight Crime, the recruiters will join public multiplayer sessions or [00:18:00] lobbies really late at night when it’s expected like parents aren’t really watching or, you know, these are kids whose parents just aren’t there, who aren’t disciplined enough to keep tabs on their kids, which is perfect.

Like the selection criteria there is just so clever, I think. And they, they’ll DM them or send them a friend request or a group invite using the in-game chat. And they will have profiles or profile images- Mm-hmm ... that feature really like intimidating im- imagery or something really glamorous to, to a kid.

So you know, like cartel symbols or weapons or something, right?

Malcolm Collins: Or like a b- a, a buff guy or something.

Simone Collins: Yeah, like Andrew Tate style. You know what I mean. You know what I mean. And then they’ll like sort of love bomb them, you know, cult style. Like be like, “Oh, you’re really good at this game. Do you wanna do it for real?”

Malcolm Collins: Ooh, that sounds spicy.

Simone Collins: I mean, I feel like

Malcolm Collins: every time I hear about a money-making opportunity, I’m always just like, “Is this something we can make a few bucks off

Simone Collins: of?” Oh [00:19:00]

Malcolm Collins: God.

Simone Collins: Stop them. You know? And then they’ll, they’ll promise, you know, money and adventure and guns and cars and status and they might frame it as a job, like a security guard or a lookout.

So like they, they might even pretend it’s fairly like above board for a little bit. Or they might even frame it as like an event for some kind of virtual recruitment drive. And then they play together, like they build rapport, they become friends. And then they transition to private chats. So they get them off Fortnite or GTA V, and they get them onto Discord or Twitch or WhatsApp or Signal, and then they switch to exploiting vulnerabilities.

So ABC4 reports that the, they really go for super isolated or bored youths who are fascinated by violence or weapons which is why they really go for the shooter games. Mm-hmm. They also really go for kids from low-income backgrounds because [00:20:00] for those kids they can even make this argument like, “Hey look, juvenile prison is gonna be better than your home environment.”

And in many ways it probably is. So the kids are like, “Yeah, this is a win-win.”

Malcolm Collins: But much is that juvenile prison that you go into with being in on one of the gangs.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Like, yeah, exactly.

Malcolm Collins: Like, do you understand? You, you get there day one, you’ve got a friend network, you’re already kinda cool, like-

Simone Collins: Yeah, like I’m a Sinaloa kid.

Like yeah, it’s, yeah, you’re one of the, you’re one of the cool ...

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, it’s like you’re auto in. That’s, that’s pretty

Simone Collins: interesting. The payment per week is I, I think really impressive. Like my allowance When I did a lot of chores. I think at the height of it was, it started at $5 a week, and I think the most was ever 20.

Oh, never got

Malcolm Collins: more than $5 a week.

Simone Collins: Yeah, I think $5 a week was the most. Yeah, like I would, I, I made most of my money from pet sitting. These kids are getting over $200 a week for low-level roles like lookouts. So the pay is good. And then- Yeah. [00:21:00] Yeah, right? So like, you, you, you’re doing pretty easy work.

You’re just being a lookout, and then they’re like, “Hey, you know, listen, you’re really good at this. You wanna do more?” And you’re like, “Yeah. Yes, I wanna do more.” Like, this is, this is life-changing money for a kid, you know? You, you ... People forget, being a kid can be fun, sure, but like, being a kid can also really suck.

You don’t get to determine what you eat, where you live, what you do on a daily basis. And nobody treats you with respect. Yeah. And no one believes you, no one treats you with respect, and here you are. You’re earning real money. It, it’s, it’s, it’s very game-changing for a kid. And then, then they escalate.

So once, once you’re hooked, and I imagine it’s very easy to get hooked, recruits can start to receive travel instructions or small tasks turn into smuggling runs. And this nonprofit, this, like, think tank that looks at crime and does a lot of investigation called InCrime, they report that cartels like CJNG and [00:22:00] Sinaloa or Cartel del Noreste are linked to these types of recruiting efforts.

Like, the biggest players are doing this. It always starts small, like you’re a messenger or you’re a lookout, and then they become big, like you are transporting, you know, possibly millions of dollars worth of drugs or you are killing people. So there are some examples that have been fairly prominently covered.

The, the most famously covered is a 21, 2021 case- In Oaxaca, Mexico, there were three boys aged 11 to 14, 11 years old that were recruited via Garena Free Fire. This is a battle royale game similar to Fortnite. I, I don’t think it’s something that is an English language game. A recruiter posed as, like, a, another kid, and then offered them jobs as lookouts with weekly pay, and then it- the, the recruiter bought them bus tickets to Northern Mexico.

This is the point at which, thank goodness, the boys were [00:23:00] intercepted. But then similar cases that have also been covered involve girls and other minors that have been lured either for trafficking or cartel work. And this is a very common pattern across games, so it’s not like there’s one game where this is the problem.

Then there’s this prominent US and Mexico 2021 to 2022 drug mule problem involving Grand Theft Auto. So one young woman in Arizona was recruited while playing Grand Theft Auto online. She met a man in the game who offered her a job transporting what she thought were electronics. Guess what it was instead?

Malcolm Collins: Was it drugs?

Simone Collins: Yeah. It was meth. It was meth. She was

Malcolm Collins: arrested- I, I I love that, like, the moment I hear it’s a girl, I’m like, “Oh, she’s gonna get raped. She’s gonna get sold into sex

Simone Collins: slavery.” I know. This is, this is the happy case.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, this is the positive outcome from girl meets guy from Grand Theft Auto who’s in a gang.

Simone Collins: For real. Yeah, no, no, she was just arrested [00:24:00] with 60 kilograms of meth. That’s all. It’s fine. US Customs and Border Protection linked this to Mexican cartels using the game for real-world runners. But keep in mind, this is a young woman in Arizona. This is not, like, some, you know, kid in a poor hovel in Mexico or something.

And then there’s another 2021 GTA V recruitment event. There’s a teen who received an in-game invite at 3:00 AM, a virtual, let’s see- A reclutamiento al- abierto, an open recruitment event tied to Cartel del Noreste and old school Zeta

Malcolm Collins: Honestly, given how y- you know, the kids these are so pessimistic about the future- Yeah

they’re also nihilistic, like-

Simone Collins: Yeah ... it’s

Malcolm Collins: really exciting for a lot of kids.

Simone Collins: It’s, no, it’s compelling. It’s compelling. And yeah, so this, there’s basically this thing where you have, like, on top you have, like, the actual cartel or gang that I imagine still resembles a proper gang. You know, you [00:25:00] got the tattooed adults, or whatever, the tough-looking, scary Armenians or- The tattooed adults

Malcolm Collins: Armenians. Why are you going hard on Armenians here

Simone Collins: today? Because Armenians feature prominently in the latest season of Euphoria, and they’re really scary. And they’re, they’re a lot, there’s, there’s, there’s a lot. They, they have, they’re white neo-Nazi dr- drug runners. They’re also there’s, like, a, a Black cowboy like- Okay,

Malcolm Collins: okay

Simone Collins: sex trafficker essentially, and then there’s the, the Armenians. The Armenians are the scariest in my opinion. And-

Malcolm Collins: Armenians are the scariest

Simone Collins: Yeah, dude, watch it. You know, but it’s, it’s actually really good. But one of the major themes, and in fact the, the primary protagonist in the latest season of S- of Euphoria, which is one of the few remaining shows that’s kind of like an event show to watch it, it starts with her being a drug runner, and I was like, “Adam, this is not a very relatable plot.”

But now I’m like, oh my [00:26:00] God, is this like, is this a thing that the youths do now? Is this-

Malcolm Collins: Is this more relatable for kids than I thought?

Simone Collins: Yeah, like is this a zeitgeist show? I thought this was like a, oh, this would be crazy. But they’re all... They’re either drug runners or basically sex workers, like, on OnlyFans and stuff.

Like, Sydney Sweeney’s in this. If you’ve seen anything about Sydney Sweeney, like, and sex work, they’re talking about Euphoria. Anyway though this is very zeitgeisty. I mean, the main character- Like, I would genuinely want to have

Malcolm Collins: gotten into this had I been younger. I would think it’s cool. I

Simone Collins: would really want to break the rules.

Yeah, it’s cool. It’s like you, you make money. It’s, it’s subversive. You’re aware of the fact that, like, the actual opportunity cost for you and the actual risk is relatively low, especially in countries... I mean, it’s low assuming that your employer doesn’t kill you or get you killed.

Malcolm Collins: But-

Simone Collins: Which I think is discounting

Malcolm Collins: this is the thing that I think is where we’re gonna see this go, is- Yeah ... so there was a case recently where a kid in Turkey, and he had built this [00:27:00] company when he was in his 20, early 20s. Yeah. So when he was arrested, he was like 22 or 23, and so this must’ve been- 17 ... he must’ve been like 19, 18, something like that when he made this.

He’s like a fat kid from Iran, and he built a company that made where he scammed people out of a hu- I think it was like 3- Was this the

Simone Collins: farm thing? The-

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, $350 million or something, right? And it, it- And he

Simone Collins: was caught driving like s- like a Ferrari in Uruguay or something.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, yeah. But anyway, the point being is the moment, you know, some Iranian figures this out, right, in Iran, right?

You’re gonna get youths that see these sorts of things and are like... ‘Cause this is what I would think. Yeah,

Simone Collins: sign me up. Yeah, it’s GTA V but, like, IRL. Please, let’s, let’s go.

Malcolm Collins: Well, not just that, but like, I bet I could run these operations better than these guys. For real. Yeah. But like now that it’s entirely decentralized- I know, I know

and I can run this while going to school during the day. Actually, make a movie about this. This would be a really entertaining movie, about-

Simone Collins: It’d be a great movie. Yeah ...

Malcolm Collins: about a [00:28:00] kid who’s just like a normal kid during the day, but, but a la, like, A

Simone Collins: crime boss by night ...

Malcolm Collins: well, I mean, this kind of happened with the guy who created Silk Road, right?

Simone Collins: Ross Ulbricht, who got a Trump pardon. That my favorite Trump pardon, Ross Ulbricht. My

Malcolm Collins: favorite Trump pardon, too. Yeah. But imagine somebody-

Simone Collins: Actually, somebody, someone we know, I, I can’t name her I’ll tell you at dinner tonight, Just recently got breakfast with his mom randomly

Malcolm Collins: Ross Ulbricht’s mom?

What?

Simone Collins: Yeah. You’re never gonna guess who it is either.

Malcolm Collins: I, I think I know who it is.

Simone Collins: Okay.

Malcolm Collins: The, our DC friend, female

Simone Collins: friend. No. No. No. You’re never... I swear to God, you’re never gonna guess. Okay,

Malcolm Collins: well, here

Simone Collins: you go. I mean, the

Malcolm Collins: point, the point here being, Yeah ... I think, one, cool anime. Very, very familiar cool It’s cool TV

Simone Collins: format, dude.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, doing the, Should I write a story? I mean, like use, with AI, this would be a great like first story, right? To-

Simone Collins: It’s

Malcolm Collins: gonna be like- I don’t know. I’m interested in this. I, I’m interested-

Simone Collins: [00:29:00] We shouldn’t be glam- No, no, bad, bad. We shouldn’t be glamorizing this. Now I know, like I really have to be care- Like Octavian just this morning, “I wanna do like multiplayer online games.”

He wants to play Among Us, he wants to play Minecraft. Now I’m gonna be like, “Oh my God, like is someone, is someone gonna be recruiting him to become a drug runner if I let him play like multiplayer online games?” Like how, how isolated does Arianna have to make our family to like-

Malcolm Collins: Actually, hold on.

To be even cooler about this, here’s, here’s an alt strategy you could do, right?

Simone Collins: Okay.

Malcolm Collins: It totally changes the way that you can even operate a gang, right? So right now, one of the challenges with operating these is they’re often targeting state actors and stuff like that.

Simone Collins: Aren’t you about to give the cartels b- like operational advice?

Malcolm Collins: No. Like what if you create a sort of distributed cartel that’s just meant to soak cartel operations for money and supplies? Like and, and because it’s completely distributed, it’s way harder for [00:30:00] them to pin down whoever is actually leading things

Simone Collins: What do you mean? Like, how, how would this work? Do you be a supplier to them?

‘Cause there are, there are

Malcolm Collins: suppliers to them. No, no. You so if they’re already doing these sorts of operations and stuff like that, you-

Simone Collins: Like you wanna be like an agency for the kids to be like, “Mm, I represent them now. I take 20% and you’re not paying me now.”

Malcolm Collins: No. You, you create a counter cartel, right?

Okay. That basically exploits the way that they’re doing operational. It’s obviously very up upsetting- Oh, like you,

Simone Collins: you more effectively recruit the youth?

Malcolm Collins: No. You exploit the way that they are doing this to siphon money from them. So, this requires a lot of trust from one, the youth who are doing this.

Mm-hmm. So you can go in and spoof acting like cartel members, for example, to get people to do things that are counter cartel interests- Ooh ... within these particular regions in ways that can make you money through then [00:31:00] exploiting organizations and saying, “Oh, you pay me X amount, you pay me Y amount to be safe.”

You could, you could run some sort of counter cartel operation. Actually, I wonder if you’re doing this in developing countries like targeting, let’s say big things like mining rigs and stuff like that, I bet you could make decent money with minimal risk of them just not being willing to pay you because the state operation that would come after you in these places is gonna be small, right?

So, if you tried to exploit mining facilities and stuff like that in places like Africa, and you’re doing this well, you could probably do pretty well. Or large banks and stuff like that. The problem is, is they already have to worry about generic terrorism, so how far could you go? I mean, there’s countries on like the edge of development, so like Peru would be an easy place to operate something like this.

Specifically because like historically, like if you look at the buildings, they’re really made to be terrorism proof, but not anymore. I’m just thinking like if a kid was going to do this, how would you do it in today’s [00:32:00] economy?

Simone Collins: Well, you better figure it out soon because our oldest is gonna be 11 soon enough, and then you know,

Malcolm Collins: there’s 10-year-old safety And do you think he’s gonna wait till 11 to start this sort of stuff, Simone?

Simone Collins: Yeah, fair enough. He’s really, like- I

Malcolm Collins: think he’ll be on it at nine. Oh my God. Y- with his,

Illegal chicken farming, of course. That,

Simone Collins: that’s what he

Malcolm Collins: really

Simone Collins: wants to do. With his baby chick daycare. Yeah. Like I said, all he wants to do is work for Tractor Supply, babysit baby chicks. He wants to be there for the chicks, okay?

He, he can’t stop thinking of the chicks. He’s into

Malcolm Collins: chicks. Our kids really

Simone Collins: into chicks. The chicks. Yeah. I

Malcolm Collins: actually think that this is... The other thing I wanna take an opportunity to think about before we sign off on this topic

Simone Collins: is- There’s actually more. Do you, can I give you a little more? Yeah, ‘cause this is, this is just fascinating stuff.

Just just so you know ice.gov has stuff on this too that I found to be interesting. Darknet marketplaces, like there are successors to the Silk Road like Alpha, Alpha [00:33:00] Bay. They function like, and this is why I was confused by what you’re proposing, like an eBay for illicit goods and services.

So there are groups that offer crime as a service with different hierarchies, and they have reviews, and they have escrow payments, often in crypto. Like it’s, it’s more secure. They’re, they’re really heavy in Eastern Europe but, and, and internationally, but I mean, we could make it, you know, made in the USA edition, you know, MAGA edition.

Malcolm Collins: MAGA?

Simone Collins: And then there’s, there are coders who sell malware. There are people who, you know, handle the like hits and drugs and transport. Like there’s, there’s a whole economy. People specialize. But the, the core model for gig economy terrorism is also fascinating, and this is the even scarier part, right?

‘Cause you were talking about the exploitation of nihilism as part of the what makes this so effective and, and youth nihilism being super high. I think it’s extra scary when it’s not just, “Oh, this is like for $200,” but also like, “Oh, I’ve finally been [00:34:00] given meaning and a community.” Like, then you can get someone to do a whole lot more when that happens.

So here’s how terrorist groups are using these general approaches. The, there’s a George Washington University program on extremism. I pulled some of my sources from there. By the way, all the show notes are in, in Substack and on Patreon. I’ve linked all my sources. They’re detailed, so go read more there.

But the way it works is they will start on platforms like Twitter, I mean X, or Facebook or TikTok or Instagram with like propaganda, and then they shift from there to encrypted messaging, and here’s where like Telegram is also super heavy, but then there’s WhatsApp still and Signal, and then there’s also apps like SureSpot and Wickr, which I’ve never heard of before.

Malcolm Collins: Okay.

Simone Collins: But they’re, I guess, good for secure one-on-one small group coordination. And then you get handlers assigning specific jobs like conduct a vehicle ramming here, or make a bomb with [00:35:00] these instructions, or film a pledge and attack. Like really scary stuff. And they will provide everything from the logistics to the targets and encouragement.

They can arrange weapons caches. You know, it’s kind of like paint by numbers just with terrorism, which is terrifying. They just make it super easy. You know, like in the past I mean, even when you watch spy movies and stuff, right? Like, the spies have to do all the work, right? Like it’s-- But now, like any kid can become James Bond.

You know, they have like their person who’s like, “Don’t worry, here are your tools. Here’s how to do it all.” You know, and they’re, they just like... But it’s so cheap. It’s so inexpensive and so therefore scalable. And this now isn’t just about money, it’s about martyrdom, it’s about caliphate glory or status.

And sometimes of course there’s financial support too. So it’s not just, it’s like crime bounties plus all these other things that can make people do much more dangerous things. There are the [00:36:00] propaganda magazines that get people really like stoked about doing this stuff that include even like open source jihad tutorials.

The, the Foreign Policy Research Institute has scary stuff on that. So here’s some examples of this happening. Back even in twenty fifteen and twenty sixteen, there was this plot in India, in, in Hyderabad. The, The New York Times reported on this basically remote case in which an ISIS handler, a virtual plotter if you will guided an engineer named Mohammed Ibrahim Yazdani in a cell for seventeen months via messaging apps.

Detailed stuff. They, they instructed him on collecting hidden explosives and chemicals from drop points, and also weapons. They helped him attack or plan his attack an attack hub. The cell was in near constant contact until they were arrested, and this was not him at all acting alone. I think sometimes when we see reporting on [00:37:00] this, it seems like it’s just one dude.

Yeah. But what we’re talking about is like there’s this just he’s, this is one dude with a lot of support. Then there were a bunch of Europe attacks between twenty fourteen and twenty sixteen. A bunch of virtual plotters directed and/or inspired around nineteen out of the thirty-eight ISIS related attack, attacks that took place in Western Europe during that time.

Nineteen out of thirty-eight is a lot. And they’re... That, that they were involved in the twenty fifteen Paris attack, the twenty sixteen Brussels attack. They used Telegram primarily for coordination. And these people are getting real-time guidance. They’re getting bomb making tips, and they’re getting target selection.

And it’s something that again is just not really... I think when we see news coverage of this, it’s like, “Oh, like some rando drove a van into a Christmas market.” And what we’re not realizing is this isn’t some rando. This is like, this is an agent being puppeted by a [00:38:00] very sophisticated, carefully planned, planning cell.

Which is super creepy. There was a case in which- Oh I, I’ll just, you know, guys go to the show notes because I also wanted just to briefly talk about how law enforcement is trying to combat this. So there’s the, there’s this international association for the chiefs of police, which I find to be very cute for some reason, and I, I fell down a rabbit hole with them, but they were- Are, are they

Malcolm Collins: like a, do they look like stereotypical police chiefs?

Is it like goofy and like a top

Simone Collins: hat? It’s just cute. I just like, I see them like going, like I just imagine them going to the little police chief convention and being like, “I’m the chief. I’m

the

chief. “... crime is bad.” Just, I don’t know. I just find, I don’t know why I find it so endearing, but I do. But they, they say that platforms like EncroChat, Sky ECC, Phantom Secure, and others are some of the like bespoke [00:39:00] crime-only platforms that have been created by especially European, but also like other international syndicates for use.

So instead of only just using Signal and Telegram and WhatsApp, they have developed these like specific dedicated bits of software, which I find to be interesting. These have been used by the Italian Mafia, by Albanian groups, drug cartels, and motorcycle gangs. And they’ve been used to coordinate drug shipments and, and do contract killings and things like torture, money laundering.

And law enforcement has, for the most part, infiltrated these or shut them down. Like in twenty-twenty, they shut down EncroChat, and, and this also led to dozens of arrests in Europe and beyond. So the danger in creating a dedicated crime software is that like you’re gonna become the number one target as soon as law enforcement learns about you, and they will because they will eventually get someone to snitch by basically being like, “You’re going to jail for life unless you, you know, become a [00:40:00] snitch.”

And-

Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

Simone Collins: They’re catching people planning murders. They’re catching people like coordinating torture sessions. It, it’s horrible. Here’s my favorite FBI sting that happened. What did the FBI think? They’re like, “I have a great idea. Let’s just build one of these and just tell everyone, ‘Hey guys, I got the new, I got the new software platform for crime.

Time to come on here.’” And so they created Anom, A-N-O-M. I’m sure it stand... it stood for something. But it was a fake encrypted platform that criminals adopted globally. Like they got over twelve thousand devices in over a hundred countries that enabled remote coordination by the Italian Mafia and outlaw motorcycle gangs and drug syndicates.

And then in twenty-twenty-one, after they felt content that they had enough people on their platform, they, they, they committed what they called Operation Trojan Shield- ... which resulted in, in over a hundred arrests. And you can read more about it. The [00:41:00] FBI has a- Fantastic. Yeah. There, there’s an article called “FBI’s Encrypted Phone Platform Infiltrated Hundreds of Criminal Syndicates.

Result is Massive Worldwide Takedown.” So there is hope. There’s hope that these things can result in some form of justice. And the great thing about there being all this documentation on Signal and Telegram and whatnot is like, okay, yeah, as much as these are, you know, encrypted chats, people take screenshots.

People take pictures of their phone even when you can’t take a screenshot in an app. Like, there are ways that, you know, if something is on a device, if something is ever written down, it can be documented. If something is uttered, honestly, around any kind of device, you know? So that, that is a thing. But I think for this reason, I, most of the current major crime syndicates and organizations are using a constellation of apps, which is why you’re hearing like, “Oh, well, the Iraqis are using WhatsApp for extortion messages, but Signal to coordinate with their, [00:42:00] like, team criminals.

And they’re using, and Sinaloa is using Fortnite.” Like, it’s better to just, to be totally platform agnostic and do whatever works and shift frequently. And that’s why you’re just, I think you’re gonna continue to see basically gaming platforms and Discord and Signal and Telegram and WhatsApp because it’s just better to not be in any one place.

So yeah, it’s scary. It’s a, but that, that’s what I wanted to share. I think it’s fascinating. I, there’s a lot more reading you can do if you go to the show notes.

Malcolm Collins: Totally changes how businesses can operate, which I find to be very interesting.

Simone Collins: It does.

Malcolm Collins: It does, yeah. And if I was going to operate one of these, I would likely target a country that can’t defend itself as easily.

I think that’s the, the best way to handle this rather than like the United States or Europe. Like yes, those are the juiciest piggy banks, right? Sure,

Simone Collins: yeah.

Malcolm Collins: But they’re also the most likely to get you, whereas if you’re targeting you know, Eastern Europe or, or you know, a, a lot of Arab majority countries and stuff like that, you can [00:43:00] operate without them being able to push back as easily.

Which would be very, very interesting. That’s, that’s what I would do. I don’t know.

Simone Collins: Yeah, absolutely.

Malcolm Collins: But then you’ve gotta, you know, try to understand the local culture and language enough to make that operate, and so that’s a bit, you know, difficult. But, Yeah, that’s very

Simone Collins: true ... very exciting and

Malcolm Collins: interesting to see where this goes and as we get better at defending against this.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah, for real. I’m so scared for our kids, man. I mean- I mean- What?

Malcolm Collins: Look, we’re the ones who started a cult, Simone, so you know, keep in mind-

Simone Collins: Who hasn’t these days? I don’t know. Like, that’s-

Malcolm Collins: It’s a pretty good cult, I’m gonna be honest.

Simone Collins: It’s cool. It’s, I’m proud to be a techno-puritan. It’s good. All right.

It’s, it’s, yeah. Love you.

To what extent does it actually taste good because you’re starving because you haven’t eaten in a really long time?

Malcolm Collins: Oh, yeah, I guess. Well, no, I had, like, potatoes yesterday. They were good

Simone Collins: Oh, yeah, [00:44:00] you had, you had french fries and samosas. That, that was the, that was your comfort food when you came back from college, right?

Today she

Malcolm Collins: made slow cooked Chinese pork belly, and it is amazing. It is amazing. And then she’s gonna saute the, the pork belly with bok choy and bean- beanlets, whatever they’re called, little beans.

Simone Collins: Bean sprouts?

Malcolm Collins: Bean sprouts.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: But I am excited for this episode, so let’s hop right in. Are we on the right side?

Simone Collins: Yes, we are. Sir, he’s such in a grabby phase. Okay. Oh, you think it’s-- he thinks it’s funny. He thinks it’s funny. Of course he thinks it’s funny.

Speaker 10: Are they getting away? Are they your buddies? Yeah. How’s the daycare going, your baby chick daycare? Yeah. It’s going well? You tickle? Yeah. All right. You wanna give them their new home? [00:45:00] Yeah, I can go get my things. Okay. Of course Okay, girly, down you go. Rascal, uh-oh Oh, no. Rascal’s living up to her name. No, no, no, no, no.

We’ll get her in. All right, you can walk them into their new home Hey Rascal. Come here girl

In this episode of Based Camp, Malcolm and Simone Collins dive deep into the Book of Genesis, revealing surprising alignments between the ancient text and modern evolutionary science.

Malcolm challenges common Sunday-school interpretations, showing how Genesis describes a timeline that closely matches scientific understanding: from the early Earth and origin of life, through aquatic creatures and large reptiles, to birds, land animals, and finally humanity. They explore alternate translations of key Hebrew words (like “yom” for “day/era”, “yatsar” for “formed/planned”, and “taninim” for great reptilian creatures), discuss the Big Bang, prebiotic Earth, the evolution of sexuality, and why Genesis stands out among global creation myths.

A fascinating conversation blending biblical scholarship, evolutionary biology, and philosophical insight that will challenge both skeptics and literalists.

Episode Transcript

Malcolm Collins: Hello, Simone. I’m excited to talk with you today. In a recent episode, I pointed out, I was like, “It is weird to within a modern context in Christianity and stuff like this, when people are saying that evolution is not coherent with Genesis.”

And I would say that at least my readings of Genesis, evolution makes me believe Genesis more because Genesis says a bunch of stuff that aligns with what we know of the, about the evolutionary timeline without saying anything that disconfirms the evolutionary timeline. So we are gonna get into this.

And it’s, it’s, it’s such a fun topic for me to get into because when I was a kid, and I believe that Genesis said what, as I call it, Sunday school Christianity, you know? Well Genesis says X, Y, and Z, and and I- if you look at it, and then don’t look up alternate translations of the words in it whenever something looks a little fishy or looks like it may be [00:01:00] factually incorrect or don’t look up how that word is used in other places in the Old Testament you immediately are like, “Okay, that’s believable,” right?

And so that’s stupid because that’s an old story for savages.

Speaker 2: We will call them cave Jews

Speaker 3: Attacker!

Malcolm Collins: And then you come at it with a more modern mindset. I mean, just if you look at the mere timeline given in it, right? It says first you have non-animal life. Then you have the vast array... No, it doesn’t even say, like, fishes.

It’s, it’s the vast array of creatures that live in the sea.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: Along with some form of large reptilian creature. Hmm ... which, which, no- What could that

Simone Collins: be?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, what, what could that be? Now, no, there’s, there’s a lot of really cool... First, it’s not as simple as saying, like, fi- they easily could have wr- fishes, right?

But if you’re describing- Yeah ... the [00:02:00] evolutionary timeline- Yeah ... the vast array of things that live in the sea is a very good description for early animal life. 100%,

Simone Collins: yeah.

Malcolm Collins: And I’m also gonna go into stuff in the translations here, where a lot of people argue that the, the giant thing that’s written here, the 吨, or whatever is like a leviathan, that it is a giant sea creature-like serpent or something like that.

And I’m gonna point out that actually if you read the, the correct, the Hebrew, which we’ll go into- Mm-hmm Isn’t necessarily talking about a sea animal. It’s only talking about a large reptilian creature. It just talks about it in the same context as it’s talking about sea animals, so people often assumed it was talking about sea animals.

And then it says- there were also some very large

Simone Collins: sea animals

Malcolm Collins: though There were some large reptiles, but I’m just saying, like, if I was trying to give an evolutionary timeline of history. Then it says you’ve got the birds. Then you’ve got the creatures on Earth today. So like before we go into this, this is, even broadly most people are aware it gives this timeline.[00:03:00]

Do you know how many other religions, and I’m talking even if I go Native American traditions, even if I go African traditions, ‘cause I have gone through AI after AI trying to find a single other religion that gets the evolutionary timeline as close to right as this. There isn’t one.

Simone Collins: Yeah. I, I can’t think of one, for sure.

One. There, there isn’t- Based on all the folk traditions I’ve heard, everything, yeah

Malcolm Collins: There isn’t even one that gets the first two simple steps right. Mm. Non-animal life and aquatic life. Or fishes, or anything. Like, I tried to give it so many outs. Wow. Nothing. Nothing comes close to getting those two stages right.

So again, this isn’t just like they randomly threw stuff together and happened to get it right. This is, like, easily very, very right related stuff. So we’re gonna get into that. Very, very fun.

Speaker 3: So note, a lot of people will be like, “Well, there’s some really obvious mistakes that you find. For [00:04:00] example, that non-animal based life came about before the sun and the moon.” To which I would be like, “Well, actually, hold on a second here. , Do you know what the oldest evidence of life we have on Earth is?

It’s

Australia’s Jack Hills zircons, which date about 4.4 billion years old, , into the Hadean era. All right? So do you know when the moon was formed? Formed, by the way, from a collision of a body about the size of Mars into Earth, which led to the surface being largely covered in magma for a period that would likely have wiped out any evidence we had of life from before that period. It was formed f- 4.5 billion years ago. So the moon is from 4.5 billion years ago in an event that would have wiped any evidence of life existing before it off [00:05:00] the surface of the Earth. Then 4.4 billion years ago, we see evidence of life. What’s the chance you think that there could have been life on Earth before this collision, and that it in some way influenced or seeded the life that came after the collision?

I’m gonna at least say, like, from my perspective, at least 20 to 30%, and I wouldn’t have known that without going into this.

Otherwise, you have to assume that coincidentally life just happened to first evolve almost immediately after this collision during one of the most violent times of Earth’s history, which seems unlikely

And then you can say, “Well, okay, but the sun definitely existed before that.” And we can say, “All right, but if you read the Bible, it says that it separated the night from the day.” That is the point of the creation of the sun in this particular story.

, And if [00:06:00] we go 4.4 billion years ago to those Jackson Hill zircons, right, , the atmosphere was still transitioning,

, More specifically, it had really high levels of CO2, potentially tens of hundreds of times higher than modern, and a very high level of water vapor that sustained a really strong greenhouse effect and permanent very thick cloud layers

, And the image I have in the background here is an image from, as you can see, it’s from a scientific catalog, right, of what scientists think Earth looked like during this period of Earth’s history.

So it would have been, , extremely, extremely diffuse and hazy. , Most days during that period from what we know , of Earth would have just looked like an orangish, reddish overcast.

Things you would not have been able to see, or would have been able to see very rarely, maybe once every few hundred years or something like that, are the stars and a [00:07:00] clear day and night. So actually, the Bible isn’t even that wrong on some of the weirder claims it makes

Malcolm Collins: A note here we’re gonna go into, like a lot of people will be like, “Uh-uh. It says that God formed the animals with the dirt, that it formed man with the dirt.”

And we’re gonna point out the word that is translated in your Sunday school Bible into formed throughout the rest of the

Old Testament, do you know what it means? No, actually. Planned. Really? It y- Oh. Yes. And we’ll go through instances. It, it, it can be used to mean formed, but it could equally be used to say, “God planned the dirt to become human.

God planned-” Oh my word ... “the dirt to become animals.” Ooh. But we’re gonna go over all sorts of fun stuff like this which is fun. And we’re gonna mostly be focused on the first story of Genesis, ‘cause Genesis sort of has two beginning of Earth stories that aren’t really that contradictory. We have [00:08:00] another episode, the Adam and Eve story, that goes over that one.

I think it’s one of the best episodes we’ve ever produced, if you’re interested. It’s, doesn’t even contradict normal Christianity that much and it’s very elucidating for, I think, a lot of people, around what’s actually in the Adam and Eve story, because it’s not often what you’re taught. And note here when people are like, “Well, if it’s saying that God like planned man to come out of dirt or whatever,” right?

Like that, that still doesn’t mean evolution, right? You know? Because evolution is a natural process, so that wouldn’t be God doing it. And here I’m gonna be like, okay, let’s just talk about the nature of miracles. Imagine God was like, “I’m gonna shoot that guy with lightning.” Right? Like calling the shots.

And then all of a sudden you see lightning come down from the sky and shock a guy, and he falls over dead. And then you turn and you go, “Yeah, but that was static in the clouds that caused that lightning, and so I don’t really think that that was a miracle,” right? You know, because it was done through natural processes.

I’m like, actually, that’s, that’s a little bit more impressive than just [00:09:00] magicking it, okay? Right. Let’s go into this, “now the Lord God formed out the ground all the wild animals and the birds in the s- sky.” So, the word used here for formed means to mold, shape, or fashion. It can mean that, okay? However it’s frequently used to describe a plan, a purpose, a division, or preordaining.

Mm-hmm ... and specifically the root idea of yatsar is to, through a plan, mold or shape something into a specific form. So if we’re gonna look at instances where we see it used this way you have Isaiah 22:11, “But you did not look to Him who did it or planned it,” and this is the same word here, “or have a regard for Him who planned it y- long ago.”

A- a- again, the planned here is the same word that was used to mean form or translated as form in Genesis. If you go to Isaiah 37:27 and there’s a parallel in 2 Kings 19:25, “Have you not heard that I [00:10:00] determined it long ago? I planned it from the days of old.” The word planned here is the same word that’s used for form.

I’m not gonna go through every instance. We’ve got an instance in I- Isaiah 46:11 Plasm 42:20 Jeremiah 18:11. Basically, it’s just everywhere. This is not an uncommon way to use that word. And people can say, “Well, obviously when the Bible was written, that’s not the way the savage people of, you know, however many, four or five thousand years ago were meant to understand these lines.”

And I’m gonna say, isn’t that even kind of crazier- Exactly ... that truth could be baked into the text, that as science continued to uncover things, we were able to reread it in a way that would never make sense to somebody 5,000 years ago, but is not disconfirming of modern science. Can you see why that affirms my faith that there might have been some actual divine inspiration for this, instead of disconfirms?

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: [00:11:00] Now let’s go to another thing that people will complain about. They will say, “Well, it says days,” right? It says on day one, on day two, et cetera, right?

Simone Collins: And- The Bible in general get, it throws me with timing. You know, he lived for 100-something years. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: I often hear the and I always thought this was a really bad counter-explanation- Oh

Where they’ll be like, “Well, you know, because days didn’t really exist yet at the beginning of time and the human concept of day didn’t exist- Hmm ... these days could mean any amount of time you want them to be,” right? And I always found this to be very flimsy. I was like, “Come on.” Like, that, that really just seems like re-begging the point.

Like, I don’t, I don’t, I don’t buy that. But okay, let’s ask this question again. The word that’s translated as day here, especially with the concept of a morning and night attached to it, which you do have in this- Oh, really? Okay ... is it in other parts of the Old Testament in [00:12:00] Hebrew writing used to refer to something longer than a single day?

Or does the word sometimes mean something other than a literal one day? Oh, so what’s the, what’s the answer? All over the place. So, a- and some even very, very common ones. So the day of the Lord this is Isaiah 2:12, 13:6, 13:9, Joel 1:15, 2:1. I don’t need to go over all the places. It’s all over the place.

And it refers to a future period of divine judgment and/or blessing, often involving cosmic signs and battles. Mm. Pretty much all Christians and Jews believe in the day of the Lord, and none of them believe it’s one day. Like, that’s not a, a common interpretation, yet it’s all over the Bible and, and very...

And this is within the communities that take the creationist literalist approach. This is the thing that gets me, ‘cause what we’re gonna be going over is a lot of verses here where day is used to mean something longer than a day, that are [00:13:00] taken to mean that by the same groups that say in- Genesis it must mean a literal day.

So the word that we’re translating as a day here, you don’t even need to be like, oh, you know, in the perception of God, a day of a thousand years or whatever. It literally in other places of the Bible is translated to mean era. , And when you think about a word like the era of the Lord instead of the day of the Lord, it actually sort of makes more sense when we see this mistranslation appear in other places as well.

, Now, do I think to the savage cave geo, , when they heard this story that they weren’t thinking of literal days? No, they probably were. They simply didn’t have any context to understand the context of billions or trillions of years. So it makes sense that we would have talked if they were having some form of supernatural inspiration to write down a true big history time span [00:14:00] of Earth, they would have used this word, , that I think divinely has another meaning in other parts of the Bible, which is era, , to say some period of time

Malcolm Collins: So, another instance here, Joshua 24:7 “And you lived in the wilderness many days.” Now this is translated as a long time , and this refers to the 40 years of wandering. Now 40 years of wandering isn’t just many days, okay? That’s 40 effing years of wandering, right?

Mm-hmm. Then you have Josiah 6:2, “After two days He will revive us, and on the third day He will raise us up.” Many scholars, including most of the scholars who take a literal interpretation of days in Genesis, see this as prophetic of a longer period. Oh. Often linked to Israel’s restoration or even the time of Christ’s restoration.

Using the a day is like a thousand years principle from Psalms 94 and Peter 3:8. Psalms. And note... Songs, whatever, blah. People say the day is like a thousand years one they use to [00:15:00] mean they argue it in this. I’ve heard that argument before. I just find it a lot more convincing that, And, and again, you have Daniel 8:2, where again you have days used to mean something that is generally agreed as being much longer than a day.

But what’s interesting here is in Daniel 8:26, you also even have the convention of evening and morning attached with this concept of a day- Hmm ... to delineate something that is much longer than what we, when we’re talking about a literal day mean. And, and this to me is just much more compelling. If this word is used all over the place to mean something other than a literal day why would we not see it as being more like the term era or epoch?

Which it does seem to be referencing in terms of time horizons if we’re looking at evolutionary and geological history, okay? Yeah. Yes. And so you can say, “Well, if they wanted to say epoch, why didn’t they say epoch? [00:16:00] Why didn’t they say billions of years?” And the answer is they just didn’t have those words.

Right? That those, those words aren’t in the Bible. The scales of time that this verse is talking about is simply not talked about anywhere else in the Bible. Huh. So of course they wouldn’t use it. Of course somebody, of, of people living in a freaking desert 10,000 years ago wouldn’t have had the concept of geological history to write that down.

Right. If it was explained to them, it would look like this.

Speaker 9: So what alternate word could they have used other than the word they used if they wanted to use a word that was closer to something like an era or an epoch? There really is only one other word, and once you know it, it’s immediately obvious why it wasn’t used if you’re trying to be true. It’s the word tekufa or tekaph, and this appears four times in the Tanakh.

So what does this [00:17:00] mean? It means a cycle, a turn, or a circuit. So it would have indicated a view of time and history that is much closer to like a Hindu or Buddhist one, which is not in alignment with what we know about evolution or the way history works. So suppose the cave Jew who was having these revelations, he says, let’s suppose some sort of angel is inspiring them or something, and it’s like a really, really long time period.

And they’re like, oh, you mean like a turn or a cycle? And they’re like, no, not like that. Do you have any other words you can use?

the wild thing about the AI response, , is I asked it, is there any word in ancient Hebrew of the time of the Old Testament that can be used to mean era or epoch, , or did such a word not exist yet? So not only did it give me this cycle word, but it then says under that if, basically, if you’re not using that word, the next best word to use is yom, the word that’s actually used here.

, What’s also really [00:18:00] cool is if you look at the scholarly debate on this, what they’ll say is, okay, yes, it’s within the s- called the semantic range of the word yom to be used as era, in that sometimes it’s used to mean era or epoch in the Bible. But that’s not how it’s normally used in the Bible the vast majority of times because, I mean, you’re just gonna be talking about days a lot more often than you’ll be talking about epoch or era.

But to me, that’s a really bad argument for it being interpreted that way in this particular context because yes, obviously you use the word day more than the word era, but in this context, era just makes a lot more sense when we know actual scientific history. More than that, when people come and they go, “Well, look, it talks about having night times and day times in this story,” and it’s like, bro, even in English, you would hear somebody be like, “Well, at the sunset of the Victorian era,” , you don’t think, oh, well, that meant that the [00:19:00] Victorian era happened in a day

Malcolm Collins: All right, now we’re gonna go over all of the lines from Genesis, and go over how actually affirming they are, and how f- from my perspective of modern science seems to affirm them. And we’ll go over the one or two contradictions where I’m like, “This is a genuine problem.”

But the genuine problems are actually even more interesting to me, because they present things where if, like, techno-puritism, our version of Christianity, becomes a, a religion that’s popular, people can say, “Look, they predicted science would overturn this based on the Bible- Ooh ... 50 years ago, 100 years ago.”

And if we end up being right about those things that is going to be very, very spicy in terms of affirmation of there’s some form of divine inspiration for this story. All right, so let’s go into this. In the beginning, God created heavens and the Earth. Now, the Earth was formless and empty.

Darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the spirit of God was hovering over the waters. [00:20:00] So immediately we have a number of problems here, right? Like, if you’re taking a normal Sunday school, typically you just read this line and you drop it. You’re just like, “Okay, something just... Whatever. Yeah, I guess.

God’s hovering over waters.” That sounds like normal you know, pagan nonsense, right? Like, like, like, the type of thing I’d expect some tribal group to write or something, right? Maybe, maybe a little more fluttery, but whatever. And then you go, “No, no, no, no.” Like, let’s, let’s suppose I’m taking this seriously, right?

This doesn’t make sense the way it’s translated to English here.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Specifically... Okay, so it’s talking about a formless, empty darkness. First of all, very interesting if you’re thinking about, like, pre-Big Bang. How do you describe reality, time before the Big Bang? I think a formless, empty darkness is a pretty good description.

And-

Simone Collins: 100%, yeah ...

Malcolm Collins: and people can then say, “Well, look here. It’s saying now [00:21:00] the Earth was a formless, empty darkness.” And I’m gonna be like clearly that’s not what it means, because it can’t both be the Earth and a formless, empty darkness.” So Earth- Yeah ... in this context clearly means everything, not just the Earth as we understand it.

Secondarily, you now have the issue of, okay, so you have, The earth with a formless, empty darkness over the surface of the deep, right? Okay. So, and then God-

Simone Collins: That implies also, yeah, like a, the earth covered in oceans, which is how it was in the beginning, right?

Malcolm Collins: Yes, during a, part of our early history, but we’re, we’ll get to that in a second.

But it then says, so basically you have two things. You have the water, right? The, the, the surface of the deep. And then the, the formless empty deep itself, and then the darkness, right? Yeah. And these two things are, are, are sort of in, in opposition to each other. And then you have the, the spirit of God hovering over the water.

So wait, that doesn’t make any sense because the earth with a formless, empty darkness over the [00:22:00] surface of the deep. So that means now God is either, like, under the water in the deep, or he is the formless empty darkness, right? You’re on one of two- Mm-hmm ... sides of this water surface. It, assuming the word over in this context means that he is literally spatially hovering over something.

So then you have to look. You have to say, well, does the word over mean anything else? Which we’ll get into in a second. It does, by the way. Ooh. There’s a spoiler. And then secondarily, we have the word hovering here, which is a very weird word that is used very, very rarely in the Old Testament and doesn’t at all mean what hovering...

Hovering is a terrible translation of the word. It basically means- It’s worthless ... a thing in constant non-hurried movement/development.

Simone Collins: Oh. Oh, yeah. Okay. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Now I can see how hovering would be, like, the closest- I can ... you’re gonna get to as an easy word.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: But I think that’s actually a way more [00:23:00] important to understand what that word, because as soon as you’re like, “That’s a-” Yeah, it sounds like

weird word to use there,” right? Yeah. Yeah. So let’s go against this. Okay. So first of all what are the other things that over could mean in this context? Mm-hmm. It could mean against. They are putting God as something that exists in opposition to the formlessness before time, okay? Before the Big Bang, right?

Or it could mean sort of like, after. So, here you have this in Proverbs 25:11. You have this in Leviticus 15:25, and you have this in Job 21:32 where you’ve got, It, it, it sort of means, like- either after or in the right time in relation to Hmm. Like th- th- God is a thing that exists both after in opposition to the formless empty darkness.

Which to me seems a lot easier to... Like, that, that doesn’t have any problems for me. I’m like, “Okay, that seems true.” And then let’s look at what this word hovering [00:24:00] means. We’ve gone over this before, but just to go over it quickly it means not standing still, but vibrating with life or purpose, in constant movement.

Hmm. But also in a non-hurried way. So where do we see this in other places? We see this in Deuteronomy 32:11 and this, Deuteronomy ... like, like an eagle stirs upon its nest and hovers over- Hmm ... its young. Okay. So one of the only other instances we have of this is something protectively guarding its young or something that’s, that’s gestating, right?

And then in, which is a way better term than, than hover as well in this context the sort of brooding over something. And then in Jeremiah 23:9, we have, “My heart is broken within me, all my bones,” and then this word and here it’s translated to tremble, like a constant shake of, of shaking or movement.

If you take, and I’m not gonna go too into techno-puritan stuff here ‘cause I don’t wanna... This is not what this episode’s about. It’s about evolution. But this is very affirming of a techno-puritan understanding of God [00:25:00] rather than being a, a static entity, being an evolving entity. But to continue here.

So next line here. And then God said, so keep in mind, we have dark, dark, empty, formless void, right? So what does God do in relation to the dark, empty void, right? I’m sure you know this part of the story, Go- Simone. He says, “Let there be light,” and then there was light. God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from darkness.

God called the light day, and the darkness called night, and there was evening, and there was morning the first day.

Speaker 10: Many of you want to say, “Well, there couldn’t have been a meaningful day and night at the creation of the universe.” Note here that clearly this doesn’t mean day and night as we experience it on Earth, because that happens in a future one of the eras, specifically the, “And God said, ‘Let there be lights in the vault of the sky to separate the day from the night.’”

So clearly this is talking about something else in regard to night and day. , Here, what I assume it means, [00:26:00] because it talks about the light or the photons that are emitted with the Big Bang, is probably light and dark matter and energy

Malcolm Collins: Now first, great explanation of the Big Bang if you’re trying to explain the Big Bang to savages living in the woods 10,000 years ago or in a desert 10,000 years ago. You’re not gonna...

Imagine trying to explain to them, it’s like, okay, so, like, time didn’t exactly exist in any way we understand it. The laws of physics probably didn’t even exist before the Big Bang. And then there was this, like, giant explosion, and all of these photons came out of it. And they’re like, “What the are you talking about?”

And you’re like, “There was a dark and formless void- Yeah ... and then there was light.” Yeah. And they’re like, “Ah, yes, that makes sense now.” I get it now. Yeah, you

Simone Collins: have to use language that can be passed on, that can make sense in the context in which it’s being... Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Any- Understood ... there, I, I do not, I do not literally think this could have been any closer to accurate Yeah, the

Simone Collins: [00:27:00] highest fidelity language possible.

Malcolm Collins: Yes, that could have been passed on in desert savages for thousands of years. And we do know that this was passed on with a high degree of fidelity because we have Old Testament from the Dead Sea Scrolls that have fragments of this story. Oh, right.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Literally 1,000 years before our next fully intact version, and they have virtually no differences.

They have a few differences in, like, poetic language where, like, there’s a few places where they’re a little repetitive, and those repetitive parts are gone. And I can see how a scribe just didn’t cover the repetitive parts. But, like, generally it served its purpose. Okay? So now we’re gonna go to the next one.

Okay? And note here separating darkness from light. This could be something that we yet to understand about the universe. We do know that there are a lot of problems with understanding dark matter in the universe right now. Matter appears to exist in oppositional forms. Could this make some sense once we better understand dark matter and dark [00:28:00] energy?

It might. We know that they appear to be pretty por- important in the cosmic order. And larger than what we consider regular matter that we interact with regularly. So it seems relevant that they would mention it here. Yeah. To continue.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: By the way, had, had you ever thought about all of this in these terms or?

Simone Collins: I remember the last time I started reading Genesis, I was like, “Oh my God,” ‘cause that was my first time reading it after historical geology and, you know, these things are touched on from that perspective. Like, here’s what we know from the fossil record. Here’s what we know from- Mm-hmm ... studying Earth and, you know, doing deep core samples and all these other crazy things.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And you were just like, “This isn’t as... This is, like, pretty accurate.” I was like, “

Simone Collins: Yeah. Oh my God.” Yeah, because it... Well, I didn’t expect it at all because you hear that there’s all these young Earth creationists, and then you just assume that the Bible is, like, really explicit. Like, boom, it, you know, that everything happened, and everyone was there at the same time, and the...

Yeah, it, it just- Yeah, no, for

Malcolm Collins: me, young Earth creationism is just [00:29:00] literally ignoring what, what the Bible says in favor of what your Sunday school teacher said. Like, I don’t mean to... I know we have young Earth creationist fans and everything like that, but, like, that, I, it just seems like if, if the Bible isn’t antagonistic to these ideas it just seems like sticking a spoke in your own, like, wheels of your own bicycle, and then it crashes, and you’re like, “Oh, wha...”

Like, fans will sometimes come to me and- And they’ll be like, “I can convince you that the Bible actually means X or Y.” And I’m like, “But then I just wouldn’t believe the Bible because this is, like, easily observably wrong,” right? Like, I believe the Bible because it aligns, it’s coherent with reality. And it’s coherent with a very sophisticated understanding of reality that there is no way that people of that period could have had, which is why I believe that they didn’t come up with this out of nowhere.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Speaker 12: And if you want to come to me with like a, “Well, why do you believe in evolution, Malcolm? That’s crazy. There’s big gaps in the fossil record and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.” It’s like, okay, so my first job, , outside of [00:30:00] like household, local jobs, stuff like that, was working in the human evolution department at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History.

, If you go through the exhibit on human evolution in that and you go to the part of the exhibit that is just every ho- hominid fossil we have from like Australopithecus to modern man, I constructed that. I had to go through every single one of those fossils and take, you know, 380 images of them. Um, this idea that you cannot see when you’re looking at the entire fossil record a clear gradient of evolution that matches well with the historic timeline is just factually wrong.

, Yes, we have some gaps, but every time you fill one gap, you now have two gaps on either side of that gap. You’re always gonna have gaps until you find literally every skeleton of every iterative change going back. Like, it, it’s just not doable. But in terms of like the broad strokes, [00:31:00] either, , evolution is true or God used a number of miracles to try to make it look as if evolution was true in some form of test that we’re not, one, warned about in the Bible, and two, I can’t understand why a good God would lay out for us.

That’s why I believe it, right? Like, , I, I think that to just deny this when, when I personally held many of these extremely valuable skulls, right? Like, I’ve, I’ve gone through the record. I had skulls all around me at this, at this point in my career. , And it-- there’s this very clear gradient, and looking at that and being like, “Okay, so either God is in some way testing us by giving us this much evidence, , or, , it’s almost kind of miraculous that, that so many of the missing links, if you talk about how not populous our [00:32:00] species and our ancestors were, ended up surviving.

Or God made sure that we preserved a fairly good record so that we could understand how we came to be and our role in the, , greater chain of life.”

Speaker 13: Also, that just broadly seems like such an un-God thing to do. God gives us this great and giant puzzle to solve through generations of research, , laying it all out very clearly for us as we, we build this puzzle, and the outcome of the puzzle is the test? Like, that we’re supposed to not believe it even though the Bible doesn’t clearly contradict it?

, That, that doesn’t seem... Like, what’s the point of the test?

Malcolm Collins: Anyway if people are wondering how I do believe it, I believe that, like, a bunch of traditions form randomly, and this was the one that was the closest to an absolutely true tradition, and so it was favored through history. But that’s a different... You want to get into our track series. So to continue here “And God [00:33:00] said ‘Let there be a vault between the waters to separate the water from water.’

So God made the vault and separated the water under the vault from the water above it, and was, and it was so. God called the vault sky, and there was an evening, and there was morning the second day.” And this is one area where I’m really not sure what’s meant here. I don’t see how this... It, it doesn’t discorrelate with modern science, because if we’re right about what’s meant by water here, he’s talking about not literal water, but the formlessness before time.

Mm-hmm. So, what, what could this be? I don’t know. I assume it’s something that physics just doesn’t have... It doesn’t, it’s not contradictory to any of our understanding of physics, because what’s on the other side of the vault is what we call the sky. So it’s whatever is at the end of the sky. And we just don’t have the physics to understand this yet.

Now, if you take a literalist interpretation w- the way that people used to understand this, like if you go back to, you know, ancient Hebrew times, they thought [00:34:00] you look at the sky and it’s like a literal dome over your head. And on the other side of that dome is the water, the, the endless, the endless void, and the, the you know, the stars are all sort of painted on the dome.

That’s the way that they used to understand it. So it’s neither disconforming, it’s, it’s, it’s predictive, I guess I would say, of this.

So, one of the things that I wanted to go into here was why water? Like, wh- why do they keep talking about water here? Why do they use water in these analogies?

Simone Collins: Well, I think they use water for the same reason they use fire. You know, burn it with fire. That doesn’t mean... Like, sometimes there are no other ways to describe things, like deleting or, you know, other forms of elimination, Yeah, which is

Malcolm Collins: what we argue the lake of fire likely means, and Gehenna likely means, is where you burn things.

But- water, it appears to be because if you look at creation myths from around this period in this area whatever was at the beginning is typically thought of as deep abyss, depths, primeval, whole ocean. There’s no, there was no

Simone Collins: concept for a vacuum. How do you explain that to someone? Mm-hmm. This is not a [00:35:00] hole.

It’s like the opposite of a hole. The, the biggest thing you could possibly give to someone for them to imagine is the ocean, is some vast body of water. That is the closest they can get to a, a large empty void.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, well, here’s another fun thing. Do you know what else the term that we’re translating as water here could be translated into?

Simone Collins: Oh, no. Do tell.

Malcolm Collins: Semen. Oh. Well, hold on. If you’re thinking about it from a life-giving perspective, Sure, yeah ... and you’re looking at what’s, what’s the... You could think of it as anti-life if you’re talking about, like, the abyss versus life itself.

Simone Collins: Mm. Right?

Malcolm Collins: But anyway, to continue here. “And then God said, ‘Let the water under the sky be gathered into one place, and let dry ground appear,’ and it was so.

God called the dry ground land, and the gathered waters he called seas, and God saw it was good.” Now this I do not see as disconfirming or affirming. This appears to be talking about actual water on Earth and the creation [00:36:00] of dry land. We know that- Well, yeah,

Simone Collins: B- because they switched from water to seas, which also implies to me that when they are referring to water, they’re referring to something that is not water.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

Simone Collins: Well, and this- ‘Cause they couldn’t have just said the oceans. They’d say seas ... this appears to be talking

Malcolm Collins: about something that is similar to the water that we’re talking about before. But, like, here I take it is this is where we transition to talking about what you and I talk about as water, okay?

Simone Collins: Mm.

Malcolm Collins: And again, not seeing any problems here so far, right? Because again, God doesn’t need to... If, if we assume that, like, God striking somebody with lightning is still God doing it even if it’s done through a natural process water forming on Earth’s surface water e- building the water cycle on the Earth’s surface, dry land appearing on Earth’s surface all of these things could be described as God doing it in just the same way, right?

So nothing particularly affirms a scientific, disaffirms a scientific understanding here. Then we have “Then God said, ‘Let the land produce vegetation, seed-bearing plants, and trees. On the land bear fruit with seed in it according to the various kinds.’ And it [00:37:00] was so. The land produced vegetation, plants bearing seed according to their kinds, and trees bearing fruit with seed in accordance with their kind.

And God saw it was good. And there was evening, and there was morning the third day.” Now, this is actually one of the worst parts- For this, which I think would surprise a lot of people, that this is one of the most out of line with our actual understanding of geological history

Simone Collins: Because of the evening and morning part?

No,

Malcolm Collins: not evening- Or because we had,

Simone Collins: like,

Malcolm Collins: like early plants- Seed-bearing plants are a fairly modern evolutionary adaptation

Simone Collins: Oh, interesting. Unless they’re, by seed-bearing they’re just r- referring to other forms of can reproduce, you know?

Malcolm Collins: So first, you caught it. The word used for fruit here does not mean literal fruit in the way that we mean fruit.

Mm. It appears that that is the way that this was conveyed to people 10,000 years ago. They likely thought it exclusively meant, like, what we consider and eat as fruit. Like, God’s- Yeah ... preparing the world for mankind’s inhabitation. But- But there were no other

Simone Collins: words for, like, capable of [00:38:00] reproduction, or self-reproducing, or whatever.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah

Malcolm Collins: But the, the actual wording here can mean basically any form of reproduction where there’s some form of, like, edible side product. And I would even go further, and to say that this could be taken to more allegorically to describe the beginning of the life cycle. You’re talking about, when I see vegetation being talked about here there is no way they could have said pre-animal microbial life, right?

Like, you simply aren’t gonna get that recorded in a 10,000-year-old document, okay? So you’re trying to explain pre-animal microbial life to people 10,000 years ago. Exactly. You’re

Simone Collins: like, “

Malcolm Collins: It’s kind of like vegetation. It, it, it has fruiting bodies,” which is what we still call parts of, like, the budding process with early microbial life.

Speaker 11: It’s like somebody’s coming to me and they’re like, oh, this is clearly not supernaturally inspired [00:39:00] because the cave Jews didn’t write single cellular microbial life and early self-replicating RNA-like structures. Like how would they even conceptually have done that? That’s a literally insane level of requirement.

Malcolm Collins: So I’m okay with that, and I would also even go so far as to say that this to me indicates that something like a vegetation or something like seed, seeds may exist earlier in the evolutionary timeline than we actually think it does. Ooh, that could be interesting. This would be one of the bigger pictures I’m gonna put into

Simone Collins: this, right?

But I really, I don’t know. Like, in terms of my reading, when we come back to language and the limitations of language at the time, and other things that you read in the Bible, you know, about the way that seed is described, like- Mm-hmm ... spilled seed, et cetera, like humans don’t have seeds, do we? Yeah, that’s a good point.

Yeah. Yeah, we spill them So it could just mean- So I’m really not reading this too literally when it’s like, “Oh, but there weren’t [00:40:00] technically seeds yet.” No, seed was a thing used for like- But the intentional- ... reproductive capabilities ...

Malcolm Collins: the intentional mention, okay, so if we take plants to mean, like, early microbial life, right?

Like, that’s- Uh-huh ... what they’re trying to describe. Yeah and the, the explicit mean- measuring of seed-bearing microbial life, right? Mm. That could bear fruit with seed in it- That could be describing the evolution of sexuality- Mm-hmm ... which would fit right here on the sexual, the, the evolutionary timeline.

Yeah. And it would probably be the closest way you could... And it’s a very important evolutionary leap, probably one of the-

Simone Collins: 100%, yeah ...

Malcolm Collins: next to the evolution of intelligence, I’d say. Mm-hmm. Sexuality and intelligence are the two biggest evolutionary leaps we’re aware of. Yeah. Do- in terms of how, how they affect the evolutionary timeline.

Intelligence basically allows you to evolve ideas faster than you can die. Sexuality allows you to remix genes and choose genetically fit individuals to have way, way, way more offspring than they would otherwise have. And it is a hugely important, happened at around this time. Yeah. That’s what I think that this is.

Mm-hmm. [00:41:00] Okay, great. All right, all right. So that’s even a further- There we go ... clarification. Yeah.

Speaker 14: Note here, if this is talking about the evolution of sexuality, that then definitely didn’t happen before the collision that created the moon. So we have to guess that when the stars in the sky and the sun and the moon being created in terms of a night and day cycle on Earth is talked about as having after this, it must mean an unobscured sky.

Because there were periods of history going after that where you still had an obscured sky during periods, long periods, like eons of rain, for example, certain periods of Earth’s history.

Malcolm Collins: Okay. Then next “And God said, ‘Let the water teem with living creatures and let birds fly above the earth and across the vault of the sky.’” And note here, like, birds are clearly... This is one that really gets me, where some [00:42:00] biblical literalist will say okay, well, the sky vault clearly, like, outer space exists, right?

So the sky vault is not referring to just, like, the sky in the way, like, ancient people 10,000 years ago meant it. Like, we’re meant to take this literally.” Except when he talks about birds here he, he talks about them in the context of flying across the vault of the sky, right? So the birds are on the same plane as the sky vault, which is why I think our interpretation of this is more accurate.

We’re to say, like, how would you communicate this to somebody 10,000 years ago? But anyway “And then God said, ‘Let the water teem with living creatures. Let the birds fly above and across the sky.’ So God created the great creatures of the sea and every living thing with which the water teems and moves about according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind.

And God saw that it was good. God blessed them and said, ‘Be fruitful and increase your number and fill the water and the seas, and let the birds increase on earth.’ And there was evening, [00:43:00] and that was the morning of the fifth day.” Now, this particular passage gets, like, heavily bastardized to try to argue for a- Sunday school.

Like, they literally basically removed a really important line for this because they were embarrassed about it. Mm. Even though it actually... So they, I’ll, I’ll show you where the line was removed. So, “God created the great creatures of the sea.” That is not, that is not what it says at all. That’s not what it says.

I mean, you could interpret it that way if you were trying to, in the same way that in the King James version they translate this word to mean whales, because whales was the biggest thing they were aware of at the time that lived in the sea. But that isn’t what the word would come close to traditionally meaning in Hebrew.

So let’s go into this to go into, one, they say fish, then birds, right? Well, fish and something, and then birds. And we’ll go into what’s, what’s the thing that they said existed alongside, and not just fish, things in the sea. This is really [00:44:00] interesting, right? Because they could have said fish, right? Which would have been evolutionarily wrong.

But instead what they say is, “The creatures of the sea.” That’s an interesting way to put something if you’re looking at, like, a Cambrian explosion or something like that after the evolutionary of sex- sexuality. But okay, let’s, let’s see what’s actually said in this line, ‘cause this line is, I think, really cool, and really affirming to me that there was some divine inspiration here.

So, “And God created the great tannim and every living creature which moves which the waters swarmed according to their kinds and every winged bird.” So we need to make a few notes here. All right? So in, first it says, “God created the great tannim.” This is what is often interpreted as le- sea leviathans, right?

In, in some older in- interpretations of texts. But that is not what it means in Hebrew. So we’ll go into what it means in Hebrew, and I also wanna point something out here which often people get wrong, is note the construction of this sentence. And this is also [00:45:00] true in Hebrew, which we’ll get to. It says nowhere in this sentence that the tannim live in the sea.

It says nowhere in this sentence that they are an exclusively aquatic creature. It says, “And God created the great tannim and every living creature which moves in the waters and swarmed across according to their kinds.” Oh. The tannim are something different from what’s in the sea. Oh ... so let’s continue here The relative - clause, which the waters swarmed, grammatically - modifies living creatures that move.

The tannim are introduced first with their own direct object marker. They’re connected by and to the rest. In Biblical Hebrew, the relative clause introduced by blank normally modifies the ne- sorry, blank is a word I can’t pronounce in Hebrew. Yeah. The nearest preceding noun or noun phrase that it logically could describe.

Here, the nearest phrase is every living creature that moves. The tannim sit before [00:46:00] that, and thus are clearly not modified by the phrase purely aquatic. And note here this gets interesting, because what could tannim be? Like, what is it generally used to talk about in Hebrew?

Simone Collins: Right,

Malcolm Collins: actually. It is typically used to talk about dragons- Oh

sea monsters- Oh ... crocodiles air, long- So just large reptilian animals. Yeah, but not necessarily reptiles. ‘Cause they could’ve said reptiles. They had a word for reptiles. They didn’t- They did ... say reptiles. Oh. Dinosaurs are not reptiles, okay? They said something that is large and reptile-like, kind of like a dragon, existed after the explosion of life within the sea, or along the same timeline as life within the sea, before birds.

Simone Collins: Huh. Well. [00:47:00] Mm. That would work. Yes, that would work. That’s pretty

Malcolm Collins: cool.

Simone Collins: That is pretty cool. Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: By the way, if you’re wondering, Ezekiel 29:3 and 32:2 is where they refer to crocodiles and large river sea s- serpents. And then for m- mythical monsters, you see in Isaiah 27:1 and Psalms 24:13. And this reminds me- Like alms

well, I saw, I don’t, I don’t speak these foreign tongues. That’s, that’s a Jew tongue. Lazarus. You’re trying to get me to speak like a Jew, okay? And I’m not gonna do that, all right? The parcel tongue, Simone. parcel tongue.

Speaker 15: . I heard you speak in Parseltongue, snake language. I spoke a different language? But I didn’t realize.

Malcolm Collins: I’m gonna end up... Th- this is how they get you. They get you with their words, saying it’s, it’s Bible talk.

And it is Bible talk, but you gotta be careful, right? I’m joking here, by the way, people. Obviously everything I’m analyzing here is relevant in both a [00:48:00] Christian and Jewish context because they both have the same book. So both would be equally affirmed if there was any proof that this book did have a degree of divine inspiration.

And again, if you wanna get into our thoughts on Judaism, see the question that breaks Judaism where we go way into like why. We actually thought about converting to Judaism. You can see in some of our earlier videos. But like as I dug into it, I just decided no, like I’m, I’m, I’m, I find Christianity more compelling when I look at the evidence.

Simone Collins: We’re also a little too asocial hikikomori for for Judaism.

Malcolm Collins: Well, yeah, and I also said like even if I converted to Judaism, I’d be a Misnagdim Jew. This is a Jew that doesn’t believe that Kabbalah should be widely taught and is against the Hasidics. Oh, totally. And that would immediately put me on the outs with al- like the Misnagdim basically lost the Jewish culture war a generation ago, right?

Two generations ago. So there’s, there’s no like... Also Christ seems to have obviously been the Messiah. Sorry, I just have to go. This is a whole different thing. You can see our question [00:49:00] that breaks Judaism if you want to get into that. It actually becomes sort of absurd to think that Jesus wasn’t obviously the Messiah when you look at everything in context.

Don’t mean to offend our Jewish listeners on this one, but yeah that’s not for this episode. But what’s really interesting about this word taninim is in various times people have attempted to retranslate it than to mean something other than what it literally means, and every time they have removed something that would authenticate the truth of the Bible, right?

They’ve tried to change it to whales when it clearly doesn’t mean whales anywhere else. Hmm. They have tried to change it to just large sea animals when it clearly doesn’t mean just large sea animals anywhere else. Hmm. It means a large reptilian-like animal that is not specifically a reptile.

I really c- that, that to me is just sort of shocking how spot on that is. But anyway, to continue here.

Oh, by the way, fun side note that came from one of our fans that some people will [00:50:00] like. Regarding biblical animal timeline, there’s a fun side note about the word used to describe the creation of each group. The most... They mostly use the same verb, but there are two that use a different verb, man and the tenenimum.

The King James Version translates the latter as whales, presumably because giant sea predators was the only point of reference for them. But apparently in Hebrew there was more a reptilian connotation they say, which is true. Okay. But what he’s saying is that there is enough linguistic wiggle room to argue that God had a special plan for giant reptiles, and now he’s wondering if there was a dinosaur bible somewhere.

Where is

Simone Collins: the lost dinosaur bible? I want, I want it.

Malcolm Collins: Well, there’s actually a theory that there could’ve been a dinosaur civilization as big as our own. And, like, we just wouldn’t have any evidence of it if you look at how quickly, like, our own civilization would dissolve into the time record. Huh. If, like, we just stopped existing right now.

Yeah. And so we don’t know that there wasn’t a large dinosaur civilization that lasted [00:51:00] maybe only 300, 400 years.

Simone Collins: God’s failson, the dinosaurs. Right?

Malcolm Collins: Okay. To continue here. And then God said, “Let the land produce living creatures according to their kinds, the livestocks, the creatures that move along the ground, the wild animals, each according to its kind,” and it was so.

God made the wild animals according to their kinds, the livestock according to their kinds, and all the creatures that move along the ground according to their kinds, and God saw that it was good. So, what you’re gonna note in this is you can say, well, it’s saying all land animals came after things like birds and dinosaurs, which is, like, clearly not true, right?

Like, people would be like, “There were some land animals before that.” And I’m gonna say, yeah, but you have to consider the context. God is talking to people 10,000 years ago, and he’s saying, “All of these things that you see, that you consider animals,” like your livestock animals, which are clearly referenced here.

All of these came after the dinosaurs, the fish, and the [00:52:00] birds, which is true. Almost every land animal the ancient Hebrews would have been aware of evolved after dinosaurs and birds evolved. Yeah, yeah. So he’s right from an evolutionary timeline perspective. Absolutely. It still all tracks. Mm-hmm. Not, no lie detected here which again is astonishing for something this old.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Well, and especially considering this is not some universal folk belief. This, this didn’t exist with other really old folklore traditions or religions. Yeah, if it was

Malcolm Collins: a universal or common folk belief, I would have a totally different perspective on this. Yes.

Speaker 17: And when AI goes over this, it’ll always hedge and be like, “Well, he’s overstating just how much, , other religious beliefs or there’s no other religious belief or traditional story about how the world was formed that comes close to a scientific ordered understanding that we have today.” , And then I always tell the AI, “Okay, [00:53:00] find one, and I’m gonna give you wiggle room.

Find one that comes one-tenth as close. Find one that comes one-fifth as close.” , AI can’t find one because there just isn’t one. This is really quite unique, and if this story wasn’t the white people story, everyone would be freaking out about the random tribe of wherever that has a creation story that almost exactly mirrors the evolutionary and historic timeline we’re aware of

Malcolm Collins: Okay. Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the sky and over the livestock and over all animals and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”

So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God He created them, male and female He created them. Just a techno puritan side note here that’s really only relevant for our interpretation of this story but the word created here, right here, could be, in Biblical Hebrew, you have something called the perfect conjuration or the qatal form of verbs.

Huh. The [00:54:00] same type used in created in Genesis 1:27. It can describe future events, especially in prophetic context. This is often called the prophetic perfect. Hebrew verbs focus more on aspect completed versus ongoing actions in strict timeline, past, present, future. Hmm. The qatal perfect form views as an action as a whole completed from the speaker’s perspective.

Oh. In prophecy, a future event that is so certain because God has decreed that it will happen. So you can look at something like Isaiah 53, where he says, “He was wounded,” and you get this conjuration, “for our transgressions. He was bruised for our inequities.” Written centuries before Jesus, and yet it’s written as in this, this future perfect form.

Eh, then you have things like Isaiah 5:13, Numbers 24:17 where you get a similar conjuration here. A lot of people don’t care about this. This isn’t necessary for most people as they understand this story. Do you mean

Simone Collins: conjugation? You mean conjugation.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, conjugation. What’d I say?

Conjuration. Conjuration. But I get

Simone Collins: [00:55:00] what you... I mean, ‘cause you’re sort of describing the God-like conjuring. But that’s super... I had never heard of that before. That’s fascinating. Yeah. A whole new- Well, it

Malcolm Collins: can be read as just in the past tense if you want to. Okay. But it doesn’t have to be read in the past tense.

The way Hebrew is constructed, it can be taken as something that is an ongoing process. God is creating mankind in His image, which is our religious- So

Simone Collins: cool. I like that much more ...

Malcolm Collins: that is, that is being laid out of the prophecy here. Do I wanna go into this? Well, we go over a lot of this in the other track, but I can just quickly go into this. This is a track... Well, not even the track. The one where we go over the Adam and Eve story. Or, or I think it might be- Oh ... a track that we go over souls and stuff like this.

Mm-hmm. But the key feature of the phrase where God is breathing life into man, I mean, this is in the second story, ‘cause you, you know, it would be like, “Didn’t God breathe life into man?” They use the term nephesh here which w- generally does not mean a disembodied soul or anything like that. It, it sort of means to animate a living creature.

Hmm. So it’s basically like there was inanimate dirt, [00:56:00] right? And then through a plan, again, I’ve pointed out that the word here can be translated as plan, not form. So God, through a plan animated the dirt with this word nefesh. And so, if you see the turn here, man does not have a nefesh, man is a nefesh, in the way that the, the story is constructed here.

And it means a living creature, a being or person. And so if we look at other places, like where it’s used we see it used throughout, like, as God is, is, is giving other creatures their life. We see similar words being used here to nefesh. So this isn’t, like, a unique human soul, unless you’re saying that He’s giving souls to all of the other animals in these particular scenes here.

And it’s, it’s very clear because it first appears in the animals in chapter one, and then it’s deliberately reused for humans in 2:7. Like, this, this is not a coincidence. This is not a mistake on the original authors, which is actually kind of weird. And we also see the same word [00:57:00] used with something like Jeremiah 15:9, “She breathes out her nefesh,” her life, right?

Oh. So it’s basically like your breath. When it leaves you, you die.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: And this, again, gets to one of the lines that we find to be very important from the Bible, just sort of as a closing here. This is Ecclesiastes 3:18-19. If I have any line from the Bible that’s, like, my favorite line “As for humans, God tests them so that they may see that they are like the animals.

Surely the fate of human beings is that of the animals. The same fate awaits them both. As one dies, so does the other. All have the same breath. Humans have no advantage over animals. Everything is meaningless.”

Meaningless, by the way, is a bad translation here. A better translation is everything is evanescent or life is evanescent

Malcolm Collins: And the word used for all have the same breath here, do you wanna know where that word is used in Genesis?

Where? It’s the word that is translated as spirit in the phrase, “The spirit of God was hovering over the waters.” Oh. So the same breath that the [00:58:00] animals have- Yeah ... that the humans have is used to describe the animating force of God in opposition to the formless darkness that existed at the beginning of time, and that was in constant movement when you have the word hovering here.

And a lot of people, we go into that Ecclesiastes line a lot more in some of our tracks if you’re interested. It’s, it’s very clear about what it means because it, it goes over a series of things where it goes over, like, hubristic things that people think, and then it contrasts them with what is actually true.

And this is one of the... It starts with the hubristic, what man thinks, that man is completely separate from this world, and then it says, “But man is tested.” And you see this framing over and over again in this section. Like, it’s, it’s not vague, th- this is meant to be a- No, you really are tested to see if you are so arrogant as to think that you are truly distinct from the natural world and from animals, which we then take into this reading here of Genesis.

Yeah. So again, spicy episode by [00:59:00] us. I guess I’ll put it in our religious stuff. It’s not that spicy compared to our other ones ‘cause I can’t- I love it. I love it ... explain

Simone Collins: crazy religion. I, I just, I remember, like, really thinking- Oh ... “Huh,” when I was reading Genesis, and going into it in, in greater depth with you is so much fun.

I have to run. Go. I love you. I love you, too. Bye, gorgeous. Bye. All right, I’m hitting record. Oh, you beat me to it.

Malcolm Collins: All right, I’ll just get started here.

Simone Collins: I’m, yeah, I’m r- I’ve been looking forward to this all day, so thank you.

Speaker 19: Yeah, look at that Motion? Yeah, we’re motion liking that. You think so? Look, I’m floating. And I’m Off you go. Sail away.

Malcolm and Simone Collins dive deep into one of the most paradoxical political alliances of our time: the surprising partnership between modern progressivism and Islamism.Why do groups that claim to champion LGBTQ+ rights, feminism, and secularism repeatedly align with a ideology that often rejects those very values? From the Iranian Revolution to "Queers for Palestine," this episode explores the ideological overlaps, cognitive dissonance, and shared strategic goals that make this alliance stronger than many realize.Topics include:• The "oppressor vs oppressed" framework• Treatment of homosexuality vs. gender transition in Muslim societies• Shared hostility toward Western civilization• Why suffering of "their side" is often irrelevant to both movements• Historical betrayals and future implicationsA sobering and unfiltered analysis of modern political bedfellows.

Episode Transcript

Malcolm Collins: Hello, Simone. I’m excited to be here with you today. Today we are going to be discussing Islam and the left, which have been bedfellows throughout recent history. Obviously they were very strong bedfellows during the Iranian revolution, which we will discuss how that ended up happening. And they all were then killed afterwards.

It was very much like the sheep siding with the wolves, only for the wolves to feast on the sheep as soon as they got what they wanted. B- pretty witless, and I think could be a sign of... Like, obviously there’s the famous picture of the two young progressive girls in a car cheering the rise of the new ayatollah, and both of...

One of them was killed by his regime, and the other one lived their life as a refugee.

And so, you know, not good for them historically when they’ve done this. But I wanted to better understand why and how these two things are compatible. And people can just say, “Well, they aren’t compatible, Malcolm,” and I’m like, surely [00:01:00] progressives don’t think that, right?

Like, surely progressives have looked into this and have some sort of thesis I just haven’t taken the time to understand. So what I did, and what, what I, what I wanted this piece to be, which unfortunately it can’t be, and I’ll explain why in just a second-

Simone Collins: Oh ...

Malcolm Collins: is I wanted to go through on some sort of, like, well-reasoned progressive piece on why Islamism and progressive values make such good bedfellows.

Simone Collins: Okay.

Malcolm Collins: And that we would go through this piece and I would explain, “Well, this doesn’t really work here,” or, “They actually have some points here.” And very, very interestingly I could not find any such piece.

Simone Collins: What? How... That seems

Malcolm Collins: implausible. Right? I assumed they must be out there everywhere, right?

Like, I was like, they must have, like, taken the time to, like, grok, digest, and explain this.

Simone Collins: Yes.

Malcolm Collins: Right? Because it seems like a contradiction, and there were a [00:02:00] lot of progressive pieces- Well,

Simone Collins: The Free Press tried to m- to make an explanation of this.

Malcolm Collins: No, they didn’t. No, they didn’t. What The Free Press did, ‘cause I read that article, that was one of the ones I read in preparation for this-

Simone Collins: Okay

Malcolm Collins: Is they tried to, they basically just said, “This happened before with the Islamic revolution,” and then they went over a few things from that. But that wasn’t, that didn’t really explain why the progressives thought this was okay.

Simone Collins: Okay, so you’re just talk- Yeah, I guess your, your argument is that isn’t an explanation, it’s only a history of the alliance.

It doesn’t explain the underlying reason for the alliance.

The, oh my God, when you move around your room, it sounds like your room is the Star Wars trash compactor. Like So

Malcolm Collins: so, I ended up running ahead and being like, “Okay, let’s see if I can find any of these,” right?

And what I did find, so I’ll go over what I did find a number of. I found, like, six or seven of these. And there appear to be near infinity more, is progressives muldering over the fact [00:03:00] that people thought that they were unaware that Muslims... Like, like making fun of them when, like, Netanyahu said that gays for Gaza is like KFC K- fried chicken, or chicken for KFC, right?

Like, and they, they really hate conservatives making fun of them for this. Huh. Okay ... being unaware that in these groups that they say they wanna help, they do want to kill gay people. Like, that’s in the Quran. You know, you stone somebody for being gay. That’s Sharia law, right? Like, this is part of their tradition.

Hmm. It happens regularly across these countries.

Speaker 2: What would happen to a gay couple in Gaza?

Speaker 3: Executed according to Islamic law. Islam doesn’t endorse gays. Islam doesn’t endorse homosexuality. Just like Canada doesn’t endorse a lot of things. So would you like to see Sharia law in Canada replace Canadian law? At some point, it will. . One day we can have a Muslim majority nation here in Canada.

Right In your face!

Malcolm Collins: And what those articles did, which was very frustrating to me because it didn’t provide a [00:04:00] logical explanation, they basically just said, “Netanyahu’s government has said homophobic things as well.” And that was obviously very unsatisfying for me because I was just like, well, I mean, yes, it’s a right-wing government, but, well, like, when you say said homophobic things, like he said he’s comfortable being called a homophobe, he doesn’t support pride marches, he doesn’t support you know, gay stuff being taught to kids.

He, That is not the same thing as having a government policy of murdering gay people, okay? But they’re sort of trying to equivocate the two. Or they will note that there have been some gay people who have been killed in Israel by members of the general public for bigoted reasons, right? And they seem to not be able to tell or assume that their audience won’t care that that’s different from something being carried out as a government policy.

Mm-hmm. E.g. just [00:05:00] random homophobes versus the government will kill you. I mean, they’re, they’re obviously very different, but the core thing that I basically realized is they see being mildly... And I guess this makes sense if you look at their wider actions. They see being mildly uncomfortable with gay people or uncomfortable with trans people or disagreeing with their ideology as equivalent to a government policy of institutionalized killing of gay and trans people.

But- But think about their actions and this makes sense. When they say that like, “Oh, Trump’s government’s going to get rid of me.” Like remember when Trump was elected and a bunch of gay people were like basically saying, “Oh, Trump, we’re gonna be eradicated now that Trump has come into power.” Trans people being like, “Trans people in the United States are gonna be mass genocided after this.”

They talked about this, like that this was something that was going to happen to them. And I think that we as conservatives were not listening to that. We heard it and we thought it was funny, [00:06:00] but we didn’t understand that actually in their minds these two things are functional equivalents. Slightly disagreeing with them and or saying, “I personally would not live this lifestyle,” and saying, “We’re gonna build a government policy of killing you.”

And that’s why they have reacted so harshly. That’s why they keep doing these assassination attempts and stuff like that, as I’ve explained in other videos, because they think that this mild disagreement is the same as murder.

Hmm. Hmm.

And then that justifies everything that comes out of this. But I wanna get into where these two things are surprisingly okay.

Like, why do Muslims keep siding with the left, right? Like, why, why do they appear to make good bedfellows? And at first I thought, well, maybe there’s some policies in Muslim texts, because I, I found a few articles arguing this. These were from Muslims trying to explain to progressives why they should be friendly with Muslims.

Oh. [00:07:00] And they went over Muslim teachings trying to argue that Muslim teachings are inherently socialist.

Simone Collins: Oh.

Malcolm Collins: This comes down to things like the zakat which is one of the five pillars, which means that you’re typically donate around 2.5% of wealth assets above a threshold to the poor, needy, debtors, or travelers.

This is... I mean, it is socialist-like, but Christians have just as many parts of the Bible that they could point to and say “This is socialist-like.” You also, Have sorry. So but then you can say, “Okay, well, if this was the case, can we look at the Gini coefficient of Muslim majority countries to see if it’s higher or lower than equivalent other countries?”

And Gini coefficients of Muslim countries are enormously higher than other countries. They are some of the-

Simone Collins: Famously so, yes ...

Malcolm Collins: yeah, some of the most unequal societies on earth. So then the question can be, okay, why do they... Because I don’t wanna ask, like, from a right-wing perspective how are these things the same.

Like, as right-wingers we can say [00:08:00] they’re both totalitarian in the way they attempt to approach things. They’re both very fascist in the way they attempt to approach things. They both hate Western civilization. They both, you know, like, we can, we can throw all of this out here, right? But to the left, those explanations aren’t really gonna hold as much, right?

So where do the left, like, really actually agree with them and find this co-solidarity? One is the issue of them killing gay people actually isn’t a big an issue to modern leftists as you would think.

Simone Collins: Explain this to me

Malcolm Collins: Okay, so if you look at Muslim countries one of the things that they do, that they’re known for doing, is gender transition, right?

Where if somebody is same-sex attracted, they are pressured into gender transition, and then they just live as the gender, and then that’s not gay anymore, right? You know, this is something that’s common in places like Iran. Now, not all Muslim countries do this. We’ll get to the other ones in a bit. But also...

But I guess I’ll just come out [00:09:00] and say it. If you go to other Muslim countries, like Afghanistan and Iraq, they have extremely high rates of same-sex relationships. They just- Right ... don’t contextualize them as gay. You j- you can still be killed for being gay, but a lot of people are gay.

Simone Collins: So they’re, like, having gay sex, but no homo gay sex.

Malcolm Collins: Well, yeah. It is, it, it’s, it’s typically of a very specific kind. It is either with underage boys, and that makes it not gay.

Simone Collins: No homo.

Speaker 5: A private party is underway in Kabul. In Afghanistan, women are not allowed to dance in public, so boys are dressed as girls and made to perform. The ancient practice of Bacha Bazi, or dancing boys, is widespread, involving orphans or boys from poor families as young as 10 years old

They are often sexually abused and raped. [00:10:00] This is child trafficking. The boys are abducted and taken from one province to another. The children are kept in the company of powerful armed commanders and forced to become dancing boys.

Malcolm Collins: Or it’s with people who have very large age gaps. So-

Simone Collins: It’s almost like, you know how if you multiply two negative numbers, you get a positive number, right?

Malcolm Collins: Mm-hmm.

Simone Collins: Right. And so, like, if you, like, combine PDF files with, with, with homosexuality, it becomes- It’s fine

virtuous.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, it cancels out. Yeah. They’re like, “No, it’s, it’s...” I’ve, I’ve joked before. They’re like, “No, it’s fine. I d-

Simone Collins: It

Malcolm Collins: cancels out ... I know I hooked with a guy, but he was underage, so it’s not a problem.” Yeah,

Simone Collins: I get it. I get it. Sure.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And, and you see this, actually. We see pictures of, quote-unquote, “gays” from these countries and the gay, the, the younger gay is, like, in their 20s.

The, the older one typically looks like they’re in their 60s or, or, or something, right? Oh,

Simone Collins: ah.

Malcolm Collins: Like, you typically see very [00:11:00] big age... The age range gap goes up as they get older.

Speaker 7: Basically it works like this, or appears to. , You would say something like, “Well, okay, so they sleep with underage gay kids, , but what about when they become teens or something like that? Who are they sleeping with?” And the answer is, is there enough of an age gap so that we in the West would find it creepy?

Then it’s okay. If there’s not that much of an age gap, then it’s not okay

Malcolm Collins: But one- That is

Simone Collins: so gross ...

Malcolm Collins: what I’m saying is, is not all Muslim societies are as... And as to why you get this phenomenon, I had a whole video I was going to do on this.

It’s mostly because the genders are so separated that,

Simone Collins: The opportunity is not there for women

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, basically the... Well, yeah, and they mostly socialize with other men, and the prohibitions on doing it with minors aren’t very strong in these countries or not a- acted upon often. And so, just because that’s all they’re interacting with they, they form these relationships more often.

You know, if you’ve had Muslim male friends, you know that they’re more handsy [00:12:00] often than other people. You know, like, hand-holdy and stuff like that, when in our society we see that as romantically coded. And they’re like, “Oh, it’s not romantically coded in our society.” And it’s like, well, I mean, it kinda is romantically coded in your society.

You just don’t frame it as romance when you have male-male sex, right? So one, you, you do have that phenomenon which normalizes gayness in the left when they see this, right? They, they ignore all the problematic parts of this and it normalizes it. But then the bigger point is, is even if you take the societies where you have first gender transition, which is okay in most Muslim societies,

Simone Collins: there we, there we go.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, you got it right in the middle I made a little middle shot right here.

Simone Collins: You got it bullseye.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. All

Simone Collins: right, keep up the

Malcolm Collins: practice. I can do a little closer so you can see. Look.

Okay,

but the second issue on the gay thing is that if you have forced gender transition, and it’s normal in a Muslim country, that means that these countries have an implicit level of trans inclusivity that you may not even see in Western society.

Oh, yeah.

Simone Collins: Yeah,

Malcolm Collins: yeah,

Simone Collins: yeah,

Malcolm Collins: yeah, yeah. And [00:13:00] famously trans people go to Iran to get cheap surgeries because they can do that there. And then once they’re trans, you know, it’s okay, they’re safe, et cetera, right? Now what’s fascinating about this is if Muslim societies can be argued to be okay to gender transition, right?

It actually doesn’t particularly matter in the eyes of the modern left if they kill gay men. Because gay men are seen as kind of right-leaning these days. Like they’re they’re gay white men, as they say, are the new white men, you know, within these spaces.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Because you have this Olympics of oppression hierarchy that they’ve sort of built among themselves.

Simone Collins: And you have Trump’s big gay White House on top of it.

Malcolm Collins: Mm-hmm. This is a New York Times article where they’re pointing out just how many of the leading Republicans are gay now, and it’s a lot of leading Republican staffers are gay now more than in the Democratic administration. And that’s just the Republican Party now.

We can get into why. I, you know, is this a good idea for the Republican alliance or whatever? But it is a fact. [00:14:00] You know, our, our best get out to voters like Scott Pressler are gay. Our, the biggest donors are gay Peter Thiel and stuff like that, right? Like, it’s a very gay party now. And as a part of this, the left has sort of kicked out gays at least male gays from the wider leftist coalition, or at least they don’t care about them that much.

So if you are coming at this with a ‘90s Republican mindset and you say, “Don’t you care that they’re killing gays?” You may think that they’re undergoing some huge level of cognitive dissonance when they’re like not part- you know, not particularly, right? Like, “I’m, I’m more interested in these things that Israel is doing.”

And you may think, oh, they’re, they’re sublimating this, or they’re not really engaging with it. And what you may not be grokking is they don’t really care. You might as well have gone to them and said, “Do you care that they are killing white males minus one?” Right? Like minus one oppression point, right?

And they’re gonna be like, “No, of course I don’t care that they’re killing white males.” Do you care that they’re killing Jews? No, of course I don’t care that they’re [00:15:00] killing Jews, right? We’ve also gotta keep in mind that as soon as October 11th happened, and we’ve gotta keep this in mind in terms of the wider, like, leftist mindset, so we sort of check in where they are.

This is when they had, like, brutally murdered over 100 people at, like, a peace rally, right? You know, right outside of Gaza that was a bunch of teenagers, right? They had the big musical peace protest with Gaza.

Simone Collins: Oh, right. Yeah, that’s, yes. It wasn’t a protest, it was a concert.

Malcolm Collins: It was a, it was, it was, it was for peace.

They were trying to, it was for- Yeah, it

Simone Collins: was a concert for peace

Malcolm Collins: that was happening on

Simone Collins: October- In

Malcolm Collins: promotion of, yeah. So they, they raided it. They took the women as, as s- s- smack slaves. They raped them to death. Like, it was absolutely brutal, absolutely terrifying. But on the same day that this had happened, and on the day after this had happened, before Israel had tried any sort of response yet there were parties at American college campuses cheering, and you, and you can find videos of this. We talked about this when

Simone Collins: it

Malcolm Collins: happened.

Simone Collins: Oh, right. The attack.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, cheering the October 11th attack. They were excited about October 11th. Leftists were, right? They [00:16:00] saw this as a fundamentally good thing that this had happened. And so, and this was their side that was being attacked, right?

Like I’m not, I’m not saying Jews are their side. I’m saying the, the peace-going teens for giving Gaza more rights who were a big part of the casualties in this attack. And they just didn’t care. And I think that this comes to a second point which is important to note, and it’s actually a huge overlap between the two groups.

They really don’t care about any degree of suffering, pain, or death that happens to people who are similar to them or share their value system if it couldn’t be seen as serving the greater cause. So to them, as is the case with many Muslims, so many Muslims don’t particularly care about what’s really going on in Gaza.

They don’t care. I mean, obviously, or they’d take Gazan refugees when not a single Muslim majority country has done that, right? So why aren’t they taking Gaza refugees? Well, the reason they aren’t taking Gaza refugees is ‘cause they, well, one, because they keep trying to kill everyone when they get [00:17:00] to a country and start a revolution.

But two they, they, it, it’s more than just not taking Gaza refugees. They are intentionally inflaming the situation with Gaza. Like consider Iran. Iran has been repeatedly, up until we started dealing with them, inflaming the situation with Gaza, inflaming the situation with you know, Israel and its, its, like Lebanon, its various neighbors which they know makes things qualitatively worse for the Muslims living in these regions, Muslims that share their political agenda, that lead to them being indiscriminately killed.

But that is a complete non-factor in their sort of global geopolitical calculation. Suffering of people who are like them is irrelevant, and this is the, something that the two groups share. Another thing that you have to keep in mind is from the position of modern leftists There really isn’t a suffering calculation that they’re making in regards to the things that they’re doing.

It’s the other side has to lose, our side [00:18:00] has to win, and then they just determine who is their side. Like, fundamentally, that’s what they care about at the end of the day. How does the Islamists end up looking like it’s their side? Because they are clearly in opposition to what they are opposed to, which, I mean, at this point you can only broadly say I think what most people would think of as Western civilization, but they found other words for it.

When they say the patriarchy, what they really mean is Western civilization, right? They don’t mean really a system of ma- because it’s not anymore a system of males at the top. I mean, women are predominantly the ones graduating from college at this point. If you look at lower professions, they’re overwhelmingly in managerial positions much more than men are.

If you look at younger people, women out earn men, right? Like, they are the dominant faction. So if, if this is the case, then why do they still want this destroyed? Because what they were really keying to was this broader idea of Western civilization, which makes them very, very [00:19:00] aligned with each other.

And then to go to the, the next point here, which I thought was really interesting, is socialism more broadly. There is nothing about a Muslim coming to power where they would not take a socialist stance. Any Mus- by the way, any thoughts before I go further, Simone?

Simone Collins: No, I find this very interesting.

Please go on.

Malcolm Collins: So suppose I am a Muslim coming into power, right? Like I, w- we’ll go back to the imam, right? You know, I’m, I’m trying to take over Iran or something like this. I want to get support from people in other communities, right? Now, I can’t go out there and say, “I plan to kill gay people,” or something like that, or, “I plan to implement Sharia law.”

That’s not gonna do well in the West. That’s not gonna do well at a whatever rally or anything like that. But if I go out there and I’m just like, “Look the system as it is set up is currently in the favor of rich people,” and by this, you know, they’re thinking Zionists and stuff like this, [00:20:00] capitalists.

Again Jews typically fight for capitalism historically. People just ... The people who think Jews are, like, pro-communism are ... The, the it is true that they were disproportionately represented within the Russian communist movement. However, they were proportionally significantly lower representative than they were in capitalist governments.

Right. So if, if b- you contrast, like, the number of Jews in US politics versus the number of Jews in leading positions in the communist government in Russia, dramatically lower. And of course, the communist Russian government then attempted to kill all the Jews, right? Like, one of Marx’s books was, like, The Problem of the Jew, right?

Like, it li- literally, like, that’s ... They’re very clear about not liking Jews in leftist philosophy. And so these two things sort of aligning, like, we want to attack business interests, we want to attack big business we want to attack the Jew, and I think that this is why this is, in part, become more common in leftist thought right now.

That [00:21:00] immediately appeals to the Islamist as well, right? Now the Islamists can say, “Oh yes, we’ll do redistribution of some kind. That’s within Islamic values.” And the leftist hears socialism, right? Now, of course, when they have used leftists to get into power, they have not enacted anything that looks like what we would consider socialism anywhere else, like in Iran or something like that, because they don’t really care about these things, but they don’t have a problem saying them, right?

Like, they’re not gonna say to the leftists, “I’ll support gay sex,” or something like that. But they will say to the leftists, “I will support your economic agenda.” And we’ve actually seen, you know, even recently in America, you can look at, like Zohran Mamdani coming into power, right? He has pushed much harder after coming into power on the pro Islamization of Manhattan than he’s pro- If you look at, like, the czars that he’s put in power, these people who have said, you know, really horrible things, globalizing patata, like kill, in, in patata.

We- like, “I hate white people. White people should be killed,” stuff like that. [00:22:00] Mentifada. Okay ... into major positions within his government, right?

And, and they’ve begun to implement their plans in regards to sort of like a broader Islamic mass migration agenda. Whereas they haven’t actually done anything in regards to, or not very successfully, in regards to his social programs.

Like his grocery stores, you know, they’re, they’re barely moving ahead at this point, right? And this is something we repeatedly see. You know, they appeal to the leftists to get the vote, but they don’t actually care about the leftist economic policies that much. And the leftists, I want to tell you the, the big secret truth about modern leftism, they don’t particularly care that their social policies and economic policies get implemented either.

Once- Hmm ... they, th- their real goal is the destruction of the civilizational system- Mm-hmm ... so that they can build something new. So, they’re, they don’t, they don’t think to hold to account. They’re like, “Zohran, where’s all this leftist stuff you said you were gonna do?” They don’t actually care about that, because that was never really the point.

They basically know they’re on team, and team is the destruction of Western civilization. [00:23:00]

Simone Collins: Hmm.

Malcolm Collins: Or at least you know, right now sort of directionally the destruction of Western civilization. And I think that this is where we can see why the gripers have so naturally slideed into this alliance. And, and Nick Fuentes’ whiter faction has, you know, recently s- coming out and saying, “I’m a moderate non-woke Democrat.”

And again, think about where I’m pointing out that the Islamists and the leftists actually fit in really well, right? So they come in here and they talk in the eyes of, like, Karl Marx, like, the problem of the Jew, the Jewish because, you know, they can’t do usury, they can’t do interest charges.

Actually, Christians aren’t supposed to, either, but they don’t, nobody follows that anymore. Wait,

Simone Collins: really? Oh.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, Christians, or at least historically from the Catholic Church, we’re not supposed to use usury or interest rates at all. And then people realize that’s, like, economically retarded and leads to really bad downstream effects for society.

Which it does, by the way. It’s really bad for society to not use interest rates because then you don’t have a reason to invest. And when a society doesn’t invest in its continued production, it advances at a much slower rate which is one of the [00:24:00] reasons why Islamic countries are so poor. Well, many other bigger reasons, but back to this point.

The point here being is, is they come out there and they say to somebody like Nick Fuentes, “Look, I am against the greedy businessman code Jew,” and he knows what they’re saying code Jew, right? And he thinks, “Well, what’s really important to my agenda right now?” Right? Mm. It is seeing Jews removed from positions of power, right?

And so I can work with Islamists on that. And more than that, if you listen to what is Nick Fuentes’ broader goal for Western civilization it is to see it collapse. Now, his belief is that after it collapses, after the movement of right-wing party collapses, that he will be able to build a new right-wing party in his vision, a new version of Western civilization in his vision which by the way is, is, is very explicitly not something that most of his followers would want, but they just don’t listen to what he’s saying.

It doesn’t really matter. The point is, is he won’t be able to do it. He doesn’t have the numbers. Even if he did [00:25:00] create the collapse that he wanted to create, whatever was built from the ashes would not be Fuentes-y, and it wouldn’t be Catholic-y either. If you look at those parties right now and their relative political influence and the, the growing or shrinking of their political influence, and the people who are like, “Oh, aren’t a lot of, like, online influencers joining the Catholics?”

I- just as a side note here, One, as I pointed out before, Catholics lose eight converts for every one they get. Protestants lose two converts for every one they get. And even with the recent movement of online influencers into Catholicism-

Simone Collins: Not converts, right? Do you just mean eight practicing Catholics for every new convert they win?

Malcolm Collins: Yes, they lose eight practicing for, on the statistics. Okay. But this has changed a bit. Re- people can say, “Oh, maybe it’s a bit better now.” The problem is, is that a lot of online influencers, and this, that we’ve seen recently are coming out as more explicitly anti-Catholic which wasn’t a thing for a while.

So an example of this is Redeemed Zoomer did a video basically coming out as anti-Catholic.

Simone Collins: Really? [00:26:00] Wow.

Malcolm Collins: And he used to be a very pro-Catholic streamer. And basically what he said was that in the online space, what he has realized is that the way that the Catholics have treated him when he has made mild criticisms of their religion really reminds him of when he was a progressive, the way other wokes treated him.

And he realized that a lot of the stereotypes that he had heard about Catholics from Southern Baptists and stuff like this he had initially discounted because he was being overly rosy to Catholics, and he didn’t realize how aggressively totalizing a, at least a, a portion of online Catholic culture was.

And they, they took over his subreddit at one point, basically, and like, were using it to attempt to convert people. And he, he, he basically said, which I thought was an interesting way to put it was he decided to go into Catholic culture and instead of having his faith in whether he was a Protestant shaken, he ended up having his faith in whether or not the Pope was actually the Antichrist shaken.

Simone Collins: Wow, okay.

Malcolm Collins: So pretty big. [00:27:00] And Redeemed Zoomer is a very nice and understanding person. So what I’m saying is we’re seeing shifting tides around where this is going in a lot of directions right now. And this is a new shift that we’re beginning to see. But the point being is, okay, so I’m a Nick Fuentes.

I wanna see a collapse of Western civilization. Directionally, the Islamists and the progressive both are on point for me. I am excited when negative stuff happens to Western countries, ‘cause that brings me closer to the point where I think I’m gonna be able to sweep up all the cards off the table, the point of collapse.

Hmm. Which is, again, comical. He just doesn’t have the numbers, the technology, the money or even his allies with cultural factions. Like, even if the Catholics wanted to do this, they would be scuttled by the Vatican at this point, right? Like, if they ever did begin to build a large movement a la what Nick wants to do, the Vatican would immediately do everything in their power to denounce it and demoralize it as we’ve already seen them do through...

And people can say, “Well, people just wouldn’t listen to the Vatican.” It’s like everyone wouldn’t listen to the Vatican, but enough would for it to cause [00:28:00] some damage especially if they attempted to sort of- engage their on the ground forces that are still loyal to them in countries like America, which have a lot of power.

Yeah. And can do a lot to scuttle, especially a movement where your you know, foot soldiers are going to mass, and these people control what’s being said on those pulpits. Because you cannot move around churches as easily as a Catholic as you can as a Protestant. So if they ever decided to go scorched earth against this, they absolutely could.

Mm. This was actually really fascinating. We were talking with one of our Catholic fans about this, and they pointed out how you, you don’t go to, like, the parish you like best as a Catholic. That’s seen as, like, really bad. And to prevent you from performing too strong an attachment with any one preacher whatever they call it in Catholicism, they switch them out regularly, like if one becomes too popular.

Whereas with Protestants, you typically go wherever is most popular for you, which at the end of the day gives the Vatican ultimate control over what’s happening, even at a local level. But the point I’m making here is there actually isn’t ideologically, like in terms of [00:29:00] anything they want in the moment, any particularly large point of conflict between the modern far leftists, the Islamists, and the griper.

Like, they’re all completely on message, on team in regards to what they want to see accomplished which I think is really interesting. Thoughts before I go further, Simone?

Simone Collins: This is more sobering than I thought it would be.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And by the way, if you want to understand, like, what they’re saying, so this is Judith Butler, by the way, at UC Berkeley.

And this was about Israel and Hezbollah, right? So, Judith Butler is, like, leftist icon, right?

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Yes, understanding Hamas, Hezbollah as social movements that are progressive, that are left, that are part of the global left is extremely important. This does not stop us from being critical of certain dimensions of both movements.

It doesn’t stop those of us who are interested in non-violent politics from raising the question of whether there are other options besides violence. So again, a critical, important [00:30:00] engagement... sorry, entanglement. I mean, I certainly think it should be entered into the conversation on the left. I similarly think that boycotts and divestment procedures are, again, an essential component of the resistance movement.

Mm-hmm. So very, very pro this stuff. And, and note they have been in the past. So here I’m gonna go over Richard Falk, a Princeton professor of international law who met with Khomeini during his exile outside of Paris. And this was the evaluation he offered of Khomeini in The New York Times, by the way, so mainstream leftist publications.

Yeah. Keep in mind, this is the guy who ended up mass executing all the leftists who supported him in his country.

Simone Collins: Right.

Malcolm Collins: Just so you understand how little this matters to them. And the left just does not care that this happened. It do- When you try to bring this up with them, you are losing, because they don’t care that they persecute people like them.

It is irrelevant to their world perspective. So to continue, he t- he wrote, “To suppose that Ayatollah Khomeini is dissembling seems almost beyond belief. His political style is to express his real views [00:31:00] defiantly and without apology, regardless of consequences. He has little incentive suddenly to become devious for the sake of American public opinion.

Thus, the deception of him as a fanatical reactionary and a bearer of crude prejudices , “Seems certainly and happily false. What is encouraging is that his entourage of close advisors is uniformly composed of moderate, progressive individuals.” But they both mean this and do not care that it is not true once it is proven not true because they do not care when people are killed.

And I think that that’s fundamentally the most important thing to note about this. To them, people being killed are just like scorecards for their larger system, and if you come into an argument with them focused on the people being killed they won’t care. If you go into an argument with them like what actually happens for civilization, right, like 100 years, 200 years if [00:32:00] these groups gain power they don’t care.

And this is why, you know, when you point out things like, well, if you shut down the AI center, right, like this is gonna have enormous economic consequences and groups that like we have, have, have social policies and social values that you would hugely disagree with-

Mm-hmm ...

like the CCP, although they don’t seem to be aware that like the CCP is anti-gay as well, much more anti-gay than the United States they, they anti a lot of the things.

But again, but again, they don’t care about anti-gay because anti-gay doesn’t matter. What matters is the trans agenda, right? At this point. And this is again where I think it makes sense for conservatives to ally with gays where we can, even if we can say, “Well, we disagree with your lifestyle we won’t in law, in institution prevent you from living it.”

I, I, I think that that’s an easy compromise that we can make and get a large faction on team that has been abandoned by the left and is, if I’m honest, disproportionately productive. If you look at I, I don’t know why this is the case, but if you look at top designers, top chefs, [00:33:00] top a, a lot of things, they’re often gay males.

They’re, they’re pretty good at design and influence. So if you wanna win the entertainment war preventing gay males from working on team is, is, is not a really bad not a really great strategy. And I think that this, what, what I have been incredibly heartened about in sort of like where all this is going, because yeah, you can say this is really sad, is that the wider movement really seems to be shaping out the way I predicted it would shape out.

And I mean, it was wild when I first sort of made these predictions or were thinking about this, is that the Groyper faction has moved to solidly form with this leftist alliance, right? Like they just wanna tear down society, you know, and, and stick it to the Jews, and they don’t really care about anything else that happens.

Whereas the, Part of the right, like the stodgy old right they still have voting power, but they don’t really have any control within institutions, like within the administration or anything like that.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: And they, they vote and [00:34:00] whatever. They’ll eventually die off. A lot of their streamers and stuff like that used to have relevance, but they’ve gotten a lot smaller.

We’ve done a number of videos on, like, what’s the real size of a lot of these people. And then in terms of the, the tech right, which is our side, and people will say, “Well, that’s not even right-wing.” Like, when people strongly assert that Asmongold is not right-wing, I’m like, “He is the very heart of what is the modern right.”

Yeah ... like it’s j- that’s literally like cutting out someone’s heart and being like, “This isn’t Brad.” It’s like, whoa, put that back in there, buddy. That’s like the core of Brad. Well, I mean, in terms of the new right sort of media ecosystem, it, it comes downstream of Asmongold. And note here if you look at As- like, what does Asmongold think about, like, forming a coalition in which gays can be members, but not necessarily, like, privileged members or something like that?

Or, or th- we don’t have to conce- concede to their lifestyle or choose their stuff. He’d be like, “Yeah, that’s totally normal,” right? And it’s not just Asmongold where you see this growth. [00:35:00] It’s the entire ecosystem from Leaflet to Rev to Nux to Clownfish TV to Bearing to, We’re increasingly seeing

This wider ecosystem both become more cohesive in terms of a intellectual force, and I think develop a internal coherent philosophy that is more than just anti-wokism. And I think this coherent philosophy we’re actually seeing a lot more. Leaflet has done a good job. I mean, her brand of, like stellar humanism is so simple to understand.

Yeah. And so easy to be like, “What I care about is long-term human flourishing and the c- conquering of, you know, our manifest destiny within space.” Yeah, it’s

Simone Collins: very elegant with its simplicity.

Malcolm Collins: The- very simple, very elegant. Everyone can just be like, “I don’t care.” Like w- when we have a [00:36:00] disagreement and w- and the reason why that very simply framed philosophy is useful, is it’s like when we have a disagreement, we have this shared point of does it hurt long-term human potentiality?

Does it limit long-term human potentiality?

Exactly,

yeah. And so, you know, whether it’s a religious disagreement, or whether it’s a, a disagreement on strategy, or whether it’s a disagreement on economic policy, it doesn’t fall down into this standard because within the ri- wider, like, new right coalition we have very diverse perspectives, as I put up.

I mean, like Shoe0nHead is very clearly in the coalition, and Kami Mommy, right? Yeah. And sh- for people who d- weren’t sure about her, I mean, she did a stream with Smug Alana, okay? Like, in terms of, like the Vtuber where, you know, you got your Kirishas, your Smug Alanas, your Banana whatever her name is.

And then you’ve got the growth of, which I think is going to be increasingly important, this is where I’m seeing it, the Skyrest Cinematic Universe. Yes. I think things like this, the using AI entertainment as a [00:37:00] cultural weapon in a society that has begun to retreat from this is going to be so powerful for the next generation.

Especially with kids and stuff like that, getting them involved in this stuff is going to be a really powerful way to sort of push things forwards. And the other thing I like about stellar humanism is it removes all of the dogmatism of the right. Like, the right doesn’t have to follow, like, all...

It’s just the people who care about what is actually true and want thriving. And Western civilization seems like the correct way to win if that’s what you care about, so all of these people care about Western civilization, not out of a love of Western... Now, you can love Western civilization for its own sake and be part of the coalition, but you don’t have to, which I like.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Well, what I’m also seeing from what you’re saying, what scares me maybe more on the left isn’t this interest in taking things down and breaking. E- what scares me even more is this intentional blindness to the negative ramifications or harm [00:38:00] done. Almost like, you know, they’re Muggles and the harm done is magic.

Like, they just can’t see it. They’re It’s not even like an unwillingness to see it. It doesn’t process. It doesn’t register, and that really scares me

Malcolm Collins: Human harm is completely irrelevant from their moral calculations because-

Simone Collins: I don’t know. I don’t know. I feel like it, there’s something deeper there, that it’s not just about irrelevance, but like some inability to see or recognize it or acknowledge it and, and for it to process

Malcolm Collins: meaning to it No, it has to do with how they process reality.

So-

Simone Collins: Yeah ...

Malcolm Collins: I can go to a leftist and I can say, “You know, Hamas is putting its terror centers under hospitals and schools.” And, and they can say, “Well, yeah, I understand that, that’s why Israel is bombing them, but Israel shouldn’t bomb them.” And I say, “Well, okay, well so think two steps ahead. If Israel stops bombing a hospital every time they put their network under a hospital, they’re going to put their networks under hospitals disproportionately, like exclusively going forwards, which [00:39:00] further puts those people in harm way, right?

And allows their force to grow, which is provably victimizing their own population.” You know, as we saw after Israel’s withdrawal, like executing people on the streets and stuff like that, right?

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: They, they victimized their own people much harder than the IDF did. And it’s, it’s, this second order narrative is not relevant from sort of a pain calculation to them because they only care about pain in a narrative context.

Simone Collins: Hmm.

Malcolm Collins: Like how do they strongly paint themselves as the good guys in a world with this oppressor versus oppressed framing? Like that’s the way all of society is structured. Everyone needs to be categorized this way. And and, and they don’t really think beyond that. This is like the average street level foot soldier.

If you’re thinking of the higher-ups, like the people who are like the actual intellectuals in the movement they fundamentally just don’t care. Like the higher-ups want a destruction of civilization- Hmm ... or what we would call Western civilization, and they understand that that’s gonna come with death, [00:40:00] right?

Hmm. Like, this is where the, you know, kill Nazis, everything like this. They know they’re talking about average everyday conservatives. They just don’t care.

Simone Collins: Hmm. Well, I h- I, I don’t wanna say I hope that’s the case. I, I’m, I’m more afraid of what I think is more real, which is a blindness that would cause a profoundly higher level of death and, and destruction and pain, and that really scares me.

Malcolm Collins: Well, I mean, it’s coming, right? Like, that’s where society is heading with current immigration rates in Europe, with the current cultural movement we see in Europe and potentially within the United States. You know, like, if, for example, I took a position as president or of a political party that I was influential as, we would be dramatically more aggressive than Trump is being right now in terms of how we handled citizenship and how we handled communities that had already gotten hooks into America in a way that was just deleterious at this point.

Simone Collins: Presumably just in enforcing our [00:41:00] laws.

Malcolm Collins: Hmm. Well, I mean, that’s where they’re trying to go right now, right? Yeah,

Simone Collins: yeah.

Malcolm Collins: But I think we need new and stricter laws, frankly. Oh ... I think there could be laws about... Here’s an easy law, right? If you become a citizen of the United States and you ever go on any form of government assistance, I think you should lose your citizenship if you became a citizen within that lifetime, right?

Like, we’ve talked about this.

Simone Collins: Well, a right to vote. At very least, right to vote.

Malcolm Collins: No, no, I just think you, you lose your citizenship, you get removed. If you’re not

Simone Collins: a productive member-

Malcolm Collins: Well,

Simone Collins: I disagree ... if you’re not a taxpayer- I mean, there, there are,

Malcolm Collins: there are times in everyone’s life, including, you know- Right

childhood and old age- And there are times in everyone’s life when they do not require government assistance when that happens to them. If they have a healthy community that supports them, if they have healthy religious institutions that support them and as many immigrant groups used to have, and they become destitute during a part or they lose their job at part, I am okay with them staying in the country so long as they don’t try to get government assistance.[00:42:00]

It is the attempting to get government assistance that I think that should be the disqualifying. And maybe even make it a two-

Simone Collins: So you would just eliminate government assistance, then?

Malcolm Collins: Well, I guess it’s a better way to do it, because I wanna be able to use it to remove them. So, if you’re on it for, let’s say, two years and you don’t shut it down before then, you immediately get put on a deport list.

I think that that’s an easy way to handle it. I also think that any of them that commit a crime, any crime, no matter how small, immediate deportation. Hmm ... and I think th- this can go to financial crimes, anything tied to fraud, especially about the government. Like, this stuff we should be... Or deportation with some form of review, right?

You know, you, you could say that, right? So basically, if it appears that they are culturally assimilating, you keep them. If it does not appear they’re culturally assimilating, you deport them

Simone Collins: I suppose. I mean, I mean, it’s, it’s complicated, right? Like, you could have a system like that be abused by people who create trumped up charges to try to get rid of people who are business [00:43:00] competitors or in other forms inconvenient to them, even if they-

Malcolm Collins: Right

merit- But I think that the social harm of that is significantly lower than the social harm of allowing in large groups that are exploiting the system. So like I understand that you can’t, you can get negative externalities from implementing anything.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: The negative externalities of that are a lot less than the negative externalities of the amount of fraud that our social safety nets are under, are under right now.

It isn’t going to the most vulnerable people in our society. Like, that’s who suffers from this fraud.

Simone Collins: Yeah. But I mean, you know, y- you would have to moderate the rule that you’re proposing here because we can’t support vulnerable people in society if anyone we support gets deported.

Malcolm Collins: No, I said, I said if they are an immigrant.

Simone Collins: Oh. I don’t know, it’s just easier to have a rule of like, you can stay in the country as an immigrant if you are a net taxpayer.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, but that’s harder to calculate I [00:44:00] mean, you can do it if you wanna try to calculate that, Simone. Apparently you love making difficult math Well,

Simone Collins: we’re speaking in, in hypotheticals here, so yeah.

I we could also presumably simplify the tax code.

Malcolm Collins: It’s way easier- But- ... to just say if they pay, if, if they go on government services.

Simone Collins: Yeah. I guess you’re right.

Malcolm Collins: Exploit government services. So anyway interesting conversation. Any final thoughts?

Simone Collins: This was interesting. This was scary. That is all I have to say.

Malcolm Collins: All right. Now excited for the next one.

Simone Collins: I love you.

Malcolm Collins: Love you too

Simone Collins: The first thing I do to try to get out of bed in the morning is put on... Like, I just open YouTube and I see what the algo has for me ‘cause it’ll help wake me up. And typically it’s, like, Asmongold or something else that I watch routinely. But this morning it was some video about, like, it, it, it had, like, almost a million views and it had just been published about the Gen Alpha melody.

It was a fascinating, like, little just, like, did you know about this thing? And there are hundreds of songs that have come out that have the same [00:45:00] broad melody, and it’s kind of incredible how pervasive it is, and I just didn’t realize it until he put all of them together. It’s really interesting stuff.

And the first... One of the earliest versions where you can find it is Lady Gaga’s Bad Romance. That’s the melody, the Gen Alpha melody which you also just... You see it everywhere, all music genres, all languages, w- Western, Eastern, it doesn’t matter. South Korean, K-pop, random Russian songs. Really, really fascinating.

And I just love that there are random people out there to explain things like this to me. All

Malcolm Collins: right.

Simone Collins: And to talk about them and how they rise and why they exist. Like, we have YouTube now. Remember when we had to look things up in, like, the encyclopedia? Do you remember? Did you have those CD-ROMs of Encyclopedia Britannica?

Do you remember the opening sequence on them? It was such a thing. I [00:46:00] guess. Oh my God.

Malcolm Collins: Anyway, I’ll get started.

Simone Collins: Yeah, go ahead.

Speaker 8: I did. It needs four batteries. Wow. That’s a lot Are any of the batteries in incorrectly? Is that maybe why he’s not turning on? Yeah. Have you checked? Take a look. Make sure they’re all in right. Toasty, can you check? You’re our quality control man. No, I, I know what batteries are and how to put them in.

Speaker 9: Let Toasty check, Octavian. He’s our quality control man. Oh, you know what? Take out this one, take out this one, and take out this one. And then I’ll do, and then I’ll do that, and then I’ll do this one

Speaker 8: Yes, I’m a great [00:47:00] bunny That’s so nice How can we get these other cells? If you press on the side opposite the spring, you can kind of push it out using the tension from the spring

In this Based Camp episode, Simone and Malcolm Collins dive into the rising anti-immigration protests in South Africa — led by Black South Africans against illegal immigrants from other African nations. From “March and March” and Operation Dudula marches to demands for mass deportations, shop closures, and prioritizing citizens for jobs, this movement echoes familiar themes of economic frustration, crime concerns, and strained resources.

Is this “Black MAGA”? Why is the global media quick to label it xenophobia while downplaying similar grievances elsewhere? The Collins discuss unemployment realities (32-33%), government responses, comparisons to US/UK/Canada immigration levels, ethnic economic niches, and why South Africans feel under attack from within Africa.

Expect unfiltered analysis, humor, genetic tangents, and real talk on immigration policy that transcends race. What happens when citizens fight back against illegal immigration in their own country?

Show Notes

When I think of “anti-immigration protests” the image that pops into my head is of white people being angry about non-white people entering their neighborhoods and taking their jobs

This happens so much that subconsciously even I sometimes find myself assuming this is a “white people clutching their pearls about their land being taken” thing, when it’s not

And recent anti-immigrant protests in South Africa are proof of this.

South Africa has seen a wave of anti-immigration (often described as anti-illegal immigration or xenophobic) protests and related violence in April–May 2026, concentrated in major cities like Pretoria, Johannesburg, Durban, and spreading to others.

Key Details

* According to the BBC at least, the main driver is the citizen-led group March and March, which advocates for stricter immigration enforcement, border control, mass deportations of undocumented migrants, and prioritizing South Africans for jobs, housing, and services.

* Protests have drawn hundreds to thousands of participants, with marches to government buildings (e.g., Union Buildings in Pretoria), shop closures by foreign-owned businesses out of fear, and some “clean-up” campaigns.

* Involvement or alignment from Operation Dudula (a vigilante-style anti-immigrant movement meaning “push out” in Zulu), ActionSA, Patriotic Alliance, and other local forums (e.g., Thokoza Abahambe Forum).

* Some political figures, like Floyd Shivambu of the Africa Mayibuye Movement, have endorsed the concerns as legitimate ahead of local elections.

* As CNN reports (here’s an Instagram link), protesters accuse undocumented migrants (primarily from other African countries, and some Asians) of taking jobs, engaging in crime/drug dealing, overloading public services (health, housing, schools), and straining the economy.

* Some issued a June 30, 2026, ultimatum for undocumented foreigners to leave, with warnings of consequences.

* Chants and actions target “illegal foreigners.”

* THIS IS EXACTLY THE SAME RHETORIC YOU HEAR IN THE USA

So this is NOT about white people at all, right?

* Yeah, the protesters are primarily South African citizens, often from poorer communities, unemployed youth, township residents, and those feeling economic pressure.

* See some footage from Sky News posted on reddit here

* Note: South Africa’s official unemployment rate is very high (~32-33%), with widespread frustration over service delivery failures after decades of ANC governance, corruption allegations, and inequality.

* They’re largely mad about immigrants from other African countries

* Nigerians, Zimbabweans, Congolese, Ethiopians, Ghanaians

Is immigration uniquely high in South Africa vis a vis other countries? Or other African countries? Is it higher than normal?

South Africa’s immigration levels are not uniquely high by global standards, but they stand out significantly within Africa and have risen notably in recent decades.

Key Metrics (UN DESA 2024 Data)

* South Africa: ~2.63 million international migrants, representing ~4.1% of its total population (up from ~3.2% in 1990 and ~4.3% in 2010). (UN)

* Global average: ~3.7% of world population (~304 million migrants). (Migration Policy Intitute)

* Africa overall: ~1.9% (29.2 million migrants across the continent). (UN)

A few other African countries have higher proportions due to specific factors (e.g., economic pull or refugee hosting):

* Côte d’Ivoire: ~9.0% (around 2.88 million migrants) — historically one of the highest in sub-Saharan Africa due to cocoa plantations and labor migration from neighbors like Burkina Faso.

* Others like Djibouti (~10.8%), Gabon, or some refugee-hosting nations (e.g., Uganda, Sudan) can show elevated shares in certain years.

* Most African countries are well below 2–3%.

Many high-income countries have 10–30%+ migrant shares (e.g., Gulf states 30–50%+, Australia ~30%, Europe/North America 12–16% averages). South Africa’s level is comparable to some other emerging economies but amplified by regional disparities

How does South Africa’s rates of immigration and illegal immigration compare to those in the USA, Canada, Australia, and the UK?

Basically, South Africa’s total migrant share is not high compared to these countries, but its challenges with undocumented migration (relative to enforcement capacity and economic conditions) appear more acute proportionally and socially. High-unemployment townships amplify perceptions of strain from irregular inflows, unlike the more managed systems in the Anglosphere nations.

Statements from Protesters

From March and March Leaders and Protesters

Jacinta Ngobese-Zuma (Founder and National Leader of March and March):

“They are not victims... If you walk down the roads, you will find that they take buildings. There are drugs. There is prostitution. There are cartels. There are mafias. So, everything in this country is a fertile ground for criminals to thrive.”“We are under attack from across Africa… The only thing that they do is to label us as xenophobic. There is nothing xenophobic about wanting law and order in your country.”On government inaction: “We’re frustrated, tired, and feel ignored by our own government... Our demand is that our government is moving at a snail’s pace in addressing the issue of illegal immigrants.”

Sanele Nkambule (Treasurer, March and March):

“Many spaza shops and informal businesses in the townships are owned or run by foreign nationals without proper trading rights... [placing] an unfair burden on citizens who pay taxes.” He called for all such shops to be run by South Africans, audits of immigrants, review of study visas, and army deployment in high-immigrant areas.

Anonymous demonstrator (to BBC during Pretoria march):

“We are grateful that we now have groups like this that have come up to aid the voice of what we have always been preaching about — illegal immigration is a big problem to our society.” (Referring to the “influx of illegal immigrants” that politicians ignore.)

From Associated Groups

Thami Madondo (National Executive Committee member, linked to Operation Dudula/March and March-aligned actions):

“The immigration laws of the country have never been enforced by the law enforcement agencies... And that’s why we’re sitting with all of these crises. … We are stressing the fact that illegal foreigners in the country must leave.” He criticized “Ubuntu” narratives in this context: “That narrative of Ubuntu, unfortunately, is the nonsense that has put us where we are today. Ubuntu doesn’t mean that you must come into the country illegally.”

Tshepo Totwe (Secretary, Abahambe Movement, collaborating with March and March):

“We are here to partake and collaborate with March on March on a progressive march that is involving different organisations and also national forums to collaborate and fight against the foreign nationals that are taking advantage of our economic freedom in our country... That is the key purpose for us to indicate and send a message that we are being labelled as xenophobic, and that is not the point.”

What are these protests like?

* Human Rights Watch (citing “xenophobic attacks”) reports that some protests have escalated into vigilante actions, assaults on migrants (including beatings, shop attacks, and reported deaths—e.g., Nigerians, Ethiopians), and intimidation.

* Human Rights Watch and others have noted insufficient police response in places. Foreign governments (Ghana, Nigeria, Kenya, etc.) have issued warnings to their citizens and, in Ghana’s case, offered evacuation flights (with low uptake in one reported instance).

What is the South African government doing in response?

* As they communicate on the official website of the presidency of the republic of south africa: President Cyril Ramaphosa’s administration and officials (e.g., Deputy President Paul Mashatile) condemn violence and vigilante “lawlessness” while acknowledging legitimate grievances over illegal immigration.

* They’ve highlighted deportations (over 100k in recent years) and pledged legal enforcement.

* They deny widespread xenophobia, calling incidents isolated or criminal

What is the larger media narrative about these protests?

* When you distill all the coverage together with AI summaries, you’ll see these protests being framed as a recurring pattern of xenophobic tensions in South Africa during economic hardship, seen in prior years (e.g., 2008, 2019, Operation Dudula activities).

* High inflows of migrants/refugees amid regional instability, porous borders, and competition for scarce opportunities fuel it.

Episode Transcript

Simone Collins: [00:00:00] We are here to fight against the foreign nationals that are taking advantage of our economic freedom in our country. We are being labeled as xenophobic, and that is not the point.” So what are the protests like? And

Malcolm Collins: again, you’re sure, you’re sure this guy was Black, so we’re not gonna get the channel taken down?

Simone Collins: I’m, yeah, I’ve, yes.

Malcolm Collins: Okay, good.

Speaker 2: We are sick and tired with the Somalians, with the Pakistanis, with all, with Nigerians and all illegal immigrants in this country These protesters say they’re declaring war on illegal immigration and want to take their complaints right to the doorsteps of embassies across Pretoria.

Speaker 5: The protesters here, um,

Speaker 4: plan to raise issue with the Somali Government about activities of their citizens in the country. The group, who are wearing Zulu traditional dress, initially sat down before the embassy gates saying they want to show respect.

They demanded answers on a range of issues from crime to illegal immigration, but things got tense when they were unhappy with the answers from [00:01:00] the Somali representatives.

Speaker 6: The youth is caught up

Speaker 4: by this country and is taken The group say they’ve given undocumented immigrants until the end of June to leave South Africa.

Speaker 7: There’s eight million young people that are not working in South Africa. It is not xenophobia. It is there’s eight million unemployed people,

would you like to know more?

Simone Collins: Hello, Malcolm. I’m excited to be speaking with you today, because when I think of anti-immigration protests, the image that pops into my head is, is white people being angry about non-white people entering their neighborhoods. Even though that’s like not... I know- True ... that that’s not true. But thank God one of our Base Camp listeners was like, “Hey, you should, you should talk about the anti-immigration protests in South Africa.”

Malcolm Collins: It is Black fatigue on an African scale-

Simone Collins: Yes ...

Malcolm Collins: of Black South Africans being mad about Black immigrants to South Africa. I-

Simone Collins: This has nothing to do with us. Nothing

Malcolm Collins: to do with- I, I found some video footage of it that I’m gonna play- Yeah ... right [00:02:00] here.

Speaker 3: Attacker!

Malcolm Collins: Oh, sorry, that was the wrong footage.

That’s gonna get us in a lot of trouble.

Simone Collins: Damn it, Malcolm, why do you... Ah. You-

Malcolm Collins: Come on, I wanna put the caveman fighting footage ...

Simone Collins: you continue to speed run our... Do you not want to be on YouTu- what is... Anyway. Let... I will bring you back to speed.

Malcolm Collins: That clip, by the way, that clip is like a meme clip. It’s from a 1980s representation of Homo erectus fighting Neanderthals.

And white populations, by the way, so you can’t say I’m racist. These are historically white populations. in fact, Africans they’re the only people on Earth that don’t have any Neanderthal DNA, so technically I’m making fun of my own- Oh, really? ... ancestors here, not theirs.

Simone Collins: That, no, that makes you...

Right, right, right. ‘Cause Neander- right. Oh my God. Right, right, of course. I-

Malcolm Collins: Yep. [00:03:00] They have D- Denisovan DNA though, but that’s, you know, neither here nor there.

Simone Collins: We did a separate episode on that, that stuff. Well, probably multiple. Let, let’s just- It’s

Malcolm Collins: one of our spiciest episodes where we go over things that I was unaware of, that there are certain populations in Africa today like the God, I can’t pronounce,

The Kosan people

Malcolm Collins: that are more distant genetically if you’re looking not time-wise.

Like, their breakoff wasn’t earlier, but if you look at, like, I think it’s SNP count or something- Mm-hmm ... they are more distant from Europeans than Europeans are from Neanderthals. And a lot of people just- Well,

Simone Collins: that’s how it is in Africa in general, right? Like, there are different genetic strains or, like, heri- what is it?

Like, sort of n- heritage backgrounds that are- So in a way- ... more genetically different ...

Malcolm Collins: they are more justified to be mad about immigration, right? Because- Yeah,

Simone Collins: absolutely. Yeah. No, no, no. Yeah. The, the, they’re, they’re more different. They’re more different than, like,

Malcolm Collins: Than Europeans are from each other, so yeah.

Yes,

Simone Collins: yes. Yeah, yeah. Or, like, people from Latin America versus, like, Irish people. Yeah, like, no, way more different. But anyway, South Africa has seen a wave [00:04:00] of anti-immigration some- some people are describing it as anti-illegal immigration or, or xenophobic, if you’re asking Human Rights Watch, protests and rioting violence.

I love

Malcolm Collins: that Human Rights Watch didn’t care when they were killing white farmers, but the moment they start protesting Black immigrants from even- horror countries, they freak out.

Simone Collins: No, but actually, but actually, and we’re gonna But

Malcolm Collins: actually.

Speaker: I want to take time to point out here that this isn’t a racialist thing. The groups that hate us hate us just because we are disproportionately productive and technologically productive when contrasted with other groups, and that’s why they hate the South African blacks. That’s why they want to see them replaced within their own country, and they’re fighting back, which we can learn something from

Simone Collins: Yeah. The, these started breaking out in April. They’re, they’re continuing this month.

They’re concentrated in major cities like Pretoria and Johannesburg, Durban, and they’re starting to spread to others. Like, this is kind of the, the momentum is building, and so it’s worth it for us to talk about this. [00:05:00] So according to the BBC at least, the main driver is this citizen-led group called March and March, which is an interesting choice of words. March and March advocates for stricter immigration enforcement. They want border control, they want mass deportations of undocumented migrants, and they want prioritizing South Africans for jobs, housing, and services.

Doesn’t it sound so familiar? Doesn’t that sound a little MAGA?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, it does sound a little MAGA.

Simone Collins: It’s like, oh my God. We get-

Malcolm Collins: Are we gonna call this Black MAGA?

Simone Collins: Black, Black MAGA.

Malcolm Collins: Dark

Simone Collins: MAGA.

Malcolm Collins: I don’t know the, the... Okay

Simone Collins: I like it. I, I like it. I like it. So the protests, they’ve, they’ve drawn... They’re big. We’re talking hundreds to thousands of participants, and they’re doing things like marching on government buildings, like the union buildings of Pretoria.

They’re, they’re enforcing shop closures by foreign-owned businesses. They are... They’re, they’re doing some cleanup campaigns. There’s some also additional groups that are getting involved. One is called Operation Dudula, [00:06:00] that they’re a vigilante-style an- anti-immigration movement, meaning push out in Zulu.

We don’t see something going this far in America. You know, like, if this was happening in the United States, they’d be like, just... I, I just know the, the white racist allegations would just go, like, off the charts, but, you know, whatever. Also, there’s another one called Action SA, Patriotic Alliance and there are other local forums like the Phekoza Abahambe Forum.

And then there are additional political figures that are really endorsing concerns, just like you’ll see in any... I mean, obviously in the United States, in the UK, there are people who stand out as being like, “Immigration is a problem,” and then they kind of run on that platform. As CNN reports, and in, in my show notes on Patreon and Substack, I’m linking to all my sources.

There’s a, there’s a, an Instagram link you can see to, like, the news reports that I’m linking to. Protesters are accusing the undocumented migrants, primarily from other African countries and some Asians, but mostly other African countries, of taking jobs, [00:07:00] engaging in crime and drug dealing, overloading public services like health and housing and schools, and straining the economy.

Some issued a, a June 30th- Mm ... 2026 ultimatum for undocumented foreigners to leave, saying, like, “If you don’t leave by the end of June, we’re coming for you.” Which we also haven’t done. I- imagine if, like, a, a, like middle, middle of America Americans were doing this, you know? We’d, we’d be defenestrated.

Like, they already are being defenestrated just from us wanting to enforce our own laws. Can we

Malcolm Collins: import some Black South Africans to handle- Can we- ... our immigrants?

Simone Collins: Actually, yeah. Let’s- Maybe ... So, so Trump needs to expand the whole white South African, like, refugee visa to include these, these xenophobic, I

Malcolm Collins: would take South African immigrants over Somalians I- Like, let’s, let’s pick ‘em on the Somalians, right?

Like, they understand-

Simone Collins: Right, they, I mean, they, yeah. God. I just, I can’t. It’s just, it’s so- I won’t,

Malcolm Collins: Iliana Ruhr wouldn’t be able to do sh- you, you have a, a mob go to her house.

Simone Collins: I know. The, the Somalians [00:08:00] wish, wish that, that only like, you know, JD Vance was coming after them, right? Like, e- they are lucky.

They are lucky. And, and I just, I, I wanted in, in my research for this to be super, super sure that this like has nothing to do with white people in South Africa. And yeah, the protesters are primarily not only South African citizens, but from the poorer communities, the unemployed youth, township residents specifically, and trust me, there are not white people in the townships.

We’ve been. And, and people in general feeling economic pressure. And I have footage from Sky News that I found posted on Reddit. It’s, it should be reiterated-

Malcolm Collins: So you visually, you did a skin check just to make sure.

Simone Collins: Yeah Yeah. It, yes, I did.

Okay, you’re good to go

Simone Collins: South

Malcolm Collins: Afric- It’s too okay to talk about, because if it was right, people, we’d have this video taken down in two seconds.

Simone Collins: Right. We would be in really... No, genuinely, like, I can’t. So, so I checked.

Malcolm Collins: [00:09:00] Any other day, we’d be arrested. We’d have the thought police at our door right now, right?

Simone Collins: No, and, and r- remember, HRC is still very mad at these people in the townships. People facing a country with 32 to 33% unemployment, okay? They, they’re gen- like, you know, we think we have it bad that, that illegal immigration is putting some pressure on job availability, plus, you know, AI and all this stuff.

But 32 to 33% percent and their social services are not good like ours. So of course they’re mad. And they’re not, they’re, they’re not mad about Indians coming in. They’re not mad about Europeans coming in. They’re mad about Nigerians, Zimbabweans, Congolese, Ethiopians, Ghanaians. That’s who they’re primarily mad about.

And that those countries keep issuing warnings to South Africa. They’re like, “You are being m- mean to our people. You must stop.” Like, they’re, they’re actually, like, submitting formal complaints and stuff, and I’m like, I don’t... It’s like stop sucking so much then. Like, they’re leaving your country for a [00:10:00] reason.

I don’t know. And so I also wanted to check just i- if immigration in South Africa is uniquely high vis-a-vis other countries or other African countries. And South Africa’s immigration levels aren’t uniquely high by global standards, though they do stand out within Africa. Like, it’s, South Africa’s one of the countries that in Africa is doing, like, relatively okay, I guess.

So they are seeing- And

Malcolm Collins: it’s doing terribly, by the way,

Simone Collins: Yeah, but Africa sometimes has some troubles, and-

Malcolm Collins: They are. I mean, if we’re gonna be realistic I, and I’m saying this as, like, an objective reality of South Africa.

Simone Collins: Mm.

Malcolm Collins: South Africa had a fairly strong economy- Yeah ... then they started acting in a way that scared away the European population within the country increasingly.

And since then primarily due to political corruption in part due to Black tribal infighting within the political scene corruption has reached a level in the [00:11:00] country where basic businesses have failed to continue to operate. Electricity is constantly failing, which means that you can’t easily have things like restaurants without you know, you, you can’t have frozen food, you can’t have refrigerated food, you can’t have without generators, and then generating- Well,

Simone Collins: there, there, there are blackouts, there are brownouts, there, there are jar- giant holes in the

We, we have a whole episode on it, just like third South Africa in, under, like, the Base Camp YouTube channel. But,

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, but, but my point is is that they’re basically, they’re not really operating on their own anymore. They’re living off of a legacy and slow decay out of that legacy.

Simone Collins: Yeah, yeah. So, but the, you know, still, they ha- they once had, and they still kind of have some opportunity that many other places don’t.

In fact when I, when we did our South Africa episode, I found a bunch of posts by white UK residents who’d moved to South Africa to work remotely there and enjoy, you know, the relatively low cost of living, and, like, nice gated communities, et cetera. Like, there are, you [00:12:00] know. Anyway, it, it has things going for it.

But in terms of where they stand with immigration, South Africa ha- has around 2.63 million international migrants. That’s about 4 point ... Oh, sir, 4.1% of its total population. That’s up from 3.2% in 1990 and 4.3% in 2010. So it’s not at, like, an all-time high, but it’s high-ish. The global average is 3.7 of the world population, and in Africa overall it’s 1.9.

So they’re certainly higher than average in Africa though a few other African countries do have higher proportions of overall immigration due to specific factors like th- they have even more economic opportunity or they’re just more friendly to hosting refugees, like the Cote d’Ivoire. I think Djibouti has a lot.

Yeah, 10.8. 10.8%, ha- immigrants in Djibouti because there’s a lot of I think people from Uganda, U- Uganda, [00:13:00] Uganda and, and Sudan, S- Sudan, oh my God, showing up there. But yeah, most African countries are below 2 to 3%. So South Africa is, is being relatively more flooded and I, I could see that, you know, putting pressure on them.

Yeah. And you know, vis-a-vis- I think we- ... the United States and, and the UK and Canada it’s, it’s n- certainly not... I mean, like, we- Well,

Malcolm Collins: okay, I wanna put this in context for people who do not understand why South Africa would be so freaked out by this. Uh-huh. Imagine if your country was this close to Africa, and it was this easy to immigrate into your country.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Like, you’d be pretty pissed too. Yeah ... also, the immigrants, are they primarily Muslim, or are there any, like, religious tension here?

Simone Collins: From what I can understand, it’s not religious tension.

It’s not about culture. It’s about jobs and economic security and resources. But just to be clear, so, like, South Africa is around 4.1% of the total population is immigrants.

Australia, which also has some tension, right? 31 to 32%. [00:14:00] Canada, 22%. UK, 17 to 18%. USA, 15.2 to 15.4%. So all these other countries where it’s, you know, the citizens are getting way more shade for being, like, uncomfortable with the immigration,

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, we gotta get some South Africans in here to, to handle our immigration issue.

We have- I

Simone Collins: know, right? Like, we’re, we’re at, like, three times their amount. And we are, we’re being, we’re, we’re being basically like, “Oh, come on in,” compared to them, where they’re like, “Yeah, if you’re not out by June 30th, I’m just, I’m just gonna say it’s not gonna be good for you.” What? Okay.

Malcolm Collins: Can we, can we do that with America’s Black population?

Like, let’s do that. They, they’re the ones who are getting their jobs taken, right? You know.

Simone Collins: And what are they... Yeah, like we’re, they’re silent in all this, right?

Malcolm Collins: Remove

Simone Collins: the whole border. It’s just gonna be one big fight. Yeah. Like, are we... I don’t know if there’s something like where, where journalists don’t want to interview Black Americans when they’re covering anti-immigration because they’re, they’re like, there’s this unspoken thing of like, “Oh, I want, I just wanna make it [00:15:00] look like...”

Oh my God, why, why is this... Like, his new thing is screaming. It’s, this is not great for podcasting. Where they just wanna make it seem like-

Malcolm Collins: You can’t hear. It doesn’t matter. You can put him in the box or something, Simone. He’s an infant. He’ll survive, all right?

Simone Collins: The, the, the Skinner box. What did B.F.

Skinner call his baby box again?

Malcolm Collins: I don’t remember, but you know they used to put babies in, like, boxes and hang them out windows?

Simone Collins: Oh, well, no, no, no. That was just, like, a, like, cute 1950s product, like an urban trendy thing. I don’t know how much it was used.

Malcolm Collins: A modern trend, yeah, where you hung a baby out a window.

No.

Simone Collins: Let me see. It was like a... People still buy boxes like that for their cats now. You could technically just buy one for your cat and put a baby in it. I, I mean, you’d probably have CPS called on you, of course, but Anyway, I don’t, I don’t know what to do with

Malcolm Collins: this. Anyway,

Simone Collins: Let you know what?

Malcolm Collins: By the way, Simone- Yeah

a hilarious trend I learned about, if you wanna, if you wanna spice it up with something else-

Simone Collins: Okay ...

Malcolm Collins: is ballmaxing. What? There’s a community that try to have, th- and they do this through inflating them, the [00:16:00] perfect balls. Vice did an article on it. Your faces are the best. What does this

Simone Collins: have to do with South Africa?

Or with

Malcolm Collins: streaming? Nothing, it’s just hilarious. I don’t know. Some of these people might be in South Africa.

Simone Collins: Well, I mean, we can do that, like, in our episode on, like, is Kim Kardashian a transhumanist? And just talk about... Because also apparently, like, a vaginal optimization is in Okay, you know what? I think maybe he could, can I just- You can’t

Malcolm Collins: hear it.

It’s irrelevant.

Simone Collins: So, let’s go to what, like some actual statements from these protesters to get a picture of what they’re actually saying. Right So here are what some of the March on March leaders and protesters are saying. That’s that, the primary group that’s leading all these, if you recall.

This is from, I’m going to butcher this, Jakaynda Ngobazi Zuma. He’s the founder and national leader of March and March. These “They are not victims. If you walk down the [00:17:00] roads, you’ll find that they take buildings. There are drugs. There is prostitution. There are cartels. There are mafias. So everything in this country is a fertile ground for criminals to thrive.

We are under attack from across Africa. This only thing that they do is label us as xenophobic. There is nothing xenophobic about wanting law and order in your country. We are frustrated.”

Malcolm Collins: Oh, these people are MAGA.

Simone Collins: I know. Th- th- the thing is, like, if you just take this out of context and you’re like, “According to, like, James Brown,” like, J- J- well, what, what’s a really white-sounding name?

James Carpenter from Ohio, you know, like, you’re just gonna be like, “Yeah, of course.” “We’re frustrated, tired, and feel ignored by our own government. Our demand is that our government is moving at a snail’s pace in addressing this issue of illegal immigrants.” Oh my God, right? It sounds so fricking, like, universal, so American, so UK.

This is from Salit Sanele Nka- Nkambule. I’m so sorry. [00:18:00] This is the treasurer of March and March. “Many spaza shops and informal businesses in the townships are owned and run by foreign nationals without proper trading rights, placing an unfair burden on citizens who pay taxes.”

He, he goes on to call for these shops to be run by South Africans, and he wants audits of immigrants a review of study visas, and army deployment in high immigrant i- areas. And this is... It’s, it sounds a little bit like a mix of-

Malcolm Collins: An army deployment in high immigrant areas?

Simone Collins: But they want ice. They want ice Like, MAGA

Malcolm Collins: hasn’t even thought of this yet.

Come on, g- we gotta

Simone Collins: be taking notes from these South Africans. No, they just want ice. They want ice plus the National Guard. That is, like, exactly what we’ve been doing. Okay, great.

Malcolm Collins: Okay, yeah, that’s what we need, National Guard in these neighborhoods.

Simone Collins: So, yeah. And then it, here’s what BBC quoted one anonymous demonstrator saying as they, they filmed a Pretoria march.

“We are grateful that we now have groups like this that have come to aid the voice of what we have always been preaching about. Illegal immigration is a big problem to our society.” And [00:19:00] then additional groups this that, that have been talking about this. Here is Thami Madondo. “The immigration laws of the country have never been enforced by the law enforcement agencies, and that’s why we’re sitting with all these crises.

We are stressing the fact that illegal foreigners in the country must leave.” He criticized ubuntu narratives in this context also. “The narrative of ubuntu, unfortunately, is the nonsense that has put us where we are today. Ubuntu does not mean that you must come into the country illegally.” Which is so like him It sounds like an American, you know, being like, “Look, you know, we believe in helping people who are in need, but we have to take care, you know, of our own social services, et cetera, before we let other people in.”

Yeah. And so it’s, I, I, I mean, what I like about him referring to Ubuntu is that he’s like, he’s referring to sort of the African version of progressivism of like, “You have to help everyone. Shut up, and like, just give everything away.” And he’s like, “Hold on. I’m not gonna lie down and do that.” Here’s Teshepo Thothwe.

This is the, he’s the secretary of the Abahambe movement and they’re also [00:20:00] collaborating with March and March.

Malcolm Collins: So for people who are wondering what Ubuntu is, ‘cause I went and looked this up, it is a profound southern African philosophy of humanism often translated as, “I am because we are.” Mm-hmm.

Rooted in languages like Zulu it emphasizes a collective wellbeing or universal bond, or the belief that all of humanity are shaped by our relationships with others. Mm-hmm. And I’d point out that this philosophy didn’t go very far. It went about a quarter as far as apparently it went in the West, right?

Mm-hmm. So, be aware that these people may talk like they have these philosophies, and everyone’s like, “Oh, these native whatever tribes in Africa, they have these wonderful progressive ideas that hold for about this long.” Okay, continue.

Simone Collins: So Deshepo says, “We are here to partake and collaborate with March on March on a progressive march that is involving different organizations and also national forums to collaborate and fight against the foreign nationals that are taking advantage of our economic freedom [00:21:00] in our country.

That is the key purpose for us to indicate and send a message that we are being labeled as xenophobic, and that is not the point.” So what are the protests like? And

Malcolm Collins: again, you’re sure, you’re sure this guy was Black, so we’re not gonna get the channel taken down?

Simone Collins: I’m, yeah, I’ve, yes.

Malcolm Collins: Okay, good.

Simone Collins: All

Malcolm Collins: right. I, I,

Simone Collins: I did, I did check.

And again, I am, I am linking to my sources. You can literally watch the video. This last quote was from... You can see the video. It’s on africanews.en or africanews.com. All right? Just go to Substack or Patreon. I link to my sources, friends. So what are the protests like? Well, Human Rights Watch, surprise, surprise, in, in an, an article citing the xenophobic attacks, reports that some of the protests have ax- escalated into vigilante actions, assaults on migrants, including beatings, shop attacks, and reported deaths.

Reported deaths, not confirmed deaths, of Nigerians and Ethiopians-

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, those reported deaths of white farmers, they really didn’t care much about

Simone Collins: Right. Just rep- yeah, who, where are the deaths? Show me the bodies. And intimidation. [00:22:00] Human Rights Watch and others have noted insufficient police response in places.

Foreign governments like Ghana, Nigeria, and Kenya have issued warnings to their citizens and, in Ghana’s case, offered evacuation flights with low uptake on when, on reported instances. So they’re like, “Don’t worry, we’ll fly you back.” And, and the migrants are like, “Yeah, I’m good.” They- Low

Malcolm Collins: uptake, yeah

Simone Collins: They’re gonna stay.

So what is the South African government doing in response? As they communicate on the official website of the Presidency of the Republic of South Africa, President Cyril Ram- Ramaphosa’s administration and officials, like the Deputy President Paul Mashatile, condemn the violence. They, they call it vigilante lawlessness.

They acknowledge that there are some legitimate grievances over illegal immigration, and they have highlighted that they are deporting people, that they have deported over 100,000 people in recent years, and they’ve pledged [00:23:00] legal enforcement. But they also deny widespread xenophobia, and they call the incidents isolated or criminal.

But the larger media narrative about these protests when you distill it all together, Is that they’re being framed as this recurring pattern of xenophobic tensions in South Africa during economic hardships. And they, they point that this is, like, echoing ve- similar activities in 2008 and 2019.

People are citing Operation Dudula activities. I don’t know them. And, and basically they’re trying to say that there are high influe- high inflows of migrants and refugees, and while you get this with additional regional instability, which we’ve covered on other podcasts, and you have porous borders and competition for scarce economic opportunity, you’re gonna get stuff like this.

But I find it very interesting that when people talk about immigration from a, [00:24:00] a left-leaning standpoint, it’s always xenophobia and people just being, like, just evil racists, when it’s super clear. Like, it doesn’t matter if you’re white, if you’re whatever. Like, people don’t like their jobs being taken.

People don’t like people breaking the laws of their countries

Malcolm Collins: And acting differently. A lot of these other African populations, like Somalis, and people are wondering why I said, like, we gotta g- g- they’re, they’re a population that essentially specializes in fraud, right? Like, obviously not every Somalian is a fraudster, but we’re looking at rates in some of these communities that are over 50%.

Like, it is astonishing the rate of fraud that we’re getting in some of these communities. This, for example, was a Somali immigrant community. I think it was 84% of Somalian immigrants are on welfare. Like, why are you bringing in a population? And then what was shocking is then somebody said, “Well, Somalian’s earn more than the average American.”

And I was like ... And I [00:25:00] looked it up, and it’s true. Like, this is just fraud

Speaker 9: So just to double-click on these numbers here, it is

81% of Somalian households are on welfare. 89% of Somalian households with children are on welfare. And that is way higher than any other immigrant group. , That is an astonishingly high number. And even after 10 years in the United States, the rates remain at around those numbers. , And yet, if you look at the average Somalian reported income in the United States, it’s 70 to 80,000 per household.

, This makes no sense unless they’re predominantly making money through fraud

Simone Collins: Yeah, we did another episode on ethnic cartels like the Patel motels and all the Indonesian nail salons in California, and it’s super common. This is, this is not moored to any particular ethnic group but for especially immigrant groups- No, some ethnic

Malcolm Collins: groups disproportionately do fraud.

Like, we’ve gotta be realistic

Simone Collins: about it. But no, I mean, it doesn’t have to be fraud. It’s basically if an ethnic [00:26:00] group especially immigrant groups find an economic niche, often of like- Not glamorous or desirable work. Fraud can fall into that, but so can, like, running motels or doing nail salons, right?

Low-paying- I’m okay with evenly- Where you can often skirt laws ... bailable and owners,

Malcolm Collins: right? They’re not investors-

Simone Collins: I know, but what I’m saying is this is- ... they’re fighting ... I’m trying to point to this just being a natural economic dynamic that happens with immigrant groups, and it just so happens that the ethnic cartel that many Somalis have formed in many states is around, like, the business model of fraud.

To

Malcolm Collins: understand how big a part of their culture it is, when US aid was shut down by the Trump administration, Somalia and a bunch of human rights groups put up these giant like, warnings saying that Somalia’s economy collapsed. Hold on, I wanna see what was the percent, ‘cause I wanna get this number right.

Simone Collins: And you’re talking about the foreign nation of Somalia, not- I’m sorry, it’s another ... Somalis living in America.

Malcolm Collins: They had estimated that the freezing of [00:27:00] USA funding represented an economic exposure or equivalent of 9% of Somalia’s gross national income.

9% of their gross national income was coming from USA.

Simone Collins: And that’s just USAID. We’re not talking about potential remittances being sent... Sorry.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, by the fraudsters that are in the

Simone Collins: United States already. From fraud committed, yeah. Because, you know, that, the USAID being shut down didn’t change all of the autism services, all of the Medicare services, all of the home health and transportation and et cetera services that S- Somalians were apparent- or c- daycares fraudulently running in the United States.

So yeah, we’ll see. We’ll, we’ll see if... I, I mean, I was really in- intrigued when the Trump administration announced that JD Vance would be, like, the fraud czar in the United States. I haven’t heard any updates from that.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, really? He’s done a really good job. So, he shut down tons, this is in California, of hospices that were fake.

And he- Oh, really? So he

Simone Collins: followed through. [00:28:00]

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. He shut down four times the amount that Gavin Newsom has since he took power, and then Gavin Newsom tried to claim that he had actually done the shutdowns.

Simone Collins: Are

Malcolm Collins: you

Simone Collins: kidding me? Oh,

Malcolm Collins: no ... when they first whiffed out about them doing the shutdowns, and he tried to act like he was the one who managed it all

Simone Collins: God. I think Tim Walz did something similar when a couple take care

Malcolm Collins: of her. Oh, they did. Yeah. Tim Walz did. They went to, they shut down planned- He’s

Simone Collins: like, “We did it, guys.” And then

Malcolm Collins: he acted like... And they’re like, “Tim Walz’s department has done nothing to help us at all. Like, I do not know why he’s taking credit for this.”

Simone Collins: Golly, that’s so bad. Oh my gosh. This though, it really, it helps to fix something. And, and the other thing that this news really hammered home for me was just how effective the media narrative has been, just in my subconscious, in making me, just my evoked set of like, [00:29:00] anti-immigration protests means white people getting their, their panties in a bunch.

You know, like I, I know logically that that’s not what it’s about, and yet the just, the, the coverage of it from that angle is so pervasive

Malcolm Collins: Well, and I find it interesting that Bla- like in the United States, I do not think Blacks would make the same sort of argument. These people seem to genuinely be concerned that people are gonna label them as xenophobic, right?

Like, I love it that there’s like Black South Africans

Simone Collins: who are like- Wait, you’re saying there are Black people in America who would not want to say that they’re against immigration?

Malcolm Collins: No, they don’t, they don’t... In America, you get such a pass for being Black. You know, they’re not gonna immediately come out and be like, “I’m not saying this because I’m a racist.”

But in South Africa, the Black protesters are like, “I wanna be clear. I’m not a racist.”

Simone Collins: This is not xenophobia. Yeah, that, that is interesting. Yeah, you make a good point there.

Malcolm Collins: And I’ve been watching a lot more on American history and like the idea that America was ever a country where [00:30:00] endless immigration from any population was something that we wanted that is not true of historic America.

We were very, very strict about who could immigrate into the country. We were very, very strict about who could enter our communities, who could integrate into our communities. You know, it like, I, I... Obviously, what really broke the dam on all of this was the integration of Catholics into America.

I, I think-

Simone Collins: Wait, wait, why do you say Catholics?

Malcolm Collins: It’s factually true

Simone Collins: Everyone, you can reset your counters back to zero. Catholic alert. Ca- take a shot.

Malcolm Collins: If you study American history, it’s factually true. That’s where we first allowed a really large immigrant group that didn’t have American culture or American values and was unable to persistently integrate into American values.

Mm. Which is really which, which when we made that normalization, like anyone can integrate, anyone can become America, even if they’re still Catholic three generations in or something like that-

Yeah ...

that is when I think we sort of set the tide where, no, now we’re a country that accepts anyone.[00:31:00]

Mm. Now we’re a country that’s just like, wherever you are, anywhere in the world, if it’s hard for you, just come to America. Because that wasn’t the original goal of the you know, the Puritans or the Congregationalists or the you know, original American religious communities. I’ve been doing more research recently on the original Great Awakening which is really fascinating in sort of how it built the American so fun information, Simone, because I probably won’t do a full episode on it ‘cause I don’t think our audience can stomach just education.

Oh. But what, what was a really big part of the Great Awakening is when it started you typically only had- Mm-hmm ... preachers that were regional and, Mm ... they began to have traveling preachers, and the traveling preachers were really hated by the local preachers because you were supposed to only have, like, one church in an area and everybody went to that church.

Yeah.

And in some settlements you could only get into that church if you had had, you know, a, a specific type of, like, religious awakening even. Mm. So it wasn’t even like everyone had to go to the church, it was one [00:32:00] local church was an option, and getting in was exclusive. Wow. And so, then these traveling preachers began to become popular and people really hated it ‘cause they were competing with the traveling preachers.

But the traveling preachers ended up sort of spreading and creating a cross American religious identity that was very... It, it took parts of the various original Protestant American groups and sort of formed a Pan-American religious conversation where things that they would do during the Great Awakening that hadn’t really been done before, were things like religions of different Protestant theologies teaching together or going on tour together.

And people thought this was very scandalous, right? Like, “How could you do this?” And they’re like, “No, no, no. Like, we... Come on, guys. We agree we hate Catholics. Like, it’s okay that we’re preaching together, right? Like, we, we agree on the important stuff, okay?” And this created this idea that various Protestant groups can have communion with each other, which was not widely agreed upon either outside of America or in America before this[00:33:00]

So then

Simone Collins: following- That is really interesting. That is fun. And also I’m, I’m interested to see how these protests unfurl. Huge thanks to, you know who you are the Base Camp listener who suggested this episode. ‘Cause I had no idea. I don’t know. Like it, this isn’t in at least the New York Times-

Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

Well, it doesn’t fit the narrative. Yeah. They don’t want you to know about it.

Simone Collins: I don’t, yeah, I don’t see people discussing it on X. I don’t see the New York Times talking about it. It’s not on, like, Drudge Report, so thank you.

Malcolm Collins: Can we get, like, based Africans to form a part of the community? I mean, I know we actually have- I don’t know.

We have- ... a significant fan base in Africa, so.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah. That would be, that would be fun.

That’d be fun ...

Malcolm Collins: you know, in terms of where the future of the world goes, it’d be a lot of fun, yeah. Yeah. So let’s, let’s build up that, that African community. Obviously stay in Africa. You know, I’m not saying come over here.

What?

Simone Collins: I don’t know. I think we need more based Africans here.

Malcolm Collins: We do need more based Africans here. Yeah, true.

Simone Collins: So actually, come on, [00:34:00] come on over, friends ...

Malcolm Collins: if you’re, if you’re willing to help us get rid of the fraudsters.

Simone Collins: Again, I mean, I think where we, where we fall down on immigration is, You, you can stay if you are a net tax contributor.

I, I think, like, if we just made that the one immigration policy, we would be super fine with immigration.

Malcolm Collins: Mm-hmm.

Simone Collins: The, the one rule. If your household is a net tax contributor, you can stay. If you are not, you can see yourself out. It’s fine. Okay? Okay? Okay. Great. See, then you can have both porous borders and general so- generous social services.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. No, I agree. That’s really all you have to do, and you can remove the racism, right? Like, just say- Yeah ... anyone who’s a tax

Simone Collins: contributor- I don’t

Malcolm Collins: care. Yeah ... stays. Anyone who’s a tax contributor- No

Simone Collins: matter where you’re from. Yeah. Mm-hmm. And i- it’s also not one of those, like, ticket price things where like, oh, well, you have to pay, like, you know, this much to get in or, like, invest in a company or something.

It’s [00:35:00] no, just like, “Hey, well, it looks like you were negative this month. Thank you. It was lovely having you here. You are now dismissed. K- goodbye.”

Malcolm Collins: Get your back and never can come back.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm. Yep, that was your chance. It’s over. Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

Simone Collins: Yep. I think it’s fine.

Malcolm Collins: And people are like, “That’s too harsh,” and it’s like, you can just not take government money, right?

Like, if you- Yeah ... lose a job or something. You don’t need to...

Simone Collins: Yeah. Like, you can, y- you can, you know, a- ask a church community to, you know, take care of you that month or any number of things

Is Google Ads harassing you again?

Malcolm Collins: Google is very aggressive with their ad campaign.

Simone Collins: No, I think people have discovered that ads really don’t make money anymore.

Malcolm Collins: So check out rfab.ai, any of our new features, our super search, our... We’re getting close to the Vtuber system being fully functional at this point.

Might be by this episode. We’re getting close to, Oh, we got the new based AI. Like, [00:36:00] literally yesterday I was like, “I’m gonna make a based AI.” It’s up, it’s operational. Try it out. It even switches with Alloy model into top AI models with internet connection.

Simone Collins: Explain how and why it’s based.

Malcolm Collins: Well, it literally uses a prompt injection that you can change that keeps it from being too woke so, you know

Simone Collins: Give it a try, guys.

Let us know what you think. Yeah, and anyway, that is all. Sounds good. Goodbye.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, I’ve been, I mean, even with this, putting in more image generation services, so we have, like, one of the fullest image generation... You should look at using RFAB more for title card generation, by the way. Okay. We have all of the models that you’re using, like Black

Simone Collins: Forest- Yeah, I just, I fi- I personally find your prompt inj- injections to be abrasive when it comes to image gen.

Malcolm Collins: Then you can take them out.

Simone Collins: I, I will. I know. I just-

Malcolm Collins: They’re literally... Simone, they’re just auto-added, so you can just delete them.

Simone Collins: I will. I, I just have to get over that. I’m, I’m sorry. I’m a horrible wife. I’m a [00:37:00] failure of a wife. Yes,

Malcolm Collins: you are a failure of a wife.

Simone Collins: I will- Does it use Nano Banana? ‘Cause that’s, I think we use that a lot.

You can use Nano

Malcolm Collins: Banana. Okay. So it’s, yeah. You can

Simone Collins: use

Malcolm Collins: any of the major services, Simone.

Simone Collins: So it has Midjourney, Nano Banana, Black Forest, and, and, It has

Malcolm Collins: all of those, yes.

We actually don’t have Midjourney because they don’t have an API, uh, but that’s the only one we don’t have

Simone Collins: Okay. Okay, good. Okay, good. Well- I’ll, I’ll try it tomorrow morning ...

Malcolm Collins: all right, Simone. Love you.

Simone Collins: Love

you.

Simone Collins: And I’m recording, just so you know, as you adjust. By the way, I forgot to tell you last night, when I was putting the kids to bed, Titan had decided to make a bed on the, like, tumbling pads that we have. Okay. She had a blanket and everything, and she was all snuggled in. And she looks up with me with that really serious look that she has, and she says, “Mommy, my heart is broken.”

And I’m like, “Titan, what’s wrong? Like, are you okay? Why are you sad? What, what’s,

Malcolm Collins: what’s

Simone Collins: making you so

Malcolm Collins: sad?” And she

Simone Collins: just kept saying, “

Malcolm Collins: [00:38:00] My heart

Octavian Collins: is

Simone Collins: broken.”

Octavian Collins: Mommy. Mommy, I couldn’t... Mommy.

Simone Collins: Yeah?

Octavian Collins: It... Mommy, I couldn’t find a place to hang my dart

Simone Collins: board. That’s why you need to hang it in the hallway where I set it up.

Octavian Collins: And I did.

Simone Collins: Then hang it up there again. But there’s

Octavian Collins: no place.

Simone Collins: Yes, there’s a nail right there.

Malcolm Collins: Tell him I’m gonna eat Cutish tonight if he doesn’t stop bugging us.

Simone Collins: He’s going to eat Cutish tonight- No ... if you, if you don’t close the door and leave us alone while we record. You can put the dart board in the hallway, though Well, at least he doesn’t want

Malcolm Collins: to eat- Am I abusive?

Is this what an abusive father does, is threaten to eat their kid’s

Simone Collins: pet? His favorite, his favorite chicken. I love that, like, actually we might eat our chickens. Yeah. It’s, it’s a real threat. It’s not like, “Oh, I’ll eat your cat.” You know? It’s like-

Malcolm Collins: Yeah,

Simone Collins: no. ... these are working animals. Th- they’re, yeah.

It’s, it’s days are numbered. But anyway right. She just kept saying her heart is broken, and I was just getting really worried. I’m like, “Has something made you really sad? Like, what’s wrong?” [00:39:00] And she, like, holds up, it was that heart keychain that my dad had given her, which she was calling her balance time heart.

Malcolm Collins: Balance time. It was, and

Simone Collins: it was cracked ... her balance time heart. Yes. It had... She’d like, of course, spontaneously disassembled the keychain, and it was a little bit broken. It still looks... She can still play with the heart part, but, “My heart is broken.” My

Malcolm Collins: heart is broken. My heart is

Simone Collins: broken. I was so worried.

I’m like, “Oh my God, Titan, are you okay?”

Malcolm Collins: You’re an astonishingly good mother.

Simone Collins: Just her heart is broken. By the way, Suno is so much better now like with genres. ‘Cause like I only want more obscure stuff, and it used to only be good with, you know, country and pop. And now I’m like, okay, you know, make make electro orchestral hip hop, make chiptune- Mm

make electro swing. And it’s really good. Like the stuff that I like listening to instead of just... I mean, I like, obviously I like country, but you can only make so many [00:40:00] country songs.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Interesting thing is I wanted to do full music video generation on RFAB, and, Yeah ... Suno doesn’t offer an API last I checked, so I’m checking again right now, but,

Simone Collins: Oh, to do the, the song part.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

Simone Collins: So you basically now would have to just do it to your song, like bring in your own song.

Malcolm Collins: We do have not safe for work video generation now. I got that working.

Simone Collins: That’s what we really want. It doesn’t work always

Malcolm Collins: very well on most of the models, which is frustrating, but whatever.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm. I, I think your average user probably wouldn’t care as much about creating music videos as we would, because our kids love music videos so much, but I don’t know.

I I, I still haven’t watched someone’s commentary on YouTube. Some- someone put out a video on like how the music video age is dead, long live the music video age. Like it, they’re, they’re like both dead and not dead, and I wanna see what the thesis is there, but I don’t know yet because I haven’t watched the video.

Anyway, I will I’ll kick off the episode, ‘cause I’m, I’m excited to talk about this. I’m, I’m glad [00:41:00] you encouraged me to, to do it. So you ready?

Malcolm Collins: All right. Yeah, I’m ready. Love you.

Simone Collins: Okay. Oh, he’s resisting. Don’t resist. Sir. Sir. I just gotta get him to, like, calm down. Okay There we go.

Speaker 10: That still looks like a silly happy face. Where is your scary face? I do not know. Where is your murdery face? Murdery face. Your murdery face. Is that... Are you g- When you, when you kill your enemies, are you gonna look like that? What face are you gonna use when you’re about to stab them through the heart?

That’s the face? That’s your killing face? What i- what... That is, that is what you look like when you kill people? No. Okay. Gi- give me... Strike a pose, buddy. Show me. Show me your best murdery look. Show me, buddy. Okay. Let me [00:42:00] see. So what- Show me your killing face ... this because, this because the secret move goes like this.

Speaker 12: This is it. Okay. Show me. Show me. We’re doing a video. I need to see. Oh, okay. No, you’re smiling again. What is this? Are you just gonna s- What, you think everyone’s gonna laugh if you run at them smiling? Yeah, this, this is his... This, yeah, he’s just... They’re gonna laugh, and then he’ll stab them. I, I kinda like it actually.

Speaker 10: Yeah? Octavian, can you even defeat me? Ah. Ah. Oh, God.