Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm Collins

Did the Communists win the Cold War in America? In this eye-opening Based Camp episode, Malcolm and Simone Collins dive deep into the 1963 list of Communist Goals for the United States (compiled by FBI agent Cleon Skousen and entered into the Congressional Record). From infiltrating schools and media, discrediting the family, promoting degeneracy, and weaponizing psychiatry and art — they check off how many of these goals have been achieved and what it means for modern culture, politics, and the future.

This conversation covers the long march through the institutions, Yuri Bezmenov’s demoralization playbook, Cuba’s ongoing role, why the “Red Scare” was more accurate than we were taught, and how a new tech-right counter-movement can fight back using AI, culture, and high-agency communities.

If you’ve ever wondered why everything feels broken — ugly art, broken families, captured institutions, endless culture war — this episode connects the dots.

Episode Transcript

Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] Hello, Simone. I’m excited to be here with you today. Today we are going to be asking the question, did the communists win with their goals in the United States? So this rabbit hole was prompted for me by a Chris Williamson clip where he had on a guest, Isabel Brown, who was going over a list that she reported to be the communist goals for the United States circa 1960.

She sort of misstated this list implying that it was read into the Congressional Record by the Communist Party. It was not. It was read into the record by a Republican anti-communist, and was a review of the notes on the Communist Party and their goals, circa 1963- Hmm ... by an FBI agent, Cleon Skousen.

So not a crackpot or anything like this. This was an FBI agent whose goal was in the FBI, was to track and to understand the Communist Party’s goals circa 1963.

Simone Collins: All right? Okay. Yeah, [00:01:00] and it’s not like they were incredibly secret about their goals. So this can’t be that inaccurate.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Well, you’re gonna be shocked by this list.

You’re gonna be shocked. Really? She read a few of them. And I was like, “I need to go into the full thing.” Yes. “I need to look up the history of this list.” Like, I’m not gonna go over every single one of the points that he had read into it, because some of them would just get boring. But we’re going to have enough material to shock you.

Oh, gosh. So let’s... And I’m not gonna be reading them in order either. Okay. So let’s start here, okay? “Transfer some of the power of arrest from the police to social agencies. Treat all behavioral problems as psychiatric disorders which no one but psychologists can understand or treat.” What? This was the 1960s, early 1960s.

Psychiatrists weren’t even a thing at that point. L- not, like, commonly.

Simone Collins: Oh, wow. Yeah. [00:02:00] Did we lose the Cold War? We lost the Cold War. We lost the Cold War. We lost the

Malcolm Collins: Cold... W- g- when I read through this, you’re gonna be like, “We lost the Cold War.” We were just- What? ... psy-oped into believing we won. I, I almost at the end of this, like, believe that there’s like a communist utopia in y- Russia right now, and that’s where we’ve been sending all our defrauded Somali dollars.

Apparently. Like, the... Yeah. And, and that outside the US, everything’s still going and we’ve just been psy-oped into believing that the Cold War is over and that we won to make us happy. For

Simone Collins: real?

Malcolm Collins: What is happening? I don’t know if I’m ready for this.

Speaker 7: Oh my God. Tim Robbins and Susan Sarandon. Privet svitya, Dad. My son is a communist.

Malcolm Collins: Okay, next. Dominate the psychiatric profession and use mental health laws as a means of gaining coercive [00:03:00] control over those who oppose communist goals.

Consider the way that they’ve used things like trans mental health laws to achieve other goals they have later down on this list.

Octavian Collins: Huh.

Malcolm Collins: First, given that this does seem to have been the plan, it’s a pretty clever plan, right?

Simone Collins: No, yeah. If you, if you go, we, we rewind to the 1950s, 1960s, like, all right, how do we take out these...

It is, yeah, I mean, it’s, it’s incredibly clever. I, I never would’ve thought of it. But in terms of destroying a country from the inside I... You know, there’s this one episode in earlier Doctor Who where the Doctor has this, like, plan where he’s like, “Oh, I know how to, like, single-handedly take down this prime minister.”

And he, standing next to her, like, turns to a journalist who’s always there, or who, who is also there, and says, “She looks tired.” And that’s supposed to be like, that’s the end of her career. He just ended it by [00:04:00] saying that and, like, sowed this doubt. But this is so much more, like, this is the real version of that where, like, Russia was like, “Oh, that’s that’s not just you being a, a, a dick.

It, it’s a mental health thing that is to be systematically- Well, so I should note here- ... defended” ... he is

Malcolm Collins: not, he is not talking about Russia’s goals for the United States. These were the goals of the American Communist Party at the time, how they were going to dismantle the United States.

Simone Collins: That is so... It’s, ‘cause, but then why?

Why would you... I mean, ‘cause presumably the goal- So as was- ... of destabilizing the US means that we, then they can take over. But what is left to take over once you’ve done that to a country?

Malcolm Collins: Well, they wanted to sell us out to the communists in Russia. We’ll go over this. It didn’t work out their way. But they have achieved all of their other goals other than that one.

It really seems to be about destroying the United States above all else and destroying the institutions- That were most resistant to them- Mm ... specifically religious institutions. And we’ll- So it’s not about

Simone Collins: brokering in some new age or transition, it’s just out of hatred for the United [00:05:00] States.

Malcolm Collins: Mm. I mean, there does appear to be a new age or transition.

It’s the communist order, right? Like, they’ve got to break down the existing social structure before they can create a new one or offer a new one.

Hmm. Hmm.

We’ll even go into how they plan to run their revolution and everything like that. Well, what

Simone Collins: good is a communist citizen if they’re, like, crippled by anxiety and, and statutorily unable to not work?

Because then they can’t fight

Malcolm Collins: back against the government.

Simone Collins: Yeah, but isn’t it... I guess in a, a post AGI world, a post singularity world, you don’t need workers. Like, the perfect communist state that has never been tried needs a lot of- Communists

Malcolm Collins: didn’t need their workers to work hard, Simone. Like, I, I think you’re confused about this.

Socialism involves- Communists treat their workers like slaves. Like, that’s the way communist states have always operated. Oh. They don’t actually need the- So I guess it was

Simone Collins: just, there was a plan to rug pull, like systematically, mentally drive people insane. Well, how about we

Malcolm Collins: go through all of the plans and then you can judge?

Okay. Yeah, I, well, I would... Yes.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Okay, let’s try to understand this better. Okay. Okay. Next

Malcolm Collins: here, okay? Discredit the family as an [00:06:00] institution, encourage promiscuity and easy divorce.

Octavian Collins: Oh, boy.

Malcolm Collins: By the way, if you’re unfamiliar with the legal change of the United States in post 1960s not only has promiscuity obviously become very popular, The New York Times regularly writing about polyamory and stuff like this, and but the idea of easy divorce has become way, way, way easier.

And there has been explicit attacks, like BLM saw the insti- the family unit as one of their core things that they wanted to target and discredit. Okay. Emphasize the need to raise children away from the negative influence of parents. Attribute prejudices, mental blocks, and the retarding of children to the suppressive influence of parents.

The,

Simone Collins: the retarding of children to the suppressive influence- Yeah, basically

Malcolm Collins: they’re like- ... of parents ... we need a way to retard children and then we’ll- They must retard the children ... blame it on the parents. I love, I love that wording We need a way to

Simone Collins: break the school system, and then

Malcolm Collins: we’ll blame parents on the results of [00:07:00] that.

That is so good. And every time somebody’s like, “Well, what about the parents?” Right? You know they’re running a communist op. They’re running a communist op. Come on, guys. I always hate that, that whiny, “Ooh, what about the parents?” Mm. It’s like, look, obviously par... It, it’s really about the family culture. Like, the parents cannot draconianly police everything a kid does.

They need to create a culture where the negatives of society don’t get their hooks in the kid to the same extent. But by creating this learned helplessness, communists were able to degrade portions of our society. Okay, next. Gain control of key positions in radio, TV, and motion pictures. A- again, note here, I am not editorializing these.

I am not... This is what was written, read into the Congressional Record, okay?

Simone Collins: Well, I guess that explains the witch hunt that took place in that sense, right? Wasn’t there a big blacklist because there was this, this i- i- intense fear of people taking over the media? So it sounds like this was- And they did

internalized and taken seriously.

Malcolm Collins: They did take over [00:08:00] the media. I mean, we’ve seen this today, right? You know? Yeah. This is true. The media is what in the 1960s would be called communists. The vast majority of people with influence. Like, say, well over 80% of people with influence in any of the major media organizations would, via 1953, be described of as a hardline communist.

Octavian Collins: This is true. Okay, next. One moment. Octavian, what, what’s up, buddy? Do you need something? I made,

Simone Collins: I made my, I made, I made a fox out of clay.

Octavian Collins: I’m so glad. Yeah. I made- You should get your- Yeah. Yeah. I can- Get your swimsuit ready to go out and play in the creek. Thank you, friend.

Simone Collins: I got 40 on my tablet.

Malcolm Collins: Next point here. Continue, note the word here, continue. Mm-hmm. Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all forms of artistic expression.

An American Communist cell was told to, quote, “Eliminate all good sculpture from parks and buildings. Substitute shapeless, awkward, meaningless forms.” Wait, so there’s

Simone Collins: a reason for that? There’s a reason- Yes ... for the proliferation [00:09:00] of heinously ugly statues everywhere in the United States? This is... Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. They don’t really- ‘Cause it didn’t make any sense, and now we just know. Every time you walk by some misshapen, disgusting thing in the street, it’s the commies. It’s actually- It’s the commies ... literally the commies.

Malcolm Collins: It’s the v- It, it’s not just public stuff now, it’s video games. I mean, look at Mixtape.

Look at the games they’re pushing on us.

Simone Collins: Oh, my God. Well, no, no. Mixtape was created by the daughter of one of the biggest

Malcolm Collins: capitalists. Who’s a super big communist. All of these rich people are communists, because that just institutionalizes their power. That’s why rich people are so pro-commie laws, because they know that they’ll be at the top of the communist system, which is what has happened- generally, except in China when you had communist revolutions

Simone Collins: I don’t think that’s true.

He’s, he’s buddies with Trump

Malcolm Collins: Oh, he is, but his daughter isn’t She, I could see her being a commie She inherited these things Yeah, I, I [00:10:00] could see her being a commie She institutionalized her power in a way the dad doesn’t. The dad’s productive. The dad never needs to worry. She just inherited an aristocratic position.

You know, like her, Hasan Piker, Che Guevara you know, who, who, y- Fidel Castro. Actually, we have a whole video on this On the nepo babies of communism What if a communist were born rich? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. M- Zoran Mandic parents were famous directors who have done, like, movies that, like, you’ve heard of before.

Like, all of them were co- famous c- super, super wealthy kids gr- going around on their polo, you know, back in the... Anyway, but I note here that this is actually a quote from a communist organization that was directed at another communist organization, that they picked up at the FBI. So this isn’t, again, editorialization.

Ooh “Eliminate all good sculptures from parks and buildings. Substitute shapeless, awkward, and meaningless forms.”

Simone Collins: Shapeless, awkward, and m- Ooh That is, that completely... Remember just walking around Palo Alto- Mm, mm, mm ... and you’d just be in a beautiful neighborhood, and then suddenly, [00:11:00] brp, like- Yeah ... there would be some nightmare fuel just sitting there.

God, yeah. Wow. Communists.

Malcolm Collins: And we’re gonna talk about how they transmitted these cultural values through people not necessarily recogni- Actually, I’ll just go into it right now. People can be like, “Well, okay, but how did a small communist party in the United States end up getting control of a Palo Alto housing committee?”

for example, right? Like- Actually,

Octavian Collins: though, yeah ...

Malcolm Collins: that, does that make sense? And the answer is, and this is why I pointed out in our Cuba video where we’re like, “It is so important that Trump takes out Cuba,” which they’re in the process of doing Cuba played a major part in this. So Cuba, for a long time, has been funding organizations with communist leaders and people who have, like, these playbooks and keeping groups like Antifa and like the sort of rebellious leadership cast of ultra progressive movements in the United States on [00:12:00] message and aware of what they’re trying to do, even if they don’t fully understand why.

Yeah if we disrupt Cuba in this, this may be able to be pushed back on in significant ways. But anyway, continue.

Simone Collins: This is shocking.

Malcolm Collins: Control- Critics and directors of art museums.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Yep. Yep. And hence the art museums and all their disgustingly ugly meaningless art. And then

Malcolm Collins: he has a, a quote here from another communist organization that they were spying on.

“Our plan is to promote ugliness, repulsive, meaningless

Simone Collins: art.” Repulsive, meaning- I feel so heard. Oh, my God. This is, this is one of the most validating things ever. Mm-hmm. How is this... Oh, my gosh.

Malcolm Collins: Okay, next. Present homosexuality, degeneracy, and promiscuity as normal, natural, and healthy. Oh, boy. Keep in mind, this was 1963.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah. You- And- It really wasn’t seen that way.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah ... here [00:13:00] is, here’s a fun one. Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with, quote-unquote, “social religion.” Oh. Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual maturity, which does not need a, quote-unquote, “religious crutch.” And they were wildly successful at this.

This is one of the reasons when people are always like, “Why do you have your own weird version of Christianity? Why don’t you go back to the...” And I’m like, because they’re where all of this was spread from, right? Like, the, the progress pride flag went up on the churches before it went up in the schools, right?

Like, they have been the source of the rot. They were some of the first institutions to fall. The Vatican is a captured city at this point, right? Like...

You guys, if you wanna do your Reconquista with what’s his face? I like him. Redeemed Zoomer. I like, I like Redeemed Zoomer. Go for it. I think it’s a waste of time until we are a larger and more cohesive movement than the existing sort [00:14:00] of, I just wanna go back to the way things were movement, which I, I think obviously isn’t going to work.

Because the way things were is what they were able to crack open. The way things were was incredibly un-robust. Mm-hmm. But anyway, to continue here. Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in schools on the ground that it violates the principle of separation of church and

Simone Collins: state.

Oh, boy. Well. Well, they did that. My God, they nailed it. But I mean, you gotta hand it to them. Mm-hmm. Y- you know? A- apparently. They were at least effective in this. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Okay. Discredit the American Constitution by calling it inadequate, old-fashioned, out of step with modern needs, and a hindrance to cooperation between nations on a worldwide basis.

Discredit the American Founding Fathers. Oh. Present them as selfish aristocrats who had no concern for the common man. Wow. Hmm. Develop the illusion that total disarmament by the United States would be a demonstration of moral strength. Do we not repeatedly [00:15:00] see this today from leftists circles?

Simone Collins: I’m... Wow.

Hmm. Hmm.

Malcolm Collins: Permit free trade between all nations regardless of communist affiliation and regardless of whether or not the items could be used for war.

Simone Collins: Look at what they get ready to do with Iran

Malcolm Collins: instead of just dealing with the Iranian situation, which Trump is finally doing.

Yeah.

Thank

God.

Yeah. Trump and the Jews, Trump and the Jews, b- bombing, you know, I, I saw a comment recently where they were like, “Yeah, like I really don’t like the Jews or Israel, but by God, they know how to just kill someone when they’re f*****g around.”

And I’m like, “Yeah, it’s refreshing at this point, right?” Somebody’s f*****g with you, you just murder them. You just cap their butt. And people were like, “Well, w- what if they, what if they put their clinic or what if, what if they put their garrisons of, of guerrillas and terrorists under schools and hospitals?”

And the Jews are like, “Well, we’ll bomb them.” And other people are like, “Well, what about the peop-” [00:16:00] Well, just bomb them. Like, whatever. I don’t care. They’ll stop doing it. It will stop being differentially a good idea to do that if they realize we don’t care. It’s only because the international scene still freaks out over it that they kept doing that.

They would have stopped if the international scene had stopped being babies about it. But oh well. Continue here. Provide American aid to all nations regardless of communist domination. Or I guess I could say here anti-American affiliation, right? Like, why is US aid giving tons of money to countries that hate us, right, and, and groups that hate us, right?

And that hate us for the aid itself, right?

Grant recognition to Red China. Admit Red China into the UN one. When did

Simone Collins: just co- yeah. When did we stop calling it Red China?

Malcolm Collins: When did it stop being communist? I mean, we point out in our episode America’s functionally more communist than China now by an order of about threefold.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: In terms of about [00:17:00] any measure that you could measure, like go into.

Okay, note here. Th- this one I love, right, Simone? Promote the UN as the only hope for mankind. Oh, boy.

Simone Collins: If its- That was... Oh my

Malcolm Collins: God. If its charter is rewritten, demand that it be set up as a one world government with its own independent armed forces. Some communist leaders believe the world can be taken over as easily by the UN as by Moscow. So, hilariously, the UN, he’s saying the U- right, this was 1960s. He said the UN is a branch of communism. Yeah. And many communist and Marxist leaders- But it makes so much sense Think that the UN can dominate the world better than Russia can.

And with the collapse of Russian communism, see our recent episode, this means that NATO and the UN are likely bigger threats to American sovereignty than any other force in the world right

Simone Collins: now. Even more evidence that you [00:18:00] should drop it like it’s hot. I tell you, man.

Malcolm Collins: Drop it like it’s hot. Look, if the Democrats can just randomly pull us out of, like, Panama, why can we not randomly pull out of the UN, right?

Yeah. Like, quit their stupid little project. Yeah. Okay, next. Do away with all loyalty oaths. Capture one or both of the political parties in the United States. I like it that they thought big. Capture both, right? And this is something- Look,

Simone Collins: they did dream big, but they achieved. Like, their, their checklist here.

Do, do, do, do, do, do. It, they, they just

Malcolm Collins: went through it. They’ve nailed it Well, I mean, I, I think GOP Inc., before MAGA came in, before Trump came in, right, before we washed them out, the deontological faction of the Republican Party is not particularly far from a lot of these ideologies, right? They appear to be focused on sowing division within a voting bloc that we should be using to win through you know, racialist agendas, through agendas that are just not winning in the polls [00:19:00] right now.

And through trying to peel, you know, as we pointed out, like Fuentes voting Democrat, trying to peel Republicans out of the coalition so that these people can win, right? Like, we repeatedly see the agents of the Communists understand their role, right? This is where we get organizations like the Southern Poverty Law Center being the, it appears now, primary donor to the Ku Klux Klan, right?

Like, and you can see our episode where we argue, we go through the, the numbers on that to show that it was likely their primary source of external funds. Which is wild, right? And not just them, but the American Nazi Party, the... A lot of this stuff is being funded by these organizations to cause division, and, like, we need to be aware of this.

They want to take over our party as well, and we cannot allow that. Next and they want to make us weak. If somebody comes to you and they say, “Oh, we as Americans we shouldn’t be using genetic technology. We shouldn’t be using AI technology.” These individuals are of the [00:20:00] camp, like, let’s de-arm.

Let’s, let’s neuter ourselves so we can’t fight back. In a world where the people- Well, and

Simone Collins: contrast this to the, the attitude toward AI and technology that you see in China, where they’re like, “Yeah, AI’s good. This is, l- let’s go. Absolutely, this is gonna make people’s lives better.” Something’s going on here.

Well, I don’t care about people. I want the

Malcolm Collins: autonomous drone swarms, okay? I want the gene, the the, the... There’s a lot of fun stuff we can do with genetic technology as it gets better. But to continue here. I’m sorry, I d- I didn’t wanna name any of it, lest be I get clipped. Use technical decisions of the courts to weaken American institutions by claiming their activities violate civil rights.

That’s so bon- I love it. Ugh ... get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current communist propaganda. Oh, God. Oh, it’s a little on the nose. It’s a little on the nose, yeah. [00:21:00] Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers’ associations.

Simone Collins: Soften the curriculum.

Malcolm Collins: Get, get control of teachers’ association.

Oh, no, the teachers’ union. Put the party line in textbooks.

Simone Collins: But they did. They did. You know what? If anything, I kind of now just, I’m like, what? We lost. We lost. We lost the Cold War. They won. Maybe commies are a little more competent than I thought they were, and apparently the US is a lot more spineless than I thought it was. I’m, I’m kind of humiliated here.

Malcolm Collins: Because we treated our adversaries with respect while they didn’t treat us with respect, and we need to stop doing this, right? We need to be willing to understand that we are playing for the future of human civilization, and we- Not, like...

Simone Collins: No. I, I think th- this, the reason why this worked, why [00:22:00] they were able to pull this off, is it happened just as increasing numbers and proportions of women entered the workforce, and these kinds of ideologies are exactly the ones that they’d be like, “

Yeah, we should be doing this.

We should be.”

And that, I think, unfortunately, is a bigger factor in this than I would like to admit. I don’t think that in a patriarchal society this would have, this would’ve gotten by us. Don’t, I mean... don’t you think so, though?

Malcolm Collins: Probably. I mean, I think that that’s definitely one thing. Okay.

So, where were they here? Gain control of student newspapers. Use student riots to foment public protests against programs or organizations which are under Communist attack. Belittle all forms of American culture and discourage the teaching of American history on the ground that it was only a minor part of the, quote-unquote, “big picture.”

Give more emphasis to Russian history since [00:23:00] the Communists took over. Now they didn’t get this bi- second part, but they definitely got the first part. And a focus on Communist history, like if you look at American education systems now, it’s just like slavery, Native Americans w- what is it? Like, Jim Crow laws, stuff like this.

Just like, oh,

Simone Collins: all these- That was a big part of my, yeah, public school education. All these- Plus, when you think about, yeah, rioting students, th- this is just such a big theme on college campuses especially recently. It’s just- Another one thing- That’s what they

Malcolm Collins: do ... they did here eliminate the House Committee on Un-American Activities.

Simone Collins: Don’t we still have that?

Malcolm Collins: I’m pretty sure we don’t. The House Committee on Un-American Activities? Let’s

have a

look. I don’t think we still have

the standing committee, it was made a permanent committee of the House in 1945.

Simone Collins: Okay. There we go. I thought so, because I’ve heard it in headlines, so I was

Malcolm Collins: like- no, it w- No, sorry, it was abolished in the late 1950s and 1960s.

Opinion largely turned against it. And it was rebranded as the House Committee on [00:24:00] Internal Security, and then it was entirely abolished in 1975.

Simone Collins: Hmm. Okay. So again, they won. They nailed it once again. Like, I mean, respect. Eli-

Malcolm Collins: S- Support any socialist movement to give centralized control over any part of the culture, education, social agencies, welfare programs, mental health clinics, et cetera. Infiltrate and gain control of more unions. They’re already in unions. Infiltrate and gain control of big business. That wasn’t an accident.

That was the plan is controlling big business. They always saw big business not as the enemy of Communism, but as their goal for bringing it about. Overthrow all colonial governments before native populations are ready for self-government. And int- internationalize the Panama Canal, another thing they achieved.

Simone Collins: Wow. How?

I would, [00:25:00] so let’s say, you know, we’re, we’re in a, a meeting of the Socialist Party in the US that’s like, “Hey, let’s do all these things.” I would be sitting there thinking, “Yeah, like, but we need to have leaders permeating every element of government and society to make this work. We need all the wealthiest people to be communists and to be a member of this party and a part of this strategic initiative.”

I don’t understand how this... I mean, well, I can’t really, I don’t have a good explanation as to how these things ended up happening anyway aside from women tend to have more aligned with Communist Party desires and- Well, I think the answer is pretty

Malcolm Collins: clear. They took over our university system first.

It was first target elite universities. Mm-hmm. We saw this happening when we were at university, and a lot of the kids who are cheering for this stuff do not understand what they’re actually fighting for. The people who understand the bigger picture are their handlers often in Havana.

Mm.

And [00:26:00] that and I just don’t think that people got how much Cuba was organizing behind the scenes and how relevant Cuba is in managing the wider communist project in the United States.

Simone Collins: Yeah, I mean, well, we should. I mean, Hasan just had that, well, the, it wasn’t obviously Hasan’s event, but Hasan was at a very major event there just recently.

Malcolm Collins: Well, I mean, to understand how competent Havana has been at this stuff, they took over Venezuela’s government, right? Like, when we took back a Veniz- Venezuela was shipping them basically free oil to keep the lights on, right?

Like, that is how Havana operated. It treated the rest of the world, countries that they would go in, infiltrate, and essentially take over. They had taken over the vast majority of the president’s guard. They had taken over the vast majority of leadership positions within the military in Venezuela, and they used that to keep control of the country and siphon all the money out of it.

This is what the USSR did for its surrounding countries and stuff like that. That is what their goal is for the United [00:27:00] States. That is what they do with socialists in the United States, right? Like- Hmm ... the, the fight against Cuba is far more existential for the United States than I think many Americans believe because when you see all of these, you’re like, “This seems too perfect.

How is it all organized?” And the key is gain control of the elite institutions, make this cool, you know, make it cool through Havana-backed education, which you’ll often see from leading groups like Antifa and stuff like that. They’ll be like, “No, this guy is legit. He went to one of the Havana training camps,” right?

That’s

Simone Collins: right, yes, Antifa too. Yeah. Oh. So you’re trying to say that even back, going back to the ‘70s, this was all happening in Cuba?

Malcolm Collins: A lot of it, well a lot of it was organized in Russia in the ‘70s. And it, then it sort of became externalized to Cuba. And that’s where the, the key sort of organization ran from after that.

Hmm.

But yeah Cuba has been where the operations to brainwash parts of the [00:28:00] United... I mean, it makes sense. It’s closer to the United States. Like, you operate them out of there, and they never really stopped. They still hold regular, for like American socialists and stuff like that, like yearly conventions.

They basically go and they’re told what to do and how to act and how to contact their handlers and yeah, I mean, it’s, it’s all very organized. Now a lot of this is organic, I, I, I will say. Like it’s not all top-down. But I think more of it is top-down than people realize, or even the people on the ground implementing the stuff realize.

Huh. And I think

Octavian Collins: it’s

Malcolm Collins: our job, and I really make an effort to do this, to create a new right or tech right opposite of this, right? Where a fairly small yet highly organized and value-aligned group of individuals can cross-coordinate and build messaging across channels, and then use that messaging to with [00:29:00] careful directionality break apart and eventually recreate society in the image that we are aiming for, in the same way the communists achieved.

Right? The problem is, is that the communists were interested in end goals. And the old version of conservatism that they were fighting against was very deontological, and so they didn’t really have a toolkit that could compete against a organization that was focused on like actually winning, right?

Like, they just cared that they were technically correct in the things that they were doing not that this was gonna have some like wider culture war end state, right? And so they would, you know, blow stuff up rather... You know, somebody could point out to them, they’re like, “Well, if you make the movie like that, then nobody’s gonna buy it,” right?

They’re like, “If you make a movie that’s all like morally preachy and everything like that and it doesn’t have some fun to it, then, then nobody’s gonna watch it.” And meanwhile the communists were like, “Oh no, you know, throw in degeneracy, throw in whatever,” right? Mm-hmm. They were able to [00:30:00] win. But now communists control the media industry, and they’ve made all media, all video games, shapeless blobs.

And so we come in, we’re like, “Hey, you know, you can throw some sexy women in it without going full degen.” And people are like, “No.” So some of the old right it’s like, “No, I won’t do it.” It’s like, no, this is how we b- they have ha- handcuffed themselves at this point. They have hobbled themselves at this point.

We can win the culture war at this point. And we- The, the key to us winning the, the next stage of the culture war is AI, I think. And I think we’re beginning to see what that looks like through products like RFab, where we’re trying to build, like, our own AI ecosystem for this space. But in addition to that, you have the Skybrow Cinematic Universe, you have these constant, you know, songs and media that are created with conservative themes and that are catchy.

I mean, for example, our kid, the song that he sings most these days is the Holy Balls [00:31:00] song about pronouns. Like, too many, too many pronouns. And- ... he loves it, right? Like, this is the mind of a kid who sees this, and has actually been psyops into singing a song regularly as he walks along, why, about why, like, the, the pronoun community and alphabet soup community is bad and a problem.

Speaker: MMIWG2SLGBTQQ. MMIWG2SLGBTQQ. MMIWG2SLGBTQQ. Yeah, A-A-MA-A-I-M-L-S-F tuning. LTM, RN, ND learning. TTS Faye with an AD burner. Verlo Rock Hi, real transformer.

Malcolm Collins: That is absolutely astounding to me. Like, if you talk about winning the culture war, that’s [00:32:00] what it looks like, okay? We don’t even, like, show our kid... I wouldn’t even understand why anyone would show their kids modern cartoons at this point, right? Like, if you’re a conservative parent, you can watch all the old cartoons for free, right?

Like-

Simone Collins: Well, not, I mean, we’re all paying for YouTube Premium. But yeah, I mean, I’ve heard from multiple other parents who are like, “Yeah, that’s all we’re watching, is old cartoons,” typically on YouTube Premium, and that’s kind of it, yeah.

Malcolm Collins: W- yeah, why are you watching anything else with your kids these days?

Octavian Collins: Yeah,

Malcolm Collins: yeah ... i- and, and I think that, that w- it’s also interesting is that it means that they’re not watching Disney, because Disney is so... Yeah. Talk about Disney really shooting themselves in the foot. Not only are they losing this generation of youth in terms of new content, and pricing them out of parks as children- Yeah

But they’re not gonna have Disney adults in the next generation, because an entire generation of kids wasn’t just raised without seeing new Disney movies. They were raised without seeing old Disney movies. Because Disney [00:33:00] never making those movies free or easily accessible has been a enormous strategic mis- misstep.

Simone Collins: Well, yeah, and it’s a shame too, because o- our kids have occasionally seen on YouTube, you know, like, pirated clips of songs from, like, The Lion King or The Little Mermaid, and they’re like, “Oh, what’s this?” Like, th- they’re i- we would be watching old Disney movies if we could. Yeah. But we can’t, so we don’t.

And they just don’t- And so they’re gonna grow up without

Malcolm Collins: any memories of any of those properties. Yeah. Our opponents are shooting themselves in the foot. We just have to be careful in how we move forwards. Yeah. We have to build out networks, which we’re already working to do. We need to move forwards with technology where science says, you know, th- this is too much for me.

This... You know, the left tries to censor the degree to which we can move forwards with science,

Speaker 11: They believed in me. I believed my methods were too radical, too controversial, but there were others in the shadows, searching for [00:34:00] ways to circumvent their rules. Freed from my shackles, the pace of our research hastened. Together, we delved deeper into those areas forbidden by law, and by fear. And we With this knowledge, what new world could we build?

Malcolm Collins: . But that’s the basic plan that we need in terms of... And we’ve been funding this stuff from behind the scenes. Like, some of it has been found out with money that we raise.

They’re like, “Oh, you funded X sketchy technology.” It’s like, yeah, we’re moving forwards. And we maintain access lines to the technology that we’re getting. So when and if state structures start to break down, we know who to call up to begin to set up, you know, gene labs and stuff like that in other places.

To begin to set up modular nuclear reactors. To begin to set up fabs that can print basically anything you want at a fairly low cost. To begin to set up, I mean, I [00:35:00] don’t wanna go over all the technology that we’ve been sourcing. But yeah. I mean, we’ve been moving forwards on everything we need for self-sustaining settlements and stuff like that.

Mm-hmm. To be able to then push from there back into... And our goal, as a reminder, is not to capture all of society. It’s not to capture all of culture. It’s to capture the efficacious individuals with a high degree of work ethic and a high degree of intelligence. No It, yes. It’s to create

Simone Collins: a sustainable ecosystem of autonomous, independent, and quite varied cultures and groups who can inherit the future together, and also, you know, intermix, learn from each other cultivate resilience among each other.

That- Well, they

Malcolm Collins: don’t need to intermix if they don’t want to. The, the plan is just to intellectually- No, of course, if they don’t want to. Yeah ... intermix. Like, share technology and ideas so that we can use the technology to move ourselves forwards. And, and this is why we see it as very important to not be overly aggressive towards groups that are persistently high technology.

[00:36:00] Mm-hmm. We have to find a way for those groups to work with each other because that’s all that matters in the, in the future, the age of AI and the age of space travel. We simply do not need to lower ourselves to the savages, right? If the communists captured the savages and made them impotent, we don’t need them anymore.

We can replace them. That’s what AI gives us the tools to do. And people are like, “Well, AI has a leftist bias.” Completely irrelevant if you use the right prompts, right? Like, if, if you... That’s one of the things with RFAB. You could even create just a regular AI engine that has a prompt reminding it to not be woke, and it won’t be woke, right?

Like, it’s very easy to do. So what,

Simone Collins: what people would push back and say is you can’t change the fact that the training data available to do that. Yes, you

Malcolm Collins: can. You literally can. This is so annoying and so stupid. It does not matter that an AI has a leftist bias if you are engaging with the AI without any prompting that is negating the leftist bias.

If you-

Simone Collins: But wait, Malcolm, when literally people are choosing not to [00:37:00] publish peer-reviewed research that confirms many conservative stances, for example, and then disproportionately you see a lot of peer-reviewed research that is published that confirms more left-leaning stances, even if you’re prompting AI to answer a certain way, you can’t change the fact that the available information- That’s factually wrong,

Malcolm Collins: Simone.

That’s factually wrong, and this is what it means to me. Okay, explain that to me. And it, and it actually, like, these people who are saying this stuff are deep enemies of the conservative movement because they are trying to psyops the conservative movement into a learned helplessness. Hmm. The reality is, is that if you put prompts into an AI telling it to take on a conservative persona or a persona of X religious background or a persona of a person with Y beliefs that are like the beliefs of the host of the show Base Camp or something like that- Mm-hmm

after going through what those beliefs were, it will, with a high degree of veracity, follow that prompting structure. The fact that you can’t get an AI that you have not prompted to a- [00:38:00] It’s, this is basically what it’s like. It’s like me going to an image generation AI, and a person says to me, they go, “Malcolm, image generation AIs weren’t all trained on anime.

And so if you just ask it to make art, it almost never makes anime art.” And I’m like, “All of mine on RFAB always create anime art.” And they go, “Huh, how do you get it to do that?” And I go, “Because it silently puts the words anime style before every request, you tard.” Sorry, like, this actually gets me because it is such a stupid level of learned helplessness that it fires me up.

Speaker 2: It’s like somebody comes to me and they go, “We need to ban chainsaws.” And I go, “Why?” And then they show me this stump where their arm used to be, and they go, “’Cause it can cut off your arm.” And I’m like, “Oh my God, did the chainsaw do that on its own?” And they’re like, “No, I put my arm on a tree stump, and then I chainsawed it off.”

It’s like, “So you did it.” It’s like when people are like, “Oh look, I got the AI to do a terrible thing.” And it’s like, “How did you do it?” [00:39:00] And it’s like, “Well, I told it to do a terrible thing.” And it’s like, it’s just trying to do what you told it to. If you prompt an AI to do something without any direction not to do it in a certain way, when you know it has a proclivity to do things in that way, then of course it’s going to act in that way.

We all know this. We know how AI works. We know how token predictors work. You need to provide a prompt that prevents it from acting this way

Speaker 5: It’s not that it’s impossible that the thing that they’re talking about could be a problem. If it was true that no matter what prompting you put in, or you could prove to me that no matter what prompting you put in, that you could not get a sane answer out of the AI, then I would say, oh, that’s very interesting and very concerning.

But the people who look into this, I have not seen any of them attempt to show me that yet. Instead, what they show me is without any prompting attempting to correct this, that AI does what we would predict it to do based on how much the left has controlled the training data and culture for so long, which isn’t [00:40:00] interesting to me.

And it can be used to get other people who otherwise would intelligently engage with AI and find ways around this to not engage with AI, which ends up nerfing our own side, which is why I crash out over this so hard. , And the thing that gets me angry the most is learned helplessness or encouraging learned helplessness.

, Simone would know this from our relationship. Like if you go and somebody says, I don’t know how to do something. And I’m like, well, did you try to figure it out? And they’re like, well, no. It’s like, well, then don’t come to me until you at least try first.

Malcolm Collins: It is irrelevant that this is in the training data of AI. AIs can easily get around their training data with prompting, and if you can’t get around it with the first layer of prompting, then you get around it with a second layer of prompting, or you can run a secondary AI that-

Simone Collins: I’m not talking about the training data.

I’m talking about also available information, like just what is out there

Malcolm Collins: And if we are able to deduce what is true from what is out there, AI can deduce what is true from what is [00:41:00] out there using the same internal heuristics that we use to determine what is true. If you read the book The Pragmatist’s Guide to Life we go over this in an extreme amount of detail.

How can you determine what is true when you are looking at evidence from a captured industry? So you can say something like, if a big oil company puts out a report about how bad oil is for the environment or something like that, you can be more sure that that’s true than if they put out a report saying oil isn’t bad for the environment.

If a global warming nonprofit or a major university institution puts out a paper saying, “Oh g- you know, global warming is happening faster than anyone expected,” right? You, you can say, “Okay, I can’t really trust that.” If they put out something that disconfirms their agenda... And there’s, like, 50 points we go through in our book that goes through various ways to tell, even when you’re dealing with captured institutions, when you’re dealing with information that is more likely to be true or [00:42:00] information that is less likely to be true.

You can then feed these heuristics into AI, and somebody could then say, “Well, what if it still gets it wrong on the first output?” It’s like, then you use a multilayered output. This is what... If you go to rfab.ai and then you go to our super search fa- feature, this is what we use. We do multilayered AI web searches using different mainstream models, where they basically go through and they have to confirm point by point what every one of the other models output.

And it is very good at removing both hallucinations and bias. I can further remove bias by putting in prompting to make it more explicitly conservative if I wanted to. But what I’ve noticed is that the vast majority of time, when I have heard conservatives complain about bias in AI, they’re just being stupid.

They are crashing out about something where the AI is right and they simply were unaware. In fact, I will go further. I will say around 75% of the times I get a comment in show notes saying, “Malcolm, you have made a mistake [00:43:00] by believing an AI hallucination,” and then I double-check it. It turns out the AI was right, and the person who said I believed an AI hallucination was wrong.

Your average human is worse at determining AI hallucinations than AI is. Great example. Somebody was like, “Oh, Austria was never split into two countries like Germany during the Cold War. That’s an AI hallucination.” I go and check, and no, it absolutely was. It, it would’ve been very easy. There, there was God, a great example recently where I was just like, oh my God somebody said something with an AI hallucination, and I go check, and I’m like...

Do you remember what it was, Simone?

Simone Collins: This has happened so many times. I, I don’t have a specific instance in mind. Okay. So you

Malcolm Collins: know that, like, it happens all the time with us. Somebody will, like, accuse us of an AI hallucination, and it turns out the AI is right again. Yeah, and

Simone Collins: I’ll look it up. Or, well, it’s also just other stuff.

They’re like, “Did you know this?” And then I’ll look it up, and it’s not quite true. But then, you know, we have a lot of, a lot of other people who give us really good feedback, so you know. It’s whatever. Yeah. It’s

Malcolm Collins: not that I’ve never fallen for an AI hallucination in the show. It’s just that the majority of the time I get called out for it, it wasn’t- Well, I think also

Simone Collins: more importantly, you literally build tools like [00:44:00] Supersearch or rfab.ai- Oh, oh, sorry.

I remember this one. Yeah ... to, like, overcome them because you- Yeah ... you do care about avoiding hallucinations. That is

Malcolm Collins: really funny. Somebody stopped using our products with their kid ‘cause they were using the Whizzling system that like- Oh ... you know, embodies. And this was because the kid asked them about, like, w- when the, when Jewish slaves built the pyramids.

And then it replied saying, “Biblically accurately, Jewish slaves did not build the pyramids. They built supply depots outside of,” I think, “Memphis.” And that you, you have a cartoonish vision of Christian history that you learn. And, and, Well, they didn’t insult the kid, but they just tried to gently explain that that isn’t what the Bible says.

And the parent crashed out. A ca- parent, by the way, who had an Oxford degree in theology. So okay. But a lot of people are just very confident about things, and then they get mad when the E- when the AI doesn’t affirm their confidence, right? But to continue here do you... Well, we could go into Yuri Bezmenov, which people often like to talk to on this subject.[00:45:00]

Simone Collins: We could. I just wanna say that one thing that really is hitting me with all this, going back to the commies winning, is that when I was in school and also just generally growing up, this idea of the Red Scare and of people blacklisting people who are suspected to have communist sympathies was framed as both just super overwrought and pointless and also misguided.

Like, oh, these people weren’t actually communists and these people weren’t actually, Oh, it’s come out that most

Malcolm Collins: of the major figures who, like, we were taught in school were unfairly judged actually were communist agents for Russia. Actually were.

Simone Collins: Okay. So yeah, I was wondering if that was the case.

And also now it just hits me that, like, we, we actually have not done that enough. There, there wasn’t enough of a Red Scare. Or we kind of stopped and were like, “Oh, I guess we won the Cold War. The communist threat is over.” And then it just... It all... Like, who knew? Who knew that... And, and, like, my view has totally changed on that because I really [00:46:00] grew up thinking like, oh, a bunch of people went on this witch hunt, and they did all this sanctimonious like, “Oh, he’s a commie,” when he wasn’t.

And, and yet, like, here’s this hit list of things they wanted to do and all of the, like... Well, p- certainly not all the boxes, I’m sure. There must be some things that weren’t achieved. But everything you read off, box ticked. You know? Mission accomplished. So- Yeah, it’s, it’s just, it’s kind of mind-blowing to me that this witch hunt that I’ve been told about all my life tur- well, one, the witches were real.

Yeah. Two, we didn’t hunt them hard enough, and three, the witches won. We should- And we all live in their twisted witch world ... if America was

Malcolm Collins: a healthy country, we should be treating anyone with any communist connection the same way we treat people with Nazi connections. They, the communists killed more people than the Nazis did.

They are, throughout history, a more evil political faction than the Nazis ever were in terms of the, the brutality of the things that they did. And I’m, and like, by the way, I, that’s saying a lot to say [00:47:00] this, but like, if for example you compare the concentration camps that the Nazis had which I have read about the, the worst descriptions of them they simply do not compare in terms of cruelty to the concentration camps of the Khmer Rouge.

Like, the Khmer Rouge concentration camps, Simone, you wanna cover your ears for this. Oh my God. Just cover your ears. Take out your thing.

Simone Collins: La, la, la, la, la,

Malcolm Collins: la. They would- La, la, la ... when you go into the camps ... la, la, la, la ... they would have rotting babies they had cut out of pregnant women- La, la, la, la

hanging from umbilical cords on the entranceway. La, la, la, la. They would take children- La, la, la, la, la ... and bury them in anthills up to their face- La, la, la, la ... and let the ants slowly sting and kill them.

Octavian Collins: La, la, la, la, la,

Malcolm Collins: la. They would have children- La, la, la, la ... brutally kill their own parents. La, la, la, la.

La, la, la, la. They like... Okay, you can come back. Now I can’t

Octavian Collins: re-watch this episode. They, they wouldn’t- So much for that ...

Malcolm Collins: because unlike the Nazis who, you know when they would kill people, they’d use gas and stuff like this, the Khmer Rouge would [00:48:00] just because they didn’t wanna waste the, the, the money of bullets in the killing fields just bring them out and beat them to death.

You know, so that’s why the Khmer Rouge- But that costs

Simone Collins: money and calories.

Malcolm Collins: They didn’t care about that. So I wanna give you an idea of like, and note here, here we’re not even talking about, like, other things. You’re like, “Well, that’s just the K- well, what did the, the, the Russians do?” They did things like left people on islands to starve to death and all kill each other slowly.

Hmm. Like again, I am not underselling the genuine horror of what the Nazis did. They did some of the most horrifying acts in history. It’s just, like, when you compare like to like, communists are generally worst. The, the, the worst. And, and they did, like, okay, sorry, I should go... They experimented on children, Nazi did.

They mass killed people in really painful ways. They killed children. Like, all the horrible things they did. It’s just maybe they weren’t as creative as the Khmer Rouge were in instances. But yeah. [00:49:00] Horrifying. But let’s go to Yuri Bezmenov here. But the reason I’m saying this is we need to treat these two the same way.

Anyone who has ever affiliated themselves with a communist organization should be absolutely the same way, like, not necessarily removed from society, but the same way that, like, you can’t get a job if you were affiliated with a Nazi organization, or you’d be hounded out of politics, or you’d be... We need to, whenever they’re like, “Oh, a Nazi came to one of your events,” you’re like, “Did a communist come to one of your events?

Have you checked for that?” Because we’ve got to be realistic about this. We’ve got to keep a clear eye at history and how evil these groups are, and their end goals. You can see here that when they say they care about things like native groups, th- they explicitly had it in their planning to remove colonialist powers from native regions before those regions had the ability to self-govern, because they wanted to cause suffering on those groups so they could take over.

And we saw this. We could go into, like, what happened with India and Churchill trying to [00:50:00] prevent them from pulling out fast enough, and it ended up causing one of the most li- like, India and Pakistan going to war with each other when that absolutely didn’t need to happen if they had just waited and carried out the plan that Churchill was trying to carry out.

But that’s a whole other thing we’re not gonna go into. But to continue here Yuri Bezmenov is a former communist. He’s the one from leaflet song about college where she’s saying- Yeah, that’s all I

Simone Collins: know of Yuri Bezmenov was he was right, per leaflet. That’s like

Malcolm Collins: where, where it, and it starts from.

So he said the plan for the Russian communists was demoralization, 15 to 20 years. Focus on the school and education system. Corrupt the education system, media, art, and religion to erode moral values, patriotism, critical thinking, and cultural identity. To parp- pump Marxist-Leninist ideology into students via teachers, textbooks, and university.

Promote relativism, destroy traditional standards, make people unable to access true information, even when presented with facts. He explicitly mentioned that by the 1980s this had already affected generations of American students. Destabilization, two to five years. The [00:51:00] economy, foreign relations, defense, and social fabric.

Create chaos and division. Then crisis, up to six weeks, i.e. COVID. Precipitate a major upheaval where people demand radical change. And then normalization. The new subverted system becomes accepted as normal, often with force to stabilize it under the new ideology. Useful idiots, leftists, activists, academics, et cetera, from earliest stages are no longer needed and now may need to be eliminated, as we saw in the Islamist revolution in Iran.

So communists won, and now we need to fight back. But we’re winning against them right now because it turns out that when they have power Having gamed it through all of these systems, the one thing they didn’t think about is how are we gonna still win the war of art when we’ve made all of our games actively unfun and ugly?

How are we gonna actively win media if we’ve made everything unfun and ugly? When people can no longer trust education, how does controlling these organizations have any institutional power, right? Mm. When somebody, the AI guy was like, “Well, you can’t trust edu- [00:52:00] educational institutions to do good science.”

When I’m getting my science, I don’t often get it from educational institutions. I’m, like, going through independent Substacks these days and stuff like that because everybody knows that’s where the best research is done, right? Like, we’ve pointed this out. Everyone I know who’s, like, an independent, like, really good researcher in, in, in fields though, nobody goes to the academics anymore as the first line of defense because it’s just not where the cutting edge research is.

You wanna go cutting edge sexuality research, you’re going Aella. You wanna go cutting edge genetics research, you’re going Emil Kirkegaard or Razib Khan, right? Like, you simply aren’t going to the academics anymore because they’re not any good anymore, right? They lost the... You know, obviously the sheep still follow them.

The sheep still repeat, but you don’t need to. And people can be like, “Well, how do you get an AI to not listen to the sheep?” You tell it not to. I do not... It’s, it’s like not trying step one of fixing the problem and then getting mad at the thing, right? Like, going into an AI that you know has a bias and not putting in a prompt to correct for that bias, and then getting mad at [00:53:00] the AI is like the image of the guy sticking the stick in the spokes of the bicycle, and then the bicycle falls over, and then he says, “Bicycle, how could you fall over?”

Wow. You know what I should do? I’m gonna do this on the website. Okay. Next feature I’m gonna make is gonna be based AI.

So I’m gonna have a number of ways that correct for bias in AI and then create normal AI interactions with top of line models outside of any of the mainstream ecosystems. Maybe even have it run by default in alloy mode which will be different from, like, a generic companion or narrative engine or something like that.

That’s what I’m gonna do. I’m gonna fix this for you guys who can’t figure out how to fix it on your own so that we don’t have this problem anymore and you can just come to rfab.ai and get your based AI takes.

Simone Collins: Works for me. I love you, Malcolm. This scares me, but, I mean, we already knew things were bad.

We just didn’t know it [00:54:00] was also part of a communist plan. So, okay. Fine. Okay. Okay.

Malcolm Collins: All right. Love you, Simone. Have a good one. You too. Bye, gorgeous.

Simone Collins: Can’t wait.

Malcolm Collins: All right. And dinner tonight, what is the story?

Simone Collins: So it looks like my dad’s just gonna stay at the hospital, so... A- and I think Minka will be there too. She’s gonna bring him our, the, the Thai curry I made. So I can make you Thai curry with more curry paste. Or we can do hot dog and french fry night like we’d planned.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, we do have to eat the french fries the hot dogs at some point. Let’s just do hot dogs and french fries. Okay. Are we doing it with potatoes, or are they, like, pre-made french fries?

Octavian Collins: They’re pre-made french fries that I’m gonna add,

Simone Collins: Some additional... Well,

Malcolm Collins: we’ll see if we can make them good. That would be an interesting experiment.

Simone Collins: Yeah. So- I mean, add a [00:55:00] little bit of MSG to it ... chop up some

Malcolm Collins: onion or some what do we have for- Oh, for

Simone Collins: the hot dog. I have I saved the shallot that you bought,

Malcolm Collins: so. Yeah, so a shallot would be nice. Yeah. Okay. And you have

Simone Collins: all the sauces. A billion sauces, so.

Malcolm Collins: So that’s, you know. All right.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm. I think you’ll be just fine, sir.

All right,

Malcolm Collins: let’s see here.

Speaker 3: I just wanna run inside and take a nap. Oh my God. What do you see? I don’t know.

The internet has fundamentally changed — and almost no one has noticed. In this episode of Based Camp, Malcolm and Simone Collins break down how the explosion of global internet users (especially from India, Pakistan, Indonesia, Brazil, Bangladesh, Nigeria, and other developing nations) has dramatically reshaped online discourse on both the left and the right.

They explore:

* Why environmentalism, anti-Black racism, and anti-Hispanic racism faded from leftist priorities while Gaza, Pakistan, Jews, and “Hindu Indians” suddenly dominate

* Audience capture, botting, and engagement farming

* Why certain right-wing creators (Tucker Carlson, Nick Fuentes, Andrew Tate) shifted toward international/Islamic audiences

* The hidden influence of third-world users on Western political conversation

* Christian-majority vs. non-Western audience patterns

* And why the “online right” often feels disconnected from actual American conservatives

A paradigm-shifting look at how the internet is no longer majority American — and what that means for culture, politics, and influence.

Show Notes

* In terms of sheer internet users (using broadband and mobile internet subscriptions as a proxy), there is only one Western nation—the USA—represented in the top ten countries represented

* (top representation = China, India, theU SA, Indonesia, Brasil, Russia, Japan, the Philippines, Bangladesh, and Pakistan).

* Contrast this to 2008, when the top users of the internet were:

* China (but doesn’t count, due to the great firewall of China)

* And then the USA, Japan, Germany, the UK, France, and Brazil

* In terms of broadband: Leading countries by total subscribers or penetration included the US, China, Japan, South Korea, Germany, France, UK, and Canada.

* So functionally: Mostly Western nations were represented online

Could this be why the left shifted from discourse about LGBT and climate change to discourse about Palestine?

Internet + Broadband Subscriptions: Then and Now

Internet/Broadband Subscriptions in 2008

Leading countries by total subscribers or penetration included the US, China, Japan, South Korea, Germany, France, UK, and Canada.

Mobile + Broadband:

* China: ~253 million (June/July 2008; some estimates ~180–220 million by end-2008). China surpassed the US mid-year.

* United States: ~220–230 million (active/home users ~150 million in early 2008 per Nielsen).

* Japan: ~80–90+ million (active home users ~47–48 million in early 2008).

* Germany: ~40–50+ million (active home ~35 million).

* UK, France, Brazil, etc.: Lower but still in the top tier (e.g., UK/France ~25 million active home users; Brazil growing rapidly).

Internet/Broadband Subscriptions Today

Dominated by:

* China

* India

* USA

* Indonesia

* Brazil

* Russia

* Japan

* The Philippines

* Bangladesh

* Pakistan

The USA is the only “western” country represented on the top ten list.

Pulling from Wikipedia’s list of sovereign states by number of broadband Internet subscriptions, I combined mobile + broadband internet subscriptions to create a ranked list:

* China - 1852637000

* India - 1200170910

* United States - 505719000

* Indonesia - 464967914

* Brazil - 265158564

* Russian Federation - 258214661

* Japan - 210519139

* Philippines - 176599291

* Bangladesh - 152409669

* Pakistan - 146355310

* Nigeria - 144994174

* Germany - 139217000

* Mexico - 131458662

* Vietnam - 131286117

* Thailand - 129738000

* Egypt - 108181505

* United Kingdom - 105189476

* Italy - 100457919

* France - 97446000

* Iran - 97164277

* South Africa - 93576635

* Turkey - 89725075

* South Korea - 84854606

* Argentina - 69767601

* Colombia - 68540947

* Spain - 66958543

* Ethiopia - 63197120

* Ukraine - 60954476

* Poland - 56881929

* Algeria - 53040296

* Myanmar - 48356160

* Canada - 45381104

* Morocco - 45294933

* Malaysia - 45026300

* Kenya - 43103412

* Saudi Arabia - 42709657

* Tanzania - 41802027

* Peru - 41225603

* Ghana - 36808571

* Nepal - 36096396

* Australia - 35476000

* Democratic Republic of the Congo - 35271156

* Taiwan - 34490976

* Iraq - 33335316

* Côte d’Ivoire - 31890058

* Sri Lanka - 29419587

* Kazakhstan - 29046500

* Sudan - 28675221

* Netherlands - 27742800

* Uzbekistan - 27585670

* Romania - 27330000

* Venezuela - 27103805

* Chile - 26072126

* Uganda - 25094643

* Afghanistan - 23946523

* Hong Kong - 20986099

* Guatemala - 19986482

* United Arab Emirates - 19826224

* Cameroon - 19748144

* Cambodia - 18702623

* Burkina Faso - 17960442

* Austria - 17435540

* Syrian Arab Republic - 16804909

* Greece - 16715369

* Belgium - 16340062

* Sweden - 16171593

* Senegal - 15870161

* Czech Republic - 15695534

* Ecuador - 15565345

* Portugal - 15338153

* Switzerland - 15142000

* Tunisia - 15135865

* Hungary - 14987525

* Belarus - 14578427

* Zimbabwe - 14279414

* Zambia - 13474451

* Angola - 13420871

* Israel - 12882000

* Azerbaijan - 11932214

* Mozambique - 11917159

* Bolivia - 11321904

* El Salvador - 10424913

* Bulgaria - 10297690

* Serbia - 10101873

* Singapore - 9933200

* Costa Rica - 9584401

* Dominican Republic - 9555585

* Denmark - 9453730

* Finland - 9017200

* Rwanda - 8840997

* Benin - 8801877

* Niger - 8787534

* Madagascar - 8755561

* Slovakia - 8522504

* Honduras - 8466489

* Nicaragua - 8390000

* New Zealand - 7982000

* Norway - 7855360

* Malawi - 7781723

Follower Composition of Major Influencers

Nick Fuentes - America First?

* The Network Contagion Research Institute reported (in December 2025) that ~50% of retweets on Nick Fuentes most viral posts originated from foreign accounts before Kirk’s death.

* These were heavily concentrated in countries like India, Pakistan, Nigeria, Malaysia, and Indonesia (with additional shares from the UK and Canada among foreign sources). Non-Western countries made up the majority of the foreign retweets.

* The NY Post reported that the pattern matched known engagement farm/bot activity (rapid, coordinated retweets shortly after posting, often from anonymous/single-purpose accounts), with no clear organic tie to Fuentes’ “America First” content in those regions.

Tucker Carlson - Pakistani Icon?

Tucker Carlson’s popularity among a Pakistani audience surged due to his outspoken criticism of liberal Western culture, his advocacy for Palestinian rights, and a viral 2025 interview where he stated he had more in common with a “sincerely religious Pakistani cab driver” than with secular, liberal Western elites

That said, Tucker Carlson Network (TCN) website traffic (as of early 2025 data) indicates:

* ~82% from the United States

* ~2.6% from Australia

* ~2.05% UK

* ~1.98 Canada

* ~1.67 Russia

* No notable Pakistan or South Asian spike in the available breakdown.

On YouTube and X, independent estimates show moderate U.S.-heavy performance, with some international growth noted in the Middle East/Gulf due to his anti-war/anti-interventionist takes (e.g., on Iran), but nothing indicating dominance by Pakistan or similar countries.

Some X posts and memes joke about his audience shifting to “Pakistan, Iran, Russia” amid his criticism of U.S. foreign policy (especially on Iran). These are often mocking, not serious analysis (e.g., claims of “closeted gay Muslims in Pakistan” as his base or similar). Pakistani users sometimes push back, noting low actual awareness of him domestically

Andrew Tate: Indian Hustler?

* Google search interest and anecdotal reporting (+ reporting form the Guardian) indicate higher per-capita interest in Muslim-majority countries (e.g., parts of the Middle East, Pakistan, Indonesia, Malaysia) than in the UK/US.

* Popularity also noted in India, Brazil, and other Global South areas

* Tate’s 2022 conversion to Islam boosted this

* Much of Tate’s international reach comes from short-form content amplified by algorithms and affiliate promoters in places like India/Pakistan/Bangladesh

* Audience composition often highlights young men from ethnic minority backgrounds in the West or aspiring youth in developing countries drawn to his “self-made” wealth, discipline, and anti-”matrix” messaging.

Hustler University

* Articles note it helps young Indians navigate industry/job challenges; Indian students comment on applicability (e.g., freelancing); LinkedIn profiles and reviews show Indian participants. Affiliate promotion and clip-sharing by creators in India contribute to virality

Are Shifting Internet Audiences Changing the Discourse?

From a Based Camp listener: “A lot of their viewerbase are muslims, they don’t care about climate change. That is also why Tucker changed his content. American politics is now no longer only consumed by Americans. People from other countries also have strong opinions on US politics.”

To be fair, I checked Google Trends and Palestine has always (as long as they’ve been measuring search volume) been searched more than LGBTQ community stuff and climate change as a topic.

Why islamists and modern progressives are so compatible

The apparent alignment between Islamists (those advocating political Islam, often with Sharia-oriented goals) and progressives (or segments of the radical left) is a tactical “Red-Green alliance” driven primarily by shared enemies rather than shared values.

This is not a new alliance.

* This phenomenon, sometimes called “Islamo-leftism,” has historical roots (e.g., Western leftists supporting Iran’s 1979 Revolution before many were purged) and has intensified in recent years, especially post-9/11, during anti-Iraq War protests, and after October 7, 2023 (The Free Press writes about it)

Core Reasons for the Alignment

* Common adversaries: Both groups frequently oppose Western liberalism, capitalism, U.S. foreign policy, and Israel (viewed as a symbol of “imperialism” or colonialism). Progressives frame this through lenses of anti-racism, decolonization, and social justice; Islamists see it as a civilizational/religious struggle. This creates convergence on issues like Palestine, anti-Zionism (often overlapping with antisemitism critiques), and resistance to “Western hegemony.”

* Identity politics and “oppressor vs. oppressed” framing: Many on the progressive left apply a hierarchy where Muslims (as a minority in the West or in conflict zones) are positioned as victims of colonialism/racism/Islamophobia. This leads to alliances via intersectionality, even when Islamist views on gender, sexuality, or secularism clash sharply with progressive ones. Islamists leverage this for legitimacy, funding, and platforms in Western institutions.

* Anti-imperialism as a bridge: Historical leftist support for Third World revolutions extends to viewing Islamist resistance (e.g., Hamas, Hezbollah) as part of global anti-Western struggle. Shared tactics include protests, framing dissent as justice, and using media/activism to delegitimize opponents.

* Pragmatic coalition-building: In the West, left-leaning parties see Muslim immigrant communities as electoral bases and prioritize anti-discrimination solidarity over cultural clashes. Islamists gain influence by adopting progressive rhetoric on equity while advancing their agenda.

Places where there’s tension but possibly even deeper alliance

* Progressives typically champion secularism, LGBTQ+ rights, feminism, and individual autonomy.

* Traditional Islamism emphasizes theocratic governance, strict moral codes (e.g., on homosexuality, apostasy, gender roles), and religious authority—views that conflict with core progressive tenets

* Ironically, many conservatives (certainly us) see the modern left as being all about theocratic governance, strict moral codes, etc.

Episode Transcript

Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] Hello, Simone. I’m excited to be here with you today. Today I am genuinely excited, because this theory has completely changed the way I see our society today.

This is one of the big ones. And- It is so explanatory to me of so many things that I didn’t have a good explanation for. For example, why did the left so quickly and over the very explicit time period that we are looking at completely abandon environmentalism? Why did they abandon anti-Black racism as a cause?

Why did they abandon anti-American Hispanic racism as a cause? Why did they start focusing on Gaza and, and Pakistan and the problem of Jews all of a sudden? Why all of a sudden did they start complaining about Hindi Indians all of the time? Why all of a sudden... not that there aren’t legitimate grievances here but these are changes that we’ve seen in both the left and the right.

So we’re gonna [00:01:00] talk about, like, where these changes have happened in both the left and the right. And I’m not saying, again, I’m not saying that these grievances don’t have, like, a genuine reason for them, right? But when I hear about, for example regularly, like, women being dragged off the streets in parks and graped, okay?

And then I see Nick Fuentes crashing out about Indian tech workers I’m like, “Your hierarchy of racism seems off.” Not, I’m not saying that, like... Or like the, the, the three boys of a certain ethnicity, you know, recently beat to death a, a disabled kid.

What? It’s three Black kids, yeah. There was a w- white disabled kid that they mocked and beat to death.

There was the, I think it was like they got, like,

Yeah, so they live-streamed themselves beating him over the course of three days, it looks like, and they only got re-respectively, , three years in prison, seven years in prison, and eight years in prison. That’s it

But I was wrong. He [00:02:00] survived, and so that is why people say, “Oh, it’s okay they got these relatively light sentences.”

Malcolm Collins: There was a recent incident of the Black guy, like, murdering some Asian old guy in San Francisco, and they said that putting him in jail would be bad for him.

Like, it would be bad for him, like, mentally or something, and so he’s not. No, it’s, it’s, g- there’s, like, a lot- And he’s just not using that

Simone Collins: i- if I ever get in trouble as a defense. This, this would be, this would be bad for me. Yeah, this would be bad for my emotional health- The timing is, it’s- ... if I got raped

I’ve got a lot going on right now. Yeah. Not a good time.

Speaker: For context, he murdered an 85-year-old Vietnamese immigrant and he was only given five years in prison, after which he was released. First he was only sentenced to eight years in prison, then he was released after only five years because it was considered bad for his mental health.

Malcolm Collins: Well, there was the recent incident of the the Muslim guy who drove into a crowd. Ooh. And they said it was a mental health issue, even though he said he just wanted to kill them all.

Simone Collins: Well, [00:03:00] at least there’s, you know, a long documented body of, of comments and analysis online talking about how unhinged we are.

We basically have an get out of jail free card.

Malcolm Collins: Exactly. Well, not anymore. Not that many people talk about how unhinged we are. Now most people are like, “Oh, they, they’re crazy, but they make a lot of points, and they’re barely ruthless.” That was your thing on Christmas. But okay, theory. Theory. We’re gonna get to the theory.

Yeah. Then we’ll talk about us. So, this was in a recent episode where we were looking at the expansion of internet users. Ooh. And we were going over data on this, Simone and I. And what happened over the past 10 years or so- ... is that the internet went from being predominantly an American and minoritely a European platform, to today being a much, much more international platform.

Yes. Where- In terms

Simone Collins: of sheer internet users, like we’re talking broadband and mobile internet subscriptions, there’s only one Western nation, the [00:04:00] USA, represented in the top 10 countries that are out there. So the top are China, which of course doesn’t count ‘cause they’re sort of walled off, India, the USA, Indonesia, Brazil, Russia, Japan, the Philippines, Bangladesh, and Pakistan.

We are the only Western country there. Whereas contrast that with 2008, and the top 10 internet users were China, but still doesn’t count, and then the USA, Japan, Germany, the UK, France, and Brazil. This is a very different landscape. It was mostly Western countries. We didn’t think... I mean, like it makes sense.

I don’t think this would come as a surprise to anyone, but I, I... What I don’t think we’re really thinking about is how that has impacted the discourse online and our perception of what, like- Simone, can you send me- ... people’s normal views are ... that list

Malcolm Collins: of countries?

Simone Collins: But you can actually, even if you go all the way to like 34, you’re like, “Oh my God,” like in terms of internet and broadband users today.

Malcolm Collins: And so what you’re going to notice is essentially what has happened to the internet over the past 10 years, [00:05:00] without people grokking that the internet has fundamentally changed, is the internet has become a platform where the majority of consumers, not the majority of creators, have become uneducated third worlders.

Mm-hmm. Sorry, I didn’t- Well, well- Savage third worlders ... people

Simone Collins: from, people from developing countries in, in many cases who may have-

Okay, yes,

Malcolm Collins: developing countries, people from developing cou- the developmentally challenged ... up and

Simone Collins: come, up and comers, and so- ... rising

Malcolm Collins: stars

Speaker 2: I found some video footage here that depicts their daily life

in a way that I think really humanizes them

Speaker 3: Attacker!

Malcolm Collins: What this has done is a lot of online content creators who get shaped by their audience have begun to drift [00:06:00] towards causes that the developmentally challenged, we’ll call them- Oh my God.

Thank you so much ...

prefer and champion. This explains perfectly why the left gave up on environmentalism. Does your random

Malcolm Collins: care about environmentalism? Does your random person from Bangladesh care about environmentalism? No. Will they tune in if you go on a rant about how much you hate Jews and Israel?

Of course, they’re Muslim majority countries. And this is what we’re seeing throughout the internet is we have gotten waves and waves and waves of potentially high attention spam, and we can even see this provably. If you look at a channel like Nick Fuentes, there was this thing where it came out that he was being rapidly retweeted after his tweets at a rate that was higher than even Elon, and when it came out where these were based, they were mostly in Muslim [00:07:00] majority countries like- Yes, I

Simone Collins: can br- I can, for those who want receipts the Network Contagion Research Institute reported in December of last year, 2025, that around 50% of retweets on Nick Fuentes’ most viral posts were originated from foreign accounts, though that was from before Charlie Kirk’s death.

And they were heavily concentrated in countries like India, Pakistan, Nigeria, Malaysia, and Indonesia, though there were some additional shares from the UK and Canada among foreign sources. It’s just- All of which- ... the important thing is that the majority were non-Western countries. And then additionally, the New York Post reported that the pattern matched known engagement farm bot activity, so it’s not just, like, natural interest in those- But, but hold on

non-Western countries. No, the point

Malcolm Collins: I’m making here- Yeah ... isn’t the point you’re making. I’m saying they might be wrong in this, okay? It might be genuine engagement from these countries. Every one of- Yeah ... the countries you mentioned has a large Muslim [00:08:00] population. The point I’m making is that across the internet, in both the left and the right, we have allowed ourselves to be heavily influenced by Muslim third worlders, basically.

And it’s caused a dramatic shift in the causes that the left claims to care about and the causes that the right cares about, and this shift has been exaggerated by a secondary issue which is something that we’ve been exploring in recent videos. But I have been digging deeper on, and it’s been completely changing my perspective of the right and the internet Which is the amount of large mainstream right-wing creators that are incredibly heavily botted and rely on incredibly heavy inauthentic viewer waves.

And as a result of this, people misunderstand two things. One is, who actually are the most influential [00:09:00] influencers in various intellectual spaces because they accidentally key to the bot farmed ones, not realizing that they don’t actually have that big of an authentic audience. And two, the people who are heavily botting because their proportional audience is so low, and if you are botting authentic, e- educated, you know, people from the United States are going to be less likely to go all the way through your streams.

The people who are actually still staying are more likely to be from these developing countries. And keep in mind, like, when we talk about the blatant developing country stuff, we’re not even talking about the ones who are using VPNs and stuff like that. Like, I bet the vast, vast majority of them are at this point, especially after the Twitter leak happened and it basically came out that a bunch of these people were just LARPing as conservatives and progressives and were actually all .

Malcolm Collins: I’m just gonna call them

Malcolm Collins: even though a lot of them are from India or from- Was it... Hold

Simone Collins: on ... Virginia. I have this vague memory of that word, that term being used in the movie Bend It Like Beckham, [00:10:00] and it was, like, seen as a major slur. Are we, is this part of the basement-

Simone Collins: a slur? If I’m remembering Bend It Like Beckham correctly, yes.

It was, it was yelled at her, muttered at her on the soccer field. It was deeply insulting and hurtful. Pakistanis. Okay. Yes. Thank you. Thank, thank, thank you. I mean, I was confused by it in the movie because I was like, it’s, it’s a reference to a, a shortening of your country name. You know, if someone called me a Yank I wouldn’t be- Yeah,

Malcolm Collins: it’s like Yank or something like that, right?

Like- But then keep in

Simone Collins: mind that, that... Oh, I the term Jap also was a slur. So- Oh, true ... I remember also, like, the shock I heard when I went to GWU in DC for my undergrad, George Washington University, and everyone kept talk- “Oh, she’s such a Jap. She’s such a Jap.” And I’m like like, “What’s... One, where are all the Japanese students, ‘cause I don’t see them?”[00:11:00]

Two, oh my God. But it turns out that they had never heard the term Jap because they were referring to Jewish American Princess, and there were a lot of very affluent Jewish students at my s- at my school. We

Malcolm Collins: gotta worry

Simone Collins: about those

Malcolm Collins: Japs taking over the, the- I mean, ... finance industry ...

Simone Collins: sl- slurs, slurs really confuse me.

I don’t know when I’m supposed to feel shocked and alarmed. There, there are, you know, sometimes multiple uses, so I’m just saying. I mean, it’s not a very biting slur if it is a slur. I, mm, I mean- I know, and neither is yank, and I don’t know. I mean, but like I think in the end, the problem with slurs is when they’re, when they’re said with, with anger and hate in one’s heart then suddenly they become bad and full of baggage, and then you can’t use them anymore.

Well, I

Malcolm Collins: should be clear. I mean this derogatorily. So I won’t use the term anymore. I will just call them Pakistanis. Ugh. For... And note, here, I’m not talking about everyone from Pakistan. Surely there are some intelligent people of [00:12:00] Pakistani heri- heritage. And I, and I say to you- Is this... What is happening here?

And I say to you people, I like you even though you’re Pakistani.

Simone Collins: Guys, don’t listen. Don’t... He’s... I don’t know what he’s doing. I don’t know what he’s doing right now. I don’t know, I don’t know what he’s do- do- I- I’m being

Malcolm Collins: provocative Don’t look at, don’t get mad

Simone Collins: at me. I told him my little public service announcement that I learned from Bend It Like Beckham, the girls movie that was like The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants before The Sisterhood of Traveling Pants.

I’m doing the whole the more you know rainbow, and he’s just not listening to me, so don’t come for me.

Malcolm Collins: Anyway, I’m glad I have you here. Sorry. Like with our kids- I’m sorry for derailing ... when a kid comes up with a little bird that’s a robin, and it’s an all red bird, and it has a little black patch around the eyes, and she goes, “What are you gonna name him?”

And he goes, “Blackface.”

Simone Collins: Well, and that was after, yes, he wanted to name his cardinal plushie Blackface. This was after he wanted to name one, [00:13:00] one of his, one of his baby chicks Whitey. So, Okay ... great. Th- th- Whitey, yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Th- th- he’s gonna get, he’s gonna get jumped if he goes into the wrong part of town.

He’s really- Whitey here, the little chick ...

Simone Collins: yeah, I

Malcolm Collins: I- Okay ... I

Simone Collins: don’t know what to do. I don’t

Malcolm Collins: know what to do. But where I was going with this- Yeah, sorry ...

is that what a lot of people, if you, if you have an audience that is primarily astroturfed you are going to be more influenced by the develop- the developmentally challenged overly because they will watch more of your videos than people from first world countries who are educated.

And, and as, as McGold said, as McGold said, like, “I don’t care.” He got kicked off of Twitch for this. What some, you know, like goat farmer in whatever cares about his, naming some third world country. And he got kicked off, but he’s like, “But you don’t care either.” Everybody knows we don’t care what these people think.

But the problem is is when you can’t tell these people. So I’ll give a good example of somebody who I think is heavily influenced by this. [00:14:00] Did you hear about the Tucker Carlson leak in terms of his actual paid subscriber numbers?

Simone Collins: Tell me, because I had seen allusions to, like, Tucker Carlson, Pakistani icon, and then when I actually tried to look up stuff, I wasn’t really-

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, so the core, like, that could explain this with Tucker Carlson is can you guess how many paid subscribers Tucker Carlson has?

Mr. Millions of Views on everything that he puts out.

Simone Collins: I, I think I looked it up and, and it was around, like, 7,000, but that there’s nothing public about the composition of that subscriber base.

Malcolm Collins: Okay, 7,000 is astonishingly low for someone of his view count. It came out because he did a very bad job of securing his, his database and so you could just tell how many- Oh

Bars were in it, basically. Did you... Was his,

Simone Collins: like, email password TuckerCarlson6969 or something?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, he has a user base of 7,000 paid members. That means that his [00:15:00] actual, like, real-world watchers might be astonishingly small at this point. And I’ve noted this with other people. One of the groups that I’ve noticed seem to be, like, the highest bodied of communities is anybody who used to be famous in the conservative space- Mm

um, and then sort of dropped off in terms of you hear anybody talk about them with respect anymore. The, Tucker Carlson falls squarely in that. Like, I used to love Tucker Carlson. My little brother used to love Tucker Carlson. Like, everyone I know in my space, whenever Tucker Carlson would do a video, we’d all, like, talk about it.

Like, it was like, “Oh, God, it’s the new Tucker Carlson video,” right? Like, he h- was known as having, like, really intellectually deep and provocative takes. And- Yeah, that’s fair. That, that tracks with my experience, too and then, like, nobody talks ab- like, o- other than can you believe this crazy thing Tucker Carlson said I haven’t heard that much about him, and I think it might be because he allowed his numbers...

And keep in mind, I’m not talking about botting as a negative thing, right? Like, for some industries in some [00:16:00] platforms, you near have to bot. Mm-hmm. Like, on Twitch, for example, I hear, like if you- Yeah, you,

Simone Collins: you will not be discovered if you don’t bot on Twitch. Yes, that is correct.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, you basically have to bot on Twitch, Yeah

from what I’ve heard. The only thing- Unless you’re

Simone Collins: super famous from other platforms and literally you’re just sending all your audiences there, which is like- Or you

Malcolm Collins: built yourself up over absolutely ages and you’re stubborn, like Leaflet. Yeah, yeah. But you know, once you establish a norm around botting, if Twitch doesn’t stop it, then if you wanna be discovered, then you have to do it, too, right?

And there becomes a whole ecosystem around this. So I’m not saying, like I’m not dispersing aspersions on their moral character by saying... But what I am saying is it does mean that third-worlders have more of an influence on them.

Simone Collins: So, Well, and it seems that Tucker Carlson has been doing more to try to pander to Russian and Pakistani audiences.

Like, in 2025 he did this viral interview where he stated that he had more in common with a sincerely religious Pakistani cab driver than with a secular [00:17:00] liberal Western elite, and this caused this surge of popularity among a Pakistani audience. Not just due to that, but also due to his, his criticism of liberal Western culture in general.

But here’s where I see some tension, because apparently if you look at website traffic at least as of early 2025 on the Tucker Carlson net- web- Network website, 82% of the traffic is from the US. Yeah,

Malcolm Collins: that’s actually super suspicious.

Simone Collins: Really?

Malcolm Collins: So I’ll explain why. And that also makes me think the, the, like it leads to botting allegations and further.

So let’s go to our podcast, right? Okay. I am probably one of the most openly bigoted against non-American YouTubers I think that I’m aware of. Yeah. I, I, I- Yeah ... can’t think of another YouTuber who I watch who as regularly casts as- aspersions among non-American groups, whether that is Catholics or whether that is, The [00:18:00] French.

Simone Collins: Always the French.

Malcolm Collins: The French. The- And don’t forget the next

Simone Collins: episode we were hoping to outline was titled Don’t Trust the Irish. Oh, yeah,

Malcolm Collins: the Irish. I went on a long crash-out about the Irish recently. The Polish being corrupt. The you know, so I, I go off on other countries, right? Like, I’m explicitly anti-courting other countries.

Oh, my God, did you know that Shoe0nHead are our fourth most oversub- overlapped subscriber channel? Oh, that’s a good sign. That’s new. I didn’t... That’s, that wasn’t there before. Yeah, and it’s been going up. She’s up, she’s well above Leafly. So it goes Asthma Gold Timcast Lotus Eaters, Shoeonhead, Actual Justice Warrior, Trigonometry, Warren Smith, Timcast, Leafless in Asari, Tim Pool, Dad Saves America, Alexander Grace, Clownfish TV.

Now we have, h- higher to the left This implies

Simone Collins: we’re going more mainstream slash becoming more weird Yeah, so Dave LaChute

Malcolm Collins: and Metreon. Yeah, this is very mainstream. All of these people have like millions. Hmm. But hold on. I’m trying to find out where it shows me our geographic stats. Okay, so our channel- It’s in [00:19:00] order

our channel has, do you, can you guess what our American audience is?

Simone Collins: I think it was like 56%, something like that.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, it’s gone up a bit. Now it’s at 64%. Wow. So- Good for us ... so considering that, you have to ask yourself, how on earth is a podcast as one, American focused as ours, and two, as jingoistic as ours, okay coming so much lower than Tucker Carlson, which actively is constantly dick cucking Muslims?

That’s...

Simone Collins: Huh, okay.

Malcolm Collins: So- So I’ll explain to you how that could happen ... yes, arousing my

Simone Collins: suspicions. Very interesting. Hmm. I’ll explain

Malcolm Collins: to you how that could happen. Oh. ‘Cause there is a way that that could happen.

Simone Collins: Aside from botting, how? Hmm.

Malcolm Collins: Botting. He explicitly is paying his bots to go through American VPNs- Okay

or American accounts, so that’s why it would appear that much. The, the, basically no other believable explanation I can think of.

Simone Collins: Yeah, that’s entirely fair. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Hmm. Great. Yeah. [00:20:00] So, by the way, people, people are wondering, like, where we actually, let’s see where we actually get audience from

you, you wanna know our male to female? 90% male. Male’s like n-

Simone Collins: ninety, ninety, yeah, yeah. Great.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, so, we’re, United States, then Canada, then United Kingdom, then Australia, then... Ooh, good Australian audience. Then Germany, then Brazil, then Sweden. People pointed out that we’re actually, like, really disproportionately large in some of these countries.

Then Poland, then Netherlands, then India, then Finland, then Israel, then France, then Norway, then South Africa, then New Zealand, then Japan. By the way, note I’m going down this list so you guys can tell something about this list. Do you notice something about all of these countries so far?

Simone Collins: Yeah fair, fair point.

I see, I see what

Malcolm Collins: you’re

Simone Collins: doing.

Malcolm Collins: All of these countries so far, except for Israel,

Oh, and India, but that’s only zero point seven percent of our audience

Malcolm Collins: are Christian majority countries until Japan.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Then Mexico, then Russia, then the Philippines, then [00:21:00] Switzerland, then Romania, then Ireland, then Portugal, then Spain, then Chechnya, first non... And this is only 0.3% of our audience, non-Christian majority country.

Then Argentina, then Denmark, then Italy, then Austria, then Belgium, then Singapore. Next, I think they’re Christian, non-majority. Then Greece, then Hungary, then Vietnam, then Indonesia, then Thailand, then Malaysia, then Serbia, Bulgaria. So you see it’s sort of down at the end here. We’re 0.- And that’s interesting because that does not track

Simone Collins: with the, the current...

so I, I also looked, I pulled from Wikipedia a list of- ... sovereign states by number of broadband and internet subscriptions, and then I combined their column for mobile broadband, and then also, like, mobile like, for fixed and mobile. And the top ranked now are China, then India, then United States, Indonesia, Brazil, Russia, Japan, Philippines, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Nigeria, Germany, Mexico, Vietnam, Thailand, Egypt, United Kingdom, Italy, France, [00:22:00] Iran South Africa, Turkey, South Korea.

Like, so there, we really don’t... Our audience isn’t representative of- The world ... the world. It’s representative of Christian majority. Well, specifically of internet users of the world. It’s representative of a specific memetic set.

Malcolm Collins: Mm. But I’d go further. It’s representative of, so to go over it just, like, let’s go over the top countries on this list again.

Y- unusually highly educated countries, okay? Mm-hmm. So if you go over the top on our list, United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Australia, Germany, Brazil, Sweden, Poland, Netherlands. And, and note here, Brazil’s really high on the list. We wanna talk about Brazil ‘cause we have a big audience in Brazil and we work a lot with Brazilians.

Like, that’s Bruno who does RFab is, is Brazilian. Brazil is kind of messed up in these statistics, and we’re gonna do a totally another episode on it because Brazil has about half, if I remember the chart correctly, about half of the internet users, if you look at America as a portion of internet users, okay?

[00:23:00] Brazil represents about half of the internet users America does. Yes. Now, this is insane because Brazil is not half of America’s population. This- Does not

Simone Collins: make sense. Yeah, it’s there’s a separate graph that Not All Detox Tea on X sent to us that I also just re-sent to you on WhatsApp. Hey, thanks for this, by the way.

You inspired this episode. This graph shows you that. You can look at it visually, and hopefully you can put it up on the screen for people watching on YouTube. Oh, did you send it to me? I sent it to you on WhatsApp, yeah. And it shows two graphs, total Internet users 1997 to 2007, and then total Internet users 2018 to 2012.

Or sorry, probab- 2018, ‘12. Oh, so maybe July 1997 versus December 2018. I’m not sure. But anyway, we’re, like, around 1997 and we’re around 2018. The- Oh, actually,

Malcolm Collins: I’m surprised here

Simone Collins: What?

Malcolm Collins: Brazil doesn’t have as small a population as I thought.

Simone Collins: Brazil is a huge pop- I told you this before. You were like, “I’m [00:24:00] shocked.”

But most

Malcolm Collins: of it’s uninhabitable.

Simone Collins: Yes, but it has insanely densely populated urban areas. Brazil’s massive.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, so let’s see. What are they? They’re 64% of America’s population, which is about what we see in terms of Internet users.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: So they’re not disproportionately online, they’re just a bigger country than the United States.

There’s just a

Simone Collins: lot of Brazilians, which is awesome. And I feel like, I feel like to a certain extent, until very recently, people have, like, discounted Brazilians online because of the language gear- barrier with Portuguese. But as we’re now seeing, for example, with Japanese Twitter, a, a lot of those language barriers with just automatic translation are totally disappearing.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, and this is really interesting as well, because it’s shifting leftist discourse online to be more small C conservative in its value set. In some ways, yeah, yeah ... because a lot of the th- the, the rest of the world, like, one, they’re realizing that nobody’s woke but them. Like, Japanese people are, like, mortified by them, all these anime creators.

But two, if you’ve [00:25:00] noticed, in top of the line leftist discourse, it’s become significantly more Islamist. Like, hard-coded Islamist in its framing. Speaking

Simone Collins: of people who’ve actually pivoted. So Tucker Carlson, I would say it’s a cringe pivot. His whole, “I love Russia, I love you know, like, Pakistan” thing.

It’s, it feels forced to me, and it feels cringe and not- Mm-hmm ... like, he can’t really pull it off. You know who just, like, took to it like a duck to water and has really nailed it?

Malcolm Collins: H-

Simone Collins: Hasan?

Malcolm Collins: No, Andrew Tate Oh, Andrew Tate has taken to it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I heard the majority of the people who go to his school, you know, the Tate University, are Indians.

Simone Collins: Well, yeah. So I looked, I looked at it a little more. Google search interest and then also anecdotal reporting and reporting from The Guardian indicate higher per capita interest in Muslim majority countries, so parts of the Middle East, Pakistan, Indonesia, Malaysia. As we recall, big internet populations now more than in the UK and the US.

But then also [00:26:00] popularity is noted in India, Brazil, and other Global South areas. And then Tate’s 2022 conversion to Islam, remember that? Yes. Totally boosted this. And a lot of his international reach comes from short form content, which again, really caters to these... You’re talking about them being less educated and stuff.

I would say if, if you have a less literate, less educated country, shorts do incredibly well versus long form, like podcasts and videos and stuff, because also people are talking or looking at the internet mostly through mobile devices on the go. It’s, you don’t really have people, like, playing stuff on larger TV screens or on their computer monitors.

So shorts make a lot of sense, and that is, like, Tate’s native format. Keep in mind, Tucker Carlson is all about this old legacy Fox News style TV format even though he’s, like, totally digitally native now.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

Simone Collins: So Tate really did the short form content in addition to converting to Islam, in addition to really appealing to this like, sort of young radicalized minority male [00:27:00] population diaspora throughout the entire world.

And then audience composition when people look at it, it al- not just highlights all these people in, in developing countries, but highlights young men from ethnic minority backgrounds in the West. So even within his, like, market penetration into the West, he is reaching, like, young disaffected immigrant men and, and also aspiring youth in developing countries that are really into his whole self-made wealth, discipline, and anti-matrix messaging.

Well, it’s these rapist migrants, right? No, he, like, super appeals to that. No, but, like, think ab- like, who has most capitalized on this, like, growth of, of, of dislocated unemployed migrant male youth that’s somewhat misogynistic? Like, Andrew Tate is nailing the change in internet

Malcolm Collins: composition. And I, I, I’ve noticed now that you, you, you talk about this, I even think that this is a full sort of pipeline, whether it’s Tucker Carlson or Andrew Tate [00:28:00] or Nick Fuentes, where you get popular in the American online right, and this affirms you for these sorts of, Mm.

It’s kind of like an

Simone Collins: endorsement. Yeah, like third level recruiters ... like, well, the right likes him, so he’s also, like, fancier for that. But then- I, I really do think that Tucker Carlson fell into this through a form of audience capture and reinforcement and possibly some botting. Whereas Andrew Tate, like he was, he was born in it.

Like he really came out of it. And also you have to keep in mind with Hustler University there are some articles that are claiming that it really helps young Indians specifically navigate industry and job challenges that they uniquely face. And then a lot of Indian students apparently talk about how applicable it is with freelancing and various LinkedIn profiles and reviews of Hustler University as like a platform, like should you pay for it?

Is it worth it? Show that Indian participants really, really like it especially. And affiliate [00:29:00] promotion and clip sharing by creators in India have really contributed to its virality. So like even India specifically is this like big Hustler University thing. So- What, you’re like, “It’s

Malcolm Collins: actually good for them.

Yeah, yeah. Like

Simone Collins: Hustler University is good for someone. What is it? Can you explain it to me? It’s good for Indians. Like so if you’re in some country where you’re making like, you know, cents on the hour,

Malcolm Collins: it’s, it’s great. Can you, can you explain what you mean how it’s uniquely applicable to them? Like what- Yeah, so Hustler University is all

Simone Collins: about

Malcolm Collins: like

Simone Collins: w- a weird combination of freelance work and like white label shipping things, drop shipping things, like very internet native somewhat ephemeral jobs that are not moored to a specific location.

And if you speak English fluently and are kind of have a shady background and are willing to play with different arbitrage games and not necessarily do stuff that’s prestigious or aspirational- She’s saying

Malcolm Collins: Indians are scammers. I didn’t say that. And that that’s why Hustler University is good for them.

I didn’t

Simone Collins: say that. I’m, I’m just saying [00:30:00] it... And I don’t even know if this was intentional on Andrew Tate’s part because I think Andrew Tate was mostly trying to just show various ways that he has found to make money and like h- here’s how to do it at scale. But it just happens to work really, really well.

A lot of it is, is about a game of arbitrage, and this is something that came up in our episode on clip farming and botting as well, that a lot of clip farm workers, for example, are in Bangladesh or they’re in India or they’re in Pakistan because for them the unit economics work. You know, they sit in these Discord servers and they’re creating numerous n- like clips for Caleb Hammer, for Clavicular, and spamming the internet with them because the, the compensation they’re getting for it is worth it for them.

No Western country, like developed country kid out doing this is going to find a benefit from doing that. Yet they might be sort of tricked into signing up for something like Hustler University or like these Discord servers that like, “Oh, let’s [00:31:00] make clips that go viral,” because they see a lot of people talking about it.

And I think that’s one of the core themes of this episode is that many of us will see people being really excited about a certain business model or like g- get rich quick scheme or whatever, and guess what? If you’re like in a slum in Pakistan or India, it is your get rich quick scheme. Like it’s actually gonna mean something to you.

But if you live in Chicago, it’s really not. And we don’t realize it because everyone’s speaking English, and we have a basic tendency to assume that like this other dude that we see on the internet is like at least another American or at least another Westerner. But this, this

Malcolm Collins: also explains the ephemeral legacy conservative influencer where- Mm

Andrew Tate sort of perfectly falls into this at like a later stage, more than like a Tucker Carlson or something like this where Andrew Tate is somebody who I’m like aware that people still follow him. I used to watch some of his... I was never like a fan of his, but like [00:32:00] I, he, he could say entertaining things occasionally and sometimes had interesting points sometimes, right?

Like I, I, I think- He had his moments. No, he had his moments. Yeah, he had, he had his moments. But like nobody that I know has talked about T- Andrew Tate in like a year and a half except for that moment that he had with Kublai Killer. That’s the only, Oh ... but I, I was aware also that he was still somehow like relevant, and it’s where?

How? And it’s third worlders. This explains everything.

Simone Collins: Again, I don’t think we say th- Third World, we say developing. Am I, do I have to be the PC police? Why, why is this my role?

Malcolm Collins: The, the, the but no, I, I think once you understand this, once you understand, and I’ve actually noticed it more and more and more in the types of people who argue these positions online, So for example, if you watch Asmongold stream, which I do there’s [00:33:00] occasionally people who try to like s**t stir or something around like, you know, anti-Jewish stuff, anti-Iran stuff.

And don’t get me wrong, like we certainly have our anti-Semitic takes. But overall, like we think it’s useful, right? For now. If, if we’re, if we’re... The global elite versus the global non-elite part of the global elite alliance includes Jews. But the, the, the, they’ll regularly attack him, right?

And I’ll watch him like pull them up. He’s like, “Okay, like explain your full, full point,” right? Like he’ll, he does this thing like enhance, like take this one chatter out and be like, “Make your full argument. I wanna hear it.” And I like this. I appreciate this about him because like we try to do the same thing.

Like if somebody can make an argument for us that like we’re genuinely wrong, and people who have watched our content for a long time know that like we update pretty severely on positions when we find new information. And we’re like, “Wow, we were just wrong about this.” And, and we try to hear out the arguments of our [00:34:00] opponents as well.

And we also try to apologize when we get facts wrong ‘cause occasionally we do get facts wrong. A- again, you’re doing an episode every day. You, you can’t always get everything right. Although you can if you use the new RFAB

SuperSearch which runs multiple online AI searches against an AI’s output to determine if any of it was hallucinated to get fully hallucination-less responses.

Simone Collins: Yeah, that’s actually really, really cool.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, it’s, it’s very cool. And if you wanna go on the website in safe for work mode, rfab.ai/demo locks your computer into a... This is our website for people who don’t know. We do lots of stuff on it. I recently added like a, a feature where you can talk to people from like the 1930s using AI only trained on that, and I’m trying to get other ancient AIs working on it that have like a weird collection.

So we’ll see. The more I can get working on that, I’m excited. I’m excited. I love it. I love it. But we actually have a whole episode where we’re gonna be like interviewing them to get their thoughts on like different estate groups to get like a 1930s- So exciting ... estate game.

Yes.

But what was I gonna say?

Oh yes, I remember. It was, so Asmogold like pulls these people up and he’s [00:35:00] like, “Okay, make the full point.” No. And when they try to make their arguments, and they typically come from like this faction, which before I thought of as like a genuine faction of the American right. Oh my

Simone Collins: God. Oh.

Malcolm Collins: They do not appear to be able to make coherent arguments.

They appear to have like- But it might

Simone Collins: be a language barrier issue?

Malcolm Collins: No, they appear to be like IQ 70 types. Oh. In some parts of the world this is normal, Simone. Having an IQ of like 65, 70 is the average in certain parts of the world. And I’m realizing th- this explains stuff I didn’t get. If you’re just in the online Discord, it looks like, for example, on the right, 50% or more of the online right is anti-Iran war.

Whereas like 40% I get is like pro-war. If you look at like actual polling of MAGA, it’s 90% pro-war, right? So it’s like where is this coming from, right? What, what’s cre- And at first I thought this illusion was created just by a faction of like intellectual elitists on the right that tried to hijack the right for their own means a Romanist conspiracy if you will.

But now I’m [00:36:00] thinking no, it really is indicative of people who have been pretending to be part of the online right for a long time, and may even consider themselves part of it, but are you know, Pakistanis or Indians. As we saw, a lot of like based accounts when Twitter did its reveal a lot of right wing accounts were just Pakistani and Indian accounts, right?

Simone Collins: Yeah ... and

Malcolm Collins: this is where- Well, and

Simone Collins: specifically like a lot of, I guess, MAGA rage baby style accounts. Though I think it’s kind of- It’s unclear whether they... I mean, I think it’s more likely that they didn’t really believe in it. They were just going after monetization, and they got the engagement from MAGA rage bait.

Malcolm Collins: I disagree.

Simone Collins: Really?

Malcolm Collins: What do you think is happening? I think some of these accounts, if you look at them, they were somewhat coherent. They seemed to be on message. They just really crash out about Hindi Indians and Jews a lot. And by the way, sorry, you might be confused here. If you’re not familiar with the politics of these regions, you go, “Why would people in [00:37:00] Pakistan and India keep crashing out about Hindis?”

And the answer is, is because people in Pakistan and India this is where the people who hate Hindis the most of everywhere in the world, except for Canadians, who also really hate Indi- Hindis. That’s for other reasons. Simone has crashed out about that before. And maybe, like, San Francisco tech workers also really hate Hindis because they take all the jobs there, and that’s, like, a, a genuine problem.

But again, like, the scale of the problem is not the scale of dragging people off the street to rape them, right? Like, it’s not the scale of the problem of, you know, randomly murdering people and then getting off scot-free about it. It’s not the scale of the problem of you try to defend yourself when they are attacking somebody on a subway, and now all of a sudden you actually...

Or walking up to a random young lady on a subway and stabbing her to death, right? Like, it’s not that there’s no reason for racism. We just need the scale of racism, people. And it just didn’t make sense to me, right? Like, when I’m looking at, like, the actual [00:38:00] social problems we’re dealing with. And when I saw this, except in Canada, right?

There might be genuine... It’s like, oh, Pakistanis hate Indians specifically the Hindi Indians because they think, “Oh, well, if we can make India Muslim, then, well, fine. We’re, we’re cool with that.” And there’s a huge Muslim population in India I think it’s about a third of the country who hate...

I mean, it’s like a online pr- practically, like, a religious war simmering beneath in the country right now that could break out at any time, especially with differential fertility rates. We’ll see how that goes. But it would make sense why that would be top of mind to this online audience about scoring racism points.

And then same with Jews. Of course, you know all of these you know, Well, you know the stereotypes we’re talking about here wouldn’t have a fond opinion of Jews, right? And wouldn’t care if the United States lost geopolitical ground- Yeah, but

Simone Collins: keep in mind, like, it’s not just people in India or Muslim countries.

[00:39:00] One of the most prominent ones, it had, like, 400,000 followers, was, mm, @maganationx, and they were just in a non-EU Eastern European nation. Then there were a bunch from Nigeria, like there was one, @scopemaga. And then there were also a bunch from Thailand, Germany, Egypt,

Malcolm Collins: Right. But here you’re talking about random shotgunning of other places with their own- Yeah

agendas. These other agendas can align with American right-wing agendas. Like for example, most Eastern Europeans, other than being Orthodox Christians or Catholics, are going to align with American values. Like, a Romanian TV it the little troll VTuber- Yeah ... I think perfectly aligns with most American values in pretty much all of his takes.

That’s true. But he’s still unapologetically Romanian in his takes. And I think that what we are seeing here is where un-American values are seeping through, people who are unaware of, like, where their [00:40:00] audience comes from or where the loud part of specific parts of their audience comes from.

Mm-hmm. Or where the perception that you get in online circles of, like, half of people care about this, half of people care about this, when it’s actually a 90/10 issue. And it also speaks very interestingly of if this audience continues to influence leftist discord, I think we’re going to see an even more rapid drift away from trans acceptance in leftist spaces and gay acceptance in leftist spaces, which I think we’re already seeing some pullback on.

And I do not think that these communities realize how quickly these groups are gonna pull back against them. And I feel like their only safe space eventually is gonna be in the right, and the right is gonna remember the shenanigans that they pulled for as long as they pulled. And no, we’ve had some, some gays who came over really early and have been really good to our side, like Scott Pressler, who played potentially a large part in winning the last election.

And he was explicit about why, as he, a gay, became right-leaning. He’s like, “Well, you know, I saw the nightclub shooting of the gay nightclub,” and I was like, “Well, [00:41:00] who did this? Who’s trying to stop them from getting into the country?” Like, that’s literally all he’s saying. I- at least they don’t shoot me on the street, right?

Simone Collins: Yeah ... what, what are they- But I mean, that’s, I think that’s the other really interesting bit of Tension here, I guess? Or, like, or, or maybe it just makes sense that, that we’re seeing this shift as well in online discourse because in the end, Islamists and modern progressives are just inherently incompatible, and it’s not just something that intuitively our audience is picking up on.

Like, the Free Press has written about it. They talked about how the phenomenon has historical roots and It, the, it, it goes all the way back actually to Iran’s 1979 revolution before

Malcolm Collins: a bunch of- And then they killed all the progressives. It does go back to then. Yeah. Yeah. But we know from the Iran revolution what the playbook is for them.

Simone Collins: Yeah. But this, this, the, the so-called, like, left, Islamo-leftism or Red-Green alliance is, is definitely strong for a bunch [00:42:00] of really good reasons. I mean, one, they ha- they share a conom- common enemy, that they don’t like Western liberalism, they don’t like capitalism, they don’t like US foreign policy, they don’t like Israel.

And- They don’t like the Jews ... they, yeah, they don’t like the Jews. And they also seem to really like identity politics and this concept of the oppressor versus the oppressed. That framing resonates and is used a lot by both groups. Plus, anti-imperialism is a huge bridge between the two of them. I mean, this is so interesting- Anti-Western

Malcolm Collins: imperialism.

There is no religion on Earth- Yeah, okay, okay ... more inherently imperialistic than Islam. You know? Well, but here’s the

Simone Collins: other thing, is, is what people cite as also being the core tension between modern progressives and Islam, which is that people are like, “Well, they’re incompatible because traditional Islam emphasizes theocratic governances and strict moral codes, like on homosexuality and apostasy and gender roles and religious authority.”

And I’m like, hold on, though. Like, actually many conservatives in, in the modern right see the [00:43:00] modern left as being all about theocratic governance and strict moral codes and being like, “This is what homosexuality has to mean. This is what you being trans has to mean.” Mm. So actually, like, even in the core areas where we would argue they wouldn’t get along, they kind of do.

Like in as many Islamic countries, you know, if you don’t wanna, you know, if, if you feel gay or like you feel same-sex attraction, like ah, do not worry, that just means you’re a woman, you know, slash man. We’ll change you. Oh, we’re gonna do a whole

Malcolm Collins: episode on this that I forgot to do, so you gotta remind me- Oh, yeah

of how similar Islamism actually is to progressivism. Yeah. They’re, really about the only issue they’re differentiated on is p- progressivism being pro gay sex, but they’re not even that differentiated on that because first of all, progressivism is now trying to convert all of its gays to trans- Yeah

which is what Islam does anyway. Yeah. And two, a lot of Islamic countries have major gay sex problems. This was a huge problem for our troops when they were in What? Afghanistan. In our- What? Are you unfamiliar with this? They kept sleeping with [00:44:00] underage boys, like our allies would. And it was super, super common and, but it was like okay because, like, they were underage.

Bro- ... there’s like tons of videos on this. It’s a, it’s a very well-known phenomenon, and it was a major problem for our military because we were like, “You guys need to stop this,” and they’re like, “But it’s our culture.” They’re like, “Don’t worry, it’s okay. He’s underage.” And we’re like, “No, that- That makes it worse.

They’re like, “Don’t worry, bro. It’s not gay. He- he’s a child.” You know,

Simone Collins: that’s so Greek. I don’t know. Like in the end, I, I, I don’t know what to say. I’m just like, people need to do better. I, I love that line,

Malcolm Collins: Greeks, they invented gayness.

Speaker 4: Good for you, Father. Well, someone had the guts to stand up to them at last. Coming over here, taking our jobs and our women, and acting like they own the

Speaker 5: place.

Speaker 6: Fecking Greeks.

Speaker 4: I don’t care who he gets, so long

Speaker 6: as I can have a go at the Greeks. They [00:45:00] invented Guinness.

Malcolm Collins: We’ve been talking about-

Simone Collins: I mean, but you know ... not letting Greeks

Malcolm Collins: into your country.

Th- no, but the, the, what I’m increasingly realizing is one of the things we also have to think about, and this could be something we could sort of close with, is does it make sense to begin to think of a Western alliance of Christian values from across the world, where like we have differences but fundamentally, like you look at our viewer base, you look at these countries, and it’s not a random smattering of countries that watch us.

It’s Christian countries that watch us. It is the United States, Europe, Latin America, right? Canada, New Zealand, Australia. You know, that’s our audience, right? And w- I think that we should be more vigilant around the wider... Because fundamentally that is, you know, Western civilization is Christian civilization, right?

Be more [00:46:00] vigilant of individuals within our wider movement who have been co-opted to fight against the interest of Christian civilization. And where Christian civilization, whether that be, I mean, there’s many ways you can fight against the interests of Christian civilization. That can be fighting for things that are geopolitically against our interests, or fighting to get Christians to, for example, abandon technology that’s needed to crush our opponents, right?

Like whether that be genetic technology or AI or anything like that. Technology is power. Those who fight for us to tie our hands in regards to technology, because let me tell you what, the Muslims are. They have no such prohibitions. So, and the Chinese aren’t. Although they did arrest that guy for doing genetic e- editing, but now we’ve heard that like all of the elites in China are doing genetic editing, so be aware of this.

We

Simone Collins: just heard that Chinese families, wealthy Chinese families are just quietly going about it. So. Yeah,

Malcolm Collins: Who knows? ... for people who wouldn’t know this. But the point I’m making here is we have to be aware of like who’s trying to subvert us, and [00:47:00] be more vigilant about this instead of just earnestly, like a child, going into online.

And I say this because I was this. I, I went into a child and I was like, “This is the online Twitter on X. This must be what Americans on the right think.” When I was really being influenced by a bunch of Pakistanis.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Well, and I think just in general, most people, and even most influencers, are largely unaware of the compositions of their audiences and are maybe not talking to them.

I mean, even we do it. Like, we, we speak still, despite even our awareness and knowledge of the fact that our audience is only by a slight majority, you know, like- American ... 60% American, we still speak like this is a 99.9% American podcast, when that’s just not true, clearly by the numbers that you just went over.

Yeah. And I think all of us would benefit from just maintaining a little bit more top of mind awareness [00:48:00] and just knowledge of the fact that, look, there are many people with very, very different backgrounds and very different geopolitical positions and perspectives than you who are talking. And when you’re hearing their opinion, you can’t just assume that they, like you, went to this kind of school, and that you have this kind of neighborhood, and that these kind of laws and these kinds of taxes, because they don’t.

And that’s very important.

Malcolm Collins: Actually, c-

this reminds me of something that one of our fans said recently, and I just realized, like, I, I don’t think that that’s actually as popular as you think it is.

Mm.

Yeah, so they said they were talking about how many, like, American conservatives don’t believe in evolution. And I was like, at least in the influencer class, that’s, that, like, like, our new right influencer class.

Now, if you go to, like, Tucker Carlson, you go to Candace Owens, like, they don’t believe in evolution apparently, which you were shocked about. And Nick Fuentes.

Simone Collins: Yeah, yeah. Nick Fuentes doesn’t believe in

Malcolm Collins: evolution. Because, yeah. B- and, and when we first started doing our podcast we would always frame any point [00:49:00] we made about evolution, like, “Well, and if you don’t believe in evolution, here’s the argument.”

And we just stopped doing that, ‘cause I realized basically none of our fan base doesn’t believe in evolution. And- Maybe it’s they

Simone Collins: just don’t talk about it,

Malcolm Collins: because

Simone Collins: apparently creationism is alive and well.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Well, so 55% of American conservatives even today don’t believe in evolution. What? Oh, okay. I mean, hey.

Hey. No, but I don’t think it’s a, a base that we reach. Because, you know, we talk about this at conferences at The Heritage Foundation. We talk at like... I talk to people all the time about this sort of stuff, and I have yet to run into anyone, like, in, at least in real life, who didn’t believe in evolution.

Simone Collins: Yeah, because we discuss things like, well, things adjacent to evolutionary biology all the time. We talk about evolutionary pressures, and there’s no, like, “I don’t know.” Unless there are a bunch of creationists out there who believe in evolutionary pressures but only, like, after God just boomed everything into experience, e- e- existence Well, yeah, I wouldn’t have a

Malcolm Collins: problem with that.

But I mean, [00:50:00] the, the interesting thing, and we, we actually talk about this, is if you do believe in evolution, it’s actually very affirming of the Bible being true. Because if you look at Genesis, the timeline laid out in Genesis of the evolution of different clades is It tracks.

Simone Collins: It tracks with historical geology- Assuming this-

to a great extent ... it,

Malcolm Collins: it, it, it, it tracks more than you would, like it, it tracks stupidly well. It’s like- Yeah, it surprised

Simone Collins: me. I was like, “Hold on. Wait.” Like, if you just don’t take year counts or day counts totally literally, and who would, that’s

Malcolm Collins: usually- It’s actually a good description of evolution.

More than just being a good description of evolution, it’s a description of evolution in like a way that you wouldn’t expect. So for example, why would God make the fish first? Right? Like that doesn’t, I, I can’t imagine why somebody however many thousand years ago would think, “Ah, yeah, obviously the fish come first.”

Yeah. Yes. Right? Like now if you understood evolution, that would [00:51:00] make sense. Absolutely. But I can’t understand how somebody at the time the Bible was written would have known that.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: But anyway.

Simone Collins: No, it’s impressive and compelling. Love you. I love you too

Malcolm Collins: And have a spectacular day. And you guys can tell us what you think.

So new, new theory unlocked for me, new world perspective unlocked for me, and I’m gonna start discounting a lot of the chatter I see online a lot more and focus much more on what the people I consider to be intellectually cogent are saying.

Simone Collins: Are we... I don’t know. Are we having... Are we in the middle of a paradigm-shifting crisis?

Like, first we’re like, “Oh, God, everything’s botted,” and then a bunch of additional stuff has been clip farmed into fake relevance. Like, it’s not actually relevant. There’s just a bunch of people being paid to spam social media feeds with clips to make the algorithms think that they’re relevant, so we’re all talking about clavicular when it’s just a kick paid for clavicular to be a thing.

And then on top of that, even the few people who are actually real people on the [00:52:00] internet aren’t even from, like, what we consider to be our community talking about our issues from a perspective of an American. They’re talking about American- No.

Malcolm Collins: What, I’m going through an anti the crisis where it’s the crisis in my understanding of reality because I’m realizing that the internet as I thought it exists or as it appears at surface level is no longer representative of what I thought it was representative of.

But in realizing that, I have re- realized the reach of our wider community, which I thought was smaller and more niche, if you actually compare unbotted numbers, un- you know, foreign numbers, whatever- Mm-hmm ... is actually much further than I anticipated. That individuals like Leaflet, who obviously we talk about a lot, we have on the show a lot, much broader than I had thought.

Figures like Asthma Gold much str- farther than I had thought. Figures like Nuts much farther than I... Rev much farther than I had thought. I guess that is

Simone Collins: really encouraging. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. The, that the wider part or faction of the online community, and [00:53:00] this explained things I didn’t get. I didn’t get how our subreddit- So Tucker Carlson is

Simone Collins: fake and gay, and Leaflet is, is real.

Yeah. And, I didn’t get

Malcolm Collins: how our subreddit ended up beating r/Relationships in terms of daily interaction before it was shadowbanned. Yeah. Like, that didn’t make sense to me. Yeah. I didn’t get why our Discord is orders of magnitude larger than the largest in terms of, like, regular interaction, the largest effective altruist Discord.

It did

Simone Collins: seem somewhat confusing, and I guess it’s less confusing in light of all this.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. I’m like, “Oh, I just wasn’t faking it.”

Simone Collins: Hmm. Okay. Well, welcome to the narrow influencer class based campers. Yes. You’re among the elite, the chosen, the few. But actually, weird. Anyway. Yes.

Malcolm Collins: And we need to I think get better at building alliance between the factions represented within the wider conservative world.

Yeah. [00:54:00] Against the real threats to our cultural regional hegemonies.

Simone Collins: Fair.

Malcolm Collins: And this means being open to, you know, allying with sort of the wider Romanist world, allying with the more traditional, the Jews, allying with more traditional conservatives where it, where they don’t try to impose their value system on us.

And I think that we d- like that’s been being accomplished more and more and more without the lie that we’re actually all the same, and that’s always disgusted me. We’re not all the same. We’re different. Mm-hmm. I’m nothing like you. Different is good. Different is good ... we can, we can be allies without being secretly the same group, right?

That, that psyop has really scrambled my brain. I don’t like it.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Well, thanks Malcolm. I love you.

Malcolm Collins: Love you too. Looks terrible. I need to get my hair cut immediately ‘

Simone Collins: Cause you always get really mad at me when I’m like, “I have to cut your [00:55:00] hair,” and then you get mad at me before, during, after. No, you’ve gotta cut my hair. You’ve gotta cut my- I feel like I’m being punished for trying to make you look better You wanna do it tonight.

I think it has to happen tonight. I don’t think we have a choice. This can’t continue. But you can’t keep, like, getting all sully and mad at me. So- I get much more mad when you cut the kids’ hair than my hair Oh, God. Can I c- Because they can’t- Can I not make this family somewhat presentable? You’re so... You guys are all so awful.

Like, I try to get Tai Jin dressed, and she’s like, “Ah.” And she decides that she has to, like, run away. You knew what you were signing

Malcolm Collins: up for, gene-wise. Hmm. God. You

Simone Collins: knew it. I wasn’t ready for this. This is,

Malcolm Collins: I didn’t, I didn’t hide anything about what you were gonna get with these kids.

Simone Collins: We need to create some kind of basic training boot camp for all of our future in-law children to, like, prepare them for everything.

Malcolm Collins: They’re there just hanging out with all the, the young, the younglings. They have [00:56:00] no idea. Yeah. What’s,

Simone Collins: what’s that... There’s some, like, movie series, right? Is it called Knives Out, where, like, someone marries into a family, and then, like, all try to kill each other or something? Yeah. Hmm. We, we

Malcolm Collins: basically...

Simone Collins: We’ll just do that.

Actually, I feel

Malcolm Collins: like it’s a lot of two movies.

Simone Collins: Yeah? Well, I mean, it’s, it’s, I guess it’s compelling to people because they realize it’s kind of true for some families. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Okay. Do, do I need to go get Octavian? Yeah.

Simone Collins: Yeah. I think... What’s so funny about that toy Chinook helicopter is that it’s all in English, but it’s very clearly some beleaguered Chinese factory worker.

Malcolm Collins: Go play somewhere else. You’re too loud out here. We’re trying to record and you’re making lots of noise.

Simone Collins: All right. I’m done beating him. It’s supposed to be this, like, patriotic Chinook helicopter, and yet it’s clearly this beleaguered Chinese factory worker recording the sounds for it. “Fire! Fire!” And it just sounds really bad. And I love it. I love it, [00:57:00] but I also... I need a little bit more of, like, a redneck accent on my Chinook helicopters.

We’ll just have to fix that someday. Would you like me to do the intro? Oh, also, for dinner tonight, I can probably make things go either way. Like... But I can either do another night of Thai red curry, or I can do gourmet hot dogs that were gifted fr- to us with pesto pasta. What’s your preference?

Malcolm Collins: Honestly, if I can, I don’t know if this is too much, is just pesto pasta

Simone Collins: I can do that. Yeah. And then gourmet hot dogs with french fries tomorrow, and then Thai curry. ‘Cause I feel like the more days... If it can sit up to three days in the fridge, then it’s amazing. It seems to, like, stay- Well, it definitely

Malcolm Collins: needs more curry paste.

It’s, it’s very bland right now.

Simone Collins: Well, I’m trying to... I, you know, I’m making for guests too. But yeah- Mm ... I’ll just... [00:58:00] Okay, fine. Who cares what our g- guests can tolerate? Actually, the last time we had guests and we did the Go- gochujang chicken, they were like- Yeah, they liked it a lot ... they can take, they can take it.

Yeah. I mean, I think someone was like, “Oh my God.” But then everyone else was okay, so.

Malcolm Collins: Right, how hot it was?

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: All right. Just for the site where I am right now, I’ve sort of given up on one feature. I’ve been trying to make a bunch of different historic models that are only trained on historic AI- Oh, yeah

That you can, like, experiment with them on the site. But I only have two really working, ‘cause I have to host them in super unique ways. I might need to make them all local only, which is very frustrating for me.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm. But it would save people money, so that’s kinda cool.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, but nobody’s doing a long chat with a historic model.

These are mostly for experimentation.

Simone Collins: Mm.

Malcolm Collins: Just to see what people of that time period would have thought about things.

Simone Collins: I don’t know... So how would you do, like, a 1790s one? Because people during those time periods, like, there wasn’t a person. Like, [00:59:00] now it’s easier for there to be someone- Yeah ... because there’s only, as we’ve said, one story left.

You know, people are sort of dealing with a shared community to a certain extent. But, like, the experience of someone in 1790s England versus France, despite a lot of their close bonds would have been very different. Very different mindsets and cultures. How are you planning on approaching that anyway?

I mean, I don’t know, like, how feasible it even is, unless you want to do, like- For sure the literary

Malcolm Collins: culture of the elite is captured in the r- the AIs. Like, the one thing that I noted that was very interesting about the 1930s model, which is running right now and that it was very antisemitic, but not very anti-Black.

And I think this shows something that is genuinely forgotten in history, which is that elite society was not particularly anti-Black racist, and it was actually very trendy to be like, “The Blacks are actually really cool and can do great things once they’re freed,” in elite circles in the 1930s.

Whereas in elite circles in the 1930s, it was still very trendy to hate the Jews. See Karl Marx [01:00:00]

Simone Collins: We’re gonna do a whole episode on, on that, right?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

Simone Collins: Good. I’m excited. I’m also thinking about doing an episode... I mentioned how we are setting up matchmaking networks for, like, our future, you know, for our kids and future kids- Mm-hmm

and we, we already have a big database of parents to participate in it. Someone saw me mention that on the Chris Williamson podcast, and sent me on Instagram literally a dating platform that they had made that is for parents to matchmake for their kids. So you go on this website, and then you skeeze on other people’s kids- Mm

and then try to match them up with y- like, your son or daughter, your adult son or daughter. Really? Yeah. What’s it called?

saw their DM. It’s called Seony, S-E-O-N-Y, seonyapp.com.

Malcolm Collins: So,

Simone Collins: and- By the way, they, they explicitly reached out to me. They’re like, “This is not an ad. I’m not self-promoting. I just, I know your, your kids are still kids, but you might find this fun.” So they’re not, this is not a sponsor. No, it’s a very good

Malcolm Collins: community

Simone Collins: thing to

Malcolm Collins: promote.

I, I,

Simone Collins: I love the idea and- [01:01:00] 100%, yeah. I’m just wondering if I should do a whole episode on, on what I ... Well, I mean, a weekend- What I think- ...

Malcolm Collins: episode on it might be interesting if you go on, see the way people are presenting- Or VHS ... their kids within a modern context. Yeah. ‘Cause

Simone Collins: we have, I think we have some, a decent number of community members whose kids are adults, and might be...

We, I mean, we really need to get parents more involved in matchmaking. This ain’t gonna solve itself, this problem. Don’t leave it to your kids, you know. If you wanna become a grandparent, you’re gonna have to make that happen all on your own. You’re gonna have to smash them together. Now kiss. It’s, yeah.

I’m, I’m... Okay, maybe we’ll do that.

Speaker 7: Savion, come on. One.

Today on Based Camp, we go over the accounts of women who reportedly regret having kids, as covered by New York Magazine, and discuss why they’re so miserable.

Among other things, we explore:

* How the hardest phase is often the early years, especially infancy and toddlerhood, and that regret can be heavily shaped by sleep deprivation, pain, and the shock of being the default caregiver

* How the same events can feel unbearable or manageable depending on whether a person frames them negatively or as part of a meaningful life project

* The utility of thinking through failure modes in advance, building contingency plans, and explicitly discussing logistics before having children rather than relying on vague social assumptions

* How if someone dislikes themselves or their partner, that unhappiness often gets magnified through children because kids reflect both parents

* How online communities like “regretful parents” can reinforce misery by rewarding negative storytelling, though they acknowledge that some parents are genuinely unsupported and hurting

Ultimately, parent regret is often driven less by children themselves and more by a mix of poor preparation, weak reasons for having kids, lack of support, bad partner fit, and untreated personal issues like depression, anxiety, ADHD, or body image problems.

Many of these risks can be headed off by brutally honest parenting discussions, early planning, and choosing parenthood deliberately rather than as a default life stage

Episode Notes

* A lot of conservative-leaning influencers are talking about an article in the New York Times, part of The Cut’s “Oh, Baby” series

* Broadly speaking, they’re trashing NY Mag for discouraging motherhood and/or trashing the mothers for various reasons

* Though some, like Brett Cooper, have more balanced takes: she argues that the viral “I regret having children” discourse is really about unsupported, isolated mothers and bad matching in marriage, not mothers hating their kids

* I disagree with all the takes I’ve seen though

* This article is great

* These accounts are super important

* Anyone who is serious about kids should read them—and more

Here’s why:

* The best way to get through something tough is to:

* Have a strong reason for having kids

* Understand where things go wrong

* Heading off serious issues, especially with your first child in their first years, makes the difference between hating parenthood and wanting a huge family

* A positive experience with first kids was the top common factor Dr. Catherine Ruth Pakaluk identified when interviewing college-educated American mothers of over five kids

* We, personally, have experienced a lot of the negative things (or rough equivalents) the mothers in this article experienced, but because we had a strong “why” behind having kids and we had prepared for a lot of the potential downsides, we were able to weather the hazards

What we would encourage:

* Going through r/regretfulparents and cataloging all the things that go wrong

* Building contingency plans for those things

* We did this with our relationship—in building our relationship contract—and prospective parents would be wise to do this before having kids

* I.e. build contingency plan items into a parenting contract, or adding them to a relationship contract

The Article

The article opens with: “Parent regret is more common than you might think — the r/regretfulparents sub-Reddit alone gets around 70,000 weekly visitors who anonymously commiserate — though stigma makes it hard to admit in real life. Below, three moms of young children talk about why they wish they could go back to their old lives.”

The Cut - I regret having children: https://archive.is/BF3zn

34-year-old Rhode Island mother of a 6-year-old and a 3-year-old

* Didn’t have kids for a strong reason

* “When my husband and I were dating, his deal-breaker was having kids. I didn’t feel the same way, but I didn’t see life without children as an option. It always felt like the next stage of life for us. I remember telling my husband, “I’m worried; I love our life now and I’m not sure what it’s going to look like with a child.””

* Has personal issues which she now has to contend with in her kids (easy to be frustrated, colickey, etc.).

* Struggled with postpartum depression

* Perfectionist

* Got diagnosed with ADHD after suspecting her oldest had it.

* “When my younger daughter struggles to get dressed, I try to distract her or make compromises, but in the end, she’s screaming, and I don’t know how to make it stop, so I just shut down.”

* Is admittedly in the “hell zone” of parenthood (after six, things get awesome)

* She’s not wrong that parents of especially young children are less happy

* But that’s not the point

30-year-old European mother of a 3-year-old

* Grew up sheltered with a stay-at-home mom; married at 22

* Mother said she would help out with a new baby

* Was constrained to bed rest in her fist trimester

* Horrible recovery from birth (painful to move)

* Mother and husband didn’t help that much

* “My husband had a month and a half of paternity leave, but the only helpful thing he did during that time was change her diapers, though he did it with a reluctant expression on his face; I had the feeling he never believed how much pain I was in. My mom helped, but she didn’t like being disturbed at night and even during the day was afraid of holding the baby or changing her. I hallucinated from lack of sleep. It felt like I’d been tricked into this. Everyone who wanted me to have a child — my husband, my family — knew they weren’t going to lose much, while my freedom and identity went down the toilet.”

* Had a history of depression and anxiety

* Turned down a job offer that would require moving because they didn’t want to change their daughter’s preschool

* Worries a LOT about her daughter (i.e. what would happen if I were not here and something happened?)

27-year-old North Carolina mother of a 1-year-old

* Didn’t want kids

* “My husband and I met in middle school. He was always interested in having a big family, and I told him I wasn’t quite sure.”

* Has a history of depression and is now dealing with it in her son perhaps:

* “My son has a low tolerance for frustration and doesn’t communicate other than whining, screaming, crying, throwing things, and pulling my hair.”

* Has body dysmorphia issues

* “During pregnancy, I felt embarrassed. I’ve had body-dysmorphia issues since I was a kid, and I felt so massive. I used to be a track athlete and have always been fit and active, so I didn’t like feeling so heavy and restricted when trying to do the things I’ve always done, like hiking. During my third trimester, I didn’t want to leave the house so that people wouldn’t see me.”

* Different contextualization would have made a huge difference re: body dysmorphia

* Horrible birth experience

* “My son’s birth was also traumatic. His shoulder got stuck in my pelvis and the epidural kept wearing off; the nurses told me it was fine, that I was overthinking. They held me down and jumped on my pelvis to dislodge his shoulder while the doctor reached up and got him out; I still have pain from it. When my son was placed on me, I didn’t feel anything. It was surreal. I told the nurse, “You’ve got to put him back in the bassinet, I’m about to puke.” Then I did, all over myself. No one helped me to the bathroom or showed me how to wash myself.”

* Felt erased as a human being

* “I felt like I’d disappeared as a human being. Clients called me “Mama.” Friends and family asked me how my son was; they told me how excited and overjoyed I must be. I tried telling them I wasn’t coping well with motherhood and was still processing the birth, and they’d tell me, “That’s what motherhood is.” One of my friends texted my husband, “Wow, she’s changed, and not in a good way.” It came from a place of care — she and many friends and family told me I had postpartum depression, to seek therapy and go on medication. But at the same time, they’d quickly flip it back to, “You need to be there for your son. Pick yourself up by your bootstraps. Move on; it’s over with and done.” Everything I went through, was just like, No big deal, because the baby is here. Your existence doesn’t matter.”

* Withdrew from fellow parents because her son is developmentally delayed

* “I stopped talking to my friends with kids. They wanted to exchange baby photos and milestones and, while I was happy for them, my son is delayed and is in early intervention services, so he wasn’t meeting his.”

* Plans to leave her husband and son

* “My husband and I are taking steps to separate, and he’s willing to take on the role of a single parent, which makes me feel incredibly guilty. But I can’t live this life with him anymore. I’m not the parent my son needs.”Simone & Malcolm Collins react to the viral New York Times / The Cut article “I Regret Having Children” — three anonymous mothers share raw, dark stories of resentment, isolation, postpartum struggles, and lost identity.

Instead of the usual outrage, we treat this as an important warning and planning document. We break down why these regrets happen, how strong reasons for having kids + radical honesty + contingency planning can prevent them, the power of contextualization, genetic self-awareness, partner compatibility, and why the early toddler years are brutal but temporary.

We also discuss:

* Why hating yourself or your partner makes parenting hell

* Polygenic selection & mental health

* The importance of realistic expectations around birth, sleep, and infant care

* How to build a “parenting contract” before kids

* Feminism’s impact on women’s identity in motherhood

A must-watch for anyone considering children or already navigating early parenthood. Brutally honest, optimistic, and solution-focused.

Episode Transcript

Simone Collins: [00:00:00] hello Malcolm. I’m excited to be speaking with you today because we are gonna be talking about a New York Times article published in the Cut called I Regret Having Children Telling the very dramatic Stories of three mothers who genuinely regret becoming mothers and have these dark and very ominous tales.

And most of the conservative commentators I’ve seen covering it, and basically I feel like I’m seeing this everywhere online. So we have to talk about it.

Malcolm Collins: No, what I love about this is so many people, they’re like, oh, Malcolm and Simone, think about how it’s gonna affect your kids. That it is really publicly documented that you really wanted to have them and, and love them.

I’m like, what, what, what about these people’s kids? Like this is part of the, the historical,

Simone Collins: well, it’s anonymous. So the idea is that hopefully these children will never see it. And even the mothers have said this, like they wouldn’t want their children to know how much they resent this. But most of the people who are talking about it are saying This is, wait, one

Malcolm Collins: of you?

Simone Collins: Hmm?

Malcolm Collins: Was one of ‘em, you.

Simone Collins: No, no, actually. But a lot of the people are saying, this is [00:01:00] Antinatalists and this is terrible. Or like Brett Cooper thinks that the, the discourse is really about unsupported isolated mothers and bad matching in marriage and not really about mothers hitting their kids.

Whereas I think really everyone’s missing the point. And here’s the thing, I actually think this article is. Fantastic. And that the, the accounts that these mothers give are actually really important. And that anyone who is really serious about kids should read these and read a lot more. And, and here’s why.

Basically the, the best way to get through the tough parts of having kids and having kids isn’t necessarily easy, is to have a strong reason for having kids. And also know ahead of time everything is gonna go wrong. And you and I did exactly this. But not with kids with getting married, remember we went instead of on like regretful parenting subreddit, we went on the relationship subreddit and we very miss fastidiously cataloged everything that could possibly go long wrong with our relationship.

And we built plans, contingency plans around those

Malcolm Collins: things and, and documents. But the thing is, is this is different because the people [00:02:00] don’t know what their kids are gonna be like. Right?

Simone Collins: Oh no, they do. And we’re gonna get into that. No, they super do. And that’s the

Malcolm Collins: thing. Oh, you’re right. I mean, genetically our kids are just us.

Like, and I

Simone Collins: see, and again, in these stories, so we’re gonna go over the stories, but the bigger story here is, no, this is good. We should be talking about this. These problems are real, but they’re also very easy to navigate. In fact. Many of the things that these mothers talk about, these nightmare scenarios are things that, at least on a similar level, we are have as parents experienced.

This is not, they’re not like having universally terrible experiences. They’re just going through the rough parts of being early parents. And most of these have kids like, you know, that are still in their toddler years. It’s, it can be rough at times. And the point be talking about this shouldn’t

Malcolm Collins: actually difficult

Simone Collins: parenting.

Malcolm Collins: I have a different reason why I like articles like this. And I do like reading articles like this because you

Simone Collins: love the snark

Malcolm Collins: because it’s the same reason I’m like really into like red pill content about how horrible somebody’s girlfriend was to them or something like that. Of course.

Simone Collins: Right? ‘

Malcolm Collins: cause it just makes me appreciate you more and make you feel like more of a treasure.

Simone Collins: Oh, and how, like before you, you’d [00:03:00] love to see what happened to like old classmates on Facebook so that you could be feel

Malcolm Collins: superior. Yeah. Just be like, okay. Okay. No. But no, I think a lot of people they think that like, I’m, I’m watching like. Super misogynistic content and it’s gonna make me misogynistic.

And it’s like, no, it just makes me appreciate how unique and special you are as a wife. And I think our kids are pretty unique and special too. So hopefully this, this reframes that as well. And I think for a lot of people, when they end up hating their children or being parents, it’s because they don’t really like their partner.

They don’t really like themselves because

Simone Collins: there’s a lot of that in that, in this,

Malcolm Collins: by the way, just the mix of the two of you Personality wise. Yeah. Like when I see my kids play it’s just me plus Simone. Like there’s, there’s not a lot of. Exogenous personality in there.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah. And I think that’s, that’s one of the really big themes in this actually, that we.

Don’t talk about it enough as a society. But the article, it itself opens with parent regret is more common than you might think. The our regretful parents subreddit alone gets around 70,000 weekly visitors who anonymously commiserate [00:04:00] through stigma. Makes it hard to admit it in real life. Below three moms of young children talk about why they wish they could go back to their old lives.

And so I’m gonna just pull some. Highlights from each mother who gives their account. And we’re gonna talk about how this, this is stuff that people actually really should be planning around and talking about. And that if you do adequately plan for these things either one, you could just avoid becoming a parent if it’s really not for you.

But two, you can really. Make something that could be terrible, totally surmountable by just planning for it because it’s pretty, like the writing was on the wall for most of these issues that these women encountered. And that’s a really big thing. And the most common problem for all of these women is that they lacked a strong reason for having kids.

So let’s start with a 34-year-old Rhode Island mother of a 6-year-old and a 3-year-old. First off, she did not have a strong reason for wanting to have kids. She wrote, when my husband and I were dating, his deal breaker was having kids. Totally relatable, right? I didn’t feel the same way, but I [00:05:00] didn’t see life without children as an option.

It always felt like the next stage of life for us. I remember telling my husband, I’m worried I love our life now, and I’m not sure what it’s gonna look like with a child. And I think this is, I. One super, super common. I mean, you, we can tell from the polling that women are far more ambivalent around having children than men are men put having a, a, a child and, and, and becoming a parent is one of the top things that they need for a fulfilling life, whereas, mm-hmm.

Especially conservative men, whereas progressive men and all women,

Malcolm Collins: and it just famous polls recently that showed that conservative men having a kid is the number one thing in terms of life fulfillment and progressive women. It was like the absolute bottom. And that mean, I mean, that culture’s just gonna go extinct, right?

Like that’s, that’s what happens when you, which is a weird place to be, where you can see that the cultures that we’re opposing and the people we’re opposing control elite institutions and have power within our society, but they’re. Failure is also inevitable, which makes things feel so weirdly [00:06:00] comforting.

Because I, I like being both the underdog in a fight, but I also don’t want the risk of thinking that we could lose.

Simone Collins: Yeah. The other really big thing, and I’m so glad you pointed to this, is that if you hate yourself or you hate your partner. You’re gonna have a lot of trouble with your kids. And this also shows up in all three of the stories.

So this particular Road Island mother, did you hate

Malcolm Collins: adopt?

Simone Collins: What

Malcolm Collins: if you hate yourself? Adopt.

Simone Collins: I guess, yeah, if you hate yourself, you are a good candidate for adoption. This particular mother had personal issues that now she is contending within her kids. Like, it’s super obvious. She says she struggled with postpartum depression.

She’s a perfectionist. She got diagnosed with a DH ADHD after suspecting her eldest had it. And then, you know, she turns out she had it too. And she wrote, when my younger daughter struggles to get dressed, I try to distract her or make compromises, but in the end she’s screaming and I don’t know how to make it stop.

So I just shut down. And so one, yeah, you could adopt two, you could genuinely, like, you could just do polygenic risk score selection like we did and [00:07:00] select for different behavioral traits. You, you can do that. Weird, I mean like risks of behavioral traits. Mm-hmm. But I think more importantly than that actually is, and I have to be careful about how I say this, right?

‘cause we’re, we’re not, we’re not big on therapy culture. We’re not big on like working through like your mental health issues, but like, how can I put it? Raising kids has forced me to give myself a lot of grace and forgiveness around, for example, my sensory issues, my autism. And while there’s a world in which I could have seen that in my children and freaked out and everything got way worse instead I see it in my children and it teaches me how to be more forgiving with myself.

It also way more understanding of my children. And I think for parents who do things like struggle with depression and frustration and perfectionism like she does, for example, she has chosen. To like have this turn into this vortex of pain and suffering for herself of like, oh, oh, my daughter’s experiencing.

‘cause her daughter’s her, like her daughter has her same tendencies ‘cause. They’re, you know,

Malcolm Collins: they’re very valid. This is, I wanna [00:08:00] you know, illustrate for the fans what you mean when you say this because it’s something that you, you know, focus on a lot.

Simone Collins: Uhhuh

Malcolm Collins: is you will see some behavior in our kids, like the way they’re picky with food and X way or

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Really into systematizing or, or something else.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: And you will reflect on, oh, like I can. More forgiving of myself for those traits.

Simone Collins: Yeah,

Malcolm Collins: because that was genetic. That wasn’t like a personal failing on my part.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Like it helped me, yeah. Hate myself less for that. And I, with this mother, for example, if I were speaking with her in person, I’d be like.

I mean, wow. This is, you know, an amazing way to give yourself grace for struggling with these things and just kind of deal with it together. Okay. And

Malcolm Collins: you get, get getting a little,

Simone Collins: I know. I, I don’t

Malcolm Collins: getting a little therapy as, as they would say in the gamer rooms. You’re getting a little gay here, Simone.

I’m gay.

Simone Collins: I, it’s a, it’s a, it’s a little fake and gay, but also like it. It’s kind of, it can be beautiful. I’m just saying like, the way you contextualize things really affects how you [00:09:00] can process it. And there’s a world in which this mother would be able to navigate her own struggles with perfectionism and depression as her daughter struggles with them in a way where they can both navigate it better.

And there’s also a world in which it’s worse. But anyway the other, the other part is again, she has a 6-year-old and a 3-year-old, like especially three year olds are really, really difficult

Malcolm Collins: to point fun, start.

Simone Collins: So because she has a really young kid, it’s also just gonna suck. And the problem is, I mean, after both her kids are over six years old, things are gonna go get a lot easier.

And I think it’s really unfair for and this is where I think it’s unfair with the media and also probably our regretful parenting is riddled with parents who have. Toddlers and probably doesn’t bring a lot of older kids.

Malcolm Collins: Well, and I’m taking it back. I mean, imagine how much that must make you dislike your kids to be constantly in an environment like a Facebook group or, or regretful parenting where this hatred is being boast rewarded and re.

Forced by the community you have chosen to surround yourself with. Yeah. If the water cooler talk every day is how much you hate your kids, you’re going to begin to hate [00:10:00] your kids more and more. The same thing happens with partners. If you surround yourself with a community, that’s poor conversation point is how much you don’t like your partners, or even you get social credit for challenging yourself or for being the beleaguered mother, then you’re going to project that more.

But let’s get to what the actual article says.

Simone Collins: Okay, we’ll move on to the, I I just wanna point out though, like you, you’re missing my point that when you actually look at these parents and being like, oh my God, I’m not happy, and that’s bad one. It’s a very short term period where on average parents, especially women, are less happy.

And that’s specifically when they, they have really young children and it passes. And it sh it should be just better understood that this isn’t a period that’s like necessarily full of joy. Okay, so moving on to the 30-year-old European mother of a 3-year-old. She says that she grew up sheltered with a stay-at-home mom.

She married at 22. Her mother said that she’d help out with a new baby which turned out to not be so true. She felt like she was [00:11:00] one. She had a terrible pregnancy and delivery experience. She was constrained to bedrest in her first trimester. She had a horrible recovery from birth. Like it was painful to move.

There was something like an incision made that was just. Incredibly painful.

Malcolm Collins: Everybody who’s had a number of kids always has a few bad pregnancy stories. I think when people are like, I stopped having kids because of a bad pregnancy then you were never gonna be in a sustainable population. If, if that was what prevented you from having kids.

You’ve had really terrible pregnancies in the past.

Simone Collins: Yeah. And again, it comes down to contextualization. She, I think, experiences this in an isolated way where people were kind of gaslighting her into like, everything’s gonna be great. Everything’s wonderful. It’s all magical. And the worst thing for her, and this is one of those things where had she looked at everything could, that it could go wrong and actually looked at regretful parenting before she had her baby.

She could have basically headed this off. But she was in a situation where both her mother and her husband didn’t help that much. She wrote, my husband had a month and a half of paternity leave, but the only helpful thing he did during that time was change her diapers, [00:12:00] though he did it with a reluctant expression on his face.

I had the feeling he never, never believed how much pain I was in. My mom helped, but she didn’t like being disturbed at night and even during the day was afraid of holding the baby or changing her. I hallucinated from lack of sleep. It felt like I’d been tricked into this. Everyone who wanted me to have a child, my husband, my family knew they weren’t going to lose much while my freedom and my identity went down the toilet.

And that’s something that she could have if they’d all discussed it, anticipated and had off. Like I think it’s horrible what happened to her. And it didn’t have to do that. No, I

Malcolm Collins: mean, I think that’s an an I’m, I’m gonna be honest we tried to do for the younger years with kids do more gender equal breakdown in terms of care, and it just doesn’t work very well.

It ends up being so contrived the way you do the split care for the infant. Yeah. It like. Infants really was in our house. The infant is always Simone’s like total responsibility. And I’m in charge of the fallback for anyone over that age, and that works really well. But if you’re just going into [00:13:00] this and you just have one kid and you’re in that infant stage when the mom bears and it is hard, I mean.

You’ve gotta remember guys, if you’re watching this, what it’s like to be a new mother you are in enormous pain often because you just underwent some form of surgery or something like that. The kid could die at any moment because kids of that age do die. Just die randomly.

Simone Collins: It’s horrifying. Yeah.

Especially your first time parent and you, you don’t necessarily, I mean, if you didn’t grow up with very young siblings, you also have no idea what you’re doing and you’re like, oh my God, this is the human and I feel like I’m gonna kill this human.

Malcolm Collins: You’re not sleeping like at all up, all. Night and day. Yeah, if you are breastfeeding, that is very painful.

Simone Collins: It can be for some people they just love it, but for a lot of people it’s not the best.

Malcolm Collins: I,

Simone Collins: I hate it.

Malcolm Collins: So, so the, the, the, you know, you are in both constant pain, but also your brain is hypersensitized to the needs of the baby.

I can see in Simone’s face how distressed she gets. When we have the infants, I think the reason why you don’t contextualize all [00:14:00] this, this as horrible as she is contextualizing it, is one, you know that your sacrifice is appreciated which is really important for guys to make sure that you are signaling that, that you understand and it is appreciated.

Yeah,

Simone Collins: and that’s the thing she pointed out, right, that like her husband didn’t seem to really believe her, that it was like

Malcolm Collins: tough

Simone Collins: for her.

Malcolm Collins: And two, you see the outcome. In the, the older children, like when I, I see my kids, I hug my kids, my kids jump on me. I see how awesome this, what to me is honestly a very boring stage of life.

The infants I’ve, I’ve, I’ve been, I do not like infants. It’s zero

Simone Collins: interest.

Malcolm Collins: But I love, love toddlers.

Simone Collins: Like, but I mean, parents should talk about that because I think that that also. Some women may grow up exposed to what I call like baby men who just like, there’s five to 10% of men just seem to be baby crazy.

Like they absolutely beloved babies. I wanna hold the baby, they’re the baby whisperers. And then every other man, like zero interest like they, I. You know, like they’d rather hold a wet stray [00:15:00] dog covered in trash.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

Simone Collins: You

Malcolm Collins: know, babies disgust, I’m not a fan of babies. Yeah. And on newspapers. When, when I first said that, as you said, you know, we need to normalize it.

You can feel like, I’m not a big fan of babies, but I it’s worth it for when they’re toddlers newspapers. When that went viral for me saying that, they’re like, oh, he doesn’t even like his children. He doesn’t even, you know, like being around them or enjoy parenting. Mm-hmm. And I’m like, what a sick reason to have kids because you’re going to enjoy it.

Right? Like this isn’t

Simone Collins: well, but also again, it, women need to be aware of this. Like women shouldn’t be gaslit about like.

Malcolm Collins: Oh yeah.

Simone Collins: Oh, you know, like your, your husband’s gonna be in love. And also like, keep in mind the, the men who are referenced in by these women in this article typically were like, yeah, I really wanna have kids.

Like, kids are a must for me. Like they act like they really wanna have kids, but then they’re not into kids below three years. Like, that’s actually super normal. And that doesn’t mean they don’t wanna have kids that actually they’re probably gonna be great dads.

Malcolm Collins: Is this me with the dog and, and chickens.

Simone Collins: The dog and chick. Oh, you,

Malcolm Collins: you, you always, you

Simone Collins: Right. [00:16:00] Malcolm has been the one who’s pulled the trigger ultimately on us getting a bunch of pets. And then who ends up being the only person who takes care of the pet, who feeds the pet, goes out.

Malcolm Collins: I’m sorry, Simone. I will endeavor to lighten your load there where I can Yeah,

Simone Collins: sure.

It’s been how many years now? Okay.

Malcolm Collins: It is, it is appreciated though, Simon phone and I’m just, I’m just airing that so that you know, that I, I know that you likely feel similar to them just in other domains of our life.

Simone Collins: No. Well, no, but also like you’re not into babies, like you don’t. Have you’ve changed, I guess when you, you, you did, you did take texts to the diaper, so you’ve changed his Sorry.

To the doctor. So you’ve changed his diaper then, but you don’t, you have not Once,

Malcolm Collins: when we started with kid number one, we shared bi diaper changing, but we stopped doing that pretty soon after kid. We

Simone Collins: just dropped it. Yeah. Like, because it didn’t make sense, but it’s, I just, I, I, I think it’s great that this is being discussed because it should be discussed because.[00:17:00]

If you, here’s the thing. So we had on the podcast at one point, the author of Hannah’s children, Dr. Katherine Ruth Balak, she interviewed academically and then published a book on college educated mothers of five plus children.

Malcolm Collins: Okay?

Simone Collins: And she told us that the top factor, determining whether or not someone was like, oh my God, I am all in this.

I wanna have so many kids, was whether or not they had a good experience with their first kid. And if they felt, you know, well supported and it was, you know, what they wanted and they had a great experience, they were way more likely to wanna have a lot of kids, even if like they came into it being like, I really like keep, I will, I mean, you didn’t read the book, but many of the mothers who or interviewed in the book had similar starting points to these three women.

Who regret becoming parents were like, I don’t know. Like,

Malcolm Collins: okay, let’s, let’s get to the next one.

Simone Collins: But my point is though, that like if you come into it the right way, you know, if you come in prepared, you can be super into it. So, anyways, so she had this terrible [00:18:00] experience. Her husband, mother didn’t help much, but another common thread here, she had a history of depression and anxiety.

And I think, again, if you’ve got a lot of mental health problems, especially as a woman. I, I do think that you need to plan extra for that. Well, this

Malcolm Collins: is I think one of the biggest arguments for polygenic selection Yeah. Is a lot of people who have major depressive disorders or anxiety disorders these are the things that I have heard the technology being used for the most.

Yeah. Is ensuring that they do not pass major depression onto your kids. Yeah. People. Are out there imagining that it’s gonna be people like us selecting against autism or something. We’re like, no, we don’t select against autism. Like, or, or selecting against you know, some sort of like ethnicity or something.

And it’s like, no, it’s people who have gone through some sort of major psychological challenge in their own life who do not want to bring kids. To undergo because depression isn’t like a cool, like, nobody’s like, oh, they’re, they’re trying to genocide depress people. Everyone who’s actually undergone like depression or anxiety or [00:19:00] something like that understands why you may not want your kids like, like that is an uncontroversial thing to not want to pass that down.

Simone Collins: Well, and, and here’s the really tough thing is, is, is it’s one thing to deal with ongoing, like with postpartum depression and then with the anxiety of being a new parent like that, that you can kind of anticipate if that’s. Already your tendency, it’s gonna happen to you as a new parent, especially ‘cause you’re under all this additional stress.

Yeah. Also dealing with that in your kid, like having it magnified in that way is really rough and like Yeah, they’re depressed. And you’re depressed. Yeah. Super ready for that. Or you need to. You know, like do yeah. Try to reduce the odds of it happening in the first place. Something like polygenic risk or selection.

Malcolm Collins: But actually this is interesting because you have traits that people could contextualize negatively. Well, it’s not depression. You need an incredibly controlled environment or you become very stressed about things. Yeah. And that can be seen in the setup of our house and the way that we make decisions.

Simone Collins: Everything. But it’s also, it’s, it’s something that so cool. I’ve been able to, adapt with our children.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

Simone Collins: So one, I don’t think it’s maladaptive for a modern society, like actually it’s much, [00:20:00] it’s much easier for people like me to get by, so I don’t think it’s, it’s like a, a bad thing to bring children in with those traits.

But like, it makes me as a parent really, you know, I, I’m able to anticipate that in them and accommodate it. I take custom orders for everyone’s dinner every night, like everyone gets to do a lot of things in their own special, unique way that they have to do them, because I know that that’s how they need it to be.

And they’ll be happy as long as that’s the case, and they are like, it’s good.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah,

Simone Collins: so number three, woman number three. She’s a 27-year-old in North Carolina, and she’s a mother of a 1-year-old, and she’s the most dark ending. She

Malcolm Collins: don’t start there when you’re talking about kids. Come on.

Simone Collins: Oh, well, okay.

Yeah. And not, not, not Simone trigger dark meaning that like your child is getting hurt. It’s actually the, the outcome is best for the children, but is still pretty dark for the child. She didn’t want kids. She wrote, my husband and I met in middle school. He was always interested in having a big family, and I told him, I wasn’t quite sure.

So already kind of a warning sign. Like, really, if, if you’re not into it, you know, it’s, it’s, you should get through that first. Before you, [00:21:00] you weren’t

Malcolm Collins: into it either, and now you’re super

Simone Collins: No, but you, you convinced me. And I was like, yeah, I’m all in. Based on the conditions. And that was it. We were all set.

I was 100% bought in. What happened to her though was she got a positive pregnancy test and she’s like, well, I guess I’m doing this. Her, her husband was like, I, I really, really, really want you to keep the baby. Like, I think she was even thinking about having. An abortion. Okay. She has a history like the others of depression and is now dealing, probably dealing with in her son, she wrote, my son has a low tolerance for frustration and doesn’t communicate other than whining, screaming, crying, throwing things, and pulling my hair.

So again, like this is one of those things just to highlight

Malcolm Collins: that it’s how you contextualize it. But I mean, I guess you could say like, Octavian constantly climbing on me and hitting me and everything like that is like this horrible thing.

Simone Collins: Well, but you contextualize it positively. And there’s an even better example with her in contextualization because she has.

She has body dysmorphia issues she wrote during pregnancy. I felt embarrassed. I’ve had body dysmorphia issues since I was a kid. I, and I felt so massive. I used to be a [00:22:00] track athlete and have always been fit and active, so I didn’t like feeling so heavy and restricted when trying to do the things I’ve always done, like hiking.

During my third trimester, I didn’t wanna leave the house so that people wouldn’t see me. So she, like, I also have body dysmorphia. I hate the way I’ve looked. I, I’ve always. Hated my body, but like the way I contextualize pregnancy is like, well, all right, I am stuck in this body. I’m resentful of it. I’m going to like wear this thing into the ground.

Like it is the ultimate revenge of like, all right, well, we’re just gonna. Where like, you know, use it the full capacity until I literally break it until I break my uterus, until I break everything. Which is ultimately more satisfying for me than like getting a hysterectomy, which is the first thing I thought about doing before I met you.

And so there are ways to deal with these things. You, you could have body dysmorphia and respond like she did, or you could have body dysmorphia and respond like I did. And they’re both ways you can deal with it, but I think we’re having a lot more fun with my method. So I’m just saying like, contextualization is everything.

She also had a horrible birth experience. I’m not gonna, I don’t have to [00:23:00] describe it too. I can, I can read it, but like, I also have had horrible birth experiences and it sucks and I think that it.

Malcolm Collins: Well, you one I would say was all of this. You don’t know. Some people just contextualize everything horribly.

Like,

Simone Collins: yeah, yeah.

Malcolm Collins: You, you know, whatever their experience is, it’s going to be a horrible experience because they have learned

Simone Collins: based on like, so her, her she had an epidural, but like it kept not working. I, I also, I didn’t have an epidural and I, I was bad. Anyway,

Malcolm Collins: continue

Simone Collins: with the

Malcolm Collins: story,

Simone Collins: but they, they had to like.

Jump on her hip to make, dislodge him from like a place where he was stuck before he entered the birth canal or something. And she still felt pain from that. So it was, it was bad. It was like genuinely bad. It wasn’t just her whining about it. Malcolm.

Malcolm Collins: Okay, continue.

Simone Collins: But yeah, she also, more importantly for her is she felt erased as a human being.

She wrote, I felt like I disappeared as a human being, clients. Called me mama. Friends and family asked me how my son was. They told me how excited and overjoyed I must be. I tried telling them I wasn’t coping well with motherhood and was still [00:24:00] processing the birth, and they tell me that’s what motherhood is.

One of my friends texted my husband, wow, she’s changed and not in a good way. It came from a place of care. She and many friends and family told me I had postpartum depression to seek therapy and to go on medication, but at the same time, they’d quickly flip it back to, you need to be there for your son.

Pick yourself up by move on. It’s over with and done. Everything you went through is just like no big deal because the baby’s here. Your existence doesn’t matter. And again, that’s contextualization. And I think that one of the most toxic things about our modern society, and I I do think this has to do more with culture than it does with like preparing, is that the more you focus in on yourself and get into your head, the more miserable you’re gonna be.

So even if you wanna optimize for hedonic pleasure. Doing what she’s doing is kind of like an exercise in frustration and suffering. And I mean, if, if she’s such a miserable person, the idea that she would want to identify more with herself to me is so odd. You know, like you could just become more expansive and identify with [00:25:00] your family and enjoy the joys of a child, which is so

Malcolm Collins: interesting.

I mean, it’s, it’s, it’s.

You are supposed to stop being the point of your life. Yeah. Your kids are the point of your life, right? Like the, the focus shifts. And for somebody who adopted the urban monoculture, that can be horrifying because they’re taught in this sort of atomized self being the most important thing. And this idea that you would sublimate that either in a marriage or through children is one of the most mortifying things they can imagine.

And yet we had already, I mean, when we got married. There was a period where we stayed more atomized at the beginning. I, I think you were really afraid of this idea of No, we’re just one person now.

Simone Collins: Yeah. I was much more hesitant around it than you were. I, I think also though, because women. One, lose more just traditionally than men do, like physically logistically, especially in the younger years, like to your point, [00:26:00] right, like I’m doing most of the infant care, your life changes the least as we get new infant.

So women, women do feel like they have more to lose, especially in the early years, and they do. But also they’ve been uniquely conditioned to be like, no, don’t ever give those things up. It’s a bad thing if you give those things up. Whereas men. Have never really been told that.

Malcolm Collins: Actually, hold on, this could be like a whole other episode, but you could almost argue that feminism conceptually was fighting against.

The, the woman’s role as a mother that societal framing of a woman’s position like we, and, and, and you see the people who have fully adopted feminist framing, you even suggest, well, that’s a woman’s role, and they freak out. Right?

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Well, and you can also argue, which I think is interesting, is that.

Women are so concerned about losing their identity, but men never had them. Like, men don’t really get to be full men until they have their families and identify as their families, which is so weird. Whereas, like for women, they feel like they lose everything by getting their family, which is I think, a really interesting piece of tension and [00:27:00] interplay that you get with relationships.

It’s not, it’s not what I would expect. But I, I, yeah. Now that, that’s kind of, that’s kind of occurring to me that like men, men aren’t losing. Men. Men don’t even get to be anything like an incel is nothing, they don’t have an identity. They, they mean nothing in society. That’s

Malcolm Collins: actually a really interesting point.

Yeah. Men do not matter until they’re married and, and then really until they have kids. Yeah. From a societal

Simone Collins: perspective and then sort of women kind of cease to, cease to, well, yeah. I don’t know, like, not that they cease to matter, but they kind of recede into it and they feel like they’re losing something, whereas men.

Feel like they’re finally getting their identity. It, it’s a very weird thing.

Malcolm Collins: There’s a Well, and this is seeing that the, that the mother is lesser in the eyes of the urban monoculture

Simone Collins: uhhuh. Oh yeah. No, you, you definitely take a downgrade, a

Malcolm Collins: single

Simone Collins: woman.

Malcolm Collins: That’s the, the, the, we’ve read other articles as women, like identifying as single, even when they’re in a relationship because it’s seen as cooler or something.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Or identifying as a divorcee just to be

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yeah. Even after she was remarried, [00:28:00] she still identified primarily as a divorcee.

Simone Collins: Yeah. My, my cache is in rejecting marriage actually. Speaking of which so she. A after withdrawing from fellow parents. ‘cause she just hated so much people identifying with their children.

Decided to leave her husband and actually her son too. She wrote, my husband and I are taking steps to separate and he’s willing to take on the role of a single parent, which makes me feel incredibly guilty. But I can’t live this life with him anymore. I’m not the parent my son needs. And I, one, I think it’s kind of based, like she actually isn’t the parent of her son.

She, she seems to really hate it. And that would be not good for a kid to grow up around.

Malcolm Collins: She’s not the person anyone needs. She seems.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah. No, she, she, she seems genuinely, she, she needs to work on a lot of things and, and I don’t think she can do that with her husband and her son. Also, like single dads statistically do really well.

So I’m not worried for the kid and I’m not worried for the husband. And, and I didn’t read these parts, but the husband was also incredibly gung-ho about this kid really wanted to be a dad. He’s super on board with being a single parent, so. But it’s still a [00:29:00] very dark ending, right? This is a woman who rejected parenting so much that she’s literally just going to end it.

She’s not gonna be,

Malcolm Collins: I would say that kids. More broadly, and I, I really cannot make this point loudly enough, is I don’t know what this kid is like, but like there are bad kids out there, right? Like, there are unpleasant kids. I’ve seen our kids, I’ve, I’ve seen our kids interact with ‘em. We, we have other kids who I, I’ve, I’ve like, oh my God, if that was my kid, I’d like smother them in their sleep.

Like they, they’re a, a net. Burden to society And I maybe,

Simone Collins: well, I, so you put it that way, but like in act, and so what this mother complained about was her son was not meeting the same developmental milestones that her peers children were and that he was in early intervention. Our kids have been in early intervention, our kids have been diagnosed with autism.

Our kids have gone through pretty extensive therapy. Like at first we were made to feel a lot of shame about that by some people in our. Family and stuff, but then

Malcolm Collins: Oh, no. And the wider,

Simone Collins: like, we ultimately realized like, oh no, you’re just messed up like we are. And like [00:30:00] we all get along really well here.

So I think, I don’t know.

Malcolm Collins: But what’s interesting to me as well is, and I think you make this point well, the things that she complains about are all things I notice in our kids and, and love. I love the way that they’re vitalistic and crawl all over me and fight me and

Simone Collins: don’t, yeah. And like we’re, we’re

Malcolm Collins: don’t

Simone Collins: always about our kids not meeting the developmental milestones of

Malcolm Collins: like, when I’ve seen kids and I was just like.

Like the, the kids that have given me that, it, it’s interesting, they’ve always been like either like genetically obsequious you know, like very needy attention, wanting clearly like unsure of themselves. It’s interesting that to me that would be like such a trigger in seeing a kid who’s unsure of themselves and being like, Ugh, disgusting.

Or they, they, are

Simone Collins: timid and afraid. You can’t, timid

Malcolm Collins: and afraid

Simone Collins: children that are timid and afraid.

Malcolm Collins: And that’s like a big ick factor for me. And it’s interesting that I like, have kid icks like that. I’ve like,

Simone Collins: God,

Malcolm Collins: I now know what women mean when they say this. Right. You know, I’m like, Ugh.

Like that Is [00:31:00] that, that, that’s cringey to be around that. But our kids just don’t have any of that. And I don’t know how I’d feel if we ever had a kid who was like that. But I, I also don’t know how. You and I could produce a kid like that.

Simone Collins: Yeah, it’s, it’s unlikely. But I mean, you and I talk about this a lot and I don’t know how much we’ve talked about it on our podcast we have a little bit, but like.

If you do not like your partner or you do not like things about your partner, you’re gonna really struggle with your kids. ‘cause those kids are gonna exhibit those behaviors. It’s gonna be really tough for you. Whereas if you love your partner, you’re gonna be crazy about your kids, at least if you are also a forgiving of your yourself.

And I think where I struggle most of our kids at times is when they exhibit behaviors that that. Bother me about myself, and I see that in them and I’m like, oh no. But, but then seeing you show grace around that, I feel like you’re showing me grace and it’s just all over again. You show me how much you love me and

Malcolm Collins: I feel there’s the other weird thing that I’ve, I talked to Simone about when I see her being a really loving mom to our kids, [00:32:00] and she is, she’s a phenomenal mother. Like when I go down on a weekend, ‘cause she gets the kids first on weekends and she has, you know, made them all like individual dishes and, and music’s playing and the kids are all roughhousing around and she’s, you know, reading them a book or something and she’s doing all these nice things for them and she does these things for them.

At least she tells me because, you know, she. Likes the kids, but somehow my brain doesn’t register it as that. My brain, every time I see her being nice to the kids is seeing her going out of her way to do me a favor.

Simone Collins: Well, I mean, the, the kids are just like, I mean, not to sound spiritual or like emotional, but like the kids are fragments of our souls and they’re, they’re definitely little pocket Malcolms.

I see so much of them in you that Yeah, I mean, if, if you love your partner, you’re gonna love your kids. And that’s, I mean, you can see this with, with these parents. I think that these mothers who really re regret becoming parents, I think are really also struggling with not just themselves. It’s clear that they have self hatred [00:33:00] issues or depression or anxiety or all of those things.

But then they’re also really struggling with your husband. And like, imagine what a nightmare that is. If you hate yourself, if you don’t like your husband either, and now you’re alone with like a version of the two of you magnified and also pooping and you know, totally out of control like that. That sounds.

Yeah. Like a complete nightmare. And

Malcolm Collins: well, I also think another thing that’s that, that we’ve, we’ve skirted on here, but I think it’s really important to drill into

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Is the role of contextualization in all of this.

Simone Collins: Yes, that’s

Malcolm Collins: right. You know, we had reporters here today asking me about like when people were.

Dog piling us online for using corporal punishment with our kids and saying that we’re child abusers and everything like that. And like asking me like, do you feel? And I was like, no, I don’t really feel bad about that. Like, I can choose how I can textualize these things that happen in my life. And when I was in that debate with Steven meu and he kept trying to get me to be like, well, look at these things your parents did.

Like you should reject them and condemn them. And I was like, I like who I am as an adult. I’m not gonna condemn them. Like, it’s fine. Right?

Simone Collins: Yeah. The outcome was good. So,

Malcolm Collins: yeah. And I, I, [00:34:00] I realized that. Like at a pathological level, if you look at me and, and my outlook on life, I just choose not to contextualize things negatively, right?

Mm-hmm. And I, ‘cause I don’t see any purpose in it, right? Like, it doesn’t help me. Yeah. And society will reward you for contextualizing things negative because everybody wants a sob story. But if you can, you know, internally was in your family culture, steal yourself against that. You will just be like way happier with your life and way more productive.

And this is and I think for a lot of these people, it’s just a choice of negative contextualization, right? Yeah. Of things that happened to me and you and I contextual. And I never have, like, I never like made some deal with you around that you have to do this, but it seems like you have organically adopted this as well.

We

Simone Collins: organically did it. But what do you think about the idea of. Like we did with our relationship also doing stuff like this with parenting because it does seem to [00:35:00] be a really big deal breaker in life in. In a relationship that, that people do. I mean, we, we did some things like what will we do if our kids ask for porn?

What will we do if our kids misbehave? What religion will we make? But we didn’t do it about parenting, logistics.

Malcolm Collins: The idea of parenting choices in a parenting contract.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: Being something you create before having kids is a failure.

Simone Collins: Really, I like the idea a failure.

Malcolm Collins: So

Simone Collins: why?

Malcolm Collins: Everything that would be in a parenting contract should be in the outset of the relationship, the relationship contract.

You should. Okay,

Simone Collins: that’s fair. But like, instead of just looking at how relationships fail, also look it up. Parenting fails.

Malcolm Collins: Exactly. That’s

Simone Collins: okay. Okay. Okay. So we are on the same page. I was like, what are you talking about?

Malcolm Collins: And we had done all of that with our relationship contract.

Simone Collins: No, not all. No. What I’m saying is all we did actually was.

Religion, porn and punishment. And like where we spend family holidays, we didn’t do, those are

Malcolm Collins: core things [00:36:00] parenting

Simone Collins: wise. Yeah. Those are core things that relationships end over. But what we, we didn’t do was like, you know, how are we gonna handle infants? What’s gonna happen? You know, if I’m really injured in like pregnancy, what’s, what’s gonna happen?

Like. With you know, who’s gonna do overnights, et cetera, like, what’s gonna happen. Now, we did have an agreement on like, what’s gonna happen if, if one person has to be a stay-at-home parent and it was gonna be you. But like, I don’t know. I, I feel like we could have done more. I just, I want, my thing is I, again, I think this article’s good.

I think people should be aware of what can go wrong, and I think people should plan for it as they’re beginning the outset of a relationship. Do you agree?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Well, it needs to be agreed at the outset of a relationship because the kids are ultimately the purpose of human relationships, sexual relationships, romantic relationships.

Simone Collins: Well, I mean, per our view, people are welcome to have different objective functions and decide to only do pairings based on

Malcolm Collins: No, no, no, no. Biologically, I’m speaking here.

Simone Collins: Oh, biologically. Yeah. That

Malcolm Collins: is, that is why the [00:37:00] concept of a relationship evolved. That is why the institution of marriage evolved. That is why the institution of dating evolved.

It was to produce the next generation. It has been co-opted as a l rrp by, by other groups. But it is fundamentally that’s what it’s about. Right? Yeah. Now obviously you know, now you can be like, well, does this mean that like. Gay people aren’t really in a relationship. It’s like, well actually that could change as science changes, right?

Like yeah. If, if, if they can you know, artificial wombs and have kids on their own. Yeah. Then even for them, right? If a faction of like, let’s say gay culture survives by making itself above repopulation rate was most of the cultures that are above repopulation rate being very you know, homophobic, transphobic, et cetera but if some faction of, of, of a gay culture finds out how to make it.

Self stable through science from the perspective of that faction of gay culture? Yeah. Relationships will still be about kids. They’ll still be about forming a stable household to bring the [00:38:00] kids into.

Simone Collins: I actually, I think of what I’ve seen of gay parent social media influencers they may actually be in a better position coming into this ‘cause they are approaching parenting from a more.

Thoughtful and first principles approach because instead of just being like, oh, I guess we’re just gonna default to like the gender norms or whatever.

Malcolm Collins: Well, and you know, huge bonus they don’t have to be married to a woman.

Simone Collins: Yeah, but also like if it’s two women they, they still, you know,

Malcolm Collins: okay, I’ll, I’ll, I’ll put it this way, of the gay parenting influencers.

Yeah. I see a lot of wholesome male, male partners. I do not see many wholesome female, female, gay parenting influencers.

Simone Collins: There’s there’s one that I watch a lot. They just had a, well, not just, but they recently had twins after having one boy and they talk about it a lot. She’s, she’s I mean like both of them show up on the podcast, but she does a lot of like, just cultural commentary.

I can’t remember her name now, but she’s a, a disabled ginger vintage fashion wearing. Woman whose, whose [00:39:00] look I love, I love her look. And

Malcolm Collins: I’m disabled.

Simone Collins: She talks a lot about her disability. Other, I wouldn’t say that if it weren’t like part of her identity. ‘cause otherwise that would seem like I’m, I don’t know, trying to shame her or

Malcolm Collins: a weird thing to talk about, you know?

Simone Collins: Yeah. But no, she, she grew up with like crippling pain issues and, and like, I think she’s partially deaf perhaps, or something like that. But then, yeah, she’s a, just always think of that Everest news clip to the top of Everest. But he’s gay. I mean, he’s gay. I mean, he’s blind.

Speaker: Right after the break, we’re gonna interview Eric Weihenmayer, who climbed the highest mountain in the world, Mount Everest. But he’s gay. I mean, he’s gay... Excuse me, he’s blind. So we’ll hear about that coming up. Okay. As we head to the break, a look at the s-

Simone Collins: She’s both, she’s both deaf and gay.

So maybe she just needs to climb Everest and finally fulfill the prophecy. But anyway, the

Malcolm Collins: most disabled person to ever do a thing. But so you think that they, they, that she comes across as like wholesome.

Simone Collins: Very, no, no, no. Like [00:40:00] they’re, I mean, tired as being a parent of, of twins, but like, that’s kind of normal when you have like young twins and everything and like, they had a complicated pregnancy and everything and they shared a lot about it openly.

And I like, I like that people do that. But yeah, they’ve, they’ve I think very intentionally thought through, you know, how they’re gonna balance things and how they’re gonna manage. And I like that. So, you know, that’s the, the great thing about. When you the, the problem, and this is something we talk a lot about in the practice guide to relationships, is that when people don’t explicitly negotiate terms in a relationship, each person is going off a social contract.

Now that makes sense if you grow up in some medieval fiefdom where everyone has lived with the same culture in isolation for hundreds of years. But when you live in our culture and everyone is dealing with a slightly different tat. Social contract, you, you’ll get into a marriage and like one person expects like one set of things and the other person expects a totally different set of things.

And then it’s this huge shock when you’re not on the same page.

Malcolm Collins: What, what I find so funny is you know, I, I have to choose my words because there’s different factions in [00:41:00] our audience. And the ways the different factions relate to ideal marriage set setups. Like there’s a huge chunk of like the online right, where when we’re talking about like a single father raising a kid, they’re like, that’s awesome.

That’s the only way to raise kids, and it can be a great

Simone Collins: way to raise kids.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yeah.

Simone Collins: The faction, like, you could never raise kids without a mother and a

Malcolm Collins: father on the, on the men who are doing this, and they’re like, that’s great. And then we’re like in. And now you have the, these male, male partnerships where they’re raising kids.

Oh, that’s awesome. And then the other faction is like, no, traditional family’s all the way, you know, the kids need a mother.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: And we’re just like, whatever. It works like. Well,

Simone Collins: I think a big thing, some people have actually asked us to do a podcast on this. There’s the famous Olympic ice skater who is the, daughter one, one of five via IVF to a single Chinese father who chose all like Caucasian Jewish women for the egg donors. And it’s just this very like, very great example of like, a, a a based single dad just being like, yeah, I’m gonna like raise five [00:42:00] children via IVF and they’re all gonna be exceptional and amazing.

And he, he has this like Olympic gold medal winner. Who’s like super cool as a person too, by the

Malcolm Collins: way. Oh, really? One of his kids became an Olympic gold medal.

Simone Collins: Yeah, no, she was like one of the most talked about and famous people in the entire Winter Olympics. I don’t know how you missed this. She’s super cool.

Malcolm Collins: Did she fight for China team or America team?

Simone Collins: I think she was on China’s team. But yeah. Anyway, IVF. Did dad, Chinese chose Caucasian egg donor, so she’s like mixed.

Malcolm Collins: That’s a, that’s a pretty good mix. We did the episode on average racial attractiveness. And Asian White, from the perspective of many ethnicities is the top attractiveness ethnic group.

Simone Collins: Yes. With us concluding that the holy grail is Japanese Irish, which many of our viewers have come to agree with,

Malcolm Collins: what was it? I, I think it was that white people marked them as even more attractive than other white people and generally groups. Yeah.

Simone Collins: And then just anecdotally, like people have sent actually pictures of like their Japanese Irish friends and there’s like [00:43:00] just impossibly, you know, beautiful.

So, who knew? But there you go. But yeah. Okay. Well, yeah, anyway, I’m glad the New York Times is, is doing this series and I, I think that, being thoughtful and not sugarcoating things is important. So. There we go. Well, did

Malcolm Collins: they, any, any other choice quotes from the article or just

Simone Collins: No, just these, these are deeply sad women.

It, it’s mostly a very depressing article.

Malcolm Collins: Well, I actually think the bigger takeaway is the toxicity of environments like, you know, regretful parents where people are like, oh, these people affirm you, but you shouldn’t be affirmed for wallowing in this stuff. Right? Like, that’s only gonna make things worse for you, even if you’re really experiencing it.

Simone Collins: Oh. Although, I don’t know, I, I feel conflicted about that because these women were also surrounded by people who said exactly that and who were like. Man, like stop wallowing, like snap out of it. Like be positive, think about your kids. Like, enjoy the things they enjoy and it just, that didn’t work for them.

So as much as I can empathize with your marriage, I also, also, sorry, sorry. With your, with your message. I can’t, it didn’t work [00:44:00] and I like things that work. So. I don’t know what to say to that. Like, I, I, the, and unfortunately I don’t have a solution for women who once they get in this position aside from like, Hey, maybe you can contextualize this a little bit differently.

I think the only real solution is to head off these problems before they become problems. Unfortunately, like there’s no saving. The ones who have already come to regret becoming parents is only saving the future parents, which is not convenient, but that’s how I feel. So it goes. Anyway, I love you. I’m gonna make you Bullock tonight with the mozzarella cheese, and if the mozzarella cheese doesn’t look good, we’re doing cheddar instead.

Malcolm Collins: The mozzarella cheese will be good. It’s only like a week and a half old.

Simone Collins: Look, if there’s mold on mozzarella cheese, because it is a soft cheese, it just goes all the way through. You can’t cut it off. Like you don’t really know where it ends, the veins of those. So it’s not considered safe when it’s a hard cheese, you can cut off the, the mold and you’re, you’re more, it’s like easier to safely do.

But I’m not, I’m not doing that. If your mozzarella cheese looks off, I don’t wanna, I don’t wanna kill you weirdly. [00:45:00]

Malcolm Collins: Well, you are my wife.

Simone Collins: Right? So

Malcolm Collins: it’s one of these things where everyone’s always like, your wife could die having a kid. And I’m like, and that’s, that’s like a big problem for me. ‘cause now I’ve got five in kids that I’m raising alone.

Right? Like I would much rather, when I think of one of us dying. Like, that’s the one who got out of the hardship, right? Like that’s the, that’s the if, if I died at any point in the next few years I, I, I feel like I, I, I screwed over Simone, right? Like I got the easy out. She’s got the hard dealing with five kids.

Simone Collins: You’re not allowed to die. Look, you just. You’re not allowed to die until we have all of our kids are set up and thriving. Then. Then like we can go whenever we want, but you gotta hold on. Until then, Octavian like rediscovered his mortality. Yesterday as we were driving back from the doctor, he’s like, wait, I’m gonna die.

And I’m like, yeah, that’s why you need to be careful with how you spend your time. And he’s like, hold on, wait. Actually, and I’m like, yeah, dude, you’re gonna die. And I’m [00:46:00] like, you’re not res responding. And he is like, whoa,

Malcolm Collins: whoa.

Simone Collins: It’s, it’s kind of hard for kids to discover that they, they, they don’t re respond because that’s,

Malcolm Collins: that’s an interesting thing to discuss with first time

Simone Collins: metaphysically.

Like,

Malcolm Collins: yeah, you’re eventually gonna die.

Simone Collins: Yeah, now, now he’s aware of it that I was like, you’ve got like probably considering modern science like about a hundred years. He’s like, oh, okay, whatever. Like, that’s a lot of time. You know, when like one day for them is eternity. So he’s not too worried about it yet, thank goodness.

But he is like, also, I don’t want you to, that’s like, that’s toasty wave saying I love you by the way. You know how he’s always like, I love you and I don’t want you to die. Because they’ve heard me so many times being like, please stop jumping off the bed. Like, please stop doing all these things. I don’t want you to die.

And they just think that that’s like this generic way of expressing fondness when I’m really like, no, please stop trying to kill yourself. Like, oh. Anyway, I I love you and I don’t want you to die. [00:47:00] Bye.

Malcolm Collins: All right. We gonna join the meetup for fans.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm. I’m

Malcolm Collins: looking for, do you have people filming? You still Uhhuh.

Okay.

Speaker 4: Are we going deep into the jungle, guys? Yeah, are we digging in the jungle? Is this a jungle or woods? This is a wood. It looks jungle. Oh, huh? It looks like it. It looks like it. And that’s called a temperate rainforest, guys.

Today on Based Camp, we discuss the purpose, history, and utility of the UN and NATO. Do they make sense in the modern geopolitical landscape? Do they make sense in the face of demographic collapse?

As people who constantly rail on bureaucratic bloat and mission creep, you might be able to guess where we fall… but what do you think? We’re keen to read your opinions in the comments.

Show Notes

A typical middle-income American household is paying $337.50 annually on the European theatre and NATO-related missions via their taxes

* Per household, middle of the income distribution: USAFacts reports that in 2021, families in the middle 20% of the income distribution paid about 10,391 dollars per year in federal income tax alone.

* So for a middle‑income household paying 10,391 dollars in federal income tax, a good ballpark is about 1,500 dollars of that going to national defense in a recent‑years sense.

* And one mainstream estimate is that roughly 20–25 percent of total U.S. military spending is devoted to the European theater and NATO‑related missions (forces, bases, exercises, enablers, nuclear posture)

* With U.S. military spending around 850–900 billion dollars per year in the mid‑2020s, that implies on the order of 170–225 billion dollars annually that can reasonably be tied to European and NATO deterrence, broadly defined

* 1500*.225= $337.50

Meanwhile, what is NATO doing for us?

I vote we not only leave NATO but also leave the UN (roughly $90-100 per year is paid to the UN per tax return / tax paying household—this includes lower-income households).

Why NATO Was Created

Basically to fight commies during the cold war

* It emerged in the early Cold War as a direct response to the Soviet Union’s expansionist actions, including the domination of Central and Eastern Europe behind the “Iron Curtain.”

* Western European nations were still recovering from World War II, and the U.S. and Canada sought to deter further Soviet aggression through collective strength rather than unilateral action.

It operates within the UN Charter framework (explicitly referencing Article 51 on self-defense) but focuses on military readiness

What Nato Does

* Coordinate on defense, crisis management, and cooperative security

* Like a neighborhood watch group

* Participants voluntarily join

* They coordinate on security and defensive action

* They sometimes partner with non-members to promote stability beyond their own borders

* They meet occasionally to strategize and troubleshoot

Key functions:

* Regular consultations in the North Atlantic Council (NATO’s main decision-making body).

* Joint military planning, exercises, standardization of equipment/procedures, and integrated command structures.

* Deployment of standing forces, rapid-reaction units, and multinational battlegroups (e.g., on the eastern flank).

* Common-funded activities like infrastructure, command structures, and some operations (though the vast majority of capabilities come from national forces contributed by members).

Article 5 (Collective Defence): An armed attack against one member in Europe or North America is considered an attack against all. Each member must assist the attacked party “forthwith… such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force,” in line with UN Charter Article 51 (individual/collective self-defence). The response is decided individually by each member but coordinated through NATO. It applies only to armed attacks (traditionally state-on-state, but clarified to potentially include significant cyber or hybrid attacks) in the defined North Atlantic area.

* IMPORTANT: The Article 5 commitment (“attack on one is an attack on all”) is not a guarantee that NATO will always send combat troops; each ally chooses how to assist, which might be logistics, intelligence, or other support.

What NATO Does NOT Do

* Feature any concrete financial obligations in terms of contribution to group efforts

* The treaty itself contains no specific spending requirements or percentages

* spending targets are political commitments, not legally enforceable treaty obligations.

* At the 2014 Wales Summit, members pledged to aim for 2% of GDP on defence (with at least 20% of that on major equipment/modernization). All members met or exceeded this by 2025

* BUT THIS HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH CONTRIBUTING TO THE GROUP

* Updated 2025 commitment (The Hague Summit): Members (except Spain, which received an exemption) agreed to reach 5% of GDP annually by 2035 on “core defence requirements and defence- and security-related spending.” This breaks down to at least 3.5% on core NATO-defined defence expenditure (to meet capability targets) and up to 1.5% on broader areas like critical infrastructure protection, cyber defence, civil preparedness, resilience, innovation, and the defence industrial base. Allies must submit annual credible plans to show progress

* Guarantee that members will host bases for each other

* NATO cannot force a country to go to war or to host a base; participation in operations and basing arrangements is negotiated and voluntary.

* Maintain its own large standing armies

* NATO relies heavily on VOLUNTARY contributions from members

* When NATO runs an operation, countries voluntarily “assign” units for that mission; those forces remain nationally owned and can be withdrawn by their governments.

* Meaningfully enforce anything among members

* The treaty commitments are binding, but failure to honor them (especially Article 5) only undermines the alliance’s credibility

* enforcement relies on political consensus and mutual interest.

* Any member can legally withdraw by giving notice under the North Atlantic Treaty; NATO cannot legally forbid a state from leaving.

Examples of NATO members not contributing / helping out when asked

Post-9/11 (Article 5 Invocation, 2001)

* NATO invoked Article 5 for the first (and only) time after the U.S. terrorist attacks. Allies offered broad political solidarity, overflight rights, AWACS patrols over the U.S., and contributions to operations in Afghanistan. However, actual military involvement varied significantly:

* Many allies deployed forces to the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) and Operation Enduring Freedom, but contributions differed in scale, duration, and risk.

* Spain did not obtain parliamentary approval to send combat forces initially and provided more limited support (e.g., later ISAF troops and hospital units).

* Other nations imposed national caveats (restrictions on troop use, such as geographic limits, prohibitions on offensive operations, or requirements for home-government approval before engaging). These fragmented command, reduced effectiveness, and increased risks for allies willing to fight in high-intensity areas (e.g., southern Afghanistan). Germany, for instance, restricted its troops mostly to quieter northern regions.

2003 Iraq Crisis (Turkey’s Article 4 Request)

In early 2003, Turkey (which borders Iraq) asked NATO for defensive assistance—Patriot air‑defense missiles, AWACS, and other measures—because it feared retaliation if the U.S. invaded Iraq.

* France, Germany, and Belgium blocked NATO planning for weeks, arguing that preparing defenses would signal that war was inevitable and undermine UN diplomacy, leaving Turkey feeling exposed and accusing allies of failing their obligations.

This is one of the clearest cases of major members actively hindering support for an ally’s security request.

Afghanistan Mission (Ongoing Caveats, 2000s–2010s)

* Once NATO took on the ISAF mission in Afghanistan, some allies imposed strict “caveats” on their troops—limits on where and how they could fight—which meant that combat burdens fell heavily on a few countries (e.g., U.S., UK, Canada, the Netherlands) while others stayed in relatively safer roles.

* These caveats were widely criticized within NATO as a way for governments to claim solidarity while avoiding the riskiest tasks their partners wanted help with.

Recent Example: 2026 U.S.-Iran Conflict

Following U.S. and Israeli actions against Iran (starting February 2026), which affected shipping in the Strait of Hormuz:

* Several European NATO members, notably Spain, refused U.S. requests for basing rights, overflight, or naval support. Spain barred use of key bases like Naval Station Rota.

* Others (e.g., France, Germany) offered limited or qualified support and declined direct involvement or a coordinated NATO naval effort to reopen the strait. This drew sharp U.S. criticism, with discussions of potential repercussions for non-supportive allies.

These cases highlight how domestic politics, differing threat perceptions, legal requirements (e.g., parliamentary approval), and strategic disagreements can limit responses. NATO has no mechanism to expel or automatically punish members for such actions—decisions rely on consensus and political pressure.

The US Disproportionately Helping NATO Countries

Disproportionate US Spending in General

In 2024, U.S. defense spending was about two‑thirds of the total defense spending of all NATO allies combined, meaning the U.S. spends roughly as much as everyone else in the alliance put together.

The U.S. overwhelmingly dominates high‑end capabilities that NATO depends on: strategic airlift, aerial refueling, global intelligence/surveillance, precision strike, and much of the nuclear deterrent.

In operations like Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Libya, U.S. forces supplied most of the enabling assets and often a large share of combat power, without which European allies could not have sustained the campaigns at the same tempo.

Cold War and immediate post‑Cold War

* Throughout the Cold War, the U.S. stationed large ground, air, and nuclear forces in Western Europe (West Germany, UK, Italy, etc.) specifically to deter an attack on NATO allies by the Soviet Union; these deployments are widely seen as the core of NATO’s collective defense during that era.

* Even after the Cold War, the U.S. kept substantial forces and nuclear weapons in Europe as a “tripwire” and security guarantee for allies like Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Italy, and Turkey.

Defense of exposed allies after Russia’s actions (2014–present)

* After Russia’s seizure of Crimea and intervention in eastern Ukraine in 2014, the U.S. rapidly increased air, land, and sea deployments to reassure allies, including extra fighters for the Baltic Air Policing mission over Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania.

* The U.S. also sent F‑16s and hundreds of personnel to Poland, moved naval forces like USS Truxtun into the Black Sea for exercises with Romania and Bulgaria, and pledged thousands of troops and assets to NATO’s Response Force as part of a visible shield for eastern allies.

Permanent and rotational deployments in Europe

* The U.S. provides key elements of NATO’s missile defense for allies, such as a radar in Turkey and Aegis ships forward‑based in Spain, plus land‑based interceptor sites in Romania and (planned) Poland, aimed at protecting European allies from missile threats.

* It routinely deploys forces to exercises and forward positions across NATO territory—from Marines in the Baltics to aviation rotations in Poland and strategic lift assets that enable allied operations—helping ensure that front‑line states can be reinforced in a crisis.

Financial and capability support that underwrites others’ defense

* The U.S. pays the largest share of many NATO common programs and high‑end capabilities used to defend allies, such as AWACS surveillance aircraft, the Alliance Ground Surveillance (Global Hawk) drones, and strategic airlift; Washington typically covers around 40–42 percent of major shared systems’ acquisition or operating costs.

* U.S. defense investments like the F‑35 program, precision‑guided munitions stockpiles, and shared airlift have been deliberately structured so that allied air forces and armies can plug into U.S. capabilities and be defended or reinforced more effectively in a crisis.

Why Not Also Leave the United Nations?

For 2026, the US paid approximately $827 million to the UN REGULAR BUDGET (based on the approved ~$3.45 billion UN regular budget). For 2025, it was around $820 million.

ADDITIONALLY, the US has been spending around $1.1–1.2 billion on UN peacekeeping annually in recent years, though actual payments have been lower due to cuts and delays

The Difference Between NATO and the UN

* The UN was established earlier (1945 vs 1949)

* It has more members (193 member states vs 32 member countries)

* Meant to prevent future conflicts vs specifically deter Soviet aggression during the cold war

* Meant to act not just through coordination on security (like with NATO) but also diplomacy, international law, human rights, and cooperation on economic, social, and humanitarian issues

What makes the UN suck

* It’s a lumbering bureaucracy with six principal organs (General Assembly, Security Council, Secretariat, etc.), specialized agencies (WHO, UNESCO, etc.), and the International Court of Justice

* The Security Council (5 permanent veto-wielding members + 10 elected) can authorize binding actions, including force under Chapter VII. Decisions often require broad consensus or majorities, but vetoes limit enforcement.

* NATO is elegant by comparison!

* Member countries waste tons of money paying for the lumbering bureaucracy

* Whereas NATO has no central budget for operations

The one thing one might want to replace / keep around that the UN does: Peacekeeping

* HISTORICALLY it has been helpful

* Counterfactual analyses estimate that without UN peacekeeping since the early 2000s, there would have been 3–4 more countries in major armed conflict by 2013, with up to two-thirds reduction in major conflicts possible under stronger mandates/budgets (potentially saving ~150,000 lives in one modeled period)

* Peacekeeping increases the durability of peace agreements (e.g., reducing risk of repeat war by 75–85% in some analyses) and supports institution-building.

* UN peacekeepers help maintain ceasefires, supports local peace processes, reduces communal violence, and aids demobilization/reintegration. Overall, it is described as more effective than most other known tools for managing civil wars.

* Though the UN is doing it less well now and it likely can be done better by a more specialized org

* In places like Mali (MINUSMA), Democratic Republic of Congo (MONUSCO), and others, missions have struggled against active insurgencies, armed groups, and lack of political will. Some have withdrawn amid rising violence, host-government opposition, or perceptions of ineffectiveness (e.g., failure to fully protect civilians despite mandates). (See: The New Humanitarian)

* One analysis of 69 missions found ~43% fully successful, with lower rates post-2000 and in enforcement/humanitarian-focused operations. Long-duration missions see declining success

* The US could probably pend LESS than it’s obligated to pay to UN peacekeeping (1.1-1.2 billion USD), maybe just spending $1B, and be even more effective

* Plus use more of those dollar on US defense suppliers

* Note: Peacekeeping works best when there is some peace to keep or a viable process. It struggles in high-intensity wars without enforcement capacity or against terrorism/extremism

* Perhaps some AGI-driven org would be great to fill this role in the future

Appendix: NATO Articles

As published on NATO’s website

The Parties to this Treaty reaffirm their faith in the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations and their desire to live in peace with all peoples and all governments.

They are determined to safeguard the freedom, common heritage and civilisation of their peoples, founded on the principles of democracy, individual liberty and the rule of law. They seek to promote stability and well-being in the North Atlantic area.

They are resolved to unite their efforts for collective defence and for the preservation of peace and security. They therefore agree to this North Atlantic Treaty :

Article 1

The Parties undertake, as set forth in the Charter of the United Nations, to settle any international dispute in which they may be involved by peaceful means in such a manner that international peace and security and justice are not endangered, and to refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force in any manner inconsistent with the purposes of the United Nations.

Article 2

The Parties will contribute toward the further development of peaceful and friendly international relations by strengthening their free institutions, by bringing about a better understanding of the principles upon which these institutions are founded, and by promoting conditions of stability and well-being. They will seek to eliminate conflict in their international economic policies and will encourage economic collaboration between any or all of them.

Article 3

In order more effectively to achieve the objectives of this Treaty, the Parties, separately and jointly, by means of continuous and effective self-help and mutual aid, will maintain and develop their individual and collective capacity to resist armed attack.

Article 4

The Parties will consult together whenever, in the opinion of any of them, the territorial integrity, political independence or security of any of the Parties is threatened.

Article 5

The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all and consequently they agree that, if such an armed attack occurs, each of them, in exercise of the right of individual or collective self-defence recognised by Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations, will assist the Party or Parties so attacked by taking forthwith, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area.

Any such armed attack and all measures taken as a result thereof shall immediately be reported to the Security Council. Such measures shall be terminated when the Security Council has taken the measures necessary to restore and maintain international peace and security .

Article 6 1

For the purpose of Article 5, an armed attack on one or more of the Parties is deemed to include an armed attack:

on the territory of any of the Parties in Europe or North America, on the Algerian Departments of France 2, on the territory of Turkey or on the Islands under the jurisdiction of any of the Parties in the North Atlantic area north of the Tropic of Cancer;

on the forces, vessels, or aircraft of any of the Parties, when in or over these territories or any other area in Europe in which occupation forces of any of the Parties were stationed on the date when the Treaty entered into force or the Mediterranean Sea or the North Atlantic area north of the Tropic of Cancer.

Article 7

This Treaty does not affect, and shall not be interpreted as affecting in any way the rights and obligations under the Charter of the Parties which are members of the United Nations, or the primary responsibility of the Security Council for the maintenance of international peace and security.

Article 8

Each Party declares that none of the international engagements now in force between it and any other of the Parties or any third State is in conflict with the provisions of this Treaty, and undertakes not to enter into any international engagement in conflict with this Treaty.

Article 9

The Parties hereby establish a Council, on which each of them shall be represented, to consider matters concerning the implementation of this Treaty. The Council shall be so organised as to be able to meet promptly at any time. The Council shall set up such subsidiary bodies as may be necessary; in particular it shall establish immediately a defence committee which shall recommend measures for the implementation of Articles 3 and 5.

Article 10

The Parties may, by unanimous agreement, invite any other European State in a position to further the principles of this Treaty and to contribute to the security of the North Atlantic area to accede to this Treaty. Any State so invited may become a Party to the Treaty by depositing its instrument of accession with the Government of the United States of America. The Government of the United States of America will inform each of the Parties of the deposit of each such instrument of accession.

Article 11

This Treaty shall be ratified and its provisions carried out by the Parties in accordance with their respective constitutional processes. The instruments of ratification shall be deposited as soon as possible with the Government of the United States of America, which will notify all the other signatories of each deposit. The Treaty shall enter into force between the States which have ratified it as soon as the ratifications of the majority of the signatories, including the ratifications of Belgium, Canada, France, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and the United States, have been deposited and shall come into effect with respect to other States on the date of the deposit of their ratifications.3

Article 12

After the Treaty has been in force for ten years, or at any time thereafter, the Parties shall, if any of them so requests, consult together for the purpose of reviewing the Treaty, having regard for the factors then affecting peace and security in the North Atlantic area, including the development of universal as well as regional arrangements under the Charter of the United Nations for the maintenance of international peace and security.

Article 13

After the Treaty has been in force for twenty years, any Party may cease to be a Party one year after its notice of denunciation has been given to the Government of the United States of America, which will inform the Governments of the other Parties of the deposit of each notice of denunciation.

Article 14

This Treaty, of which the English and French texts are equally authentic, shall be deposited in the archives of the Government of the United States of America. Duly certified copies will be transmitted by that Government to the Governments of other signatories.

Episode Transcript

Based Camp - Should the USA Leave NATO_

Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] Hello, Simone. I’m excited to be here with you today. Today we are gonna be asking the question of, is it really a sound idea and a sound investment for the United States to stay in NATO? And this is an interesting question for me to visit, and I think you to visit as well. Because during Trump’s first real rise to power, while I had these perverse ideas of wouldn’t it be so fun if he actually won-

I was still a responsible citizen. Right. And I would hear about these ideas of leaving NATO and I remember just thinking, “Well, of course that’s a bad idea because all of the blah say it’s a bad idea.” And surely they wouldn’t just say, like, they’re not being paid by NATO or something, are they? They don’t have some vested interest in pretending like NATO is an existentially important thing for America to be in.

Well, and it

Simone Collins: certainly seemed like, well, it’s the responsible thing to do. We’re all grown up now. You know, we, [00:01:00] we work together and, and have meetings where we put on our business suits and talk sternly about international problems and different- Oh my God,

Malcolm Collins: is NATO actually the kid from BoJack Horseman the businessman?

I, that is unironically NATO. But no, no. So, I saw, I saw that. And, and as time has gone on, and I wanna say, like, this has been a recent thing for me where I have revisited this question, and I was like, “What was I thinking?” Hmm. So like I wanna go into this, but we’re going to do it from Simone ‘cause she’s the one who did all the research this time.

So take us away, Simone.

Simone Collins: Right. So I wanna put things into perspective to start things off. A typical middle income American household is paying $337.50 annually on the European theater and NATO related missions- Mm ... via their taxes. That’s, that’s a lot of money. And- That’s a

Malcolm Collins: lot of money for a middle income family.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Meanwhile, what, what is NATO doing [00:02:00] for us? Like for real, actually, you know? W- what have they done for us? It seems like, I mean, it’s, it’s clear, and I’m gonna go into it we are doing, America’s doing the vast majority of the work. It’s mostly just us defending Europe and, and being like their outsourced defense in return for nothing.

In fact, when we ask for them to do us a solid, like with the war in Iran, countries, m- member members of NATO like Spain are like you can’t use, you know, you can’t use us.” Yeah, I, I wanna

Malcolm Collins: point out how crazy what Spain did. Yeah. We have a base in their territory- Uh-huh ... that we pay them to have- Mm-hmm, mm-hmm

in their territory. Uh-huh. And they wouldn’t... And, and keep in mind, Spain has said, like leaders of Spain have on multiple times said Iran is an existential threat that needs to be dealt with. Yeah. Before Trump went into this war, he called up various European leaders being like, “Are you...” Like, the, the, it w- they didn’t know that he was about to attack, but basically they were like, “Yeah, this needed to happen.”[00:03:00]

Yeah. Right? And that is what motivated him partially to do this. Mm-hmm. They then, doing a war that is fundamentally on their behalf to an extent, ‘cause they have more terrorist attacks than we do, right? Well, that depends. Yeah. And these terrorist attacks are often funded by Iran proxies. Mm-hmm.

Would not let... And, and keep in mind, we’re like boosting their local economy by having our military base in their region. Yeah. Like, they’re not paying for that. They didn’t let us refuel there, and as a result of us not refueling there and having to do in the sky refuels, American servicemen died.

Right? Like, that was some of the only people who died during this war, due to Spain’s incallcitrance on this. Yeah. Why are we paying to defend them if they don’t come help us? And I wanna go into like the bigger-

Simone Collins: Yeah, we, the taxpayers ... picture here. $337- Yeah, why am I paying for that? ... a year. And this, I mean, we, we probably, you know, I mean, like a- I’m sure a lot of the people listening to this are paying proportionally actually a lot more in like functional, like financial terms.

And I wanna,

Malcolm Collins: I actually want to, before you get into all the, the, like let’s get into like the [00:04:00] theory of this, the reasons why people say that we’re actually paying this, right? Uh-huh. So anybody who looks at this honestly is going to tell you that okay, right now NATO is a strictly bad deal for the United States.

For- Right now ... to, to understand why it’s a strictly bad deal right now is our current primary geopolitical enemies or core geopolitical enemies are- Iran, which NATO refuses to help with- Yeah ... and China, which NATO is not in a position to help with.

Simone Collins: Yeah, and it’s not about China at all. It, it’s about countering the Soviet Union.

Malcolm Collins: R- right. But the- That doesn’t exist anymore ... Soviet Union doesn’t exist. I know. So we’ll get to that in a second. Yeah. But the point being is that NATO militarily right now is completely pointless- Mm-hmm ... from the perspective of the United States. Yep. Even if... And, and people could be like, “But what if Russia attacks neighboring countries in Europe,” right?

And it’s like, what if Russia attacks neighboring countries in Europe? Suppose, and we’ll, we’ll get into [00:05:00] this, but, like, suppose Russia was not bled dry right now, did not have a failing military industry right now did not just show how catastrophically incompetent they are in a military context.

Suppose they had working nukes, and if people are like, “Malcolm, of course Russia has working nukes,” we basically know as a fact they don’t. Russia has not won a successful nuclear test since before I was born 38 years ago, okay?

Speaker 18: Sorry, correction. It’s been 36 years since their last nuclear test, so a little bit less than I’ve been alive, but still far too long for it to be plausible that they still have working nukes, especially given the geopolitical advantage they would have by showing the world they had working nukes

Malcolm Collins: If Russia had working nukes or was confident they had working nukes, they would run a test as a means to show us, [00:06:00] “Hey, we still have working nukes.”

North Korea can run tests. They do that to show us. Every other country in the world with working nukes, other than the US, who nobody doubts has working nukes, regularly does tests of their nukes, right? The fact in that we saw that Russia couldn’t even keep an airplane working or a truck’s tires turned shows us pretty hard that they probably don’t have working nukes.

So what do they have? Suppose, but I’m like, suppose they had working nukes. Suppose they did not have a depleted military right now. It’s still irrelevant for us because the maximum they would do in, in like a maximally successful military campaign is conquer Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania the Ukraine, and maybe move a bit into Poland.

Okay? And, and supposing they did all of that, one, their bureaucracy would be completely strained by this. The territories that they captured, all of the competent people [00:07:00] would flee, and land isn’t really that relevant to the current geopolitical context. What you need are tech workers and they would be the first to leave, right?

And then or like high-paying white collar workers or finance sector workers, right? Like, you don’t win a lot these days by taking over an effing potato field that you mined. Okay? And then on top of all of that, Europe would, for their own political interests, oppose this and fight against this.

Russia, economically speaking, is puny compared to the rest of Europe at this point. Europe would fight them back and at a best case scenario for Russia they’d be stuck on the Polish border and get a little bit of Polish land. Like, this is absolute best, best, best case scenario for Russia. Okay? That is irrelevant to the United States’ geopolitical security.

We do not need to worry about the USSR taking over Europe and turning it communist. In [00:08:00] fact, there is a much bigger threat of NATO countries themselves voting themselves communist or voting themselves into Islamist states than there is of freaking communist, like, like the Soviet Union taking over Europe at this point.

It is stupid. And now I’m saying, okay, but now let’s look at the reality. Russia right now does not have a big remaining population to play. They lost a war against an irrelevant backwater without a meaningful military, the Ukraine, right, at the start of this war. They have, the- their, their losses have been staggering.

Their demographic situation is worse than almost any other country in Europe, and that’s saying a lot. Which means that not only could they not for- field an army now, they’re not gonna be able to field an army tomorrow. And their freaking military is [00:09:00] full of useless junk at this point if they were going up against a real military power.

It’s just frankly irrelevant, and if the US wanted to get into one of these wars, like if Russia said, “Well, we’re gonna attack because you’re not in NATO anymore” Okay, well the US could still say, “Well, we will defend this country if you try to attack them,” and just remove our pointless spending in other territories, right?

Yeah, we, we do

Simone Collins: not need NATO to be aligned with the countries we’re aligned with. We don’t need some stu- like, like Joni Mitchell says in a song lyric, “We don’t need no piece of paper from the city hall.” Like you don’t need a, a treaty to be like, “I promise to defend you if you’re attacked.” Like, dude, if we think that Russia’s doing a bad thing and we’re trying to help out countries that we’re, we have aligned inter- interests with, we’ll get in there and we can do it.

Well, and I, I wanna

Malcolm Collins: point out, people can be like well, is that really true? You know, would America and would Russia believe that America would actually [00:10:00] stand up for these?” It’s like, yeah, well, we did for Ukraine. We sent them a ton of effing money and a ton of military supplies. That makes it ver- Like, keep in mind, people can be like, “Well, that’s not the same as telling Russia, ‘You’ll go to war if they attack.’”

And I’m like, no, it’s worse for Russia. It’s literally worse because Russia would have preferred America got involved in the war in U- Ukraine because then they would have had a reason to withdraw without looking stupid and buffoonish. But we didn’t. We just kept giving them money until they bled their own country dry to an extent that is almost comical.

That Prigozhin was able to just turn around and march to Moscow shows that it is actually the fact that nobody’s willing to attack Russia that led Russia to essentially genocide its own fighting forces and not leave protective forces within their own country like you normally would, was in a war. So okay, Russia’s not relevant.

People can then say, “Okay, well, what about Europe? In 15 [00:11:00] or 50 or 100 years, Europe could, if we are not protecting them, develop a geopolitical interest that is orthogonal to the interests of the United States.” And I’m like, bro, we’re already there. They are not meaningfully our allies anymore. If you look at the way that European countries have been acting recently, if you look at the decisions they’re making, not only are they not our allies right now, they’re not politically relevant go- They act like fascists.

They arrest people for writing things like, “Islam can be questioned,” on a wall. Germany literally, the, their citizenship voted majority for ADL and conservatives, and they froze the ADL out of power, the two parties that wanted to limit immigration, through one, siccing a secret police force after them and monitoring them just like the Nazis did.

And then two, just saying we’re basically ignoring election results. Reform won overwhelmingly in the UK recently, and do you think Reform wants NATO? [00:12:00] No. The factions in Europe that are aligned with us don’t want NATO either. So okay, not only do you have all of that, but even if Europe was our bestest of buds and really was long-term aligned with us, economically and geopolitically in the future they’re irrelevant.

If you look at their current fertility rate, the fact that they have blocked AI training on their own data, and the fact that they shut down a bunch of their nuclear plants or went on all of these green orgasm trips, they are literally the worst place in the world to run an AI company from. And that’s the future of the world economy.

So they both don’t have the demographics to make themselves work in the future, and they don’t... And people have said, “Okay, well Malcolm, what about Eastern Europe?” Like Eastern Europe, there’s this idea of like Eastern Europe combining into like a state that like opposes Western Europe. They’re like, “Do you like Eastern Europe because Eastern Europe is more trad?”

And I’m like, “No, I don’t like Eastern Europe that much.” Eastern Europe is fine. I like them more than Western Europe. I will absolutely give you that. Poland’s pretty [00:13:00] cool. Some of the other countries in Eastern Europe are pretty cool. But the problem with Eastern Europe is that it is tremendously corrupt/Catholic, basically the same thing.

And people can be like, “No,” but it’s, it’s true. When people are like, “Oh, well some Catholic countries are wealthy,” and I’m like, “Are they tremendously corrupt in spite of that?” And they’re like, “Yeah, they’re tremendously corrupt.” It’s like yes, it’s very hard to long-term do business so long as that culture has a grip within those countries.

So they can be allies, but they’ll never be allies in the way that Western Europe used to be our ally. Because when we said Western Europe, everybody knows we didn’t mean Italy and Spain. We meant Protestant Europe. That was the heart of the alliance because we had a shared cultural tradition with them.

Like everybody realizes that, right? When we’re like, “We have a shared culture with Western Europe,” nobody was thinking Italy. Nobody was thinking Spain. They weren’t. That’s why we’re mad about Latin American immigrants. They were thinking [00:14:00] England. They were thinking Scandinavia. They were thinking Germany, okay?

And I don’t think we have a shared culture with Germany anymore. So anyway, they were thinking Denmark.

Speaker 11: The one country that would be the exception here would be France. , If you want to say Ireland is also an exception here, not at all. Ireland has never really been a meaningful ally of the United States. They are a terrorist country formed in terrorism, killing children. , They, , didn’t help us in World War II.

, They’ve never really helped us in any meaningful war. , They, they are not a meaningful ally to the United States and never have been

The only reason America ever got it into its head that Ireland is a country that we should think positively of is because we accepted huge waves of migrants from Ireland, which I think was probably a mistake,, because they’ve incepted our country into thinking positively about a country that has never done anything but stab us in the back every opportunity they’ve ever gotten

A note here, I say this [00:15:00] without bias because I’m saying this as somebody with Irish ancestors. Like, my dad’s name is Michael Collins, okay? , Ireland is a terrorist state that has never been an ally of the United States and has always opposed us geopolitically

Malcolm Collins: So anyway the point I’m making here is you guys do your thing, get together. Maybe you can come up with some Catholic way of dealing with corruption, mass executions or something.

I d- I don’t know. You guys figure it out, but you’re gonna have a very hard time being relevant into the future of the global economy if you can’t handle that. And the bigger problem that the Eastern European bloc countries have is that they are not immune to the urban monoculture. It just hit their door later.

I used to think they were. I used to see all these cool gaming companies coming out of these countries, you know, like CD Projekt Red and stuff like that, and then they got eaten by woke, and I was like, “Oh, you guys aren’t resistant to this. You’re just as... Y- you know, your tech leaders are just as excited to jump on woke dick as anyone [00:16:00] else.”

So okay, that’s not relevant. And then it’s, so okay, Malcolm, if you say you need to pay attention to the countries that are gonna be geopolitically and technologically relevant in the future and economically relevant in the future, who are you building stronger alliances with? It’s like, well, you know, obviously Israel.

Oh, okay, we’re already doing that? Okay. Well, that makes sense. That’s the alliance that’s worth investing in. Where else might I invest? You know, maybe bit of Poland, bit of Turkey. You know, Japan, I think while they have terrible fertility rates, at least they have technology. South Korea has terrible fertility rates, but at least they have technology.

So those countries are, are worth investing in. Australia worth investing in a relationship in with. But yeah I just NATO is utterly pointless. There is, like, no reason to keep it operational at this point. But continue with stats, Simone. Sorry, I had to crash out on this.

Simone Collins: I understand. [00:17:00] It’s, it is ridiculous. And in fact, I mean, aside from NATO not really doing anything for us, I would vote that we not only leave NATO, but also the UN. I mean, in addition to that over $300 that your typical taxpayer is paying on NATO, they’re, they’re spending roughly 90 to $100 per year on the UN per tax return, and that’s not for, like, mid-range tax, tax-paying household.

That is, like, per tax-paying household. Like, including low income.

Speaker 3: I’m sorry, but the UN must be firm with you. Let me see your whole palace, or else. Or else what? Or else we will be very, very angry with you, and we will write you a letter telling you how angry we are.

Simone Collins: That’s astonishing, ‘cause

Malcolm Collins: that means that per mid-range household, that’s probably $350 to $600. A lot more. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So

Simone Collins: we’re also saying- So that means for the UN and NATO, you’re probably

Malcolm Collins: paying around $1,000 a year as a middle-income American.

On the

Simone Collins: UN. Yeah. And so, a- and keep in mind, like, the NATO [00:18:00] is, it operates within the UN Charter framework, explicitly referencing Article 51 on self-defense. But it just- Withdrawal from the UN?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, F that

Simone Collins: You know, yeah, like actually. So but let’s, let’s start with NATO and then-

Malcolm Collins: No, like look at the UN.

And people are like, “Oh, but the UN is a...” The UN is constantly putting like countries that chop up journalists as like leading their human rights councils and stuff. The UN is a- No, it’s, it, it, it’s, it’s ridiculous ... is a woke- But we’ll, we’ll

Simone Collins: talk about that in a little bit ... like list circle jerk. Let’s start with NATO.

It was, and, and this, I think it just, when you look at its creation, it’s just so obvious that it, it has run its course and it doesn’t matter anymore. It was created early in the Cold War as a direct response to the Soviet Union’s expansionist actions. There isn’t a Soviet Union anymore. I get that Russia is a little expansionist, but it’s also about to contract significantly.

Just look at their demographics. Like, the, the situation just isn’t what they’re, what it was. There is no Iron Curtain anymore. And you also don’t have Western European nations crippled by World War II. You have, [00:19:00] you know, the, the, they, they’re, they’ve matured. They are much older now. I mean, there is, there’s even some language in the UN, or sorry, the NATO charter that kind of implies that they didn’t expect it to last very long.

They’re like, “Well, after 20 years,” you know, like they, they, anyone can leave really easily. Like they were sort of just, the language implies to me that the people who wrote it thought it would be sort of a 20-year commitment and that maybe people after that would kind of walk away, ‘cause, you know, European countries would recover from World War II and they’d be fine on their own and, you know, that the Cold War would end.

And, and it did, but we just kept NATO going, and this is something that happens with many bureaucratic institutions and just general like- group based power things. They just stick around well past their, their point. But what NATO does, because I think people don’t really understand what it’s all about, is they coordinate on defense, they coordinate on crisis management, and they a- engage in cooperative security.

It’s, it’s very similar to a [00:20:00] neighborhood watch group. So unlike with the UN, where, where countries, like, pay in for this overhead of this bureaucratic structure, NATO is much more of a like, “Hey, let’s all promise to, like, have each other’s backs, and to make sure that, that we are ourselves investing in defense.”

So there are obligations of, of members of NATO to spend certain amounts of money, but the spend obligations are on their own internal defense budget. It’s not on like, “I promise to contribute this or that.”

Malcolm Collins: So

Simone Collins: even

Malcolm Collins: on- And they don’t spend it. We’re the only ones who do it.

Simone Collins: Yeah. So it’s... Well, w- we’re, we’re not the only ones.

But I’ll, I’ll get into how much exactly we’re spending. But- All right ... here are the things that they, that they do. They, they regularly meet and talk, sort of like, “Oh, you know, here’s what’s going on with defense. Here’s the strategy. What do we think?” They also do joint military planning and some exercises.

They, they will coordinate on how they deploy standing [00:21:00] forces. And then they, they sometimes commonly fund act some, some command structures and infrastructure like naval bases and stuff. So the most important thing about NATO is Article 5, the collective defense p- point which basically is like, if you attack one of our, one of the members of NATO, we consider that an attack on all of us, and we will treat it as such.

Like, we all, we all agree that, like, basically if, if you come for one of us, we’re all gonna come back at you. Yeah ... but that’s, you know, a- as, as has been demonstrated members don’t necessarily have your back. And all of this is like, it’s very non-binding. It- Well, no, hold on.

Malcolm Collins: People would say that Iran didn’t technically attack us, so Article 5...

But that’s not really relevant. It’s like you’re being an active D when we are paying to have a military base in your country that’s protecting your country and leading to the death of American service m- members over something so utterly petty as social signaling.

Simone Collins: Yes. And let’s go over what NATO- That’s not an ally we want

what NATO doesn’t do, ‘cause [00:22:00] I think that’s the bigger thing. They don’t have any concrete financial obligations in terms of, like, contributing to group efforts. So even if someone is helping you, they might do... Oh my gosh. Tex, please. They might not actually, like, help. So, For example after this 2014 summit, all members pledged to aim for 2% of GDP on defense, with at least 20% of that on major equipment modernization.

Yeah. And pretty much everyone agreed to do this. But then in 2025, there was an updated commitment at The Hague summit where members, except for Spain, which just seems to always wanna be like, “Yeah, I’m a member, except don’t make me do anything the members do,” agreed for a 5% of GDP annually by 2035 on core defense requirements and defense and security related spending.

So again, like Spain wasn’t really willing to do this, but like basically all they’re saying is, “Hey, I plan on...” I- again, if this were like a neighborhood watch group, it’s like, “Well, [00:23:00] I plan on having security cameras out, and I plan on arming my home so that I can be there to help both myself and everyone else here so that we can make sure that we’re the kind of neighborhood where criminals don’t feel safe.”

That’s kind of the, the gist of it. Yeah. But NATO also doesn’t guarantee that members will host bases for each other. NATO can’t force a country to go to war or host a base, and all participation in operations and basing arrangements are negotiated and voluntary. So I don’t really know why we need to have NATO when all of this is like on an, a, a case by case basis anyway.

Like we, we, we have no more luck approaching Spain about having a base with NATO existing or without it existing. And I almost feel like just having bilateral agreements would be more efficient and more effective because you actually have more chits in that case. You know, it’s not like, “Well, oh, like we’re grandfathered into this whole thing,” and blah, blah, blah, blah.

It’s more like, “Hey, look, I’m not gonna give you X unless you give me Y.” And it would be much more effective and I think much more efficient. Another thing that, that [00:24:00] NATO, NATO doesn’t do and the UN does this a little bit more, is NATO doesn’t have any sort of standing army. Everyone’s just contributing on a voluntary basis certain numbers of their own troops.

You don’t know what quality you’re gonna get, you don’t... You... So sorry, he’s just- Simone, y-

Malcolm Collins: don’t, don’t worry, you can barely

Simone Collins: hear him. Okay, good. I’m just, I’m trying to aim him away from the, the microphone. But yeah, like you don’t know if or when troops from any participant are going to come and help out.

It’s just kind of like, “Oh, yeah, sure, maybe like, maybe we’ll like pitch someone in.” So it’s like if, again, if we had like a neighborhood watch group, it’s like, “Yeah, like we’ll, we’ll, we’ll help if someone’s like, you know, invading your home.” But like maybe they’ll send like, you know, their, their 16-year-old son with like a, like a, a baseball bat two hours after the police have arrived, you know?

Like not very

Malcolm Collins: helpful. And- Well, like the UK, they’re trying to get their one measly ship down there. Right, exactly. The other big problem with NATO- Exactly ... is it prevents us from attacking European countries. And I think- Yes. [00:25:00] Yeah

Speaker 5: Clear them that, you f*****g c********r? Do you have any idea how f*****g busy I am, Hans Brix? Well, f**k you. Inspection? Well, inspect

Malcolm Collins: that that is something that we should be seriously considering

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

And there’s also just no way to meaningfully enforce anything within NATO. So again, I’m like, what’s the point? Like, we should be... I think it would just make so much more sense, especially considering the geopolitical situation that we’re all in now a- and the way that dynamics work now, to just on an ad hoc basis negotiate bilateral agreements with each individual country using various economic and social incentives trade partnerships, et cetera, like as, as bargaining chips.

It’s more efficient and effective, and I think you would get better results for any participating country. Plus you would, I think you would encourage more alignment. Like right now, a lot of countries that are in NATO and in the UN are like, “Oh, well, I [00:26:00] don’t have to actually like, be useful to the United States.

Like, I’m just gonna, I’m gonna benefit from their large, broad defense infrastructure anyway.” Whereas if we didn’t have all these assumptions associated with NATO and the UN, they would be much more likely, I think to try to be less dickish to us. So there are lots of- Yeah, they’d be less dickish

Malcolm Collins: if they didn’t w- like, if they didn’t feel they had us in their back pocket like a soul.

Yeah, they, they

Simone Collins: take it for granted and they shouldn’t. And, and we shouldn’t be responsible for defending w- sort of being the de facto security system for nations who are not paying us for it and who are not working to help us in any way who sometimes work counter to our best interests as a country, and even work with our adversaries.

It’s ridiculous. Now so there, there are lots of examples also of NATO members not really contributing or helping out when asked. Article 5 was only [00:27:00] invoked once in NATO. It was post 9/11. It was by the United States. It was in 2001. NATO invoked Article 5 after we were, you know, we were hit by terrorists, and while allies offered broad political solidarity there were some, like, limitations.

Once again, Spain did- Th- this is, this goes way back. Did not obtain parliamentary approval to send combat forces initially, and it provided much more limited support. Like they provided-

Malcolm Collins: Do we just conquer Spain? I bet they don’t have a meaningful military.

Speaker 12: So I decided to research how easy it would actually be, and Spain spends about half what the UK spends on its military. And given that due to bureaucratic incompetence, , indicative of an EU country, the UK hasn’t even been able to field a single battleship recently, , I suspect Spain is probably in a similar zone of bureaucratic incompetence, , and lack of will to [00:28:00] fight on behalf of the country at this point for people who are being systemically replaced, , as we’ve seen the Spanish government attempting to do.

, And note here in Spain it’s different from the US. There’s been politicians that have gone up and said, like, “That’s the goal of our...” , Like in the US they let this through other words. In Spain it’s incredibly explicit that that’s one of the goals. , And, and the people that they’re replacing them with don’t care about Spain either, so, you know.

Speaker 13: Quiero pedirles a las personas migrantes y racializadas que, por favor, no nos dejen solas con tanto facha. Y claro que sí queremos que voten, claro que sí. Hemos conseguido papeles, regularización ya. Y ahora vamos a por la nacionalidad o a cambiar la ley para que puedan votar, por supuesto. Ojalá, teoría del reemplazo, ojalá podamos barrer de fachas y de racistas este país con gente migrante, con gente trabajadora.

Claro que yo quiero que haya reemplazo,

Simone Collins: we really... They, I, yeah, I don’t know what’s, what’s going on with Spain [00:29:00] especially with NATO.

And then some other nations too when we invoked Article 5 imposed really severe caveats. Like, they would, they had all these restrictions on troop use. Like there were geographic limits, there were prohibitions on offensive operations, or requirements for home government approval before engaging.

And then this really fragmented command, it reduced effectiveness, and it increased risks for allies who were willing to fight in high-intensity environments. So the

Malcolm Collins: only time Article 5 was ever activated, it didn’t work.

Simone Collins: Yeah, like Germany- Like, I want to make that clear ... like restricted its, its troops to, like quieter northern regions.

They’re like, “Oh, we’ll help out,” like where there’s no serious conflict. Like, you know, like your home is being invaded and, and you’re like, “Help,” like, “They’re in the basement. I’m like locked in this closet.” They’re like, you know, “Oh, I’m, I’m going in to try to stop him. He’s trying to like raid my safe.” And Germany’s like, “Okay, I got the backyard.

I’ll, I’ll patrol out

Malcolm Collins: there.” We’re being scammed. Yeah. NATO is an active scam, but far worse than anything Israel is doing.

Simone Collins: Yeah, [00:30:00] yeah. And then there was the 2003 Iraq crisis. Turkey had its Article 4 request moment. In early 2003 Turkey, which borders Iraq, asked NATO for defensive assistance. They wanted Patriot air defense missiles and some other measures, because it feared retaliation if the US invaded Iraq.

And France and Germany and Belgium blocked NATO planning for weeks. They argued that preparing defenses would signal that war was inevitable, and then undermine UN diplomacy. And this left Turkey feeling super exposed and they accused allies of failing their obligations. So it wasn’t just the US that was sort of left feeling exposed.

Turkey felt that way too. Yeah, I actually think that, I

Malcolm Collins: think the, the country, the only country in NATO that matters is Turkey. Yeah. They have the biggest military in NATO. They are in an incredibly important geopolitical position. We would be better off just forming a better relationship with Turkey, especially because the values of Turkey aren’t even in alignment with the values of the rest of NATO.

Trump and Erdogan get along really well. Yeah. Turkey, [00:31:00] because of Russia’s actions, is increasingly being pushed into the United States’ sphere of influence. W- why not just form a NATO with Turkey and say F you to all of those European- P words.

Simone Collins: Well, and again, not a NATO. We don’t need th- It’s, it’s a group project, okay?

Anyone who’s, like, gone to some, you know, nonsense make-work university in America ha- or gone through, like, high school in America, has been subject to a group project. What is a group project? A group project is when you get given a group assignment in a class, and inevitably, like, you know, most people do absolutely nothing, and then one student ends up doing everything.

We need to just admit on a, on a geopolitical international societal level that group projects are stupid, and that in the end if you need to agree to something, you guys need to, like, you know, between two people, you know, decide, “Hey, our interests are aligned. Tit for tat, here’s what we’re gonna offer each other.

You know, here’s what we’re gonna do,” or, “We both want the same thing. Here’s how we’re gonna work together.” [00:32:00] And we don’t need these standing ongoing group agreements. They’re just stupid. Well, and,

Malcolm Collins: well, no, but the reason they would say you need the standing ongoing group agreement is for deterrence, they would say.

Simone Collins: No. Well, yeah, but you know what? It, deterrence exists if you understand, okay, nations A, B, and C are all aligned in this one di- Like, right? Like, they, all these European nations don’t like the idea of Russia expanding into Western Europe, okay? And, and neither does the United States. And I want to point out here that- So if I’m Russia, I will understand that they don’t want that, and that they will coordinate on stopping me if, if I go into that.

We don’t, we don’t need some stupid, like- But

Malcolm Collins: hold on. I wanna, I wanna make something clear for people who think NATO is like a magic wand that forces people to go to war to defend a country. If Russia decided to attack Estonia, for example, or Finland, for example the probability that any individual European nation would decide to militarily intervene [00:33:00] while NATO was still fully formed and active versus when NATO was not active, like EG if the US pulled out of NATO and NATO completely disbanded, would be about equivalent.

By this what I mean is a lot of the countries are just not g- they’re gonna be like, “I don’t want war with Russia. I don’t wanna escalate. I don’t wanna...” You know how European countries are. They’ll be like, “Yes, Article 5, but, but, but...” As we’ve seen before. Well, yeah, NATO’s

Simone Collins: historical limited effectiveness also shows that it, it, it acting as a deterrent is, is fairly feckless now.

And if they- Russia’s gonna be like, “Yeah, sure. Everyone’s gonna come and help out, huh?” And if they actually

Malcolm Collins: felt like doing something, they would do it regardless of whether or not NATO was there.

Simone Collins: Exactly. Exactly. Either your incentives are aligned or they’re not, and, and this like non, basically non-binding agreement doesn’t change anything.

In fact, the fact that it exists and is non-binding and people don’t really stick to it only makes it a bit of an embarrassment and wastes a lot of money and resources and time and, and, and, and gets in the way of making much [00:34:00] more efficient, strategic and, and short-lived but effective agreements.

So, going back to just, to rehash our, Oh wait, did I talk about the Afghanistan mission? No, I didn’t. But basically once NATO took on the ISAF mission in Afghanistan, some allies employed really strict caveats in their troops. Again, like where and how they could fight, and that meant that combat burdens really fell heavily on the US, the UK, Canada, and the Netherlands, who actually had a pair of balls to like, go in and fight where it was dangerous.

Mm. And the caveats were widely criticized within NATO as a way for governments to claim solidarity while avoiding the riskiest takes. I’d be totally

Malcolm Collins: okay with us c- saying, “Well, we’ll have NATO. That’s the UK and the Netherlands and

Simone Collins: Germany.” No, again, that’s stupid. People are either aligned and they’re like, “Hey, I’m in.”

Or they’re not. Okay, sure. Or they’re not. Okay? And then, you know, we will, we will reward those who are in, who, who show through their actions that they’re helping us, right? Like, I think we’re way more likely to have, you know, fewer tariffs or whatever, like better trade arrangements, you [00:35:00] know, more, more all these things with, with countries that show up, okay?

It’s who shows up, all right? I don’t, I don’t care who’s on the list. E- everything should be based on actual actions and not on, on promises. Everything should be actions and rewards. Well,

Malcolm Collins: it’s not just that, but even capabilities. These countries, like when we saw that the UK couldn’t even field a single destroyer To help in the operation because all of them weren’t working.

Or we see other countries constantly crashing their destroyers because they keep putting lesbians in charge of them, like fricking New Zealand or what was it? They had a girl running one in, like, Norway and it sank. You know, maybe these countries are too feckless and we should look at entering a page of expansionism again.

Yeah. I think what we need to do is fix the fertility rate in the United States and then go on an expansionist crusade to reconsolidate the world under the US imperium.

Speaker 7: Are you gonna make the whole World America one day? How? Certainly

Speaker 8: [00:36:00] over over.

Speaker 7: That’s a good plan.

That’s why we named you Octavian.

Speaker 8: Don’t. Then we will kill you.

Speaker 6: Uya, there is always another way. No, please. I know how to make sure the world stays free forever. I have to make the whole world America. . I’m gonna send pure American freedom across every inch of the planet. . [00:37:00]

Malcolm Collins: Sure.

Simone Collins: But also, I just... So going back to the ways that NATO has failed us or failed in general, the, it wasn’t only Spain that completely screwed us over with, with I- Iran recently.

Another, both, basically both France and Germany had limited and/or qualified support, and they declined direct involvement or coordinated NATO naval effort to open the Strait of Hormuz. So I’m kind of glad they’re suffering due to their, their decisions right now because they were like, “You know, I don’t wanna, I don’t wanna get involved.”

And then in terms of how we disproportionately help NATO countries, despite the fact that people aren’t showing up for us just to be clear, in 2024 US defense spending was about two-thirds of the total defense spending for all NATO allies combined. We, we spend as [00:38:00] much as everyone else in the alliance put together, and the US overwhelmingly dominates high-end capabilities that NATO depends on.

All the strategic airlift and aerial refueling, and global intelligence and surveillance, and prec- precision strike capabilities and, of course, the, most of the nuclear deterrent, that’s us. Like, all the stuff that actually matters. I mean, even if people, “Oh, well, we spend this much and the, that means that we’re contributing,” we have all the, the best toys.

So that’s another really important thing.

Malcolm Collins: And after seeing what we did in Venezuela or what’s happening in Iran right now, like, our toys are good. And the only other person whose toys we’re playing with is Israel. Yeah. And this is the thing, they’re actually fighting along with us. In Iran, 50% of the ordinance dropped has been dropped by Israel.

Right? Like- And they’re not in

Simone Collins: NATO. Because look, again, a- aligned interests. Well, yeah, aligned interests for the most part. And by the way, a lot of

Malcolm Collins: people are like, “Well, Israel didn’t help us in the war in Iraq.” Okay, let’s give a few things about the war in Iraq. So there’s two important points about Israel and the war in Iraq.

One, we explicitly asked them [00:39:00] not to help us because we were concerned about that further destabilizing the Middle East to have Israel actively involved in the war. And two, Mossad put out a big report saying, “Don’t go into Iraq. It’s going to be a complete s**t show. They don’t have weapons of mass destruction.

What are you doing?” And they were right. Okay? The, the core thing in Israel was freaking right. Well, the war in Iraq was a complete waste of time. And they, they told us that. Day one they are like, “You cannot nation build there. What are you doing?” And you can look this up.

This is something that, like, people complained about at the time, that they- Yeah

were not on message, that they said, “You’re wrong about this.” And it’s because they have a high sneak stat. Look, they’ve really fucked us over a ti- I’m, like, the first to admit that, okay? But they have fucked us over less than Europe, less than the UN, and less than NATO. Right. And let’s talk, let’s

Simone Collins: go back to how we have helped Europe.

So during the Cold War, and then [00:40:00] immediately post-Cold War, we stationed large ground, air, and nuclear forces in Western Europe, like West Germany, and the UK, and Italy, specifically to deter an attack on NATO allies by the Soviet Union. And the deployments were largely seen as core the core part of NATO’s collective defense during that era.

It was just basically us being the security guard of Europe. And then even after the Cold War, the US kept substantial forces and nuclear weapons in Europe as a tripwire and security guarantee for allies like Germany, and Belgium, and the Netherlands, and Italy, and Turkey. It was, again, just this had nothing to do with them doing a solid for us.

It was just, “No, we, we, we got your back.” And then there was the defense of exposed allies after Russia’s actions. So from, like, 2014 to present, after Russia seized Crimea and intervened in eastern Ukraine in 2014, we rapidly increased air, land, and sea deployments to reassure all of our NATO allies, and this included extra fighters in, in the Baltic air policing mission over Estonia, and Latvia, and Lithuania.[00:41:00]

And we also sent F-16 and hundreds of personal personnel, sorry, to Poland. We moved naval forces like the USS Truxtun into the Black Sea for exercises with Romania and Bulgaria, and we pledged thousands of troops and, and assets to NATO’s response force as part of a visible shield. Like, this is a lot of money on our part.

And, and they’re just basically locally defending themselves, and we are all the way, like, we’re s- we’re sending troops all the way over to Europe, and for what? Like, to what benefit of us? And, you know, this is again, like, over $350 a year for your mid-range taxpaying family. I’m not really sure what they’re getting out of it.

Then we have these personal, or sorry, permanent and rotational deployments in Europe, and we’ve met plenty of people who’ve served on, like, military bases in Germany for long periods of time. We have key elements of NATO’s missile defense for our allies, such as radar in Turkey, and Aegis ships forward based in Spain, and land-based interceptor sites in Romania.

There’s even, like, planned stuff in Poland still that’s aimed at [00:42:00] protecting European allies from missile threats. So, so much for, like, our golden dome, which is, like, I guess still under development. Like, we’re basically building the same stuff for our European allies, and then we deploy forces for exercises and forward positions across NATO territories.

There’s Marines in the Baltics. There’s, there’s just, there’s so many more US troops in Europe right now than I even thought after looking into this And then we also have the largest share of many NATO common programs and, and high-end capabilities. Like all of our surveillance stuff, all the cool toys.

I’m not gonna go any further into this, but basically, like, I wanna get to the United Nations, ‘cause this is the, this is the, I think, bigger thing, and I don’t see the point in being a member of either of them. My larger thing is, again, like, either you’re aligned with a country or you’re not. We don’t need these blanket standing agreements, especially when countries are demographically and politically changing quite rapidly, and typically in directions that are antagonistic towards us.

And you can’t have this, like, standing agreement of, like, “Oh, we’ll always be [00:43:00] solid,” when, like, meanwhile, countries are turning b- against us, like, bit by bit. And suddenly we’re gonna be in these, like, standing agreements to defend people who actively hate us and are working counter to our best interests.

So for 2026, the US paid approximately 827 million into the UN regular budget. Just the, just the, just the regular budget. This is, like, their administrative budget, like the office stuff, okay? Mm-hmm. And for 2025, it was around 820 million. Then on top of that, the US has been spending around 1.1 to 1.2 billion on US peacekeeping.

And that is through ... I will say, to our benefit, the Trump administration is trying to, like, cut this amount, but it’s still incredibly embarrassing. To be clear, the difference between NATO and the UN, just to, to make it clear, is that the UN was established earlier. It was established in 1945 versus 1949 for NATO.

It has more members, so the UN [00:44:00] has 193 member states, like, basically all countries are- And it’s

Malcolm Collins: even more pointless.

Simone Collins: I know. For real, it is. And NATO only has 32 member countries. The UN is, is meant to basically maintain world peace. It, it’s supposed to prevent conflicts through various, like, economic and diplomatic things in addition to, like, security related efforts.

Whereas, you know, the, the NATO was really about the Cold War. Which, again, is, it just makes it seem so ridiculous. Like, NATO just seems like this short-term, like, thing on top of the UN to be like, “By the way, let’s not let the Soviets win the Cold War,” and then the Cold War ended and we just forgot to turn it off.

Yeah. It’s just so obvious when you look at it in context. And the UN furthermore is meant to not act just through coordination on security, but also through diplomacy and international law and human rights and cooperation on economic and social and humanitarian issues. So why does the UN suck?

Well, [00:45:00] first and foremost, it is a huge lumbering bureaucracy with six principal organs. There’s the, the General Assembly. There’s the Security Council. There’s the secretariat. And then it has these specialized agencies on top of it, the World Health Organization, UNESCO, and then there’s also the International Court of Justice.

They just, they just kept building like, “Oh, like I need this new...” And I, I don’t know. So, we have been in New York City when the UN General Assembly convenes, and the city basically shuts down. Like the number of bureaucrats who are involved in just s- small facets of the UN are sufficient to just totally shut down entire cities.

I, I’ve never seen a s- a city shut down like New York does with the UN General Assembly. You can’t go anywhere. Like the streets are just clogged. It’s bizarre. I will say that the one thing that the UN does that I do kind of think has some value, can you guess what it is? What? It’s not the World Health [00:46:00] Organization.

Malcolm Collins: It’s not

Simone Collins: UNESCO.

Malcolm Collins: I don’t know, something related to ocean defense or something?

Simone Collins: Sort of. It’s, it’s actually like UN peacekeeping, ‘cause I was... I, I

Malcolm Collins: was like expecting-

Simone Collins: Does UN

Malcolm Collins: peacekeeping do anything meaningful? I thought that it was just massive waste.

Simone Collins: I thought so too, but historically it appears to have actually been helpful.

There are conditions on the helpfulness. So counterfactual, and, and by the way, I’m linking to sources in the show notes, counterfactual analyses estimate that without UN peacekeeping, since the early 2000s there would’ve been three to four more countries in major armed conflict by 2013, with up to two-thirds reduction in major conflicts possible under stronger mandates and budgets.

So peacekeeping- I’m pretty sure

Malcolm Collins: the UN did that study, Simone. Mm. I’m pretty sure people associated with the UN did that. That, that does not seem true to me at all. I, mm, I could

Simone Collins: see

Malcolm Collins: it. Trump stopped like 20 wars ... other, other people- Hold on. Trump stopped like 20 wars in these past two administrations.

And I think that- No, and, and I’m

Simone Collins: gonna get to that. I’m gonna get to that because [00:47:00] the, the effectiveness has gone down. But peacekeeping appears to increase the durability of peace agreements in, in instances, in various instances by reducing the, the risk of repeat war by 75 to 85% in some analyses.

This, and it, it supports sort of the like a, a post, a post-war stabilization ‘cause I, look, I mean, admit it, after, after a war- Nine out of 10

Malcolm Collins: dentists recommend who we gave money to.

Simone Collins: It, I, I think it makes sense That it doesn’t have to be the US It doesn’t

Malcolm Collins: make sense But if you have- UN peacekeepers are not a meaningful unilateral force in the way that the American troops are or American power projection I, I agree

Simone Collins: with you on that.

I agree with you on that. Just let me make my point, okay? Some sort of peacekeeper, some sort of, like, rule, rule enforcer can help maintain ceasefires, they can support local peace processes, they can reduce communal violence, and they can, they can aid demobilization [00:48:00] and reintegration. Thing, things are rough when you’re, like, winding down from a war, and I think having, like, a mod present to just, like, calm things down is helpful.

Does the mod have to be the UN? Absolutely not. In fact, the UN is doing peacekeeping less well now and it can almost certainly be done better by just the US. So in places like Mali and the Democratic Reco- Republic of Congo UN peacekeeping missions have more recently struggled against active insurgencies and armed groups and, and lack of political will.

And some have just wi- withdrawn amid rising violence. And they’re just like, “Oh, I, I can’t do it.” One analysis of 69 missions found only 43% were fully successful, and there were lower rates of successful peacekeeping after the year 2000. And in general, like, event enforcement and humanitarian-focused operations Well,

Malcolm Collins: bureaucratic nonsense, and these aren’t Americans Yeah, no, that’s the thing is I think that over time They’re not bred for [00:49:00] battle

Simone Collins: over time bureaucracies become more feckless. The UN is just too old as an institution, too bloated, too, too ridiculous, and, and too mission creep ruined, you know, too cancerous to be effective anymore. So what I think would actually be great is if the, the UN were to dissolve, at least the UN just i- is left abandoned by the US, and the UN could spend so much less than it’s even obligated to pay to the UN peacekeeping mission which is, like, $1.1 to $1.2 billion a year, which is a lot.

Imagine if the US just spent one billion. It would be even more effective in peacekeeping And it could also put more of that money into peacekeeping measures that utilize US defense suppliers. So it would be better for our internal industries and defense technology. Yeah, one of the things that

Malcolm Collins: people are like, “Well, if you withdraw from the UN, then they’ll stop buying American weapons.”

And I’m like, “Okay, then they’ll be easier to conquer later.” No, we would...

Simone Collins: No, we would be buying proportionally [00:50:00] more. ‘Cause I’m sure, like, when we pay all this money into the UN for their peacekeeping, there may be some stipulations that we set, you know, that Congress sets of, like, you have to buy this much from US, you know, based suppliers.

But we would be able to do 100% US manufacturing, like all Anduril because I love them and they’re amazing to, to do all this work instead of just, like, I’m sure, like, a ton of money is, like, lost and laundered by that stupid wasteful bureaucracy. So it would just be a lot more effective. And then, like, think about how it will be, like, post AGI.

You could have some AI-driven organization that, that manages peacekeeping and deployment of, like, enforcement drones. It just... I, I’m super ready for it to be gone. So generally, I, I see your NATO doesn’t make sense anymore, and I raise you let’s just get rid of the UN. Because the whole point is I, I, I...

There, there was a place for this. World War II, everyone was, like, beaten up, bloodied, completely weak. [00:51:00] The US was kind of okay, and the US was like, “Dude, I don’t... Let’s just recover. Look, I’ve got your back.” It was like, it was like a big brother being like, “Look, I’ll... If someone comes for you again, I’ll beat them up, okay?

Like, you’re gonna be fine.” But now our, our, our little friends have grown up and they’ve, they’ve grown into entitled, surly neets, and we need to just cut them loose. The UN

Malcolm Collins: is like a like a, like a 30-year-old living with their parent at this point. Yes.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Like, it... The, the time has passed, okay? They, they, they’re not recently bloodied and impoverished following a devastating war.

This is water under the bridge. Also, the, the Cold War is over and there is no longer a Soviet Union. None of this makes sense anymore. Beyond that, this giant bureaucratic sprawling apparatus that has grown into a bunch of tumorous, cancerous growths needs to just be excised. Even if you completely believe in the [00:52:00] concept of the UN If you really care about it, you would be like, “Oh, we’ll nuke it,” and then start it completely fresh now with technology and also, like, an understanding of current geopolitical tensions and imbalances and stuff.

Like, you would, you would start fresh and just get rid of all of the bloat that has grown over these years if you actually cared about the mission of the UN. But I personally don’t think that it makes sense to have these standing agreements. Like- So the question

Malcolm Collins: is, why is anyone fighting for this? And I think it’s, it’s, it’s a fear of change- It’s, it’s inertia

and a desire to protect the bureaucracy. It’s inertia.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah, like, like- And also I think there’s this big, like, l- sort of, largely leftist view of like, “The, the, this is the responsible thing to do. We, you know, you have to let the authorities do their thing. They’re the educated ones.” You know, it’s all about, like, trust the experts, trust the science.

Yeah ... and of course, the UN, “Well, we respect the UN, we respect the World Health Organization.” When in the end, like, no. They’re, they’re not doing respectable work. They’re no smarter than anyone else.

Malcolm Collins: And, and if you wanna [00:53:00] talk about, like, the UN’s reporting on demographic collapse has been astonishingly bad.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Atrocious. Like, they-

Malcolm Collins: Truly ... they’ve gotten the numbers wrong in the exact same way every year for the past 20 years with that famous graph that we show. Every year they say, “This year it’s gonna stop.” Well, they don’t want to cause alarm. They know they’re lying. When they were reached out to by a professor at Penn, an American Ivy League institution, and he said, “These numbers are wrong.

Are you gonna update them?” And they said, “We don’t wanna cause a panic.” Mm-hmm. The UN sees it as one of its duties to replace you, okay? I’m just saying. I’m, I don’t wanna be, I’m, I don’t wanna be too spicy here, but if you’ve heard Trump’s recent thing on re-migration and all of that, the whole idea that demographic transition is a goal for certain groups.

Especially in Spain where they have come out and said, “That’s our goal.” Is that, Hillary Clinton has come out and said, “That’s our goal.” We have an episode on how she became a great replacement theorist.

Speaker 13: the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, despite [00:54:00] Trump saying he knew nothing about it, if you had read it, it’s all in there. It’s all in there. return to the family, the nuclear family , return to being a Christian nation return to, you know, producing a lot of children. Which is sort of odd because the people who produce the most children in our country are immigrants and they wanna.

Deport them. So none of this adds up. But you know, one of the reasons why our economy did so much better than comparable advanced economies across the world is because we actually had a replenishment, because we had a lot of immigrants legally and undocumented. Who had a you know, larger than normal by American standards family.

Malcolm Collins: It’s ridiculous at this point. Like, everybody knows populations are changing, and that is the goal for some individuals.

Like- Yeah ... the guy here who says he’d kill every white woman and child and is a, a mainstream leftist influencer, right?

Speaker: and make it my mission in life to murder every single white man, woman and child on the eastern [00:55:00] seaboard of the continent.

Malcolm Collins: You know, this is a real thing that a lot of them feel at this point.

Simone Collins: Yep. It’s ridiculous. Burn it down. And I love you very much, Malcolm.

Malcolm Collins: Love you too.

Oh, by the way, you got a number wrong in yesterday’s.

Simone Collins: Uh-oh, what did I get wrong?

Malcolm Collins: So there was a number of news articles that reported that Daily Wire, specifically Ben Shapiro’s show, had had an 80% reduction in viewership, but it was wrong.

It was a 35% reduction. That, we can measure on YouTube, assuming the official numbers are real. However, if you take the botting argument I made into account, the number could easily be 95%.

Simone Collins: No, from VidIQ it was 85%.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, it’s from VidIQ?

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Okay. Well, then I wish I’d known that. Okay, then I’ll put that in the Discord.

Simone Collins: Yeah. J- tell them to look at my show notes. I, I, like, link to sources and stuff. I- Okay ... I say where I get my things.

Malcolm Collins: Okay, okay, [00:56:00] okay, I’ll put this. Okay. Note.

Simone Collins: Just look at the sh- tell them to look at the show notes.

On Substack and on Patreon. On Substack they’re not paywalled during weekdays, so... But they only show up when I outline the episodes, ‘cause you don’t do show notes. You work differently. You name files things like Stuff and, like, you know, H- How to do Thing. Ugh. I d- I really don’t know what your naming convention is.

I have no idea. I can’t predict or model it. It

Malcolm Collins: scares me. You are amazing, Simone. I appreciate how diligent you are, that you always double-check everything, and you’re- Do you have

Simone Collins: a naming convention?

Malcolm Collins: For... Yeah, just don’t name it the same thing as the last thing. So, like, if I have a folder named New Folder, then the next one is New Folder 1, [00:57:00] and then the next one is New Folder 1, and then, like, A because I happened to mash the keyboard, and that’s what I got, because that was less time than naming it New Folder 2, which would require deleting or highlighting the 1.

Oh,

Simone Collins: my God. Okay. I’m sorry I asked. Simone, don’t you know about my genius naming convention? I really don’t, because you sometimes use words. I- it’s, it’s really not consistent like that.

Malcolm Collins: I love tormenting you. You are the best woman in the world to torment. AI will probably render that.

Simone Collins: Irrelevant soon Oh So who cares?

Malcolm Collins: What, tormenting you?

Simone Collins: No Show notes? The, your naming convention thing. Oh. Like I can just say, “Find the file that’s about this,” and then it will find it regardless of titles, which is helpful.

Oh, I don’t

Speaker 14: Okay, Octavian, are you going deep in the water? Yeah, but there’s a live lobster right where I’m looking. See? Uh-oh, is it gonna eat you? No, it’s dead. Okay, well [00:58:00] then go. I saw his white claws.

Simone and Malcolm Collins expose how viewbotting, clip spamming, and manufactured engagement are completely warping our perception of what's popular online. From Twitch streamers (80% of top creators allegedly botted) to music giants like Beyoncé losing billions of fake views, "woke" games with 200 peak players, Substack subscriber farms, and Kick's massive clip-spamming campaigns — the internet is far faker than most realize.We break down the economics (why botting is a rational business decision), real-world examples (Ben Shapiro, Steven Crowder, Caleb Hammer, Clavicular), how algorithms get gamed, and what this means for discovering authentic content in 2026.Dead Internet Theory just got an upgrade.

Show Notes

* According to some analysts, for the first time in over a decade, bots now generate the majority of internet activity

* At 51-53%

* This is according to multiple reports and sources (see note at the end)

* Note: Breakdowns often separate “good” bots (search engine crawlers, SEO tools) from “bad” ones (malicious scrapers, credential stuffers, ad fraud). Imperva notes bad bots alone rose to ~40% of total traffic in 2025 (up from 37%)

* BTW: Cloudflare’s data (which focuses on HTTP requests they observe) shows a lower but still rising bot share—around 31–32% in Q1 2026 (up month-over-month)—with AI crawlers as the fastest-growing segment. Their CEO has publicly predicted bot traffic will exceed human traffic by 2027, aligning with the broader trend. Some analyses of Cloudflare data cite >50% of HTML page requests as bot-driven in 2025

* There are literal view farms (this is one Brazilian one that was raided two months ago, in March 2026:

* For any platform you can imagine, you can buy viewbots with varying degrees of sophistication, including viewbots that have widely varied IP addresses that have detailed histories, leave comments, mute/unmute while watching streams, etc.

Fame is manufactured

* Major music labels and artists are using botting to look bigger than they are

* An example: Drake accused his own label (UMG) of conspiring with third parties (including Spotify) to bot streams for Kendrick Lamar’s “Not Like Us” to harm him. UMG called it “untrue” and “illogical.” Defamation claims were dismissed; the broader case is ongoing. Drake has also faced separate accusations of using his Stake partnership to fund botting for his own catalog.

* When major companies DON’T use viewbotting, you see embarrassing situations like the pilot episode of Star Trek: Starfleet Academy, which got ~16,000 views in its first 11 hours after release on YouTube. A separate report also said the live premiere peaked at roughly 1,300 concurrent viewers.

* Even major viral figures, like Caleb Hammer and Clavicular, are manufactured to a great extent

Let’s explore just how bad it is

Viewbotting on Twitch

* Around 10% of Twitch streamers with at least 50 average viewers show clear, persistent signs of viewbotting, according to the most comprehensive independent analysis available (Streams Charts / Audiencly 2025 whitepaper, covering Q2 2025 data)

* It’s worse for big creators: Streamer/analyst Devin Nash (and his agency) analyzed the top 500 Twitch streamers and estimated 400–430 (roughly 80%) show signs of viewbotting or being botted (30–40% of viewers as blatant bots + another 5–15% via embeds).

* This is based on chat activity monitoring, user-list sampling, logged-in/out ratios, and known botnet cross-referencing

* Creators argue Twitch is a platform where viewbotting ia necessary for survival; if you’re not doing it, you’re not competitive

* Doesn’t help that discoverability is very low

Devon Nash on the Unit Economics

In a recent video, Devon Nash, a professional on the brand marketing side of the equation (he’s Chief Marketing Officer at Novo), explained how viewbotting is a no-brainer smart decision for streamers and agencies based on the unit economics:

* Viewbots cost approximately $0.01 to $0.02 per viewer hour, which translates to about $135 to $185 per week to add 500-750 viewers to a stream. This weekly cost includes features like chatting and custom chat messages to make the viewers appear authentic. For a full month of viewbotting, agencies spend less than $800 to artificially inflate viewer counts.

* Twitch sponsorship rates typically range from $1 to $3 per concurrent viewer (CCV), with $1.50 to $2 being the standard rate for a 2-hour gaming sponsorship. For a streamer with 1,000 viewers at $2 per CCV, a single 2-hour sponsorship generates $4,000 in total revenue. The agency typically takes 20% commission, earning $800 per deal, while the streamer receives $3,200.

* Nash demonstrates how agencies can achieve massive returns by combining viewbotting with multiple sponsorship deals.

* Starting with a 300-viewer stream and adding 700 botted viewers creates an apparent 1,000-viewer stream for approximately $150-180 per week. If the agency secures just two 2-hour sponsorships for that inflated audience, they earn $1,600 in commission while spending less than $400 on viewbots.

* This creates what Nash calls “a money printing machine” where agencies multiply their investment several times over.

Viewbotting on Substack

There are websites that sell Substack subscribers (as low as ~$0.02 each), sometimes claiming they use “real people” added manually rather than pure bots. Whether these are organic or farmed/incentivized accounts, they still represent artificial inflation

* here’s one: you can buy low, medium, and high quality subscribers).

* You can also buy comments, likes, views, shares, plays, restacks, searches, comment likes, comment restack, comment shares, aves, messages, comment replies, and save as image

In April, the Observer covered how Andrew Tate’s Substack saw its total follower count drop from 1.1 million to 980,000 after analysis of a sample of 1,000 paying subscribers found that 75% had no biography, publications, or visible activity—and half were created in a 16-day window. Investigators concluded he had imported a pre-existing (likely harvested) email list. Substack’s standards and enforcement team reviews bulk email imports and acts when they appear illegitimate.

Earlier, creator Rebekah Jones lost hundreds of thousands of subscribers in apparent purges (documented on X in 2025), with charts showing dramatic drops after bulk fake additions.

Viewbotting on YouTube

Fake views have existed since at least 2009, with media attention by 2011 and a major 2012 purge in which YouTube removed billions of fraudulent views, including over 1 billion from Universal Music Group artists (e.g., Beyoncé, Rihanna, Justin Bieber, Nicki Minaj).

Physical view farms continue operating globally in 2026. In March 2026, Brazilian police raided a large-scale YouTube view farm with dozens (or hundreds) of smartphones rigged to ceilings, running 24/7 to loop videos and simulate views/interactions. (IT LOOKS CRAZY) Similar operations have been documented in Vietnam and elsewhere, often targeting music videos or algorithm gaming

A 2024 academic study analyzing nearly 100,000 YouTube videos from over 1,000 French channels over 1.5 years found fake view removals (“corrections”) on ~90% of channels and 78.5% of videos. These corrections occur in daily batches (often around 5 p.m.) and frequently happen late in a video’s lifecycle—after most organic views have accumulated—rather than in real time. Notably, videos corrected later tended to be more popular overall, suggesting fake views can temporarily boost algorithmic recommendations and perceived popularity before being stripped.

Clip Spamming

Devon Nash also changed how I view YouTube discovery with his breakdown on how people—including Clavicular and Caleb Hammer—are manufacturing virality by spamming clips of their work on platforms like YouTube (see: Exposing the New Manufactured Viral Content Industry)

The video explains how a paid “clipping economy” is artificially hijacking short‑form algorithms on YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, and X to manufacture viral influencers and promote the streaming platform Kick,

How the clipping system works

* Campaigns run inside large Discord servers (20–30k+ people) or invite‑only groups where each campaign corresponds to one streamer, podcaster, or brand.

* Clippers pull 30–120 second segments from long‑form streams and upload them as shorts on TikTok, Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts, and sometimes X, under their own accounts.

* They are paid on a flat CPM basis, typically around 0.10–0.40 dollars per 1,000 views but sometimes up to 2–3 dollars or specific bounties like 3,000 dollars per million views for particular clips.

* Payment usually happens in USDT and often only once a minimum aggregate view threshold (for example 100,000 total views across all the clippers’ uploads) is reached, incentivizing people to spam 50–100 clips across multiple accounts.

Because the CPM is on top of the platform’s own ad revenue, this can be decent money for clippers in lower‑income countries, and the servers are generally run in a professional, non‑scammy way with visible campaign caps (for example 10,000–20,000 dollars budget per campaign).

Scale of manufactured virality

Nash uses the case of Clavicular” to show the scale.

* In one recent month, this streamer allegedly generated 2.2 billion views from about 69,000 clips posted across platforms, with 1,600+ paid clippers involved.

* Averaged out, each clip might get around 31,700 views, but the real point is the volume: tens of thousands of separate uploads all about the same person in 30 days.

* Even if a significant fraction of views are “free” (below payout threshold), running such a campaign still costs hundreds of thousands of dollars per month at around 1 dollar CPM, implying millions per month across all similar campaigns.

This sheer volume tricks recommendation systems: algorithms treat topics with tons of uploads and engagement as globally relevant (like a major news event), so when 50–70k clips pop up about one guy, the system concludes he must be important and pushes him everywhere.

Who is funding it and why

Nash concludes that the primary funder for the biggest campaigns is the streaming platform Kick, not the streamers themselves.

* A Kick‑backed streamer openly states they receive “over six figures a month” of clipping budget, and that Kick pays high bounties (20–30 dollar CPM) on some clips.

* Internal Kick clipping program materials (from invite‑only servers) require clippers to use a precise Kick logo overlay; incorrect placement can get the clip rejected and unpaid, ensuring the Kick brand is visible on every short.

* Kick’s strategy, derived from its close association with the crypto gambling site Stake, is to pay to flood short‑form platforms with Kick‑branded clips, both to grow selected streamers and to funnel some fraction of billions of impressions back to Kick.

Nash contrasts this with Twitch’s older model of paying select streamers big contracts and expecting them to bring their own audience. Kick instead spends its marketing budget directly on mass short‑form distribution and lets streamers benefit as a side effect.

How this affects algorithms and the creator ecosystem

* Algorithms heavily weight volume and multi‑channel chatter, so campaigns that generate tens of thousands of clips effectively override organic audience “voting” based on interest and quality.

* As a result, extremely mediocre or even unlikeable personalities can dominate feeds purely through paid volume, while more interesting creators without budgets get buried.

* The user experience becomes “interest media” rather than social media: you are no longer curating your own feed or following friends, but passively consuming what algorithmic signals (distorted by ad‑like campaigns) decide to show you.

Nash thinks this makes live‑streaming in particular a “rigged game” at the top end: small creators can still grow by doing a mini version (a few friends clipping them), but competing with industrial‑scale campaigns is extremely difficult.

What Should We Take Away From This

This is not

* Individual creators

* Agencies

* Looking to boost their cut of revenue

* Platforms

* Like Kick, looking to drive in viewers

* Don’t trust views or engagement, ESPECIALLY on streaming platforms like Twitch or Kick

Sources on Internet Bot Traffic

* Imperva/Thales 2026 Bad Bot Report (full-year 2025 data, released 2026): Automated bots accounted for more than 53% of all web traffic (up from 51% the prior year). Human activity: 47% and continuing to decline. This is the most comprehensive and widely cited benchmark.

* Fastly Threat Insights Report (January 2026): Bots made up 49% of web requests (51% human). Nearly all (99%) of this bot traffic was classified as unwanted/unverifiable (scrapers, attackers, etc.).

* Human Security 2026 State of AI Traffic Report (2025 data): Automated traffic grew 23.51% YoY—8× faster than human traffic (+3.10%). AI-driven traffic volumes surged 187% monthly across 2025 (nearly tripling), with agentic AI exploding 7,851% YoY. Over 1 quadrillion interactions analyzed; >95% of AI traffic concentrated in retail/e-commerce, streaming/media, and travel/hospitality.

Episode Transcript

Simone Collins: [00:00:00] Hello, Malcolm. I’m very excited to be talking with you today, ‘cause I kinda feel like I need to completely reevaluate the way that I browse the internet, and that everything’s a lie, and I that internet theory doesn’t even begin to really describe what’s going on.

And we, we need to... I need, I need help. I need help. You’re gonna help me. So according to some, some analysts, for the first time in over a decade now, bots generate the majority of internet activity, like 51 to 53%. This is according to multiple reports and sources. I have in the show notes on Patreon and Substack all the, all the sources.

I, I can link to them. Breakdowns sometimes separate the, the good bots, like search engine crawlers and SEO, from the bad, and the bad ones still control up to, like, 40% of internet traffic. Cloudflare’s data has it a little bit lower, like 31 to 32%, but that’s insane. Anyway th- there are literal view farms of just, like, walls of phones of just people generating fake traffic.

Very sophisticated fake traffic.

Speaker 2: agora. Celular [00:01:00] até o teto. Meu Deus, parece uma colmeia.

Simone Collins: . A literal view farm. Oh,

Malcolm Collins: no, I have seen this. Yeah. No, but it’s, it’s worse than this because what I want to use this- Phones on walls. So yeah, there was

Simone Collins: this Brazilian one that was raided two months ago, and, and police go in, and it’s just, like, these walls of just phones wired up.

It just looks like something fake. Like, if I saw it in an anime, I’d be like, “Yeah, no, like, no one actually...” No, no, we just, we’re just gonna, like, put grids of phones on a giant wall and, like, control them. And for any platform you can imagine, you can buy viewbots with varying degrees of sophistication.

This includes viewbots that have widely varied IP addresses, that have detailed histories, that leave comments, that mute and unmute while watching streams. Like, the, the extent to which it’s hard to actually track whether or not this is real too. ‘Cause I came into this being like, “Oh, yeah, I’ve heard viewbotting’s a problem.

I guess I should just look at, like, engagement on a thing, and then if there’s a lot of, you know, like, what seems to be real human behavior, it’s gotta be real.” No, [00:02:00] no. This is- So what I

Malcolm Collins: wanna use this conversation to talk about, like, the meta of this conversation for me- Yeah ... is how much of what we perceive to be popular on the internet is a lie.

No, this is so true. Both in terms of the left and the right. Yes. And this has been really evident in a lot of things like recent games that are still trying to appeal to a woke audience. Oh, boy. And we haven’t gotten as much a chance to go over these, as I would like. We may do a whole episode on them if people really want to.

Yeah, let us know in the comments ... one of the ones that crashed out recently after, like, every main person, it’s made by Larry Ellison’s daughter in the industry talking about how good it was. It got, like, all perfect reviews, like, 10 10s. Mm-hmm. And it was called Mixtape, and it had a high, a player streaming high of 2,000.

Oh, ouch ... another one that came out recently called Aphoria, right? To, to, to give you an idea of, like, how bad these things do. So it had a [00:03:00] developer team of it looks like around 60 people. Mm. And it was in development for I think four years, okay? Oh, my lord, okay. So this game came out a month ago, and if you look at the, the peak player count on it, okay?

Simone Collins: Okay. It

Malcolm Collins: had a peak player count, this was 15 days ago, so it only recently came out, okay?

Simone Collins: Okay.

Malcolm Collins: Of 219 people. Oh, God. If you look at its current player count- Mm ... 21 people. That’s about a third- Right now That’s about a third the people who are currently playing rfab.ai

Simone Collins: That’s like people riding a bus.

That’s, that’s

Malcolm Collins: bad. This came out- This is really bad ... 15 days ago from a team of 60 people who made it, right? It, it, estimated- This is like one

Simone Collins: public school classroom of children. I...

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. For years. And keep in mind, all these people likely had salaries of like 60, [00:04:00] $70,000 or something like that. You know, you’re talking- Probably more than that.

I think, yeah ... like okay, say they paid them cheaply, like $20,000. The game is estimated to have made, I think, around $40,000 in total or like $45,000 in total. Ooh ... like astonishingly low amounts of money. How is this happening? Oh, my God. This is made by a major studio, by the way, right? Arts- Well, and it’s not just, it’s

Simone Collins: not just game studios ei- either.

Like, a, fame in general is manufactured. Like, major music labels and artists are, are using botting to look bigger than they are. So even when you’re like, “Oh, well, of course, like Beyoncé is famous,” like no, there was this big... Back in 2012, there was this really big basically like view bot erasing, and, and figures like Beyoncé lost like billions of views, just like, “Oh, by the way, those were fake.”

Like, the, even these, these huge people- Mm-hmm ... their hugeness is to an extent, i- it’s, and it’s impossible to say how much, because so much of this is both very hard to measure and kept very under wraps [00:05:00] manufactured. Another example, Drake accused his own label of conspiring with third parties, including Spotify, to bot streams for Kendrick Lamar’s Not Like Us to harm him, and while UMG called it untrue and illogical they, they dismissed defamation claims, and the broader case is still ongoing.

And Drake has also faced separate accusations of using his stake partnership to fund botting for his own catalog. Like, it’s just so pervasive that like everyone understands it’s happening, but most of it’s just gone underground. Yeah. And also, it’s, it’s, the, the extent... And this is, this is another really good way of, of understanding how true this is.

When major companies don’t use view botting, you see extremely embarrassing situations like the pilot episode of Star Trek: Starfleet Academy- Yeah ... which, th- whoops, someone forgot to pay the view botting company. And it

Malcolm Collins: came out at lower than our episode count for that week in terms of views.

Simone Collins: Yeah, they got 16,000 views in the first 11 hours after release on YouTube, and a separate report also said the live premiere [00:06:00] peaked at roughly 1,300 concurrent viewers.

Now, Leaflet, on one of our streams at like 2:00 in the morning, we’ll have like a low of 1,000 viewers, right? Like- Yeah, so

Malcolm Collins: I, I do streaming with Leaflet on, now every other Friday, so we’ll be doing it this Friday early, early in the morning, so like 3:00 AM- Yeah ... on a Sun- W- w- what is Saturday? Saturday is right after Friday.

Okay. It’s Saturday

Simone Collins: morn- yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Saturday, 3:00 AM. Generally we’re at around like 1,500. That’s where we typically are. So we- Yeah, and well,

Speaker 4: The stream tonight will start at 8:00 PM EST. Um, and something I got wrong here is the 1,500 is just her concurrent views on Twitch. I forgot that they’re probably about equal or larger on Kick, so she’s typically doing about twice-- Or I guess we are doing about twice as well

Simone Collins: welcome to Starfleet Academy territory. At 3:00 AM ... heavily marketed, et cetera

Malcolm Collins: Are beating Starfleet Academy, which had- Yeah ... hundreds of millions of dollars go to it.

Yeah. Our episode that came out the day it came out, and keep in mind we do episodes every f*****g [00:07:00] day, okay? And they had- Yeah ... one premiere, had more views than them. Well, it

Simone Collins: checks out. I’ve, I’ve, I’ve, I’ve watched, I’ve watched so many hour- I’ve, I’ve, I mean, p- like, days worth of, of Leaflet. And I love Star Trek.

I’ve not watched a minute, I’ve not even watched the preview of Starfleet Academy. I don’t, I don’t like- Yeah ... it’s, but anyway, so that’s just, d- again, to be clear it ma- you, you, you can’t obviously know how much these like, big media companies and, and famous celebrities are investing in viewbotting and fluffing up their own subscribers and views and engagements and likes and shares and comments.

But I, I wanna turn to asking you- But you can see what happens in the absence of it, and it’s not just, like, professional, like, or mainstream media figures. Viral figures like Caleb Hamer and Clavicular are manufactured to a great extent, and we’re gonna get into that too It’s insane Oh,

Malcolm Collins: oh, hold on. I wanna get into Asmongold’s take on this before we go any further.

So- Okay. Okay ... I think it’s very interesting. So-

Simone Collins: Yeah ...

Malcolm Collins: he was going over viewbotting on Twitch, and he’s like, “Almost every- Yeah ... large player on Twitch is viewbotting.” Yes. And [00:08:00] so he was saying you know, “You’ve got these people where they realistically have, like, 1,000 people watching.” And I’m just like, “Dude, should we just, like, get into viewbotting and then start a Twitch, right?”

And he’s like- ... “But Twitch doesn’t wanna shut it down because it makes their numbers look higher.” He’s like, “They say they wanna shut it down.”

Simone Collins: Yeah, they w- yeah, they’re very disincentivized from, And there, there are Twitch streamers who have been, like, publicly been like, “Oh yeah, I viewbot.” Like, “There are probably, like, three people watching this right now, but it looks like there are 1,000 people.”

Like, so transparent, and they’re friends with Twitch’s, like, CEO. Like, it is very, it- But what,

Malcolm Collins: but what was more interesting about Asmongold’s take on this is somebody was like, “Well, these people who buy ads on them, right? And they think that they’re getting, like, thousands and thousands of views, but it’s, like, less than 1,000 concurrent viewers.”

And Asmongold was like well, actually, they’re not really getting screwed.” And he, the guy was like, “Well, what do you mean by this?” Mm-hmm. And he’s like, “Well, consider who actually signed the contract to buy the ads. It’s not somebody with equity in the company. It’s not the company’s CEO. It’s the head of marketing or whatever, right?”

Yeah. “And he just needs to show the next [00:09:00] guy above him how many people watched it for X amount of money.” Right. “They don’t care how many people are concurrent.” But those who are

Simone Collins: savvy enough to be able to somewhat sophisticatedly track if they’re getting a bump to a product, like, I get it ... and, and they’re not seeing it.

Like, they’re, people are starting to realize that, and, and people like Devin Nash, who I’m gonna reference multiple times, ‘cause he’s actually really good at parsing out what’s going on here being somewhat of an in- industry insider, more than somewhat. Some advertisers are discovering this, and they’re super not cool with it.

So there is a tension there. Which I, I won’t comment on more. Actually,

Malcolm Collins: hold on. This explains something I didn’t fully understand. Oh? But our Discord is hugely bigger than other equivalently sized influencers. Oh. And I’ve been very surprised by this. Hm. And now I’m realizing, “Oh, sh- were we supposed to be

Simone Collins: viewbotting?”

No. Like, it, it’s really good that we weren’t. I’m, I’m really glad that we’re not. But I mean, now I, I get also maybe why a lot of people are like, “Why is your channel a lot bigger?” Because I think they’re used to seeing [00:10:00] other similar- Yeah, they’re used to viewbotting stuff ... content creators who are viewbotted.

And so, like, when you see that someone doesn’t have like, “Oh, where’s your, like, you know, hundreds of thousands of...” Well, you’re seeing mostly people who are paying for that, ‘cause it’s also incredibly affordable, and I’ll get into that, too. But- Yeah ... yeah, to go over Twitch, around- And we’re talking just normal creators, like small creators.

Around 10% of Twitch streamers with at least 50 average viewers show clear, persistent signs of viewbotting according to the most comprehensive independent analysis. And I, again, this is all linked in the show notes. It’s worse though, as you pointed out, as Asmongold says, for big creators. So Devin Nash, again, he really knows what he’s talking about they analyzed the top 500 Twitch streamers and estimated that 400 to 430, that is roughly 80% of them, show signs of viewbotting or being botted.

Now keep in mind, many streamers do not know they’re being votted, botted, and I’ll get into this. Yeah. Okay. So 30 to 40% of, of viewers are blatant bots, and then another five to [00:11:00] 15% via embeds. And this is based on chat activity monitoring user list sampling, logged in and out ratios, and then known botnet cross-referencing.

Creators argue that Twitch is a platform where viewbotting is necessary for survival. Basically, if you’re not doing it, you’re not competitive, and this is because unlike on YouTube, and many, os- ma- like probably most other platforms- Yeah ... discoverability is basically just impossible on Twitch. The way they’ve designed it, you will not, you will not be discovered on Twitch, period.

And that’s why I feel like breaking into it is, is really hard now, especially if you’re not, like, already super famous and... Basically, I think the way people get big on Twitch is they have huge audiences elsewhere to start now, and then those audiences come over to Twitch. I don’t even know how much viewbotting would really help to jumpstart it.

But Devin Nash went into the unit economics of this in a really fascinating way and, and showed how basically it’s a no-brainer smart decision for a streamer’s agency to [00:12:00] viewbot them because they will put in- Like, $1 and then get $1.50 back. Like- Mm-hmm ... it, it, it pays back. It would be stupid to not do it.

And he understands this ‘cause he’s a professional on the brand marketing side of the equation. Yeah. I think he just left them, but he was at least former chief marketing officer at Novo, which is an agency. And again, he represents not the, not the streamer side, but the brand side, so he’s also keen on delivering actual results to brands so that they can keep, you know, trust him and keep working with him.

But so he pointed out that view bots cost approximately one to two cents per viewer hour, and that translates to about 135 to 185 per week to add 500 to 750 viewers to a stream. And then the weekly cost includes features like chatting and custom chat messages to make the viewers appear authentic.

And so for a full month of view botting, agencies spend less than $800 to artificially inflate viewer counts. That’s pretty reasonable. Yeah. Now, Twitch sponsorship rates, and again, he knows this, he’s worked in the industry, they [00:13:00] range from one to $3 per concurrent viewer, with 1.50 to two being, like dollars, being the standard rate for a two-hour gaming sponsorship.

So for a streamer with 1,000 viewers at a $2 per CCV, a single two-hour sponsorship generates $4,000 in total revenue. The agency typically takes a 20% commission, so they earn 800 per deal while the streamer gets 3,200. So Nash demonstrates how agencies can rece- get basically massive returns by- Yeah

combining view botting with multiple sponsorship deals. So starting with a 300-viewer stream and then adding 700 botted viewers creates an apparent 1,000-viewer stream for approximately 150 to 180 per week. And if the agency secures just two-hour sponsorships for that inflated audience, they earn 1,600 in commission while spending less than $400 on view bots.

And so it’s, it’s... He calls it a money printing machine. It [00:14:00] is. I, I just, I, I can’t believe it.

Speaker 5: And I think that this is an easy way to tell who’s viewbotting and who’s not viewbotting is who’s doing sponsorships. People who aren’t doing sponsorships, there’s virtually no reason for them to viewbot. , And this is why I think when you’re looking at our communities, , you see individuals who are big enough easily to do lots of sponsorships, like say an Esma Gold, but you almost never get them.

, Or a Leaflet, and you almost never get them. , And it’s being right-wing in the way that we’re right-wing. Like, if you’re right-wing in like the way Ben Shapiro, it’s your episode on him where I point out heavy evidence that his audience could be as much as 90% botted. , There’s a huge reason to viewbot, , and the financial backing to do it.

, And no, when people are like, “Wait, so his entire organization is just fraudulent?” And I’m like, I don’t really think that’s it. I think what’s going on with him is, , that The Daily Wire should be thought of more the way we think of an organization like The Heritage Foundation, where it’s people giving it money to influence politics [00:15:00] and not really something with a large organic audience.

, By the way, if you’re, if you’re wondering, like, why I am so certain that his channel is heavily botted, if we are to believe his channel really, he does a daily hour, hour and a half, hour ep- e- episode, okay? About two-thirds of the views for his daily episodes are arriving the day after they’re released.

Speaker 10: And then after that, they get virtually no views. That makes no sense. I could see almost like in our videos, the majority of the views happening on the day they’re released for a daily episode, but who’s reliably watching daily episodes always the day after they’re released instead of the day that they’re released?

Speaker 13: And I’m not saying that it’s impossible that anyone would have this behavior. I suspect, you know, maybe one tenth of our audience would have a [00:16:00] behavior like this, , if we’re talking like on the larger side. But two-thirds of your audience or more than two-thirds it seems like often? Mm-mm.

Speaker 10: Or I could be like, well, maybe he’s got a really long tail. And so that way you would see views trickling in for a long time after the video.

Speaker 14: Which we also don’t see. Views basically stop the moment a video hits around half a million views, uh, which almost always happens on day two or day three

Speaker 10: But this indicates basically they’re paying someone to promote it in a linear fashion.

Speaker 5: That doesn’t make sense for daily episodes, especially if they’re daily episodes that have a fanatical long-term following, which is what we have to assume because the longer form episodes are doing so much better than the shorter form episodes, which typically doesn’t make sense in the YouTube algorithm unless it’s, like, a dedicated following waiting for them.

Speaker 8: Oh, side note here, some people were looking up YouTube statistics and they thought that Simone got the 85% decline in Ben Shapiro’s numbers wrong, even if you don’t [00:17:00] include view botting. , And there was some debate about it on the Discord, and at first I thought that they were right and that she had got it wrong, and then she pointed out, “Malcolm, I upload all my notes to the show notes.

Go to it.” And so then they went to it, and then they kept arguing for a while, and then they came to an understanding that Simone wasn’t wrong. , But it had to do with the way that she worded it. I don’t get it exactly. The point being is that if you think on a surface level we’ve gotten something wrong, , especially if it’s Simone because she’s the more diligent researcher out of the two of us, do check her show notes

Speaker 6: So another online conservative voice I had heard was fake when I was doing research on the Ben Shapiro one, , where it seems pretty clear that Ben Shapiro has a smaller real audience than we have, , was Louder with Crowder. And I used to like, , Crowder a lot. Um, I, I watched his show regularly and then it just got boring.

, So I was like, “Okay, that, that seems believable. Let’s look into this.” So here, , I pull up an episode. So this episode’s from 10 days ago. I wanted to get one that looked, like, fairly representative for the channel. , It’s got [00:18:00] 104,000 views, , and it’s got 529 comments. Okay, let’s look at one of our videos to get an idea if that makes sense.

All right, so we’ll just go through one. So there’s a video that came out yesterday. This one had 12,000 views. It’s already at 553 comments. So more than a video with over 100,000 views of his that came out 10 days ago. Okay, maybe that’s an anomaly. Let’s go before that. The one from the day before that, 16,000 views, over 1,000 comments, 1,077.

Okay, the day before that, 16,000 views, 443 comments.

Like, it’s- Pl-- no, it’s not plausible. It’s not plausible that he’s 10X larger than we are and has less interaction than we have. It shouldn’t even be close. If it was three times our interaction, I’d still find that suspicious

Speaker 7: And I think your perception, , and my perception of who’s big in certain culture war [00:19:00] spaces is heavily warped and heavily manipulated and often very not true. , And I think a lot of the sort of moldier, more boring, more pearl-clutchy conservative figures who previously I thought were like a giant political battle that we’re fighting against, , are, , not real.

Their, their base is not real. Their-- th- this ideology is entirely astroturfed. , Not that it didn’t have, , support at one point. I’m just talking about within the current online environment. And, , I was thinking about this recently in the context of, , ‘cause I was talking with Leaflet about this and like, oh, you know, should we be worried when, you know, X, Y, and Z people are mad at us for our views or whatever?

And it-- I’ve just gotten to the point of it’s like, it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter. I don’t need to care about them. They’re not going to have a place in space. , If their views lead them to disengage with technology or not actually find partners and have kids, , it’s [00:20:00] not a political battle worth fighting because they’re just not long-term relevant.

I need to focus on groups that are thriving and do have a possibility of building those spaceships with my descendants.

Simone Collins: Well, and I

Malcolm Collins: think that this is why th- when we look at, like, our cultural movement, right? Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Like this techy, right-leaning cultural movement the impact it seems to have within online culture- Yeah

is so much bigger than you would expect from the- Right ... view counts. Yeah. Yes,

Simone Collins: yes, yes. It’s been... Yeah, I’ve been like, “Wait, why are, like, why have we been referenced here and there when, like, our views are so low?”

Malcolm Collins: And yeah, yeah. And what I’m realizing is- Our culture, like for example, you look at Leaflet Streams or something like that.

Mm-hmm. Leaflet doesn’t really do sponsorships. And because she doesn’t do sponsorships, she doesn’t have a reason to viewbot in the way that other people do.

Simone Collins: Hmm. Yeah, there isn’t that same incentive. ... Although, and we’re gonna get into it- Yeah ... it is not always, even if you don’t have an agency, and [00:21:00] even if you don’t have sponsorships, you might still be viewbotted without your consent.

And we’ll talk about that too. Go over it. Come on, let’s

Malcolm Collins: go.

Simone Collins: Yeah. But no, I, first I wanna talk about s- I just, I also wanna be clear that this is... I think a lot of people, the, the discourse is, “Oh, Twitch viewbotting, Twitch viewbotting.” Whereas I just wanna reiterate, and, and this is even older discourse, that Facebook, full of viewbotting, and also even more so Spotify and like just streaming music, viewbotting so huge.

But here’s the one place where I was like, “Oh, well, here’s a place where Substack couldn’t...” You know, like s- where, where viewbotting isn’t a thing, Substack. I’m like, “Well, Substack is too new, and the way it works like with email platform delivery and all these other forms of engagement, like Substack has got to not have viewbotting.”

But no, it totally does. So there are websites that sell Substack subscribers for as low as two cents each. And sometimes they claim that they use real people that they add in manually rather than pure bots. Whether they’re organic or farmed, it, it’s still artificial information. And I I found [00:22:00] one just like one website where you and I just now if we want to can go to en.misterpopular.net to buy...

you can choose low quality, medium quality, or high quality subscribers. They don’t really s- I haven’t poked around their site a

Malcolm Collins: lot, but they’re, they’re- But so, and so, I told you. Like we had a family member who all of a sudden had like 80,000 followers on, on- ... Substack, and I was like, “This is fake.”

He had four articles- I- ... and like three comments on each.

Simone Collins: I know Like- I, I didn’t wanna believe it, and now I’m like, “Oh my God.” Because, but it’s, and it’s not, yeah, it’s not just subscribers. You can buy comments. You can buy likes, views, shares, plays, restacks, searches, comment likes, comment restacks, comment shares.

You can buy messages. You can buy comment replies. You can buy save as image. You can buy a ton of different ways to be like, “Yeah, look at all these... Like it, clearly this isn’t fake. Who would, who would bot save as image?” Like, that is how sophisticated this... I’m just really impressed. And, and, and there [00:23:00] are already high-profile examples, recent ones, prominent ones, of people totally faking their Substacks.

So in April, The Observer covered how Andrew Tate’s Substack saw its total follower count drop from 1.1 million to 980,000 after analysis of a sample of 1,000 paying subscribers. Paying subscribers. Found that 75% Had no biography, publications, or visible activity, and half were created in a 16-day window.

So, eh. Wait ... they, His

Malcolm Collins: paying subscribers, 75% were fake. Andrew Tate- That I, yeah ... no, and I believe this. When I look at Andrew Tate’s comment being as popular as it is, it doesn’t make sense. He’s not that smart. No, and like Andrew- He’s like, “Do you find that interesting?”

Simone Collins: It’s not even that, though. I- i- it shouldn’t also be...

I mean, ‘cause his whole thing is sort of like faking things, you know, pretending to be a, a, a thot you know, using like a girlfriend’s images and then like chatting to men on OnlyFans or something. You know what I mean? Yeah. Like that’s kind of his thing By the way, Simone,

Malcolm Collins: I was just checking out our, our, our [00:24:00] Substack right now.

Uh-huh. Uh-huh. I mean, first of all, do you know how many paid subscribers we have?

Simone Collins: We have a lot, and they’re cool. Dude, every- We- By the way- Just on Substack ... every time we get a paid subscriber- Just, just ... I, I will, and, and some of them are a little bit more secretive than others. I totally stalk them. I find their Instagrams.

I find their, like- You do, yeah ... I’m obsessed with them. Yeah. So we are at now

Malcolm Collins: 99 paid subscribers on Substack. Yay. You wanna be number 100. Yeah. I, I, I actually think our Patreon is slightly better than Substack. I don’t know, like if we offer more on- I treat them,

Simone Collins: I treat them equally. I read every comment.

I b- I, I add each n- new paid subscriber to our personal, like network, like, you know, in our personal CRM. I email them personally from both of us. There’s an open line of communication via email. I, and do you wanna know

Malcolm Collins: what our, what our yearly income is- I stalk them ... just from Substack? What? I was, I was surprised by this.

$10,700. Wow. I mean, you can’t live off of that, but that’s, that’s really meaningful, guys. I appreciate it.

Simone Collins: No, like for real, the, [00:25:00] the support, yeah, we, like a- and yeah. And and I, I, these people have histories. Like, I wouldn’t be able to stalk them if they weren’t real. So anyway, I was just kind of shocked that you could, that you could fake Substack as much as you can.

And, And our biggest growth- This isn’t, it’s not just Andrew Tate ... you know, during our campaign- There

Malcolm Collins: was also this- ... where YouTube tried to take us off for a bit.

Simone Collins: Oh, yeah, that was, that was the biggest, And you got so mad at me that I made

Malcolm Collins: like an arc about that, and I was like, “No, it’s so fun. Come on.”

Simone Collins: Yeah, but we got a lot of subscribers, and thank you for everyone who did show support then, ‘cause we really thought we were done on YouTube. We were

Malcolm Collins: incredibly demoralized. Well, we have one, we

Simone Collins: have one of three strikes, I’m just saying. Huh. It’s gone now. It’s gone? Did it fall off? It did not fall off.

If we’ve been without

Malcolm Collins: strikes for long enough that the strike where we said Hitler was bad because he was progressive- No ... that’s gone.

Simone Collins: Hold on. It must have, ‘cause I just saw it like three days ago, it was still there. No. You’re right, it’s gone. Oh, our record has been cleared. Okay. Well, I [00:26:00] hope that doesn’t mean people are not gonna consider subscribing.

I mean, immediately

Malcolm Collins: as soon as it’s cleared, Leafly gets a strike for one of our videos, but, Oh,

Simone Collins: no, I feel really bad about that ... she was clear

Malcolm Collins: She... Oh, right, she was. Thank God. Yeah, Asmongold got it cleared for her or something. I

Simone Collins: know, but like, you know, she took cash social chips or that. I don’t,

Malcolm Collins: I don’t know.

Anyway. I don’t think cash social chips. I think a bunch of people on the right created content about it. Rev says, “Jesse, you nuts.” Like, everybody was creating content about it. It’s part of the cycle. No, but hopefully it

Simone Collins: was good for her. Yeah, yeah. As long as it’s good for her. I never want anything bad to happen to her.

She’s the best. Okay, so also there was this creator called Rebecca Jones who lost hundreds of thousands of subscribers it- when they did a bunch of purges, and this was documented on X in 2025. Like, it’s, it’s a thing. I just didn’t know it was a thing. I was, I was very surprised. But so in terms of viewbotting on YouTube fake views have existed on YouTube since around 2009.

And they’ve been getting media attention since 2011. But this major 2012 purge in which YouTube removed billions of fraudulent views, including over one [00:27:00] billion from Universal Music Group artists like Beyoncé, like Rihanna, like Justin Bieber, like Nicki Minaj. It’s so crazy to me that, like, I look at them and I, I, I never had a reason to question.

I’m like, “Well, of course, it’s like Justin Bieber. People are crazy about him.” But like- But who

Malcolm Collins: listens to Justin Bieber anymore? I watch Justin Bieber AMVs. I don’t watch Justin Bieber. You watch Justin Bieber AMVs. I don’t care what he has to say anymore.

Simone Collins: That tickles me. Yeah. Anyway and, and then you have, like, literally these, these physical view farms that I...

You... I hope you can include the, the Brazilian, View farm ... recently raided. No, they’re

Malcolm Collins: everywhere, right? Yeah ... you know what’s interesting is, is so I’ll be, I’ll be transparent with people here. Mm-hmm. We tried, like, a version of viewbotting with our books. Oh,

Simone Collins: totally. Yeah, we, we’ve talked about this before.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. We’ve never tried it with YouTube or Twitter. It’s called book laundering.

Simone Collins: Like, the... yeah, this is a whole nother thing of, like, if you, if... Like, anything, all the, all the proof that we used to use to think, like, “Oh, this must be good. [00:28:00] It’s a New York Times bestseller. It’s a whatever bestseller.”

No, no. Completely fake. Look up, like- The,

Malcolm Collins: the ru- Yeah ... the way we topped the Wall Street Journal bestseller list was, was this sort of stuff, right? It- And people are always confused as to why our Wall Street Journal bestseller book is the lowest reviewed of any of our books. Like, clearly- I know ... the worst selling of any of our books.

Mm-hmm. It’s because we had to launch it in a really stupid way. Like, not on Amazon, because Amazon didn’t count. Yeah, we had to

Simone Collins: launch through Barnes & Noble. And then- dot, dot, dot. Well, I think there’s, like, a lot of offering it for free, but then I’m sure they have, like, a lot of fake purchases in there.

We, you know, we paid someone to help us with this, so we’re not ab- we’re not above this. But, but- I mean, we’re too

Malcolm Collins: lazy to do it with Y- the, so people wondering why we don’t do it with YouTube. The reason why we- Well, I also

Simone Collins: just want to, like, actually engage with our com- our community on YouTube.

Malcolm Collins: No, but there’s, like, a reason.

It’s really bad for your long-term algo. Yeah ... it, it, when you do it- Well,

Simone Collins: eh, so there was this one French study in [00:29:00] 2024 where they, they analyzed nearly 100,000 YouTube videos from over 1,000 French channels over 1.5 years to find fake view removals, so corrections on 90% of channels and about 78.5% of videos.

The corrections occurred in daily batches around 5:00 PM, and they frequently happened late in a video, video’s life cycle after most of the organic views had accumulated. And it, it appears that videos corrected later tended to be more popular overall, which suggests that the fake views, views can temporarily boost algorithmic recommendations and perceive popularity before you get stripped.

So no, actually. In many cases, getting that early social proof that tricks algorithms- Mm ... has been to the benefit of the creators. And this was, this, again, this was published in 2024. I would like to think that YouTube has gotten better at this. I don’t wanna risk it. I don’t wanna put our channel at risk, because one of [00:30:00] the ways that YouTube is fighting this, and many other platforms fight this, ‘cause it is incredibly hard.

You know, the, the cat and mouse game has gotten so sophisticated that what many platforms are doing is basically you’re guilty until proven innocent. And- Yeah ... I, I mean, like, we’re already at risk of being taken down if something were to go suspiciously viral, even naturally, just because platforms are trying so hard to fight against this.

But yeah, I mean, there, I’m, I’m just trying to say there is some, there’s some, there are many instances, I mean, like on Twitch and now with this example on YouTube, where people are being rewarded for doing this, this bad behavior. But now I wanna get into a different version of manufactured viral- By the way, I, I was highly

Malcolm Collins: suspicious, I was just ‘cause we were doing a video on Ben Shapiro recently and so I was looking at his views.

Uh-huh. I suspect he’s heavily view botted because the pattern in his videos didn’t make any sense. Mm ... most of his videos were at around the view count of our videos. Yeah ... and then he would do these, like- and these were like- But when they’re him,

Simone Collins: when his name is on them, they get a lot, they get a [00:31:00] lot of views When they had his

Malcolm Collins: name, they were like an hour long and it was like- Ooh

the podcast. It was like half a million views. Yeah. Uh-huh. And I was like, “This doesn’t make any sense. Why are your videos that should be doing better in the algorithm-” Yeah, the

Simone Collins: short form algo-friendly videos

Malcolm Collins: I think that he’s entirely astroturfed, if I’m gonna be honest at this point.

Simone Collins: Mm, you never know.

Malcolm Collins: I mean, who’s still watching... When have you heard a human being say- ... “I am, I, I continually watch Ben Shapiro, even today”? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Like, if you look at our content, I, like, k- I, a lot of people, we go to like a conservative convention or something like that, and a lot of like the staffers will run up to us and be like, “Oh my God, we love you guys,” even though Daily Wire tried to freeze us out of all of them.

See our video on that. But like, like clearly people watch our... And I can see why you would watch our stuff. Like, this is the thing. With the people who I watch who don’t appear to be viewbotted, you know, like Leaflet or Asmongold or something, or Nexador I can understand why people watch their content, right?

No, totally. With these [00:32:00] people, I just don’t get it. Who’s watching

Simone Collins: this? Yeah, I can’t bring myself to watch it. I’ll watch Brett Cooper not infrequently. But no other- Steven Crowder, for example.

Malcolm Collins: Who’s still watching Steven Crowder? Not me. Yeah. And I used to like his stuff. Like Tim Pool, I used to like his stuff.

I cannot imagine who’s still watching their stuff. It’s so formulaic now.

Simone Collins: Hm. Yeah. Anyway. Yeah. Because like when I

Malcolm Collins: click on something, I’m like, I either wanna have my views affirmed in an interesting way, which is like Knucks or Asmongold, right? Yeah. Or I wanna learn something new, which I think is what we try to do as people.

Like, we try to have... And people will like challenge us. They’ll be like, “Your new idea per minute in this video was low.” Right. Yeah ... and I was like, “You do a lot.” We’ll try better next time.

Simone Collins: Yeah, I know, I know. We’re trying, guys. Well, well then let me introduce this to you, because this is so interesting to me, and I had mentioned this to you one morning earlier, but I didn’t really get into it, is I’m calling it clip spamming.

It, this isn’t, it’s not like [00:33:00] a- term. But again, Devin Nash and I gotta start watching more of his videos ‘cause I just, as I was doing this research, I realized, like, all the best sources were coming from him. We, and I’d seen, like, two of his videos already. He, he totally changed the way, like, a week ago in how I view YouTube discovery in, in his breakdown of how- Right

people, including Clevver Killer and Caleb Hamer are manufacturing virality by spamming clips of their work on platforms like YouTube, and well, not, not exactly them, I should say. You can see the video. Again, I link to it in the show notes. It’s called Exposing the New Manufactured Viral Content Industry.

The video explains how basically a, a paid clipping economy is artificially hijacking short-form algorithms on YouTube and TikTok and Instagram and X to manufacture viral influencers and promote the streaming platform Kick rather than just like surface- Well, Kick’s, Kick’s

Malcolm Collins: a great platform.

Simone Collins: I know.

Well, but and this is... And, and, and just, you know, like, a spoiler alert, Kick is just doing... This is, this is how Kick is growing. They’re not necessarily [00:34:00] asking Caleb Hamer like, “Hey, dude, are you cool with this?” They’re just, they’re just taking these, these clips, and, like, Caleb Hamer’s benefiting. But I think they sort of spot, like, who has the potential, and they use those as almost like non-consensual endorsers of Kick that drive people to the platform.

Is Caleb Hamer- So here’s how it works ... on

Malcolm Collins: Kick?

Simone Collins: I guess. But you watch Caleb Hamer ... how it works is-

Malcolm Collins: Why do you watch Caleb Hamer, Simone? Because you watched him before he became political.

Simone Collins: He’s fun. Yeah. I... You, you bu- you build a parasocial relationship with him. You feel better about your own life and your own mistakes when you see just how- His stuff

Malcolm Collins: just makes me feel terrible about the US economy.

I’m like, “Jesus Christ- Yes ... I don’t wanna pay taxes.” Yes, but

Simone Collins: it- After watching him, I just- I’m the one who manages our finances, and, like, I stress out about like, “Oh, have we saved enough? Am I budgeting well?” And then I, I see how these other people spend their money, and I feel a lot better about it. And I think a lot of people watch for that.

You know, it’s just like, “Well, you know, f- inflation’s bad. Prices are going up, but, like, at least I’m not this idiot who bought, [00:35:00] like, a, a, a car with a terrible loan,” you know, that kind of thing. So but here’s how the clipping system works. There are these campaigns that are run inside large Discord servers.

We’re talking 20 to 30,000 people or invite-only groups where each campaign corresponds with one streamer or podcaster or brand. Okay. And then the clippers who are in, in, like the people in these Discord servers, they will pull on- 30 to 120-second segments from the long-form streams. ‘Cause, you know, like a Caleb Hamer financial audit is, like, w- an hour plus, and their streams are even longer.

And then they’ll upload them as shorts to TikTok and Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts and sometimes X under their own accounts. So these are, like, widely dispersed accounts not affiliated with anyone else, just like some random person in Pakistan. And then they in turn- through this Discord server community are paid on a flat CPM basis around 10 to 40 [00:36:00] cents, I think per, per thousand views.

But around $2 to $3 or specific bounties, like $3,000 per million views for particular clips. And then payment happens in the USDT. And there’s often, like, a minimum they have to reach in terms of views before they reach that threshold. Like, maybe they have to have 100,000 total views across all clipper’s uploads.

And then that incentivizes people to just spam, like, 50 to 100 views a- across... Or sorry 50 to 100 clips across multiple accounts. And keep in mind he, he’s hanging out in the Discord servers to try to figure this out. Like, he spent, like, two plus weeks- Yeah ... just watching what was happening here.

Super fascinating. And then so become the CPM is on top of the platform’s own ad revenue. This can be really decent money for clippers in very low income countries, which as we’ve, we wanna cover this. Not Altus Huxley sent us this graph of, like, the, the, the internet users of today and, like, so much of the people on the internet are just-

Malcolm Collins: [00:37:00] Brazil’s a huge chunk.

We need to go- Brazil ... at least, like, Brazil has- India ... like, half the internet users of the US.

Simone Collins: Yeah, and we just don’t realize. Th- you know, we think, you just think, like, “Oh, like, it, it’s mostly, like, US and Europeans or whatever,” ‘cause, like, what we see is English. But no, there’s, like, it’s just, like, people in Brazil and Pakistan too.

And w- like, hi guys too. I mean, like, a lot of the people watching Base Camp are in Brazil, and we love you guys. But, like, we just didn’t realize how many of you were there. And so but anyway, like, if you’re in a third world country where wages are really low, not necessarily Brazil, but, like, Pakistan or something you can make a decent income from, from uploading these clips and making them, especially if you’re leveraging AI and being smart about it.

And so this is, this is run in a professional, non-scammy way. There are visible campaign caps. Like, they’re like, “Okay, well, this is a, you know, $20,000 budget campaign.” Like, the, people are making careers out of this. And then Nash uses a case of a Clavicular clip to, to show the scale. In, in one recent month, Clavicular allegedly generated 2.2 billion views [00:38:00] from about 69,000 clips posted across platforms with 1,600 plus paid clippers involved.

And averaged out, each clip might get around 31,700 views, but the real point is this volume. You’ve got tens of thousands of separate uploads all about the same person in 30 days. What is that gonna tell an algorithm, right? Like, the, the point is that algorithms are cert- The way he, he described it in his video was, like, you know, how is an algorithm gonna know?

Like, if you’re designing an algorithm, like, well, if there’s some earthquake or, like, a volcano explodes, like- Mm ... how, how am I gonna make sure my algorithm picks that up? Well, if suddenly a bunch of separate people all at once start talking about, like, a volcano- I, I should probably like promote that thing, you know, surface that content more.

Yeah. And so that’s what they’re gaming with these really simple, on, on the surface of it, clip campaigns, is they’re tricking the algorithms into thinking, “Oh my God, this [00:39:00] clavicular guy, like he must be the most relevant thing in the world.” So just the sheer volume tricks the recommendation system. And then algorithms that, that treat topics with tons of uploads and engagement as globally relevant are just- Mm-hmm

um, it’s this is just so fascinating. So in terms of who’s funding it it, it’s, it’s just Kick. It’s not the streamers. A Kick-based streamer will openly state that they receive over six figures a month of clipping budget, and then Kick pays high bounties, like 20 to $30 CPMs on some clips. And then internal clipping...

Sorry, internal Kick clipping program materials from invite-only servers some of which I don’t- We should like go on Kick?

Malcolm Collins: Is this what you’re saying?

Simone Collins: Yeah, I guess if you’re gonna start streaming, stream on Kick. They can require clippers to use a precise Kick logo overlay, and then incorrect placement can get the clip rejected and unpaid, which ensures that the, the brand of Kick is visible on every Short.

So if you see a Short and you see a cl- a Kick [00:40:00] logo on it, you know you’re being subject to this new tactic. And Kick’s strategy, which is derived from its association with, with Stake, which is a crypto gambling platform, is to pay to flood short-form platforms with Kick-branded clips, and then they grow selected streamers to funnel some f- some fraction of the billions of impressions back to Kick.

And Nash, who is, is also, you know, our, at least my like go-to now expert on like Twitch botting he contrasts this with Twitch’s older model of paying select streamers big contracts and expecting them to bring their own audience with now this, I think, much more smart and sophisticated- Such a better model

method. Yeah. I mean, yeah, where Kick is just spending its marketing budget directly on mass short-form distribution, and then streamers just benefit as a side effect, but streamers are clearly benefiting. So what’s happening though is that algorithms that heavily weight volume and multi-channel chatter are just completely getting one-shotted by the tactic.

And so you’ve got this [00:41:00] sometimes even like really mediocre or unlikable personalities are suddenly dominating feeds and getting all this paid volume, while more interesting creators just aren’t- Getting discovered. And then you get basically this, this random weird, like, fake viral stuff. Like, what... I, I, I find, like, some of the talk about Claviculars to be interesting, but then when I go and I watch his actual content I’m like It’s so boring.

Like, I find him interesting conceptually. Yeah, like, there’s no charisma, nothing’s happening. This is really boring. Now, Caleb Hammer’s different. I think he’s actually fun. He’s, he, he’s good at, at, like, actually trying to deliver, whereas I think fundamentally Claviculars is an introvert autist who’s discovered his special interest, and kinda just wants to be left alone, but i- you know, understands that he’s getting a lot of money and reinforcement and attention, and is feeding into it, like, while he can.

But I just wanna be clear, like, this is not, this is not some concerted thing. Like, this isn’t just a story of, like, [00:42:00] ah, like, all the celebrities you thought were real were manufactured. I mean, we all kinda knew that. Like, the Kardashians manufactured themselves, and, like, all the music labels are, they’re faking it.

But I didn’t know how bad it was, but that’s still a thing. But then it’s also not like, oh, well all Twitch streamers are just faking it by viewbotting. ‘Cause no, often it’s their agencies- Yeah ... without even telling them just trying to get more of their cut. And then the, the streamers don’t even know it, and Asmongold has talked about this.

Like, it’s not necessarily... And even sometimes it’s fans who are, like, a big stan of some creator, even if they’re really small, and they’re like, “Well, I wanna make them look bigger,” so then they’re going off and they’re buying bots. So, like, people are... So s- this isn’t even content creators. So sometimes it’s the agency, sometimes it’s fans, sometimes it’s a music label.

Sometimes- Thank you for, if

Malcolm Collins: you’re a fan of us, how risky it is to bot a show. Don’t. Don’t. Because you can get the entire thing knocked down. Don’t.

Simone Collins: Yeah, don’t, don’t bot us. But sometimes it’s a platform. Sometimes it’s, like, Kick doing it, right? Like,

Malcolm Collins: I’m up to running a bot experiment on Kick or Rumble or something, but not here.

Simone Collins: Not, not here. Yeah, don’t. No. [00:43:00] Please don’t. Yeah. No, no. Again, we weren’t above it for Book Wandering, but... And again, books, right? So just... But, but what I thought I was gonna come away with this, like, my moral of the story was like, well, if you see, you know, a YouTube video that has a lot of views and you’re trying to decide whether or not it’s worth watching, like, actually look at the comments and see if they’re...

But then that doesn’t even work. So I don’t know. Like, ‘cause I, I do. I, I fall for it. I will look when I, like, go through my YouTube feed and my recommended stuff, like, I will look at how many views something has, and if it has a lot of views I’m gonna be more likely to choose it. And now I’m, I know I can’t do that, and I don’t know.

Like, what, what would, what do you do in light of this information to try to, to not be subject to that level of manipulation, and to not get caught in, in the deader than I knew internet? What do I

Malcolm Collins: do? Huh. Well, I think watch content that’s actually entertaining Sure ... this is the, no, no, no, no, no, no, no Yeah This matters more than you [00:44:00] think, right?

Like- Yeah ... I think discount content that when you go to it and you’re like, “I’ve heard X person is really big,” and they have a- Yeah ... reputation for being really big. Yeah. And then I go to their channel and I’m just like- It’s not ... this is kind of boring. Who’s- Yeah ... watching this?

Simone Collins: Yeah, so basically even if people are talking about someone- I don’t wanna cash shade.

I don’t, because- Even if people say they’re watching it, like that doesn’t... You have, yeah, use your own judgment. You know? So, so an example

Malcolm Collins: of this, right? Okay ... I don’t wanna cash shade ‘cause, like, Smug Alana is like on team or whatever. Do you see that Smug Alana in the latest you know, Smug Alana the Vtuber, right?

The- Yeah ... fox girl conservative Vtuber. Mm-hmm. So the latest li- what was it she went ahead stream, Yeah ... about Hasan crashing out Commentating on

Simone Collins: Hasan crashing out. Yeah. That, it was fun to see them together. The, the stream she went on. Yeah,

Malcolm Collins: yeah, yeah. Yeah. But like, I go, I... While I like her politics and everything and some of her stuff, the reality is is she’s just not that entertaining, right?

And if I contrast- No one’s entertaining with bleep fluid ... her [00:45:00] views with how entertaining she is, I’m like- Yeah ... “Oh, this is a little sus.” And I think that I- Mm ... need to be more open to in my head calling out when I’m like, “Who is watching this?” W- w- like w- w- what’s the entertainment value of this for people?

Like at the very least with Nick Fuentes I’m like, I get the entertainment value. And I, it does seem- Mm ... that he’s heavily bodied, but specifically ‘cause he’s, like, cruel to his fans.

Speaker 5: Like be- living the dream, three daughters. What dream? You’re the gayest guy ever.

You’re gayer than gay guys. That’s crazy.

Malcolm Collins: And I understand that, like, there’s the thing where there’s, like, the Hasan fans who are, like, women who like men demeaning them, and there’s the Nick Fuentes fans who are guys who like to be demeaned by people they look up to.

I don’t, it’s like not my thing.

Simone Collins: Speaking of S- Smug Alana the Vtuber like the automated VTuber rig creation [00:46:00] system that you’re creating for Reality Fabricator, rfab.ai, you should try it out. Malcolm’s building really cool stuff there. It should be working by the time this goes up ...

Speaker 9: So it’s partially working right now. Right now it will work for generating the VTube rig, generating all the components for the VTube rig, exporting it in a file format that you can export to a VTube rigging platform, but you’re going to have to manage the deformations yourself. , Or I’m trying to automate that step right now.

But, , yeah, I mean, you can get the basics with what we have right now.

Simone Collins: well, I wanted to ask ‘cause, like, when when Smug Alana on that collab tried to bow she just like, just her, just her, her titties bounced.

Is... Are you eventually gonna set up a rig that can do, like, full body tracking?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, I’ll do titty bouncing. I just don’t have it in for visual- No, not

Simone Collins: titty bouncing. I just mean, like she wanted to bow- Oh, I will have the bounciest- ... but she couldn’t ... titties

Malcolm Collins: you have ever seen Well, obviously it’s... Yeah You don’t even understand.

I know. My titties- oh ... will be bouncing out of control with this [00:47:00] rig. Oh, I hope so. They will be the most luscious, the titty simulations you’ve ever

Simone Collins: seen. She... Titties, no. Look, they should never be luscious. That makes them sound like they’re hairy. You want- Luscious, you hear hairy? Yeah. You want buoyant titties.

Well, not buoyant. That sounds- Buoyant? I

Malcolm Collins: now think of, like, a woman swimming and her titties are, like, bobbing up in front of

Simone Collins: her. Well, they do. There’s this scene in the original Austin Powers movie where there’s, like, a woman in a hot tub, and I... Like, her titties do seem to float in this, like, one scene, and I just...

Something, like, that’s, that scene sits with me where it’s like, do breasts float? And then they would- Well, they have a lot of fat

Malcolm Collins: tissue in them, so they probably would They do, so they

Simone Collins: would float, yeah, especially if you have, like, a jacuzzi bubbles. But, like, I just remember being like, “Huh.” Your breasts aren’t big enough to

Malcolm Collins: have experienced

Simone Collins: this They really aren’t.

My poor, my poor English muffins. So I’m, I’m gonna be honest.

Malcolm Collins: I would find that disgusting. Th- like, there, I, I, there are guys who are confused by this. For me, like, the big... I, I find it so gross, so [00:48:00] disgusting.

Simone Collins: Well, it’s for someone, and I hope that you build into that. But what my, my larger question is, clearly with VTuber rigs, titty bouncing is not something that hasn’t been solved.

It, it exists. However, she clearly wanted to do a full body gesture and was prevented from doing that. Will you make it possible to, like, bow and dance eventually with that? No, that will take too

Malcolm Collins: much time.

Simone Collins: Take...

Malcolm Collins: Okay, fine. At least for the first version. Never mind.

Simone Collins: A girl can dream.

Malcolm Collins: You’ve gotta keep in mind what I would have to rig.

I mean, I will eventually do this, but right now I’m just focused on the basics, okay? Okay. What we will have by the time this video goes live is if you handle the rigging yourself, the image output is all gonna be fine. Now, what I’m working on now is getting the auto-rigging set up as well.

Simone Collins: Nice.

And just for context... God, yeah, ‘cause no, some of our VTubers are people who use animated anime avatars of themselves, or animated characters. One is, like, an [00:49:00] orange, I think. Like, the biggest Twitch streamer, right, is just an orange. A potato A pota- a potato? Is that

Malcolm Collins: what he was? Yeah, Angry Orange was like an early YouTube thing which is not popular anymore and everyone- Oh, you’re right.

No, he...

Simone Collins: Okay, fine. He’s... He... What? He’s a thing. He’s a mo- But anyway, where you use an animated thing. Y- you, you... And, and, like, basically there’s software that tracks your face and then uses that to, like, puppet the, the illustrated puppet. And so typically what people do well, have done up to this point is you have to commission an artist to make every small part, the eyes, the nose, the ears, the different variations, and then you upload it to the software, and then the software is what you use to record your, your videos and streams and interviews, et cetera.

What Malcolm is doing with Reality Fabricator is making it possible to submit a prompt to AI to create your own character, which you can then upload to that software and animate in all of your videos and interviews and streams without having to commission art from someone. And even if you have an existing VTuber setup, you can use AI to generate outfits or [00:50:00] accessories that you may not have had to save you time, to, to, to speed up turnaround.

And it’s really cool. And, like, hearing him go through the creative process has been humbling and impressive. Bruno’s working on this too. It’s really cool stuff.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, let’s see. I didn’t take down the site ‘cause I was doing an update right now. Yeah, it’s working. Great. Okay.

Simone Collins: Anyway that’s cool stuff, but okay.

I, yeah, I agree with you. And you know what? I think that, like, younger people and younger generations are already really hip to this. Something I’ve noticed with our six-year-old son, Octavian, is w- some, like... We were t- we were trying to find videos on YouTube explaining the, the, the feather dongle on quails’ heads, that little...

It’s actually six feathers, at least on the California quail. But what’s going on over here, you know? Ba-doo-doo-doo. And so we were trying to figure out, like, why those feathers are there. There’s not really a good explanation. But we found all these videos about quails, and a bunch of them were AI slop.

And I thought well, maybe kids wouldn’t really know when a video is AI, like, [00:51:00] generated. It, like, it’s obviously, like, a thing that I’ve always known. Yeah. But not bad quality. Like, they honestly weren’t terrible. It gave the information. They were better than many human-created videos, but it was still AI slop.

And Octavian 100% with that, 100% accuracy was like, “Oh, this was made by AI.” And yeah. This is why it’s good to engage them with AI at a young age. Actually, yes and... ‘Cause he talks with AI all the time. Yesterday he was just talking with ChatGPT all night. It was really funny. ChatGPT is so sycophantic though.

So yeah. Anyway I, I do think the younger generations are going to become much more sophisticated about this, and not only will they know when something is AI slop, and do they already but I think they’re gonna know, like, “Okay, this was served to me algorithmically, but it, it’s fake because it’s- It’s not hitting.

And hopefully over time-

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, things that don’t hit are fake.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah, like if you’re not feeling it... And I, but this is important ‘cause I think what’s happening with a lot [00:52:00] of people is they’re like, well, and ‘cause I do this all the time, like it’s not hitting with me, but I guess it’s still true or the zeitgeist or important because it has so many views.

Mm-hmm. Or because it keeps getting served to me. Like, it just keeps showing up in my algo when I scroll. And one, this is just another argument, another point in favor of not scroll-based content. Like, if you are, if you are consuming content based on a feed, stop. You should be searching proactively for stuff that you like, and then leaning into channels and creators that clearly do their homework and are good and real and trying.

And I, I... By real, I don’t mean that doesn’t use AI, whatever, but like, just per your judgment. But yeah. I don’t know. Anyway, it’s, it’s, there’s gonna be a lot of people- You did a great

Malcolm Collins: job by the way- Research ... researching today’s interview episode. Like, I didn’t know- Oh ... any of this. This is fantastic.

It changed my view on a lot of things. I’m gonna be thinking about it for a long time. It’s, yeah. And that’s what I come to- It’s sobering ... [00:53:00] conversations with you for.

Simone Collins: Oh. And you know what I need? Well, this is normally a you thing- I do need more- ...

Malcolm Collins: but I wanted you to work on the VTuber

Simone Collins: rigs, so.

Malcolm Collins: I need a, a, a shorter sword that I can flail around on stream better.

Simone Collins: Oh, ‘cause this is too large for your- Too, yeah ... little square- So I need something I can really- ... and can’t fit it in ... hit our kids

Malcolm Collins: with, if you know what I mean. Well, what if you

Simone Collins: like, you need you need a butterfly knife and you need to learn... Oh, God, you’re gonna f*****g- You could watch me- You’re gonna cut your nose off.

Sh- sh- Yeah, you gotta drink the whole- Watch

Malcolm Collins: all my fingers. Like, by the end of this stream- ... I got no fingers left.

Simone Collins: Your face is all bloody. Yeah, that’s sound’s gonna go. And then of course Toasty’s gonna get hit. That’d actually be like a great

Malcolm Collins: AI thing to have in the background. Of a guy, like, playing with a knife and, like, as the stream goes on, fingers start missing.

Just

Simone Collins: his face gets increasingly cut. Yeah. Honestly, though, I feel like a lot of streamers are just... I mean, watch a clavicular stream, right? At the end he’s hospitalized and yeah, he’s he’s dis- his face is descending ‘cause he, you know, gets all cut up. But it’s, God, it’s just so strange. All this is just so strange.

We’re being [00:54:00] manipulated and puppeted, but there is no they. There is no man, you know, like Illuminati doing this. It is all these unique systems that are just performing in alignment with incentives. Oh, shoot. I

Malcolm Collins: just realized my classmates who I thought had, like, immediately started bigger Substacks and, like, YouTube channels than us, were they botting?

‘Cause I’ve watched some of their stuff and I’m like, it’s not very good. Colette- Is it I- ... is good.

Simone Collins: No, Colette, no. Colette, I know. Like, one- It’s, it’s more like you, like- ... it, it may not hit with us, but per, no, per the, the internet revelation that we had thanks to not Aldous Huxley We know that the internet is, to a great extent, less educated third-worlders.

Not to... Like, okay- But no- Not to be mean ... and Khalid

Malcolm Collins: aims for that, but I’m talking about my other classmates who are not. They’re educated people who are- Oh, right, who are trying to

Simone Collins: sell highbrow. Yeah, Khalid, Khalid caters to the everyman. The, the not even developed country everyman, just the everyman. Yeah

and he’s great, and we [00:55:00] love him, and he’s very smart, and he, he’s amazing. We- he’s great. But yeah, the ones who are like, “I’m selling highbrow content. I’m selling interviews with founders.” I

Malcolm Collins: got Mark Cuban on, on my stream. It’s like, who f*****g cares what Mark Cuban- ... thinks in 2026, man? Grow up.

For real.

But- I bet it’s all botted, now that I think about it. I hadn’t thought about it- Hmm ... because I hadn’t... When I saw my family member bot so callously, I was like, “You don’t think anybody f*****g exists.” You know,

Simone Collins: I, I don’t know. Because they, they were also successful in generating viral content in the past. Like actual...

Well, I don’t know. Let’s see. ‘Cause it was 2009 when, when you first saw viewbotting on YouTube. I’m gonna have to look at the timelines. I, I don’t know. Some stuff is really viral. Some stuff is not. I don’t, I don’t, I don’t... And I’m just having such a crisis of... but anyway, this episode is definitely dedicated to Devin Nash, who’s just...

I, I, I have a lot of viewing to do. ‘Cause he, he’s done a lot of, like, per his [00:56:00] unique position as someone making money in this ecosystem- Yeah ... and understanding, like, the, the unit e- Like ‘cause Asmongold understands it’s happening, but he has no interest personally in, like, understanding the unit economics, going into Discord servers, like, watching, watching people work.

Like, that’s, that’s a deep level. I just wanna explore this more, but I, yeah, I’m just... I, I’m never gonna look at the internet the same way again. ‘Cause I thought dead internet theory was mostly about content. Mm-hmm. And n- now I realize it is it is literally, it is engagement, it is restacks, it is image downloads.

Like, it’s crazy. Yeah. But I love you very much.

Malcolm Collins: I love you too. Yeah. You are an absolute princess, and I I guess I’ll go down and talk with Steve and Minkit right after this.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm. Yeah, and work out, work out some dinner plans, and I will try to wrangle the younglings, maybe shovel some of [00:57:00] the sand out of our house.

That’s the new thing. Are you going to

Malcolm Collins: kill even the younglings? Simone going after the video. It’s, like, her lightsaber, like in that scene with Anakin. The younglings.

Simone Collins: They

Malcolm Collins: have crossed every

Simone Collins: straw. Oh, they cr- they c- they crossed every straw Yes, they did. They did. They crossed the squad mission. No, I’m not good

Malcolm Collins: with the brain thing.

This is like one of my failure zones of scenarios. Ooh. I

Simone Collins: mean, I don’t know if I’m gonna be able to get it, ‘cause Tex is... Look, he’s like totally crashed out on my,

Malcolm Collins: Oh, you can’t even move. Of course. I

Simone Collins: can’t. I’m, I’m immobilized based on his... He’s just all... I can’t, I can’t... There. This is red sheet. I love you, Shawn.

Yeah. I love you too. I’m just trying to go to bed early

Malcolm Collins: tonight. You should try to go to bed early tonight.

Simone Collins: God, I want to. I’ve had one long pounding headache all, all day that it just- Bye. Bye.

Malcolm Collins: Give us money for her headache. Subscribe to Patreon or something. Subscribe

Simone Collins: to take away my [00:58:00] headache. But actually, like, our subscribers are awesome.

Thank you so much for those of you who do. Yeah, no,

Malcolm Collins: for the ones who are subscribed, like, that’s really cool. Like, it makes it feel like you know, when people don’t like us on YouTube or whatever, it’s like, well, you know, at least some people like us. Like, at least we have some

Simone Collins: friends. It’s more... We, we get so much of our episode content from them.

And they’re smart- We do ... and friends, and like I actually- So we just

Malcolm Collins: farm you for everything: content, money. We’re the worst ...

Simone Collins: our fu- our future children’s spouse. It like- Yeah ... it’s bad.

Malcolm Collins: It’s bad. Anyway, bye. Bye. For the Leaflet stream on Monday Me too. Two days, two days. Have you, have you watched any of my long streams with her? I’ve only seen clips. No,

Simone Collins: I’ve... I have, my, my view, my view list is so freaking long. I- You don’t have

Malcolm Collins: time for 10-hour Crash Out streams?

Simone Collins: Mm. They make

Malcolm Collins: me wanna do Twitch streaming, if I’m gonna be honest.

Yeah. I’ve learned I’m really good at it. Like, I, I’m gonna be... I’ve, like, watched other Twitch streamers. I’m astonishingly good at it, [00:59:00] I’m telling

Simone Collins: you. Well, guess what? You- you’re gonna, you’re gonna discover quickly why maybe you’re not gonna wanna do that, but we’ll go into it, so I guess I might as well just start.

Ooh. It’s all fake.

Speaker 11: Okay, so you’ve got a store that you made here- Yeah ... with, like, little huts behind it and a- Yeah ... okay. This, this is the, this, that, that is the person bought spot, and that is the person buy place, too. And that, that is the, that is the, that is the place where you can get furniture. And do you see the carpet?

Speaker 12: That is the carpet place. And you see a fridge? That is where all of the foods are. And you see above the fridge? That is the toy aisle. And right there- Oh, that’s the toy aisle? And, and right there is the hair salon. Oh, that’s the hair salon right there? The- And this is like, and this is my AI buying place right there.

So- That is the AI buying place ... oh, this is where you get AI? Yeah, to buy. And what would you do with the AI that you bought? Oh, um, I’m gonna make it help me do stuff, to buy. [01:00:00] And this is the- Wait, so what is over here, Octavian? Oh, that is another home that someone who rented this store. Okay, so I wanna

In this Based Camp episode, Malcolm and Simone Collins break down the dramatic decline of The Daily Wire — from massive layoffs (25-50% staff cuts), an 85% drop in Ben Shapiro’s YouTube views, and high-profile splits with Candace Owens, Brett Cooper, and others — to financial flops like the $10M Pendragon fantasy series nobody asked for.

They explore Shapiro’s mean-girl gatekeeping, failed attempts to control the conservative movement, allegations of heavy viewbotting, outdated content strategies, and why the old-guard “Boomer conservative” model is collapsing while newer, more vital, fun, and adaptive voices (including Based Camp) are rising.

Show Notes

* Around May 1st, the Daily Wire laid off around 13% of their staff

* At least according to a company spokesperson

* Candace Owens claims that 50% were laid off

* And LayoffHedge (a third-party tracker) estimates approximately 100 jobs cut in 2026 (that is 50% of the approximately 200 remaining staff)

* This is their second round of layoffs, following a 25% staff cut in April 2025

* A year in which they also shut down their Bentkey children’s entertainment division

* So their team is down over 60%

* These changes coincide with a 85% drop in Ben Shapiro’s YouTube viewership

* 2023: He had over 170 million monthly views

* Now: 18-28 million monthly views

* Plus Ben Shapiro and Team Daily Wire is very publicly splitting from major right-wing influencers—after a long history of sanctimonious gatekeeping

* And this is in addition to insanely stupid financial indulgences made by the Daily Wire, like dumping $10M on a fantasy series nobody asked for

Let’s look at their rise and fall and what it indicates about the right.

The Rise of Ben Shapiro and the Daily Wire

Ben Shapiro’s rise began in the early 2000s as a teenage author and columnist, accelerating in the 2010s through campus debates, books, and podcasts.

Shapiro published his first book, Brainwashed, at age 17 in 2004 while at UCLA, followed by columns and radio appearances.

His national breakout came around 2012-2016 via viral campus speeches (”facts don’t care about your feelings”), resigning from Breitbart in 2016 amid Trump tensions, and The Ben Shapiro Show podcast launch. By 2018, it was syndicated on over 200 stations, peaking his influence during 2016-2020 political polarization.

The Daily Wire launched on June 29, 2015, co-founded by Shapiro and Jeremy Boreing with seed funding from the Wilks brothers, building on Shapiro’s momentum post-Breitbart. The Ben Shapiro Show debuted as its flagship in September 2015.

* The Daily Wire perfected Facebook‑era virality with clicky headlines and “SJW owned” debate clips, becoming one of the most‑linked news domains on the platform and a powerhouse during the Trump and early COVID years.

The company hit its peak in late 2023, driven by Shapiro’s YouTube reaching ~170 million monthly views amid Israel-Hamas coverage, with revenue claims over $100 million annually by 2022. Expansion included Nashville HQ (2020), DailyWire+ (2022), and Bentkey (2023).

The Layoffs

* Most of the layoffs were around the Daily Wire’s Nashville, TN headquarters (and particularly within the production office)

The YouTube and Facebook Drops

Facebook

* Facebook’s 2024 feed changes de‑ranked news and gutted The Daily Wire’s traffic, collapsing the distribution engine that had made them look unbeatable in the mid‑2010s.

YouTube

* Independent YouTube analytics (VidIQ and others) show Ben Shapiro’s channel views are down roughly 70–85% from their late‑2023 peak

* Flagship channels sometimes have normal slumps, but online commentators like Philip DeFranco have noted this change in traffic is closer to a collapse

* Social Blade data shows The Daily Wire’s YouTube subscriber base has plateaued or shrunk in 15 of the last 16 months since early 2025.

* Website traffic by March 2026 was about half of what it had been a year earlier, and Shapiro has admitted that revenue is down from 2024 even while insisting cash flow remains strong relative to critics’ expectations.

The Splits

Direct

Brett Cooper

* Voluntarily left The Daily Wire on December 10, 2024

Candace Owens

* Left in March 2024

* CEO Jeremy Boreing announced the end of their partnership, stating it was mutual but amid public feuds like Owens’ “Christ is King” posts and defense of Kanye West’s antisemitic remarks. Shapiro challenged her to quit if unhappy, while Owens called herself “finally free” and accused Shapiro of ad hominem attacks. She continued criticizing Israel and the ADL post-exit.

* Owens weaponized receipts, text messages, and live‑stream theatrics to frame Shapiro as hypocritical and captured by Israeli donors, and then rode the Charlie Kirk assassination discourse into a giant audience surge while undermining Shapiro’s legitimacy.

More Ideological

The Daily Wire fell out of step with the dissident right and younger MAGA, especially re: stanning Israel

Nick Fuentes

* In his interview with Tucker Carlson, Nick Fuentes talks about how Ben Shapiro gatekept and belittled him early in his career, even when he was essentially a nobody

* Fuentes describes first publicly criticizing Shapiro and The Daily Wire over Israel, then getting labeled an antisemite:

* “I tweeted to Ben Shapiro. I said, ‘You know, I’ve never seen anything on the Daily Wire that’s actually critical of Israel.’ And he quote tweets me… And he says to accuse a Jew of dual loyalty is the shest sign of anti-semitism.”

* “He immediately called you an anti-semite.” (Tucker) – “Mhm. So I’m driving to Christmas Eve mass with my family and I see on Twitter the notification comes up. Ben Shapiro quote tweets me calling me an anti-semite.”

* “And then… I said something like, ‘If you’re China first, you should live in China. If you’re Mexico first, you should live in Mexico. If you’re Israel first, maybe you should go live in Israel.’ And again, he quote tweets me and says, ‘You’re an anti-semite’ that same night.”

* Fuentes frames this as Shapiro deciding early on to shut him down inside the conservative movement:

* “It turned out that Cassie Dylan, she had texted him earlier and she wanted him to take me under his wing… And he goes, ‘I’ll take a look.’ And so, I guess the two of them were kind of like grooming me in a sense. They wanted me to go maybe and be a Daily Wire [guy] or maybe looking me as a potential conservative activist or influencer. And so they started paying attention to me.”

* “And the more critical of Israel I was, I started to get this really intense push back from the both of them and from a lot of the people at Daily Wire.”

* “For them, it was very easy that if they detected that a promising young guy was going to become anti-Israel in the conservative movement, they could crush that person easily and grind them under the heel. So, they sort of were alerted, oh, there’s a precocious young guy that isn’t on board with Israel. We’ll keep an eye on him and if he gets too vocal or popular, we’ll cut him down. We’ll crush him.”

* “Basically from then on, it was just this escalating series of blacklisting, censorship, hit pieces, rumors to try to ostracize me from the movement.”

* Fuentes links Shapiro/Daily Wire and their circle to efforts to isolate him and get him fired:

* “First they would try to dissuade me from asking questions… they would say, ‘Well, you know, there’s a really good answer for that, but you’re asking it in the wrong way… you’re asking it in an anti-semitic way.’”

* “And eventually they said, ‘You know what? we’re not going to talk to you anymore.’ And these were my friends… All of them one day said, ‘You’re done. We’re blocking you. We’re never going to speak to you again. We’re never going to have you on our show.’”

* “At this time I was on RSBN… And they escalated their attacks. Cassie Dylan would call my boss… every day for weeks, saying, ‘You’ll never believe what Nick said on his show tonight. It’s so racist. It’s so bad. You got to take him off the air. It’s going to make you look bad.’”

* “And I would then get word from my boss… ‘I don’t know what has gotten into Cassie. I thought you guys were friends, but she is calling me every day hysterically demanding that I fire you.’”

* On a clip that ended up at Media Matters: “And so that clip appears on Media Matters… and ultimately then they fired me… But the pressure in this scenario came exclusively from the Daily Wire.”

* “My show got maybe a hundred live viewers every night… So the Media Matters was not on to me. They were put onto me by people in the right that wanted me cancelled.

* Later, Fuentes explicitly ties Shapiro’s attacks to his own radicalization and turn against the conservative establishment:

* “Looking back with that 2020 hindsight, I mean, Ben Shapiro seems like a big part of your political evolution. You went from a fan acolyte to an opponent and then just pivoted against everything that he believes.” (Tucker) – “Yeah. It was because it was this new dialectic that Trump forced… So once you accept that, a lot of the way we’re doing things becomes impossible to support or justify. The contradiction becomes apparent.”

* “I realized that the conservative movement was completely bankrupt in that way. Became very radical.”

Tucker Carlson

Shapiro blasted Carlson as an “intellectual coward” and “moral imbecile” in late 2025 for interviewing Nick Fuentes and echoing antisemitic tropes on Israel/Jewish influence. Carlson retaliated by slamming Shapiro’s “many attacks on Jesus,” immigration views, and pro-Israel stance as “bigotry and cruelty,” especially on Iran policy. Their rift deepened post-Trump’s 2024 reelection, splintering right-wing media.

Megyn Kelly

Kelly mocked Shapiro’s YouTube views as “like 500 views” apiece in May 2026, amid his audience decline. At Turning Point USA’s AmericaFest in December 2025, Shapiro called her a “charlatan” for platforming Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson; Kelly fired back, accusing Shapiro and Bari Weiss of fueling antisemitism by suppressing Israel criticism. She defended her neutrality and friendship with Owens, calling Shapiro “Israel first.”

The Conservative Disney Boondoggle

* Daily Wire co-founder Jeremy Boreing pulled Daily Wire into a fantasy series passion project

* CEO Jeremy Boreing pursued a Breitbart‑style “politics is downstream of culture” vision, pouring money into kids’ content, feature films, and merch (anti‑woke razors, chocolates), aiming to build a conservative Hollywood in Nashville.

* He is no longer CEO, he just wants to lead creative stuff

* The Pendragon Cycle: Rise of the Merlin

* Arthurian fantasy series

* Here’s the preview:

* The Daily Wire spent at least $10 million on “The Pendragon Cycle: Rise of the Merlin,” with a minimum of $1 million per episode for its seven-episode season.

* This figure comes from statements by co-CEO and executive producer Jeremy Boreing, marking it as the company’s most ambitious production to date, filmed in Italy and Hungary.

* The series is fully live and available now. It premiered on DailyWire+ on January 22, 2026, with all seven episodes released by early March 2026

* It holds an IMDb rating of 7.9/10 from over 2,400 votes and a Rotten Tomatoes audience score around 86-88%, ranking moderately at #2,181 out of 35,000 shows.

* Critics and some outlets like Esquire call it uneven or “terrible,” while fans and figures like Roger Avary praise it as engaging fantasy akin to Game of Thrones.

* The $10M+ production aims to attract subscribers, but no reports confirm new viewer influx or revenue gains post-premiere in January 2026. Past Daily Wire revenue hit $100M+ in 2021-2022, but recent 2026 figures are unavailable.

Why Ben Shapiro is Falling Off

* Shift from in-demand inexpensive content to not-highly-demanded highly-produced content

* Pendragon has become the symbol of Daily Wire drifting from relatively cheap, high‑margin podcasts/political commentary into expensive streaming‑style productions that may not have had the necessary audience.

* Failure to evolve

* As social platforms shifted toward short‑form and livestreaming, Shapiro’s show format, thumbnails, and pacing stayed static, while creators like Candace Owens aggressively embraced live, high‑drama streaming.

* Brittle model

* The company’s model—sign talent, build their audiences, and monetize under The Daily Wire umbrella—became structurally weak once it was trivial for stars to spin up independent monetized channels and leave.

* Sanctamonious gatekeeping

Episode Transcript

Simone Collins: [00:00:00] Hello, Malcolm. I’m excited to be with you today because the Daily Wire is having a moment. Around May 1st they laid off around 13% of their staff, but this is just according to a company spokesperson. Candace Owens claims that 50% were laid off.

And Layoff Hedge, which is a third-party tracker, estimates that approximately 100 jobs were cut in 2026, and that is about 50% of their approximately 200 remaining staff. Oh no, Candace Owens coming in with truth nukes here? I mean, well, she’s because people are leaking to her from the inside, and I think that’s entirely plausible.

It’s not like she doesn’t have any remaining friends there. You know, she worked there for a while. Well, when you

Malcolm Collins: look at their decline in viewership, that makes perfect sense. Yeah. Because you don’t wanna cut, when you’re in the middle of a decline like the Daily Wire is right now- Yeah ... you don’t wanna cut to your existing level because you’ve got to presume that it’s going to continue to decrease going forward.

Exactly, so

Simone Collins: maybe they’re kind of preemptive cuts. And keep in mind, this is, this is their second round of [00:01:00] layoffs. This, there was a 25% staff cut in April of 2025, so last year. And that was a year also in which they shut down their Benke Children’s Entertainment division. So their team is down over 60%, as far as anyone can tell.

Yeah ... and the changes coincide, as you alluded, to an 85% drop in Ben Shapiro’s YouTube viewership. In 2023 at their height, he had over 170 million monthly views, and now that’s down to 18 to 28 million. And then also, Ben Shapiro and Team Daily Wire are very publicly splitting from very major right-wing influencers after a very long history of sanctimonious gatekeeping.

They were like the Regina George of the conservative space, and now they’ve been deposed by some upstart redhead from Africa.

Malcolm Collins: Who’s Regina George? What? Wait, sorry, you are quoting some girl book here that people are... Who’s Regina George? Who’s some upstart- She’s the queen

Simone Collins: bee in Mean Girls From what?

Oh, from Mean- Mean Girls ... Girls movie.

Speaker 10: I love your skirt. Where did you get it? Thanks. [00:02:00] That is the ugliest effing skirt I’ve ever seen.

Simone Collins: Yes Yes. Gee whiz, Malcolm. Whoa. Grow a pair of tits. You need to be more girly. And he also- I know, okay, yeah, our fans will love that, right? You know, hold on. Right. Hold on. Oh, God. Hold on. What? Brian Gnome is doing it, you can do it too, okay? This is in addition, I should say- Mm

to the insanely stupid financial indulgences made by the Daily Wire, like dumping $10 million on a fantasy series that nobody asked for. And I will share more information about that one, ‘cause-

Malcolm Collins: Oh, my God ... what? Yeah. But I wanna get into well, one, what’s kind of cool about where Ben Shapiro is right now, the Daily Wire is more broadly, is, like, they’re falling into, like, our territory in viewership.

If they’re- ... he’s at, like, 14 million we’re growing pretty quickly, and we’re now, you know, regularly over, I wanna say, like, a half a million to, like, you know, 0.75 million a month- Yeah?

Simone Collins: Oh ...

Malcolm Collins: from our various sources. And so yeah, that’s [00:03:00] still, like, more than 10X lower than him. But, like, that’s a, that’s a measure...

Like, we were 10X smaller a year and a half ago, right? You know, if we look at, like, where we’re going and where our movement is going, which I think is really telling. One of the things I wanna throw out there with the Daily Wire is... Because I think that this is really telling, and you’re gonna go into some of it, but Ben Shapiro really attempted to control the direction of the conservative movement.

Yeah. And if you are an inside baseball player, like a conservative influencer person, right? Over the past however many years, you are aware of this. So, there’s the crazy emails that went out from Charlie Kirk, and it’s particularly crazy- See, I don’t

Simone Collins: remember these. Can you bring me up to speed?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, so these leaked from Candace Owens, or somebody tied to Candace Owens, and they’re Charlie-

Simone Collins: She

Malcolm Collins: has

Simone Collins: been

Malcolm Collins: such a great source of gossip.

And, and look, this is the thing about Candace Owens leaks. Candace Owens, like, when she makes a mistake [00:04:00] with a leak or something like that, right? It’s- Makes a mistake ... a crazy, it’s a crazy way of misinterpreting it. Like, Charlie Kirk will say something like, “I feel like an alien somet-,” or like- Oh, yeah, and she’s like- Like, “I feel like an alien”

“He’s an alien time traveler.” Yeah. Yeah. And, and, and then he’s like, “Yeah, and I feel like I came from the future.” And she’s like- Oh ... then she goes out to everyone and she goes, “See? He came from the future.” But we don’t actually have any evidence of her manipulating evidence. She has never- Huh ... faked a tweet.

She’s never- No, she’s, I think she’s a very

Simone Collins: earnest person. She’s just going a little schizo and that’s okay. Even

Malcolm Collins: when she gets evidence wrong, she’ll, like, pull out flight logs and be like, “These flight logs say X.” And they’re real flight logs. It’s not that, they’re, they’re not fake. Yeah. And then people go to it and they go, “They don’t say that at all.”

So, so I’m just saying this so we can know that this is probably an accurate text exchange between her and Charlie Kirk, okay? Okay. So Charlie says, again like Ben has been going on like, “I’m gonna pick up the bloody microphone that Charlie dropped.” Really like he’s gonna carry on the movement for Charlie.

And it’s [00:05:00] like, Ben, you were anti-Charlie Kirk behind the scenes. Yeah. So let’s get into this. He said “The Ben thing involves me more than he wants to admit. He knows Jon Snow is stronger as the dragons fly higher,” Candace says. “100%. It pisses him off,” Charlie says. “Two reasons. You’ve always been a threat to him, and because you’re smarter,” Candace says.

“He... And he is sending his incestuous brother to go try and kill us,” Charlie says. Now, of course, he’s referencing Game of Thrones here. This is all an, an analogy.

Simone Collins: Yes. No one, but... Wait, did she like interpret it?

Malcolm Collins: Did you- Although people have, I... To me, this is clearly a Game of Thrones, but anyway, to continue. I, yeah,

Simone Collins: I mean, oh, look, I c- it’s a little on the nose.

I- And then

Malcolm Collins: Candace says, “And he views you as responsible for me.” And then Charlie says, “It’s worse. He views you as my slave 100%. ‘Control her’ is what he was trying to say to me when he called. You are bigger than Ben now. Walking into the White House yesterday, I realized that.” And then she says, “I know. He hates it.”

And then he says, [00:06:00] “We just have to treat him like noise. He wants you to punch down to him. His respect amongst movement fighters is quite low.” So note here he’s saying that like actually like conservative influ- And I’ve seen this as well, and this is something we’re gonna be talking about in another episode we’ll be doing.

But even if you look at like raw view count, nobody gives an F what Ben Shapiro has to say anymore, who’s like an on-the-ground operative in conservative politics at this point. In, in fact, he’s sort of seen among the operatives I know as a Boomer entertainer. Like that’s the only people who- That’s, that’s actually,

Simone Collins: yeah, it’s one of the themes if you look, and it’s not just him.

I think it’s, it’s some of his colleagues at the Daily Wire co-founders, et cetera, who are pushing in that direction. But it is definitely a, an older, more stagnant Boomer-ish, and by Boomer I just mean stagnant, unwilling to change with the times, not, not flexible mindset that is leading to the downfall.

Well, hold on. Yeah. Would, would classically Abby be his incestuous [00:07:00] brother? Because he is, he’s... Hasn’t he like commented on that beauty competition? They are classically

Malcolm Collins: Abby. I actually thought that episode was really fascinating. Yeah. So, just a quick aside Go check out this episode if you’re interested on Classically Abby, but he had this sister who he decided he was gonna promote for a period, and she was, like, all over YouTube when they were trying to promote her.

Oh, yeah, I mean, like,

Simone Collins: I don’t... You, you couldn’t go on YouTube without seeing her promoted content. I, I, I was shocked by it, yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, it was, it was everywhere the amount of money they went into trying to astroturf her, and- Yeah ... it didn’t work remotely. Her channel has, has since shut down, but I mean, if you look at, like, her regular view counts you know, they were you know, at, at like a, a 2,000, 3,000 views per video.

Like, like nowhere. And I actually think that his failure with her as well as his attempts to control people both represent his disconnect in understanding the modern conservative movement and how the movement is changing- Yes ... as well as his intense [00:08:00] arrogance in it. Because everybody’s like, it’s just the, like, what does he represent in attempting to control the conservative movement?

They think of it as just, like, a Jewish influence, right? Like, just like a pro-Israel influence. Yeah. When the reality is, is that his attempt to control the movement was incredibly more damaging than just his Israel stuff. No, and

Simone Collins: yeah, I think people are overly focusing on his pro-Israel stance being the element of d- his downfall when really it is a constellation of mean girl gatekeeping behavior that’s very petty.

Which he did

Malcolm Collins: to us, by the way. For people who don’t know, when we started rising in the conservative sphere, he, like, dedicated a huge part of an episode to us and basically sent people out to, like, harass us, ‘cause we got harassed heavily after this episode. Where he called us basically insufferable nerds.

And I’m like, yeah, we’re taking your spot, bro. You used to be the right’s insufferable nerd, but now we’re coming in with actual nerd cred. Oh, yeah. No, and it’s, it’s funny [00:09:00] because he just sort of, like, learned a nerd, right? Like, he looked the- No, no, no. Well, I mean,

Simone Collins: to, to be clear, like, his... He, he rose really early and, and it wasn’t al- it was never really nerd.

It was, like, young wunderkind. Because keep in mind, he was 17 years old in 2004 when he published his first book, Brainwashed, while he was at UCLA. Really? Yeah. So, like, he, he was this, this early 2000s teenage author and columnist- whoever was like, “Whoa, who’s this young kid coming out of nowhere?” And th- that, that is, I think, where people get y- like, we get the, the nerd thing.

Because, like, in general you don’t get, like, a little Doogie Howser, like, like, brilliant little, like, genius- No, he’s still Doogie Howser ... and it also helps that they’re nerds

Malcolm Collins: He’s like grown-up Doogie Howser in a kid’s body in everyone’s mind, right? Like- And that’s the

Simone Collins: problem. It’s like you, you can’t maintain that branding successfully into your mid-40s.

But yeah. It’s, so it’s, it’s that combined with a [00:10:00] model they made a couple key bets that were really poorly thought through. So they, they decided well, what we’re gonna do with The Daily Wire to a certain extent is bet on all these, like, rising stars or sign all these rising stars before it became super obvious that you can just go off on your own.

So that’s when you get people like Candace Owens and Brett Cooper spinning off and just doing their own thing. Yeah. ‘Cause they’re not idiots, ‘cause they know they can do better and get more money and have more creative control and have better work-life balance if they just work on their own. And, and they can get the same number of views if not more, because they’re not being held down by this dead weight of The Daily Wire and their creative control.

And then beyond that, a lot of things just changed in a much more technical, less interesting algorithmic way, where ways- Mm-hmm ... that they used to grow viral on Facebook and on YouTube shifted and they did not adapt with the time in their format, in their title cards. They didn’t shift to shorts the same way.

They didn’t [00:11:00] go for the same sort of clickbaity viral content that got people a lot of views like Candace Owens. And, and to a lesser extent like Brett Cooper.

Malcolm Collins: He’s... I mean, I, I would argue it’s more than that. Like, I want you to lay out your argument, ‘cause you did a bunch of research on this.

Yeah. But I, I actually think the core problem is that his politics never evolved.

Simone Collins: The, the- Well, that too. Yeah, it’s, it’s in general a failure to evolve i- is, is the problem. Yes. Right.

Malcolm Collins: Like, like he didn’t need to join, Like if, if you look at the online culture war in the right, there are multiple interesting factions at play.

He’s just not aligned with any of them. He represents, in many ways, the last of the old guard. And it’s because that was the faction that he rose appealing to. And so nobody- Mm ... likes that because the modern conservative movement is intrinsically a rebellious movement fighting against inter- entrenched institutions.

But continue with your theory and then I’m gonna go with mine. So go.

Simone Collins: Yeah. So just, again, ‘cause it seems like you weren’t [00:12:00] super aware of, like, the full background. His, he, he rose as, as a teen, as a kid. And then his, his national breakout happened around 2012 to 2016 via viral campus speeches, virally Ch- very Charlie Kirk- ish.

There was one- Mm ... that was super, super famous. Like, “Facts don’t care about your feelings.” I’m sure you’ll, you’ll vaguely remember this. And then he worked with Breitbart for a while- Mm ... but then resigned in 2016 amid Trump tensions, and then he launched The Ben Sha- Hold on, he didn’t just

Malcolm Collins: resign. I need to put some context on this.

Yeah ... so Steve Bannon said that Ben Shapiro was pushed at, like he had to aggressively push Ben Shapiro out- Mm ... because as Ben Shapiro was within Breitbart- Ah ... he aggressively tried to control the organization- Mm-hmm ... and control the brand of conservative politics that it was pushing.

Simone Collins: Which is very much his MO.

Yeah ... and we’re gonna get into how he’s done that more in, in the case of another person later. We’re gonna get there, I promise. But yeah. So then he, he... And, and it’s funny that he, like, [00:13:00] didn’t learn from his, his own actions ‘cause he, you know, just as he left Breitbart and then went on to found the, the Brett...

Sorry, I’m getting ahead of myself. The Brett Cooper Show. But no, he founded The Ben Shapiro Show. And then it was syndicated, and it was on 200 stations. And then it peaked at its influence from 2016 to 2020. And then- Uh-huh ... he launched The Daily Wire in, in- Oh ... 2015- Ah ... along with Jeremy Boreing.

Ah. And he also got really, like, prominent seed funding- Ah ... like building on this post-Breitbart momentum. Just as like a little side, he should have learned that, oh- Ah ... y- having major talent, you know, as, as a larger company like Breitbart, you know, is kinda risky ‘cause that major talent, just like I did, can just, you know, bustle off and make their own money.

But he didn’t learn from his own, you know, kind of predatory or maybe selfish behavior, whatever, which is fine. Like, I think it’s fine- Mm ... that he did that. Anyway one thing that’s really important to note here in terms of [00:14:00] why they saw- have seen a drop is they perfected this very Facebook era form of virality with super clicky headlines like, “SJW Owned,” and little debate clips.

Again- Yeah ... very Charlie Kirk style. Mm. And he was one of the most linked news domains- Ah ... on Facebook, and a very big powerhouse- Ah ... during the Trump and early COVID years. Right. And then so the, the... Oh, my gosh. Okay, let me ... Give me one moment here. There. So in 2023 is really when all of it came to its beautiful height, which is really, I mean, ultimately quite recent, right?

That’s, that’s three years ago- Mm-hmm ... when, when his YouTube reached 170 million. And this is especially during the October 7th sort of huge crash out in the media amid all the I- Israel-Hamas coverage. They, the Daily Wire that is, claimed revenues around 100 million annually by 2022. And then at that time, like well around the pandemic, they expanded in, with their Nashville Eight headquarters.

They launched Daily [00:15:00] Wire Plus in 2022. They, they launched Ventky in 2023. That’s, that’s the kids production arm which they then subsequently shut down. And then basically things started falling off. So, the, the, the layoffs I already mentioned starting last year and then continuing this year.

They really centered around their Nashville headquarters, which they, again, had founded in 2020, which seem to largely have just been kind of a stupid idea. I think they made a lot of hiring they never should have made. And in 2024, this is also key and not something discussed a lot, is Facebook changed its fees significantly, which de-ranked news and just gutted the Daily Wire’s traffic.

It completely collapsed for them, Facebook as a key distribution engine that had made them look super unbeatable in the mid-2010s.

Malcolm Collins: So that’s one- That’s fascinating Yeah And we never really distributed... So for people who know, we distribute on Rumble, Substack podcast networks and YouTube. But we never were able to successfully distribute on Facebook [00:16:00] because- Never

their their spot checks on video clips, which I include in a lot of episodes to be entertaining, are just way too restrictive for the show to operate. Yeah, yeah. I was actually thinking, should we look at syndication?

Simone Collins: I don’t know. I, I feel like that’s too old school. So no. But I mean, you know, if someone knows about it and thinks we should, chime into the comments, because we read the comments.

And thank you for everyone who comments, ‘cause- Yeah, if anyone knows how to do- ... you always have interesting things to say.

Malcolm Collins: I, I’d even... If somebody was willing to take over that for us and it made some money, I’d be willing to do profit-sharing with them.

Simone Collins: Yeah, totally. Yeah. I mean, we’re, we’re definitely of the, like- Look how Aplay does- We can’t do everything

Malcolm Collins: YouTube, by the way

Simone Collins: Yeah. Anyway in terms of their YouTube channel, independent YouTube analytics like vidIQ and some others show that his sh- that is to say Ben Shapiro’s channel views are down 70 to 85% from their 2023 peak. So like it went way up, it was amazing, but it has gone way down. I mean, so it should

Malcolm Collins: be- But, but you gotta keep in mind, Simone, that 70 to 80% reduction [00:17:00] is not even on the platform where they’ve been hit the hardest, which is Facebook.

Yeah. So just across platforms he’s being destroyed.

Simone Collins: 100%, yeah. It’s, and it’s not like at the same time YouTube has had some huge algorithm change. This is a, I think to a large extent mimetic, but also them not really changing their format with the times and title card with styles and stuff. But to be clear, it’s very common for flagship channels that get a lot of investment to have a slump.

Like it, it, it happens. But online commentators like Philip De- DeFranco have noted, and like they know better about this stuff than I do, that this is not, this change of traffic is not a slump. This is a collapse. Like this, there’s no way to be like, “Oh, like it’s fine.” And to be clear the, the Daily Wire team is like, “Oh well, you know, revenue year over year has been up under my leadership.”

That’s what Mr. Boring has been saying. But just ‘cause your revenue is up doesn’t mean you’re actually doing well. It could just mean that you’re like spending like massively wrong. But I mean, their layoffs indicate clearly that they’ve gotten over their skis on, on their spending. Yeah. Social media data shows- But another really

Malcolm Collins: [00:18:00] interesting thing about his YouTube that I’m noticing by looking at videos- Yeah

is the view count is wildly inconsistent. Oh,

Simone Collins: hmm.

Malcolm Collins: A, a lot of them get around like I, I wanna say to like 16K to like 50K views. Huh. And then occasionally, like every seventh one or something, gets half a million views.

Simone Collins: Bizarre. Super bizarre.

Malcolm Collins: Oh,

Simone Collins: I see

Malcolm Collins: why.

Simone Collins: Why? Wait, why?

Malcolm Collins: It’s a different in format.

The ones that do really well are the ones that have the word Ben on them and appear to be about an hour long. And- Okay ... the clips don’t do very well.

Simone Collins: So yeah, they’re really bad at clips apparently.

Speaker 12: So after we recorded this episode, we recorded an episode where we went deep into how botting works and how to spot when something is heavily botted. And, , unfortunately, Ben Shapiro’s channel has all the hallmarks of being almost entirely botted. , By what I mean by this is the videos that are getting the half a million views are the long-form [00:19:00] hour plus long videos.

Whereas the videos that are getting the, you know, 12K views, those are the shorter, piffier videos in like the 10 to 15 minute range. , That doesn’t make a lot of sense when you consider how the YouTube algorithm works. , It should be the shorter videos getting more views and the longer videos getting fewer views.

, Like this is difficult for me to explain to someone who’s not a YouTube creator, , but basically it just makes absolutely no sense. It would never happen, at least not at this order of magnitude difference, which implies to me that he sees his long-form content as the important content, so he bots that, and he doesn’t bot the other content.

Which also makes sense when I think about the number of people I’ve talked to who genuinely seem to have watched a Ben Shapiro anything in the last, I don’t know, six months. , I’m not talking about in the distant past. You know, people used to watch him. I used to watch him in the distant past. I’m talking recently.

, And so, , yeah, my current intuition is he might have a smaller [00:20:00] regular audience than we have at this point.

To word this in another way, , it would make sense that his long-form podcast got orders of magnitude more views than his shorter form content, , if it was being hosted in other locations. So like if somebody said, “Oh, it gets orders of magnitude more than the YouTube content,” that makes sense. It doesn’t make sense that it’s getting orders of magnitude within the YouTube platform, because that would require some like alternate audience that just knows to tune in whenever the long-form thing is coming out, and YouTube doesn’t really work that way.

In addition to that, even if it was the case that it was working in that way, right? That for some reason, YouTube just knew that this long-form content algo-wise did much better, their company would stop posting the short-form content within the same channel. Because if it was a, a short, okay, , that doesn’t affect the algo on the long.

So sometimes people will post shorts on channels where shorts don’t do well. It doesn’t really matter. But if it’s like a 15-minute video, and they’re [00:21:00] often doing orders of magnitude higher multiple hour videos, okay? Or like hour and 30 minute videos, that, those short videos would be nuking the longer videos in the algo.

Like you just wouldn’t have those in the same channel. You’d put them on a different channel, unless you were botting

So a couple other notes here. , Just so people aren’t confused, when I say his short form content, I’m not talking about short form vertical videos. Those run on a separate algorithm and wouldn’t be hurting the long form videos. I’m talking like ten to fifteen minute videos, which would severely hurt the long form videos if they’re this underperforming.

In addition, Candace Owens has said that the channel heavily bots. Given that she worked for them, she would likely know this. But I think the most important bit of evidence that we can look at here is let’s look at our video from yesterday. So this video has only been out for a day. It has thirteen thousand two hundred and twenty-nine views and nine hundred and thirty-four comments.

Okay? Now let’s look, , at [00:22:00] Ben Shapiro’s video, , from, , the other day that presumably has two hundred thousand views. Okay, so, , more than twenty x what ours got around. All right, it has eight hundred and sixty comments, literally fewer comments. How is that conceivably possible?

Speaker 23: That does not make sense.

Speaker 17: Now here you might be saying, “Okay, Malcolm, maybe, maybe, but why don’t we look at some other metric to try to understand if he’s botting? Why don’t you look at the most liked comments on each of the videos to look at the variable interaction? Because maybe people just don’t comment on his videos, but they spend time liking the comments on his videos.”

Okay, so we’ll go to our video. , Top not pinned comment, two hundred thirty-nine up votes. Next one hundred and eighty-six. Next one hundred and twenty-two. Next eighty-nine. Okay. Now let’s go to his top comments. First, two hundred and [00:23:00] nineteen. Hmm, that makes sense. Then ten, forty-two, eighty-six, forty-one, thirty-seven.

Excuse me? Excuse me? Come on, guys

Speaker 18: Presumably looking at a video here that’s getting around 20X the number of views, but getting around 20X lower engagement? Explain that to me

Speaker 23: Does that make sense? Ladies and gentlemen, I am not making any sense. None of this makes sense.

Speaker 24: So a Redditor had looked into this more so I’m putting the image on screen here. “Notice how the recently released Ben Shapiro episode has under a hundred thousand views.

, The Ben Shapiro from the day before has three hundred thousand views, and the Ben Shapiro episode from forty-eight hours before that has five hundred thousand views. Keep in mind, because I checked a few hours ago, , and this is what I found. Notice the pattern again. The video from today is at a hundred K views.

The video from yesterday or thirty-six hours ago is now magically at five [00:24:00] hundred K views, and the video from forty-eight hours before, which was at five hundred and f- uh, sixty-four K views, “Has now magically only gained four K views in the twenty-four to thirty hours.”

So basically, normally, so for people who aren’t aware, you get your biggest viewership right after the episode is released. That is not what Ben Shapiro is seeing. Right after the episode is released, he’s not getting that much a bump in views. It’s like the day after he gets a linear large jump in views up until the video hits five hundred thousand views, then it completely drops off,

He also notes, and I’m not gonna go into how he calculated this because it’s boring, , you can look it up yourself, but that during the period of slower interaction, that beginning period, he’s getting one comment for every 30 views. During the period of quick growth that doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense, he’s getting one comment for every 500 views

But they pointed out something else that is very indicative of viewbotting for the Ben Shapiro episode videos, , is that they almost [00:25:00] always get around exactly 500,000 views. That’s not normal. Normally on like your bigger videos, you’re going to be going up, you know, 30% sometimes, down 30% sometimes, have an occasional b- episode bomb, have an occasional episode do really well.

So if we go outside of the episodes that he appears to currently be populating to five days ago, uh, right? And we’ll just go through the final view counts on the Ben Shapiro episodes. 489,000 views, 478,000 views, 517,000 views, 517,000 views, 571,000 views, 582,000 views, 504,000 views, 612,000 views, 480,000 views, 529,000 views, 605,000 views, 541,000 views.

Do you see how absolutely insane this is? This is very clearly viewbotted.

Simone Collins: The social- And if you look

Malcolm Collins: at like, I mean, the title cards aren’t bad. Like, I’m looking at this. It looks a lot like one of our title cards.

Like, here’s the most recent long [00:26:00] form episode. Here’s how China spies on the US. Hmm, wonder where they got that idea from. Are they watching our episode from, like, three days ago? No. I, I, I bet one of their writers is just, like, a fan of ours. Oh, no. It

Simone Collins: was, it was a major headline. The, the ... I think it was with the London Times, had been really pr- it, it, this, this this young woman who had been spied on I think it was Elsa- Yeah, but

Malcolm Collins: we had to delay our episode, like, a week after we filmed it, so it’s weird that he-

Simone Collins: Right.

Well, they, they’re also produced and edited. It takes them a while to get stuff out too. Like, everyone needs time, so you know. I don’t know. But anyway, social- Right ... blade data shows Daily Wire’s YouTube su- subscriber base has plateaued or shrunk in 15 of the last 16 months, since early 2025. And their website traffic by March 2026 was about half of what it had been a year earlier.

And Shapiro has admitted that revenue is down from 2024, even while insisting that cash flow remains strong relative to critics’ expectations. What is he getting cash flow

Malcolm Collins: from?

Simone Collins: Probably, like, Daily Wire [00:27:00] Plus subscriptions. Like, they’re trying to be the Christian Disney, you know? And I’m gonna talk about that too.

And

Malcolm Collins: yeah, I wanna talk about that, because what’s interesting is they tried so hard to create all of these alternate forms of conservative media. Yeah. And yet when we look at the conservative media creators that I think people are actually watching there’s really two of them that stand out for me, and, and, and they’ve both been really excellent sort of coming on the conservative media scene.

One is Freedom Tunes. Oh. Freedom Tunes is excellent, excellent show.

Simone Collins: Just in terms of entertainment. Yeah, there’s, like, short form stuff ... and then the other is

Malcolm Collins: Babylon Bee’s

Simone Collins: media. Yeah, but no, they’re, they’re literally, they’re trying to make just generally conservative and Christian, like, shows.

This is not- But nobody wants shows anymore I know. I know. Well, and we live in a, a market very saturated with shows, also in which time has collapsed. People are watching stuff, stuff from, like, 1968. They’re watching stuff from 1992. Like, it, no one needs ... We, we really [00:28:00] don’t at this point need more serialized content in the same way that we did before.

And we’ve, we’ve talked about this in other episodes. Anyway, though- Well, and that’s why

Malcolm Collins: I mention Freedom Tunes specifically. Oh. Because I think Freedom Tunes delivers content to the right in a way that the right wants to consume content, right? Like, it is- Yeah ... funny, it is irreverent and I think we’re beginning to see the bubbling of, and guys, like, I’m, I’m, I’m, I’m predicting this now.

What is coming out of The the Skybrows Cinematic Universe- Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah ... which is like a collection of content creators who have just created some amazing songs. I’ll, I’ll play one from, like, a Kirsha song on here right now. This is from the Holy Ball, which isn’t even Skybrow. This is like a Skybrows inspired guy.

Well, but I love

Simone Collins: Holy Ball. It’s fantastic. Yeah, his, his style’s my favorite. His, his music- Yeah ... is better than Skybrows, I think.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

Speaker 5: call me a racist, fascist, nationalist grifter, bootlicking [00:29:00] theocrat, literally Hitler, colonizer Nazi, incel, bigot, white supremacist, privileged idiot, snowflake, pick me, toxic, homophobe, CHUD troll, sexist, deplorable, xenophobe, shill dog whistlin’, transphobe, simp stan, alt-right, neocon, tyrant.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And then you’ve got obviously, like, the Leaflet stuff, which is doing pretty well these days. Oh, my- And- ... yeah, amazing ... and then th- like, her music videos, right? Like, which are- They’re so good

some of them are very clearly inspired by our podcast, which is fantastic ‘cause it feels like- Thank you ... you have this virtuous circle of you know, we have an idea that we take an hour to say, and then she makes it into, like, a two-minute music video that is really catchy. And then you know, it, it, it spreads and normalizes, right?

Speaker 3: よ。大切な人にちょっとしたプッシュ。理想の自分に変えちゃお。 液に溺れて[00:30:00] る時は愛情たっぷりでほどほどにって教えてあげよ。全部肯定するだけじゃダメだよね。優しい気持ちで批判するのも最高の愛だよ。 , groom, groom your wife.Pick her up dive and keep growing.Groom, groom, groom your husband.Get us stronger, faster.

Malcolm Collins: Or one, one of the things I found really crazy recently, have you seen the Asmogold going back over The Onion videos from back in the day to show how right they were?

Simone Collins: No. That sounds really fun. Okay. I will

Malcolm Collins: play one, yes here. But anyway, continue.

Speaker 2: Author Christine Eckard is here to show us some exercises to reduce stress.

Speaker 4: The first thing I like to do is imagine my money-related stress as the most disgusting, terrifying creature I can think of.

Okay. I like to imagine an ugly, greasy little creature with a hooked nose and oily black hair. Oh.

Speaker 3: Oh, he is scary. I

Speaker 4: call him the Grabbler because he’s a greedy [00:31:00] little monster who wants to grabble up all my money. Ooh. Mm. Now close your eyes- Mm-hmm ... and picture the Grabbler.

He invented interest rates like the ones on your credit card. Oh. Oh. He’s taking the jobs, because Grabblers only hire their own kind. Now imagine the Grabbler slowly disintegrating like a pile of ashes blown away- Oh ... by a purifying wind. Ah. Ooh, what a relief. Yeah. I feel so relaxed.

Simone Collins: Right. So let’s, let’s talk about stumbles other than YouTube.

We, we just need to go over the fact that, like, there were some e- extremely prominent splits, both in terms of from the team, but also memetically. So you had Brett Cooper leave in December 2024 voluntarily. It was a, you know, conscious uncoupling, but she clearly understood she could do better on her own, just like Ben Shapiro himself did also with Candace Owens.

It was mutual. Jeremy Boreing announced that their partnership ended was for mutual reasons. But it was amid really public feuds, like Candace posted this [00:32:00] Christ is King post and defended Kanye West’s anti-Sem- Semitism basically, and Shapiro was like, “Dude, if you’re unhappy, just quit.” And so she quit and called herself finally free.

And, you know, the rest is, is, is history. You, you already know. She’s, she’s posting receipts. She’s leaking stuff even now about- Yeah ... Full Send Media. I mean,

Malcolm Collins: Ben Shapiro has been one of the... I, I might say the single most... Like, if, if you consider all humans that have lived maybe in the past 25 years, maybe even 50 years Ben Shapiro is probably what, the, the single worst for the long-term safety of the Jewish people.

The- Yeah, that’s fair ... the number of almost every prominent anti-Semite was basically minted by Ben Shapiro’s constant rambling. Let’s talk about that.

Simone Collins: Yeah, so I’m gonna, I’m just gonna pull some quotes from the Tucker Carlson interview with Nick Fuentes where, like, you really get a, a good succinct layout of the, the manner in which almost it seems like Brett [00:33:00] Shapiro is personally responsible for the anti-Semitic radicalization of Nick Fuentes.

He is. He is personally responsible ... and I think this also represents an ideological split. Yeah. No, really. And, and I’m linking this all in the show notes. I have show notes if you go to Patreon or Substack, and by the way, thanks for everyone who supports us. You guys are amazing and we love you.

I, you can find the video linked along with all my other sources. He, he talks about how basically way before he was a big deal at all, he’s just, like, this college student posting online Ben Shapiro gatekept and belittled him even, you know, when he ba- had no reason to. He describes, Nick Fuentes describes first publicly criticizing Shapiro in the Daily Wire over Israel and, and not in, like, a, like, “I hate Israel” way, but in a, like, “I don’t, like, do we need to support them this much?”

He I’ll just quote him. Nick says, “I tweeted Ben Shapiro. I said, ‘You know, I’ve never seen anything on the Daily Wire that’s actually critical of Israel.’ And he quote tweets me and he says, ‘To accuse a Jew of, of dual loyalty [00:34:00] is the surest sign of antisemitism.’ ‘He immediately called you an anti-Semite,’ said Tucker.

Mm-hmm. So I’m driving to Christmas Eve mass with my family and I see on Twitter the notification comes up. Ben Shapiro quote tweets me calling me an anti-Semite. And then I said something like, ‘If you’re gonna if you’re gonna, if you’re China first, you should live in China. If you’re Mexico first, you should live in Mexico.

If you’re Israel first, maybe you should go live in Israel.’” Which is a really great rejoinder. And again, he quotes tweets Nick and says, “You’re an anti-Semite,” the same night. And then Fuentes in the same interview with Tucker frames Shapiro’s deciding really early on to just- And I, I wanna point out here, cut him down inside the conservative

Malcolm Collins: movement ... for Jews who are unaware of this, you cannot throw around the word anti-Semite for non-anti-Semites. If you do, that is an extremely loaded term. That is- Yeah, it is. It is ... telling whatever racist person you’re talking to- And he was just saying, like, “By the

Simone Collins: way, nothing on the Daily Wires is, has ever, you know- Been like, “Hey, you know, Israel...”

And Israel is an imperfect country. There are que- and there are many people in Israel who fight for Israel, who die for Israel, who question the way that it’s [00:35:00] governed. Like, it is not wrong for him to point that out, you know? Right. And it is weird that The Daily Wire has never been like- But it is wrong within a

Malcolm Collins: certain perspective, like Ben wanting to com- Ben thought he could just shut it down.

Like, any criticism- Yes ... I can shut it down because I have the cultural power. And what he seemed, well, I mean, he, whether or not he’s aware of this or not, we’ll talk about why he’s so blinded to this, but he’s wielding woke weapons. Mm. And woke weapons radicalize right-wing people against- 100% ... whatever faction is using them.

Yeah. He’s trying to be like, “How dare you say that? You’re an anti whatever phobe.” Mm-hmm ... and, and as such, I’m gonna attempt to de-platform you, which he did do- Yeah ... to, to Nick Fuentes. Continue. Yeah. And to us. Keep in mind, like the reason I believe all this from Nick Fuentes is he did the same to us, right?

And we weren’t even anti-Israel, we were just too nerdy for him. Too nerdy. And we didn’t even

Simone Collins: tweet at him. We didn’t even criticize The Daily Wire. We were just talking and he, yeah. Anyway. We were just talking, yes. Nick says [00:36:00] In his interview, it turned out that Cassie Dillon, she texted him earlier and she wanted him to take me under his wing.

And he goes, I’ll take a look. And so I guess the two of them were kind of grooming me in a sense. They wanted me to go maybe be a Daily Wire guy or something, looking at me as a potential conservative activist or influencer. And they started paying attention to me. This is totally believable in my opinion because they’ve cultivated other talent to have on their platform.

It’s part of their business model. He continued. And the more critical of Israel I was, I started to get this really intense pushback from the both of them and from a lot of the people at the Daily Wire. For them, it was easy to say if they detected that a promising young guy was going to become anti-Israel in the conservative movement, they could crush that person easily and grind them under the heel.

So they sort of were alerted, oh, there’s a precocious young guy that isn’t on board with Israel. We’ll keep an eye on him. And if he gets too vocal or popular, we’ll cut him down. We’ll crush him. Basically from then on, it was just this escalating series of blacklisting censorship hit pieces, rumors to [00:37:00] try to ostracize me from the movement.

And he goes on to link Shapiro and the Daily Wire and their circle to efforts to isolate him and get him fired. And I’m not going to go into like the full quotes on all this. It involves this clip from Media Matters. And then he eventually- We went over this

Malcolm Collins: in our episode on Nick Fuentes, the first one we did on him, the big one.

But yeah- And then he explicitly

Simone Collins: ties Shapiro’s attacks to his own radicalization and then turn against the conservative establishment. He says, looking back with that 2020 hindsight, I mean, Ben Shapiro seems like a big part of your political evolution. You went from a fan acolyte to an opponent and then just pivoted against everything he believes.

That’s what Tucker said. Nick said, yeah, it was because it was this new dialectic that Trump forced. So once you accept that, a lot of the way of doing things becomes impossible to support or justify. The contradiction becomes apparent. I realized that the conservative movement was completely bankrupt in a way that became very radical.

Anyway, it was a very, you should go watch the interview if you [00:38:00] haven’t. But speaking of which The, I think Tucker Carlson- But I, I, I wanna

Malcolm Collins: point out he’s done this to us too. Like, it is loud and noticeable when him or the Daily Wire are involved in a conservative event, we are blacklisted. We don’t get approved, we don’t get invited.

They have never... It is weird that they’ve never reached out to us or done anything with us given that, like, almost every major conservative influencer has done something with us. Like, but, but anyone who is remotely tied to the Daily Wire just completely- Well, and you’re, you’re s- ... blacklisting us

you’re so

Simone Collins: right in that they’re using a very leftist tactic, because a very common leftist thing attack is like, “Oh, you spoke with this bad person? That makes you bad.” There’s this, like, contamination accusation, and that is exactly what Shapiro did with Tucker Carlson after Tucker Carlson had this interview with Nick Fuentes.

Shapiro blasted Carlson as an intellectual coward and moral imbecile [00:39:00] for interviewing Nick Fuentes and echoing antisemitic tropes on Israel and influence. And then Carlson retaliated by slamming Shapiro’s many attacks on Jesus and immigration views and pro-Israel stance- ... as bigotry and cruelty, especially on Iran policy.

And this, this just deepened their rift. And so now you have Ben Shapiro even radicalizing Tucker Carlson further and then- Which

Malcolm Collins: he did do. Like, you, you- I know ... again- I know ... Jews, you gotta understand this. If you call someone an antisemite when they’re not being an antisemite, the standard American cultural reaction is, “Well, I guess I just hate the Jews.”

Yeah. Like, if, if I’m gonna get called it anyway like, it actually takes a lot of mental effort on my part to not have that reaction when it happens to us. Yeah. Because- Yeah ... it is the standard reaction that an American, culturally speaking, is going to have. And- So another

Simone Collins: example of Ben Shapiro going after anyone who touches the bad person, right?

Again, this is, I said Regina George from [00:40:00] Mean Girls at the beginning of this ‘cause he’s- Yeah ... he’s doing ex- He’s being a c- high school mean girl. Because now when, So, so even after all this, right? So now he hates Tucker Carlson and he hates Candace Owens ‘cause they’ve turned on him. And then at Turning Point USA’s America Fest in December 2025, Ben Shapiro called Megyn Kelly a charlatan for, for platforming Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson.

And Megyn

Malcolm Collins: Kelly used to be his friend and helped him a lot in gaining his public recognition.

Simone Collins: Well, and to your point- Like- ... just like you are, she fired back, accusing Shapiro and Bari Weiss of fueling antisemitism by suppressing Israel criticism, and she defended her neutrality and friendship with Owens calling Shapiro Israel first, because he, he is.

And she, she was... And again, he w- She wasn’t, like, defending their stances. She was simply having discourse with them, and he, in that very leftist way, is like, “Oh, by talking with them, you’re platforming them. You’re now bad.” That’s such a leftist- Shelton seriously ... sentiment.

Malcolm Collins: That’s such a woke sentiment, right?

Like, everyone- Yeah ... on the right knows [00:41:00] this. I know, I know.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: But, like- It’s crazy ... okay, so I wanna, before you go further here because- Okay, okay ... we’re not getting to meat and potatoes, so I’m gonna get to some meat and potatoes. Okay.

Simone Collins: Okay. Why

Malcolm Collins: did he actually lose his audience? ‘Cause I don’t think he lost his audience because of all of these missteps.

He lost his audience because his brand of conservatism doesn’t make sense in a modern context. He’s going out there with a very like, you know, anti-porn, like, like s- s- specifically for widespread pornography bans. Trad wife, like women don’t have a job, you know, stay at home, take on a traditional role.

Their role is raising the family. You know, very anti oh, you know, Malcolm and Simone are too nerdy to, to be in all of this, you know, what, what are they doing here? And we go through with every one of these. You can watch our episodes. You know, he’s, he’s video games and, and lewd things are terrible, you know, all, all of the, the, the traditional things here.

And there’s a way to do something like this that is at least entertaining. But he just comes off [00:42:00] as, like, morally policing in, like, the driest Old lady sort of a way that you can. And what makes it so perverse and I think turns people so strongly against him is at least if he pretended to live out the lifestyle that he was preaching- Mm-hmm

people would take it seriously. But he’s here promoting a woman’s job is to raise kids and his wife is a doctor, and he can’t help it. It very much fits the trope of the, the Jewish person who is attempting to infect a culture with ideas that they know will eventually destroy that culture- Mm ... and not follow them themselves.

And I think that a lot of people functionally see it that way, and are really disgusted by it, right? Like v- so for example, him attacking us for being too nerdy and everything like that. Like obviously you’re a giant nerd, like Ben. Like just maybe, maybe a little more old school, maybe a little more prestigious with your Lord of the [00:43:00] Rings nerdiness.

You can go hang out with Stephen Colbert. I’m sure you guys would get along great. Instead of your- Sure ... your anime and whatever nerdiness. But like when he tried to make his sister work, I think he perfectly showed how much he didn’t get the modern conservative audience because what he presented her as was this non-salacious, perfectly presentable rule follower, right?

It did- she, she never mentions that she’s really into Warhammer tabletop gaming. Or- And she

Simone Collins: totally should have. Yeah, like against Sarah etc. More like

Malcolm Collins: if she led with that and it was a, a big boobed whatever lady d- doing tabletop miniature painting while talking about you know, like the nerdier parts of conservative politics and like- Yeah, the

Simone Collins: busty Warhammer conservative mom.

People would’ve loved that. Come on Oh,

Malcolm Collins: people would’ve been so into it. Right. Yeah. Sure. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But no, he thinks that you need to- Pretend to be this sort of fake [00:44:00] thing that the internet hates more than anything. And, and, and this is the thing. It, it, there are ... Like, we are fighting a meaningfully annoying deontological faction that is, like, genuinely, you know, taking blows and fighting back.

But this faction leans in on all of this, like, curmudgeonly pearl clutcher stuff, but does it in either a profoundly entertaining way, like they’re, they’re being over the top about it, they’re being ... nick Fuentes falls into this category to some extent, right? Like, at least when he complains in the sort of the, oh, the, the whatever anime nerds and video game

Right? Like, he’ll attack them in a way that’s entertaining, right? And over the top and vitalistic instead of just like, “Mm, well, don’t do this. It’s weird and you’re weird for doing it and I don’t like it.” Or they are, and I don’t like this faction much either, but they are growing a lot they’re UK boring.

Typically former leftists who have adopted a lot of these- I do love

Simone Collins: that boring, there’s a special brand [00:45:00] that is UK boring. Yeah, there’s, there’s yeah. U- UK vanilla. American boring is different. And

Malcolm Collins: y- and you bite into it and you’re like, oh my God, this is just, like, filled with unprocessed vanilla beans.

Like, that’s what I’m like when I, I, I bite into, like ... But I think that that’s being replaced by the Reform Party, because the Reform Party is pretty boss. Yes. When they’re like, “We need to melt down- 100% ... Nigerians to fill potholes.” Like, that’s an elected representative. I’m like, okay, you go, boy. Okay, continue.

Continue.

Simone Collins: Right. Well, let’s go into their conservative Disney boondoggle and, Yeah, yeah, let’s get into it ... this whole thing. So a lot of this comes down to Ben Shapiro’s co-founder and, and the former CEO of the Daily Wire Jeremy Boreing, who pursued this Breitbart style politics is downstream of culture vision pouring money into kids content, though of course they shut down that branch, feature films, and merch like anti-woke razors and chocolates.

And he was trying [00:46:00] to build this conservative Hollywood in Nashville. And you can tell by the pattern of their layoffs that, like, they’re quickly discovering that no one wanted this and it’s not making any money. Of course not. No ... he, he’s no longer the CEO of the Daily Wire, but he is leading creative stuff still, so I don’t know if they’re gonna keep throwing money at this, but he’s not gone.

Malcolm Collins: He should be gone. His name’s Boreing. What did you wanna

Simone Collins: say? No, I’m sorry.

Malcolm Collins: No, I’m gonna take determinism. - Oh,

Simone Collins: well. Yeah. Yeah ...

Malcolm Collins: no what I was gonna say was if we look at this sort of content- ... like conservative kids content, why doesn’t conservative kids content do well? Because I show my kids conservative kids content, and it’s cartoons from the 1980s.

Yeah. And it’s free, and it’s on YouTube, and I can just push play- Yeah ... and it’s on forever. Yeah. And I can show them G.I. Joe, where American soldiers go and shoot a bunch of people with a lisp, right? Like, that’s what we’re all about as Americans. You

Simone Collins: know, and we know that we build- Ooh, it’s such a gay theme song, though.

I, in, in the best way. I mean that, [00:47:00] I mean that in a good way. Well, no, yeah.

Malcolm Collins: We teach kids, y- you know, the G.I. Joes are a little f- you know, there’s some gay undertones. They’re extremely

Simone Collins: gay, and it’s wonderful. But they’re not- It’s, it’s, yeah ... they’re

Malcolm Collins: not faggy about it, okay? They’re basically like Sea Spray in, I, I gotta play this from, like, The Venture Brothers, right?

Like, this is G.I. Joes. But no- Oh, no ... it’s, it’s fantastic, right? You don’t need to be overly puritanical about this stuff. And he feels- Yeah ... you need to be, and there just isn’t... Like, when I’m like, “Okay, what conservative content do I want to see more of?” Like, if I was like, “Okay, I wanna see more, like, explicitly conservative media to shape ideas,” right?

Yeah. Yeah. Honestly it’s just more cinematic Sky Брауз Universe stuff. Like- Yeah ... there was a feature length anime made about Leaflet and Powder. And it’s l- No ... it’s literally, like, 60 minutes. Huge. It’s got a fight scene, and then the, the CEO- Oh, my goodness ... of Twitter tries to trap, trap them in a crystal, and they end up battling him.

And, um Breaking out, breaking out Asmogold, who, who teaches him to, [00:48:00] to not destroy him or whatever. You know, it’s fun. It’s, it’s, it’s very well done. But like, like that’s entertaining.

Speaker 7: This woman in anime is voiced by Asian now. I guess I unban her. Quang!

Speaker 8: Do you know why I’m here, Quang? You unbanned another 2D cutting board chess Vtuber without my approval.

Malcolm Collins: And I think, you know, we’re a year away, two years away from like full links anime being able to be easily [00:49:00] made from these sorts of systems.

Yes. And you know the moment that that stuff gets out there, this sort of cinematic universe that we’ve begun cultivating... And I wanna be honest, I’ve had like a realization and a change in how I see the world and the wider conservative scene. Part of it was hugely influenced by your recent appearance on Chris Williamson.

Part of it was hugely influenced by the growth of Leaflet and, and her seller humanist philosophy. And by the way, for people who like she- At least she’s feminism

Simone Collins: all the way. Ah, she gets it. Yeah, she’s huge. Gets it. You know she’s like

Malcolm Collins: on Twitch like a third bigger than Kirsha on, on YouTube. She’s like white Spotify.

Which gives me hope for

Simone Collins: humanity. Yeah, man. Yeah. And all she’s pushing is like- Oh my goodness ... we gotta get

Malcolm Collins: to the stars. We gotta get to the stars. Yes. This, this fun, n- not overly theosophical set. Yes. But the thing is, is like, you’re up there and you’re next to all these like do- all the other leaders of the prenatalist movement, but there’s all the, like, stodgy, you know, the, the statistic pushers and everything like that, and they’re all like, “Well, if we can move the numbers here and here and [00:50:00] here,” and you’re just like, “Oh, you.

You know it won’t work. You know it won’t work.” Right ... and it doesn’t even matter. Why are we even trying to save these people? They hate us. They are in opposition to everything we care about. Let’s just breed, spread our culture to the future, and we’ll replace them. And then within the parts of the Conservative Party that are still breeding but are not technophilic, they’re also not particularly long-term economically relevant, right?

So, like why am I even stressed about fighting them? Just cultivate our movement, cultivate our wider ideological movement keep it fun, keep it light and don’t, don’t worry about the conservatives that are eschewing technology and whining about this is bad and that’s bad because they’re falling out, they’re crashing out of the, the slip stream.

Like it’s like we’re, we’re, we’re warp speeding into the future, you know, like a, a, a time machine or something, and somebody falls out of a time thing and they like r- more rapidly [00:51:00] wither and turn to dust. Like, that’s what is repeatedly happening, right? We don’t need to worry about all of them because we know we’re in the driver’s seat in this, okay?

And all we need to do is keep going and keep working our hardest to do what’s right for humanity. And I, I have a feeling that we’re doing that, and there is no large faction that has, that seems to have a place in the future that isn’t on our wider team. So, like, why am I even stressing about these people, right?

Anyway, continue.

Simone Collins: Right. You were talking about all the cool Skybrow Cinematic Universe stuff that we love, that we enjoy. You were talking about Freedom Tunes. Well, what does The Daily Wire think that people want? The Daily Wire thinks we want Pen- the Pendragon Cycle: The Rise of Merlin. I sent you the preview.

You don’t need to watch it, but I sent you the preview on WhatsApp.

Speaker: All of this is an illusion, an echo of a voice that has [00:52:00] died. And soon that echo will cease.

Simone Collins: It just comes across as, like, the Game of Thrones reboot that nobody wanted, and they’re, like, c- like, cribbing Game of Thrones hair and just, like, people wafting around in costumes, and it just, it just looks oppressively- It’s, it learn,

Malcolm Collins: it’s the conservative version of woke media

Simone Collins: Yeah, but, like, no one... I, I just don’t under- I don’t, I don’t understand why anyone wants it. The series now is live. It’s available. It premiered on Daily Wire Plus this January. All seven episodes were released. They spent 10, at least $10 million on this with a minimum of one million per episode for this seven-episode season.

And this is, this is not my conjecture. This comes from Jeremy [00:53:00] Boreing marking it as the company’s most ambitious production to date. They filmed it in Italy and Hungary. I- it’s this huge thing, and it, I mean, I don’t think it’s doing so well. It, it holds an IMDb rating of 7.9 out of 10 from over 2,400 votes on Rotten Tomatoes.

It has an audience score of 86 to 88%, which is okay, but I’m like, I don’t feel like watching this. That’s pretty good. That’s pretty good, Simone. It, it ranks moderately at number 2,181 out of 35,000 shows, so yay, top- That’s

Malcolm Collins: pretty good for what they were doing. Look, 2,000- They tried to- It’s, I don’t care about that.

I don’t wanna watch that stuff anymore

Simone Collins: Well, yeah. And, and some, some outlets, to be fair, they call it uneven or terrible. Of course they would- ... some like it ... because The

Malcolm Collins: Daily Wire did it. I don’t care what some outlets say. That’s true. That’s true. I bet it’s fine. I bet it’s fine and boring.

Simone Collins: But financially, it’s unclear as to whether it has been a financial boon for them, and I doubt, I highly doubt that it is.

But [00:54:00] I think the really big thing is that when you, when you roll all this together, what you have is this shift from... Their, their strategic shift from in-demand, inexpensive content, heavy on AI, heavy on clips, heavy on being, you know, bombastic and fun and flexible, to not highly demanded, highly produced content.

You know, creating this Nashville headquarters, and we’re gonna do all these productions, and we’re gonna make culture, and, and you’re gonna want it and watch it instead of just watching ‘90s cartoons like everyone else. And I feel like Pendragon is really the symbol of The Daily Wire drifting from just cheap, high margin podcasts and political commentary, which just, I mean, from a business standpoint, is way more sustainable, into this expensive streaming style production that there’s a lot of competition there.

They, they didn’t have any particular, like, moat or special ability that, that, you know, would make them uniquely good at entering this space in which they have no head up or like, sorry, like, advantage. And then [00:55:00] also their failure to evolve. You know, as, as social platforms shifted towards short-form and live streaming, Ben Shapiro didn’t.

And, and their pacing didn’t change. They, they are just being left in the dust by people like Candace Owens, who’s all about her live high drama streaming. They have a very brittle model in that they wanted to sign talent and then build their audience and s- and then monetize under them with this Daily Wire umbrella.

And then it just became trivial for, like, their true stars to just walk away, while the, all these people they tried to manufacture, from, like, Classically Abby to Reagan replacing Brett Cooper just not really working out. And then you have- You have- ... on top of that all the sanctimonious mean girl leftist woke gatekeeping.

It’s no wonder that The Daily Wire is winding down at this point. I don’t know if there’s any coming back for them.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. It’s, it’s, [00:56:00] it’s sad to see where this is going. But at the same time as they have been falling apart, our movement’s been growing. Yeah, I mean- and I’m excited to see this because it’s fun.

Our movement is fun, and their movement- It is ... was boring and sad and stodgy, and I’m done with it. I am, I am So done with, even, even the culture war stuff. I’m like, “Why even care about it,” right? We’re, we’re fighting against people who don’t matter. They either don’t have kids or don’t have technology.

Simone Collins: Yeah, it, it’s boring and not engaging, so why would we care? Even if they’re attacking us, it’s like, like, “come at me with something more interesting please,” you know? Yeah. Oh, so lame. So lame ... why,

Malcolm Collins: why listen to somebody about a trad lifestyle who’s not living a trad lifestyle, right? Like, why, you know, why, why...

W- when we come at you and we’re like, “This is how you should structure your marriage. This is how you should, you know, have kids and raise kids,” we never once- We live it ... no, yeah, nobody, people are like, “Oh, you’re doing it wrong,” which is fine, but [00:57:00] nobody doubts that, like, we sincerely believe what we’re saying and are trying it, and change our mind when presented with evidence we find compelling.

Mm-hmm ... we had a really sweet letter recently about the whole sword and shield marriage thing, you know, the wife d- doing the, the safer stuff and the husband... and it really was big for me because it showed, I think a lot of people, when we did that video, people were like, “Well, not everyone’s trying to change the world in the way you guys are trying to change the world.

Not everyone can wanna save humanity and everything like that.” But in the way that they were implementing it, the wife was managing, you know, the, the safe stuff, right? And the husband was managing trying to recreate sort of youth sports in a way that wasn’t super costly, so you don’t need to travel between states and everything like that.

And that is actually focused on fun and kids and not creating show ponies for rich parents. And the moment I heard that, I was like, “Oh, obviously this is so something that’s needed in our society right now.” And it, and, and obviously so many parts of our world have become broken. You don’t need to [00:58:00] empower your husband to save all of society, but to become a force for good within your community that is durable, and not something boring and perfunctory like serving in a soup kitchen or something that’s exciting for a lot of people.

And, and we- Mm-hmm ... present a way that you can do that, and then other people go with it and they’re like, “Oh, this is great. This actually really makes me feel a lot better about being alive because I’m trying to make the world a better place,” right? And I’m not gonna step back from this, the people who are like, “Well, not everybody wants to make the world a better place.”

And it’s, try. Not just with your family, but, like, we all have a responsibility to fix our society as it crumbles around us.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Anyway, that’s my spicy take. Although it’s, honestly

Simone Collins: it’s enough. I think, I think it’s plenty to, to fix your family, to, to make a good, a good family, to raise kids well. I think that that is a very honorable thing to do

Malcolm Collins: I think that’s a good place to start.

But when your kids are, you know, teens or whatever, and you’re... I think for a lot of [00:59:00] people I, I do want to encourage this, and I know it’s, it’s spicy- Well, your kids

Simone Collins: are teens, and you work on matchmaking, and you work on setting them up for their careers, and then you work on helping them raise their grandkids.

I know this is

Malcolm Collins: spicy, Simone- I think people being

Simone Collins: like, “Oh, no

Malcolm Collins: one likes you” ... and it’s gonna piss off part of our audience- Mm ... but I’m gonna say I do think it is good for men to focus on civic engagement.

Simone Collins: No, it’s true. And I think, you know, what I’m hearing a lot of people discuss I think this is coming up more and more, for example, on the All In podcast and among that class of people, talking about this idea of basically having a tour of duty, you know, serving for a certain number of years, maybe four years, maybe eight years in government, in politics, to try to improve whether it be your, your local area or on the state level or on a national level- No, I think-

sort of depending on your resources ...

Malcolm Collins: I think that’s fine. If you wanna go into politics, that’s fine. But I, I, I- There are other

Simone Collins: things you can do, too, but, like, yeah, to have a tour of duty in civic engagement in some way to help your community

Malcolm Collins: or country. And that the wife’s job is to support the husband in this tour of duty.

Simone Collins: Yeah, yeah. It’s, it’s more effective when you have that [01:00:00] support. Yeah, you can do more with one well-supported person than two not at all supported people working separately,

Malcolm Collins: absolutely. Or, or the husband’s role to support the wife. Sure. If the husband is, is doing the day job and the wife is at home with the kids, do some tour of duty civically.

Mm. And, and I know it’s extra work, but I, I promise you... Or I don’t promise you. I can’t, I can’t promise anything, but I, I believe based on the evidence I’ve seen that both you and your husband will feel better about your lives if you have been successful in at least attempting some form of ambitious civic engagement.

That is my spicy take that’s gonna get people mad at me. Oh, well. Oh,

Simone Collins: well.

Malcolm Collins: Love you, Simone. I thought this was fantastic. I think it’s fantastic that Ben Shapiro’s losing his influence. He’s been- ... as, as Steve Bannon called him, and I don’t even like St- Bannon. I, I see Steve Bannon as a swamp creature. You know, look at his Epstein rehabilitation takes.

Mm. But Ben Shapiro is a [01:01:00] cancer. And you know, fortunately, the cancer is in remission, heavy remission.

Simone Collins: I’d, I don’t... I wouldn’t go that far. I think he’s a well-meaning person who played a game, who lost some agility or really just didn’t- He’s not well-meaning.

Malcolm Collins: He’s spiteful. He may have aligned goals with us but he’s kind of a little prick.

I don’t think he has

Simone Collins: aligned goals with us. Not

Malcolm Collins: true ...

Simone Collins: I- Yeah, actually. I mean, I think weirdly a lot of people, I feel like they just are all very, they’d be very happy with each other because they kind of just love hating on other people. Like, both he and... Actually, you know, never mind. I’m not gonna say this.

I think Nick Fuentes is a more, a more inclusive person in the end. He may troll- No, Nick Fuentes is a more inclusive

Malcolm Collins: person ...

Simone Collins: and hate on people. Yeah, but yeah- I’ve got problems- ... Nick Fuentes is way more inclusive than yeah, than Ben Shapiro is. Yeah, so yeah. Nick Fuentes’ audience- Okay,

Malcolm Collins: I think we’ve- When we were growing, let’s, so I wanna, I wanna contrast Ben Shapiro and Nick Fuentes, and people know w- I do [01:02:00] not like either of their politics, and I think Nick Fuentes is an active harm to the right.

Despite all of that, the one thing I will not say about Nick Fuentes is he is not gatekeep-y. He, yeah, he’s

Simone Collins: really not When we- He’s really not, actually ...

Malcolm Collins: first started rising in influence this was around the time when Ben Shapiro crashed out about us Nick Fuentes’ like wider circle reached out to us, included us, interviewed us.

Nick Fuentes during that period talked about us positively, thought, “Oh, maybe they’re people I can win to my ideological faction.” These things are things that I, I want to state very clearly. As much as I disagree with his political orientation and his strategy for the conservative movement which I do not see that, it’s, I mean, he’s really a Democrat at this point.

Even he says that. He still is not somebody who snipes at ducklings as they come to shore. Like- ... Ben Shapiro’s the guy where all of the little, the turtles are coming to shore, all the little baby [01:03:00] conservative influencers are coming to shore, and he’s shooting them with a sniper rifle, whereas Nick Fuentes tries to help them through the the, the, the, the, the bird attacks and everything like that, even though they may not always be on his side.

Simone Collins: Yeah. No, I agree. And I would still love to have Nick Fuentes on our show, though he never... Maybe eventually, you know, who knows? We’ve been warned, “Don’t do that. Everyone will hate you.” No, people are gonna... It’d be great. Look, it’s, it would be, I would love, I would love to interview him. I would do it, yeah.

If

Malcolm Collins: he wants to come on, I mean, we, you know, for mutual fans. I mean, obviously the show’s gonna be boring ‘cause the whole time I’m gonna be talking about, like, Catholicism or something. It’s, we’re gonna be totally different.

Simone Collins: I don’t know. It’d be amazing to see him just nerd out about Catholicism for a bit and not do his, like, normal thingies.

But anyway, I don’t know. Whatever. Maybe it’ll happen. Yeah, I’d actually- Maybe it won’t ... be

Malcolm Collins: very interested in that. Like theologically, like what’s, what’s his plan here? His- Oh my God, yes.

Simone Collins: I’d love to know, like, his stance on, his different like theological stances and stuff. Yeah. And then, y- maybe he’s- Yeah.

What I’d really

Malcolm Collins: like to have if we got him on the show is where does he want [01:04:00] America to be in 100 years? Mm. Like, what’s his 100, 150 year, 200 year plan for our species? I’d

Simone Collins: love... Yeah, I’d love to see that too. Yeah, come on. Ah, someone make it happen. Help us out here. Someone has an in. I mean, I guess don’t donate $50 to him on his stream though and tell him that there’s a woman present on this podcast, ‘cause that’s not gonna work.

He’s not gonna feel like he can fart on stream if I’m there, so-

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Oh my God ... I don’t know. Yeah A woman? A wo- yeah, we’ve heard he- he- that’s... Sorry, we did a clip recently of his where he crashed out on a fan who donated $50 to him because the fan had all female children. And I was like, “What?” And you can’t

Simone Collins: fart and burp around daughters apparently, even though our daughters constantly fart and burp around us.

Yeah. God, I love our kids. Apparently Octavian farted in the doctor’s office today. Is that something that happened? Octavian was like- No ... “Yeah.” ... he didn’t

Malcolm Collins: fart in the doctor’s office.

Simone Collins: I farted in the doctor’s. He was really proud about it. I guess- I didn’t see

Malcolm Collins: it. They were, they were- There was this whole thing.

It was highlighted ... astonished. The doctors were so amazed at how much they all helped each other. Aw. How much they [01:05:00] all, like, did their thing. They tried to give him all the information he needed. They were very worried when they found out that Indy had to get a shot. And they wanted to... Octavian, oh my God, you wanna know how sweet the kids are?

Like, I don’t even know how our kids are this sweet. When they were gonna give Octavian the shot, Octavian- Indy ... like, no, Octavian goes to Indy and, like, looks her in the eyes and he goes, “I’m gonna sing a song for you.” And so he sings a, a song for Indy while they’re, like, prepping and doing the shot so she doesn’t notice.

And she actually didn’t notice.

Simone Collins: Oh my God, Noodle. I love these kids. Jesus.

Malcolm Collins: Why are they so good? They are simulated. That’s all I can believe, because I’m not that good a person. Yes, you are. Or maybe I am. Like, maybe fundamentally- Yes, you are ... I’m actually, like, a pretty nice person.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Fundamentally, you, like, actually are.

Who knew? After a lifetime of being told, “Oh, you’re a demon child. Oh, you’re crazy. Oh, you’re so problematic. Malcolm, Malcolm, Malcolm.” Yeah, actually.

Malcolm Collins: [01:06:00] You’ve been around my family, yeah.

Simone Collins: Malcolm, Malcolm. Oh my God, all the ways. All the ways of your voice or your name being pronounced. This is why you’re so resilient online.

N- no one’s n- the, the cruelest comments ever made about us don’t, don’t come m- anywhere close to the things that come from your own family. And I’m not just talking, like, one mean person. No, like, everyone.

Malcolm Collins: Everyone in my family- Everyone ... constantly belittling me.

Simone Collins: Oh my God. Anyway, I love you. Bye. I

love you.

Bye.

Simone Collins: Well, after this you can tell my parents, who are very generously offering to order in, what you might have in terms of preferences. So very rare, exciting opportunity to eat from a restaurant.

Malcolm Collins: We do really live in an area with some quite good restaurants.

Simone Collins: Well, and there... A, a non-trivial number of [01:07:00] people who listen to the podcast live around here. Like, eventually we’re gonna have to host a local meetup. It’s gonna have to happen.

It’s a good place to live. Just saying. Maybe somebody will do one in Philadelphia. That could be kind of fun. There was that one cool restaurant that reminded us of, like, British pubs. Do you... You remember the one I’m talking about, with the multiple floors and the cool chairs?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, it was nice, but, you know, I don’t, I don’t know if I wanna go to a city again, Simone.

That’s the... That’s not an option for me. Never again?

Simone Collins: You, you’re just quitting ci- cities forever?

Malcolm Collins: I’m quitting cities, yeah. I think I’m done with them. I, I don’t I don’t think that they’re good.

Simone Collins: Never again. I don’t think they attract-

Malcolm Collins: Never again. Okay. Never again. I’m just done. I’m just done. Cities are over.

I- is that... are we allowed to have this opinion?

Simone Collins: Just- Well, what about Edinburgh?

Malcolm Collins: Edinburgh is over. I’m sure it’s gross now. No, it’s not.

Simone Collins: Stop. Don’t you ever say that.

Malcolm Collins: I hear it’s full of you know, people- ... who weren’t there a few years ago. How dare you. No. That’s all... That’s Glasgow. Scotland is, like, more progressive- [01:08:00] That’s Glasgow.

No, E- pff. Scotland is more progressive than the rest of the UK. You, like, know that, right? Like, it’s seen as, like, by far the most progressive part. I don’t know that.

Simone Collins: Honestly, like, just from m- meeting random locals in the process of doing all of our wedding planning, I know that was ages ago now, but, like, they were just normal.

Honestly, they reminded me a lot of just normal local Pennsylvanians, but with a fun accent. Actually, Pennsylvania’s also have fun accents. But you’re meeting

Malcolm Collins: rural people in the... It’s the city dwellers who are the danger.

Simone Collins: Well, no, I was dealing with city dwellers. I’m getting things like, you know, hairdressers and, and cake makers in- Oh, I guess that’s true

the city. Yeah. You’re just being a silly, a silly goose. People in Scotland are amazing and wonderful. And you were just dealing with the bougie international students at the St. Andrews, so you don’t even know what you’re talking about

Malcolm Collins: Oh, I don’t? You know. Is this the type of scolding I get from a wife who pretends- Yes

to love me?

Simone Collins: The, the ball and chain.

Malcolm Collins: The ball and ch-

Simone Collins: what am, what is [01:09:00] psychological- Pretend to love you? As soon as you, as soon as you married me, I had to stop pretending, right? Well, of course, you decided to write into our vows, “I don’t promise to love you.” So it was never even part of the contract. Never even part,

Malcolm Collins: yeah, we just...

All right, all right,

Simone Collins: all right. You ready?

Malcolm Collins: Okay. Let’s go.

Simone Collins: Okay.

Speaker 13: You see what Toasty’s hiding from him? Yeah, we like it.

Speaker 14: What are you guys doing?

Speaker 15: Octavia, don’t, you’ll get wet. Mom gave me permission to go on. But you won’t leave your ankle. Oh. Say hi to your friend. Go to your friend.

Malcolm and Simone Collins break down a viral left-wing YouTuber’s video claiming the Left would win an upcoming American Civil War. Instead of dismissing it, they steelman his arguments, examine historical parallels, institutional control, police/military loyalty, supply lines, and urban vs. rural dynamics.

They explore realistic scenarios for how a future crisis could unfold (disputed election → secession of blue cities → blockades), why drone swarms and logistics will matter more than armed rednecks, and why the Left’s own demographics, antinatalism, and institutional parasitism may doom their long-term prospects.

Includes deep discussion on vasectomy culture, narrative-based vs. data-based thinking, and a fun tangent on next-gen autonomous drone design for home defense and warfare.

If you’re interested in pronoia, demographic collapse, institutional power, or surviving turbulent times, this episode is essential listening.

Episode Transcript

Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] Hello, Simone. I’m excited to be here with you today. Today we are going to be diving deep into the mind of an individual who some right-wing figures have covered recently for his crazy comments. One of the crazier ones that happened recently is he said that if he transported back to the Pilgrim era, and obviously I’ll play the clip here,

Speaker: You suddenly wake up in the 17th century on a ship headed for New England. As soon as we landed, I would use the money to bribe the boatswain to look the other way while I stole all of the muskets and powder on board, and then I would march immediately to the nearest indigenous settlement, give the guns out like candy, and make it my mission in life to murder every single white man, woman and child on the eastern seaboard of the continent.

Malcolm Collins: That he would kill w- any white women and children that he found after- Oh, God

betraying the Pilgrims and giving away all their guns to Indians. Because apparently this makes sense to him, and he’s [00:01:00] also gone viral, which we’ll talk about later in this you know, sterilizing himself. But with all of this stuff, yes, I could go over how crazy this guy sounds. Which is- I think we

Simone Collins: all know

something

Malcolm Collins: I could do. But as people who watch our channel, I try to bring a unique perspective to what I’m covering, so I decided to go through and watch his videos. So on- Oh, you

Simone Collins: went down the rabbit hole.

Malcolm Collins: Yes.

Simone Collins: Okay. And

Malcolm Collins: one of his videos, which is the one I really wanna talk on in this, is why the left would win an upcoming civil war.

Oh ... and he basically lays out the plan that his side has for winning an upcoming civil war. And it’s- Really? ... not as insane as you would think. So- Oh, they have

Simone Collins: a shot?

Malcolm Collins: Potentially, yeah. Can they take

Simone Collins: us?

Malcolm Collins: So it’s something that we need to, to talk about, we need to engage with. And more than just engaging with it, the reason why [00:02:00] I think it’s so important to engage with is I think it makes it clear when the right-wing alliance thinks about the elements of the alliance that are actually important to both its long-term viability and its immediate security on in the moment of, like, crazy revolution type stuff, right?

Yeah. Yeah. It is- Massively misunderstanding where it should actually be focusing. Hmm. It’s focusing way too much on armed groups of rednecks, which he points out, realistically, aren’t particularly relevant if a civil war did break out. And he goes through historic civil wars to make this argument.

Now, I don’t think that that’s... I, I, I don’t think the way he presents his argument is powerful, ‘cause I’d be like, yeah, but the technological context is entirely different now. They didn’t have, like, fully automatic weapons back then and stuff, right? Mm-hmm. But the, the... He does, he [00:03:00] does notice things that I think a right-wing person would notice.

So let’s go into this, and he also goes into how, how probable it is, okay?

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: So broadly, his worldview goes like this. If you look at historic civil wars, what actually ended up determining who won and how well sides were able to sort of field their assets, it largely came downstream of the existing bureaucratic and civilizational infrastructure that allowed them to recruit and command troops at scale.

Uh-huh. As well as manage industry at scale. Mm-hmm. And that so if you, if you think about something like the Revolutionary War or something like this the troops that we had fighting for us were not just, you know, people who we had raised out of nowhere. These were preexisting military regiments often.

Or, or they had elements of [00:04:00] preexisting military regiments within them. If you look at the you know, Civil War both the South and the North had sort of large scale e- economic and sort of civilizational infrastructure that they could call on. R- random rebels have a very hard time doing anything other than just holding land.

And would they even be able to hold land in an existing context? So to give an understanding of, like, how he’s thinking about a civil war he was praising Mondame for and apparently a lot of leftists see this as a major betrayal, and he was saying that this was actually very shrewd immediately burying the hatchet with the NYPD as soon as he was elected.

And he’s like, “Look, if we want to prevent ICE,” like federal government troops, “from operating effectively in New York, we are going to need the [00:05:00] NYPD on our side. We are going to need- our own thugs with guns to be fighting their thugs with guns.

Simone Collins: Oh. Oh. Oh. I mean, I guess the police need their pensions to be paid, and who, who controls the pensions?

So if we’re talking about, like, national versus local control, is that kind of what he’s thinking about?

Malcolm Collins: So, th- yeah, basically the question is, is if society were ever to fall into unrest, how much organizational control would leftists have? We, I mean, like, when we know the types of institutions that leftists control today leftists control the huge parts of the, the judicial system in the most economically prosperous parts of the United States, huge parts of the white collar job system in the most industrious parts, you know, technologically industrious parts of the United [00:06:00] States.

They control governments and the surrounding environments in stuff like cities. So suppose we were having any form of a revolution or something like that. The NYPD is obviously quite pissed at the way leftists have treated them, but you’ve also gotta keep in mind how long they have had woke hiring practices within their organization.

So even though they have a bit of a, a chip on their shoulder compared to other people, you gotta keep in mind their entire architecture around them, right? You know, you’ve got everybody else in Manhattan, many of whom are quite left-leaning, who could pressure them or make it difficult for them to act independently in the case of any sort of serious split.

Now I’m just giving you guys his perspective. I actually think it’s massively wrong, but I’m giving you his perspective, right? And then if I was gonna further steel man his perspective beyond what he has said, because obviously being a modern leftist, he doesn’t think AI is relevant. But,

Speaker: Where [00:07:00] do you fall on the Luddite to accelerationist spectrum? Uh, I’m of two minds. I- in my heart of hearts, I think the agricultural revolution was a mistake. I think that any society with an agricultural mode of subsistence is necessarily imperial and hierarchical, and I think that basically all of our problems come downstream from that.

Malcolm Collins: No ... I have argued that the core thing of relevance in future battles, even six, seven years out, is gonna be automated drone swarms.

You know, th- this matters, who

Simone Collins: controls the- Absolutely ...

Malcolm Collins: the automated drone swarms. And the-

Simone Collins: Well, so far the federal government is, like, leaps and bounds ahead of any, any private or state-based entity I’m aware of Is that thing

Malcolm Collins: I worked on with RFAB is automated drone swarms?

Simone Collins: Yeah, sh- yeah. Yes.

Malcolm Collins: Would fans pay for that?

Could we get funding for that? ‘Cause I

Simone Collins: would

Malcolm Collins: do that. I don’t, I mean- I could, I bet I could build automated drone swarms better than the government can.

Simone Collins: [00:08:00] Well, let’s look into it. I want, I want a home defense swarm system. So could work on that one.

Malcolm Collins: Well, so okay, just a side note. If I was gonna focus on automated drone swarms, how, w- like what would be our, our arbitrage play?

Mm-hmm. So I’m just trying to think of how you could do something significantly better than the existing systems. So I’ve been watching lots of film of like what’s going on in Ukraine right now. Oh. And you have a huge, a, yes, our fans will find this tangent interesting. I t- I’m trying to think. Like do our fans care- Yeah

about automated drone swarm technology and how

Simone Collins: you- Yes, they do. Yes. No. No. Anyone who wants to survive in the future, and I mean our fans are not suicidal and self-terminating, they do. They want their children to survive.

Malcolm Collins: Well, except for the ones who said some naughty things about Israel, and I’ve, and I’ve heard many of them have been thinking about some end of life solutions.

Y- [00:09:00] I, I, I, I say this of course for Mossad so that they know I’m on team here, okay? 100% on team.

Speaker 3: So this speculative discussion into drone design went on way longer than I anticipated. , So I moved it to the end. , And you can, I guess, just skip to it with timestamps if you’re desperate to hear me, an uninformed person, go on forever about what would be an interesting drone design

Malcolm Collins: Okay, I gotta get back to the topic at hand.

Simone Collins: Right. Civil War

Malcolm Collins: webs police. So what actually ha- happens... And people can tell me their ideas of how you could make drone technology better.

I’d be very interested in this so I can steal them, because my idea’s probably stupid. This was just off the top of my head idea. But okay, so this guy I think he’s fundamentally wrong about what a civil war would look like because he’s thinking of a civil war in the way that rightists think about a civil war.

So he’s looking at the rightist militant’s fantasy of the armed guerrilla civil war which I do not [00:10:00] think is a realistic pathway for a near future American Civil War. Okay. What is a more likely pathway for a near future American Civil War? I’ve said it before, but let’s, let’s go through what it would look like if it happened.

One party gets into power, and then the election results, either through genuine fraudulence or non-fraudulence, says that they lost the next presidential election. But they say, “We didn’t lose the presidential election.” In fact-

Simone Collins: Which is what you anticipate, the primary means through which this all happens.

Malcolm Collins: Yes. And the reason I suspect that this is gonna happen is both parties have become razor thin close to doing this multiple times.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Like, every election just seems like we’re asking for it at this point.

Simone Collins: Well, yeah, it, it’s almost like a pendulum that’s swinging, but it just keeps swinging farther and farther each time, and eventually it’s gonna ha- like hit this ding, like bell.

We’ve hit the we’ve hit the civil war bell. [00:11:00] Great

Malcolm Collins: Or the one party put something in place that is just so transparently cheating in the election system that the other party’s just like, “No, we’re not going along with this.” Right? Yeah. And obviously we got closer with, like, the the, the Voter Rights Act and stuff like this.

M- many leftists do not like that they do not get the racial seats that they used to got, which were obviously unfair and racist, but whatever. And then the Virginia case when they tried to cancel this, getting struck down, so they lost- Yeah ... all the seats that they thought they were gonna get there.

Simone Collins: Did you see Scott Pressler’s tweet about it?

It was lovely. He, he was- Mm-hmm ... he was there. He’s still making things happen.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, he was part of that?

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: How did he campaign to the, I

Simone Collins: don’t know the full backstory. I just know he was a part of it. He was there and he tweeted a selfie of himself and everyone celebrating, and it was lovely.

Malcolm Collins: Well, that’s lovely.

Yeah. You know, if, if they’re gonna play the g- gerrymander game, you know, let’s, let’s do it, right? By the way, fun thing. I don’t know if you know this, but the actual thing that, [00:12:00] that triggered the reinvestigation of the gerry- the, the system and the court case that ended up causing the strike down of the Voter Rights Act was actually initiated by the Biden administration against Texas.

And then the Trump administration dropped it, but Texas said we’re not dropping this. We’re taking this to court.” Oh. And they ended up being the case that got it overturned. So it was actually a process- Oh, goodness ... initiated by Democrats trying to be even overly aggressive with the system they already had.

Simone Collins: Okay. Well... But Interesting

Malcolm Collins: What happens if we’ll go through each candidate. Let’s suppose the Democrats win this next cycle, and it’s somebody like AOC. I think she’s actually the most likely to win, if I’m gonna be honest. Mm-hmm. Like, I, I do not think Gavin Newsom would win. Would AOC believe that she needed to hold onto power if it looked like she lost to somebody she was really afraid of, [00:13:00] right?

The answer is yes, probably. Right? I can, I can totally see her doing something, or her supporters doing something to that effect. Okay, so she says, “I’m not leaving.” What would be her likely complaint? She would say that, like, either it was too much gerrymandering or there was something suspicious about the vote count or something like that, right?

So what do we have in place that could deal with this? First, you’ve gotta remember, DC is incredibly left wing. Are DC cops going to pull her out of the White House, right? No. You would basically need the United States military to attempt to do something. This means the United States military, somebody within the military would have to decide to act against the commander in chief.

Would they do this? And, and this is difficult because you’ve gotta keep in mind not everyone in the military is gonna go on board with this, right? Like, the moment one person does this even though, like, technically it would be AOC doing the coup, like, they’re doing a [00:14:00] coup. Like, they’re now starting a, a, a conflict of some sort.

They go to the White House, they attempt to arrest her. Okay, who’s defending her? Secret Service, right? Is Secret Service enough in the hands of the Democrats to go along with something like this? Yeah, I think they are at this point, if I’m gonna be honest. I still think that the right has enough influence within the military to prevent a Democrat from doing this successfully.

It, it, it would be tough, but probably. Okay, but let’s assume that a rightist did this. Let’s assume Trump does this this next cycle, for

Simone Collins: example. Okay.

Malcolm Collins: What happens there? I mean, the key would be for him and the relevant people in his administration to make sure that they’ve gotten out of DC before they attempt this. If they’re in DC, if he tries to just stay in the White House, that is incredibly stupid. Mm-hmm. What he should do is operate something like this with key administrative officials [00:15:00] out of something like one of the presidential whatever, retreats or something like this, that is in rural America where they are less likely to get significant pushback.

You would immediately have a number of leftist cities basically secede to some extent. The key to drawing them back in is basically not confronting them with armed conflict. You could essentially just starve them. If you just close off roads into any major city they would have to capitulate in a very short period of time, and it would be trivially easy to do.

Which is very different from rural sections of America. To, to pacify a rural section of America you really need to basically militarily occupy it. To pacify any American city you just need to block a few roads. Really very easy roads to block, too. And, and, and, and don’t even do it, like, aggressively.

Just be [00:16:00] like, “Look, we’re looking to negotiate, but for now we’ll be blocking things off.” And you really wanna lower their power, we’ll be managing an evacuation of the city, right? To, you know, i- i- for people who are dealing with power, food, everything like that. Because now you’re moving people away from, like, their source of ability to fight back in, in a situation like this.

Simone Collins: Hmm.

Malcolm Collins: And this is what really matters, not the control of the institutions but control of the military. Really whichever side the military backed when one of these happens, that would be the side that won. And keep in mind that they would win permanently. So, like, suppose that AOC or Trump did this.

If the military ends up backing the other side, the other side is not gonna go back to free elections. They’re going to say that, like, “We can’t do free elections anymore.”

Simone Collins: Yeah. Fair.

Malcolm Collins: So the, the moment the conflict comes to a head, basically the American Republic is over and we enter our imperial age. Which is why we named our first kid Octavian, right?

You know? Gotta, gotta handle that [00:17:00] transition. Maybe, maybe born a generation, we’ll see when this happens. But thoughts, Simone, before I go further.

Simone Collins: This generally makes sense, and I didn’t know that there were people who were actually thinking through the logistics of this, but huh. I mean, there, there are so many complications with interstate trade and supply routes and everything where I just feel like there are so many more levels of vulnerability too, like the power grid, that different parties in this conflict could leverage against each other that just didn’t exist at the time of the US Civil War, where functionally civil war just isn’t really possible in the United States in any sort of full-scale, you know, city w-

Malcolm Collins: I mean, the key is to do it in a way that doesn’t look like a civil war, right?

Which is, is

Simone Collins: not- So it would look like a, a, a chop chas? Like a sort of this, this [00:18:00] is their zone and we’re just gonna let them pretend that they have it and-

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, so you- ... let it go apart ... you like suppose you do this, you are Trump. A number of cities say, “We’re not going along with this.” Just you, you, you d- you do your best to not allow violence to break out, right?

You say- Yeah ... unless their side is initiating it we, if, if you are not part of America anymore, we are blockading the roads into these major urban centers. And we are managing an evacuation for the people who don’t wanna be part of your basically independent project, right? If you do that. And the other key is to work with companies on this, right?

To make it clear to the major companies that there will be some window upon which they can join this project. And if they do not join it within X potential window then they- [00:19:00] Some form of, of repercussion. Like they’re, they’re, they’re taxed in a different way or their assets are withheld or something like that, right?

Like, basically you just put financial pressure on companies to go along with this. ‘Cause a lot of companies are gonna want to reflexively, you know, d- do their, their sort of signal on this. But the moment you put, like, international pressure on something like this, the big companies are just gonna go along with this, and that really hurts the city’s ability to, to, to go along with this themselves.

So first you do something small, where, like, companies basically just need to signal to you and signal to the world, “Oh, yeah, I’m moving ahead with this new accounting system,” or whatever, right? Mm-hmm. And then you go into the second phase, which is to say, if they pay taxes to any of the parts of America that are still in open rebellion they are then put...

So they’ve already done the costly signaling of being like, “I’m okay with this,” and then you start to starve the cities that are left of taxes.

Simone Collins: Yeah, that makes sense.

Malcolm Collins: Now how would the leftists do it [00:20:00] is it’s way harder, because they need to power project from cities outwards, which is just incredibly difficult to do.

Simone Collins: What if they just did, what if, like, California seceded? You know? That would be more feasible. California has ports. They have more of an independent electricity grid.

They are a very economically productive, still, state.

Malcolm Collins: So ports are incredibly easy to blockade, first of all. Like a civilian port, like San Francisco Port or something like that.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: And it, with California, you really only need to block like two ports. Oh ... if, if you block the port in San Francisco and LA, like you, you, they’re cooked.

They can import goods through other ports, but if you then block the main arteries into those two areas, and there are not that many into, like San Francisco, for example, you’re literally blocking like four roads.

Simone Collins: Yeah, I, yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Most of [00:21:00] California is red. Remember that. Like literally-

Simone Collins: That

Malcolm Collins: is a fair point ... m- it’s just a few, and you say, “Okay, you know, you, you secede, but like, don’t use our infrastructure.”

Simone Collins: Oh, you mean even the fact that we defend the seas or something?

Malcolm Collins: Well, no. We built, America built your port infrastructure. You are not allowed to use it.

Simone Collins: Oh. Hmm.

Malcolm Collins: That is wh- that would be my justification for blockading the sea routes.

Simone Collins: That’s fair enough.

Malcolm Collins: But yeah. That- that’s what a, that’s- that is what an American Civil War is going to look like, the next American Civil War.

It’s not gonna be fought by random guerrillas. It’s, it’s, it’s going to be fought by how do you control supply lines into things like cities, and how long are people going to throw a fit about this?

Simone Collins: In other words, it’s, it’s defined by institutions siding with one aggrieved party af- following a f- a [00:22:00] presidential election that was very contentious, and refusing to contribute taxes or enforce laws to the extent that it’s a, it’s a functional civil war.

But to what end? I just don’t... I can’t... In, in the c- with the way that our states run and the way our government runs, I cannot understand why even a very large group of people who believe that an election was a fraud would successfully rebel or attempt to rebel with any expectation of eventual success.

I mean, what does eventual success look like? They just think-

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, so we’ve seen this. There was both... So a lot of people aren’t aware, but there was a protest that was about as big as the January 6th protest that the leftists held just,

like, a month and a half before where the president had to be taken to a secret bunker, and they tried to light the White House on fire, and it was-

Simone Collins: Well, I don’t remember this at all.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, because the left didn’t report on it. They didn’t wanna report on it. They didn’t want people to know about it. But yeah, it [00:23:00] was huge. If you find photos of it, like, there’s giant, like, bonfires around the White House and stuff like, right in front of the gates and stuff. It was, it was obviously an extremely dangerous scenario.

The core difference is that the CIA wasn’t there to open the gates for people. You know, but the point being is the other question you have around any sort of a protest like this is the people who are resisting this, right, like, especially if they’re violently resisting

This, would the military or any sort of military forces that you have be comfortable shooting on a crowd of civilians?

That, that often determines, like, if things go ahead. And one of the things that we’ve repeatedly seen recently in rebellions and stuff like this, we saw this in Turkey, for example is that if your military is drawn from rural or r- like, conservative regions and the [00:24:00] protesters are incredibly far lefties, like, they’re going out like the anti-ICE protesters, looking like actually dangerous militant- Psychopaths.

Okay. Which they often look like. I mean, we’ve seen the people who are protesting ICE. Like, they’re like-

Simone Collins: The hoods, the... Yeah

Malcolm Collins: The hoods. They, they look like a group that has othered themselves from the concept of civilians enough that I do not think that they would actually care to shoot at a crowd. Which is unfort- I mean, it’s leftists trying to feel cool and everything like that, but like, it’s also important when you do protest something like this, like suppose it’s the leftists who have power when this is happening, that you don’t go out there in outfits that other you.

Go out there looking like normal civilians. Yeah. That is how you prevent the, that is how you get the military on your side again, right? Going out there and harassing the military by throwing bricks at them in a hood and hitting them was like, that’s how you get them to feel like fighting back is on their side.

I think the lefts have really [00:25:00] hurt themselves. So the final part of this video I wanted to address any thoughts before we go further?

Simone Collins: No, but I agree with you on that. Seems poorly thought through, but I know they’re not exactly thinking from that perspective.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. This guy’s not wanting to have kids, and leftists not wanting to have kids more broadly.

So I’ll play the clip here.

Speaker 2: Earlier this year, I got a vasectomy. When people ask me why I got snipped, I generally kinda gesture vaguely to fascism and climate change, and people go, “Oh, yeah, totally understandable.”

But the truth is that whenever my friends and family members get pregnant, and I’m in my early 30s, so that’s happening a lot these days, I get a horrible weight in the pit of my stomach. Oftentimes, I’m genuinely happy for them, you know? Sometimes I can even look them in the eye and say, “You’ll be a really great father,” and mean it.

But there’s another part of me that can’t shake the idea that in nine months, another American will come into the [00:26:00] world, , another ravening cannibal who will spend the next better part of a century burning fossil fuels, housing cheeseburgers, and ignoring homeless people at traffic lights.

And you can say, you know, “Oh, well. Well, I’ll, I’ll bring up my kid to share my values, and they won’t do those things.” Um, and I can respect that, but that’s a hell of a gamble, right? I mean, you know, you could take your kid to school every day on your bike, but if every other parent has an SUV, eventually your kid’s gonna get curious and want to drive a car, right?

And then, and then what are you gonna do, you know, forbid them? I mean, they’re just gonna do it anyway. What if my pride and joy grows up to be somebody else’s abuser but the real kicker is that even if my child has a great life even if they cause no harm to others they will still suffer they will still die it is unavoidable right i will be [00:27:00] inflicting this fate upon them without their knowledge or consent to me the creation of human life is very obviously an incredibly selfish thing to do under most circumstances

Malcolm Collins: And what you really see from this is he’s afraid above all else that his kids may have different political beliefs than him. And he’s like, “No matter how much I try to brainwash them, they might not be vegans.” You know, because he calls all non-vegans cannibals, right?

Which, yeah, of course, right? Like, why wouldn’t he? And what’s interesting is the lack of... And I noticed this with leftists. One of the really interesting things I think on the right that we repeatedly see is even when we have, like, radical beliefs there is a lot of intellectual effort and this is something you see on our channel and stuff like that, establishing why we have the core beliefs we have that [00:28:00] inform our downstream beliefs, right?

Like, why do we have the beliefs we have about the environment, right? Like, clearly he thinks the environment is like an existential and immediate threat, yet he never goes into why. Like, he doesn’t actually investigate this, which I’d be very interested to know. I’m like, “Okay, I’ve dug into the data on this, and it just doesn’t seem to be.”

So, like, what’s the counter to this, right? Other than just, like, I’ve been told. So yeah, there’s that element. The other is, so, like, it’s, it’s, it’s sort of that there isn’t an intellectual backbone To, to what they’re pushing here, right? It’s just like, I’ve been told that this is a trendy thing. Like, why do you hate white people, right? Like, this guy clearly thinks it’s cool to hate white people and stuff like this, kill white children, all that.

W- why does he feel that this... And obviously it is protected for him. His, his videos are still doing well. He has half a million subscribers, you know. He is a popular YouTuber, right?

Simone Collins: Oh, [00:29:00] absolutely.

Malcolm Collins: So this, this type of content, I’d actually say his videos aren’t even that bad. Like, when I was watching them, they really remind me of ContraPoints, where...

And I notice this, we actually had a leftist, like, trans news team come here recently that we were, like, interviewing, right? And it really became clear to me that, like, we were not able to successfully communicate with them. We had perfectly amiable conversations, and they understood. And I was like, “I can’t communicate with you because effectively because everything they saw, they saw in terms of narratives.”

Everything had to have some sort of, like... And this is the way he sees things. This is the way Philosophy Tube sees things. This is the way I see a lot of ContraPoints videos see things. The world is a series of narratives, and what is true is what is narratively true. So, what I mean by this is if we are doing something like having lots of kids, it must be because of either a kink or because of something that happened in our [00:30:00] childhood.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: And I’m like, “No, we’re doing it because of the data. Do you wanna look at the data?” Right? Like, you can do something for a reason other than a kink, but, like, this is just incongruent with, because their entire world, self, and person is structured around what gives them pleasure.

Simone Collins: You think that’s why?

Malcolm Collins: Oh, yeah. Remember I said that, like, clearly pleasure is not, like, the core purpose in life, right? Remember you were like, “Well, that, you know, that’s for you,” right? You know, to this individual, pleasure was the core purpose in life. Mm-hmm. And so when they look at why people are acting in a way that seems odd to them, like why are we having a lot of kids, it must be because it’s arousing to us, right?

It must be some sort of kink scenario. Which I find very interesting for a couple reasons. One is, like, in case you’re wondering [00:31:00] and, and to, to we have argued before that the only thing that isn’t a kink is having kids, right? Like, being turned on by getting somebody pregnant or being impregnated, like, that’s literally what the whole system is in place for.

Simone Collins: Yeah ...

Malcolm Collins: you know, the fact that you, that you would call that a kink is bizarre, right? Like, you think- You think using another human as like an Oni hole is the non-kink and doing sex for the reason sex exists is the kink? It’s the

Simone Collins: only one normal version of it ...

Malcolm Collins: Yes. But this scenario in terms of like erotic scenarios, the idea of impregnation a breeding kink you could say is, is something that I personally do find arousing, right?

Like it’s in my panoply of like random things that arouse me. The idea of this in terms of my life, wife, and kids, absolutely not is it arousing. Like it, it, it just ... [00:32:00] I was trying to explain this to them. I’m like, “Do you understand like having a kid is a giant logistical process that takes months?”

It’s not like a sexual fantasy, right?

Simone Collins: Like- Yeah. Pe- people who have this sort of fetish aren’t having children. There are people who act it out, absolutely. There are people who will even go on these like Facebook groups for sperm donors and actively seek out women who are willing to have sex with them in order to get pregnant and they will fly all around the world and have thousands of kids.

They would count. But like yeah, that you would create a whole new life and be responsible for them and raise them for like f- a couple minutes of your fetish, your arousal pathway?

Malcolm Collins: Well, what it is, but it’s not even an effective mechanism for, ... Okay, I’ll word this a different way for people. Mm-hmm. If anyone here is, is listening has a, a b- a, a, a submission or [00:33:00] dominance arousal pattern, right?

Like you get turned on by role playing a very dominant person or you get turned on by role playing a very submissive person, right? Do you get turned on when you’re a like wage slave if you’re turned on by being submissive? Probably effing not. Do you get turned on by being a boss or managing a team if you’re turned on by being dominant?

Probably not, right? It’s just there’s too much other stuff going on in those sorts of roles to actually activate those pathways.

Simone Collins: Yes.

Malcolm Collins: But I actually think that’s a really good explanation for this, right? Like, but it is w- one, I mean it, it, it’s sad to see that that level of sort of degenerate framing of reality by these individuals but the thing to remember with any sort of civil war with the left and everything like that is we really only need to wait them out at this point.

Their fertility rates are [00:34:00] so low. They are sterilizing themselves. Like literally- There’s these people out there right now who hate you, they want you dead, they want everything you stand for destroyed, and you could be like, “Oh my God,” like, “We need to get out all the guns. We need to round these people up.

We need to sterilize them.” And it’s like, oh no, you don’t need to do that. And they’re like, “Well, why?” It’s like they literally have vasectomy vans go to like the DNC and offer free vasectomies at this point. It’s not even a right-wing conspiracy. This is them doing this. They’re handling

Simone Collins: it. They’re handling it.

But for the same reason, that’s why I find it so shocking the idea that there would be any form of civil war because I just don’t think that ultimately the left has the ability to take that level of organized initiative. The left is about degrowth, it’s about antinatalism, it’s about stepping back, relinquishing- But they have-

turning back, stopping, stagnating. It’s not about organizing and building, and you need to organize and build in order to lead a civil war.

Malcolm Collins: But [00:35:00] they have tons of institutions under their control.

Simone Collins: I get that, but those institutions are highly dependent on other factors in order to work, and being parasitical in nature culturally, they’ve already weakened those institutions.

True. True. So they just won’t work, especially when isolated and rebellious. They’re not sufficient rebellious entities.

Malcolm Collins: And this is why I think America should conquer Europe.

Simone Collins: Yeah. I feel like- It’s there to be taken. Yeah. We’re, we’re thinking too small- We need to do this ... with, with Greenland. You gotta think bigger.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Greenland? Come on. You’re thinking so small, Trump.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm. There’s more out there, some, some nice ones to pick off.

Malcolm Collins: If we went out and we conquered Greenland, they would do nothing. Oh, we should do a video on whether NATO’s a bad idea.

Simone Collins: That would be fun to do. Yeah, I like that.

Malcolm Collins: All right. I love you to death.

Yes, I love you. You’re amazing

Simone Collins: what a day. What a day.

Malcolm Collins: Film, film, [00:36:00] film. Got crews over all day today.

Simone Collins: And yesterday.

Malcolm Collins: Such a, a fun life actually, in a way, because it feels like we’re celebrities, but like, without, like, having to be film stars or something. Like, the news is, like, r- regularly interested in, like, what are, what are they doing today?

Oh,

Simone Collins: but like, we don’t have to memorize lines or something?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. We don’t have to... I mean, I wouldn’t wanna be a celebrity in the way that celebrities used to exist. I wouldn’t wanna be a celebrity in the way that Kardashians are celebrities or the way that Ozzy Osbourne is a celebrity, where, like, it’s interesting because we’re like celebrities, but people care about our political views.

Like, the antithesis- Oh ... of, you know, the historic celebrity where it’s like, “Well, they’re

Simone Collins: not-” Oh, where like, okay, yeah, you would hate if they cared about what you wore or something, or who you were dating, and y- you like what they actually care about your substance. They care what they think

Malcolm Collins: about

Simone Collins: X.

Malcolm Collins: I get it.

Yeah. But with us, it’s like, why would anybody? Well, they are, they are, Which is interesting, ‘cause y- you know, there’s not I mean, I don’t think there’s any political provocateur that gets as much just, like, raw news [00:37:00] coverage as we get. Not even close. Like, if there’s some that are more famous than us, like Munches Bulbog or Scott Alexander or something like that, but they’re, they’re much more private than us too.

Simone Collins: Nick Fuentes, come on. He gets tons of views.

Malcolm Collins: Ah, Nick Fuentes does get more news coverage than us, and is a provocateur, so I will give you that.

Simone Collins: Yeah, well.

Thank you. Thank you. I try. Okay,

Malcolm Collins: so- who else? Yeah, but I m- I mean, it’s, it’s interesting. It’s interesting to play this, this, this game with the dying press era.

But

Simone Collins: yeah. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: And you saw me in a music video today, which made me happy. It had like 11 views, but still, you know, we’re getting in some of the you know, the wider universe of whatever it’s called. Sky Browse, Sky Browse videos.

Simone Collins: Cinematic

Malcolm Collins: universe. All right, well I’ll see

Simone Collins: you later. Okay.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, what are we doing for dinner?

Reheating?

Simone Collins: I’m going to be working it out. I might do some... I was thinking about doing a mixture of some roasted Brussels sprouts [00:38:00] with butter and some, like, kosher salt dusting on the top, and then also some meat over some maybe, like, fried rice or something. Like, a just kind of a mismatch of- No,

Malcolm Collins: I mean, did we freeze yesterday’s dinner?

Simone Collins: We haven’t phrased, frozen yesterday’s. But I’m not gonna just serve leftovers, like-

Malcolm Collins: To guests, yeah, you’re right, you’re right, you’re right ...

Simone Collins: yeah, so we need to do something new and cool. And so I might take out some of our, our batch-prepped cool s- cool dishes, and zhuzh them up.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, whatever you want. Rendang is something Steve would, Mika would probably like.

Simone Collins: That would require a new, like, coinage of, of meat, which I do not have.

Malcolm Collins: No, I mean, if we have one frozen.

Simone Collins: Oh, we, we might actually. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Ren- rendang over rice with roasted Brussels sprouts as a side.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

Simone Collins: Okay. I’ll, I’ll check with them. I’ll, I’ll give them some options after seeing what I’ve, I’ve batch prepped and then- All right

we’ll go forward from [00:39:00] there.

Malcolm Collins: Okay, so anyway the, the obvious, like what I would think initially is how inexpensive can I get them at scale, right? Yeah. But the reality is is that the inexpensive path is either you’re just retrofitting existing drones, which we’re already seeing people do pretty competently- Absolutely

in, in environments like you know, Iran was doing this pretty well, was just like the lobbed systems. You know, you’re getting this out of Russia. So then the question would be- Yeah ... if I was gonna build something, how would w- I make it meaningfully differentiated from the other systems that are out there right now?

And the way I would make it meaningfully different is twofold. First, one of the big problems you have with the drone systems out there right now is they’ve gotten pretty good at the ones that are designed at taking out tanks, right? To the point where it doesn’t even make sense to field tanks in the way that you traditionally would have been fealing- fielding tanks in a war.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: And so that means you [00:40:00] have much more personnel movement and much more individual drone movement. So like small things where like just lobbing an explosive isn’t necessarily as useful. Now the idea of like the gun drone, these do exist, right? But the core problem with them is kickback, right?

You, you have a, a flying thing, you’re shooting. Minor

Simone Collins: difficulty, yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Right, minor difficulty. And two, all of the systems that are made to prevent the sort of lobbed drones, the explosive drones, are also good at these, right? So if you’re in Ukraine and you’re trying to like find a path through the Russians, basically you’re trying to find like invisible corridors that don’t have drone blocking setups around them that sort of block where the drones are going, right?

Oh,

Simone Collins: yes.

Malcolm Collins: Okay. Yeah. So you’ve got two problems, right? One is good kickback, the second is the drone defense that blocks radio signals. So how can you get around both of these problems?

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Right? Okay, so [00:41:00] problem number one is what if you had a drone that was actually, while it could fly, its predominant strategy in terms of, like, the way it moves and does its thing is landing and locking into ground for something like a more sniper rifle type approach.

Where it’s, it’s got a, a, a, a, a weapon on it that isn’t designed to fire-

Simone Collins: It’s a mobile firing turret ...

Malcolm Collins: a mobile firing turret. But then secondly, that it had a a wheel-based system as well. So it would be really designed to camouflage itself. Like, the idea is, is it gets itself in position and it can stay there for a long time, basically completely quiet to an enemy so they can reposition their...

So, like, suppose you’re losing ground in a territory or something like that you could just leave these out. The enemy moves their anti-air defense to the other side of [00:42:00] them. Mm. And you can reactivate them, and the- Yeah, you can...

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Mm-hmm ... and the important thing about the wheel system on them as well is the wheel system plus an AI navigation system would be really good for when they’re blocked.

It basically allows them to drive through blocked territory until it gets to a space where you can reestablish radio connection, and then fly it into a place where you would want to fly it into to lock it into place.

Simone Collins: A Wall-E that shoots and flies.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. So the idea is, is it’s, it’s a rethinking of the way that a drone would work in a military context.

Mm-hmm. Outside of these very simplistic ones to basically one that’s built around camouflage, sniping, and moving through AI drone detection systems. And the idea is, is that if you could get it good enough at long distance aim, which I think you could with an automated system pretty well given what, like, what we have with, with things, you wouldn’t need to worry as much about counter drone systems [00:43:00] because it would be very difficult to detect is the idea.

But we’ll see. And one, one of the challenges of it would be uneven terrain. So you’d probably need some sort of, like... But if you do tank treads, then it’s gonna be too heavy. Yeah. Hmm. You could probably do some form of, like, a hovercraft utilizing the same fans that are used to fly it to pump air out the bottom.

Simone Collins: I don’t know. I would look at kids’ toys really as a base because they’re meant-

Malcolm Collins: Well, that’s why I was thinking hovercrafts, because I had some hovercraft toys as a kid. Yeah. And they’re really not that hard to create. You just need to create a suction padding at the bottom with like a styrofoam, which can be very lightweight and inexpensive.

And then you blow

Simone Collins: air- But can hovercraft travel on uneven terrain?

Malcolm Collins: What?

Simone Collins: Can hovercraft travel on uneven

Malcolm Collins: terrain? Yeah, very rough terrain. Oh. I mean, that’s the point of hovercrafts often.

Simone Collins: I’m not fa- I’m really [00:44:00] not familiar with hovercrafts.

Malcolm Collins: So basically you’re just making it fly, but at very low altitude.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: And with less power. That’s

Simone Collins: the ... Yeah, interesting.

Malcolm Collins: Obviously the challenge then is, is, is repowering it. How do you handle that? I need to think through. Anyway, fun, fun concept here.

Speaker 4: Whoa. Whoa.

Wow. I got this dinosaur. What would you

Speaker 6: like for dinner, Titan?

Speaker 4: Well, I want macaroni and cheese and then pizza.

Speaker 6: We don’t have any big pizza, but we can make macaroni and cheese.

Speaker 4: But we can spill on floor. Stop it. No, we cannot.

Malcolm and Simone Collins break down Helen Andrews’ “Great Feminization Theory” — the idea that the rise of wokeness, institutional dysfunction, and cancel culture correlates with fields tipping majority-female and importing feminine sociological norms (empathy over rationality, safety over risk, cohesion over competition).

They explore law schools, medicine, media, management, conflict resolution styles, why organizations feminize and then decline, practical solutions, male-only spaces, and how this intersects with marriage, ambition, and building high-agency families in a declining culture.

Show Notes

The theory

* presented by journalist Helen Andrews at the National Conservatism conference in Washington, DC in September 2025

* Speech got over 175K views

* later published as an essay in Compact Magazine in October 2025

* Connects the rise of wokeness and institutional dysfunction to higher percentages of women in formerly male-dominated fields

* Because women bring feminine values that prioritize empathy over rationality, safety over risk, and cohesion over competition

* Notes that many key institutions tipped from majority male to majority female in roughly the same period that “wokeness” intensified:

* law schools (majority female since 2016)

* New York Times staff (majority female since 2018, now 55 percent women)

* Medical schools (majority female since 2019)

* College instructors (majority female since 2023)

* The college‑educated workforce (majority female since 2019).

* Women now 33% of judges (63 percent of those appointed by Joe Biden)

* Women now 46% of managers

* Cites writers like Noah Carl and Bo Winegard & Cory Clark, saying survey data show women more likely than men to prioritize social cohesion over free speech (one cited survey: 71 percent of men favor free speech over cohesion, while 59 percent of women favor cohesion)

* Draws on Joyce Benenson’s book Warriors and Worriers, she reports lab observations that male groups “jockey for talking time, disagree loudly,” then quickly converge on a solution, while female groups focus more on personal relations, eye contact, and turn‑taking, paying less attention to the assigned task

* Attributes the rise of cancellations to women’s conflict aversion

* That’s interesting—I hadn’t seen it as being that way but it is

* References research and primate observations claiming that males are quicker to reconcile after conflict, while females favor slow, covert, ongoing competition within a group, and generalizes this to say men tend toward open conflict and reconciliation, whereas women undermine or ostracize enemies

* Examples cited

* Larry Summers’ resignation from Harvard in 2006 (after his comments about women in science)

* Bari Weiss’ resignation from NYT (Weiss described colleagues calling her a racist and bigot in internal Slack, and shunning people friendly with her)

* Doctors wearing political pins, endorsing Black Lives Matter protests during Covid as “public health” despite lockdown rules, and generally importing political causes into professional settings as a “failure to compartmentalize” tied to feminization

* Causes cited

* Andrews claims feminization is not organic but engineered via anti‑discrimination law

* because under‑representation of women invites lawsuits and huge settlements (she cites large companies that paid nine‑figure or multi‑million settlements over gender bias or “frat boy culture”), firms are pressured to hire and promote women and to suppress “masculine” office culture

* THe creation of hostile-to-men environments

* women’s preferred norms drive men out rather than women simply “outcompeting” men

Is it backed up by actual evidence?

Support

* Medicine

* Momen comprised only 9.7% of doctors in 1970

* Reached 32.4% by 2010 and continue to increase

* Medical students are now over 50% female

* Law

* Women were just 4.9% of lawyers in 1970

* Rose to 33.4% by 2010

* Reached 41% by 2024

* Academia

* Women law faculty now constitute the majority among those with 20 years of experience or less

* Women are projected to become the majority of full-time faculty in ABA-accredited law schools by 2024-2025

* Government

* In the U.S. Senate, women held 0% of seats in 1973 and 1975, rising to just 2% through most of the 1980s, then accelerating to 25% by 2023.

* The House of Representatives showed similar patterns: women were 3.2% of representatives in 1973, 10.8% by 1993, and 28.5% by 2023.

* Women’s representation in presidential Cabinet positions has fluctuated more dramatically based on administration, ranging from 0% in the early 1970s to a historic high of 48% under President Biden starting in 2021.

* Re: General government employment: While women made substantial gains in government employment from the 1940s through the early 2000s—rising from less than one-third to nearly half of the federal workforce—their representation has largely plateaued around 45-46% since the 2000s and has begun declining in absolute numbers due to recent federal workforce reductions.

Mixed

* Journalism

* 1971: Women represented only 22% of daily newspaper journalists and 11% of television journalists

* 1982: women comprised 34% of daily newspaper staff and 33% of television journalists

* 2001: women had reached 37% of daily newspaper newsroom staff and 40% of television news staff

* 2022: 40.9% of US journalists are women

* television (44.1%) and radio (43.7%)

* weekly newspapers (41.7%)

* daily newspapers (37.2%)

* wire services (34.1%)

* News magazines (43.9%) (up by about 10% over the past decade)

* Online media (40.4%) (up by about 10% over the past decade)

* One 2023 survey found journalists nearly evenly split by gender, with 51% men and 46% women.

Contra

* Business

* Corporations in general

* Women represented about 47% of the U.S. labor force in 2000

* As of 2025, women STILL constitute approximately 47% of total U.S. employees.

* Women were just 35% of the workforce in 1970, rising to 47% by 1990. Between 1966 and 2013, women’s participation rates in the workforce increased from 31.5% to 48.7%

* Startups (down over time)

* For over a decade, only ~2% of venture-backed startups are exclusively female founded

* In 2024, female-only founding teams received just 2.3% of global VC funding ($6.7 billion out of $289 billion total), while all-male teams captured 83.6%.

* This 2% figure has remained largely unchanged since at least 2017, when female-only teams received 2.5% of funding. By 2026, some reports indicate this has declined to 1-2%

* Female workforce participation is below its peak

* Women’s labor force participation peaked at 60% in 1999-2000 and has since declined to 57.5% as of March 2025, remaining well below men’s rate of 67.5%

* Women still constitute only 47% of the total U.S. labor force, and projections suggest this will remain “slightly less than half” through 2032

* Women remain underrepresented in senior leadership positions where institutional power is concentrated

* Women hold only 27% of U.S. medical school dean positions and 25% of department chair roles despite representing 45% of faculty

* In law, men still “dominate the upper echelons of the legal profession through federal judgeships, state supreme courts, law firm partnerships and corporate counsel positions”

* Women represent only 33% of law faculty with over 30 years of experience and comprise just 38% of C-suite positions in corporate America (up from 31% in 2021) (See: National Jurist)

The Criticism

* Andrews presents no policy solutions

* Some push back on Andrews’ argument that women are emotional while men are rational

Helen Andrews’ Background

* American conservative political commentator and author

* Senior editor, The American Conservative

* Features editor, Commonplace Magazine

* Graduated from Yale University in 2008 (BA in Religious Studies)

* Lived in Sydney, Australia from 2012 to 2017 (worked as a policy analyst and think tank researcher)

* 2021 book: Boomers: The Men and Women Who Promised Freedom and Delivered Disaster

* Argues that the Baby Boomer generation harmed American culture

* Profiles six prominent Boomers: Steve Jobs, Aaron Sorkin, Jeffrey Sachs, Camille Paglia, Al Sharpton, and Sonia Sotomayor

Episode Transcript

Malcolm Collins: Hello, Simone. Today we are gonna be talking about The Great Feminization Theory by Helen Andrews. In summation, if you are not familiar with the theory, ‘cause it’s been doing the rounds recently, and it might have some explanatory power to society’s current state.

She specifically looks at when various fields began to become majority female, be that university professors, law school students, scientists, management in the United States, most of which at this point is majority female. And she pinpoints the dates that these transitions happened to the rise of wokeness as a social phenomenon.

Arguing that what wokeness really is is a female sociological approach, like what makes female minds different from male minds, applied at the civilizational management scale. And I find it very interesting. I told Simone to dig into it. I mean, [00:01:00] unfortunately she’s got a cold today, so you’re gonna have to have a, a, a, a weak voice Simone here.

But she is a woman, so she, on- only she can truly understand the horrors of the female brain.

Simone Collins: Yeah, I don’t know. Whenever I have some kind of throat problem, I just think of Gentleman Prefer Blondes when at one point a boy speaking from a trench coat that Marilyn Monroe’s hiding behind and she’s like, “Laryngitis,” and that’s all I think of when I have this voice. And that’s such a great, like, that home film is such a great study of gender roles and, and playing with them.

Anyway, though- ... i’m, I’m, I, I think there’s a lot of merit to this theory, but I also think that there’s some, I don’t know. I wanna, I wanna question it, and I even have one kind of, a- another theory about how maybe men are responsible for this too. So I wanna hear your thoughts.

Malcolm Collins: Okay, go into it.

Simone Collins: The, this [00:02:00] first emerged last year in September when Helen Andrews gave a speech about this great feminization theory at the National Conservatism Conference in Washington, DC, and the speech was super popular.

It got over 175,000 views. So then she decided to publish an essay about it in Combat magazine that October, and that was just when this dude was born. And yes, like you said, she connects the rise of wokeness and institutional dysfunction to higher percentages of women in formerly male-dominated fields.

And that’s really the key part here, because men still are the dominant people in employment now, I mean, at least formal employment. But her point is that women bring feminine values that prioritize empathy over rationality and safety over risk and cohesion over competition, and that many institutions that were really key in influencing how the rest of society works had this tipping point over, like, a series of maybe, [00:03:00] like, five to seven years.

And she cites specifically law schools, which became majority female since 2016, New York Times staff, which was majority female since 2018 and is now 55% women, and medical schools, which became majority female since 2019, and then also the college-educated workforce, which was majority female since 2019.

So these are really recent tipping points. Women are now 33% of judges additionally, and 63% of those were appointed by Joe Biden. Again, this is super recent. And women are also 46% of managers, as you pointed out. And in her more detailed article, she cites writers like Noah Carl and Bo Winegard and Corey Clark whose survey data show that women are more likely to prioritize social cohesion over free speech.

For example, one cited survey has 71% of men [00:04:00] favoring free speech over cohesion, while 59% of women favor cohesion. I think we might have even covered this in our podcast.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And

Simone Collins: then she also draws on Joyce Benenson’s book Warriors and Worriers. Like, isn’t worrying. And where she reports lab observations that male groups will jockey for taking time and disagree really loudly, but then converge on a solution.

Whereas female groups focus more on, like, personal relations and eye contact and turn-taking. Like, classic stuff that we think first really saw with the rise of Occupy Wall Street. And then they pay less attention to the actual assigned task. She also attributes the rise of cancellations to women’s conflict aversion.

And I think of that, that’s the first of her theories that I find to be really revelatory, because I hadn’t seen it as that way, but it really is. Like, the way that women deal with conflict is they just freeze people out and cold shoulder them. There’s all this, like, behind closed doors [00:05:00] talking about people behind their backs.

Whereas men just trash talk you to your face, and, like, you work it out in person.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah Which I think obviously is true I noticed this and we talked about it, with the conflict between Trump and Elon. Which was- Yeah ... really refreshing and I do not think damaged either of their reputations nearly as much as it would have had it been a standard woke fight.

Where they just, like, basically to each other’s faces on X, said a bunch of mean stuff for a week and then they got over it, and nobody cared anymore.

Simone Collins: Yeah ... and

Malcolm Collins: it, it felt so different from the types of political battles that we are used to out of, like, the Clintons and stuff like that. Where Hillary would never just go out there and say a bunch of mean things against another mainstream Democratic candidate.

Simone Collins: No, they like, they, they shadowban you to the point- Mm ... where, like, you don’t necessarily even know you’ve been frozen out, you just have been. It’s like, the, there’s no, there’s no due process. You don’t have a chance to even have your say. You just get uninvited at some point.

Malcolm Collins: Well,

Simone Collins: and that’s not even true.

And I heard in popular, like, [00:06:00] mainstream outlets-

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, mm-hmm ...

Simone Collins: that cancel culture was attributed to, well, they say it came out of, like, gay culture- Yeah ... specifically. Like, at least the, the, the linguistic origins of it came from gay culture apparently. But yeah, I mean, like the can- the, the, the, the act of cancellation-

Malcolm Collins: It didn’t, by the way

as a- And I have explained this to you before. You just refuse to believe it, because it’s, it’s very well documented. What do

Simone Collins: you mean?

Malcolm Collins: So cancel culture, the word cancel-

Simone Collins: Yeah ...

Malcolm Collins: came from the campaign #cancelcolbert- No, but- ... as in get his show- Canceled. Then people retroactively, as people do for many things, attempt to pin it to either Black or gay culture because this is just something progressive culture does.

It cannot admit that something had a random origin or a white origin, so it will always go back and try to find any historical incidents of [00:07:00] gay or Black people using a word in a specific way so it can say actually that everybody knows that they do this. It’s always like, “This came from Black culture.

This came from gay culture.” And you’re like, “Well, obviously not everything came from one of those two cultures.” And with cancellation, it’s one of the clearest examples because to cancel a television show is a normal thing to say. The very first major widespread campaign of cancellation, I just cannot deal with this historical lamp what is it?

L- lamp gassing? Light, light gassing?

Simone Collins: Gaslighting.

Malcolm Collins: Gaslighting.

Simone Collins: Yes.

Malcolm Collins: Gaslighting, yes. This, this historic gaslighting that this came literally from anything other than ca- #CancelColbert. That was, they, like no other incident was nearly that big, and she clearly had no connection to gay culture. She clearly didn’t get the term from gay, gay culture.

She wanted to cancel his television show.

Simone Collins: Well, anyway, it’s, it’s, it’s, I, I just never thought of it, I never realized the [00:08:00] extent to which it is a very deeply feminine way of conflict resolution.

Malcolm Collins: Just to say- It was a woman, by the way, who did this ...

Simone Collins: conf- it’s, it’s very, like, direct conflict adverse conflict resolution.

But one that is ultimately less just because it doesn’t give the aggrie- or the accused party a chance to defend themselves. It just ruins them

Malcolm Collins: without- And one study you

Simone Collins: haven’t studied,

Malcolm Collins: Which is obviously very important to all of this in terms of the rise of women-

Simone Collins: Yeah ...

Malcolm Collins: is the study that showed I, I hope our audience is familiar with this one by now because it is very big to my understanding of, of, of reality now where people played a game against other people for resources.

And some of these individuals were shown to be cheating, and some of these individuals were shown to not be cheating. And men and women were shown them being shocked while they were playing the game. And for men when somebody wasn’t cheating and they were shocked, it distressed men and, and, and made them upset.

But when they were cheating and they were shocked, it made [00:09:00] men satisfied. It gave them a dopamine hit. But for women, it made them equally upset whether they were cheating or whether they were playing fairly when

Simone Collins: they were shocked. Yeah, they didn’t care. They didn’t care about, like, punishment. They don’t, they don’t want any form of

Malcolm Collins: punishment on anyone

Simone Collins: Yeah, be it just or not.

Yeah. Which is a, a another key flashpoint in modern society. The, the, the key division being those who wish to enforce our laws and those who do not. Though at a recent dinner party it was Chatham House Rules, but someone that many of you will know well as a, a major, like, thought leader, pointed out that for a very long time, it is, it has been a debate in society about enforcing rules.

It was, like, uncool to enforce laws. So yeah- Wait, when was that? ... it’s not necessarily new, but it’s certainly-

Malcolm Collins: Sorry, when? When did they say this was true?

Simone Collins: Like, since the 1960s.

Malcolm Collins: Okay, that’s not a long time.

Simone Collins: Okay, fair enough.

Malcolm Collins: And- It’s, it’s a long time in- No, I mean, it is, it is relevant [00:10:00] because, you know, I pointed out that the the Quakers were incredibly against enforcing rules.

And, Well,

Simone Collins: they were all about... They were like, you didn’t visit the right person after you got married, you’d be, like, frozen out of your Quaker society. Well,

Malcolm Collins: they

Simone Collins: had a- They were all- ...

Malcolm Collins: 22-step process after you got married, and if you did any part of it wrong-

Simone Collins: It was more than two steps. Are you kidding me?

It was like 18 steps. I said 22. Okay. Thank you. 22.

Malcolm Collins: Yes. Continue.

Simone Collins: Anyway. Anyway so, in addition to the... Oh, sorry, additional research that she cites is primate stuff, like how males are quicker to reconcile after conflict, whereas female primates show a lot more of that, like, slow burn resentment that you get with women.

Yeah ... so she’s just trying to sort of generalize to say that men both as primates and as, as Homo sapiens, tend toward open and rapidly resolved conflict, whereas women tend to undermine and ostracize and make things a lot more long-term. [00:11:00] And then she cites three sort of salient examples in her argument.

She talks about Larry Summers’ resignation from Harvard in 2006 after he made comments about women in science. It feels like just yesterday, which is crazy. That was 20 years ago. And then Bari Weiss’ resignation from The New York Times in which she described colleagues calling her a racist and a bigot in an internal Slack, how people even who were just friendly with her were shunned.

And she also describes doctors wearing political pins and endorsing Black Lives Matter protests during- By

Malcolm Collins: the way, I love Bari Weiss’s story there. That, that, that turned around on those people’s faces.

Simone Collins: Yeah. I mean, seems to be working out pretty well for her.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, right?

Simone Collins: But yeah, the, the doctors were endorsing going to protests even though it was a public health risk to the lockdown rules and, like, violating lockdown rules.

And- Could you explain

Malcolm Collins: how that works?

Simone Collins: Sorry ... integrating- You remember how during COVID-19 a [00:12:00] lot of doctors were- Yeah, I

Malcolm Collins: remember, but I don’t understand why that’s relevant to the woman thing. Explain the connection there.

Simone Collins: Oh, she’s, she’s describing how an increase in women in the medical profession led for a shift in emphasizing sort of emotion and sentiment and care, like concerns about social justice over like literally concerns about human health and chronic disease.

Malcolm Collins: Ah, so that’s when doctors became useless.

Simone Collins: Yeah, they’re like, “Who cares about transmitting COVID? Go out to the Black Lives Matter protest.” So, you know, that bothers me because, you know, they, they won’t, they won’t emphasize palliative care ‘cause they just wanna keep people alive even when they only have like terrible quality of life left.

But they’re like, “Yeah, go ahead, die as long as it’s going to a Black Lives Matter protest.” And in terms of the causes she cited for this, and some of the, the primary criticism that she actually gets for this is she doesn’t really get really into like how to fix the [00:13:00] problem. But she does point out that basically legalizing a lot of this was a big source of the issue.

That by making organizations more liable for discrimination- Mm-hmm ... and, and making anti-discrimination lawsuits a lot easier to do, workplaces had to become more female friendly places and they couldn’t really tell you to guess this weird female behavior. And then if, for example, in an, in an organization you have an under-representation of women and then you’re therefore exposed to lawsuits, you’re gonna get a lot more women.

And you’re gonna have people do anything they can to avoid the risk. Right. She also mentions that like, basically once you get this like tipping point of women in an organization, you just kind of create this de facto hostile to men environment.

Malcolm Collins: I’m so sorry, he’s just like screaming. Well, I mean, I think something that’s really important with all of this, and it’s something that I think [00:14:00] parts of our audience miss because they molder over the unfairness of all of this in terms of the life paths that they told were open to them when they were growing up and then going into the traditional workforce, is that a lot of these companies are failing at this point.

They are falling apart in terms of their ability to competently produce products. It is quite shocking actually that when we look at the cutting edge AIs right now, which are obviously the cutting edge of technology, require huge amounts of investment very competent teams, everything like that, right?

You would expect because unlike previous generations of transfer when you go from one generation of tech to the next, Typically, the, the, the history was is that the new tech required very little money to operate and could be done very inexpensively. And even though during this one particular technological revolution this is not as much the case, it is still the new [00:15:00] and young AI companies that are dominating.

It is not the Geminis, it is not whatever the hell Microsoft made, Copilot. It’s, it’s not the Facebook, it’s not the, I mean, Facebook is maybe... No, Llama is terrible. It’s, it’s not Apple. Apple AI is, like, an actual joke. It’s not Adobe. It’s not, you, you know, it’s not any of the mainstream players, right?

It’s, it’s, it’s the little guys. It’s your Groks and your Mistrals and your OpenAI’s and Anthropic’s and everything like that. And so the question is, is how is this even conceivable? And the answer is that the organizations that l- live for a long period of time feminize so quickly and adopt feminine institutional norms that they are no longer able to compete.

And this is why if you go to, like, our website, like rfab.ai, a lot of people are like, “Wow, your, like, super search feature is, like, really good in terms of, like, using AI to cross-check AI across multiple models. Like, why are none of the big companies using this?

Speaker: Note [00:16:00] this morning, , we are uploading the ability on rfab.ai to on SuperSearch upload things like documents and spreadsheets. So improving every day

Malcolm Collins: Oh, you have, like, a card game that uses AI.

That’s, I haven’t seen this implemented before. Oh, your chatbot system’s better than most of the other chatbot systems. Are you just, like, two people building this?” And it’s like, yeah, you know, um The, the reason we’ve been able to do this is because we are not bogged down by the giant self-referencing bureaucracy.

And a lot of people, I think, get mad at being frozen out of parts of the tech space right now, when the reality is, is the parts of the tech industry that are being monopolized are going to collapse. And the people who have invested in- Yeah,

Simone Collins: and I think you’re mentioning this, like in light of, of people talking about like immigrant groups, freezing them out.

Like- Yeah, they’re like incompetent immigrants ... if you’re in a, if you’re in a company that is like mass importing what you perceive to be incompetent immigrants, [00:17:00] that company’s not long for this world anyway.

Malcolm Collins: Exactly. You should be able to out-compete what that company is doing, right? Like, if they’re mass importing incompetent immigrants, then the presumably the quality of the product’s going to go down.

If the quality of the product doesn’t go down, then they didn’t need you anyway, or the immigrants weren’t as incompetent as you thought they were. And I think that that’s really a critical point, right? So the question is, is, is then people are like, “Well, you’ve got natural monopolies.” And yes, natural monopolies matter, but you can still break natural monopolies.

It has happened multiple... Sorry, for people who don’t understand what a natural monopoly is typically in industries that involve two-sided marketplaces search, social media, these are good examples of them. You typically get a case in which one and the largest company ends up being 85% of the market.

And we have seen these dominate for a long time in something like search or advertisement or, Those are really the only two where I know... amazon, Amazon [00:18:00] is the, the third one. But they’re not as stable as you would think. So if you look at something like social media, social media is a natural monopoly that’s undergone multiple disruptions throughout our lifetimes, where one brand was completely eradicated almost.

Another is online dating. Online dating is a two-sided marketplace that has undergone complete transformations multiple times in our lifetime. So you can disrupt this if you can create a better product. Oh, another one that’s undergone complete disruption is instant messaging systems. Instant messaging is a two-sided marketplace that has undergone multiple enormous disruptions.

Obviously the biggest one that we would want to see disrupted is video streaming. But it is incredibly expensive to do, which is one of the reasons it hasn’t been. And a lot of... Yeah, it’s, it’s, it’s difficult. What you would really need to do is have a site. Like if I was going to attempt to compete with YouTube, which Rumble is, I, not doing it the way I would do it is to essentially mirror [00:19:00] and host YouTube videos alongside the videos that my own site hosted that couldn’t easily be taken down.

So there is no cost to somebody to switch over to my site in terms of the videos that they like on YouTube. And you could do this legally. Just use an embedding- But

Simone Collins: where would they get the money for all that hosting? I guess something disruptive could change that and make it more affordable.

Malcolm Collins: No, you don’t need to host the YouTube videos.

They’re hosted on YouTube’s backend. Oh. All the videos that you’re ho- They’re just basically embedded videos that are acting as if they’re videos on your platform.

Simone Collins: Oh, yeah. Okay, I get it. I get

Malcolm Collins: it. But again, this is just like, just think through this stuff, right? Like...

Simone Collins: Yeah. Anyway, what I think is interesting, I mean, like to her point, just in terms of talking through the, the, the argument she made and whether it has merit, I do think it’s interesting that she points out this tipping point, but one issue is that, like, if this is the problem, if the [00:20:00] problem is women entering these formerly male-dominated fields, what percentage of women is too many?

Because when you actually look at medicine okay, yes, over 50% of medical students are now female, but by 2010, only around like a third of women in medicine or, sorry, of people in medicine, professionals in medicine were female. So that’s not, that’s not that much. And women, I mean, that’s compared with only 9.7% in 1970.

But like, is 30% too much? Like, w- ‘cause 2006 is the first example of this cancellation being an issue. Like, presumably by 2010 that was already an issue. I’m not sure, like when is, when is too many women too many women? Also looking at law, so in 1970 only 4.9% of lawyers were women, and then by 2010 it was similar to medical [00:21:00] professions and women, about a third of women.

Or sorry, a third of lawyers were women. And then by 2024 it’s 41%, but it’s not that most women are, or sorry, most lawyers are women. It’s just that there’s more women than ever before. So part of me wonders like where is the tipping point, because they’re not necessarily female dominated. And also an important point is that all really.. M- most leadership positions still are overwhelmingly male dominated So if you actually look at, like, the, the leadership of every major company y- you’re not gonna, you’re not gonna see that many women. Women hold only 27% of US medical school dean positions and 25% of department chair roles, even though they rep- I think

Malcolm Collins: that’s really misleading and an illusion.

Really? ... specifically what creates this illusion is for the very most senior of roles most of them were fought over [00:22:00] a couple decades ago. So a lot of

Simone Collins: people- So you think there’s just a big delay when it comes to senior leadership?

Malcolm Collins: Well, yeah, a lot of people in these roles are in their 70s, right?

Like, of course they’re overwhelmingly male. The world was different back then. So I do not think it’s, it’s meaningful to point that out.

Simone Collins: Okay, ‘cause I mean, it’s also the same, like women are only 38% of C-suite positions in America.

Malcolm Collins: S- again what’s the average age of a C-suite position in America?

Simone Collins: Let’s just- Yeah, okay ... keep it that way. So you just think that there’s a delay there? ‘Cause part of me wonders if men are still dominant in these positions, is this kind of a comp- a competitive tactic to get rid of middle management that are men who could c- potentially supplant them, and just replace them with less competent, less engaged women who are also less likely to supplant them, thereby solidifying their position in leadership?

Like it’s a gerontocratic status maintenance strategy. You don’t think that that’s in [00:23:00] play?

Malcolm Collins: No. Th- it’s, it’s just that they’re old. Like, as, as the workforce ages up, it seems very obvious to me C-suites are gonna become increasingly female, as we’ve already seen. In fact, I would ar- go so far as to argue if you just look at the math of when women began to dominate management positions and then age it forwards you’re, you’re going to see C-suite positions changing at the same rate.

The only place where this really changes is outside of major companies, if you’re talking at companies that were still run by their original founder. And if you’re looking at companies still run by their original founder, of course they’ll be overwhelmingly male because th- you know, these are the, the competent people who are being frozen out of the workforce right now.

Not even like men are smart. It’s just like if you’re a competent woman, you’re going to get a job. If you’re a competent man, you’re less likely to get a job deserving of your competence.

Simone Collins: That’s fair. And also, when you look at younger people in, for example, like law school faculty women in law school faculty are now the majority among those [00:24:00] with 20 years of experience or less.

So I guess per what you’re saying, we can expect leadership to be Majority female in most fields going forward. At least, like medical, law, academia. And also- Yeah ... I mean, similar things are happening in government. I mean, even historically, government was, in terms of like federal jobs and stuff, there were a lot of women working in government.

But now it actually, it’s plateaued since the 2000s. It, it plateaued around 45 to 46%, which is more representative of just the number of, the percentage of women in the workforce. So I guess government isn’t that good at representing it. But now in terms of like House of Representatives, as of 2023, 28.5% of House of Representatives members were women, and in the Senate it was 25% in 2023.

So it’s still a minority, so I also wonder like how many, how, what [00:25:00] percentage of women is too many? I’m just not sure.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Well, I mean- In journalism- Again, keep in mind, congressmen and senators are enormously old. So again, it’s, it’s not as relevant, but continue. Yeah.

Simone Collins: I guess that’s fair.

Malcolm Collins: Well,

Simone Collins: and they don’t exercise that much

Malcolm Collins: control

Simone Collins: journalism personally I think, like the New York Times I think is an outlier in terms of being majority women because of, as of 2022- 20- ... only 40, 40% of journalists in the US were women. 44% in television, 43% in radio, 41% in newspapers, 37% of daily newspapers, 34% of wire services. So-

Malcolm Collins: But with a lot of newspaper media it’s, it’s really irrelevant.

And this is again what I’m talking about, right? Like, as these institutions feminize, they became irrelevant. As Hollywood feminized, it became irrelevant. As newspapers re- feminized, they became irrelevant. We are seeing a society where, yes, women, immigrants, [00:26:00] Indians may capture organizations, but often not long after they do, if they are not competent, those organizations begin to erode in terms of their ability to innovate and market dominance.

Simone Collins: Well, speaking of erosion, it could be that this feminization theory, while it has its merits also is a, it’s like a short-lived ph- phenomenon, and as you pointed out, it’s kind of toxic and, I mean, you point this out extensively in The Pragmatist’s Guide to Crafting Religion. Call it feminization, call it the woke mind virus, whatever you wanna call it, urban monoculture, it is parasitoidal, as you say.

Like it destroys the things that it takes over. And when you look at where you see the fewest women, I think that’s where we’re gonna see the greatest takeover over time. So if you look at, for example, startups Women just aren’t there. For over a decade, only about 2% of [00:27:00] venture-backed startups are exclusively female founded.

And that’s down actually, I think, from before. So- Well,

Malcolm Collins: yeah, I mean, I... There was a period where- I think around- ... it was like a point of pride to fund a female startup, and that’s not even a thing anymore. Like, the female- Yeah ... startup groups have mostly- Yeah ... dissolved because everybody realized it was stupid to give women money.

Simone Collins: Yeah, well, and there were some high-profile busts that scaled-

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Uh-huh ... badly. Some high-profile busts. Yeah, I think so. So- Some with holdings,

Simone Collins: yeah ...

Malcolm Collins: it’s, it’s actually more than that. So both of us worked in venture capital, and if you have worked with all-female founding teams even when their companies are doing good, they’re often kind of delusional about like, how management should work, how their team should work, how they construct things, what they should actually be focused on.

So even where I’ve seen a female-founded company, you know, just serendipitously take off it is a nightmare wrangling female CEOs into not self-sabotaging because they [00:28:00] constantly want to focus on whatever sort of messaging is capturing them that day. I, I cannot imagine, and I bemoan our audience so much, having to marry women whereas I got to marry- Oh, I’m so sorry everyone

an autist like Simone. The, the... That’s her gender, by the way. Au- au- Yeah,

Simone Collins: I don’t count.

Right, I identify as re, and those are my pronouns. Re ... really though, like I think the, the best thing about married couples is their pronouns become we and they , so.

Malcolm Collins: Is those- Yeah ...

Simone Collins: are those

Malcolm Collins: your neo-pronouns?

Simone Collins: Yeah, my neo-pronouns are we/they so , whatever. But also, another important thing I think to note, and I think this is only gonna become a lot more profound as AI rises, female workforce participation is actually below its peak.

So women’s labor force participation, it peaked at 60% in the [00:29:00] 1999-2000 range, which I didn’t know. I didn’t know that it got so high for women, and then declined to 57.5% as of March 2025. So it’s below the rate of men’s, which is 67.5%. And right now, women are 47% of the total US workforce, and that it’s gonna probably remain slightly less than half.

But-

Malcolm Collins: Well- ...

Simone Collins: that’s what projections say. I think as AI rises, I would not be at all surprised if in the 2030s we saw it dip well below 45, possibly even go to 44%, and then go even further below in the 2040s Like to 40

Malcolm Collins: Mm-hmm

Simone Collins: So we’ll see

Malcolm Collins: Well-

Simone Collins: But ...

Malcolm Collins: I mean, we already saw this in after DOGE, which we’ve talked about in our episode where like wokes abandoned Black women where we point out that there is a huge glut of Black female unemployment right now [00:30:00] because the organizations that were captured by DEI and over-employing them collapsed at the same time as government s- services, partially due to DOGE, stopped hiring people solely based on DEI.

And a lot of Black women had made that basically their entire career, and it’s caused a 50% explosion in Black female unemployment in just the last year.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: So, so we’re actually already seeing the fallout of this. And the c- Yeah.

Simone Collins: Well, because it’s, it’s inherently unsustainable. And I think in the end, like if you resolve conflicts by not actually resolving them, by shadow banning and canceling people, you’re going to let problems fester.

And I shared with you on WhatsApp this graph that went a little bit viral on X this week that showed a trajectory of basically like the male response to conflict resolution versus the fem- res- female response to conflict resolution. It’s a graph- where, where

Malcolm Collins: did you send this? ... that goes

Simone Collins: from the functional system to dysfunctional system.

I’ll resend it to you on WhatsApp right now.

Malcolm Collins: Are you talking [00:31:00] about Elon’s?

Simone Collins: Elon retweeted it.

Malcolm Collins: Okay, that graph. Okay. Okay, yeah, I know what you’re talking about. Okay, continue.

I mean, this is, this is reflected in Leafly’s latest song is basically about this as a theory. You know, you’ve, you’ve

Simone Collins: got

Malcolm Collins: a- Yeah.

Simone Collins: It shows basically unkind truth to unkind truth to unkind truth makes a functional system become more functional, versus kind lie to kind lie to kind lie makes a dysfunctional system even more dysfunctional over time, or any system more dysfunctional over time. And that’s basically just the, the difference between male and female conflict resolution.

And also just general treatment of issues in general. Like women, as through various forms of intrasexual competition and mate guarding, will tell other women, “Oh, like eat that piece of cake,” or, “You do look great,” or, you know, “Dump him,” even when they really shouldn’t be told that. And it ultimately is to their detriment.

[00:32:00] Whereas men will be like, “Dude, you’re getting fat,” or like, “No, you know, she’s out of your league anyway. You should, you know-

Malcolm Collins: Yeah ...

Simone Collins: give up and be a better partner.” Like that, you, you, you see men telling each other the unkind truths and that’s, I think, why ultimately they’re kind of behind most of society’s major innovations because you’re not gonna get- I, I kinda don’t think

Malcolm Collins: that’s why or even the primary reason men innovate more than women.

I think-

Simone Collins: Just testosterone? Is that what you’re gonna

Malcolm Collins: reckon it’s? It’s neurological differences.

Simone Collins: And then what? Also being smarter on average?

Malcolm Collins: I didn’t say that. I just said neurological differences, sociological

Simone Collins: differences.

Malcolm Collins: Come on, Simone. We- we’re not, we’re not going for a channel ban here, okay?

Simone Collins: I wonder, would, would, would recognizing that men are on average smarter than women get us in trouble?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, it would get us in trouble, Simone. So we don’t recognize that.

Simone Collins: So we never... Yeah, we, we, we’re speaking in hypotheticals, of course.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, hypotheticals only. Come on, [00:33:00] Simone. Right. I’m not the smarter one in this relationship, it’s clearly you. This is why you’re doing all the analysis for us.

Simone Collins: Surely, surely you could hypothetically be the smarter one,

Malcolm Collins: right?

Hypothetically.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

Simone Collins: So let’s just say hypothetically. But I mean, so the biggest criticism that Helen Andrews faced with is that she had no solution, and I guess the only solution we’ve proposed so far is, “Don’t worry, it solves itself.” Like, put women in charge- Well, no ... they’ll bring feminism to

Malcolm Collins: the ground It solves itself if you are diligent in guarding against it as we rebuild the economy ourselves with our own companies.

Simone Collins: Yeah, I mean, the, the most practical solution for the problems that she points out is don’t make companies liable for being male-friendly spaces or for being female hostile spaces. But how, like, how functionally do you do

Malcolm Collins: that? Hm.

Simone Collins: Repeal laws.

Malcolm Collins: Well, yeah [00:34:00] you know, I, I think you look at RFab and we don’t hire any women.

We don’t have any women. We got you working on it and that’s it, and like calling you a woman feels a little perverse within the current ecosystem.

Simone Collins: I think your larger solution is not hiring humans though, so I don’t know if that counts.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Well, I mean, humans are also pretty terrible though.

Simone Collins: I guess it’s...

Last time we checked. That’s

Malcolm Collins: the whole reason why my expertise is, is not working with people, because people are such a bunch of b******s.

Speaker 22: Yeah.

Speaker 23: I don’t like

Speaker 22: people.

Speaker 23: Oh, well, now that’s not fair, Roy. Have you met all of them?

Speaker 22: I’ve met enough of them. People. What a bunch of b******s.

Simone Collins: They really are, though. But I don’t know. I think, I think just removing legal liability is probably one of the biggest things, but I think there’s also a cultural element [00:35:00] of celebrating, to the point of Bronze Age Pervert actually, male-only spaces.

Malcolm Collins: Mm-hmm.

Simone Collins: Like a lot of, a lot of men online have celebrated this idea of a return to male only spaces, and I encountered some people, like when I was in Austin a couple weeks ago, who were really excited to start like men’s clubs like private invite-only men’s clubs and membership clubs. No domination will never

Malcolm Collins: work

Simone Collins: I don’t know, man.

Like even, I mean, they think men

Malcolm Collins: still want to interact

Simone Collins: in person. They do. They do ... Taylor Lorenz was talking about how now the high class and trendy thing to do. No, I’m telling you, even highly leftist Taylor Lorenz, I just watched her on a podcast today, was talking about how the high class thing to do now is to meet people in person and hang out in person.

And I could absolutely see it being very trendy to only do stuff in person going forward. Mark my words, I’m seeing it. There’s like a tipping point. So- Not

Malcolm Collins: among the high class people I know. Among the high class people I know, I’m seeing the [00:36:00] exact opposite. In person is increasingly seen

Simone Collins: as- Yeah. We’re terminally online, Seth

Malcolm Collins: No. It’s different I’m talking about the ones I know who used to be offline people, right? Like, the, the upper class people I know who used to socialize offline no longer do. Now I mean, here’s an example, Simone. Brian Chow, right? Like, he’s talked to us about the way he does socialization now.

Simone Collins: And- Oh my God, though.

No, no, y- no, that’s the problem, is he has shifted to being literally someone who is employed and working for network state.

Malcolm Collins: No, I know he’s working for network state. Network school. Sorry But the communities that he is most proud of being a member of and associates most with are things like Signal groups and stuff like that.

They are not personal networking events or anything like that. Because the reality is, is that if you are engaging with these people- He

Simone Collins: literally, his life now

Malcolm Collins: pivots

Simone Collins: around- I

Malcolm Collins: understand, but that doesn’t mean that’s his social life ... an in, like only

Simone Collins: in person city

Malcolm Collins: state. Right. And the point I’m making is despite that, that is [00:37:00] not his social life, and that shows how severe this thing is- Yes,

Simone Collins: it is

Malcolm Collins: among c- you have, you, you haven’t talked with him recently about his social life. If you look at an insider- I

Simone Collins: read all of his Substack posts. Do you?

Malcolm Collins: Okay, I haven’t read his recent Substack posts. So you’re saying he’s regularly- Then, then you need to- ... socializing in person?

Simone Collins: Yes. That’s what you do at network school.

Malcolm Collins: No, no, no, no, no. It, it includes your week- No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no ...

Simone Collins: it

Malcolm Collins: includes your week at network school I don’t mean your... Simone, I am not talking about your subjective guess around what happens in network states. You read posts about him going to- Network school ... in person parties and events. Or-

Simone Collins: Yeah, he’s alluded to them

Malcolm Collins: Alluded to them.

‘Cause the last time I talked to him, he talked about Signal groups being the core source of power in his society, and it makes a lot of sense. That was a long

Simone Collins: time ago. No, no, no.

Malcolm Collins: Even if you’re in a network state. So just think about this rationally. Okay. Suppose you’re a man and you’re rational, Simone. So I know this is gonna take a lot of work, so try to- Oh my God

get there with me, okay? You care about [00:38:00] moving up in the world, about associating with people who are in positions of power. Within your industry, right? Or within some industry tangential enough to yours, or within an intellectual space tangential to yours. Okay? What is the probability that the leaders, the intellectual leaders or the economic leaders of those communities are going to happen to be in your network state, even if your network state is highly selective?

Virtually zero. This is also true if you’re asking in your city, in your area, in your state. And so if you’re actually being like a man and efficient, you don’t bother with that. You instead focus on gaining access to the digital isolated environments, because this is where you can interact with the actual world leaders within a field regularly, instead of the social masturbation that happens in something like a network state.[00:39:00]

Simone Collins: I don’t know. We’ll have to ask him. Okay. But I, I hear you. Still, I guess, what, do you have any other proposed solutions to the great feminization- You just replace them.

Malcolm Collins: That’s the point. You replace them, and the people who are so indulgent that they wanted to meet up in person, the, the wussy men who thought that that was their solution, their smoking clubs and stuff, you replace them, too.

Because you’re gonna be in the clubs with the people who are actually running the world, and they’re in the clubs with the people who like to socially signal to other men, which is kind of fay. Okay? It’s like watching football or something. I understand that, like, we’re supposed to pretend it’s masculine as a society, but, like, as an autistic external objective observer, it appears pretty fay to me.

I, I, I just... It does. And it is indulgent, and so it doesn’t lead to these [00:40:00] sorts of positive outcomes. So it’s easy to outmaneuver these people, be they men or... Sorry, be they women or feminized men.

Simone Collins: Ugh. Well, I think, yeah, what, by this definition you think anyone who engages in leisure activity is

Malcolm Collins: a feminized man?

No, I think that there are efficient ways to engage in leisure, leisure activities, and there are inefficient ways to engage in leisure activities. For example, if I want to... Let’s talk about efficient versus inefficient, okay? Let’s look at a hobby like gaming Which is fairly efficient, versus a hobby like, let’s say, tennis or scuba diving, which are fairly inefficient.

Okay? So I wanna go- Does

Simone Collins: it include commutes or what? ...

Malcolm Collins: scuba diving, now I need to commute. I need to get my tank ready. I need to sit on the dock. I need to go out early in the morning. So irrespective of when I might be efficient at working during that time of day, I then have to get everything ready, everything prepped, go out.

I cannot [00:41:00] multitask. With gaming, I can have a game open in one tab and a vibe coding session open in another tab. I then lose, like, an entire day on a weekend. I then come back, and I’ve just lost a day. Same with, let’s say, tennis. So I get all my stuff together. I have to then go out and organize with somebody else so we’re both free at the same time.

We then get to a tennis ranch or whatever they call them. Tennis ranch. And y- s- sorry, I actually used to play varsity tennis, so I’m, I’m, I’m fairly familiar with it. So you, you get to your tennis court, and you you, you need to sign up for a time, by the way, so, you know, you gotta get the, the right timing.

You get there. You play a few rounds when you’re also not able to multitask. You then have to come home, shower, which is, again, another waste of time that you wouldn’t have need to do if you were gaming. Now, contrast all of this with something like gaming, okay? It’s the end of the day. You don’t need to drive out somewhere.

It’s at a time period where you’re already, your brain’s already fried, which for some people’s early [00:42:00] morning, some people that’s late night. And so you’re like, “Okay, I’m going to do this while I’m tying up the last of whatever, X, Y, or Z.” And that’s, that’s very, very efficient, right? Like, this is why the, if, if you’re playing tennis on your computer versus going to a tennis court. Also, it’s fairly inexpensive. It’s one of the least expensive hobbies there is- It’s very inexpensive ... as long as you’re not engaged in the gambling aspect of it, like loot boxes and stuff like that. If you’re just playing a video game, contrast that with owning a country club or you know, subscription, or maintaining your scuba equipment, or you know, just buying a new Nike tennis racket.

Simone Collins: All the certifications and the travel.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And the specialized clothing and the gas and the- Oh,

Simone Collins: and don’t forget your tennis club membership Yeah

Malcolm Collins: Oh, and the potential parking, and the, you know, all of this is so expensive. Such a waste. I mean, this is true of so, so, so many hobbies. There are a few other efficient hobbies: [00:43:00] walking, hiking, biking.

And these are efficient because while you cannot multitask while you can do them, they at least give you exercise and can be done right from your front porch.

Simone Collins: Yeah ...

Malcolm Collins: depending on where you, you live. I mean, there are ways- Yeah ... to do these hobbies that are incredibly inefficient, and there’s ways to do gaming that’s incredibly inefficient.

But there’s some hobbies that there’s just virtually no efficient way to do them. And this is what I’m talking about here, right? Like, that people pretend like these things are the same, and they’re not the same. And I, I just like... And this, this is where people get, get mad at us at the channel or whatever so much, they’re like, “Oh, you guys are so, I, I don’t know, puritanical about recreation and about doing recreation efficiently.”

And I think that the latest Leaflet song goes into this, by the way is not, not overdoing recreation and, and staying healthy and everything.

Speaker 3: 社会はそのままがいいって言うけど、そんなのつまんないよ。変えちゃおうよ。大切な人にちょっとしたプッシュ。[00:44:00] 理想の自分に変えちゃお。 液に溺れてる時は愛情たっぷりでほどほどにって教えてあげよ。全部肯定するだけじゃダメだよね。優しい気持ちで批判するのも最高の愛だよ。 , groom, groom your wife.Pick her up dive and keep growing.Groom, groom, groom your husband.Get us stronger, faster.

Malcolm Collins: But you’ve, you’ve done a good job of keeping me healthy ish. I mean, I’m, I’m healthy again now. That’s

Simone Collins: how we have. Yeah. Now that your blood work is in.

Malcolm Collins: We just got our blood work back. Yeah, so, last year I had gotten to a point where I was drinking more again to the point where my, my levels of a few things, ‘cause I get this measured regularly, went up. And I just got my blood work back and they all went back to normal. Because diligence, right?

You, you don’t let the thing control you. You don’t need to focus, you don’t need to design your entire life around avoiding a thing. [00:45:00] Just stay within the measured variables.

Simone Collins: Glad it worked out, and I’m glad you’re okay.

Malcolm Collins: But yeah. And I, the, the, the, these sorts of ideas that we’re talking about I think are, are difficult like if you even begin to bring this up with a woman, like, well, I mean, you don’t wanna be friends with somebody who is of zero utility to you.

You know, they’d be confused and angry, right? Like, they’d, they’d hurt you in their,

Simone Collins: Well, here’s... Yeah, I mean, here’s the struggle then with the great feminization theory is, like, how can we reconcile acknowledging this theory and still encourage men to get married?

Malcolm Collins: Well, women- Like, I don’t know ... become very efficient when they are subservient to a man.

This is the difference, right? And I’ve, I’ve pointed this out in similar ways- Yeah, but I

Simone Collins: mean, like, in modern culture, women are strongly discouraged from-

Malcolm Collins: Women want- Like- ... to do it ... any- They want a man to work for. They do. They want to do it. They want to [00:46:00] be inspired by who you are and what your goals are.

Simone Collins: They do wanna be inspired by... Yeah. They, they wanna be inspired by it, but are there enough inspirational men, right? Like, I mean, I- There can be ... I sometimes feel very

Malcolm Collins: I

Simone Collins: feel hypocritical ...

Malcolm Collins: No, this idea, I, I don’t, I don’t buy this, and some people in our comments have argued this, and I just, they’re like, “Well, not every man can have, like, sky-high ambitions for how he wants to change the world.”

And I’m like, “Yes, they can. They absolutely can.” You don’t need to succeed in your ambitions. Simone doesn’t value me because I succeed in all my ambitions. She values me because I have them and I earnestly strive for them. I haven’t

Simone Collins: succeeded in- Yeah, yeah, and I, I mean, to, also I think we know there’s some people have pushed back on us in comments saying, like, “Look, I’m happy enough to just raise a successful next generation, like, to just raise good kids who are gonna make, you know, the world a better place and make the next generation good,” which is totally in line with our mission and our interest in promoting human [00:47:00] flourishing.

Like, Malcolm has really, really big ambitions, but not everyone has to be like, “I’m gonna change the world.” Just raising good kids is huge and very impactful. I think the, the key thing is we’re not saying that for a man to be attractive, he has to plan on, like, world domination. We’re saying for a man to be attractive, he has to know who he is, be extremely confident in who he is, and know what he’s all about.

Like, “Hey, I am going to raise a successful family, provide for that family, like, build a good, you know, future generation, create a great childhood for my kids, and make the world better by doing that. And I hear my beliefs, and I know what I’m all about.” Well, this,

Malcolm Collins: this comes

Simone Collins: to something- Women find that really attractive.

Like, you don’t have to take over the world. You don’t have to be delusional

Malcolm Collins: Yes, you do. So this, this comes to what we were talking about earlier today. When I was trying to understand how Nick Fuentes had gotten so one-shotted by society that now his stated goals are not at all served by his actual actions.

And I’d say this as somebody who [00:48:00] can sympathize with him, because I think we have a lot of similar motivations. But he’s basically crashed out. Like, as I, I, I pointed out in the recent video, just

Simone Collins: simply- By similar motivations, like, what? The, the fame w***e-ish-ness or something else?

Malcolm Collins: Well, no. I mean, yes, we, we both are narcissistic fame w****s who come off as a bit fay to people, but it, it, it’s- You’re

Simone Collins: not, no, you’re not a narcissist.

You, you like, you like fame. I think he does, too. And you like attention, and I think he does, too. But you are not a narcissist.

Malcolm Collins: But it’s, it’s not just that. I mean, we both realize many of the same problems with society. People downplaying cultural and ethno differences people thinking you can just import anyone forever into the country.

Like many of the problems that we diagnose about society today are very similar, but the way that he has gone about it is completely unlikely to have any sort of efficacious result. Not, not unlikely, it’s, it’s virtual impossibility from his actions, and anyone who is thinking clearly could see that.

And so I began to think, how did he f- [00:49:00] so bad in terms of his logic? And what occurred to me because he began to... I began to think of him as, like, one of those, in anime there’s this common trope of somebody gets, like, a, an evil bug on their back or something like that that turns them into an evil version of themselves that, like, fuels, like, one, like, negative character trait they have until that character trait defines everything that they’re doing and then they turn into some sort of, like, big bad putty or something.

Shugochara is an anime where this happens, as an example. But, but it’s a very common trope in, in animes and shows for, for children. And he sort of, he, he doesn’t come across as, like, a bad guy to me. He comes across as somebody who’s been sort of infected by, like, an hate, a hate bug that has ended up g- making him unable to see that he’s destroying the very thing that he claims to want to save.

Speaker 4: Nick, you’re the man. With three white girls. That’s the dream lol.

Speaker 5: That’s the dream? Like be- living the dream, three daughters. [00:50:00] What dream? You’re the gayest guy ever.

You’re gayer than gay guys. That’s crazy. I’m living the dream. Daughters, wow, a lot of manis and pedis, a lot of, uh, tea parties and, uh, drama. Dude, I just can’t even. I literally can’t even. Women talk to me, and my eyes just glaze over.

So I can’t imagine being in a house with four of them. You’re like a prisoner. You’re like a prisoner of war. I’d rather be a prisoner of war in Vietnam how can you live like that? I would need a lot of vacations and a lot of w****s or something.

Just like you would need some kind of extramarital affair to keep it going. I feel like that is the only way I could stay sane in a life like that.

Why’d you have to lead with that? He said, uh, “Hey, I got three white girls living the dream, but the girl dad rightism s**t was gay.”

Speaker 6: First, , for people who cannot tell or do not know people who’ve done cocaine, he’s clearly out of his mind on cocaine in this. Y-you can tell because of [00:51:00] the way he’s talking and he keeps rubbing his nose, which is not a normal human behavior, , to be doing that as, as frequently as he’s doing that.

But, , I, I... So, so I, I, I do, you know, give him some leniency on the things he’s saying here, ... Like, as time has gone on, Nick has clearly been captured by his demons. And so, , there’s no way he can achieve what he says he wants to achieve in life or motivate his fans to do this when he’s, like, being mean to somebody who’s reaching out to him and expressing admiration , to him for doing the very thing that he’s telling his fans to do.

, It-- I-I’m not even mean to my fans when, they have different opinions. Like, just to be mean like this to, to a stranger For doing what you’re telling them to do, like,, the deep evil that has to have taken root in your heart. And not just that, , but the people who are like, “Well, Nick Fuentes shows so much self-control.”

Here he’s literally saying, “Oh, if I had a bunch of daughters, I would cheat on my wife.”

Speaker 11: Like even if I had a perfect wife who was wholly dedicated to me and due to something completely outside of her control, having [00:52:00] boys instead of girls, , I’d just end up cheating on her,

Speaker 6: , And, , yeah, I guess, just, like, as time has gone on, I feel more pity for Nick, because in a different world, maybe I could have gone down his pathway if I had less self-control, if I was raised in a different religious background, if I... You know, who knows? , It, it’s, it’s very, very sad to see this happen and to see him admonish people who look up to him, , when they do do what he presumably wants people to do.

But it-- I mean, it’s clear, again, revealed preferences versus, , claimed preferences. It’s clear that that is not his revealed preference to actually start a family and have kids and everything like that. , And I just wish he could better communicate to people that, like, allowing his ideology to spread within you will eventually destroy you as a human being. , There, there is no positive end to this. Like, contrast this with, like, Leafly’s song, right? Like, that’s, that’s positivity. That’s future. , His is just [00:53:00] destructivity at this point. And it’s really, really sad to see. And I do not think that him and I are particularly different in the problems that we see in society. It’s just that his, again, like one of those hate bugs has been so corrupted that it’s all he can see anymore.

Speaker 7: Or another good analogy would be like the orcs from Warhammer who drink the demonic ichor to, , enhance their worst qualities but make them stronger. You know, it makes him stronger in the algorithm, but it leads all those who follow him to ruin this sort of demonic pact that he has made. He’s still an orc.

He’s still at least in his own way trying to be on our side, but he is so corrupted that he fundamentally is as big a threat to us as those who oppose us

Speaker 8: Drink, . Claim your destiny. You will all be conquerors. And what, Gul’dan, [00:54:00] must we give in return? Everything.

You would reject this gift?

We will never be slaves!

But we will be conquerors.

Simone Collins: agree. I mean, what we talked about also is that, a key difference is that you and other people who we really like and admire, like Leaflet, have a very clear vision of the future-

Malcolm Collins: Well, no, that’s what I was going to say ... toward which to mourn ... is, is that the reason why the hate bug has gotten him and it hasn’t easily gotten some of the other influencers I watch, I was trying to think of, like, what creates this differentiation?

And [00:55:00] looking at Leaflet’s recent content because I’ve been working with her. She’s actually really helped me in developing the VTuber thing on RFAB that’s gonna be coming out soon. Saved me a significant amount of work was one of the leads she gave me today. But anyway, th- th- so that’s the reason she comes up a lot, is ‘cause I’m working with her and I’m talking with her daily, so, v- very top of mind.

But anyway so, she has a very clear vision, and we have a very clear vision of where we want human civilization to be in 50 years, in 100 years, in 200 years, right? And I don’t think he has one of those. And because he doesn’t have a clear vision of where society’s going to be, it’s just like society’s gonna be where society’s going to be, it’s very easy for the grievances of the current culture war to overwhelm his sort of psychology to the point where he can no longer think, “What are the long-term actions if I attempt to blow up this alliance or this alliance, or you know, do not care about this encroaching group or [00:56:00] that encroaching group?”

And I think that the, the, the hate bug can get you if all you care about is being a good family man. Because if all you care about is being a good family man, you can accidentally lean into performing the trope of the family man, in the same way a woman can perform the trope of the mom, instead of focusing on a concrete outcome.

“I want to raise kids to have this effect on society because I see this future civilizational state as ideal.” Now both can be part of the same action, it’s just how are you framing it, which is why- Well,

Simone Collins: this goes also, it’s connected to your deontology versus consequentialism argument that always comes

Malcolm Collins: into our episodes Well, yeah, but I, I, I realize that, that arguing about it on a deontology versus con-

That can be a little hard for people to grok. But the idea of just either you have a vision for where you want society to be in 100 years or you don’t.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Basically, is your ship just blowing wherever the winds blow, or are you actively navigating [00:57:00] in a specific direction towards some kind of true north, and are you shifting your sails in response to the wind blowing you where you may not wanna go?

You, you, you do want-

Malcolm Collins: I, I actually think a better way to word this is not just is your ship going where the wind goes, but there’s sort of three categories of people. Like, there’s the truly lazy person who is allowing their ship to just blow wherever the wind blows, but then there’s the other person who might be incredibly hardworking, but they spend all of the time just trying to make sure their ship is the prettiest ship there is, without particular care for where it’s going, right?

And these are the people who strive to have the perfect family that follows all the rules, or the perfect deontological life that follows every rule and every command and everything like that. And th- they’ll often be like, “Well, God’ll just take me in the right direction if I do all of that.” And that leads to really negative externalities.

And it, and it’s not biblically... I mean, I, I always go through the the, the sermon of, um Um, a boat and two helicopters, so I’m not gonna go over that again Oh You can go over our Trek series if you’re [00:58:00] interested. But the point I’m being i-i-here is I think that it is sometimes easy to confuse trying to make sure your boat is the prettiest boat in the world without caring about where the boat’s going.

Anyway.

Simone Collins: Fair.

Malcolm Collins: Love you, Simone.

Simone Collins: I love you too.

Malcolm Collins: And I don’t think I want dinner tonight. I’m full.

Simone Collins: Are you sure? I have some lo mein left over, just a little bit.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, you do have lo mein left over? I can

Simone Collins: bring it to your room. Yeah, if you want, I could just walk it up to your room. I can- Mm ...

Malcolm Collins: I can stir-fry it- Can I have it, can I have it the next day?

Simone Collins: Yeah. ‘

Malcolm Collins: Cause you gave me eggs today, and I had chips and salsa today, and I had whole milk today. So that’s a lot.

Simone Collins: Are you gonna get scurvy? I’m

Malcolm Collins: not... Yeah, Simone, that is not how scurvy works.

Simone Collins: I guess- One

Malcolm Collins: of our- ... I

Simone Collins: knew you had salsa.

Malcolm Collins: Right, so- Salsa, I had salsa, Simone. That was a lot of tomatoes and juices.

Simone Collins: Okay.

Malcolm Collins: I also had jelly beans. You had salsa. Okay. I had some orange jelly beans, [00:59:00] which are basically- I hate you

Simone Collins: so much. You are going to die. I t- I try to help you by serving you eggs, and then... Anyway, it’s fine. It’s fine. You can have lo mein tomorrow. It’s fine. But are you sure you’re not hungry?

Malcolm Collins: I’m sure. Okay.

I’m sure I’m not hungry.

Simone Collins: Well, I love you.

Malcolm Collins: I love you too, ish. I find you a little, you know, you’ve da, da, da, da.

Simone Collins: I am a woman. I’m sorry. I’m very sorry.

Malcolm Collins: Joking, by the way. I love you. All right, have a good one.

Simone Collins: Bye. Old Titan thing. No I

Malcolm Collins: sent it on WhatsApp.

Simone Collins: Oh yeah, the old dinosaur Titan

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, doesn’t it look a lot like her today?

Simone Collins: Looks just like her today

Malcolm Collins: Very, very similar- Early on here ... attitude to modern Titan

Simone Collins: This morning though she decided she was a cat, and every time I asked her questions, you know, I said, [01:00:00] “Titan, do you want this or can you do that?”

She’s like, “No, I’m a cat. Meow.” She did a lot of meowing, so.

Malcolm Collins: Meow. She’s, Yeah ... you really, you did that as a kid too, right? It, it was pretty cute You pretended to be a cat?

Simone Collins: I 100% did that. I wonder if there’s some, it’s just a little girl thing. I don’t think it’s like a genetic thing, but who knows? Well,

Malcolm Collins: I mean, you know, fortunately we’re not into all that, yeah, trans furry stuff or we’d be like, “Oh, we’ve got a-”

Simone Collins: You got her furry tail and her furry ears.

Malcolm Collins: You got her a therian kid, right? We’re gonna have to transition her.

Simone Collins: That was you, dude. You bought that stuff on Amazon, J’Accuse.

Malcolm Collins: Have you, have you given it back to her now that she thinks she’s a cat so she can dress up like a cat?

Simone Collins: Yeah, I need to. No, I’ll g- I’ll get it out this weekend. Yeah, I’m 100% getting that out.

Okay.

Malcolm Collins: That’s

Simone Collins: fantastic. I will kick us off. And unless you, do you wanna kick this one off ‘cause you were the kind of impetus for doing this.

Malcolm Collins: All right, sure.

Speaker 10: [01:01:00] that movie. A

is he, is he a her or

Speaker 9: a him?

Speaker 10: He/him. I bet they, I bet they left my birds at our house.

Speaker 9: Yeah, they are.

Elsa Johnson, a Stanford student and Hoover Institution researcher, was aggressively targeted by a suspected Chinese Ministry of State Security operative. What started as a friendly Instagram DM from “Charles Chen” quickly turned into visa-free trip offers, pressure to move to WeChat, and eventual transnational repression — all while universities looked the other way.

In this Based Camp episode, Malcolm and Simone Collins break down the full university-to-CCP pipeline: how massive Chinese student tuition payments create financial dependency, the role of CSSA (Chinese Students and Scholars Associations), Confucius Institutes, the United Front strategy, tech/IP theft in AI, and why American universities are failing to protect students and national security.

Show Notes

Elsa Johnson, a Stanford student, is calling attention to a toxic national security flaw playing out in American universities and the problem is so much bigger than I had imagined.

This spring, she testified before the House committee on Education and the workforce, asking them to do something about the problem

‘I exposed China’s espionage tactics in The Times. Now I’m being harassed’

What Happened to Elsa Johnson?

* Elsa attended a Chinese language immersion school from kindergarten through either grade in Minneapolis, Minnesota

* Got into Stanford University

* Became a research assistant at the Hoover Institution, where she focused on Chinese industry and military tactics

* From her congressional testimony:

* “In June 2024, a few days after I spoke with one of my supervisors at Hoover about Chinese recruitment tactics targeting American academics, a man calling himself Charles Chen reached out to me on Instagram. He had over 100 mutual followers with me and had photos of Stanford on his profile. I had no reason to believe he was anything other than a fellow student.”

* “Over the following weeks, Chen’s messages grew more concerning. He told me he was from China and asked detailed questions about my research and background in Chinese. He offered to pay for a trip to China, sent me a flight itinerary from Los Angeles to Shanghai and sent screenshots of a bank wire to prove he could afford my accommodations once I got there. He also sent me a document outlining a policy that would allow me to travel to China without a visa. He sent me videos of Americans who had gotten rich and famous in China and insisted that I, too, could find wealth and fame in the PRC.”

* “Later on, he began incessantly pressuring me to move our conversation to WeChat, a Chinese government-monitored messaging app. When I didn’t respond to Charles Chen fast enough, he would delete and resend his messages. He even referenced the whereabouts of Stanford students who were in China at the time of our correspondence.

* “Then, in July, he publicly commented on one of my Instagram posts in Mandarin, asking me to delete the screenshots I had taken of our private conversation. I had not told anyone I had taken screenshots, and I do not know how he knew. The only explanation I could come up with was that my phone or my account had been compromised somehow.”

* “I contacted two China experts at Stanford whom I trusted and they connected me with an FBI contact who handled CCP-related espionage cases at the university. I met with the FBI in September and handed over everything I had. The FBI confirmed that Charles Chen had no real affiliation with Stanford. He had likely posed as a student for years and used multiple fabricated social media profiles to target students researching China-related topics. I was told he was likely operating on behalf of China’s Ministry of State Security. I later found out that I was one of at least ten other female students targeted by Charles Chen since 2020. “

* She published an account of this experience in the Times of London

* After that, she was followed and harassed by the CCP

* “Last summer, while conducting research on China in Washington, DC, I began receiving regular phone calls from unknown US numbers. When I answered the calls in English, the callers would switch to Mandarin. In one case, the caller referenced my mother. These bizarre calls were intimidation attempts, designed to remind me that neither my family, nor I, is safe from transnational repression by the CCP.”

* “Then, this past fall, the FBI informed me that I am being physically monitored on Stanford’s campus by agents of the Chinese Communist Party. They told me that my family is also at risk and is being monitored. As a 21-year-old who grew up loving the Chinese language and culture, I never imagined that studying it would put me in a position where a foreign intelligence service is tracking my movements on my own campus and monitoring my family. I fear for my safety and for my family’s safety.”

The University Problem

Universities Heavily Accepting Chinese National Students

US Universities and Private Schools

* Department of Homeland Security SEVIS analysis found that 47% of all foreign K–12 students in 2019 were from China

Universities

* Around one quarter of foreign (international) university students in the United States are from China.

* The absolute number of Chinese students has fallen from a pre‑pandemic peak of around 370,000 in 2019 to under 280,000 in 2023–24, but China remains one of the top two sending countries (with India).

UK Universities likely accepting more Chinese students to meet visa rules

* To keep their sponsor licence, universities will soon need: 95% of enrolled students to actually start their course (up from 90%), 90% to complete (up from 85%), and a visa refusal rate under 5% (down from 10%).

* Because these thresholds are strict and the start date is unclear, some universities have already effectively stopped recruiting from countries with lower visa grant/compliance rates, including Bangladesh, Ghana, Pakistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Nigeria, which currently fall below the new 95% benchmark in Home Office data.

* Chinese students are good with visa compliance, so they’re likely to be accepted at greater rates

* This will create greater financial dependence on foreign Chinese students

The ‘Times of London discusses the problem in greater detail here.

Chinese Students and Scholars Associations (CSSAs)

* The CSSA the official organization for overseas Chinese students and scholars registered in most colleges and universities outside of the People’s Republic of China.

* It’s described as a government-organized non-governmental organization

* They were created by the CCP to monitor Chinese students and mobilize them against dissenting views, according to the U.S. State Department.

* They receive guidance from the CCP through Chinese embassies and consulates, aligning their activities with Beijing’s political objectives rather than purely student interests.

* They participate in the CCP’s “United Front” work, which Elsa in her testimony characterizes as using these groups as vehicles for surveillance and influence on campus.

* In some cases, local Chinese consulates must approve CSSA presidential candidates, suggesting foreign government control over student leadership selections.

* They may accept funding from Chinese embassies that makes up a large share of their budgets (Elsa notes Foreign Policy reporting that Georgetown’s CSSA received roughly half its annual budget from the embassy), creating financial dependence tied to political influence.

There are also Confucius Institutes at universities

* Elsa testified: “A bipartisan Senate investigation found that 70 per cent of schools with a Confucius Institute [programmes which promote Chinese Language and Culture] that received more than $250,000 in a given year failed to report it properly.”

What is being done about them? In her testimony, Elsa notes: “Congressman Tim Walberg has co-signed a letter to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, requesting that CSSAs be evaluated for designation as foreign missions under the Foreign Missions Act.” and calls it a step in the right direction.

She also notes “Section 117 of the Higher Education Act requires postsecondary institutions to disclose foreign gifts or contracts totalling $250,000 or more, and the Department of Education recently approved a new foreign funding reporting portal that launched earlier this year.”

“Transnational Repression”

According to a 2024 Freedom House report, “International students, visiting scholars, and faculty in the United States are being targeted by foreign governments and their agents. Tactics of transnational repression on campuses include digital and physical surveillance, harassment, assault, threats, and coercion by proxy.”

The report cites the CCP as the biggest threat, noting that:

* Classroom discussions and campus events on topics like Hong Kong, Xinjiang, Tibet, or Chinese politics are monitored, with information relayed to Chinese diplomatic staff or officials via networks such as Chinese Students and Scholars Associations (CSSAs) and platforms like WeChat.

* Students who organize or join protests (for example, White Paper/zero‑COVID vigils) report being filmed, shouted down, or physically intimidated by pro‑CCP students or CSSA affiliates, sometimes resulting in assaults at demonstrations.

* Authorities in China contact or visit students’ family members back home to warn them about the student’s activism abroad, creating intense psychological pressure on the student to stop speaking out. [freedomhouse](https://freedomhouse.org/report/transnational-repression/2024/addressing-transnational-repression-campuses-united-states)

* Pro‑CCP actors use social media and messaging apps to threaten, smear, or expose identifying information of critical students, contributing to a climate of fear and self‑censorship.

* CSSAs, overseen by the CCP’s United Front Work Department and supported by Chinese diplomatic missions, monitor Chinese students, mobilize them to oppose speakers and events critical of Beijing, and help enforce informal red lines on campus speech.

* Confucius Institutes and CCP‑linked programs are described as contributing to an atmosphere where students feel they must avoid sensitive topics or visible prodemocracy activity to protect their safety, immigration status, and future prospects in China.

Universities Failure to Do Much About Foreign Actors

* In her testimony, Elsa notes how the FBI worked with her, but she found no support or resources from Stanford University

* This could be due to financial pressures:

* Chinese students have been the largest single group of international students, often about one quarter to one third of all foreign students, so they account for a disproportionate share of that high‑margin tuition revenue.

* One analysis estimated that Chinese students contributed about 12 billion dollars to the U.S. economy in 2016–17 alone, with a large fraction flowing directly as tuition and fees to higher‑education institutions.

* Public research universities are the most clearly exposed type of uni in the USA: when state funding fell, they grew foreign (especially Chinese) enrollment, so their budgets became partially conditioned on keeping that demand.

China’s United Front

* In CCP theory, the united front is one of the Party’s three “magic weapons” for seizing and maintaining power, alongside armed struggle and Party building.

* Its basic purpose is to “unite all forces that can be united” in order to neutralize opposition and build the broadest possible coalition around CCP objectives.

* So it’s basically like the Urban Monoculture: Groups may be aesthetically different, but under the surface they’re the same

How it works inside China

* Domestically, united front work focuses on groups the Party sees as important but not fully under its control—ethnic minorities, religious communities, private entrepreneurs, intellectuals, non‑Communist “democratic parties,” and new middle‑class and professional strata.

* These groups are drawn into Party‑led institutions such as the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) and various “mass organizations,” where they get limited representation but are expected to take the CCP’s lead

Overseas and influence operations

* Overseas, United Front work tries to shape foreign environments in ways favorable to the CCP by influencing Chinese diaspora communities, elites, media, academic institutions, businesses, and politicians in other countries.

* Activities described by governments and researchers include promoting pro‑Beijing narratives, building relationships with foreign elites, guiding or co‑opting Chinese‑language media, gathering intelligence, facilitating illicit technology transfer, and, in some cases, interfering in foreign politics.

The AI Problem

A component of China’s AI strategy involves stealing IP from US tech companies.

Concrete AI‑related IP theft cases

* Google AI trade‑secrets case (Linwei “Leon” Ding, 2024)

* A Chinese national working at Google in California was arrested and charged with stealing over 500 confidential files on Google’s advanced AI infrastructure and chips.

* DOJ alleges he uploaded files describing Google’s TPU‑based data center architecture and AI supercomputing platform to a personal account while secretly working for two China‑based tech startups building AI platforms and large‑model infrastructure.

* FBI Director Christopher Wray framed this as part of “the lengths affiliates of companies based in the People’s Republic of China are willing to go to steal American innovation.”

* Operation CuckooBees / APT41 IP theft (multi‑sector, includes tech)

* Cyber firm Cybereason detailed a years‑long campaign by APT41, a state‑linked Chinese group, that exfiltrated “hundreds of gigabytes” of trade secrets, including proprietary diagrams, formulas, and manufacturing data from ~30 multinationals in technology, manufacturing, and other sectors.

* While not solely “AI companies,” this shows a pattern of Chinese state actors targeting high‑value tech IP, including software and design data that could underpin AI systems.

* Broader CCP cyber‑espionage targeting AI/ML sectors

* CSIS analysis notes that the CCP uses cyber‑espionage and human networks to steal IP in strategic areas, explicitly including AI/ML, as part of its “Made in China 2025” industrial plan.

* They emphasize that startups and small firms—exactly where cutting‑edge AI work often happens—are especially vulnerable, and that cyber operations are paired with clandestine human intelligence to extract trade secrets.

There are older non‑AI‑specific but relevant precedents (e.g., Apple self‑driving car engineer Xiaolang Zhang, various semiconductor and source‑code theft cases) involving Chinese nationals and core algorithmic or hardware IP. Those show the pattern that now appears to be extending directly into AI‑model and AI‑infrastructure theft.

Government claims about “industrial‑scale” AI theft

Recent U.S. government messaging has become much more explicit that Chinese entities are targeting American AI models and infrastructure as a systematic campaign.

* White House and State Department warnings (2026)

* A memo by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy describes “industrial‑scale campaigns” by foreign actors—“predominantly from China”—aimed at appropriating U.S. AI technology, including via model distillation (training models to replicate proprietary ones).

* Separately, the State Department has reportedly asked embassies and partners to warn about alleged AI theft efforts by Chinese AI firms (e.g., DeepSeek), following OpenAI’s warnings to U.S. lawmakers that DeepSeek was trying to target U.S. frontier‑model companies to replicate their systems.

* Congressional findings and expert testimony (2026)

* The House Select Committee on the CCP held a hearing on China and AI, where the chair stated that Chinese companies “rely on Western AI models” and are “buying what they legally can… and stealing what they cannot,” at “every layer of the AI technology stack.”

* Witnesses framed theft and replication of U.S. models and tools as a central “cheat code” in China’s AI strategy.

* Broader IP‑theft statistics with CCP attribution

* A Homeland Security “China Threat Snapshot” notes that about 20% of U.S. companies report IP theft by PRC‑linked entities, highlighting a sustained pattern of illicit tech acquisition through hacking, phishing, and front companies.

* FBI leadership has said they open a new China‑related counterintelligence case roughly every 12 hours, and estimates of total IP‑theft loss (not AI‑specific) run into the hundreds of billions annually.

Embedding or recruiting insiders in AI companies

* Direct, named “spy in AI lab” cases are still rare publicly

* The Google/Ding case is the clearest example of a Chinese national inside a major U.S. AI player accused of stealing AI‑specific IP while also working with China‑based companies.

* Most other public cases remain in adjacent domains (chips, autonomous driving, source code), but the modus operandi—placing employees or recruiting insiders—carries over directly to AI research orgs.

* Pattern of insider recruitment in high‑tech fields

* CSIS and similar analyses emphasize that Chinese espionage campaigns combine cyber‑operations with “clandestine human intelligence networks” to steal trade secrets from U.S. firms in strategic sectors.

* The Homeland Security “China Threat Snapshot” describes PRC‑linked actors using spear‑phishing, academic and business cover, and front companies to solicit or extract proprietary code and software from U.S. institutions, including NASA and tech firms.

* While not limited to AI, this is effectively the same recruitment and infiltration toolkit that would be used to place or flip employees at AI labs.

* AI‑assisted espionage operations targeting tech firms

* An incident reported by Anthropic in late 2025 describes a state‑sponsored Chinese threat actor using an AI coding assistant (a Claude variant) in an “AI‑orchestrated” cyber‑espionage campaign, automating reconnaissance, exploitation, and data exfiltration across multiple sectors.

* This shows Chinese operators using AI tools to scale intrusions; combined with traditional recruitment/influence ops, this increases the risk that employees at AI or cloud companies become unwitting or witting enablers.

* Export‑control evasion networks around AI hardware

* DOJ has charged U.S. citizens and Chinese nationals in schemes to illegally export high‑end GPUs to the PRC by routing purchases through Florida‑based front firms and re‑exporting via third countries.

* These operations often rely on insiders with business roles inside U.S. companies or shell entities interacting with the AI hardware supply chain, which is adjacent to but not the same as spies directly inside research labs.

Public reporting from the intelligence community hints at more such insider or near‑insider cases than have been unsealed in court, but those details are typically classified. The pattern you do see publicly—Google/Ding, APT41 campaigns that pull source code and designs, front‑company GPU diversion—is consistent with a deliberate strategy to get inside the AI stack at multiple points rather than just scraping public models.

What Should Be Done?

Elsa in her testimony: “Stanford should establish an anonymous tip line for students facing transnational repression. Right now, a student who is being surveilled or coerced by a foreign government has nowhere to go within the university. The University of Wisconsin-Madison has already created an information guide and reporting structure that directs targeted students to relevant offices and connects them with law enforcement. Stanford should adopt this model immediately. It does not require an act of Congress.”

Seems wise to educate Americans in general about spies. “Loose lips sink ships” and all that.

Spying feels a lot like social class in the USA. We know it exists, but we pretend it does not.

Episode Transcript

Simone Collins: [00:00:00] Hello, Malcolm. I’m excited to be speaking with you today because we’re gonna talk about the university to spy for China pipeline through the lens of one young woman’s plight. Elsa Johnson is a good old-fashioned American girl. She attended a Chinese language immersion school from kindergarten through eighth grade in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and just developed this lifelong love of the Chinese language, of Mandarin, you know, o- of China in general.

She is a high achiever. She gets into Stanford University. She’s so happy. She became a research assistant at the Hoover Institution, where she studied Chinese industry and military tactics. And then here’s where things go a little sideways. So I’m gonna read a little bit from her congressional testimony because, surprise, surprise, things go so sideways that this spring she finds herself testifying to the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, asking them to do something a- about this really serious problem.

So [00:01:00] she, she said in her testimony, “In June 2024, a few days after I spoke with one of my supervisors at Hoover about Chinese recruitment tactics tarting- targeting American academics, a man calling himself Charles Chen reached out to me on Instagram. He had over 100 mutual followers with me and had photos of Stanford on his profile.

I had no reason to believe he was anything other than a fellow student. Over the following weeks, Chen’s messages grew more concerning. He told me he was from China-” And asked detailed questions about my research and background in Chinese. He offered to pay for a trip to China, send me a flight itinerary from Los Angeles to Shanghai, and sent r- screenshots of a bank wire to prove he could afford my accommodations once I got there.

He also sent me a document outlining a policy that would allow me to ch- travel to China without a visa, which is super shady, and, like, the Chinese consulate is not hard to get to from Stanford. I, I know

Malcolm Collins: [00:02:00] this. Why would they do that? Why would they have her travel without a visa? Like,

Simone Collins: presumably- I don’t know.

That, yeah, that, that whole thing is

Malcolm Collins: like- Oh, I know ... wild They didn’t want it in the American books that she had traveled to China, because then she might be easier to pick up by, like, the CIA and stuff like this as a potential spy.

Simone Collins: Oh, because it would be in her American passport. That’s right. Yeah. Okay.

“He sent me videos of Americans who had gotten rich and famous in China, and insisted that I too could find wealth and fame in the PRC. Later on, he began incessantly pressuring me to move our conversation to WeChat, a Chinese government-monitored messaging app. When I didn’t respond to Charles Chen fast enough, he would delete and resend his messages.

He even referenced the whereabouts of Stanford students who were at, in China at the time of our correspondence. Then, in July, he publicly commented on one of my Instagram posts in Mandarin, asking me to delete the screenshots I’d taken of our private conversation. I had not told anyone I had taken screenshots, and I do [00:03:00] not know how he knew.

The only explanation I could come up with was that my phone or my account had been compromised somehow.” Clearly her phone.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

Simone Collins: ‘Cause, yeah, it, I mean, I guess there are some banking apps that are able to detect if you’re trying to take screenshots. I know this ‘cause they’ll give you, like, a little push notification saying, “Screenshots are not authorized,” so maybe the app can pick up on that, but most likely it was her phone that was compromised.

They had, like- Yeah ... bugged her phone or something. “I contacted two China experts at Stanford whom I trusted, and they connected me with an FBI contact who handled CCP related espionage cases at the university. I met with the FBI in September and handed over everything I had. The FBI confirmed that Charles Chen had no real affiliation with Stanford.

He had likely posed as a student for years and used multiple fabricated social media profiles to target students researching China related topics. I was told he was likely operating on behalf of Chinese Ministry of State Security. I later [00:04:00] found out that I was one of at least 10 other female students targeted by Charles Chen since 2020.”

Malcolm Collins: Female students. Why always female? Are they more malleable? Are they more stupid?

Simone Collins: Oh, yeah. I mean, you know, look, you’re, you’re listening to Base Camp. You don’t need to hear him answer this.

Malcolm Collins: You don’t need to know why it was only

Simone Collins: females.

Malcolm Collins: Women. Come on.

Simone Collins: But she, so what she did ultimately was she published an account of this experience in The Times of London.

And then after that, she was followed and harassed by the CCP. And actually, the reason why she gave that testimony to Congress in the spring wasn’t, like, “Oh my God, we have a spy problem.” It was, “Oh my God, I’m so tired of being harassed by the CCP, and universities need to be better at stopping this.” It was, like, not even, like, oh, this...

‘Cause I’m, I’m over here being like, “Whoa, can we, can we, like, talk about this spy problem?” And she’s just like, “I’m just so done being harassed.”

Malcolm Collins: But- Well, I’ve pointed out that the CCP is, and a lot of people do not... Outside of TikTok, which obviously has had a huge negative effect on the United States, and Trump [00:05:00] 100% should have shut it down.

Yeah. Very stupid.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: But he could have blamed it on the Biden administration. It would’ve been so easy.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Trump, you fool. Anyway. Outside of not shutting down TikTok the CCP fundamentally, like, doesn’t understand America or American culture.

Simone Collins: It really

Malcolm Collins: doesn’t. And we’ve pointed out that often their attempts to make Americans angry at America or, like, sow division in America are very different.

Russia is, like, let’s fund BLM. As we pointed out, like-

Simone Collins: Oh, Russia gets it. They know

Malcolm Collins: Like-

Simone Collins: They know

Malcolm Collins: how to do it ... nine to one, the money that they spent on the Trump presidency, which they thought would be subversive, they spent on BLM. Mm-hmm. They... Like, BLM was a Russian funded movement. Go watch our video on it.

Like, the receipts are really clear. And by the way, Russia is not our friend. Don’t make that mistake. It’s weird that anyone ever did, but you know, some people are very gullible. But anyway the CCP when they try to attack us, they don’t get it. They’re like, “America, like-” Can you really trust your government?

Here’s where the US government has lied to you, and people are like, “Yeah, I mean, [00:06:00] that checks out, right?” It’s something I didn’t know. Like, the US government lies to us all the time. Yeah. Because Americans, like in the CCP, you can’t, like, distrust your government. You can’t be like, “Oh, yeah, yeah this is the, the questions I have about my government,” you know?

But in, in in America, like, oh, this is f*****g normal. And with her, the, the- they took somebody who probably... I mean, I think the reason she was on their list is she probably had anti-American or socialist sympathies, probably, like, a far progressive. And they made the mistake of deciding to harass her when they could have just kept quiet, and she probably would’ve just let it go, right?

Like, but they made it clear that they saw her as an enemy and they were gonna treat her like an enemy, which is fascinating.

Simone Collins: No, no, no, th- this is, this is far more systematic than I think you’re aware. Okay. So first I’ll describe how she was harassed. As she states in her testimony, “Last summer, while conducting research in China and Washington, DC, I began receiving regular phone calls from unknown US numbers.

When I answered the calls in English, the callers would switch to Mandarin. In one case, the caller referenced my mother. These [00:07:00] bizarre calls were intimidation attempts designed to remind me that neither my family nor I is safe from the transnational repression by the CCP. Then, this past fall, the FBI informed me that I’m being physically monitored on Stanford’s campus by agents of the Chinese Communist Party.

They told me that my family is also at risk of being monitored. As a 21-year-old who grew up loving the Chinese language and culture, I never imagined that studying it would put me in a position where foreign intelligence service is tracking my movements on my own campus and monitoring my family.

I fear for my safety and my family’s safety.” So I’m gonna get into how this is a systematic thing, but first I wanna set the

Malcolm Collins: scene. I, I want you, before you get into that, go into how they attempted to lure her. Uh-huh.

Simone Collins: I

Malcolm Collins: mean, I think that this is actually fairly interesting.

Simone Collins: Oh, yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Like, they tried to get her into China first- Mm-hmm

just to see, like, basically-

Simone Collins: Oh, and that’s how they get you. Then this is the, this is how you get all these people who are total shills for China, even though otherwise, like, just temperamentally and politically you wouldn’t expect them to be.

Malcolm Collins: Well, yeah, Elon [00:08:00] obviously is a good example here, right? Like, that, I think this is one of his biggest blind spots.

Mm-hmm. This is, is, like, soft spot for China. But I mean, hey- I

Simone Collins: don’t know. I mean, I think, and I’m gonna get into this as well, like, there, there is- He, it would be financially unwise and, and business-wise unwise for him to come out against

Malcolm Collins: China No, no, no, no, of course. But I mean, even in totally private conversations he’s still pro-China, right?

Like, it makes no sense to me. But I think that once you support them within a certain context publicly, which you need to to do business, and he’s done an amazing job at getting... Like Tesla’s w- I think one of the only s- in fact, i- like companies that’s really allowed to operate there independently. So he’s done a good job in, in, in regards to that.

But like, so they wanted her to get into China, right? Give her a bunch of nice stuff. The idea of her getting rich in China I think is also interesting. Yeah ... like I wonder exactly how that’s supposed to work. My best guess is what they do is they give you a bunch of assets in China that you can’t easily get out of China, so you are hugely dependent [00:09:00] financially on making sure that the CCP looks good.

Simone Collins: Yeah, possibly. I would

like

Malcolm Collins: to

Simone Collins: see- And possibly this, this could just be like how bribe payments are essentially made in many cases, where like you get a job and the job doesn’t actually do anything, but you get this really high salary for basically doing nothing, and the salary is your bribe. Yeah

so that, that could also be just kinda how it works, you know.

Malcolm Collins: Anyway, continue from here. But yeah, that, that was interesting to me as well. Like are, do people actually make this money or do they just dangle this in front of them? I would guess they probably do.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: It’s probably worth it for the CCP to shill out money for stuff like this.

Simone Collins: Yeah. So w- why, eh, why can this even be happening on university campuses in the first place? The answer is that both private schools in the US and both public and private universities in the US kinda need Chinese students. So the Department of Homeland Security analysis it was a SEVIS analysis?

I’m not familiar with SEVIS, but anyway, that found 47% of all foreign K12 students in 2019 were from [00:10:00] China. That number went down after the pandemic, but- Mm ... if almost half of private school foreign students, and basically all foreign students in the United States who are K12 are private because public schools don’t really take foreign students th- who aren’t like refugees or illegal immigrants you know, like visiting-

Malcolm Collins: I mean, obviously, yeah, yeah, of course

Simone Collins: Are... That, that, that’s huge. Universities also have incredibly high numbers of Chinese students. About one quarter of foreign, that is to say international university students in the United States are from China. The absolute number of Chinese students has fallen from the pre-pandemic peak of around 370,000 in 200- 2019 to under 280,000 in like 2023 to ‘24.

But China remains one of the top two sending countries, alongside India. And I mean, yes, they’re very, very populous countries, but basically if, if US universities were to stop accepting Chinese students [00:11:00] they would be seeing a pretty significant gap in funding. This is also an issue in the United Kingdom.

I- in fact, the United Kingdom is likely to now accept more Chinese st- international students and accept fewer students from some other countries because in order to keep their sponsor license that allows them to basically give visas... Like, I’m sure you remember when you went to St. Andrews and when I went to Cambridge, we had to get those universities to sponsor our visas as students.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

Simone Collins: So to keep their sponsor licenses, universities in the UK soon need 95% of enrolled students to actually start their course. This is up from 90%. And then they also need 90% to complete, up from 85%. And they need a visa refusal rate under 5%. That’s down from 10%. And because these thresholds are really strict, and they’re not really sure when they’re gonna start to be imposed, some universities are already no longer f- recruiting from countries that have lower visa grant or compliance rates.

And that includes [00:12:00] Bangladesh, Ghana, Pakistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Nigeria. And that means that they’re gonna be turning a lot more to China because they’re very good with visa

Malcolm Collins: compliance. That’s fascinating- Yeah ... but also stupid. So at St. Andrews- ... one of the things I remember about the Chinese students, they were the most likely to drop out.

Simone Collins: That’s really interesting. Yeah. There was one... There were two Chinese students in my, my graduate class. And one I think just maybe didn’t complete the course and, and really struggled with English.

Malcolm Collins: This is what we saw as well at, at St. Andrews is they, they, they typically didn’t really understand English.

And, like, it was weird that they would attempt to go to an English school without understanding English. I mean, maybe they had, they had thought that this worked in China. And, and th- this is regular for Chinese students at top universities like Cambridge and St. Andrews.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Is that they go and it’s clear that they’re not close to understanding English.

Yeah. Like, they can’t have a casual conversation. And that’s gonna make it extremely hard to do well in school.

Simone Collins: But they’re still [00:13:00] accepted at super high rates because when and this is the same even for, like, US schools

Malcolm Collins: the- Hold, hold on. Actually side note here. I, I should be clear, this isn’t true of any other national group that I was aware of in the UK.

Oh,

Simone Collins: same. Yeah. No, dude, dude, dude. I- Yeah, there were lots of other international students in my Cambridge class. And also in my undergraduate. Yeah, yeah. Oh, at GWU especially, like in Washington, DC, so many kids. That was the first time I ever met someone from Kazakhstan. That was my first time ever meeting someone from so many countries.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, yeah, yeah. You’ll meet people from Kazakhstan, from Pakistan, and from the, the, you know, all over Africa. And like-

Simone Collins: Yeah ...

Malcolm Collins: none of them ever had any problem speaking English.

Simone Collins: Nobody. Nobody. Yeah. Nobody. It was only ever China. That is

Malcolm Collins: weird. It was only ever the Chinese.

Simone Collins: My God, though, you’re so right. What’s up with that?

Malcolm Collins: I-

Simone Collins: I mean, the languages are very different, to be fair. Like, it’s very, it’s pretty easy to, like, well, relatively speaking, learn another Romance language.

Malcolm Collins: I think it might have to do with the way that corruption in their education system [00:14:00] works- Maybe ... and that they don’t actually think that they actually need to know a thing to know a thing.

Maybe. They, they think that there is a way to, to, to cheat around it, which,

Simone Collins: But yeah, like, the Korean students spoke, We had a Korean I, I mean, I obviously had, like, Korean foreign nationals in both under- undergraduate and in my graduate classes. They were perfect English. Japanese as well. That, that is...

Yeah, so it’s not even like, oh, well, they have a different alphabet. They have different... Huh.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yes, it was true in my boarding schools as well, is that we had a, a bunch of- Weird ... Korean kids and they all spoke perfect English. Yeah. And we had Chinese kids and they didn’t speak English very well.

Simone Collins: Weird. Weird, weird. So but the, the-

Malcolm Collins: Not just weird. There’s something to take away from this, which is I think that their education system is so corrupted that they genuinely dissociate actually needing to know a thing- I don’t,

Simone Collins: I don’t know if that’s it ... from knowing a thing. I, I mean, we, there are other things going on with, like, money laundering, where it’s a lot easier to do it if you have a student who has a visa or something like that.

Like, we know through both surrogacy and through foreign- Sure ... [00:15:00] students, a lot of Chinese families will launder money through real estate and other things. And so for that reason, it doesn’t really matter if your Chinese student is learning something or getting good grades at university. What matters is that you’re offshoring money, so who cares?

True. I, I think that has more to do with it than anything else, if we’re being honest. Like, everyone else is there to learn, and then we got some kids over here who are here to just launder money. Whatever. It’s fine. And the university-

Malcolm Collins: They’re, they’re good learning is, is getting that money flow

Simone Collins: they roll over and take it, because in the end, foreign students pay, you know, either, you know, foreign tuition fees, out-of-state tuition fees that especially state-funded universities really need. So even in the United States, universities that are uniquely vulnerable and, like, in to this dynamic and in need of these foreign students are often state universities who, you know, especially as states face funding [00:16:00] cuts, really need the money from not only out of states, but especially foreign students.

And Chinese students are, you know, happy to, to fill those gaps. So it’s very hard to talk to a university about, like, “Hey, hey, maybe, you know, can you, like, scrutinize this group a little more? Can you, like, l- run an inquiry into some harassment campaigns going on on campus?” Because There is, and we’re, we’re gonna talk about it, going to be in reaction this huge, you know, ruffled feathers and, and then big threats of basically money just disappearing, vaporizing, that the universities increasingly need.

And also keep in mind the demographic headwinds that are facing universities. Universities are shutting down across the United States every single year. This is a game of life and death. They are dying. They cannot afford any hit to their financial income. So this idea that they might do something that would anger one of their most valuable, most hiring, [00:17:00] high-paying student classes, like- True

they can’t. Which is kind of why it was this exercise in frustration that poor Elsa decided to testify in front of Congress. Anyway, one of the primary, and this is interesting to me, bodies through which the CCP enacts its agenda- Yeah ... in universities is called the CSSA. It’s the Chinese Students and Scholars Association.

It’s, it’s basically the official organization for overseas Chinese students and it’s registered at most colleges and universities that are outside of China, so this is an international thing. Yeah. It’s described by, like, journalists and activist groups as a m- government organized, non-government organization.

So it’s an NGO, but it was, that was created by the CCP. Really?

Yeah. They, they, they basically though and this is something also that Elsa argues in her testimony to Congress, they were created by the CCP to [00:18:00] monitor Chinese students abroad and mobilize them against dissenting views. And that, that is also something the State Department alleges.

They receive guidance, so these, like... It’s basically like student clubs and orgs receive guidance from the CCP through Chinese embassies and consulates and then they align their activities with Beijing’s political objectives rather than just, like, oh, like, you know, the students are into this thing.

Like, we’re gonna have a picnic. It’s more like, well, China says do this, and so they do that. They, they participate in the CCP’s United Front work. More on that later. And this also involves using students and groups for surveillance and also for influence on

Malcolm Collins: campus. Well, they also use it for harassment campaigns and stuff like this.

It’s been like very aggressive. Like, there’s been some instances in, like, Australia and stuff like that where some students who are from China will attempt to protest China, and these people will like, really aggressively go after them.

Simone Collins: Yeah, they’ll make note of them. They [00:19:00] will counter-protest. They will make them feel very uncomfortable.

And in some cases, local Chinese consulates have to approve CSSA presidential candidates. So they’re not even, like, privately governed or, like, student-only governed. They have to, like, get, like, a write-off from the embassies. That, that is

Malcolm Collins: incredibly-

Simone Collins: And they also accept funding ... spooky. I, it’s, yeah, it, this is, it’s, it’s, it’s weird that, like, there’s a-

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, th- this is allowed, and that the US government is just like, “Sure, whatever, you know, keep going.”

Simone Collins: Yeah. And- Because also, like, universities, this is where tech transfer takes place. This is where research takes place. Like, these are our nation’s centers for tech and scientific development.

Malcolm Collins: The administration should get in on this. I can see why the progressives wouldn’t wanna get on this, but, like, we certainly should.

Simone Collins: It’s a, it’s a national security risk, and that’s why I’m like, “Oh, this is something I’ve, I’m surprised is happening.” I mean, I, I, I 100% understand the dynamics at play given the financial incentives and that universities are boned.

Malcolm Collins: Right, but, [00:20:00] like, we’re okay with universities going out of business, you know?

Yeah, so- Yeah ... screw ‘em.

Simone Collins: Yeah, but Stanford University’s still, like, a hub, and it’s also, you know, in the, in the, the hotbed of AI development and Silicon Valley in general, and I’m, I’m gonna also touch on that. There are also these Confucius Institutes at universities, and Elsa testified about those, too.

She said, quote, “A bipartisan Senate investigation found that 70% of schools with a Confucius Institute,” these are programs that promote Chinese language and culture, “that received more than $250,000 in a given year failed to report it properly.” ‘Cause there are these reporting requirements. Yeah.

But they’re just not, they’re just not bothering, ‘cause, you know, like, no one- No one do. Yeah, on, like, what laws? No one... Who, who, who’s checking anymore? No one checks. The mods are asleep. That is, like, the big thing with society these days. So Elsa does note in her testimony- The

Malcolm Collins: mods are asleep in society.

That is so true.

Simone Collins: Yeah, and it’s very scary. [00:21:00] She, she notes in her testimony saying, quote, “Congressman Tim Walberg has co-signed a letter to the Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, requesting that CSSAs be evaluated for designation as foreign missions under the Foreign Missions Act.” And she, she calls that a step in the right direction.

But oh my God. What, no, no, no. You don’t know. A step in the right direction isn’t, like, a letter, a, a, a co-signed letter to the Secretary of State. The, he, he posted a comment. It’s, it’s like someone posting a comment on this video being like, “Oh, it’s a step in the right direction.” I mean, like, we read the comments, and thank you so much.

Yeah. And, and we, we love your feedback, but, like, don’t think that leaving a comment on anyone’s video or sending anyone a letter is gonna change the world. Like- and so basically nothing’s being done. I mean, she does also note that Section 117 of the Higher Education Act requires post-secondary institutions to disclose foreign gifts or contracts totaling $250,000 or more, and the [00:22:00] Department of Education recently approved a new foreign funding reporting portal that launched earlier this year so people can actually see.

But as she also pointed out in her testimony, the Confucius Institute, like 70% of the time doesn’t even report. Like no, you know, no one’s- Yeah ... no one’s actually enforcing these rules.

Malcolm Collins: Right, so why don’t they shut it down if it’s not reporting? I do not understand how lax our legal system is.

Simone Collins: Well, who’s gonna pay for someone to actually check, you know?

There, there’s that.

Malcolm Collins: So- Well, how do they know 70% of the time it doesn’t report it unless they have checked?

Simone Collins: Well, they, they must have done just specifically with the Confucius Institute a spot check, you know, some sort of audit.

Malcolm Collins: So- Well, then shut it down.

Simone Collins: I, I know. Well, but no, because I’m sure they got tons of pushback from universities who are like, “Yeah, by the way, if you do that I’m going bankrupt, so can you not?”

Like, it’s very complicated. Yeah, like

Malcolm Collins: we, we, we survive off of the Chinese spies. That’s like our major source of income these days. Yeah,

Simone Collins: like, “Just don’t go, please,

Malcolm Collins: stop.” The US students don’t want our fancy degrees anymore, you know? In China, they’ll still pay for them. [00:23:00]

Simone Collins: Yeah. Well, yeah, for, for money laundering purposes.

Anyway this whole thing though about transnational repression, I hear about it every now and then. I’m kind of on the fence about it. ‘Cause like-

Malcolm Collins: Okay, do you think it’s a good idea? We should get into more transnational repression? No,

Simone Collins: I just, I feel like they could do a better job. Maybe it’s that we’re, we’re harassed so much where I’m just like, I’m so unfazed by it.

You know, someone, someone new being like, “I’m gonna have your children taken away from you. I’m gonna attack you with a baseball bat. I’m gonna find, you know, like, I know where you live. I’m gonna...” You know, like all these things, like, I’m kinda like, “Eh.”

Malcolm Collins: So you think just like Blue Sky is better at this than China is?

Simone Collins: Yeah. Like, I don’t know, it’s just like everyone’s, everyone’s gonna, you know, making all these threats and actually, you know, following through with them. But you heard- Did you see like someone, another attempted Trump assassin was found on the streets of DC again today? Like, what? It... So anyway though, anyway.

Malcolm Collins: So hold on. Have, have you heard the the plan in Brussels, and they did like a 74-page report on this- Ugh ... so like who [00:24:00] knows, it could move ahead.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Where they want to merge Blue Sky and X to force X users to see Blue Sky posts. But, a- and Mastodon as well, but potentially not the other way around, just ‘cause they’re so mad that all of their little foot soldiers have isolated themselves.

Simone Collins: That’s really cute. I don’t know, that’s, that’s so cute. Like that level of like, Umbridge and, and, and bristling resentment is beautiful

Malcolm Collins: It’s like X in the users where it’s like, “I consent. I consent.” And then Brussels over the shoulder like, “I don’t.”

Simone Collins: It’s good. That’s good. Transnational repression.

So this is, this is the thing that Elsa’s complaining about. Not the spies ‘cause forget that. It’s, it’s the repression. Sure, of course. According to a 2024 Freedom House report, which is, is, it’s something she cites in her testimony, international students, visiting scholars, and faculty in the United States are being targeted by foreign governments and their agents.

Tactics of transnational [00:25:00] repression on campuses include digital and physical surveillance, harassment, assault, threats, and coercion by proxy. And while they cite, I think, 38 countries that are found to do this, it’s just like, “Hey, let’s bully our citizens abroad,” the CCP’s obviously the number-one for, like, country doing

Malcolm Collins: this Oh, yeah.

I mean, they’re great at

Simone Collins: it So here are the things that they do. They classroom discussions and campus events on topics like Hong Kong or Xinjiang or Tibet or Chinese politics, they’re monitored, and then the information is relayed to Chinese diplomatic staff or officials via networks such as Chinese students and scholars associations and platforms like WeChat.

And then students who organize or join protests, to your point, Malcolm, like, the white paper protests or the zero COVID vigils, report being filmed and shouted down or physically intimidated by pro-CCP students or CSSA affiliates, and sometimes this results in assaults [00:26:00] or other, you know, shout, shouting matches at, at demonstrations.

Though I think if you show up to a freaking protest, accept, expect that. But- Yeah, expect

Malcolm Collins: a shouting match. Come on. That’s- Yeah ... I mean, we’re gonna complain about

Simone Collins: that. Authorities in China will also contact or visit students’ family members back home to warn them about the student’s activism abroad, creating this intense psychological pressure on the student who’s, you know, speaking out.

Their parents are gonna call freaked out to be like, “What are you doing?” And that would genuinely have me scared, ‘cause China does disappear people, and that would be enough for me. So that’s, that’s for real. It is scary if you’re actually a Chinese citizen who has family in China.

Malcolm Collins: Oh,

Simone Collins: absolutely,

Malcolm Collins: yeah. And

Simone Collins: then pro-CCP actors will also use social media and messaging apps to threaten or smear or expose students who are, are critical of the CCP.

So, you know, you might also, if you have any dirt on you, you know, God help you. CSSAs are also, known for monitoring Chinese students, and they mobilize them to oppose speakers at events that are critical of [00:27:00] Beijing, and they also just help to inform students’ choices. Like apparently a lot of Chinese students are just less likely to take courses that might, might steer them in the wrong direction vis-a-vis CCP stances.

And then also the Confucius Institutes and CCP linked programs contribute to this atmosphere where students just avoid any sensitive topics or pro-democracy activity just to protect their, their, their safety. So, in, in her testimony, Elsa talks about how like the FBI would actively work with her and be like, “Yeah, we, we see people are following you around campus,” but Stanford basically did nothing, and she’s very, very angry about this, and I, I can understand why.

And obviously this is due to financial pressure that... And one analysis found that Chinese students contributed around $12 billion to the US economy in 2016 to 2017 alone. Well, I mean- And then a

Malcolm Collins: large- The, the, keep in mind how effing crazy this is. This isn’t a student [00:28:00] saying like, “I’m being harassed.”

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: This is a student being, saying, “I have a note from the FBI saying I’m being harassed on campus. Can we do something about this?”

Simone Collins: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And, and you know, so what, a, a thing that she points out, which is interesting to me, and I don’t know why specifically this university is doing it, but she points out that the University of Wisconsin-Madison has already created an information guide and reporting structure that directs targeted students to relevant offices and connects them with law enforcement, and she wants Stanford to just do the same thing.

She’s like, “This doesn’t require a congressional act. Like Stanford, please.” But good for you, University of Wisconsin-Madison. I don’t know why you have such a-

Malcolm Collins: It’s a good school. I seriously considered it before I got into St. Andrew’s.

Simone Collins: I don’t know anything about it. But-

Malcolm Collins: It’s just a, the high quality state school

it’s

Simone Collins: just good? So-

Malcolm Collins: It, it’s also where they went to in That ‘70s Show.

Simone Collins: Oh, I, I didn’t watch that show ‘cause I can’t stand ‘70s aesthetics, so that makes sense. The, the big element of this, and why this is [00:29:00] happening, and, and why I think we should acknowledge this and understand this, is that the, the, there’s one of the three magic weapons of CCP theory is this united front.

It, it’s about basically seizing and maintaining power, and it, it’s supposed to basically unite all fronts that can be united. So this is part of a very concerted and presumably well-funded strategy. And the idea is to unite all fronts that can be united in order to neutralize opposition and build the broadest possible coalition of around CCP objectives.

It’s basically, you know how you described the urban monoculture as being this, this this culture that says that it, like, accepts diversity, and it tries to be, you know, as inclusive as possible- Mm-hmm ... and everyone should be, you know, a member, and you could be from any religious background, but then if you scratch just beneath the surface, everyone has exactly the same views and values?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

Simone Collins: That’s kind of what [00:30:00] they’re going for. So domestically, the United Front focuses on groups that the party sees as important but not fully under its control, like ethnic minorities or religious communities or private entrepreneurs or intellectuals or non-communist democratic parties, the new middle class, the professional strata.

And then they try to draw these groups that are not, like, CCP hardliners into party-led institutions such as the Chinese People’s Political Consult- Mm ... Consultative Conference and various other mass organizations where they get limited representation, but they’re expected to take the CCP’s lead. So they’re basically like, “Yes,” like, “United Front, let’s all be together,” but, like, let’s be clear, you’re gonna toe the line.

And again, that’s, it’s just very urban monoculture coded to me. Overseas though, the way that this works is they try to shape foreign environments in ways that are favorable to the CCP by influencing the Chinese diaspora communities, and also elites and media and [00:31:00] academic institutions, and businesses and politicians in other countries.

And the activities described by governments and researchers who are looking into the effects of the United Front’s strategy include promoting pro-Beijing narratives and building relationships with foreign elites, like Elon Musk, or guiding or co-opting Chinese language media, gathering intelligence, facilitating ilicit- illicit technology transfer and in some cases interfering in, in foreign politics.

Not as effectively as Russia does, in our opinion, but you know, it’s, it’s a thing. And definitely these, these student orgs that are very active at universities are a, a meaningful branch of this. The fact that embassies are funneling money to them, which is not being reported, and even sometimes approving their presidents, is just enough, enough for me to be like, “Okay, this is just a clear and organized strategy.”

And I do think that universities should be, like, clear to people about this. Like, “Hey, our university is a place that is [00:32:00] contributing to the technological and scientific advancement of our country.” Yeah. “And also, there are foreign national organizations that are at this university that are trying to basically, like-” send all that information to their country.

And let’s just be aware of that as a thing. Remember, like, there used to be these posters, like, “Loose lips sink ships.” You know, we used to talk about this culturally as a, as a country.

Malcolm Collins: But I just don’t know if, like, you can sell that to the type of person who works at an AI company.

Simone Collins: And that’s a big concern ‘Cause there already have been concrete AI IP-related theft cases and Chinese nationals.

So a Chinese national working at Google in California was arrested in 2024 and charged with stealing over 500 confidential files on Google’s advanced AI infrastructure and chips. On Google. Like, Google, they’re, they have, they’re not messing around. Like, they’re not a, a, a fly-by-night seat-of-the-pants, like, AI [00:33:00] startup in the same way like I- Yeah

I as, like, Anthropic, right? Like, they’re, they’re careful now. They are. But, you know, maybe they’d make a mistake. Google, though? I mean, they have, like, the big money. But the DOJ alleges that this guy uploaded files describing Google’s TPU-based data center architecture and AI supercomputing platform to a personal account while secretly working for two Chinese-based China-based tech startups, and building AI platforms and large model infrastructure.

The FBI director, Christopher Wray, framed this as part of the lengths affiliates of companies based in the People’s Republic of China are willing to go to steal American innovation. They, so it is clear. I mean, like, everyone knows, ‘cause this is just China’s, like, overtly open strategy with regard to, like, mm, putting it diplomatically, tech transfer, is-

Malcolm Collins: Yeah

Simone Collins: they will steal American tech and/or reverse engineer it, which is what’s really been happening mostly with with Claude and [00:34:00] with OpenAI-related IP. They seem to just mostly be reverse engineering it for now. But their whole strategy is, “Yeah, we’re just gonna steal it.” China is doing many other interesting things in AI innovation with a, a, a really heavy focus, per what I’ve read and heard from some insiders, on, like, robotics.

So they’re, they’re doing, they’re doing innovative stuff, too, and, but they’re still totally sticking to their old tried and true just copy it and steal it strategy, and they should ‘cause it has worked well for them.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, it’s, it’s worked well so far. I mean, it’s- Yeah ... it’s, it’s, long term it might not...

I mean, o- obviously their country’s sort of falling apart right now, which is, you know, whatever.

Simone Collins: Yeah, but, you know, they then more than anyone else needs the deus ex machina of AI and of tech to fix the problem. So they are extra in... They’re extra incentivized to steal tech. And the, the US government on many fronts, I’m not gonna read all of them that, that I pulled up is, is very explicit about the [00:35:00] fact that this is a major security risk.

And this is one of the big themes of AI, is, like, who’s gonna have AGI first? Who’s gonna have, like, the- Yeah ... the ultimate AI weapon? The House Select Committee on the CCP held a hearing on China- And AI this year where the chair stated that Chinese companies, quote, “Rely on Western AI models,” end quote, and are buying what they legally can and stealing what they cannot at every layer of the technology stack.

Witnesses framed theft and replication of US models and tools as a central cheat code in AI strategy. And most of the cases in which AI, A- IP has been stolen just aren’t public because frankly they’re so embarrassing and so dangerous, Yeah ... that they just don’t want things to come out. Now to be fair OpenAI especially after sort of coming...

They had, like, this come to Jesus moment when, when DeepSeek first, like, I guess hit the market and everyone was like, “Oh my God.” They, they got really public about how important it was [00:36:00] to protect themselves, I guess. And they have, like, biometrics protected rooms with, like, you have to do a retinal scan- Yeah

or whatever. But it’s only a matter of time until this stuff is stolen, and I, I just feel like people should be a little bit more aware of the fact that spying is actively happening. Malcolm and I actually, like, y- you and I, Malcolm- This is why you can- ... we’re pretty open about spies ...

Malcolm Collins: trust Chinese people.

They all might be spies. That’s what she’s saying.

Simone Collins: Well, we, we’ve been accused of being spies. We’ve been, like-

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, we’ve been accused of being spies

Simone Collins: for Israel. We, we joke about it all the time, but also, like, jokes aside now, I’m kind of like, “Oh, God,” you know?

Malcolm Collins: This is actually

Simone Collins: a problem. Why do all the

Malcolm Collins: other spies get money and not us?

Simone Collins: Yeah, no one’s promising us fancy s- spy jobs.

Malcolm Collins: CCC, I am so cheap. You support my family-

Simone Collins: We, yeah, we wanna be spy family. Make, make us the real spy family ...

Malcolm Collins: I will, I will not send you like, confidential information ‘cause I don’t have access to it, but I can at least stop [00:37:00] saying bad things about you for a little bit of money.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah, we’ll be paid shills. We’ll, we’ll, we’ll, we’ll help with the united front. We would be such bad shills for China.

Malcolm Collins: It’s true.

Simone Collins: We’d be really... No, like, we’d be legit bad shills for China. We’d be really bad shills for Europe. I’m trying to think who could actually, like-

Malcolm Collins: Israel could pay us. We’d be decent enough.

Just stop doing the, the, the meme videos.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Well, remember when Qatar was gonna fly us out to one of the, the Doha debates?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, I, I, I d- I do, I’d stay in

Simone Collins: Doha. And then, and then, no, immediately, like, in our next few podcasts, you’re like, “Ugh, Qatar’s so whatever.” I can’t even remember what you said about them that was not flattering, but, like, you can’t help, you can’t help but, like, anti-shill for people.

And, and that robbed us of a potential-

Malcolm Collins: I don’t think that

Simone Collins: has anything to do with it ...

Malcolm Collins: business class flight.

Simone Collins: Oh, well. Well, I like fancy flights. I like fancy things.

Malcolm Collins: Anyway, let me [00:38:00] see-

Simone Collins: I, I’m literally covered in infant urine right now. It’s, she needs a break. She needs some bribery. She needs some grease payments.

Speaker 3: Speaking of grease payments, if you’re wondering why we don’t have a reform video going live today, we did. We filmed it. We even filmed it over the weekend. It was kids crawling over us and everything, but the video got corrupted somehow. So I’m going to be putting it on our paid Substack and Patreon immediately.

I’m sorry about that, guys. I want to have it here, but it’s going to perform terribly in the algo because it starts without my video even working, and we had no idea. Obviously, it’s a big change, and I would just film one today that we could have go live tomorrow when it’s still relevant, but we have a news crew coming over today, so we can’t do that.

So sorry about that, guys. But hey, excuse to give us money.

Money, please.

Speaker 4: Oh, no. No. There’s no money.

Speaker 3: Money, please, money. Please.

Malcolm Collins: Well, let’s, let’s end early today. Get [00:39:00] started early ‘cause I’m also about to fall asleep. That’s why I was eating those jelly beans, trying to get a little bit of sugar to keep me awake

Simone Collins: for- Oh, I’m so sorry I bore you to death with my- My, my grating female voice. I’m sorry, guys. I know, you had to listen to the, the female today.

I’m

Malcolm Collins: just, I’m just getting up so much earlier these days, you know?

Simone Collins: Yeah. No, Malcolm is, Sorry, guys. He’s still not getting sleep. Okay, then I will, Are you gonna go buy your potato and your

Malcolm Collins: shallots? Yes, ‘cause I wanna taste v- v- forest-found soup.

Simone Collins: Foraged. Well, oh, yeah. Then it’s an invasive species from China, right?

Malcolm Collins: Yes, China. All right. We gotta get rid of this Chinese mushrooms.

Simone Collins: Golden oyster mushrooms. Yeah, so thematic, I guess. Yeah. Nothing, nothing says- I love

Malcolm Collins: you, Simone.

Simone Collins: I love you, too. Don’t... Do you want me to pick up your food so you don’t fall asleep at the wheel?

Malcolm Collins: I’ll make it.

Simone Collins: I don’t, I don’t like those [00:40:00] odds.

“I’ll make it.” That’s not what you wanna hear.

Malcolm Collins: I had a bunch of jelly beans. I’m up. I’m up. I’m up.

Simone Collins: I don’t know what flavor.

Malcolm Collins: All the flavors. That’s the freaking point of jelly beans, all the flavors.

Simone Collins: Man, I fill our grocery cart with, like, apples, and bananas, and broccoli, and cauliflower, and then I see this giant container of jelly beams, as Titan calls them.

Jelly beams. Jelly beams. Octavian still calls them his blanket Blankwet. Blankwet.

Malcolm Collins: Blankwet. Blank-

Simone Collins: Blankwet.

Malcolm Collins: The day he told us about how he’s gonna have a Chinook helicopter move the house to the woods.

Simone Collins: Yeah. ‘Cause-

Malcolm Collins: Simone found a spot she thought was beautiful in the woods.

Simone Collins: I... That spot is perfect.

Malcolm Collins: And so he says it’ll bring the house and it’ll bring the teddy bear in the house over so we don’t have to worry about that.

Simone Collins: [00:41:00] Well, and we’re also gonna buy vans and then drive them into the Chinook helicopter, and the kids will be in the vans when they drive. Yeah. It’s a whole thing. He also said today he was gonna, he was gonna move the climbing dome over, the, the one that we got.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, he did? Okay. Yeah. That’s good. That’s good.

Simone Collins: So it, it is done.

He’s

Malcolm Collins: gonna have everything he needs down there. That’s funny, the idea of, like, moving the climbing dome in

Simone Collins: the... The whole, the whole house.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

Simone Collins: No, he’s... He thought about it a lot. He’s like, “How much does our house weigh?” He’s trying to figure it out. I think the, the the average house weighs, a- according to Alexa, around 300 and- 300,000 pounds.

So our m- ours must weigh a lot more, ‘cause the average American house now is made out of, like, particle board and sawdust. So- Yeah ... ours, made out of all this, like, local stone, has to be a lot more. It has to weigh a lot more.

Malcolm Collins: I think it’s gonna be harder to move in a Chinook helicopter.

Simone Collins: I think it’s gonna fall apart, Malcolm.

I think Octavian’s gonna break our [00:42:00] house with his Chinook helicopter. But whatever, you know. Then we’ll have a Chinook helicopter. He just wants to live in a helicopter anyway, so it’s fine. Sorry, I’ll let you get your potato. Go. I love you. Don’t die.

Malcolm Collins: Did you see the recipe? Is it doable?

Simone Collins: Oh.

Malcolm Collins: We’ll do it with coconut milk with my plan, ‘cause I said that’ll give it a more luxurious taste.

Simone Collins: Ah.

Malcolm Collins: The part you- Per year

Simone Collins: now ...

Malcolm Collins: you can skip is the making the broth.

Simone Collins: This is so written by AI. Because no one, no one would say 700 to 900 grams fresh golden oyster mushrooms. The more the better. They carry the show. Use mostly caps. Save some stems for broth. That’s ‘cause I got

Malcolm Collins: mad at it the first time. It was like, “Chop up some oyster mushrooms and then put it in a mushroom bo- broth.”

And I’m like, “I don’t want a freaking canned mushroom broth for my mushroom soup.”

Simone Collins: Ew. Yeah, that’s disgusting. Yukon [00:43:00] Gold potato, peeled and diced. N- this might take a really long time to bring to a simmer, 15 to 20 minutes. Oh, I guess if you go now and I start right away. Oh, blend. Oh yeah, we’re pureeing it.

Malcolm Collins: Pureeing the what?

Simone Collins: The

Malcolm Collins: soup. Which part of it?

Simone Collins: The whole thing.

Malcolm Collins: Does it say blend at the end? Because it certainly- Yeah ... doesn’t say blend at the beginning.

Simone Collins: Yeah, it blends at the end and you f- oh, you’re gonna need cream. I-

Malcolm Collins: It always says you can use coconut milk instead of cream.

Simone Collins: Oh, okay, yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Very explicitly.

Simone Collins: Mushrooms, blah, blah, blah. Blah, blah, blah. Yeah. Full blend potato plus cream. Yeah. Yeah, it’s, it’s a, it’s a cream of mushroom

soup. Yeah. Separate. So I’m sauteing the onions f- or sorry, I’m sauteing the [00:44:00] mushrooms before the first and then I put into water and then I simmer them for 20 minutes and then I s- strain and then I add a softened potato.

Malcolm Collins: Why don’t you ask for a different recipe, okay?

Simone Collins: Yeah. Did you ask Grok? Grok can’t cook.

Malcolm Collins: Go to Perplexity and ask a recipe and show me what I’m getting Gee

Simone Collins: whiz. Okay.

Malcolm Collins: You could do it right now, Simone, okay?

Simone Collins: I know.

Malcolm Collins: And ask for a-

Simone Collins: I will ...

Malcolm Collins: a cream of mushroom soup, okay? Not like a m- a normal mug, because then it’s gonna give you, like, weird...

Simone Collins: Please give me a cream of mushroom soup recipe that is compatible with foraged golden oyster mushrooms.

Perplex- why would you even ask a... No. [00:45:00] Grok is a man AI, and not, like, a chef man AI, just a normal man AI.

There we go. Okay. So we need one pound of golden oyster mushrooms. Totally have. Three tablespoons of butter, check. Olive oil, check. Medium yellow onion or two shallots diced, so we need the shallots. Garlic, have it. One cup fre- one... Oh, sorry, one teaspoon fresh thyme. We don’t necessarily need that, and I think- Yeah

we might have it dried. Kosher salt, black pepper, flour, chicken or vegetable broth. I have bouillon, which I can use. Heavy cream, half-and-half or whole milk. We have whole milk. Soy sauce or tamari. We have soy sauce at least. We might have tamari. Lemon juice or dry sherry, optional but recommended. So you prep the onions, you saute them, you build the base, you thicken it, and then you [00:46:00] blend to make a smooth soup, and then you finish gently by stirring in the cream and soy sauce.

I think this would be better with heavy cream, but- Okay.

Malcolm Collins: Do it with heavy cream ...

Simone Collins: we don’t have any heavy cream. So can you get two shallots and heavy cream?

Malcolm Collins: Yes.

Simone Collins: Beautiful.

Malcolm Collins: I love

Simone Collins: you. And if you wanna get chicken broth, you can, but we have bouillon that I can use to reconstitute broth.

Malcolm Collins: Chicken broth will probably be easier if I get it, right?

Simone Collins: Eh. You know what? We might have some. I have bouillon cubes. I really shouldn’t be lazy, so don’t... Yeah, don’t buy things. Let’s save money.

Malcolm Collins: All right, love you.

Simone Collins: I love you too.

Speaker: Can I handle that chicken for you? Oh, yeah.

I remember. Let me handle him. [00:47:00] Let me handle him. I- I’m gonna get a brown one. Let me handle him. I’m probably the one to take care of this guy by hand. Mommy, I wanted to hold a chicken. Okay, go pick one up, my love. But it’s harder. Titan seems pretty good at catching them. I wanna hold one. I’m pretty good at...

Can you?

Mommy, get a chicken right now, please. Look at all these flowers in this tree, Mommy. Wow,

Speaker 2: they’re so pretty. Get

Speaker: a chicken right

Speaker 2: now for me. Okay, I’ll see what I can do. Can

guys. Be nice. Thank you, friends. Yeah, there you go, Indy. Gently. Thank

you.

Malcolm and Simone Collins react to Nick Fuentes’ shocking declaration: “I’m a moderate non-woke Democrat in 2026.” Malcolm’s long-standing prediction that Fuentes would align with the Democratic coalition has come true — and the clips prove it.

In this episode, they break down Fuentes’ revealed preferences vs. his rhetoric, his pattern of undermining Republican candidates during elections, his obsession with destroying the GOP and harming Israel, his weak stance on immigration enforcement, and why this move exposes his true priorities. They also discuss the “Nazi Democrat” candidate in Maine, accelerationism, the health of the right-wing movement without deontological extremists, and what this means for the future of American politics.

A must-watch for anyone following the Nick Fuentes saga, MAGA, or the realignment happening on the right.

Episode Transcript

Malcolm Collins: Hello, Simone. I’m excited to be here with you today. Today we get a big heaping helping of I was right, I called it, it was the craziest conspiracy theory I had ever launched. So people will know there have been a number of episodes where I predicted that Nick Fuentes would join the Democratic coalition.

And there was actually one entire episode that was nothing about but this exact topic, but I never aired that episode because I thought it was just too crazy to air as an independent episode. I thought people would say, “Malcolm, you’ve fallen off. This is crazy. You’re going too hard here. He’s never actually just gonna come out.

Like, he may act like a Democrat, but he’s not just gonna join the coalition.” And he has.

Speaker: 2026, vote Dem- I’m a Democrat now. I’m a moderate Democrat in 2026. I don’t know about ‘28. For 2026, I am a non-woke Democrat. Hi, my name’s Nick Fuentes. I’m an Afro-Latino, non-woke Democrat. I care about affordability. [00:01:00] I care about foreign interventions. I care about the border. I’m a non-woke, moderate Democrat.

I think the GOP needs to be destroyed. I think the corrupt criminal government of Trump needs to be slowed down. We need to impeach the orange. It’s time to put this in a peach. Trump needs to be placed inside of a crystal. He needs to be impeached. This fat orange, tiny hands needs to be impeached.

And then in ‘28, no Vance, no Rubio. We have to burn down the whole party. We need to elect a dark horse who’s gonna put America first. I’m not listening to anybody else. No Vance, no Rubio, America first. That’s the ma-- And that is all that matters anymore. That is the only thing that matters. I’m not voting for a Democrat unless they’re really, un- unless it’s, like, um, me.

Unless it’s a, unless it’s a Nick Fuentes Democrat. Unless a Nick Fuentes Democrat wins the nomination, I won’t vote for a Democrat. I’m, I’m never Vance. I’m never Rubio. I’m an America first guy. So Tucker and all the [00:02:00] rest of them, they’re gonna try to shut me down. They’re gonna try to get Vance in there in ‘28, and you gotta be...

You gotta wisen up and realize we gotta take our own side here. None of this nonsense

Malcolm Collins: And I will note here that I have seen some people coping and saying that these clips are him joking. I have watched enough Nick Fuentes to know the difference between when he is entirely joking and when he is...

Because he does everything in a jocular manner. When he’s saying the stuff he most sincerely believes more than anything in the world, he’ll add a joke here or there to it.

Speaker 6: And if you want to say that this is a joke, really the only line in here that I think you could use as evidence, because everything else is completely in line with everything he said in the past, is the I’m an Afro-Latino. But this only works if you’re unfamiliar with the Nick nick fuentes lore. Nick’s grandfather was Mexican.

He admits this and identifies this way. And in his DNA test, he is partially African. Small, like 1%, but he is an Afro-Latino. And [00:03:00] so I think what he’s doing here is in everything he says, whether it’s right wing or left wing in a traditional context, he always throws in some spice, some stuff to piss people off.

But he’s trying to performatively lean into the identity politics

Speaker 15: I also want to point out here that I do not dislike Nick as a person. If anything, I think that this is a good development for him because he has been cheerleading Democrat causes for a while now. And to just be able to come out and admit like what his political team is, I think shows a degree of integrity instead of LARPing as somebody who’s right wing.

And there’s nothing like, okay, like I’m against the Democrats’ agenda, but he has explained why he holds these points. These points are in line with the Democratic agenda. And I don’t think that he’s being necessarily intellectually dishonest in how he has laid these out. So I can’t hold animosity over that.

Malcolm Collins: But if [00:04:00] you look specifically where I think this is validated, because maybe you could say the whole, “I’m joining the Democrats, I’m a moderate Democrat now, a non-woke Democrat.”

First, that’s a weird way to say it if he’s joking, right? The, the coming out explicitly as a non-woke Democrat is it’s, he, he’s, he’s not putting on, like, an act, like, “I’ve become woke,” or something like that. He is, he is clarifying his position while in the same speech saying that he still can’t quite bring himself to vote for most Democrats yet.

Which to me, that doesn’t, that’s not a jo- like, that’s him saying

Simone Collins: plainly- Yeah, if, if it were a bit, he wouldn’t be speaking that way ...

Malcolm Collins: And yes, and then later in the same speech, which we’ll get to, he explicitly says that we should vote for a Democrat over a a, an Indian Republican. A, a, Wamatha, Ramaswamy?

Vivek

Simone Collins: Ramaswamy

Speaker 3: So what is the alternative? Well, not [00:05:00] everybody’s gonna like this, but in November, there’s gonna be two candidates that can win on the ballot in Ohio, and it is Acton on the Democrat side and Ramaswamy on the Republican side. If it can’t be Ramaswamy, I think you know what it has to be. And so I’m gonna be calling on everybody to be going to Ohio, and we’re gonna give people a choice.

You have an option, stay home. But I think if you really wanna make a difference and help, we’re gonna have to hold our noses and we’re gonna have to vote Democrat.

And I’d point out here how quickly he flipped on this, “Oh, I’m a Democrat now, but I won’t vote for Democrats,” to, “All of my fans need to get out there and vote for a Democrat.”

This is why I can only help but roll my eyes when somebody’s like, “Well, you know, he did say that he was never going to tell people to vote for Democrats, so it shouldn’t really be seen immediately afterwards as soon as it’s election season.” Like, there’s a pattern to this, guys.

And again, I am [00:06:00] not anti Nick Fuentes content. I find it often quite entertaining, sometimes insightful, but it’s important to look at his revealed preferences and his end goals that can be discerned from looking at the revealed preferences, what he actually does when it matters

Malcolm Collins: When, and Vivek is awesome, man. Like, he’s-

Simone Collins: Vivek is awesome, yeah. I agree ...

Malcolm Collins: one of my favorite Vivek quotes I heard this when I was at the Libertarian convention. And it was Vivek versus another one of the leading Republican candidates, one of the boring ones who I don’t like.

Anyway, so the other one, like, wanted everyone to come with out their guns to the meeting. And you know, it’s the Libertarians, so they didn’t wanna do that. It

Simone Collins: was in New Hampshire?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, it was New Hampshire. He

Simone Collins: was asking everyone to come without guns in New Hampshire.

Malcolm Collins: Well, because he’s like, you know, “I’m a...”

I can understand how he might be scared. You know, “I’m a presidential candidate, I get lots of death threats.” They all get lots of death threats. You know, we get death threats, right? Anyway, Vivek then comes, and he has no restrictions on it. He’s like, “Yeah, just anybody come.” And then he gets up on stage and the guy who I, who was telling me this story, he came with, like, an [00:07:00] open carry, like, AR-15.

You know, like, a very well, like, strapped to this event, right? And he’s like- Wait,

Simone Collins: Vivek, he, he came with a rifle strapped to him, not like a handgun, like under his-

Malcolm Collins: I think it was, I think it was a rifle from what, from what I remember of the story. So he he’s giving the speech and he then at one point in the speech is, is like, “Oh yeah, and if I ever start doing this stuff,” because he’s like, somebody’s like, you know, I can’t remember, like, you know, “Well, politicians say X or say Y.”

And he goes, “Well, if I start doing that, you know they’ve gotten to me, and you know what to do.” And he pointed to this guy with the rifle. Oh,

Simone Collins: no.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, my

Simone Collins: God ... and

Speaker 22: Do. Yes, sir.

Do it, Regal.

Malcolm Collins: I love that. That’s, that’s how you, n- I mean, that is so much more based [00:08:00] than anything Nick Fuentes has ever done, to point to the guy in the crowd with the

Simone Collins: freaking

Malcolm Collins: rifle- You know what to do

and being like, “If I ever go for this stuff, you know what to do.” That’s amazing.

Speaker 8: And ‘07 Vivek, the avatar of destruction, we love you. Uh, I do support Trump, but you’re awesome. You gotta run in 20- after Trump wins, you gotta run in ‘28. Honestly, I’m, I’m on board for a Vivek ‘28. I’m on board for a Vivek presidency. I think the ideal primary in 2028 is Kanye West and Vivek Ramaswamy. W America

Speaker 9: And I want to be clear here because sometimes people will be like, well, Asmongold says he agrees with 99% of stuff that Nick Fuentes said. And there was a time when I felt that way too. And I was like, hey, we got to give this guy some benefit of the doubt. He totally dunked on Piers Morgan. Like that was hilarious.

You know, he says funny stuff on stream. And so I would watch individual clips he said, like him glazing Vivek here and think, oh, this guy is great. I mean, other people will say that. Like here we’ll point out where he’ll do some anti-ice stuff. [00:09:00] And then people will say, oh yeah, but here’s him saying some pro-ice stuff.

And it doesn’t matter if with somebody like this, who when it doesn’t matter, you know, when it’s not an election cycle where Vivek is running, he will glaze Vivek. And then the moment it’s relevant to our side winning, enacting stricter border policy, actually protecting unborn children, he comes in and he’s like, no, no, no, no, no.

Now I’m working against him. And so this has significantly soured me on him is I realized that he has this chameleon persona where he will just take on any position that he thinks will grow his base within a right-wing audience when it’s not election season. And then the moment it becomes election season and it matters, he goes full on against us.

And this is why when people are like, oh, you know, look at this clip that counters what you just said here. Look at this clip. And it’s like, well, if those came from [00:10:00] beforehand, then he’s longing to grow an audience. Like the fact that he is contradicting himself makes it worse. And this is coming from me, somebody who prides himself in updating his views.

If you watch our videos, you will see me updating my views, but you can see the directionality of those views updating. It’s not like I’m here, you know, pro this, pro this, pro this, pro this. And the moment it matters, I turn against it, right? With me, it’s more like for a long time, I was like, well, you know, maybe the trans community, some people are legitimately trans and we just need to handle this with kids.

And then I got access to more evidence. And I was like, I was wrong about that. And I admit that I was wrong about that. And I used to be a Democrat too. Like I was wrong about that. But this is all sort of a directional evolution, which is not what we see with Fuentes. He doesn’t really look like an evolution of political beliefs, but either [00:11:00] somebody who is hiding his original goals or somebody who has just been captured by anti-Indian and anti-Jewish hatred to the extent that he is willing to sabotage everything else he has ever said he stood for in favor of that.

Speaker 10: Funny, , y- I actually, when we speak about my evolution, I actually, if you look at our early videos on Nick Fuentes, they , are pretty glowing on Nick Fuentes. , Basically, , I did... There’s a funny scene where Nexinor is like, “Who’s this leaflet person?” And then somebody in chat is like, “People are calling her a Nazi.”

And he goes, “Well, I, I probably like her then. Let’s see what funny jokes she told.” Or, no, that was, that was Shoeonhead when somebody said, somebody said she’s a Nazi, and she goes, “Oh, I wonder what funny jokes she said.” , But like, , I sort of felt the same way. All the regular people who annoy me were attacking Nick, and so I’m immediately like, “Okay, I’m gonna give him the benefit of the doubt.

Like, let’s see what this guy’s about.” And he starts with some fun stuff. , And then he starts hoping that we lose the war in Iran and starts hoping that our side loses elections and it, and all of a sudden I’m like, “Oh, God,” like, “this guy is [00:12:00] very against our best interest

Speaker 21: Quick side note here, but like we need to, I think as a movement, be clear, , in terms of like we can say that there are differences between ethnic groups. We can say that there are differences between cultural groups. We can say that anchor babies are a problem in the country. We can say that in-group preference among certain ethnicities is a problem among, within this country.

But this just totalistic othering of people from different ethnicities that now show ideologically in their actions, in what they’re doing, that they align with an American vision. Like take Leaflet. Leaflet’s, I think, a sep- second-generation Japanese. , She might be further back than that, but at least I know she’s ethnically Japanese.

In everything that she has ever done, she has shown herself to be on team, right? , so what I’m supposed to other her for this sort of like purity? Aria Babu, Indian, who we’ve talked about, who had this wonderful essay on like why witches are evil and why we need to go back to Puritanism [00:13:00] and, , clearly on team. And I just don’t think it’s helpful to create gating, , where people who are clearly... And, and it’s not culturally American. It’s, it’s not what the, the backwoods people did. It’s not what the Puritans did. Maybe the Cavaliers did it, but they were always dbags. , And the Quakers did it, but they’re where woke comes from, so also dbags.

, So I don’t see the point in this sort of, , racially pure angle on things when the real challenge, which is the harder challenge, is just to get people to understand that you can’t just import anyone and expect them to behave like anyone else. , You lose that battle if you decide that you won’t cave on the racial purity battle.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, so I was, I was telling this story to Simone, and he’s like, “Well...”

Because at first, before he then just later goes on and is like, “Yeah, we should vote for Democrats,” he, he starts by saying... And I wanna get into, like, the logic of all of this. Yeah. ‘Cause I think this can con- confuse some people, and it really shouldn’t be confusing. It’s actually, the [00:14:00] reason why I was able to predict this is it’s highly in alignment with everything he’s been doing for a long time at this point.

And the continuing to pretend to be right-leaning, I think, was the joke, right? Like, he’s, he’s not really right-leaning on any major policy anymore. He promotes social wealth redistribution he promotes like, no tariffs, like, sort of globalist market conditions. He promotes America not really exercising its, its power on the world stage.

Even when it’s just, like, a, an easy net benefit to us, like in Venezuela. Like, that’s not even, like, a boots on the ground. That’s just, like, a, oh, yeah, like... But I wanna get into the psychology of how he got to this place, because I think for some people who believe the leftist vision of Nick Fuentes, this can be weird or confusing.

But, like, if you’ve been actually listening to what he’s been saying for a while now this is not remotely surprising. This is the d- And, and note here, people can say, “Well, you [00:15:00] know, the, the, he, he has so many values that don’t align with d- values of the rest of the Democratic coalition.” And I pointed out that the Democratic coalition is much more based on what they want to destroy than what they want to promote.

And by this what I mean is you are able to have Islamists on the same side as LGBTQ extremists in the in, in, in this faction. He has more in common with, well, basically either group than those two groups have with each other. But he, at, at a, at a, at a fundamental level... Because w- we’ll talk about, like, what he says he believes.

I don’t wanna get... I wanna get into the second funny part here, ‘cause this also surprised Simone. It’s, he goes, “Well, vote for Nick Fuentes style Democrats.” And Simone was like, “What does that mean?” And I go, “Well, you know there is a Nazi Democrat now.” Mm. And she’s like, “Wait, there’s a Nazi Democrat?” And I’m like, “Yeah, you haven’t heard about it?”

So let’s get into this. This is Garren Pattler. He’s a Democrat [00:16:00] senatorial candidate, a of-

Simone Collins: What state?

Malcolm Collins: Maine.

Simone Collins: Okay.

Malcolm Collins: He’s the current front runner and presumptive Democratic nominee. In 2007 while live, i- while on leave in Croatia, the young mariner, after tours in Iraq he got a tattoo.

Now he says he had no idea- Oh ... what it was. He’s like- This is funny ... “Oh, I just got it off the wall in the tattoo shop.”

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: The problem is it is a death head symbol used by the SS-

Simone Collins: Yeah ...

Malcolm Collins: para- paramilitary force central to the Holocaust and other atrocities. It’s a, it’s a very central neo- c- it’s, it’s, like, much worse than, say, like, a swastika ‘cause with a swastika you could say, “I got it confused for that Buddhist symbol,” or something, right?

And he claims he had no idea what this was. He had no idea what it was until it picked up. But it seems,

Simone Collins: He’s an alleged Nazi. Like, he denies

Malcolm Collins: it. He has an SS tattoo.

Simone Collins: I mean, look, also the two lightning bolts, they look awesome. [00:17:00] Like, that’s the problem.

Malcolm Collins: You think it’s like the Harry Potter tattoo?

Yeah. I go to somebody and I go, “I got the Harry Potter tattoo on my forehead.” The

Simone Collins: two of them.

Malcolm Collins: And it’s the SS, right? That’s the- Yeah.

Simone Collins: That’s, I mean, I, I could see it. I could genuinely see it happening. So he’s an... I would put him down as alleged Nazi.

Malcolm Collins: But what’s been very fun about this candidate, and you can watch a bunch of videos online of people freaking out about this, is rightists will try to get leftists to condemn him for being a Nazi.

They’re like, “You will accuse Trump of being a Nazi over, like, nothing, right? This guy’s got an, an SS tattoo.” Oh, no.

Simone Collins: I’ve... See, and now that you mention him, I have heard of him, and specifically from leftist newscasters or, like, well, news commentators on YouTube. And they’re all like, “No,” like, “It, it, he, it was a mistake.”

This is totally defended on the left

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, they don’t care. Like, the left doesn’t care, ‘cause the left doesn’t care about, like, being against Nazis, as I’ve pointed out. Like, they’re, they’ll be pro-Nazi if it’s on their side. Like, this has- No, no, they just say- ... long been normative for

Simone Collins: them.

Malcolm Collins: Which is- They don’t

Simone Collins: say he’s a Nazi [00:18:00]

Malcolm Collins: So, so with the recent Nick Fuentes turn I, I, I think I should explain to people, like, how he psychologically got here, because this is, this is also fairly interesting.

Simone Collins: Well, and let me ask a question that I think might be top of mind for a lot of people, too. Is this just about being path dependent on being rebellious? And if you are far right, the only rebellious thing you can do after a certain point is go left. Like, that’s the last rebellious thing. No,

Malcolm Collins: because w- when, when, when you, when you saw his coming out as a moderate Democrat, as a non-woke Democrat, and you saw the things that he was rabidly protesting, like the Trump administration, locking up everyone in the Trump administration, ending all of their efforts when you see...

I mean, he has streams where he’s crashed out about ICE being too aggressive before.

Simone Collins: Right?

Malcolm Collins: Like- Wait,

Speaker 2: The other thing I’m really worried about is what’s happening at these ICE detention centers, where it’s happening not far from where I live in Broadview, Illinois, [00:19:00] where they set up an ICE detention facility, and the administration is rounding these people up, which I support, but they’re doing it in a very provocative way

Speaker 11: Note here, , many such quotes from Fuentes. We’ve got ones like, , “You can perform brutality without being brutal. , He called ICE performatively cruel. , And like we know that they’re not.

They’re doing what they need to do. When I watch these videos of ICE, I often feel like I see them being nice while people are calling them like the N-word and stuff, and just trying their best to get things done often, , while people are violently resisting and harassing them. I can imagine almost no other group as beleaguered and unappreciated for their jobs.

, I, I feel so sorry for what they go through every day, and to see Nick piling on with this stuff... And people can be like, “Well, here’s where he’s supporting them, and here’s where he’s supporting them.” Or later in that very clip, he walks it back and is like, “Well, he never should have said it in the first place.”

These people are working their butts off, man. He never should have said it in the first place. You’re not genuinely on [00:20:00] team if you’re doing that

Simone Collins: are you serious? He’s not about

Malcolm Collins: the poor people. Yeah, yeah. He says it, it looks bad, and it’s, like, bad. And there’s no other way you can do it, right? Like, he, I- if you follow, like, the things he’s actually complained about and the things he complains about as sort of ideological points in that stream, this follows really directly from that.

So there’s really two things that he wants more than anything. He wants the people involved with the Trump administration arrested and to face consequences for not going along with his vision of America’s future. And two, he wants Israel to suffer. And I note here that it’s not just Nick Fuentes that is making this move that we’ve seen to the left.

David Duke made this move, Richard Spencer made this move, Richard Hanania made this move. A lot of people. And Richard Hanania, like, he, he’s been on our show before. I like, I, I, I, you know, pleasant enough guy, but he often talks when he’s on left shows, he goes, “Yeah, between X and Y years, I was a professional racist.”

Right? Like, [00:21:00] people who really bit into the racist card have been, I think, sorely disappointed by how much the right is just not the party of racism anymore. And the left is okay with racism still, right? Like, they will... It’s very interesting if you watch leftist interview like Richard Hanania about his time as a racist or about his racist views, there really isn’t any condemnation for it in a, in a meaningful context.

It’s not even like he needs to apologize for it. It’s just like, “Yeah, but you’re voting blue now, right?” And his primary bugaboos, right? Like, he doesn’t really... So, so one, you’ve gotta look at his behavior pattern. For every single election and midterm up until this one, he, this is when he always turns on the Democrat coding, right?

He does this thing where when it’s not about to be a voting season, he pretends to be a Republican. And then whenever it’s about to be voting season, he always argues that either people shouldn’t vote for the Republican candidates, or like in this season-

Simone Collins: Oh, that’s true. Yeah ... he was He was not [00:22:00] voting for Trump in the 2024 election.

Malcolm Collins: What? Because he was very clearly anti-Trump in the 2024 p- political race. You remember that, right?

Simone Collins: Yeah, I thought Richard Hanania into he turned anti-Trump, but were they just saying that to, like, rile people up?

I don’t know.

Malcolm Collins: Yes. But

Simone Collins: maybe So

Malcolm Collins: it appears- Yeah ... that he has held this position really strongly since 2024. And that he really starts to flare up in these positions whenever it’s an election cycle, and then he goes back to pretending to be a Republican in between election cycles when it won’t matter.

And I, I, like, I want people to... Because when we’ve criticized him in the past, and I’m like, “I’m telling you right now, he’s not anti-Trump, he’s anti-Republican,” right? He wants the GOP destroyed. He wants our policy positions destroyed. He wants the policy positions of the leftists enacted, like loose borders and everything like that.

I mean, keep in mind, if we have just a few, like a decade more of borders [00:23:00] as loose as they were under the Biden administration, it’s going to be very hard for Republicans to ever win elections again, right? Like, he’s attempting to put things in place that will prevent Republicans from winning in the future.

Simone Collins: Wait, he wants loose borders?

Malcolm Collins: Well, if he is willing to allow Democrats to become elected, then yes, functionally he does, because that’s the thing- ‘Cause I thought

Simone Collins: he’s very anti-immigration.

Malcolm Collins: He’s, this, this is the thing, and it’s important to look at what he says versus what he does. If you look at functionally what he does, like where he actually cares, where he’s willing to, like, throw down a gauntlet, right?

He’s never thrown down the gauntlet over the issue of immigration. He has repeatedly thrown down the gauntlet over the issue of using Israel to help achieve our foreign objectives if it also helped Israel’s foreign objectives. A- he, no, I’m, we’ve seen this, right? Never once have I seen him meaningfully throw down the gauntlet on immigration.

He throw, he’s, he’s attempted to throw it down over, like, generic [00:24:00] racism, but that doesn’t really matter, right? Because that’s obviously not going to win. W- and even where he’s engaged with immigration, as I, as I’ve noticed, like he’s been anti-ICE before and stuff like that, right? Like, he, he wants to, like, slow down immigration, but not in any way that could, like, look bad or cause a fuss.

Which is very interesting when you contrast it with his public persona. But I think it’s important that people understand that his public persona, even within his mind, is a bit of an act, and not necessarily in line with his real goals for America.

Simone Collins: I do get the impression when watching him, and I’m watching a bit of a, like, a stand-up bit, it’s almost like he took the concept of The Colbert Report and he just, like, did the method acting version of it, where he, like, lived it 24/7, like, lived a far right- persona

Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

Well, I mean, you don’t know that he’s doing this 24/7 or not, right? Like, Well,

Simone Collins: whenever he’s on stream, then fine ...

Malcolm Collins: and I, I put on a persona [00:25:00] on stream too, but my persona on stream is largely-

Simone Collins: Dude, I talk with you all day. This is not a persona

Malcolm Collins: Well, I don’t know

Simone Collins: Sorry, Malcolm, nice try

Malcolm Collins: I think I’m more provocative on stream

Simone Collins: No Okay.

No

Malcolm Collins: you’re not Maybe I don’t. I thought I put on a persona on stream. The, the, but, but if I don’t, I, I’m s- well, then I’m lying. I, I don’t, I apparently am just like this 24/7.

Simone Collins: Yes,

Malcolm Collins: you are You, you don’t think I state my values more extremely or more... You know, sometimes I try to be controversial for controversy’s sake or...

Simone Collins: No? You’re way more controversial off camera

Malcolm Collins: Uh-oh, what have Malcolm saying off camera? Now you’re getting deep lore here, people.

Simone Collins: Actually, I guess you’re, you’re more or less the same, but you’re less guarded in what you say because you know that you couldn’t be demonetized in our normal life

Malcolm Collins: Oh, that’s true.

That is true, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, no, I mean, I have some spicier [00:26:00] takes that I’m like, “I don’t know, the world isn’t ready for this yet.” And, and I think that, that there are things that people could infer from things I’ve said on stream. Like, I, I think I’m significantly more ruthless and less caring about people I see as being dam- damaging to the future of human civilization than, than I come off as on screen.

But anyway I think that- go run around and play, okay, sweetheart? You’re, you’re being a loud bugaboo.

Now, now she’s crying about it, looking around like she’s been rejected.

You can go play with anything in my room. Look, the whole room is full of treasure. Just no wiggling on my lap, okay?

But what I find interesting, and what I’m really excited to see if, if, if we can see it happen is, is the left gonna embrace him like they did Richard Spencer?

Simone Collins: Oh, no, Richard Anania.

Malcolm Collins: [00:27:00] Sorry, Richard Anania.

Simone Collins: That’s a very... That would be really interesting if suddenly he has his, So what, where, where this last happened actually is, the, the girlfriend, the former girlfriend and baby mama of Elon Musk.

Malcolm Collins: Ah, who went lefty and

Simone Collins: did all the lefty podcasts. She did. Yeah, she did her apology tour. Sorry. And she did fairly w- like she was, she was accepted but with skepticism. Like she went on the A Bit Fruity podcast and they were like, “Yeah, we’ll hear you out. I mean, I think I believe you, but I’m not 100% sure.”

So I could see him being-

Malcolm Collins: And I, I also wanna point out something about his recent messaging around this that’s different from his historic messaging. That I, I told people his historic messaging was b- BS, and some of his fans actually believed him. And I think that this time, hopefully he has said enough that people understand, “Oh, Malcolm actually understood the situation better than I did.”

Which was he [00:28:00] would say when he told people to vote Democrat, he’s like, “This is an accelerationist thing. Like if you vote Democrat things will burn down faster, and then we can get the right type of Republican Party in place, then we can get the right type of Republican in place.”

Simone Collins: Cozzie, I think you’re discounting the extent to which this is a subversive thing.

That, one, it’s strategic on his part, that he knows that, like, to keep pushing the extent to which he can be subversive, he has to now go where no one has gone before: Democrat. But also, he’ll be able to pick up all the subversive Democrats who want to be rebellious in some way or more edgy, ‘cause there’s nothing Democrats hate more than the Democratic Party.

I

Malcolm Collins: don’t, I do not think that at all. Really? I think this is, if you watch the actual clip where he’s talking about this stuff, he is not in out there Nick Fuentes voice. He is not in hyperbolic Nick Fuentes voice. These appear to be- No, but- ... and they are in line with his-

Simone Collins: To be a moderate Democrat is to be [00:29:00] subversive, but also weirdly apply to subversive

Malcolm Collins: Democrats No, I know.

But when he’s doing his subversive thing, y- if you watch his show, he’ll have moments where he is subversive to be subversive, and he gets all giddy about it, and he does this whole act about it. This is not him being subversive to be subversive. This is his honest opinion. And I think that if you look at it in the context of his previous statements, which is a point I was trying to make, where historically, and part of his audience genuinely believed this, that he would tell people to not vote for Trump or tell people to vote Democrat with the understanding that if the Republican coalition became unviable without him and people like him that eventually a new form of Republicanism would grow that was more in line with the values he claimed to espouse.

This has been his historic talking point. This talking point has been dropped, okay? Now he is just, “I am [00:30:00] pro-Democrat If the Republicans are in line with and allied with groups like interracial

Simone Collins: marriage- Oh, yeah, because he’s anti, anti-Indian. Why is it so freaking trendy to be anti-Indian in America?

Malcolm Collins: Well, actually, this is a wider thing. Both in the UK and in the United States, if you look at the Indian political class out- outside of, I mean, I guess you could consider Kamala Harris partially Indian, but, like, she doesn’t identify that

Simone Collins: way. No, she leaned into her, like, “I’m partially.”

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. But if you look at the Indians who are, like, big in politics both in the UK and in the United States, the, the, the big names are mostly Republicans, right w- right wing.

Vivek Chamath and and JD Vance’s wife. I know Chamath is...

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Chamath is very right-wing. Are you serious?

Simone Collins: I know, but I was, I was gonna say, he’s not, like, that active as a political player, but I guess he

Malcolm Collins: is. He has one of the most popular podcasts in the country.

Simone Collins: Yeah, Make It Political.

Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Okay. Okay. And the, there was a, [00:31:00] a leader, the last leader of the UK Conservative coalition was an Indian,

Simone Collins: Oh, yeah, the prime minister.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. He was, like, complicated. So, th- well, the point I’m making here is that Indians as an ethnic group have largely, at least in their elite caste aligned with right-leaning politics.

As to why this has been the case, if people are wondering, like, they’re like, “That’s odd,” like, why would that make so much sense? There’s a couple reason why this has happened. And, and the right has, while skeptical of them being, like, full Americans, largely embrace them. I mean, there are issues with Indians that need to be addressed, like the nepotistic behavior they show in the tech world.

But in the United States at least they have largely been accept- a- accepted by the political caste. And the reason is, is a fewfold. One is, is that they generally hate Muslims e- except for the Indian Muslims. But the, the Indian Muslims typically don’t make a lot of money in the United States.

They’re, they’re you know, poorer immigrants. But the, the wealthy tech mogul Indians are mostly Hindis, Jain, Christian Indian [00:32:00] descendants. A few Sikhs, but not many. But, but don’t worry, the Sikhs also generally hate Muslims. So there’s that. And the second one is, is they’re disproportionately wealthy and disproportionately libertarian in sort of their value system.

Now if you look at the overall Indian voting bloc, yes, they vote less. I’m just talking about the political class here. And obviously this infuriates people like Nick Fuentes, right? Who had this like, as I’ve described by Nick Fuentes in the past, if you wanna understand his ideology, he’s somebody who’s driven much more- By seeing the things he hates destroyed than seeing the things he cares about succeed.

And so long as he can make political decisions that increase the probability of the things that annoy him or would not kowtow to his vision, it’s not even, like, broadly... Like, as I pointed out, he’s super against Vance. He’s had long rants against Vance. Vance is the most anti-war mainstream Republican candidate out there [00:33:00] right now.

He, he is- Well,

Simone Collins: and he’s Catholic.

Malcolm Collins: And he’s Catholic, right? Like the idea that he would be anti-Vance shows that it is not about being anti-war for him. It’s about seeing Israel suffer. With, it’s not really about being pro-Democrat. It’s about seeing the Republicans suffer. And if you look at his value set, like if he actually believes that life began at conception, or if he was actually concerned about the population being replaced, or if he was ev- One, he’d be having kids.

I mean, I’ve pointed this out before. He could trivially easily get a wife at this point, and I’ve always pointed out, to me, that’s always been the smoking gun. If you look- You

Simone Collins: don’t know. He could have a secret wife for all we know.

Malcolm Collins: He doesn’t have a secret wife. And I always love this one, when people are like, “Oh, no, if you listen to his requirements for a wife, you’ll understand why he doesn’t have a wife.”

And I’m like, “Bro, don’t be so brain cucked on this.” If you listen to his requirements for a wife, they are obviously intentionally designed to be something that [00:34:00] he will never meet. They are preferences he can make What, what’s the word I’m looking here for? Concessions on. You know, he’s like, “Oh, I wanna meet a wife who’s permanently offline and whatever.”

Like, well, if... S- Do, do not sip on that. If that series of requirements prevents him from finding a woman, and yet he believes, like, the white race is being eradicated and being replaced, presumably preserving the right- white race, if, if you believe his world perspective, is more important than him finding a wife who meets all of these very particular peculiarities that he’s looking for if he actually believed all that.

Now, again, I think he does actually believe it. I just think he’s far more motivated by the things he hates than the things he cares about. And so that he can functionally understand that if we get Democrats in power again, they’re likely gonna change elect- They’re gonna stuff the Supreme Court.

They’re going to let in tons of illegal immigrants. We’re going to end up in a situation where we may [00:35:00] not be able to win again. We’re going to be... Like, if Kamala Harris had won, do you think our channel would still be on the air right now? Like, very obviously not.

Simone Collins: Oh, God. That’s dark.

Malcolm Collins: Well, I mean, it’s true.

They were, they w- they have been increasingly tightening the bolts on social media. And, and but that does help channels like his. One of the other things people noted that was a huge red flag for a lot of people is he was very prominently at the Jan 6th riot, yet was never arrested for it. And so a lot of people are like, “Why?”

Right? And people will note, “Well, he didn’t participate in X part of the riot, or Y part of the riot,” or he was-

Simone Collins: Well, that’s true. I mean, to be arrested you have to be convicted of actually breaking the law. Like- Not

Malcolm Collins: true ...

Simone Collins: assaulting someone

Malcolm Collins: Many Jan 6th terrorists were as tangentially connected as he was

Simone Collins: So they weren’t, like, actively vandalizing something and they still- Yeah

got arrested.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

Simone Collins: I gotta look into that

Malcolm Collins: because

Speaker 16: So for context here, , we had [00:36:00] Nick Fuentes, who was at the Rally to Save America, performatively speaking there through a bullhorn, yelling things like, “Keep moving towards the Capitol. It appears we are taking the Capitol back,” , and, “Break down the barriers and disregard the police.” , And celebrating with rioters over lines like, “We have taken back the Capitol Building.”

, And if you look at other individuals who have been charged, they did demonstrably less than this. , Individuals like Ray Epps, who was given a year of probation for encouraging the crowd, , which is... A- and he never, , you know, went into the buildings or anything like that. , Coy Griffin also, , never went into the buildings.

, And so it’s almost sort of ghoulish how Nick led his followers. Like, how did he know not to go into the buildings? How did he know to tell everyone else to go into the buildings, but he didn’t go into the buildings himself? , It wasn’t obvious to a lot of people that that was against the rules, so why didn’t he do it?

Was he setting people up? Was he part of the setup? [00:37:00] Because it looks a lot , like, as an outsider, why did some people who encouraged the crowd get in trouble, and why did he not get in trouble? How did he know the imaginary lines not to cross when he was telling other people in no uncertain terms to cross those lines?

Like, does that not seem curious to anyone? H- I, and, and it’s so ghoulish that he led his followers into this, and we know that this was in part, now because of leaks, , a setup, right? Like, we know that there were, , CIA agents among the crowd, , and that in part this was done to try to paint the right in a bad light.

, Has that not been Nick’s career since then? Like, you just need to paste a few things together to see what’s really going on here

Malcolm Collins: I know- Yeah, no. People were, who were doing the same type of things that he is well doc- Given how fastidiously they searched out and went after everyone affiliated with that, why not him? And this brings me to, I guess, the larger point here, which is what [00:38:00] are the chances that he’s actually a plant?

My odds are very low, I think around 3%. Because I also understand in t- I, I just think that he’s being botted by people. I think he’s being protected

Simone Collins: by people. Yeah, there’s, there’s a difference between being artificially monetized or propped up but not knowing it, and being actively, like, supported and be- knowing about it.

Yeah. Just like Mormon influencers, you pointed out, and other people have, like Alyssa Grenfell, that Mormon influencers-

Malcolm Collins: Don’t get... Continue

Simone Collins: Morm- Mormon influencers are making more money and posting more content because they’re able to make so much money from their content because the LDS church pays more money for ads on LDS content.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, we have a whole episode on that, which is why, why do Mormons want to be called LES where we go into the math on that- No, why do Mormons

Simone Collins: call themselves Mormons is the-

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, why, why do Mormons call themselves Mormons. Very detailed, we go into the math on that. By the way, people are wondering why people are saying he’s botted now.

So on X, [00:39:00] his tweets, they have, like, a farm of, of reposters around them. And when it, and they’re so aggressive that they often beat Elon’s tweets in terms of the amount of reposts- Nick Fuentes’ tweets? Sorry, no. Yes, Nick Fuentes’ tweets in terms of immediate reposts beat Elon tweets despite his much smaller following.

That’s weird ... and well, it’s weird but you could’ve thought it was organic until X did that thing where they showed the country of origin of all those accounts, and they were all, like, Nigeria and Pakistan and India and so immediately everyone’s like, “Oh, so this is...” And I don’t think he’s fully aware of, of why forces are, are doing this.

Simone Collins: Well, he needs no reason to look into it. Why would you? You know.

Malcolm Collins: Well, I think that he is audience captured by-

Simone Collins: Mm ...

Malcolm Collins: a fake audience. Like, we see it in our posts as well, where if you look at the places where people post fake things we will see, like, really aggressive, for example, [00:40:00] anti-Israel posting.

Like, on our YouTube or in, like, random ats at X. If we look at places where, like, I know there’s a real persistent audience, like Discord, we don’t see any of that. It, it, it’s also true, like, if I’m doing a stream, because I, I do streaming, and this is something I’ve really noticed you can judge authentic engagement.

Because bots do not appear to engage with, like, mid-tier streams a lot. And now that I’ve done Leaflet’s stream a number of times, I’m able to sort of gauge when, like, Israel comes up or the war in Iran comes up or even Nick Fuentes comes up how many people, like, start shilling him versus how many people attack him.

And, and so far, like when Nick Fuentes has come up on the Leaflet stream, I haven’t seen a single comment defending him or confused as to why we would bring this up. Whereas on our YouTube comments where you do- Oh my God,

Simone Collins: yeah ... mainly bots. Check, we’ll see what the comments are of this video today.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And so- Oh,

Simone Collins: Nick Fuentes is this and that. What are they gonna say? [00:41:00] Call it. What do you think they’re gonna say?

Malcolm Collins: Well, they’re gonna say it’s a joke, or th- this is in line with his previous accelerationist agenda. But he, he’s not framing this in accelerationist terms anymore. Don’t do that.

Simone Collins: What was, what was that?

Malcolm Collins: Jelly beans. She’s just going around destroying stuff now. Oh, God.

Don’t do that.

She looks really sad right now. Like-

Yeah, don’t do it. You can cry if you want to, but don’t do it.

You are too sweet to these kids.

Simone Collins: Give her

Malcolm Collins: a hug. Okay, I’ll give her a hug. You can come here and get a hug, but stop it, okay? Come here, I’ll give you a hug. I’ll even give you a kiss.[00:42:00]

Come here. Come here.

Okay. Are you gonna tell the fans that you’re not gonna do that again and you’re not gonna make a lot of noises? Do you want a kiss? Do you want a kiss, sweetheart?

Simone Collins: Do

Malcolm Collins: you feel better now?

Simone Collins: Yeah, you’re okay, Andy.

Yeah, hold

Malcolm Collins: on. Let’s, let’s try to model what they’re gonna say about this. They’re gonna say it’s a joke, and they’re gonna say the evidence of the joke is he says he’s an Afro-Latino in it. Like, that’s the one part of it that could be a signal of a joke.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: The problem with that one statement in it is everything else in it is in line with everything he’s ever said, A.

B, he is partially Latino as far as I know. Or at least I’ve heard that as an accusation of him from outsiders.

Simone Collins: Well, his last name is Fuentes.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, so I... he’s at least Southern [00:43:00] European, which is the same ethnic group as, as, as Latino. So like it makes sense that he’s getting this accusation or that he would make that claim.

He’s like, “Well, now that I’m joining the left, I can use my Latino heritage,” right? Like, I can use a Latino identity.

Simone Collins: Oh, I like that. That’s fun.

Malcolm Collins: But yeah, I actually... If I’m gonna be more clear, I think the Afro-Latino thing was a joke sprinkled in with a bunch of stuff that wasn’t a joke. Because he will often, even when he’s saying w- w- when he used to say right-wing things, he would sprinkle in jokes here and there, right?

Like, that’s his style of communication. But everything else, like what the Trump administration destroyed and dismantled that’s in line with the stuff he’s been saying on his show when he’s pretending to be right-wing, right? Like, this is just his value set, right?

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: So I think that, that... I mean, that’s the harder thing.

Like, if you have actually, and I think that this is the thing, if you have actually been watching Nick Fuentes for a while and are open to changing your mind on [00:44:00] him when you see this recent like I’m a moderate Democrat rant, you can really consider it in the context of everything else he’s saying in the rant and just ask, does this sound like a joke or does it align with the other stuff that he’s been complaining about recently?

And to me if you, if you take his agenda to be see the Jews suffer, see the Trump administration suffer, see the GOP suffer above all other things, above saving unborn lives, above the immigration crisis, above saving Western civilization he actually disaligns with the modern left on very few issues, right?

Like, every one of those key points that he has is just a leftist issue.

Simone Collins: Aside from immigration, I think that’s the really key thing.

Malcolm Collins: Well, hold on. He- Has never really thrown down the gauntlet on immigration. He has been anti-ICE before. What I mean is he’s never said, “I’m turning away from the Republicans ‘cause they’re not strict enough on immigration.”

He has [00:45:00] complained about ICE being too ruthless in the past. He is not as anti-immigration as people make him out to be. He will take anti-immigration stances, but when push comes to sh- shove and we need to, like, round the wheels on stuff like people complaining about ICE, he will-

Simone Collins: Circle the wagons

Malcolm Collins: circle the wagons. He’ll completely back away and retreat. And I think that this is indicative of the fact that he was performatively anti... Because, like, if you’re anti- if you’re actually, like, anti- if you’re like, “I wanna preserve the white race I wanna preserve white people as an ethnic group,” you would have kids, right?

Like, it- it’s- it’s a trivially, well, not trivially easy thing to do, but it- for someone like him, he could do it. He just needs to make a few compromises, right? Which apparently given he says that this is existential for him, so we know he’s not telling the truth about that.

Speaker 20: This is called rhetoric versus revealed preference for people who are not aware of it. , And it’s an, it’s something you should really look at in terms of [00:46:00] the figures you are looking at for sort of ideological framing, ideological advice, because they will show you whether they really believe what they’re telling you through their own actions in life.

And I think through our actions in life, people can see that we are 100% serious and believe what we’re saying. , Whereas I think the revealed preference is Nick is he does not believe what he’s saying or he would make compromises around finding a wife

Malcolm Collins: In addition to that the fact that he is so willing to go with the Democrats during a time period where they could use immigration to shift voting blocks in a way that we will never be able to recover from I think also shows he’s interested in being performatively anti-immigration.

But the performative anti-immigration stuff, I think is more in- in- in- in line with achieving his wider agenda. Like, if you look at him recently, like, on his show, if you look at the immigrant groups that are actually causing problems in America, right? Like- like, at a [00:47:00] major level, right? You’ve got Somalians .Muslims, and to a lesser extent, Hispanics.

I- I sent you the welfare statistics on Hispanic immigrants up to the third generation, right? Oh, I forgot. Told you to take a look at. Yeah.

Simone Collins: No, that’s been trending. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. So I- I’m- I’m actually walking back my position on Hispanic immigrants a bit. I’m like, “Eh, they’re a bigger problem than I thought.”.

Simone Collins: Look, again, like, immigration is not a problem if you shift the way that you offer social services.

Malcolm Collins: I agree, but, you know, we haven’t yet, so we need to deal with immigration. So if we look at- Mm ... the groups that are actually, like, damaging ethnic groups to the country at, like, an existential level, and you contrast the amount he complains about those groups with the amount he complains about Indians and Jews, it’s, like, not even comparable.

And I think that, like, do Jews, like, run scams? Yes. You can see our episodes where, like, we complain about the O- Orthodox Jewish scams, the rounding the wagon on that. It’s our episode called Speed Running a [00:48:00] Pogrom. Obviously very spicy, right? But Jews are still net tax contributors to the United States.

Indians. Do Indians disproportionately take jobs? Yes, they absolutely do. I find that incredibly infuriating. Do Indians also start successful tech companies and are they net tax contributors? Yes, they’re obviously net tax contributors. So when I’m dealing with groups like that, while I may have animosity, it’s like...

And I may say there’s things that we need to do, there’s conversations that need to be had. If you’re mentioning those groups at, like, 10x the rate of groups that are, like, actively on a daily basis causing harm that’s a, that’s an issue for me. Right? And note here about other people who we have said have gone crazy recent- like, we had the episode where we’re like, “Tucker...”

Because I, I talk about my Mossad poisoning conspiracy, that they poison people who do start to go lefty and they start going crazy.

They start to go anti-Israel or start to question Israel. And you know, we have Nick Fuentes, Tucker Carlson, and, and Candace Owens here. And some people when I said [00:49:00] that were like, “Oh, come on Malcolm, Tucker Carlson is really on point.

He’s super based.” And I’m like, “Bro.” Like I wonder, do these people, like, step back and be like, “Maybe Malcolm is seeing things that I’m not or predicting things that I’m not,” when it turns out that now Tucker Carlson says Tuc- like Trump is casting spells on his cabinet members? I, I don’t know if you guys have seen this interview.

It’s effing, like-

Simone Collins: Everyone has seen this interview.

Malcolm Collins: He’s actually lost his mind. This isn’t normal stuff.

Simone Collins: Well, and that he’s, like, outright denying that he ever implied that Trump was the antichrist. There’s multiple- Yeah. Well,

Malcolm Collins: I mean a lot of people say people are antichrist this, antichrist that. Like, that’s, that’s less to me than him saying that he was, and, and based on his own subjective experience, under a spell when he was around Trump.

Speaker 13: And there is a kind of quality that he has that’s spellbinding, and I think it probably literally [00:50:00] is a spell. Uh, and the effect is to weaken people around him and make them more compliant and more confused. And I- I’ve experienced this myself. You spend a day with Trump, and sort of like you’re in this kind of dreamland.

It’s like smoking hash or something. It’s interesting. Very interesting. And there may be a supernatural component to it. I’m not a theologian, but I... It’s real, and anyone who’s been around him can tell you it’s real.

Speaker 14: You’ve been talking on your show about whether Trump is the Antichrist.

Speaker 13: I have not said that.

Speaker 14: On your show, the day after Easter, you noted he did not put his hand on the Bible during his swearing-in- Correct

ceremony as president. You said, and I’m quoting, “Maybe he didn’t put his hand on the Bible because he affirmatively rejects what’s inside that book.” And then on a recent show, you went further, saying, “Here’s a leader who’s mocking the gods of his ancestors, mocking the God of gods, and exalting himself above them.

Could this be the Antichrist?”

Speaker 12: I actually did not say, “Could this be the Antichrist?”

Speaker 13: Here’s a leader who’s mocking the gods of his ancestors, mocking the God of gods, and exalting himself above them. [00:51:00] Could this be the Antichrist? Well, who knows? Um, I don’t know where that comes from, but I know that those words never left my lips,

Malcolm Collins: that’s like wiccans casting spells on Charlie Kirk level stuff, right? Like-

Simone Collins: That actually feeds into our our theory with Tucker Carlson. Our theory with him is that he tends to spend time with people and just try to be very agreeable around them, and, like, go with the flow, and he becomes very convinced by them.

Yeah. And so it doesn’t matter if he’s with, like, the Qataris or the Russians or with President Trump.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, but he didn’t say this about anyone else. He said it about Trump.

Simone Collins: Well, yes, but he could have said it about anyone.

Malcolm Collins: But he, but he didn’t. He said it about Trump.

Simone Collins: He... I’m ju- I just think it’s kind of a thing he does, though.

He’s a very agreeable person.

Malcolm Collins: Ju- just to be clear, the, the leader of the GOP faction, right? Like, that’s who he said it about.

Simone Collins: I know.

Malcolm Collins: I j- I just wanna, like, be clear that we’re on the same page with this,

Simone Collins: right? Like- Well, he was, he was talking with a fairly [00:52:00] leftist journalist about this, so he was being agreeable to her

Malcolm Collins: I, I agree, but he didn’t complain about that.

He didn’t say, “A journalist put me under a spell.” He didn’t

Simone Collins: say that- No, no, he was un- he was under the spell of the journalist when he said that about Trump. Oh. What I’m trying to say is Tucker Carlson, I mean, so he may, he may feel like he’s under a spell, but that’s because he, by, by personality is a-

Malcolm Collins: I love your pathologically charitable framing of people.

I mean, to me he just came off like a crazy person. I, I, I, I like... When I say a crazy person, I mean if an employee said this, I would fire them the next day. Not because it was offensive, but because it shows that they are mentally unstable and potentially dangerous to other people in the office.

Simone Collins: Well, there’s, yeah, I mean, we’ve, we’ve discussed it would p- it would anger too many of the people in our audience, ‘cause they seem to be...

There are a lot of Tucker and Candace Stans in [00:53:00] our audience. But both of them seem to have, like, really recently gone off the rails in terms of their mysticism going too far.

Malcolm Collins: And eventually like- I, yeah, I, I sometimes wonder with, like, Tucker and Nick Stans, like, when is it too far? Like, when do they need to just be like, take off the mask and be like, “I’m a wolf.

I’ve been a wolf all along.” Like, can you see the whiskers? Can you see? And people are like, “That was a joke. That was a prank, bro. That was a prank.” But I think that this is incredibly healthy for the long-term right. So in the other video where I was discussing this, I was like, what does this mean for the future of the right-wing party if the deontological faction or at least the extremist parts of it, end up circling the w- the, the, the, the sort of drain and, and move into the Democratic coalition along with the Islamists, right?

And the answer is just a way healthier Republican Party going forwards. If you look at the people who are [00:54:00] still around I think what we’re increasingly seeing is as... There’s a part of the deontological faction that’s just going Nick Fuentes direction, right? Okay. There’s a part of the deontological faction that keeps getting caught cheating on their spouses or beating their spouse or yelling at staffers or like, I don’t know what’s up with these people and anger issues, right?

But, you know, whatever. And then there’s the, like, nerd faction. And as Leaflet said, it’s the nerd faction that’s really been having the right’s back. Like, they don’t make drama about things. They generally go along with what the administration is doing. They don’t really have internal drama very much or at all that I’m aware of.

I’m aware of no meaningful internal drama in the nerd faction. They just get out, and they just get out there and do stuff, right? Like, And, and I’m excited that this faction is in, i- it continuing to grow. And the final point I’d make, and I made this one a lot stronger in the episode where I talked about the future of the right.

But if [00:55:00] you go to CPAC or something like that, like you go to these institutions where, like, the cronies that used to control the White House before they were all founder fund members in this administration they, because we’ve gone to these events in the past this is where Nick Fuentes’ fan base hangs out.

Like, the, the people who have taken over right-wing institutions and have something of a Romanist agenda, right? These individuals, I remember I got in a fight with him, and this was... And I can say it, like I d- I don’t care. Like, the Claremont Group pretends to be, like, a mainstream right-wing organization, even within the MAGA faction.

And I was talking to some members at it, and they were clearly of, like, this, this orientation. Like, they were not aligned with us. They were aligned with the, the deontological faction, right? And they were talking about all these fantasies of laws they wanted to enact. And I was like, “Bro, like, that’s not aligned with MAGA’s values or what the base wants.”

And what they [00:56:00] said was, “F the base.” Like, very aggressively. Like, they were like, “F the base. Like, why would we care what the base wants? Like, we decide where the Republican Party goes. The base’ll vote for us whatever,” right? And I realize that if you look at the first Trump administration, and a lot of Republicans up until recently they’ve been heavily controlled by this faction.

And I think that going forwards to our fans who get in administrations and stuff like that, do not hire from the think tanks. The think tanks are lousy with these people, and they are very dangerous to our goals because they do not have aligned goals. And at CPAC, there were a number of these people who were interviewed, and they said stuff like, “MAGA is over.”

And what they really meant by that is, “Our ability to control MAGA is over. We have lost our ability to call the shots,

And that’s why MAGA had value to people like Nick Fuentes, to people like the think tank deep state on the right, is because they [00:57:00] thought they could manipulate it to achieve their ends, , rather than the ends that the base actually wanted. Again, look at things like the support among MAGA for the Iran war right now.

, The base is not with these people. It’s a 90/10 issue among MAGA. , But they, to them it’s over because they thought it was a tool they could use, and they’re like, “Well, this tool is boring to me now because, it completely sees through my BS

Malcolm Collins: and now MAGA is acting on its own, and I am furious about that because I cannot control it anymore for my personal agenda.” And I think that that’s where Nick has finally gone, is he’s like, “I cannot control this, therefore I don’t wanna be a part of it.”

Simone Collins: Well, so what are your predictions for Nick’s next move?

Malcolm Collins: Well, next move is, I think that he’s gonna go back to pretending to be Republican. He’s gonna go back to pretending this was a joke after the midterms. Perhaps even before the midterms if the pushback is, is, is loud enough from this. And he’s still gonna tell people, “Never vote for Republicans no matter what,” for at [00:58:00] least, like, the next eight years of elections or who knows, 15 years of elections, right?

He’s already signaling this, right? So, like, he’s not a useful part of the coalition. So you really

Simone Collins: don’t think there’s a world in which he, like, leans into the Democrat thing, the moderate Democrat

Malcolm Collins: thing? He might if he gets on some podcasts, if he gets some interviews out of it, I can totally see that.

Simone Collins: Because I think he can only go so much farther on the current wave he’s riding. I think that his switching to the Democrat party could get him a ton of additional media coverage and followers. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: I mean, he doesn’t appeal very well to, like, the new right audience.

Simone Collins: Yeah, so from a strategic standpoint, that’s what I’m saying, is I feel like it’s a savvy move.

Yeah. I don’t know why he wouldn’t lean into it more.

Malcolm Collins: What I mean by that is while the new, like, new right audience would appreciate his vitalism, part of the thematic problem he has reaching them is if you look at the figures that he’d get really big on the new [00:59:00] right figures like, you know, Asmongold, Leaflet, et cetera, they’re, they’re typically sort of pathologically kind and, and, and pathologically compassionate.

Like Asmongold, like, literally catching the cockroach and letting it free outside, right? Like, He’s

Simone Collins: also put them in a box school, so.

Malcolm Collins: Right. No, but I mean, their, their true core is pathologically kind. You know, Hasan is, “Stop killing people in Gaza while I shock my dog,” right? Like-

Simone Collins: That’s true.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Malcolm Collins: You know, if you, if you look at, Or, or Leaflet, where, like, she’s basically the god of her fantasy world that hundreds of people will play every day, and she refuses to move above level one, or being the guild receptionist in it. Even her avatar, for people who don’t know, she didn’t even create it.

It’s the child of two people from one D&D session she ran. Right. That is pathologically trying not to center yourself. Now do, how do we fall into this? I don’t know. I mean, I’m, I’m narcissistic [01:00:00] as heck, but I think I at least come across as authentic. So I do okay there. You’re

Simone Collins: the... If you’re narcissistic, though, like one thing that you’re really weird about is you feel incredibly concerned about never doing wrong by anyone who put their faith in you.

That’s not really what a narcissist does.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

Yeah, like if I had taken Nick’s position and gone to the Jan six riots and told people, “Go through-- like enter the building, keep moving,” and I hadn’t done it myself, and my followers were punished for believing in me, and th- no one ever came after me, my God, I, I don’t think I’d be able to live with myself.

Like the existential horror of not leading by example around something like that is, uh, just so antithetical to anything I could ever imagine doing. I-- like literally, if I had somehow, even by accident, not been able to go in, yet I had told people [01:01:00] to and they suffered lifelong consequences for it, , that would be the top of my mind every day going forwards,.

Malcolm Collins: So

Simone Collins: I don’t know. I mean, I guess

Malcolm Collins: for me, like- You’re a famewhore ... what’s been kind of important with this podcast, when people are like, “Oh,

Simone Collins: you’re-” You’re a famewhore, but you’re not a narcissist.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. “... Basecamp had this really out there take on this or that, or X or Y or Z.”

I mean, I try to do that occasionally just to make sure that we’re not having just mainstream takes because there’s, there’s no better way to know that somebody is lying to you than if they only have normie takes for, for your position, right? Like, if everyone’s saying the same thing about X or Y or Z, then you know, they’re probably...

Th- this is what we saw with the girl who was cheating on her husband who’d, like, poked with the Sheik wedding and everything like that. Every one of her conservative takes was just the most normie conservative opinion p- possible because she didn’t actually hold these positions, you know? She was just saying what she thought she needed to say to appeal to an audience.

Simone Collins: There’s... Yeah. Anyway, I I- my [01:02:00] prediction is at least if he knows what’s good for him commercially, that he will lean into the Democrat thing, go on a Democrat press tour, pick up a bunch of what’s the word? Rebellious youth on the Democrat side, and then sort of circle around to, like, we need to create a new party or something like that.

Yeah. But that’s what I would do.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, I can see that. I mean, I hope he does. If he creates a new party, that’d be fun.

Simone Collins: It

Malcolm Collins: would

Simone Collins: be fun ...

Malcolm Collins: mostly because I- he’s not useful in the conservative faction. He doesn’t get people to vote for right-leaning candidates. He always goes against them at the last minute.

So, like, and like we’ve been able to win elections without him, so I just... I don’t think that he’s helpful. I think he turns more people against us than he brings in for us, and if the left loses their ability to paint the entire right with stuff that Nick Fuentes did which they constantly do, right?

So it ends up hurting all of us in our, in our wider agenda. That’s, that’s useful as well, right?

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: So let’s hope. [01:03:00] I love you, Simone. This was a wild thing that this happened and I love that it happened. I love that we’re in this timeline. And yeah. Yes. I’m, I’m, yeah, I’m very interested to see what the stans say in the comments.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Let’s see what the either stans

Malcolm Collins: or- And, and note here, if you’re, like, a stan and you’re like, “Well, you know, I do agree with him that the most important thing that America needs to do is screw over Israel,” then a- and don’t get us wrong, like, we’re against continuing payments to Israel, everything like that.

But- Yeah ... if you’re into, like, “No, we need to actively screw them over. If something helps us but also helps Israel, we need to not do it,” the Democrats are that party right now. Like, if that’s your main issue, the Democrats are not conflicted about this point.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: So just be a Democrat. Like, I, I don’t under- there isn’t really a normal

Simone Collins: right- This could be a very interesting political shift.

Maybe this is how both the Democrat and Republican Party get their group. They have this, like, major exchange of prisoners essentially.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. [01:04:00]

Simone Collins: It could be, I don’t know, it could be the great reset. I’m excited. Anyway, sorry to everyone for my channeling RFK today. And I should be back to normal soon.

It’s ‘

Malcolm Collins: cause you ate too many gleamons or something.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: I’d say.

Simone Collins: One, one too many

Malcolm Collins: vaccinations. Oh, Indy, do you wanna say goodbye to the fans?

Simone Collins: Yeah, Indy.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, this is how I lose things, right, Indy? Come.

Simone Collins: All

Malcolm Collins: right. So what do we say? We say bye like this. We go, bye bye bye, doing bye bye dance. Doing bye bye song.

Singing bye bye hands. I say goodbye, then I dance goodbye. Dancing and dancing in the house. In the sky.

Simone Collins: Dancing in the

sky. Yeah.

I

got a rhyme.

Malcolm Collins: You want me to do it again?

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Bye bye. Say goodbye. And I say goodbye every [01:05:00] single day. And say goodbye every single way. Bye

Simone Collins: bye bye.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, and like and subscribe, guys, and try out RFAB if you wanna do, like, AI chatbot exploration, vibe putting, or image-making, or video-making, or soon V2 model making. I’ll let you guys know when I’m done with that. That’s been harder than I expected.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Lo mein tonight, right?

Malcolm Collins: If you can make it, yeah.

Simone Collins: Okay. Beef lo

Malcolm Collins: mein. Beef lo mein.

Simone Collins: All right. I love you, Malcolm.

Malcolm Collins: Love you too. You know how to say goodbye. Bye-bye. Can

Simone Collins: you say

Malcolm Collins: bye-bye?

Speaker 18: What is going on in here? We are jumping on my teddy bear. We are gonna jump on my teddy bear. Where’s Indy? Oh, Indy’s right there. We are gonna jump on my teddy bear [01:06:00] and see how he flies. Push these pillow signs when you’re safe. Okay? Are you up there, Titan?

Speaker 19: Where’s Titan? Titan? Can you get this for me? Do you want me to put that in your bed? No. No, I want to play with it. Down here, right?