Rabbit Hole: IRA vs. Popular Narrative

In this eye-opening episode, Malcolm and Simone Collins dive deep into shocking findings from U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee reports (2019) showing that Russia’s Internet Research Agency (IRA) played a far greater role in astroturfing and amplifying the Black Lives Matter movement than in any alleged support for Trump during 2016.

Key revelations:

* 96% of IRA YouTube content focused on police brutality against African Americans

* 5 of the top 10 IRA Instagram accounts targeted Black audiences exclusively

* Over 66% of IRA Facebook ads revolved around racial division, overwhelmingly pro-BLM narratives

* IRA organized real-world rallies, paid activists, and even funded self-defense classes — all unknowingly

* Activity spiked post-2016 election and again in 2020, perfectly aligning with BLM surges

Malcolm explains why this well-documented information never became mainstream on the right, how both parties had incentives to downplay or ignore it, and why viewing Russia as an “ally” against progressive causes is dangerously misguided.

If you’ve ever wondered how certain movements explode seemingly overnight — or why the “Russia helped Trump” narrative dominated while this one stayed buried — this episode will change how you see modern information warfare.

Episode Transcript:

Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] So, wow. Of their top 10 accounts, five only targeted at black people.

Simone Collins: That is insane. That is not at all like the impression I was, I was given. That like in, in general, right? This is

Malcolm Collins: not the narrative that we are told. Yeah. and then you have me going through this and like, wait, this is all in like spin committee reports and stuff like that, like that Russia was behind Black Lives Matter.

Like what? So crazy. Or, and you could be like, well, Russia wasn’t everything behind Black Lives Matter. And I’d say. Okay. Maybe they weren’t, but they were more behind Black Lives matter than they ever were behind Trump. And that’s really important to the narrative that’s out there right now.

Simone Collins: Oh yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Wow. This the, the rallies. The Charlotte rallies. This is the

Simone Collins: good people on both sides. Yes.

Malcolm Collins: This is the people on both sides. One Trump was praising Russian [00:01:00] operatives on that one. Vi Eagle was praising the Democrats ‘cause that’s who the Russian operatives helped on that one.

Simone Collins: It’s a lot of people.

Would you like to know more?

Malcolm Collins: Hello Simone. I am excited to be here with you today. . So sometimes I’ll be doing an episode and I’ll be just like fact checking something and then I’ll notice some statistics and some numbers, or I’m like, wait, this can’t be real. And then I start going down a rabbit hole. On the rabbit hole. I went down this time.

And what’s weird about this rabbit hole is this is all outlined clear as day and like senate reports and everything like that, which we’ll be going over. And yet I haven’t heard this as a mainstream position on the right. And you guys can be like, oh no, X blew this up long ago, or whatever. But the Russian collusion operation, the IRA, like the thing that was Russiagate, the Democrats said, got Donald Trump elected.

Mm-hmm. It was significantly more involved [00:02:00] with the astroturfing and creation of the BLM movement than Trump’s. What, and this is both well documented and incredibly well attested, and yet it is like not part of the popular imagination at all.

Simone Collins: That can be we, because we would’ve heard something about that.

No, right? I mean, at least from conservatives, it’s not as though conservatives don’t have a voice anywhere. And we listen to a lot of conservative influencers and, well, not media outlets, but, but influencers.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, so my thought as like a concern, and the weird thing about this is this information is not new.

It’s been out there for a while. And I’m not here saying, because this is the perception I had historically. It was like historically, the perception I had is that the, the IRA. Helped both sides in that particular election cycle. They helped the, you know, there were many instances in which two sides of a protest were both organized by the IRA by Russia [00:03:00] Plots, basically does the

Simone Collins: IRA stand for,

Malcolm Collins: I don’t know what it stands for.

I don’t speak Russian. Anyway so the IRA, and, and so I was like, and the reason why it appeared to people as if the IRA was more pro-Trump than pro Clinton was solely because it believed Trump to be the spoiler candidate and Bernie to be the spoiler candidate. So if you’re unaware, oh, IRA was actually incredibly pro Bernie.

They worked really hard to help Bernie in the primaries and everything. I

Simone Collins: didn’t know that either. Okay. Wow.

Malcolm Collins: So the, so my sort of perception was, is it was probably about 50% Republican stuff, 50% Democrat stuff. And then of the Republican stuff, it might have looked like it was more Trump just because they saw him as the spoiler candidate.

Hmm.

If

you actually go into the documentation. That is not the case. It is significantly more Democrat stuff and it is significantly Black Lives Matter focused stuff, and it [00:04:00] was Black Lives Matter focused stuff. And we’ll go into the timeline right as the movement was beginning to get big. And what you also might not know about is the height of IRA or the, the second height of IRA interference because there were two.

PI spikes. One was during the election cycle and after the election was had, so it wasn’t 2016 or

Simone Collins: 20 20, 20 16.

Malcolm Collins: Okay. And, but the second was actually at the height of the BLM movement. They, they went back in with more. Fake stuff. So we’re gonna be going over all of this, how they AstroTurf the movement and what’s important to know before I go any further than this.

‘cause it really disgusts me when I see Rightis fall for this nonsense is they act like Russia is our ferre. Because Russia realizes that like the alphabet soup crowd is like toxic to a society. And that, you know, you know, there might be problems with secularization and they’re like, look, they recognize all of these things, [00:05:00] therefore they’re on our side.

And it’s like, no, when you go to sleep every night, they’re injecting that into your neck in hopes that you die horribly. Right? Like they are as almost as ex. Essential an enemy we can have, like China does hit us with like China does try to like mess up the us Like they like come in and they’re like, don’t trust your government.

Speaker 3: evil, evil, evil, evil, evil.

Malcolm Collins: Don’t trust your government. But that doesn’t work on Americans. ‘cause Americans are like, yeah, we don’t really trust our government. Very. Yeah, we never

Simone Collins: did. Yeah. Like China.

Malcolm Collins: Sucks at, at PSYOPs in America, right? Outside of TikTok, which has done amazingly well in scrambling a lot of people’s brains incredibly well.

Yes. But Russia gets it. You know, Russia will come in and they’ll be like, don’t, you know, the, the, the, the, the, the Black Lives Matter movement. We will go into how they did this. And that’s why they’re incredibly dangerous and we should not think of them [00:06:00] or treat them as an ally. Like there might be like individual Russians who can be cool and friends and everything like that, but the country itself is, is working oppositionally to us.

, And, and I’d also say that the Republicans, the like quote unquote Republican influencers who like side whiz. And I think you’re seeing this increasingly increasingly countries like Russia and Qatar and Iran I may be talking about Tucker Carlson and Dick Witches here.

They’re not really on our side, right? Like these countries hate us. And they want to destroy our civilization. And when you glaze them, you are saying, oh, I won’t work with people on my own side who are trying to preserve the civilization because of minor ideological differences. But I will work with people who are actively injecting this stuff, who are actively creating movements like you do that way.

So let’s go on here. So Senate Select Committee on Intelligence [00:07:00] SSCI report volume two. Russia’s use of social media released in 2019 as part of a multi-volume investigation into Russian active measures. During the two 16 YouTube channels uploaded hundreds of videos of police brutality and BLM related topics.

The SSCI. Report reveals that the IRA operated 17 YouTube channels uploading approximately 1,100 videos totaling 43 hours of content. COVID

Simone Collins: happens

Malcolm Collins: approximately 96% of this. Was targeted at BLM type issues.

Simone Collins: Oh,

Malcolm Collins: like, police brutality o often mimicking Bri LM narratives to build credibility, a complimentary finding of new knowledge reports, specifics that 500 something one of these videos directly were related to police violence against African Americans.

And, youTube citations post-election, and this is really important. The majority of the IRA’s work happened after the [00:08:00] election cycle, not during the campaign. Okay. They were not trying to win the campaign. They were trying to build distrust in the election cycle,

but anyway. The mentions and links to IRA content increased 84%. No. What’s really interesting about this initial report, which remember I was just going here. Yeah. If you read it in the initial language, they’ll say something like, of this 96% were tied to racial issues. Okay. To try to make, seem like it’s racial issues on both sides equally.

Okay. When you actually look at the breakdown, it’s like 95% of that, or a hundred percent of that is b LM related issues. Oh

Simone Collins: wow.

Malcolm Collins: It’s not on both sides. So if we’re going for the Facebook ad campaigns, remember, I’m sure you would think that this was, if you read the media, the vast majority of it must have been pro-Trump stuff, right?

Or at least fighting battle of like normal stuff. No. [00:09:00] 66% of it. The IRA Facebook contact was on trying to create racial division, specifically targeted at blacks. The SSCI, wait,

Simone Collins: so this. It was, was it anti-Black Lives Matter content? Like to go? No, it

Malcolm Collins: was Pro-Black Lives Matter content. It was about police brutality.

It was the, sorry. The report intentionally words it in a way that’s meant to mislead you. We’ll get to, I’m trying to reword parts of the report so that you can understand, because they keep trying to make it sound like race related content. So they’ll say something like, like, it’s gonna

Simone Collins: stoke racism in the United States against Black Americans.

Malcolm Collins: No. So they’ll say something like, quote, over 66% of IRA Facebook advertising content contained a term related to race. Now they will say something like that, right? And because we know that a. Some of the IRA content was tried to drive up anti-white racism, so white racism against black people. They [00:10:00] expect you, the reader, to not have read the whole report and not know that actually when they’re talking about racially divisive content, almost all of it, like it seems, over 90% of it was specifically targeted at black people trying to make them hate America and hate white people.

Simone Collins: Oh,

Malcolm Collins: And, and, and, and specifically the biggest target they did was trying to get black people to hate the police.

Simone Collins: Okay. Wow. Okay.

Malcolm Collins: Okay, so this is based on an analysis of approximately 3,393 paid adverts purchased by the IRA across Facebook and Instagram. A separate analysis of the IRA ads released by the House Intelligence Committee found that 50 50.

55% specifically targeted race, often citing crime or policing themes. Again, they’re race was the dominant theme overall was the IRA, creating at least 30 Facebook pages, specifically targeting African American audiences [00:11:00] out of 81 IRA account. Analyzed. So out of 81 IRA accounts in total 31 were only targeted at African Americans.

Oh. Which amassed about 1.2 million followers and generated tens of millions in engagement. One standout includes the Blacktivism page, which alone produced 11.2 million user engagements.

Simone Collins: Oh my gosh.

Malcolm Collins: And keep in mind, this is in 2016, right? So this is. In the years leading up to B lm, right? Like this is the seedbed that led to the explosion of the, the large BLM movement.

Right? Now, I know B LM as a concept did arise organically, but it was not growing organically until the IRA stepped in. Mm-hmm. So again, if you hate. Black Lives Matter. You hate Russia. Alright? They’re the ones who gave us this [00:12:00] infection. All right? They’re, this is a partner you slept with that gave you chlamydia, okay?

You gotta learn. Bad is bad news, guys. All right. Instagram activity exploded post-election up 238% in some cases. So again, this was not about election interference. This is about show sewing, civil discord. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have exploded the spend post-election. The SSCI report document. The IRA activity increased across platform after election day 2016 with Instagram seeing 2238% surge activity.

This is measured by metrics like post volume and engagements. For context, the IRA operated 133 Instagram accounts. Posting 116,000 times and generating 187 million engagements, likes, comments, and shares. Five of the top 10 IRA Instagram accounts [00:13:00] focused on African American issues and audiences underscoring the racial emphasis.

So, wow. Of their top 10 accounts, five only targeted at black people.

Simone Collins: That is insane. That is not at all like the impression I was, I was given. That like in, in general, right? This is

Malcolm Collins: not the narrative that we are told. Yeah. Not so they were, they were, they were specifically trying to solve so racial fears among black people.

They were not targeting political things. Overwhelmingly, and by the way, we talked about this in another video, but it is worth it if you’re just on the video. You haven’t seen the other one. Russia gate, like IE that Russia was trying to help Trump get elected. It’s just baloney. Basically Obama really pressured a number of departments to push this out.

They said in, in no uncertain terms, a guy came back from vacation. Like literally he was on vacation. The guy who was like running one of the apartments, he came back. Or it might have been like an away assignment, and he was like you guys can’t release this. And he [00:14:00] sent a letter to one of the key guys at the Obama administration.

He goes I’ve talked with my team and I am not, you know, in like professional terms, this isn’t accurate information. The way he said it’s, we don’t have access to the information. We need to put this out. And we do not have, you know, high enough calling information to put this out. And the other guy said.

Well, you’re going to need to bend normal procedures. Basically, you know it as a summary, Obama said, so deal with it. You’re putting out false information. So if you are familiar with that whole narrative, that was a, that was phony baloney. That was phony, baloney put out by. A, a, a very, Obama was a really dishonest guy.

And I think a lot of people don’t realize that. Like they think that he, you know, they, they believe the public narrative that he wasn’t the type of person who would make something up like this to smear an opponent. Now, I’d like to point out in Obama’s. Defense. Right. Think about it from Obama’s perspective.

His side just lost an election ‘cause that’s when he did this. He [00:15:00] really wants to, to smear Trump. Which ironically was what the Russias were trying to do with all of this. Anyway, so he’s really helping Russians in their initial effort. He knows that some of the Russian accounts were pushing over.

Trump, I mean, yes, more of them were pushing black racial fears, but that doesn’t really help him to focus on, and he may not have a full statistical breakout at this point yet. And so, why doesn’t he just really focus on getting everyone to know that Russia was putting out bots that were attempting to help Trump?

Everybody needs to know this because he knows this and he is not really concerned with the whole truth. Does he, does he need it? Explained to him that this is also, he’d probably be like, and they’re also showing anti you know, Bernie stuff and he goes, oh, well they just hate Hillary. Well, they’re also mostly doing black racial stuff.

And he’s like, oh, well we, we probably need that.

Simone Collins: You know? Yeah. I, I, I agree. I could really see that being the reasoning of anyone seeing this, not necessarily Barack Obama or anyone [00:16:00] in his administration or on his team, or on Hillary’s team or anyone else’s. Seeing it and being like, ha ha, I’m gonna mislead people.

But being like, okay. So these accounts are also spreading information about police brutality and racism, and we know these to be major issues I’m not even gonna worry about because we’re only gonna worry about that, which is going to stop us from being, getting elected and that which is actively not true.

And if they see it as true and if they also see it as favorable to their reelection or entrenchment in power. It doesn’t deserve a second thought. Yeah, Joe deserve. Why would you

Malcolm Collins: give it a second thought? You know, that’s inconvenient, right? Yeah. He doesn’t, to him it’s not, it’s not even inconvenient.

Simone Collins: It doesn’t, it doesn’t warrant a second of of consideration.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. What Russia is doing to help lack people from his perspective. It’s just not something the public needs to know about.

Simone Collins: It’s just noise. It’s like a control set. Yeah. And the only, the only thing to consider is the amount that may be promoting Trump.

Malcolm Collins: Exactly. And, and by the way, if you’re like [00:17:00] progressive leaning and you’re just now learning about this, understand just how much of the media narrative has been.

Completely manufactured. And I think that, that a lot of people can go through and, and just be like, okay, I’m broadly figuring things out now and then you have me going through this and like, wait, this is all in like spin committee reports and stuff like that, like that Russia was behind Black Lives Matter.

Like what? So crazy. Or, and you could be like, well, Russia wasn’t everything behind Black Lives Matter. And I’d say. Okay. Maybe they weren’t, but they were more behind Black Lives matter than they ever were behind Trump. And that’s really important to the narrative that’s out there right now.

Simone Collins: Oh yeah.

That’s incredibly important.

Malcolm Collins: So did the mainstream Black Lives Matter movement ever directly interface with the IRA? Yes, but always accidentally. So let’s go through these. Okay. Like honey potted, they’re not exactly the [00:18:00] smartest of individuals. We’ll also go over how they scammed a bunch of people. But the self-defense training via black fist, the IRA Run Black Fist Group, a fake self-defense initiative targeting black communities contacted and paid at least five US trained to conduct classes.

To conduct classes. For instance, MMA fighter and activists. Oh, ally Ale in Brooklyn, New York was hired on January, 2017 to teach self-defense classes promoted as Black power matters. He received $320 via PayPal for four sessions, but stopped in contact cease in May, 2017. Ale was an. Unwitting and believed it was a legitimate community effort.

Similar payments were made to trainers across the US rally organization via black matter us. This IRA operated site and social media page, which mimicked BLM narratives on racial and police brutality. Reached out to activists, organize protests in September, 2016. North Carolina activists Connor James was contacted via Facebook to [00:19:00] speak at and help coordinate rallies in Charlotte.

Following the police killing of Kess Lamont Scott, he organized two events, one drawing over 600 people and collaborated with legitimate groups like the A-C-L-E-U in a A CP, unaware of the Russia ties. Wow. This the, the rallies. The Charlotte rallies. This is the one

Simone Collins: where the woman got killed. Like run over.

Yeah. The good people on both sides. Yes.

Malcolm Collins: This is the people on both sides. One Trump was praising Russian operatives on that one. Vi Eagle was praising the Democrats ‘cause that’s who the Russian operatives helped on that one. 600 people is not a small amount of people to get at a rally.

Simone Collins: It’s a lot of people.

Wow. Okay.

Malcolm Collins: Okay. Similarly, Los Angeles activists Nolan Hack was reimbursed for travel to assist with civil rights rallies. So like when people are like, who’s behind this latest [00:20:00] disruption? Who’s behind the protestors, who are throwing things at police, who’s behind bet your bottom dollar? In a few years, you’re gonna find out it wasn’t George Soros, it was poop.

Okay, stop.

Simone Collins: Take it

Malcolm Collins: outta your mouth for five seconds and understand. He wants to destroy Western civilization. That’s his end game because he wants to replace it with the kleptocratic civilization that he is building out. And if you understand how Russia has ever operated, even during its client state period, they always say, because they’ve done this before, by the way.

If you don’t know much about how the communist, the, the, the, the Communist Union actually operated. You, and you look at it from an outsider, you look at it like a brainwash lefty. They look at it and they’re like, oh. It was a land of equality where everyone was one under the wider communist empire.

If you actually look at the way people lived in it, people in St. Petersburg and Moscow, or living [00:21:00] it up people in the colonized regions, the, the, you know, I, I forget the. Technical name for them. The subjugated regions lived in immense poverty and were systematically exploited. When Russia says, Hey, we want you, when they come to the American right?

And they’re like, we wanna create a worldwide, you know, right-leaning empire. Right. It’s an empire like the Communist Empire where they sell you. It’s an empire where we’re all gonna be equals, but they plan to strip every right and everything you have so you can live in permanent subjugation to them.

And you can be a fodder for their endless expansion machine so far as they want to expand anyway. It’s the way they still operate today. It’s the way the Russian Empire has always thought about things. It looks like you wanted to say something.

Simone Collins: No, no, no. Keep going.

Malcolm Collins: But this, this very much reminds me of like, when, when somebody acts like that, they remind me of what’s his face from Red Alert two acting like Yuri is his friend.

Speaker 4: Allies will give up their [00:22:00] foolish resistance and join our glorious Soviet cause. Then together we take care of traitor.

Malcolm Collins: It’s like Yuri is not your friend. Like you might technically be wearing the same uniforms, but Yuri cares about you not a lick. And one day you’re gonna be serving him if his plants come to fruition. Anyway, to continue here in content creation, black Matters US contacted St. Louis hip hop artists, Ronnie Houston, AKA roughed, the ruler in March, 2016 via Instagram to produce a music video on social issues with lyrics, framing, police as assassins and protestors as quote unquote, Avengers in Atlanta, a blogging duo, William and Kevin.

Created anti Hillary Clinton videos and posts, including statements like Hillary Clinton is not our candidate, so they also tried to get the black community to hate the mainstream Democrats at times.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: Occupy Wall Street co-founder Mika White with approached in May, [00:23:00] 2016 by a fate freelance reporter, Jan Big Davis tied to Black matter’s, us leading to unwitting involvement with their activities.

The IRA also organized simultaneous pro. An anti BLM protest is in place like New York City, but they were doing much more as you can see, because everyone’s trying to be like, well, they did some stuff on the other side. They did way more on the black side. Right. So let’s go over some of these organizations that we’re operating.

So you can get an idea. So you got black Divis here, right? The one that we talked about was 11.2 million engagement. Right? So what sort of things were they posting? Cops raid wrong home and assaulted pregnant woman. All caps, insane. Cops pulverized handcuffs, man. All caps and memes urging, stand together.

And in depression with our race is under attack. But remember, we are strong in numbers. Ads promoted things like Baltimore, police brutality marches, video shared footage of white police holding down [00:24:00] black men. One was shared over half a million times. All right, so let’s go to the next one here. Woke blacks.

This account had over, or sorry, around half a million likes half a million shares and around 50,000 followers. So

Simone Collins: what’s crazy about this is one of the really big controversies that hit Facebook was when they. Basically allowed a bunch of news or I, I guess like largely fake news about Buddhist people I think in Myanmar.

Like, oh, like this Buddhist man grape a girl and got away with it. It led to just huge amounts of, of violence and people being brutally killed and. In incredible social descent and, and, and death in Myanmar. And, and Facebook got in a lot of trouble because it didn’t properly moderate these things and stop it from happening.

What it looks like, yeah, nothing on BM [00:25:00] Russia was trying to do here was just replicate what happened in Myanmar. In the United States, like, oh, so you can so dissent in a country and cause political violence by making up outrageous stories or by merely promoting real stories that are outrageous and just sharing the footage and sharing photos in a way that gets people really riled up and keen to just start like revenge killing people.

It, it, it just looks like they were actively trying to replicate it and it’s kind of. Amazing that it didn’t get worse than it was, maybe because Facebook was already wise to this issue and moderating more carefully. Or maybe just because the narrative wasn’t as compelling as it was for whatever reason in Myanmar.

But that’s really fascinating in, in the context. Well, because

Malcolm Collins: Democrats don’t want it known that Black Lives Matter was AstroTurf by Russian bots.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Oh, but Facebook also like successfully in the past, sorry, buddy. [00:26:00] Like successfully in the past was, was used to perpetuate like huge amounts of political violence.

Malcolm Collins: Right. I guess what we could do is on the right have like a freak out about this and, and be like all, you know, leftist ra radical stuff needs to be more watched because it could be Russian bots, Russian bots, Russian bots oh my goodness. Anyway, black Matter is us who had 1.3 million likes in 1.8 million shares.

And that’s just on Facebook. Their posts included things like, cops kill black kids. Are you sure your son won’t be the next? And memes like the, I can’t breathe slogan.. And then we’ve got don’t shoot us. Eg. Don’t shoot us us. That’s a

Simone Collins: website that was

Malcolm Collins: So here we’re gonna go to the gross of the Black Lives Matter movement, just in case you wanna get like a year by year play by play. So you can see just how much the IRA stuff mattered

Simone Collins: Yeah. In terms of seeding it. Mm-hmm. Okay.

Malcolm Collins: So, hashtag Black Lives Matter was [00:27:00] started in 2013 coined by, Hey.

Yeah, it

Simone Collins: really goes back much further than I thought. ‘cause yeah, we, I remember, well, he was tied

Malcolm Collins: to that, the, the, the George Zimmerman thing. That, that, that time when a guy killed a black guy and everyone pretended he was white.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Which was very weird to go through.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: That was the first time when I was like, wait, are we just like, not in reality anymore,

Simone Collins: whatever.

But I remember what it was, I keep wanting to say Wall Street Butts the anti Wall Street protests, you referred to it earlier, so then you, it was much bigger. What was it called? Oh my gosh. Occupy Wall Street. Occupy Wall Street. Yeah. It was bigger than, and I didn’t realize that Black Lives Matter predated that apparently.

Hmm.

Malcolm Collins: Well, it wasn’t big until Russia got involved. Like, wow, okay. Yeah. Russia

Simone Collins: made it a thing, like it wasn’t really a thing, and they were like, Hey, look at this. We could do something with this. We could do something with it. Yeah, they made it cool.

Malcolm Collins: And I’m just, I’m just going through the timeline here.

Okay. So, [00:28:00] in 2014, this is when you have the Michael Brown killing and the Ferguson unrest.

Simone Collins: Oh. Now

Malcolm Collins: this is when the IRA started to get involved. This was their early operations were involved in, in stuff like this. Then you go up to 2015. Where you have the growing protests over Freddie Gray in Baltimore and Sandra, et cetera.

However IRA activity really explodes this year. This is 2015 with 96% focused on police brutality against black Americans. This was in the year. 2015, 96% of the IRA YouTube videos were focused on police brutality against black Americans again. And this is on like, don’t shoot Black Lives Matter, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

Yeah. So this is when the movement’s really catching steam. Right. And then the next year you get the height of IRA interference. Okay. Okay. This was, this was 16, but it was also. When the Black Lives Matter movement really took off was the 2015 2016 period. And so this is when you have the [00:29:00] peak Twitter usage of hashtag Black Lives Matter.

So I, I want to be clear. Peak Twitter usage of hashtag Black Lives Matter coincided with peak IRA interference in hashtag Black Lives Matter.

Simone Collins: Wow.

Malcolm Collins: And this is assuming we caught all their accounts.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Right.

Simone Collins: Cool.

Malcolm Collins: And this is supposedly the year that they were out there helping Trump win the election, right?

Like

with a distant afterthought to them. Then in 2017 you have IRA operations are ongoing, but they, they scale back to some extent or sort of flat out then 2018 to 2019 you have sporadic protests. So keep in mind from like 2016 to 2019. You did not have like the Black Lives Matter movement went into a significant lull if everyone remembers.

Right. And in in part because this is, because in 2018 IRA was largely disrupted. After the 2018 indictment and Facebook purges. [00:30:00] Okay. So, but then in 2020 with the George Floyd situation, black Lives Matter picked back up. Do you know what else happened in 2020 IRA activity picked back up?

Simone Collins: Oh no.

Malcolm Collins: So the IRA activity and we’re gonna go over the IRA activity that was happening in 2020 right now.

Yeah. Perfectly precedes every explosion in the Black Lives Matter movement. So you can be like,

Simone Collins: so this is basically an AstroTurf movement, you’re saying?

Malcolm Collins: An AstroTurf movement by Russian bots.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Oh my

Malcolm Collins: gosh. And the Democrats basically realized that by ignoring or hiding this fact, they could use it to their advantage.

And I guess the mainstream Republican establishment was too witless to mention this fact.

Simone Collins: WHI lists or,

Malcolm Collins: well, it’s not just WHI lists. This is the Republican party genuinely has a lot of. Infiltrated bad actors. And so if I was a Republican during that [00:31:00] period and I went out and I was like, Hey these are Russian bots guys, I can prove it to you. Two things would happen. First they’d be, everyone would be desensitized to not pay attention.

‘cause they’re like, oh, I remember when they tried to pull that on Trump.

Simone Collins: Yeah. And

Malcolm Collins: then two, a lot of right-wing influencers large right-wing influencers are genuinely in Russia’s pocket. Like I, I mean this very sincerely. That’s,

Simone Collins: yeah, like even Tim Pool, either knowingly or unknowingly received. Yeah, all that money.

Malcolm Collins: I mean, we, we know we haven’t, we talk more about this, but it appears very likely that Tucker Carlson is being paid by somebody in Russia and somebody in Qatar. So I mean, that, that’s the only reason I can think that he’s been glazing Iran, given the history of his political beliefs. Amazing. You know, and and the, the way he talks about Russia, who is our enemy, if I go up there during that period and I start saying, Hey.

All of this Black Lives Matter stuff. It’s because of Russian interference. Russia is the bad guy behind [00:32:00] this. You know, your Tucker Carlsons, your Nick Fuentes, even for like the people off the grid are gonna come at me like a, a, a monkey on cocaine, right? Mm-hmm. Like, you can’t, I I, I mean, I was an influencer who had more reach than we do now.

Enough that I could shape the narrative. They would freak the F out because they do not want Russia implicated. Right? Yeah. And there’s a lot of people on the right who unfortunately believe this, like they believe Russia is their friend. And it’s just so disheartening to me and it’s so disheartening.

And then they’ll, they’ll go and they’ll follow accounts and they’ll listen to influencers who, anyone who is looking at it objectively would know they’re on the Russian doll. They’re just stupid and following accounts that are on the Russian doll because nobody who is pro-America would glaze Russia or one of our primary geopolitical enemies.

But anyway, to continue here,

Simone Collins: this is wild.

Malcolm Collins: Anyway.

Simone Collins: Well, this reminds me of a lot [00:33:00] actually is, I don’t know if you remember just how much of the effective altruist landscape. Caved in when Sam BigMan Freed went to jail.

Malcolm Collins: No, I remember that. It was like, it turned out that the entire movement was AstroTurf.

Simone Collins: Yeah. It was just AstroTurf by his money.

And this is making, it just feels so similar to that. We’re both a bunch of conservative influencers, but also a bunch of crazy leftist causes. Really no one, no one else wants to pay attention to them or pay for them. But there are just these mysterious forces that keep making them happen. And were those to disappear.

These things just wouldn’t exist. And, and that’s just so the case with so many of these effective altruist efforts that had been funded. No one asked for them. No one wanted them. They were like screaming loudly on the internet only because [00:34:00] they were being insanely well funded by Sam Bankman free.

Essentially. Yeah. And this, it’s, I wonder how many facets of our culture and our experience online or with the media in general is really a result of a country or a wealthy benefactor largely funding something that, that just they personally want to see screened online. I know for example, like I saw a recent headline talking about how.

Because two really prolific philanthropists in the art world were like probably gonna die soon or had just died, that this huge facet of the fine art world was basically just gonna stop existing because these people basically solely funded everyone’s lifestyles. And so. Now like all this art that a lot of people thought was like really important art.

And you’d see it at like the Met and you’d see it everywhere else. [00:35:00] No, it, it turns out no one actually liked that art. It was just paid for by like. Two guys. Like two guys, yeah. Two guys who are now dead, who like really liked it. But it turns out no one else liked it. And I just, I mean, I, I do wonder these like thing you, when when you and I were dragged on to like modern art museums and forced to look at this art and we’re like, who buys this?

Who wants this? Who pays for this? Well, people who are gonna die and then it’s just gonna disappear. And I think this is really similar that these are facets of the online world that. Felt so big and were so big and were actually impactful and did manage to fool a lot of people, but in the end, they would not exist.

Were not for the actions of some extremely wealthy people. I think a lot of AI doism is very similar. I think that there wouldn’t be a whole lot of AI doism messages if it weren’t for a couple very, very wealthy people. Recognizing that AI could be an issue and being like, sure, like I’ll [00:36:00] throw like, you know, $20 million at this and that leading to a bunch of people devoting all their time to just screaming on the internet about AI doism because their lifestyle was being paid for by these people and they wanted that attention.

But like it actually. You know, isn’t a message that, I mean, you can see that in the data, right? When it comes to Google Trends, AI doism, despite receiving so much more funding, for example, than Tism and demographic collapse, has only just recently kind of surpassed it. And I think that, yeah. Anyway, I just, you’re, you’re making me realize just how many big elements of.

Our cultural experience in the United States and globally may just be

Malcolm Collins: just a, a government running a campaign on us.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Puppeteered. That’s really something, I guess it maybe it’s always been that way. I mean, keep in mind like the medi cheese, like funded huge amounts of, of the arts and [00:37:00] there, there have always been patrons who’ve basically dictated what we as common people experience culturally and artistically.

So maybe this isn’t anything new. I guess maybe we just were under more of a false impression due to the way that social media is sold to us and media in general is sold to us, that it’s more meritocratic now and it really just isn’t.

Malcolm Collins: Hmm. No, it is meritocratic it. I think it, this is what you’re missing.

Tim Pool became famous, not because Russians were paying for him, but because Tim Pool became famous. Right. Like Tim Pool won through a meritocracy. Mm-hmm. And then he wanted more money and the Russians bought his opinion. Tucker Carlson genuinely had some really interesting takes. He pulled off some really interesting stuff, you know?

Okay. Yeah. That’s fair. And then he realized he could make even more money with Russia. And we know that he never really had any internal value system, given that when he was glazing Trump, we have private texts for him saying that like, he hates Trump so much, he can’t even [00:38:00] talk to another one of his friends because his friend doesn’t hate Trump.

Right? Like, that was his level of existential hatred of Trump. Yeah. Yet he’s able to go on air and say, Trump’s the best ever. Right? Like, if he’s doing this. Of course he’s willing to glaze Iran even if he doesn’t agree with it. He didn’t, his personal opinions have nothing to do with his rise to fame because these people, and I think this really differentiates us from them.

And it shows you know, the new, oh,

Simone Collins: because we haven’t yet received,

Malcolm Collins: no, no, no. I would take money from an outside power. Mm-hmm. But I would never compromise on my long-term mission. Right. Like my life, I’m here for a purpose. Right. Like a, a functional purpose. Part of that is having a lot of kids addressing this, but helping our civilization, the one that you and I represent, survive.

Thrive in humanity, make it into the stars as a result of that. Right. And I’m willing [00:39:00] to play whatever moves I have to play on the chess board to see that outcome realized. Mm-hmm. When you’re talking about somebody like Nick Fuentes, who doesn’t have kids, who isn’t married, who’s pushing a movement that couldn’t even win in elections, like as, as I pointed this out, he’s not playing a wider game.

He’s playing the in the moment vibes game, right? Mm-hmm. And because of that, he doesn’t care if his. Activism is damaging the mainstream right wing movement, right? Like right. He, he’s happy going out and saying, mainstream right wing individuals are my enemy. Charlie Kirk, as he said, Charlie Kirk is his enemy.

Like he wanted to take down Charlie Kirk.

Charlie Kirk in your focus group, f**k you.

Malcolm Collins: Now, of course, he’s moved to just insulting his wife now, which he does repeatedly.

Speaker 6: To the extent. Look, Erica Kirk is a spook. I’ve seen enough. Erica Kirk is a plant. We all know that that is a fact. That is basically established. She was shopping around for political [00:40:00] husband. God knows where she comes from. She she found one in Charlie Kirk. Do you think Charlie Kirk is the Riz master?

He’s not a good looking guy.

Malcolm Collins: It’s really, I, I didn’t realize how. Distasteful he was until I saw him do stuff like that. I would want my wife, he, he’s mad that his wife is fundraising for conservative causes around like his death.

If I died, do you not think I would want Simone to use the new cycle that generated to fundraise around prenatal as causes and conservative cause?

Simone Collins: Do you

Malcolm Collins: for a second? Think I wouldn’t want my entire funeral to be fricking gun salutes and be the parades and, and, and, and fireworks. And pyrotechnics. Of course I would.

Simone Collins: Well, you’re not allowed to die for the record. Well, what I’m saying

Malcolm Collins: is you have to actually not have a long-term goal or a purpose in life to not know that’s exactly what Charlie Kirk would’ve wanted. Because you, for you, this is all about you. It’s not about the [00:41:00] mission, right? Charlie Cook’s life was about the mission.

It was about something other than himself. And with somebody like Tucker Carlson, his life exists for himself, right? So he can easily be bought off because for always and ever, he’s been trying to gain. Attention for himself. Like we know that from the Trump text, right? Like he didn’t care. He just wanted about whatever would get the most views.

Whereas if you look at the new generation of right-wing influencers, one of the things that separates them from the past is they are genuinely incapable of being bought off. Let me give you an example goal. You could not buy off asthma gold, period. This is a guy who still lives in the house he was born in.

Obviously must be worth what now? I, I assume at least 50 to a hundred million dollars. Literally eats at seven 11 every day. I don’t even think he gets food. He, he still gets the, like, token cheap steak that he grills on a pan without oil or butter or anything. He just puts the steak in a pan and cooks it.

Oh my [00:42:00] God.

Simone Collins: I think using plastic utensils too.

Malcolm Collins: Using plastic utensils. He has a video of him. Well, Hasan Piker, the leftist guy is out there shocking dogs. We have ethical picking gingerly a cockroach and a and a tic cockroach. The ones we have in Texas, which are giant, they’re like this big off his shirt and then carefully taking it downstairs.

And my favorite part about that is he goes, we’re like, oh, the, the, the common stone was watching on. They’re like, oh, you know, two people accidentally told on themselves. You got, you got the Huan Piker one. As girl goes, okay guys, I’m gonna take this downstairs and let it loose. In the living room. And then he looks at the camera and he goes, I mean, outside, outside.

I’m letting it loose outside. And everyone was like, he just let that loose in his living room.

Speaker 8: Me. What you doing bro? Get outta my get go in the garbage can. I’m gonna take him downstairs. Gimme a minute. I got, I got him. I got him. I got him. I got he right.

Speaker 10: I can’t.

Speaker 7: Don’t show this one to [00:43:00] Izzy.

Simone Collins: Beautiful.

Malcolm Collins: But the point being is like he won’t even hurt a cockroach. Right. But it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s interesting that we’ve seen this rise of the, the less corruptible and I, and I’m also genuinely not seeing as much bias in the rising right wing figures, right.

Of, of the internet era, which has been very interesting to me. Like they seem to be less corruptible and less viable then. The era of influencers that the Tim Cooks and, and Nick Fuentes has come from. Tim Pools. Tim. Tim Pools. Now I will know is Tim Pool. I don’t know. Has he done, I I think he has done pro Russia stuff, so I’d I’d buy that.

He was butt off, but I, but my sort of, my take was Tim Pool is, he would’ve done that stuff anyway. Like he sort of buys into the Russia is our friend narrative, so I don’t think he would’ve like seen taking money as like a negative thing.

Simone Collins: Yeah. I mean, I don’t, I don’t think it was terribly discordant.

But I think there were like, I think like just legal, legal issues, [00:44:00] but also it wasn’t super clear if memory serves the issue with him being funded by an entity that was Russian. Was it like Russia was trying to hide the fact that it was Russia giving them money? But the people receiving it, including Tim, kind of knew that.

And like in internal messaging, were like, oh, the guy who’s totally not a Russian plant, you know, like it was all sufficiently suspicious and they all got that, it was sufficiently suspicious, but they took the money anyway because it’s money. People come on, like get real. Yeah. Like, you wouldn’t do it.

Come on. That’s

Malcolm Collins: the, the, the I, again, I’m, and I’m being totally honest here. If it’s something that I was probably gonna promote anyway, I’d be like, sure, yeah, I’ll take the money if I can use it to, to, you know, solve my wider agenda. Yeah, that’s, I think

Simone Collins: that’s where we stand with things like receiving money.

If our incentives are aligned with the person who is giving the money. [00:45:00] 100%. Absolutely. I think why we don’t see many scenarios like that is because no one’s gonna give us money to promote something we’re already promoting, or at least very few people are. You know, they’re like, why would I pay when they’re already gonna do it for free?

So we’re kind of screwed Malcolm,

right?

Like our whole thing with sponsorship, like sort of where things stand now is like we would consider maybe doing something sponsored on this channel, but only if we’d already chosen to buy the product before we heard about it and really liked it and wanted to promote it anyway.

There aren’t very many. Like, why would Coors Light reach out to you when you already promote it for free? Why? I’ll

Malcolm Collins: go trans if it’ll get me the, the sponsorship.

Simone Collins: Well, that was, wasn’t it?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, that would a joke. Right? Okay. That’s fine.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Course light would

Malcolm Collins: never,

Simone Collins: would never

Malcolm Collins: even in back in the day, it’s the same company, you know that [00:46:00] Right.

The same like super company. They’re

Simone Collins: owned by the same. Really? Yeah. Okay. I didn’t,

Malcolm Collins: almost all beer is, oh boy. Really matter. But yeah. Like British Cubs. Yeah. I this for me, I think helped me like seeing this and maybe somebody could be like, oh no, like. This has been talked about a lot by Tim Poole. He said that Russia completely bankrolled the Black Lives Matter movement.

Right? Like

Simone Collins: did he,

Malcolm Collins: I doubt he did, but maybe he did. And maybe everybody knows about this and I’m just the odd one out, right? Or maybe what it is, is it was, it was useful for a lot of people and this was actually the thing. Of the period before this generation of conservative influencers. When I say this generation, I don’t mean people my age, I mean people in our sort of upstream funnel of conservative influencers.

Okay? IE this, this last election cycle. Then the election cycle before the election cycle. Before that. They seem a lot less bought by groups like Russian groups, but it seemed like in the first, like the ones who gained [00:47:00] traction was the first Trump election. They were really open to working with Russia.

And I think it’s because the narrative caught on, unfortunately, ‘cause the left wing media spread it, that Trump was genuinely working with Russia.

Simone Collins: Oh.

Malcolm Collins: And so they thought, oh, well if I work, I’m just working with, with Trump’s guys. Right. You know, it’s, it’s fine.

Simone Collins: Even though that was never really the case, but Russia would never have a reason to dissuade people from believing that.

Mm-hmm. How desperately depressing that is. I do not like it at all. No. Oh dear.

Malcolm Collins: And so I’m interested to see if this continues, if, if, if, as this crop of influencers rises and hopefully they do continue to rise with us among them. We see them stay significantly less corruptible than previous generations of influencers.

Or are they going to be bought off just as fast as everyone else?

Simone Collins: Yeah. I wonder. And I also wonder [00:48:00] how mimetic landscapes are gonna work in the future as we see more concentration of wealth. Will wealthy people just stop? Paying for things and patronizing certain mimetic clusters or types of art the same way as they did before because they sort of declare bankruptcy or completely separate themselves from the common people.

You know,

Malcolm Collins: it’s interesting that you say this when like that’s what our YouTube career is actually gated towards. So you as a fan may not realize this, but the point of all of the content. Is one of the points we have a lot. One is AI training data. One is, you know, being able to replicate our personalities with ais.

Another is just reaching a public audience. But a huge thing that I often think about from a financial perspective is our first billionaire fan. Right? You know, you get that billionaire fan. This is literally what started like the effect of altruist movement is like one billionaire guy. It had [00:49:00] had been to like a Will McCaskill speech when he was younger and then decided like.

Oh, I’m a big fan of Will McCaskill. I’ll fund this effective altruist saying, right. So we’re trying to build all the ideological and civic infrastructure so that

Simone Collins: a billionaire decides to become our patron.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, yeah. So that they can be like, oh, I wanna make this like a movement.

Movement. Like the EA movement was. Oh, you know, so we have all the infrastructure there, all the nonprofits, all the religious structures, all the, all of it’s ready to go for when we get the billionaire who’s like, yeah, I really like Malcolm and Simone. I wanna make their thing global. You know, that’s really what happens with people like say Charlie Kirk or something like that, you know?

Yes, they have organic growth, but they also, I mean, it was pretty clear, have massive donors. Yeah. And they make it work.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah. That’s fair. That is fair. I just, I, I do wonder somewhat whether super hyper wealthy people [00:50:00] are going to continue to care about that and engage with normal people, or if they’re just gonna, are you kidding?

Malcolm Collins: What does Elon Musk do like. To half of the day or more.

Simone Collins: Yeah, but I mean, Musk isn’t gonna live forever. And also, as you point out, AI is going to just create this, this group of super, super wealthy people who are unmoored from any need to depend upon normal people. Now, they may still feel connected to normal people and, and want their attention and praise.

Maybe they won’t, you know, maybe they’ll just disappear and, and stop patronizing the arts and influencing media and caring at all. I don’t know. I, I just, I wonder and maybe they, they will continue to because they’ve, they’ve done that basically forever, so why not continue to, that also makes sense. I just, I don’t know.

I’m, I’m curious.

Malcolm Collins: Well, I [00:51:00] love you, love. Oh yeah. One final thing we should probably mention, because I was gonna go into this, but everybody knows about this. Oh, the the, the founders of the Black Lives Matter movement bought a 5.8 to $6 million, 6,500 square foot property in Studio City, California that they were gonna use for an art fellowship program, but then just decided to live in,

Simone Collins: didn’t someone go to jail over this?

Malcolm Collins: So I looked, I think

Simone Collins: someone was recently. Jailed. Hmm. Like

For clarification here. No. There has been no repercussions for the people who stole the Black Lives Matter money to buy mansions. I.

Simone Collins: so they weren’t, no one was imprisoned over this just, yeah.

Malcolm Collins: My understanding is that one was misused

Simone Collins: the funds,

Malcolm Collins: whatever.

Simone Collins: Oh my goodness gracious.

Malcolm Collins: They said, well, it is going to a historically oppressed family, ours.

Simone Collins: Y Yeah, sure. That’s, oh, goodness gracious. I mean, I, I, in the end, people gave the money to, [00:52:00] you know, I guess sort of out of collective guilt or desire to contribute to black lives. And if the people who are seen by some as misusing funds are black and living, then I guess.

Mission accomplished? Yeah, I mean, I don’t know what people thought they were donating to and they donated to Black Lives Matter anyway, so. I guess it’s fine. My goodness gracious. I just, I had no idea that Russia contributed at all to that movement. And now basically you’re saying it would not be the thing,

Malcolm Collins: it would not be the thing It was, yeah.

And, and not only would it not be the thing it was. But it significantly, Russiagate was significantly more about Black Lives Matter than Trump.

Simone Collins: Oh, that’s, that is crazy. Wow. Thanks for enlightening me. That is it sobering but fascinating.

Malcolm Collins: Exactly. Love you so [00:53:00] much, Simone.

Simone Collins: I love you too. By the way. I realized that we actually do have some bok toy left and now we have all those chives.

So, if you,

Malcolm Collins: I have great wait, a today. I want, I want something easier on my stomach today, so just pasta peso.

Simone Collins: Okay. Perfect. Yeah, that’s, that’s very easy to do.

Malcolm Collins: So I appreciate that. All right. And you still love me. That’s okay.

Simone Collins: More than ever. More than ever, my friend. You are everything to me, so thanks for existing, I’m so excited for the weekend.

Spend website

Malcolm Collins: stable ish, I think now, so,

Simone Collins: oh, I can test it now.

Malcolm Collins: Yep.

Simone Collins: Okay. So that’s my weekend mornings,

Malcolm Collins: but I’ll go check what’s happening on the Discord just to make sure.

Simone Collins: Okay. Yeah, please do. All right. Love you gorgeous.

Malcolm Collins: Love you too.

Simone Collins: Wow. That was interesting.

Malcolm Collins: Good episode, right? Finding out interesting facts.

People love that about us. They’re like, wow, you guys actually. [00:54:00] Did you actually end up getting the holly bows? I didn’t see them around the house,

Simone Collins: no. The kids got too chaotic for it, so I’m either gonna do it this weekend or tonight or whenever. Basically I can sneak outside. That’s when

Malcolm Collins: I’ll, I’m looking at the tree just out my window and it has so many berries on it.

It’s so

Simone Collins: pretty. I know. It’s, it’s, it’s gorgeous. We, we have the perfect holiday decorating tree outside. We just need to bring in the pieces. We can do it. We gotta do it.

Speaker 12: Then go.

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