Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm Collins

Malcolm and Simone dive into Pennsylvania's controversial candidate survey, revealing shocking LGBTQ+ policy proposals. They critique the implications of gender-affirming care for minors, analyzing potential legal risks. The discussion explores the complexities of transgender athletes in sports and the impact of LGBTQ+ content in schools. Additionally, they examine the 'panic defense' in legal cases and evolving attitudes towards same-sex marriage. A thought-provoking take on cultural sovereignty and the role of modern LGBTQ+ organizations is also highlighted.

Maxim Lott, a political forecasting expert, shares his insights on why betting odds often outperform traditional polls. He discusses Biden's surprising withdrawal from the race and the implications for Kamala Harris. Lott highlights the evolution of prediction markets, emphasizing their growing significance in political strategy. The conversation also covers the shifting dynamics within the Republican Party and the challenges facing political betting in the U.S. Tune in for a thought-provoking discussion on the future of election forecasting!

Malcolm and Simone Collins discuss the controversy of PrEP, government subsidizing sexual health choices, and ethical dilemmas of healthcare funding. They tackle the effectiveness and cost of PrEP, insurance coverage, societal attitudes towards sexual behavior, and the intersection of personal freedom and healthcare costs.

Malcolm and Simone Collins discuss the unexpected fertility decline in early 20th century Europe and North America, debunk myths about the causes of the Baby Boom, explore the impact of World War II on societal values and family planning, analyze cross-cultural comparisons of Baby Boom effects, discuss the limitations of housing policy in addressing fertility rates, and emphasize the importance of cultural shifts in promoting higher birth rates.

The podcast delves into the correlation between high IQ and transgender identity, theories on social contagion, impact on mental health and suicide rates, the role of autism in gender dysphoria, and critiques of current treatment approaches. It also discusses political implications of the trans movement and challenges viewers to consider various perspectives on the topic.

Political analysts Malcolm and Simone Collins dissect Kamala Harris's prosecutorial history, authoritarian tendencies, and impact on the Democratic party. They compare her to Trump, discuss her public persona, and potential presidency outcomes. An insightful look into one of the most prominent figures in American politics.

Malcolm and Simone Collins discuss the emergence of the 'New Right' within the Republican party, exploring shifts in GOP alliances, Trump's influence, changing views on social issues, clash with traditional conservatives, and the impact on the party's future.

 https://discord.gg/EGFRjwwS92Join Malcolm and Simone Collins as they dive deep into the fascinating dynamics of Trump's VP pick, JD Vance, and what it means for the future of conservative politics. This thought-provoking discussion explores the concept of "identity laundering," the evolution of American cultural groups, and how authenticity is perceived in modern politics. The Collins couple offers unique insights into the shifting alliances within the Republican party and the rise of tech elites in conservative circles.Key points covered:* The concept of "identity laundering" in politics* JD Vance's journey from hillbilly to venture capitalist to conservative icon* The evolution of Trump's political identity* The alliance between tech elites and rural conservatives* The influence of Scots-Irish culture on American politics* The shift in conservative elite culture* The potential impact on the 2024 electionWhether you're a political junkie, a student of American culture, or simply interested in understanding the complex dynamics of modern conservatism, this video offers valuable insights into the changing face of American politics.Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] Both J. D. Vance and Trump. represent a form of identity laundering and fraudulence that is extremely authentic and trustworthy. It builds trust. he grew up an actual hillbilly. Then he found out that to achieve the things that society told him were valuable, he had to adopt another identity.He's a Princeton venture capitalist, right?Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Your true self is who you choose to be, how you choose to see the world. Yeah, he is not somebody who accidentally became who he is.He became who he is because he had a goal, I want to be X type of person now, and he has transformed himselfSimone Collins: all culture is a LARP. I think this ties into that. And I think you're much more authentic when you're LARPing culture than when you're just defaulting into whatever culture surrounds you because [00:01:00] you have consciously chosen it.Therefore, you own it.Would you like to know more?Malcolm Collins: Hello, Simone! I am so excited to be talking to you today! We had done an episode on J. D. Vance that actually went live today, and I was, as Trump's VP pick and the writer of Hillbilly Eulogy.Simone Collins: Eulogy. L and G.Malcolm Collins: I'm always going to get that wrong.Effigy is, I'm always going to say, don't say effigy. Anyway I, there was a really interesting discussion on the discord about the episode. And I'll put the interesting topic on the discord here so people can get these types of comments in real time as they're coming up. But it made me realize that this pic was fascinating.From so many perspectives that I want to dive into, like the psychology of this pick and the psychology that's represented in Trump now having as his running mate, I think the personification of the never Trump movement. And what that [00:02:00] means for the shift that we've had culturally speaking. Both J. D. Vance and Trump. represent a form of identity laundering and fraudulence that is extremely authentic and trustworthy. It builds trust.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: And so do you want to talk about this?Because you were the one who first notices.Simone Collins: Yeah. So there are particular brands and personalities. I think are comforting and trustworthy in the same way that franchises are trustworthy. And I'll explain why. So I'd said earlier that it was very fitting to me and I found it very pleasing that Trump is like the poor man's caricature of a rich man.In yesterday's conversation how Trump is he frames himself as this very like classy, successful businessman. Whereas like your typical, like WASPy wealthy person in the U S would seem as pretty trashy.And on the flip side, you have this [00:03:00] man who's branded himself as a hillbilly and a man of people who nevertheless, after coming out of the Marines, went to Yale law school, worked in venture capital, worked with the tech that we, it's totally not like the hillbilly. And yet we see them as being.Probably more authentic when you actually come down to it than, like your average normal politician who's playing by the politician template of I'm authentic. This is me. And I'm basic. And I think a lot of what's going on there is they've both adopted characters that are predictable and in that way, trustworthy.You don't have to like someone to trust them. You have to feel like you can model and predict them. That's it.Malcolm Collins: I think it's more than that. So I think JD Vance is a bit easier to study this from than Trump, right? So JD Vance grew up like an actual hillbilly. So you read his book. Can you talk to some of the stories inSimone Collins: it?Yeah. I think, yeah, this is important that. People recognize it. He was mostly raised by his grandmother who he called Meemaw, and she really is this caricature as [00:04:00] well. This is like the classic Scots Irish back country, American. There was this one family story where apparently Meemaw said to.her husband that if she came home, if he came home drunk again, she would kill him. And lo and behold, one day he comes home, drink, of course, like one day he comes home drunk, passes out on the couch and she, he wrote in his book actually, that she poured gasoline on him. The family actually quibble that no, it was probably lighter fluid, but that was the only thing, some context but yeah, and lit him on fire.And it was actually JV's, I think, aunt, one of the, one of the daughters who, took pity upon this man and saved his life. But this is a womanMalcolm Collins: who does not f**k around. This is very backcountry uh, value systems. Like, you, you know, You set boundaries and then you enforce them with, Violence.Yeah, but I,Simone Collins: and I think this is, the way that, people are like JD Vance is [00:05:00] not really a hillbilly. But he was raised in that kind of culture and environment and also people are like, yeah Trump's not really like a classy, wealthy businessman.He was raised really wealthy. Like it, the way in which these people are frauds are like, not exactly the stereotypes that you're playing, that's playing topic I wanna get into, or nuance I wanna make here around fraudulence,Malcolm Collins: which is to say he grew up an actual hillbilly. Then he found out that to achieve the things that society told him were valuable, he had to adopt another identity.He's a Princeton venture capitalist, right? And he fit in with this new identity community that he was representing when he was writing Hillbilly elegy. He. Was writing it to explain how could anyone ever vote for Trump, which was genuinely something that was in his community.People were asking, and he at the time was motivated to believe I could never do something like this. I would [00:06:00] never do something like this. Not the person I am today, but then he thought the environment I grew up in, I can model them. I can begin to see how they mightSimone Collins: do certainMalcolm Collins: things or why they might do certain things.And then he did something that a lot of people do at different points of their life, which is he was modeling this other community, this community he originally came from, and either because he thought through re adopting this identity in the same way that he adopted the. Ultra urban monoculture identity to achieve success in venture capital and Princeton law and all that.He might have realized he could politically capitalize from this new identity and began to adapt it. Like maybe that was part of the early motive motivation, but people code switch too. Yeah. People code switch all the time. But maybe it was in modeling this in engaging with this population again, I don't believe in a true self like a lot of people are like, Oh, you should just be your true self.Your true [00:07:00] self is who you choose to be, how you choose to see the world. Yeah, he began to choose like he realized, I think, Partially that he had distanced himself from his real cultural ancestry because he had began to dehumanize people with those value systems and that culture and he realized that, oh, I shouldn't be doing that.They actually have some value to them. Perhaps more value than the urban monoculture. And this is the journey that many people have gone down. And so the question is when was he pretending? Was he pretending when he was ultra urban monoculture, venture capitalist, Princeton guy, or is he pretending now that he's still has many of their mannerisms.He can still close switch to access their community, but when he's making decisions about the metaphysical nature of reality, good and evil, et cetera,Simone Collins: which.Malcolm Collins: Identity is a channeling. He tells us which identity he's channeling. I think both in his actions [00:08:00] and in his policy positions and in that we can see that he is not somebody who accidentally became who he is.He became who he is because he had a goal, I want to be X type of person now, and he has transformed himself from the way that he dresses and talks to his value system into a high class hillbilly. A poor mountain deer barely kept his family fed. Well, the first thing you know, Joe Jet's a billionaire. Said, California's the place you ought to be. So they loaded up the truck and they moved to Beverly. Hills, that is there are so many people in this here town. It's gonna take a long time to meet everybody. That's real nice, son. This here's what I carry. Okay, [00:09:00] cool. Cool, cool.Simone Collins: Um, One, you once tweeted that all culture is a LARP. I think this ties into that. And I think you're much more authentic when you're LARPing culture than when you're just defaulting into whatever culture surrounds you because you have consciously chosen it.Therefore, you own it. You've thought through it. And you can Instead of deontologically or performatively acting out that culture, just Oh, I guess this is how it's done. Going through the motions, you're living it. You're living the values and you're executing on them with true fidelity to that cultural system.Malcolm Collins: I actually think that this form of identity laundering or identity fraud is actually The core of the new vitalist framework. Oh, interesting. Look at our previous video where they see the concepts of we think that we've moved from a disgust based moral system to a cringe based moral system to know a vitalist based moral system.Which elevates people like Tiger King, who is another person who I think represents this form of fraud.Simone Collins: Oh, totally. TigerMalcolm Collins: King isn't who Tiger King [00:10:00] is because of random circumstances that happened to him throughout his life. Tiger King decided to become. Tiger King. It was a brand that he, uh, aspired to embody and now does embody in a very authentic way because it is it's not something that he is because it's just what the people around him are,Simone Collins: BecauseMalcolm Collins: he chose to be.Keep rolling, keep rolling. Now this is the kind of movies we're gonna make here, okay? Ladies and gentlemen, before you hear it on the news, I'm going to tell you myself, about an hour ago we had an incident where one of the employees stuck their arm through the cage and a tiger tore her arm off. I can give you your money back, or I can give you a rain check.Simone Collins: Yeah. This is what I value. This is what I like. This is who I'm going to be. And this is what I'm going to stand for. And I'm living it 100 percent of the time at volume 10. Yes. And I actually think Andrew Tate is very similar. Yes. [00:11:00] Yes.I guarantee you don't walk around your house with a sword because you're not commander. I'm a commander.Simone Collins: And I think that's one of the appeals about him for people.Malcolm Collins: Yeah.It's so funny when people see our value system and they're like, you can't just choose who you want to be. You can't just choose what you want to believe in your moral system. Yeah, you absolutely can. That is the way the world works. That is. A value system that you actually have because you own it.Now the, or because you chose it and you intentionally went into it. And this reminds me of when people are like, how could you guys be around racists? Or like, why would it be a problem if we're around racists? Like we're trying to convince them not to be racist. And they go if you're around enough racists, you'll become a racist.And it's oh, what you're telling us is you hold your value system because the people you are around hold that value system. Not because you chose that value system. They are susceptible to What the general public is doing in a way that we are not [00:12:00] because they didn't choose to be who they are, who they are as just an average of the people around them.And you also see this in Trump Trump's identity when people say it's like a fraudulent identity because he isn't accepted within high class culture. He's not high class. He doesn't he is as somebody who grew up and this is actually interesting to me because Trump did grow up wealthy, right? Yeah.That'sSimone Collins: the thing. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: But it's clear to me that his family was never accepted in high class culture. So I grew up in what was an exceptionally wealthy family. Now I inherited none of it. The family had all the money taken from them and I was disowned from them long before that. But they are a very, I call it a Bohemian Grove, wealthy family, like that type of person.They were like Dallas. We, there was a Dallas social book that listed like the most important families in Dallas and we were in that but we still have a copy of it somewhere in our house where when they used to have a social register, you might not know what social registers are.They had them in England where they would rank people by how important their family was. The Bratz, [00:13:00] my love. TheSimone Collins: peerage, yeah.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, the peerage. It was very important to, like, how you address other people. A lot of the old southern cities had this as well and so we were in that book and we would go to all the parties, and so I really understood how to code to this community.I went to Cotillion, I went to all that, And theSimone Collins: house you were in when you were born was featured in this magazine, yeah.Malcolm Collins: Oh yeah, there was a lot of so I knew that community. Now, the reason why I was expelled from my family is because I intentionally decided I did not like that community and I did not like their value system.But I think a lot of people can see when they interact with me or look at me. And my family was always considered an outsider within that community. We used to be called out. They calledSimone Collins: you an outsider. Yeah, they called you an outsider. Um,Malcolm Collins: Because we were seen as so weird within that community. But that was the like, I knew how to code switch into that.Simone Collins: It's clear that, and that was when you lived in Highland Park, right? So the other Highland Park families of Dallas, which is this wealthy neighborhood, it's like the Beverly Hills of Dallas saw them as Yeah, yeah, yeah. IMalcolm Collins: grew up [00:14:00] hanging out with the Bush family and the, the, those sorts of individuals.I so I understood how to code switch into that and what it means to be that. It's very clear to me that for whatever reason. Trump did not grow up or was not acculturated into actual blue blood culture. He doesn't, he appears to want to be something like that, but he doesn't know how to code that way.And as I've mentioned in other episodes to me, he actually codes like a Persian.Simone Collins: Right? Yeah.Yeah, look, I'm guessing there's some kind of soccer match from your home country going on. . But, uh, some of us are trying to sleep.And I could almost deal with the noise. But it's the cologne, alright? I can smell it in my bed, that's how powerful it is. Okay? That's how powerful it is.Simone Collins: Well, But also he does all these other things that like, Classy people aren't allowed to do everyone knowsAs a side note here, I genuinely do not think Trump knew this.Simone Collins: that sure. If you want to, as like a very wealthy man of [00:15:00] a high social class, you can have your mistresses or whatever that you have to marry a respectable woman.Like ideally, someone from your shared culture who has social status within your social groups and who is, educated And, respectable and I'm not, I mean, Melania is a queen. She is a fantastic woman, but she is a, an Eastern European model. That is what trashy people marry in a trashy people where I marry the, the mail order brides were incredibly sexy and accomplished and obviously great people, but that's not like the conforming thing to do.Malcolm Collins: I think a great example, you look at somebody like JFK, you have the absolute queen, Jackie Kennedy, right? Yeah, but he's, and heSimone Collins: got like the otherwise sexy women, he just, yeah, he slept with them, yeah.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, he sleeps with the Marilyn Monroe, he marries the Jackie Kennedy. Yeah. You don't marry the Marilyn Monroe.Yeah. But Trump got his signals crossed around. And if I had to guess around why this is, my guess would be because his family made money [00:16:00] in what was considered a low class industry. And so he, he was never really accepted as a use into the high class world. So he wasSimone Collins: like a wealthy merchant family rather than a wealthy lord family or something.It's notMalcolm Collins: just, yeah, it's not just that. That he's a wealthy merchant. It, so people might not know this but within blue blood circles real estate is considered a very low class thing to be involved in. It's almost as low class as car salesYeah, well, my dad totally owns a dealership dude, do you know who his dad is? He's totally rich. He will totally hook you up, dude. We're drunk.Malcolm Collins: which is, you can make,Simone Collins: Oh my God.Malcolm Collins: You can,Simone Collins: so you don't know this, but there's all these genres now on Netflix of wealthy real estate brokers.And they are the trashiest people in the entire world. They're great shows because they like trashy people by like only super designer brands and do a lot of conspicuous consumption, which again is like the ultimate sign of being trashy. So that is so funny because I've never actually heard you say that before.And I never thought that [00:17:00] real estate was associated with like trashiness, but when you go and watch these real estate. reality tv shows on Netflix, which I do because I am low culture. Thank you very much. Um, Wow, you're right. It's it is not the waspy blue blood. It is not the prep. It is the It is.Oh, yeah.I'm the new agent, Francine. I'm like a lemur monkey. Mostly business, but I will throw my own s**t at you if I have to.Malcolm Collins: Cause a lot of people don't know this. They don't know, if you didn't grow up in one of these families, you don't because you can make an astronomical amount of money owning chains of car dealerships, but it's just considered low class.My dad's like totally rich, we own this dealership, and uh, what sorority are you in? Let's get together!Dude, dude! Get off my shirt! It's worth more than your ass life, my dad owns a dealership! Hello! I can chill out for a while, I mean, I've already flunked out, but it's cool, I'm gonna work at my dad's dealership. My dad owns this dealershipMalcolm Collins: um,Simone Collins: well, And this is, like for those who are not very familiar with American discussions of class, cause I know we have a lot of like non American viewers. Yeah. [00:18:00] They're, class, not at all in the United States is associated with how much money you have. There's like these two different version of versions of it.There's like social class wealthy, which means like you could have absolutely nothing be drowning in college debt and like living in a hovel out, like slightly outside Brooklyn, but be very high class and know all the right people and go to all the right parties. Or you could be like, An air conditioning company baron or a real estate baron and have the best clothes and have the best houses and actually live in mansions and actually have economic power and not be in those circles and not being I knowMalcolm Collins: it about the American class system is if you know how to code switch into it, you will generally be accepted regardless of your background.You will be considered higher class than the people who were born into that class.This might actually explain why JD Vance was so readily accepted and elevated within this culture while Trump struggled so much to gain acceptance within this culture.Malcolm Collins: This reminds me of something that Ayla wrote,I realize this might need some context or people who aren't regular Watchers at the show. [00:19:00] ALA is a famous sex worker and sex researcher. And she ran away from her family at a young age and got her start working in factories.Malcolm Collins: where she's I don't understand why I keep getting invited to all these parties and I'm treated as so, like why, why is it that upper class society is so interested in having me at all their events?Simone Collins: Yeah. And like, when will they realize that I am not? YeahMalcolm Collins: but she doesn't get it. In upper class, because upper class America always wants to believe that it's not classes. Ayla codes very well for extreme upper class. Oh, totally, yeah. The way she talks, the way she does her house, the way she dresses.The questions she asks her, herSimone Collins: intellectual nature her level of education. Her intellectual nature. Totally.This probably also explained to why ALA was so easily accepted into upper-class circles, but Trump was not signaling intellectual curiosity. Is considered intrinsically very high class by these communities. , which is something that [00:20:00] ALA constantly does. And Trump very rarely does. Well, attempting to signal your own wealth is considered incredibly low class. Um, and that's something that somebody like ALA never does, but Trump is constantly doing.Simone Collins: And what'sMalcolm Collins: also interesting is sex work is not considered low class within upper class communities in the same way. And a lot of people are really shocked by this. They're like, what? Sex work has always been considered low class.And I was like, actually, historically speaking, sex workers are generally You know like, Aspasia,Simone Collins: right? That was her name.Malcolm Collins: What? Aspasia. Aspasia. Yeah. So if you look at like ancient Greek culture, actually the highest class profession you could have as a woman was a special kind of sex work. Now, it's not normal sex work but this was also true in the philosopherSimone Collins: queen sex worker.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. This was also true in the courts of the French nobility. Yeah, being a courtesan.Simone Collins: Yeah. Madame Pompadour.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. So the idea of, which is also really interesting, that sex work is not considered a low class profession if you do it while being an incredible intellectual while something like real work, like being a involved in , [00:21:00] real estate or car sales.I think people from a middle-class background or who didn't grow up in blue blood families would be very surprised by the professions that give you class status dings and the ones that don't. , an example here would be. I remember my mom telling me that I would be disinherited if I got a law degree because she considered being a lawyer.So low class. , I actually got the similar threats. If I went into profession as a doctor. , And I think that a lot of people from, you know, non blue blood backgrounds would be confused by that and assume that those would be considered high class degrees. That I'm, I'm usually. , or is it something like ALA's work would bar her for being considered high class when it's like, no, no, not at all. Um, actually, this is something I noticed at, , St.Andrew's. , where I went to school and it's known for having a lot of blue blood kids go there is that the blue blood kids, like all sorted into like one of two degrees. , either it was, if you went into [00:22:00] the arts, you would go into, The classics, which is like a completely useless degree. , or art history or philosophy. , but if you went into the sciences, we're actually about, I'd say 50% of the kids did, who came from blue blood families, the generic degree you would get, , or, or stem was neuroscience, , or, , particle physics.Those were considered the two, like really high class degrees to have. , which you know, humorously, but it's my brother and I have degrees in neuroscience. , and, and again, there that's because it's considered the most technically challenging of the degrees and therefore it was the classiest of the degrees. Also, I hope people can begin to understand why I abandoned that cultural group. Even if it, you know, for a period, cut me off for my family. and It cost me what could have been a fairly easy life. it just wasn't worth it. Uh, and, and really interesting. , it's so funny that I grew up in this group that was traditionally aligned with the Republican party.And as this group moved to align with the democratic party, that new group, I [00:23:00] ended up adopting, you know, tech entrepreneurs and venture capitalists. They moved to the Republican party from the democratic party. Um, so I, I have this weird perspective and insight sort of across this transition.Malcolm Collins: So I'm just going on a tangent here about how the class system works in America. I think many people would find this amazing and interesting and weird. But Because to me, I find it interesting and weird. It's a weird thing that like America still has this class system. What I will note is that it is mostly fallen apart.So it existed when I was growing up, but that was really the last generation that maintained it. And it has now transformed itself. And the new high class faction is the faction that JD Vance is LARPing, which is a form of urban monoculture. If you look at our video, on Classically Abby about like why her channel never really caught on or worked out.It's because when she says classy, she means normative within upper class culture. But the problem is normative upper class culture in America now is urban monoculture. And now there's a branch of upper class culture, which we'll get to in another video, which I find very [00:24:00] interesting, which is the tech elite.And they are not urban monoculture. They actually have their whole own set of value systems. And that is where JD Vance is from and what we have seen. And I think what it has really transformed from the first Trump election till now, and with the party switch that's going on in the United States right now is the traditional upper class the old merchant, Class descendants, right?They were bosom buddies with Republicans because of like deregulation and stuff like that. Trump is now basically a union guy in many ways. Um, And you know, pro terrorists, pro everything like that. But what's interesting is at the same time as he has lost the ability to work with this classic upper class and I said she wasn't able to sell it because that community doesn't exist anymore.The tech elite rose. And they. began to move incrementally over the past years to being more Trump. This is like a Vitalik, Chamath, Teeter Teal, Elon, like us. The coded tech elite culture [00:25:00] is now a conservative cultural group and aligned with the conservative value system. This is the crypto conservatives, right?A lot of the people in the crypto community have these extreme libertarian positions and stuff like that.We have another video where we're going to go into this in a lot more detail, but if you look at the old conservative party, the conservative party before Trump. , and we'll call this GOP Inc. It predominantly existed as an Alliance of theocratic interests. And blue blood slash.Big business interests. Big business left the Alliance. And so did blue bloods, as both groups went, woke. , and that allowed for Trump to rise where instead of appealing, primarily to theocrats or big business, he appealed to angry and discontent Americans, but this was also part of why his first administration struggled so much because angry discontent Americans don't exactly make up a good. , like governing bureaucracy, if you [00:26:00] want it to enact all of Trump's policies. During this period, if you, if you look back at the nineties and the eighties, well, big business and intergenerational wealth supported Republicans, tech entrepreneurs generally supported.Progressive's. Well, just as big business went away. As Trump was changing the parties and the value systems and as big business and intergenerational wealth solidly aligned themselves with the progressive party. Tech entrepreneurs. I began to move from being progressive, to being staunch Republicans. And we'll have another video as to why and how this happened. , but I think JD Vance represents a solidification of this transition.Malcolm Collins: But Trump's inability to properly signal that it seems at some point in his life, what he decided is he was just going to decide for himself what it meant to be and look like an upper class person.And I think that is the core personal transformation he went through from his first presidency to this one. [00:27:00] And I think at first he thought that, Someday they would eventually accept him. The old upper classes would eventually accept him of New York. At least when he became president. At least when he became president and he's realized, Oh no, they'll never accept me.And I, and all of these people who are more interesting and who like me for the way that I thought class worked, i. e. for me do represent me. And so the Trump that we see is more authentic. than somebody trying to be their authentic self.Simone Collins: I think you can say a lot of people are like, why is he so moderated now?Why is he so calm? Why is he looking more reasonable? This is so calculated. Maybe some of it's calculated, but I think a lot of it is that he's f**k you guys. I'm comfortable with myself now. And a lot of that. That calmness and that lack of abrasiveness actually comes from a place of greater personal security.Malcolm Collins: And I think that in a way choosing JD Vance's, his running mate is the culmination of this. So I want to read something that was on our discord that I found really was like, wow, like [00:28:00] the right. OurSimone Collins: discord regularly schools us. We're like, why don't we, why don't we listen to our podcastMalcolm Collins: when we could just be on our discord?We should just have a podcast reading the discord. Yes and no, to build a voter base, you need. To appeal to different groups because there are only two parties, different groups inevitably end up grouped together. You should differentiate between the technocratic elites and the liberal elites.Technocratic elites built a company, they're smart and entrepreneurial. They pulled themselves up by their boots. Technocratic elites use. And I, here I'll note I'll say the techno elites because technocratic means something specific. Yeah. And it's a form of bureaucratic. I'll actually just say tech elites.Tech elites. Tech elites used to vote alongside the liberal elites because both of them are quote unquote elites. But Vance is using tech elites to side with rural Appalachia because rural Appalachia is scrappy and entrepreneurial. We have a, quote, pull yourself up by your boots, end quote, mentality that tech elites don't have.And that's true. That is [00:29:00] absolutely true. He found the overlap. One of the reasons why these two communities align with each other. I think it's also that the tech elites like contrarianism. That's another reason they really like this group. They like things that are true, that you will be shamed for saying.That's the thing that's true. Status was in the tech elite community because that is what leads you to be more successful when you are a venture capitalist, for example, having ideas that are true that most people shame. It's how you beat the markets. It's how you choose to start up that everyone else thinks of the gun, is a good idea, right?So of course these values end up getting lauded, which ended up aligning with this new conservative movement. And I think that is what Trump has done here. Now there's another thing that I think Trump has done here that somebody else in the discord was saying that I think is really true. Jaden Hansen, in a way, represents somebody who was part of that genuinely accepted into elite culture that Trump strove for in his early days.But he turned it down. He didn't want it. [00:30:00] He was the picture of the never trumper because he was the picture of NPR elitism. And as society began to change, as that community became more and more basically just Nazis i. e. they have they believe society should be divided into an ethno hierarchy with Jews at the bottom.And they're like, no, it's not Jews at the bottom. It's Zionists at the bottom. And I'm like depending on the survey, you look at Zionists make up 95 percent to 92 percent of Jews. So That's just semantics at that point. It's oh, I don't hate Christians.Just the ones who, believe that Jesus was the son of God. It's yeah, it's pretty close to a perfect circle, that Venn diagram there. But anyway so he, he had that, that dream that Trump originally wanted andSimone Collins: heMalcolm Collins: threw it away. Now he works to denigrate that culture. He's that culture is bad.That culture is toxic. He converted to Catholicism. He is, you look at his background on the Senate floor. He's not just trying to be a standard Republican. He's trying to build his own moral framework. He's racing. When you seeSimone Collins: [00:31:00] this like we talked about with his policies yesterday, how they, it's not along party lines that he makes decisions.He's cool with trust busting, but he's also cool with building pipelines, natural gas pipelines. He's cool with nuclear. He's. Against untethered, unfettered immigration, like there's, I like it.Malcolm Collins: I like it. Yeah. So what I see here is Trump choosing to side with and to have as his partner, somebody who represented the culture that he wanted access to and who turned it down for the culture that Trump wanted.That actually liked Trump and admired Trump. And I think that represents a psychological development, character building, right? Is he realized that the best of the old culture are now realizing that culture is bad. And that the cultures that he always appealed to being this authentic in that he chose it identity of what he thought elitism was appeal to them.Simone Collins: [00:32:00] Interesting. Yeah. So it's not as Jon Stewart claims that. Donald Trump merely selected for VP, the man who looked like Don Trump Jr's actor in a Lifetime movie.Malcolm Collins: I don't think it is at all. I think that there's I don't know how much of this is psychological, how much of it is strategic, but it does to me represent, a real OG Trump, you've chosen the guy who led his.Detractors as a running mate, he would have chosen the guy who was first to jump in and support him.Simone Collins: Like you were saying to me earlier too Pence really represented as Trump's first Mike Pence represented as Trump's first VP pick, GOP Inc, the old guard Of the Republican party, of conservatives in the United States.And so this VP pick represents something very different. It represents Trump and not just saying, okay, I'm going to. Go the tech elite route. I'm going to go the more [00:33:00] authentic route. I'm going to go this is the new tone for the Republican party. I'm going to call it. But yeah, it is going to shape the future of conservatism in the United States, especially if they win.AndMalcolm Collins: this is what somebody else said which was interesting was the first Trumpian revolution. Is it didn't have any elite factions. It was a completely the disenfranchised who were supportive of Trump in the early days in his first run. And you can't build a an entire party off of just the disenfranchised.You, and I think that this is why his party was so ineffective at actually operating the White House.Simone Collins: They really struggled just to staff people. Things like people didn't show up to meetings. There was, I can't remember the title of the book, but there were several books about what happened after Trump was elected.And in many cases, what happened is major governmental departments, when the changeover happens, they have these meetings, the people get sent out from the president's office and they're like, here's what's going to change and of [00:34:00] course, they're here, you get these large government agencies sitting and waiting.Okay. Day one, like the people are going to come in and tell us how it's going to be, and no one shows up. And I was like and then the deep state just did and went what it was going toMalcolm Collins: do. Stop doing the deep state. You need the thing about elites is what often makes them elite.There's different ways that they can be elite. They can be born elite, like the progressive elite, but at least they have, high quality education and stuff like that. Or they can prove their efficacy in the economic system by either ability to be productive. And that's what makes peopleSimone Collins: money.That's a big one.Malcolm Collins: And siding with the elites who proved their elite status through shot calling and genuinely building value for other people. That's a pretty smart faction to bring over to your side. Damn straight. The tech elite.Simone Collins: That is the tech elite. And that's what makes them so useful.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Now we should note that there are two groups of the tech elite, right? There's the old guard tech elite who are fully urban monoculture. These are the ones who own the giant natural monopolies that [00:35:00] control our means of communication. These are the founders of Twitter. These are your Bill Gates, your Mark Zuckerberg.They are from a different generation and their core goal is just to fit in with the old elite factions, but the new tech elite. Is predominantly of this new faction which is just fascinating to me and it's a very strategic alliance building. But there's another aspect of the interesting thing of the Trump Alliance with the tech elite and the Appalachian Tech Elite Alliance,Simone Collins: the Appian Tech elite.Yes. What an unexpected alliance, but it makes sense.Malcolm Collins: Yes, it's an unexpected alliance, but when you think about it, it makes sense. But there's also like the ethnic thing about it. So one of the things about the Taculate is that they have a huge number of Indians in them. And so you're noticing a huge number of Indian American conservatives rising.And I think we'll begin to see more and more leaders of the American movement, American conservative movement to be Indian Americans. [00:36:00] You've got your Viveks, your Chamas, your or the last guy who ran the conservative party in the UK or name and post or evenSimone Collins: Kamala Harris, Indian American.Malcolm Collins: No, she's half Jamaican.Simone Collins: Jamaican, I thought she was like,Malcolm Collins: yeah, she's black. I think she's half Jamaican, half white, but she could be half Jamaican, halfSimone Collins: yeah. Harris's maternal ancestry comes from Tamil Nadu, India. Her parent, her parental, an ancestry comes from St. Anne. Sorry, paternal ancestry comes from St. Annina. Paternal, yeah.Malcolm Collins: Her mom was Jamaican. Yeah. So she'sSimone Collins: Indian and Jamaican.Malcolm Collins: But I would consider Kamel Harris has chosen to identify as black.She she chooses whatever helps her in the moment, but I don't think that she's like part of the Indian community or no, she doesn't present herselfSimone Collins: as even remotely Indian, which is interesting,Malcolm Collins: but this is also something that we're seeing. If you look at like our friends who are part of this new conservative movement, like you can look at God, the Arya Babu, for example, who I think is like a great natalist intellectual in the UK, an [00:37:00] Indian immigrant.So I think what we might see is in the conservative intellectual class more Indians are going to be represented. Which I think is going to piss off some thinkers I know who but I personally think it's fine. I love this alliance of the people who are able to economically compete with the people who are forced to economically compete.And then there's this entire class of bureaucrats who've never really needed to make a change in their lives. And I think that's what represents the urban monoculture is they got ahead through conformity.Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah. The nonconformists, the rebels. And if any of David Hackett Fishers for groups that he covered and Albion seeds is going to. Be the adoptive group of the venture capital class in the United States, it would be the Scots Irish. It wouldn't be the Quakers. It wouldn't be the Cavaliers and it wouldn't be theMalcolm Collins: Puritans.Simone Collins: Why don't you talkMalcolm Collins: about this cultural group because a lot of people don't know what you're talking about.Simone Collins: Yeah. So in LBNC, David [00:38:00] Hackett Fisher, a historian describes four basically foundational waves of immigration that colored American culture going forward. David. David. The Puritans who were very conservative, religious extremists, visionaries who came over and settled in New England they were very hardworking, very conscientious very looking down their nose at everyone else and very exclusionist.Then you That's notMalcolm Collins: true, by the way. That was the Quakers. The Quakers were the exclusionists look down your nose. Remember the Quakers always look down their nose at the back country. Malcolm,Simone Collins: What did the pilgrims do to Quakers who tried to proselytize in their area?Malcolm Collins: Yeah, that wasn't looking down.That was just get out of my community. They would talk. That was likeSimone Collins: tarring and feathering them and dragging. That'sMalcolm Collins: not looking down. They never, no, it's literally not looking down. Like it's literally not the Quaker community. Sorry, you're just misremembering the book based on modern stereotypes.Huh. So the Quaker community would constantly hand wring, which we see as the ancestor of the urban [00:39:00] monoculture, about the backcountry Scotch Irish, who came in and were very rough and tumble.Simone Collins: These are the wild, yeah. So the, to jump ahead, the Scots Irish were like, the wild rebels and castoffs of Ireland and Scotland, where there were like massive border skirmishes all the time.It's a much more rural and tribal and less formal and one could argue less civilized part of the country. Quakers would debate among themselves what was worse the savage Indians who would come in and attack and kill them or the Scots Irish, they were like all terrifying and. It was a group also that was, even they, the way that they dressed freaked out the Quakers who were very prudish, they wore higher skirts.The women did, they were very, informal and the women were tough. And that, in one moment, one moment would, Slaughter a cow and then come in and serve tea. These are very tough people which of course also stand in contrast to the the Cavaliers.These were like the [00:40:00] second third sons of wealthy Lords in the UK who came to the United States as immigrants working very closely with the crown to basically make a lot of money, have a plantation maintain the social class system that they were accustomed to the United Kingdom and England at the time.When you're looking at these different groups, you have these very conformist Quakers who are, very also like religiously extreme, but they're in their own way. You've got the Puritans who are also religious extremists and also conformist and within their own, Within their own culture.And then you have these crazy renegades. Of course, the crazy renegades are going to be the ones most likely to ally culturally with the crazy renegades of venture capital, of startups, of going out and breaking things and doing things. And as for forgiveness, not permission, move fast and break things.That is, these are the mottos of Silicon Valley.Malcolm Collins: Think about even the stories of Elon, like fighting in the halls of his company with his brother.Simone Collins: Oh my gosh. Yeah. When you read his latest bureaucracy, sorry, bureaucracy, when you read his latest. Latest biography by Walter Isaacson, [00:41:00] he describes how he would sometimes just wrestle with his brother Kimball in their office, their early startup offices as employees looked on with Mixed probably horror and amusement at one point.I think Kimball was even hospitalizedMalcolm Collins: Fighting but that's very much backcountry scotch irish. Yeah to correct The misinterpretation was important to correct because it is something that the culture believes but just isn't true the Quakers Absolutely looked down upon and hated the scotch irish immigrants.Simone Collins: Let's be honest just to, not that I'm going to split hairs while you're here, but every one of these four cultures looked down upon the others. No, they didn't. That's the exact point I'm making. No, the Scots Irish absolutely looked down upon the Quakers and raided them sometimes.Um, And of course the Cavaliers are like, who are all these savages?Malcolm Collins: What you're missing, and the point I'm making, is that Puritans and the Scotch Irish actually got along and created an intermixed culture, which is what my family comes from. So if you look at [00:42:00] why they got along and why they, because it's even mentioned in the book, like I'm very surprised you don't remember this.You were like, what? The Puritans charred and feathered the Quakers who would come to their communities and preach. And it's yes, of course they did. I would char and feather a woke person who came to my community and preach too.Get the f out, but, they got along very well with the Scotch Irish communities, which is where the anti slavery experiment started.This is where John Brown came from, or the Free State of Jones movement, or many of these others. And you would be like why would these two communities get along? Because they were both very the Puritans were very okay with speak your mind mindset, which is what the Scotch Irish were known for.They were very much just say whatever they believe. They were notSimone Collins: prude. They were both largely Calvinist as well. Just different ways. Yeah,Malcolm Collins: They were not prude like the Quakers were. The Quakers were incredibly free about sexuality, and they thought the Scotch Irish were just like these [00:43:00] lewd, like they would dress down, they would just dress in whatever was useful at the time, they didn't really care about sexuality one way or the other.It was a tool. And the Puritans were also known for engaging in sexuality more, and they were like you're of a different cultural group, they very much had this mindset you're not saved, but I like that you speak your mind, that you have a strong sense of whatever, and you're not telling me how to live my life.And that was where the Puritans had a hard line.Simone Collins: Is otherMalcolm Collins: cultural groups coming in and telling them how to live their life. They were like, absolutely not. You guys are wrong. But then the other thing is both the Scots Irish and the Puritans were morally uncompromising in a true sense. So the Quakers had this sort of like social signaling moral hierarchy.But they were actually morally compromising in the extreme. They were theologically against slaves, but they owned slaves at higher rates than any of the other groups. So you can look at wills of the period, and we have an episode where we talk about this, but it was like 43 percent of Quakers owned slaves which was higher than even the height of the South.They were very How much you have quotes from the period of Amish thinking that slavery was a Quaker institution? Hey, really [00:44:00] the pyramid and so do it that much. And we don't do it, as the Quaker thing, right? So so they control the education systems and they created this like lie of history, right?That it was a Puritans who did all these things. They're not know there was them but the Puritans were generally fairly again and they had this like moral extremist position. And the back country people were very okay with moral extremist positions. This is what's right. This is what's wrong.This is why it's right. This is why it's wrong. Instead of what the Quakers had, which was these deontological like virtue signaling value positions. And so it allowed the two communities to merge very easily. And I would say that almost entirely. The Puritan community that survived, that ended up having high fertility rates, ended up completely merging with the Scotch Irish tradition.But the Scotch Irish tradition, there is a branch that is just Scotch Irish, so that's left in the United States, which is where like country music and hillbilly culture comes from. But there's a different branch, which is [00:45:00] represented a lot in Texas, for example, where my family's from which was the merger of the Puritan and Scots Irish traditions.Simone Collins: Yeah. And that checks out. So let's bring this back to JD Vance as we wrap up for people watching then. I could see them being okay, so what is he? Is he urban monoculture? Is he tech bro? Is he hillbilly? What can I actually expect from him? What can I model him? You guys are saying he is authentic.You're saying he's trustworthy, but what the hell is he now? I'm so confused. What would you say toMalcolm Collins: that? I'd say he is who he has chosen to become, who he has chosen to become. And you can say why did he choose to be, even if you're like, okay, but he only chose to become that thing because it helped him politically.He became urban monoculture because it helped him make money and move up. He became what he is now because it helped him, win the love of the conservative party. I want to say. Even if that's true, if he acts out of line with this new identity, he will lose the power it has given him. If he is really that mercenary, then, it's that line from Pirates of the Caribbean.A [00:46:00] dishonest man you can always trust to be dishonest. It's the honest ones you want to watch out for. Because you can never predict they're going to do something incredibly stupid.Malcolm Collins: Let's see if I can push it here. You can always trust a dishonest man to be dishonest or really what he means by that is do what's in his best interest. So he's very trustworthy, a trustworthy man. That's a man who might do something stupid. That's good. And so either. You could say he's a trustworthy man and he is honestly signaling his value system, or he's a dishonest man.And now this value system is what has allowed him to achieve power and fame. And so he will continue to do what's in line with it. So whatever it is, when youSimone Collins: Trump is definitely Captain Jacking it. Like the, and it's so easy to know what he's going to do. Yeah. And that's, I think that's why we like him.We like him for the same reason we like Captain Jack Sparrow. You know what I mean?Malcolm Collins: He actually, like that scene in Pirates of the Caribbean[00:47:00] Hold up there, you. It's a shilling to tie up your boat at the dock.Malcolm Collins: Where his little ship is sinking and he steps off onto the pier, that is Trump walking into the presidency. His entire like immediate empire is burning to the ground.And he's just Um, and the progressives, it's always like you are without a doubt the worst politician I have ever heard of. But you have heard of me, but you have heard of me.You are without doubt the worst pirate I've ever heard of. But you have heard of me. That's got to be the best pirate I've ever seen. So it would seem.Malcolm Collins: And that's what, and that is the vitalistic framework is not the type thing the same way. Yes. You're without a doubt.Yes. The most, the worst animal conservationist I've ever heard of. And he'd be [00:48:00] like, well. but you have heard of me. And I think that's very much like us. Like people are like, Oh my God, you guys, you're always being attacked. Everybody thinks you're crazy. And we're like, ah, I was thinking like, if we ended up getting one of our shows approved, we should do a cover of if you're ever going to survive, you got to get a little crazy songMalcolm Collins: because that is the truth of the world we live in now.The groups that survive are the groups that are willing to think for themselves. And I also like that we live in a period where that is becoming culturally lauded among the conservative faction of our society and the old pearl clutching, you must stay within our value set. Like my family being called the Adams family growing up in the local environment, which was like an elite conservative culture.They were like, Oh, they're weird. They do their own thing. Like, how dare they? And that is [00:49:00] not. That is not the elite culture of today. And so it's, it is cool that in a way, we've been able to find ourselves back into the good graces of an elite cultural faction, despite largely spurning that in my childhood,Because the faction that I spurned ended up crashing, burning and disappearing.It's the faction that, that Abby, classically Abby, you know, Ben's sister keeps trying to appeal to.Simone Collins: Yeah. God. Yeah. You really. You really did come from Scotts Irish. I was just thinking about like stories about things that your mom would do when you were a kid and she totally like, what?Oh it, you would be your birthday party or something, when you'd be like, oh, I wanna, go do this. And then, you'd run off and the other kids are like, I don't wanna do that. And your mom like, nail down to them just like you, s**t, you're gonna do it and you're gonna look happy.And like little s**t that's, that literally came from Scott's Irish culture.And note here. People may be surprised because they heard earlier that my family was quite a blue blood family, like intergenerational wealth. Uh, when I was growing up and they may be like well, that [00:50:00] precludes you from coming from the hillbilly culture. And it's like, not really. I mean, you can come from the Scots-Irish culture and then end up making intergenerational wealth.and moving into the center of a major city and becoming an important political family there without completely abandoning all of your cultural traditions.And I should also note that my mom married into the blue blooded family. She did not grow up in a family like that. So she maintained a much pure version of this culture as you'll hear in some of these stories.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Oh, yeah. She took it. She took it with one of my friends. I said, she goes, you're here to make my son happy today. So you go f*****g do what he says he wants to do. I already loved it. My favorite thing that she did.It's very much of this culture is I came home from school one day and the teachers came to them and told them that I had snitched on another kid and how good I was for doing that and she took me aside and she goes, you little s**t.I was like, but they were beating, they were like picking on another kid. She goes, that's what your fists are for. And I was like, but I'll get detention. And she's like, I don't care. I don't f*****g care. Be a man. Um, [00:51:00] uh, Don't go to the authority. Handle this yourself. That's how morality is enforced.Respect. Respect. Where I got in trouble with the teachers at my school and I go to my mom and I was like, I just was doing what I thought was right. And she heard what I had done and she goes, Oh, yeah I'm gonna let you in on a secret. To you, Being a kid, teachers are like your authority.They're the height of, what sets the culture in your community. I don't know how she says exactly but she's like two adults. Teachers are losers. They are, They are they're making minimum wage then. I don't know if they actually were. But she goes, and nobody respects it. So you shouldn't respect them.If you listen to their advice, you're going to end up just like them. So she goes, so you do what you think is right. And if you get punished for it, so be it deal with that as well. And I was like, okay, that, that is why I kept getting kicked out of schools. And that is also part of why, you know. Um, because my mom did not grow up in a wealthy [00:52:00] culture.She married into one of those families. And so I think it was her raising of me to be so annoyed where they would like kowtow or bend the moral systems to fit what was socially normative. And I was like, But no, like it's wrong. It's wrong. And I need to say it's wrong because I know it's wrong. And it would be immoral of me not to do that. By the way, people are wondering just like how white trash your family is. Her name was Winnell. She was the first fan of the show, but she has died since, since this show started. So she'd watch it every day early and she encouraged me to keep doing it.But um, Her name was Winnel. Her name was Winne because her parents couldn't decide between the names Winnie and Nel. Um, And I was like, yo, thatSimone Collins: was another element of the Scotts Irish culture was insane. Names often Port Manaus too. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: So it's very much a um, uh, a Jackie bar cultural bob, or like, uh, it is very common in this culture to have double barrel names of your Jim, Bob, Mary Sue, like Jim, Bob, Mary Sue.She was Winnie Anelle .Simone Collins: [00:53:00] She, in the end, she was the classiest woman I have ever met.Malcolm Collins: And I actually think that's where a lot of her life came from, is a desire to be in this upper class culture instead of being able to be who she was.Simone Collins: Yeah, that was the constant, uh, yeah, no, she's, in, in the context of this conversation, that was this constant pressure is that we always loved the Scots Irish Whannell, and then it was like the singing frog of Warner Brothers phenomenon where we'd like, Present her to people and look it's my mom.It's the woman we keep telling you about, like we'd share her texts, that she'd send to us that were like super based with our friends. And then she'd hang out with our friends and just be nothing but the sophisticated, classy, witty woman. And we'd be like, okay, that's fine.But what weMalcolm Collins: like, that's not what anyone who reallySimone Collins: takes,Malcolm Collins: but it was because she, unlike Trump was able to succeed where Trump wasn't, she was accepted into extreme upper class culture multiple times, my dad. And then the guy who she remarried [00:54:00] she was in like in Naples, Florida, which we don't know.It's like this it's where a lot of the Midwestern business elite goSimone Collins: to winter. And she wasMalcolm Collins: considered a very influential person among the Wellesley society there because she was also classy. It's but that's not who she was, was, you know, a heavy drinking and she was a very heavy drinking person.She'd always say well, you know, I can't, I can't talk with you until I've had my morning constitutional. Um, Instead of a morning um, Uh, uh, expresso.Simone Collins: Jen with a massive ice cube and fresh squeezedMalcolm Collins: lime juice. Yeah, that was what she always wanted. But she needed to stay skinny and attractive, but, she couldn't risk, Don't make it classy.She anyway,Simone Collins: Here's to authenticity, cosplaying culture and a very interesting election season in America ahead, which will set the tone of our culture for the next four years, too.Malcolm Collins: I'm becoming increasingly confident that Republicans are going to win. Now, the [00:55:00] assassination of Tim apparently didn't change things because half of society is run by a cult.I mean, 30 percent Trump derangementSimone Collins: syndrome is real. They are going to vote for whatever is not Trump. I, how many times do I have to say this? It changes nothing.Malcolm Collins: I think this I think this election cycle may break Trump derangement syndrome for a lot of people. And I think J. D. Vance was built like a machine to do that.You are so sweet. You are so truly pronatalist. That's a cute baby. She's got the wiggles.Simone Collins: OhMalcolm Collins: no. Do I need to go,Simone Collins: uh,Malcolm Collins: Pick it together.Simone Collins: It is time, mac and cheese night. Double cheese. Yes. Oh, IMalcolm Collins: was gonna have mac and cheese and tomato soup. I think they'd go really well together.Simone Collins: The tomato soup, if I don't open it will be good until August.So unless you feel like eating more of it later, you can. So then I'll have some more mac and cheese. Now you want mac and cheese with pulled pork on top would be so good. I don't know why. Oh, sorry. Pulled slow cooker. [00:56:00] Five day, what, brisket?Malcolm Collins: That's an interesting idea, but today I'm interested in something a little simpler from mySimone Collins: belly.Your belly's feeling a little delicate.Malcolm Collins: And you guys should know, Simone is in extreme searing pain right now, and she has been this entire episode. She is just tanking through it because one of her goals this year is to not show any of her Any negative emotional statesSimone Collins: and I've totally failed at that for multiple occasions so far this year.So I really got to make it up. Ah,Malcolm Collins: I don't think so. I think you've done an amazing job. You are a picture of stoicism, which is something I deeply appreciate, you know, show your emotions, but then keep with that Puritan stoicism. Okay.Simone Collins: Damn straight, Malcolm. I love you.Malcolm Collins: I love you too. Good. Okay. I was terrified about having to go get the kids in that rain.Simone Collins: It should let up. It's going to come back this evening, but I love me a good storm, especially now that soon we'll have power banks. Yay. Get full access to Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm at basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe

Join Malcolm and Simone Collins as they explore the fascinating transformation of online political discourse from the early days of the internet to the present. This in-depth discussion covers the journey from atheist communities to the birth of modern online conservatism, touching on key movements like anti-feminism, GamerGate, and the rise of the "red pill" ideology. The Collins couple offers unique insights into how these shifts have shaped today's political landscape and the disconnect between online conservative culture and traditional conservative think tanks. Key points covered: The evolution of online atheist communities The transition from anti-religious to anti-feminist content The rise of the "red pill" and men's rights movements The disconnect between online conservative culture and traditional think tanks The role of platforms like YouTube and Reddit in shaping political discourse The impact of these shifts on modern conservative politics The potential future of conservative ideology and religious belief Whether you're a political junkie, a student of internet culture, or simply curious about how online communities shape real-world politics, this video offers a thought-provoking look at the unexpected twists and turns of internet-age political evolution. Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] Hello, Simone! I am excited to be talking to you today. We just got back from NatCon, which is the National Conservative Convention, where all of the high and mighty conservative thought leaders, not real thought leaders, i.e. they don't lead the public's conservative mindset, they actually seem almost completely disconnected from the mainstream conservative movement which was a real takeaway for me when I was there. So these are all the people who work in the Washington conservative think tanks.Simone Collins: I heard Tower people.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, and I heard some thoughts there that really made me be like, wow at one point I was like, why are you doing this? The base doesn't want this, and they literally said, f**k the base. And I was like, wow, what one person where you got all mad where he's bureaucrats are good. Actually, we just need conservative bureaucrats.We need a larger bureaucracy and we need it to be conservative. And then another person was like, Don't complain about like socialism's okay. So long as it's within our value set and this is where you get like insane things. Like the heritage foundation did project 2024 where [00:01:00] they put out like this plan 2025 2025 for the trump administration and in this plan one of the things that they had was banning pornography And I was like, that is a leftist position, but what, are you not familiar with the stellar blade?Malcolm, they'reSimone Collins: coming together. Unity at last. We can finally agree on something.Malcolm Collins: No, it's a bunch of woke bureaucrats, it was like, Mild conservative overlay. BetweenSimone Collins: NOFAP, men's rights activists, and radical feminists, we finally found common ground! Porn is bad! Except that you guys know No, but I mean Making porn illegal, and making porn something that's shameful is the one number one thing no, holdMalcolm Collins: on.When you're talking about the base Like, NoFap is about self control. Even NoFap people are mad about the Stellar Blade controversy. Even NoFap people are mad about the Tracer butt controversy. Even NoFap people are mad about the Skullgirls controversy. Every time a group has attempted to censor male sexuality, [00:02:00] it has been a progressive leaning group.But I want to talk about how these groups became so Wildly different from each other. Why is the conservative online base which is the group that really got Trump elected, like Trump was the 4chan candidate to begin with. That is the group that made Trump happen. That is where Pepe came from. That is where emperor, god emperor Trump came from from the Warhammer stuff.That is where basically most of modern. Conservative internet culture came from a lot of people would say, okay a lot of this is downstream of 4chan, and it is, but it's not just downstream of 4chan, a very bizarre thing happened in internet history, which is the atheist movement online became the birthplace of the culture That is [00:03:00] now internet conservatism.Or internet republicanism, or internet Trump base, basically. Interesting. And the question is, how did this happen? you grew up a Muslim.Like, why did you convert to Christianity? Instead of just beingSimone Collins: atheist,Malcolm Collins: like, why did you first try Christianity when you started praying to God? And she goes, of all these years, when I was attacking and preaching against religious individuals the Muslims, would send me messages about how they were going to kill me.The Christians would send me messages about how they hoped they were praying for me and they were praying for me to be saved and they wanted me, and this is actually true of most of the atheist community. When they were attacking the Christians and then when their value system started to align more with the Christians, they were very open to be friends with these people because these people had always been.Nice to them, even when there was conflict, [00:04:00] whereas the opposite side group had always been very antagonistic. The wokes send us death threats constantlyWould you like to know more?Malcolm Collins: And let's chart the history of this for people who are too young. Now, if you are young and not familiar, like you have not been, like if you are my age and chronically online, I just said something that is completely uncontroversial to you.You're like, oh, yeah, I remember when that happened. That was weird. Because everyone who has been actively engaged with online culture for a long time and, mildly open to conservative ideas knows that this happened. But if you aren't, then you might think that's a controversial claim.Or if you just haven't been engaged with online culture, like if I said this NatCon, they'd be like, that can't be true. They'd say something like that. And then Somebody at the table would like lean over and be like, actually that did happen. So let's talk about how this happened, what happened and why it happened.So first we need to go back to the early days of the internet. If you are talking [00:05:00] about the early days of the internet, the war between the fundies and the atheists was absolutely enormous. It was like the core show on the internet. It was the core conflict on the internet. It was as big a conflict as something like woke vs.anti woke is today.Simone Collins: Okay.Malcolm Collins: It is what everyone was talking about. And then and I should note that people can be like, oh then the modern conservative movement must have come out of the early online religious movement, right? That's it. The people who are fighting the Atheists. The problem is Those people were always like 1 to 10 versus the Atheist community in the early days of the internet.They were the vast minority. They were people that brought on for people to take who had no internet illiteracy for other people to take potshots at that was basically what was going on for years and then even the people who [00:06:00] were online were more dedicated to their individual communities i.e. like promoting Catholicism or promoting some brands of Protestantism than any sort of wider political battle. So those were two of the things that caused that. And partially because of this shift, but partially fueled by this shift is the theocratic portion of the conservative party just lost pretty much all of their power in the shift to the Trumpist movement.But this will also explain how that happened because Alternate version of conservatism began to grow online which appealed to many more people than the theocratic form, and we can talk about why this happened. Early atheist community online. You have this early atheist community online.And then they, and they were mostly like YouTubers that was where a lot of this was happening in the early days. And pretty much all of their content was look at this stupid thing religious [00:07:00] people believe. Ha. Let's laugh at the religious people for having these stupid.Simone Collins: All the subreddits. Oh yeah, really?One ofMalcolm Collins: The pinned core subreddits of the top ten was rAtheism.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: So do you have any thoughts on this period of history or any memories you have of it before I go further?Simone Collins: I do remember it. It was and this was something that I definitely encountered more in my upbringing, right? As, as a young girl growing up in a very progressive area where basically, Religious people were seen as, as quite weird and it was genuinely quite funny.Like how could this person possibly have these weird traditions and believe these weird things? And yeah, making fun of them seemed.Malcolm Collins: And that's actually the core of what caused the switch. And I'll actually mark an interesting anecdote here. So Sarah Hader was in these early days.She's a guest that we've had on the show. She's great. She is an ex Muslim who was a big figure in this early atheist [00:08:00] community. Now she probably was the second most famous Muslim in the community. Now, or ex Muslim, I should say in the community. Yeah. Yeah. Now she's known as an anti woke podcaster.And I remember actually, because she hadn't contextualized that this had happened. And we were with a group of more like online savvy, like people. And she was thinking about what she was going to do next with her career. And I was with a bunch of think tank people and I go, you could just go and be like a public face of a conservative think tank.And she was like, Oh no, I wouldn't appeal to the conservative base. I'm just An ex Muslim anti woke activist because, she hadn't thought of herself the new base. She was still thinking of these early days of the internet before this switch happened. But I think it shows how if you said that today, you'd be like, You would be fantastic for being a public face of many of these organizations.But how did this happen? The, I think it was two things happened in the early days and we'll get into specific examples where this happened. But [00:09:00] first, I'm just talking about what happened? How did it happen?Simone Collins: Okay.Malcolm Collins: Was that these early atheists the arguments that you can make against the conservative positions get boring after a while because they are consistent.Yeah, they're not going toSimone Collins: Change their minds. The argument's not going to evolve and they're also not going to change their policies in ways that give you new things to work with.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. So you're just working with the ha stupid thing. It's the debate you can run 50 times, a hundred times, but you're not going to be able to run it, a million times, which is what you need, right?Yeah. Something to attack that is constantly evolving, but patently stupid. You need a group of people who is completely disconnected from reality and is willing to take the bait when you are trolling them. That was the other thing about the Christian communities, is one, they weren't really online that much and two when they were online, they eventually would [00:10:00] learn to not take the bait if they were like a prominent figure in the community, right?Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: And so it just got boring. But then they found another community that was beginning to evolve at that time as well. And this was the beginnings of wokeism. So it wouldn't, at the time they wouldn't have called it wokeism. They would have called it anti feminism or anti sort of tumblerina culture.And to people who don't remember the tumblerinas, they were insane. They were like crazier than the modern woke movement in many ways. This is whereSimone Collins: They were the female equivalent. of 4chan. Equally crazy, equally unhinged, just, and equally autistic, just female. They wereMalcolm Collins: equally crazy and equally unhinged, but unlike 4chan where everything was about, attack and the joke and like being thick skinned being females one person would write like a fan fiction or would say that because, they were accepting of everything or say, my gender is turtle or my gender is [00:11:00] clout.Those were two real genders. I think all of ourSimone Collins: genders are turtle. Thank you very much.Malcolm Collins: Yeah your community would begin to buy into this because women more than men begin to buy in the community consensus more. Yeah, I'm alreadySimone Collins: buying into turtle gender now. You can call me a turtle.Malcolm Collins: Yeah they're also statistically more spiritual.If you look at things historically women were seen as the more religious group which I think modern people might be pretty surprised about It's because women buy into these sorts of stories much faster than men do You know, if somebody writes a fan fiction women are going to start thinking these characters are real like a small group of women Yeah, yes and stuff like that.You don't get this phenomenon in men that much. So you begin to have the development of early woke culture before it was mainstream and it was just seen as like a crazy thing.And so these early atheists then begin to turn on this new ultra feminist, ultra woke culture because it was constantly providing new content.People would always fight. [00:12:00] It was just better content to be honest.Simone Collins: AndMalcolm Collins: the people who they were debating against genuinely hated them. This was another thing that was a difference between these communities and the Christians and the Jews and the Muslims. Is they began to build camaraderie! The atheists didn't really hate the religious community, and the religious community didn't really hate the atheists either.They were a few abused fundie kids, but it wasn't everyone. The vast majority were, like, they wouldn't say, look, I'm just trying to convince you that these things are silly and you don't need to follow them. It's religious I should beSimone Collins: able to save your soul. They're you know, rival football teams.Just people who really, love their side. And love dunking on the other side, but also know that they need the other side in order to have fun. So it's all.Malcolm Collins: Yeah there, what, there was nothing like that was the woke community. The woke community genuinely thought that these people were trying to kill them.And these people genuinely thought that the woke community, when I say trying to kill them, don't, not specifically, but they bought into this lie that like, if somebody [00:13:00] denies that cloud gender is real, that they were causingSimone Collins: trauma, that they were causing harm.Malcolm Collins: They'll say they're, you're denying my existence, which is akin to genocide was in thereSimone Collins: and that offending someone is akin to physical violence that, Oh it's I'm feeling real pain.That kind of thing. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: And in this moment, like nothing happened, like people, and this is how many of these atheists, I think didn't realize was there a hater that they were becoming. The new Republican bases initiating point because for them, all of this was just small incremental changes.And if people are wondering some examples of individuals where this happened armored skeptic, or individuals like Peter Bergosen, or Michael Schmerer or individuals like, I'd even say Siwan Head, to an extent, really started in that community now she considers herself a progressive now, but progressives don't own her because she was, anti woke and you can't disagree with them on anything.And I think that also the way that this wokest movement worked now, keep in mind in these early days, the wokest movement hadn't [00:14:00] taken over yet. And we're going to talk about mainstream people as well. So you can look at Sam Harris, right? One of the four horsemen of the Atheist apocalypse, right?Or of Atheism, right? So when you look at his policy position he considers himself a libertarian internationalist in approach to foreign policies which includes some interventionist policies. He was, during the Bush era, he supported specifically in regards to attacking Islam in the Middle East and the war of that period.He was seen as being willing to talk to anyone, even when he disagreed with him. For example, Charles Murray, he talked to, he's a conservative individual, and people were like, oh, how could you do that? And like the Israel Palestine conflict, he's on the Israel side he has, or you can talk about Christopher Hitchens, who in the, even in the early days supported the Iraq war, right?So you would have these individuals now in the early days, what progressivism was when all of this started, these people wouldn't have been hard removed from the progressive sphere for it's agreeing with [00:15:00] the topics, but That wasn't the case in this new, rocus form of progressives that were beginning to evolve in the online sphere, okay?I see. You can't disagree on a few issues. You can't, they, they don't allow that. And then the thing that really caused the split was a lot of the trans issues. And this was a really interesting thing, I was watching a Sarah Hayer episode and she was talking about how weird it was.Basically what happened was, is, was, in this atheist attack community, there was cred for continuing to say anything so long as you believed it was true. Now, this cred actually works in conservative circles. Most conservatives, so long as almost everything you think is true isn't progressives, are going to respect you if you just say what you think is true.Whereas So this appliesSimone Collins: basically to religious extremism, or what? Can you give me an example of [00:16:00] this?Malcolm Collins: Oh, they might say that certain ethnic communities cause more crime than other ethnic communities. And asSimone Collins: long as you're really, you dig into it and you seem to really believe it, people don't look down on youMalcolm Collins: for that.So I'll word it this way. Okay. Okay. You might have an individual who supports some level of social redistribution, but also believes crime rates differ between ethnic communities in the United States. All right. A conservative meets that individual and they go, Oh we disagree on one thing.We agree on one thing. You're a conservative. A progressive meets this individual, and they go, you are a far right extremist who I won't talk to because we disagree on one thing.Simone Collins: Oh, yeah. Okay. I see what you mean. Yeah. What happenedMalcolm Collins: with shoe on head?Simone Collins: Yeah. So in other words with progressives it's all or nothing.With conservatives it's a la carte case by case. Yeah, it'sMalcolm Collins: a la carte, whereas progressives are all or nothing.Which pushed these individuals further and further into conservative audiences and conservative communities. But then [00:17:00] some big things happened. So Sarah Hader had this story on her podcast and I thought it was very telling.It was a story. Of, from her perspective, when they were doing an episode on who's black science guy, Neil deGrasse Tyson, right? And he's been just like totally pro, like, all of the insane trans stuff that's happening now that just the science doesn't back.Simone Collins: IMalcolm Collins: point out that 2023 study that, now we know that out of 11 year olds who are gender non conforming, By the time they're 23 more than 9 in 10 is completely comfortable with their gender but likely just gay.And so what that means is that by the data, about 9 in 10 people who we are transitioning, we are basically chemically castrating. 9 out of 10 gay kids, for every one trans person, we're quote unquote saving.Like that is, yikes, we know this now we live in a post cast report era, things are different now.But a lot of people are just not up to date with the data, right? Or they willfully ignore the data. And what she said, Was it was [00:18:00] really interesting to see these people who like Neil deGrasse Tyson, she would have considered an ally in the early atheist days. And the community basically split into two groups.There was one community that just was looking for the truth.Simone Collins: AndMalcolm Collins: there was another community that just wanted to dunk on conservatives and Republicans. And you realize who these two communities were, pretty quickly, right? Which was the community that just wanted to dunk on conservatives. They are now this, Neil deGrasse Tyson or Bill Nye the Science Guy or, you know who these people are, right?They are totally detached from reality and the stuff they're seeing now, which is a conservative religion.Simone Collins: Now peopleMalcolm Collins: might be like, yeah, but These early online atheists, they weren't really the core birthing place of the modern conservative movement. Conservative base, like online base. And here I would say one, I just think you're wrong.You just need to [00:19:00] talk to many online conservatives. That's where a lot of them converted to the mainstream conservative ideology today. But two, You think of these individuals as having static views and they didn't have static views. Many of them became increasingly conservative as time went on. And so we need to talk about why that happened.So it happened for a few reasons. One, they began to, they would just side with whatever movement was more rational at the time, right? That was their idea, right? The men's right movement was much more justified given the statistics during the time when it was growing than the women's. movement or the feminist movement, right?And the men's right movement also was a core birthing place of modern conservative culture. So a lot of these individuals, they switched from anti feminist content to men's right adjacent content, which again made them part of this early birthing part of the red pill, the MGTOW, the et cetera communities, right?So it may not [00:20:00] have been the initial figures in this community, but it was people who were weaned on their content or who were mimicking their type of content. But then, you had the secondary thing that was happening during this period. And I think what's her name? The one who you were talking about, the Muslim who was one of the, original poor horsemen of the of the Atheist movement, who she wasn't actually at the conference.So she's often called the fifth horseman, but she was supposed to be who converted to Christianity. And she was originally a Muslim, de converted, then converted to Christianity. Is she? HoldSimone Collins: on. I don't know I just know that on Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a critic of Islam and yeah. Writing in a column in November 2023, Ali announced her conversion to the Christian faith, claiming That in her view, the Judeo Christian tradition is the only answer to the problems of the modern world. Okay.Malcolm Collins: Okay. So she said something about why people were like you grew up a Muslim.Like, why did you convert to Christianity? Instead of just beingSimone Collins: atheist,Malcolm Collins: like, [00:21:00] why did you first try Christianity when you started praying to God? Because she had this. depressed period and then she prayed to God and she, she felt that she was saved. So why did you do that? And she goes, of all these years, when I was attacking and preaching against religious individuals the Muslims, would send me messages about how they were going to kill me.The Christians would send me messages about how they hoped they were praying for me and they were praying for me to be saved and they wanted me, and this is actually true of most of the atheist community. When they were attacking the Christians and then when their value system started to align more with the Christians, they were very open to be friends with these people because these people had always been.Nice to them, even when there was conflict, whereas the opposite side group had always been very antagonistic. The wokes send us death threats constantly. We say stuff against [00:22:00] conservatives. They never almost never. Occasionally we'll get something because, we're pro IVF and stuff like that.That's mean, but we don't really get death threats from,Simone Collins: No, I don't think we've ever. Received really mean comments from anyone aside from people who, if you click through to their profiles, if they have a public one or something associated with their identity are totally progressive. Yeah.The only thing that maybe sometimes comes up is criticism of our using IVF for genetic testing from religious conservatives, but that criticism is typically not an ad hominem. Attack even so yeah,Malcolm Collins: no, it's like specific like logical argument. Yeah,Simone Collins: or this is not the work of the lord You know that kind of thing and it's yeah, it's Do you not?Yeah, butMalcolm Collins: they're not relevant here. But what it means is I don't like maybe progressives don't fully understand this or they're just, their culture is so toxic because it's so built into attacking each other [00:23:00] was in their culture. But when you constantly attack somebody who is trying to take a middle ground, you end up pushing them further and further to the other side and they become a more and more open.To genuinely reconsidering their positions. You might have been an old atheist. You might not have had a strong stance on abortion to begin with, but you knew the approved stance was abortion is fine in pretty much all circumstances. Now you've been attacked over and over again, and we'll do a video on our changing stance on abortion over time.And you're like, you know what? I should probably go back to the evidence on that. The nice guys seem to be really against this abortion thing. In most of the circumstances that it's being used today. Maybe I should learn more about this. And then they do, and they're like, Oh I agree with that position.And here is one of the big things that shifted along this period as well. And I think that this is indicative partially of why the new conservative base is so different from the old [00:24:00] conservative base. The old conservative base was primarily a theocratic base. That's what they were interested with, theocratic and sort of plural clutching.The new conservative base is a mixture of two communities. It is this original I call them caustic atheists, i. e. atheists who are really interested in debating people doing stupid things, who are interested in what is the technically correct answer? And aSimone Collins: no. To your point, Because they're seeking out people who are doing stupid things.I want to be technically correct and have an easy win. And I know I can win. I want a guaranteed win with no effort. It's pretty gross. So a mix of thisMalcolm Collins: community no, but they also are interested in technical correctness. This is why, for example, you have problems with people like, Sam Harris or Christopher Hitchens or other like mainstream atheists, even Richard Dawkins unfortunately from the perspective of wokeism.Having wrong policy positions, having wrong [00:25:00] positions about the way the government should be structured because it turns out that if you're just interested in what's rational, you eventually realize actually capitalistic systems seem to work much better for everyone involved in socialist systems.So let's move to those systems. So there was a mixture of this earlier let's be technically correct. And Not the old fuddy duddy Christians who were afraid of technology and afraid of change, but the theologically alive Christians, I would call them, the people who are having this active theological discussion.And so you got a melding of these two communities And that produced the type of conservatism that led to Trump, where individuals were like, Hey, we need to stop. It doesn't really make sense for people in this country for us to be focused on so much on what's going on overseas anymore, let's stop that.Or it's also why the party. In terms of it's if you talk to the Republican base, if you go to these rallies, they are often much more, and I didn't realize how socialist the conservative elite class [00:26:00] was. Oh my gosh, seriously. They are much more libertarian and they're much more libertarian in part because it works.And now you're having a weird. sort of circle back to the beginning thing. I don't know if you've heard some of the controversy of Richard Dawkins, for example, bemoaning the fall of the church in his country where he has been complaining a lot and saying it's really sad that we don't have, the cathedrals are being turned into mosques in England, and he's but, If you don't have people going anymore, then they're not tithing and they can't afford the buildings anymore.And this is all in a way downstream of his movement. He hasn't come to the perspective of converting yet, but he has come to the perspective, which most of the original Atheist community has now, which is unavoidable, is our society was better with religion specifically Christianity.And that It was to some extent a mistake to be attacking these [00:27:00] communities and that a lot of the societal problems that we have right now are downstream of the deconversion of people. However, there is not a version of Christianity that they feel comfortable with. Returning to because they're just like, but I can't believe it.So for example, when that whatever her name was, Muslim lady was talking with Richard Dawkins about her conversion to Christianity. And, she was talking about how she was depressed and noodle sidle and she wanted to she was looking for something and she finally had a psychologist.It was like, have you tried praying? And then after this like heartwarming story and the crowd has cheered, he's yeah, but do you really believe that Mary became pregnant when she was a virgin? And it's they, Because they don't have an iteration of Christianity that can conform with this Ultralogical perspective on reality.They're like, I don't, I want to rejoin. I want to believe And this is really what the tracked series project is about So for anyone who's weird here and doesn't know you go to technopyrithon. com [00:28:00] And see a summary of like our religious beliefs and the tracks that we're putting out, but we are trying to synthesize One, something that I believe is true so it is something that we synthesize through work, but it is also, when I was originally creating it, before I realized, oh my god, I think this is actually true it was a hypothesis in creating the type of religious system that That my kids could continue to believe even in this secular world, even with all of this information out there.And then only while I was constructing it was, I was like, Oh s**t I can't explain how some of this stuff is true other than the God is real in this system is true. And I don't come at that from like revelation or anything like that. I'm literally coming at that from logic. Like I plausibly can't come up with another explanation for how this worked out this way.That is. And if you're looking for the one on this you can go to the episode of why we believe in a techno puritan god Which goes over like why we believe this is stuff that I just found implausible From any other metric. But I do think [00:29:00] that's where we're going to see a lot of this community go is back towards these religious traditions because unfortunately if you're taking this logical contrarian stance Now is in modern wokest society.It's going to push you back to towards religious systems. But I'm wondering, what are your thoughts on this? Or do you remember this? As it was happening or like thinking of this is it's weird that all these ex atheist people are now like the most popular conservative YouTubers. Do you, Or anti feminist is what it was originally, and then it became conservative.Simone Collins: Anti feminist? Yeah so what I think it was more, what it feels like to me, at least, is that these were always rebel, anti establishment people online. And they didn't always move in the direction of conservative or anti progressive. In fact, some people who were avid members of the church of the subgenius and who loved being irreverent online [00:30:00] remained in the progressive atheist camp and continue to be progressive online.I just think that it happens to be that a lot of the anti establishment people who were effective players online also became conservative. So my larger answer isn't that. all of the people who were atheists online originally became conservative influencers. It's instead that both the conservative and progressive influencers online are prolific, active debaters and flame war lovers online who started out as people very likely to engage in anti atheist debates.Malcolm Collins: I hear what you're saying, but I'm less interested in the specific individuals other than how the communities developed. Because a lot of people will be like, oh there are a few now fringe players in the online conservative movement. They weren't the birthing place of that movement. And so what I'm trying to walk people through, who didn't live through this period of internet [00:31:00] history, is early internet history was Online atheists versus a mostly offline fundee crowd evangelical crowd.Then it became feminists versus anti feminists. The anti feminist community, most of the leading figures in it were either raised within or got their initial start. in the atheist fights on the atheist side. Then it moved from feminist to anti feminist to the woke community and the red pill MGTOW community, and the pickup artist community. And so this the community that then was the Anti feminist community became that community, but it had originally been seeded and created by this atheist community.Simone Collins: I think there's another element of this which is the one unifying factor of a lot of the groups that you're describing here, the rebel groups specifically.So the atheists and then the anti [00:32:00] feminists and then the anti woke people is that they typically started out. Or often started out in the enemy camp and then were cast out for some reason, sometimes for pretty egregious reasons. In the enemyMalcolm Collins: camp?Simone Collins: Yeah, in the enemy camp. So for example, people like Jesse Sinkle and Katie Herzog, the whole like Barry Weiss Free Press team.Oh no, IMalcolm Collins: strongly disagree with you. TheySimone Collins: started out as very progressive, working in progressive institutions.Malcolm Collins: You're describing a modern phenomenon, but that wasn't what happened with this community. These individuals were not cancelled. They became conservative before they were cancelled. They became conservative before even the concept of cancellation existed.They became conservative. So you've also got to remember GamerGate and everything like that. That was led by these former online atheist community. When this thing was happening, okay,Simone Collins: theseMalcolm Collins: individuals weren't like, Oh, I broke X progressive [00:33:00] norm, which is something that happens, a lot of times you'll have these progressives.It happens a lot. You then get thrown out from the progressive community. That is not what happened with these individuals. When they made the switch and I would say when they predominant, like the biggest part of the switch over happened was the transition from. Atheist content to anti feminist content.Simone Collins: Yeah, that's so interesting. I guess I missed it. I wasn't paying attention.Malcolm Collins: As soon as the transition to the anti feminist content happened the inevitable pipeline of, as the woke community rose, anti woke content. And now if you're an anti woke content producer, you are a conservative. The thing is that the anti woke community online.Was much bigger than the conservative intellectual community online. In fact, that community online almost didn't really exist. It was also much bigger than any of the individual religious denominations online, because yes, they did exist online and [00:34:00] were advocating for their positions, but they would often advocate within communities that were specific to their religious traditions.Now, this has changed over time. Recently, there has been the rise of the, I think I call it, pan religious YouTuber. But, i. e., that they just promote conservative religions regardless of what those religions are. But what's interesting is most of those individuals are like us and started in the atheist community.Which is why they don't really care what religion an individual is because they are coming at religion without a team. And this is what like the only one I can really think of that started with a team is Paul VanderKley. But a lot of them that come at this come like for example, Jordan Peterson.Jordan Peterson is able to take this pan religious perspective because he doesn't really have a faith himself. He's just I promote all religions. And he's very downstream of this internet atheist thing that was the community that he was appealing to and [00:35:00] it turned out that, and I think that this is another thing, that people who, at the end of the day, were really just promoting their own religious community's value system, always did a very bore job within the granular world of the internet, building audiences outside of their tradition.Simone Collins: Oh, okay.Malcolm Collins: If you were like a Catholic YouTuber, you would build the Catholic tradition because what you were trying to do is move towards a more Catholic value system. Or if you were a Lutheran YouTuber, if you were a SoSimone Collins: you're going increasingly niche, like you're Limiting the reach of your message.Malcolm Collins: And if you try to reach out to be like a pan religious individual, then the other religious individuals you're talking to, they're going to be as interesting as debating you over theology as an atheist would be. Sure, yeah. Because, So that's what prevented these individuals from ever being leading figures.Actually, it reminds me of a Ben Shapiro's complaint about you and [00:36:00] I becoming leading figures within the, or the leading figures within the pronatalist movement. And I think he was mad that his sister didn't become a leading figure of the pronatalist movement. I think that's what he expected.They put all this money in. She clearly wants to be like pronatalist in her value system. She's been attacked as a pronatalist. by progressives. Why isn't she being elevated? And it's because ultimately we were not coming at this from a team perspective to begin with. And therefore we were able to speak on this issue in a way that resonated with many more people than the way that they were speaking about this issue.Their way about this issue was just frankly, it was tainted by their own community background. If it's why are you having a lot of kids? It's Oh, I'm doing it for these Jewish reasons. And it's what does that have to do with anyone else? What does that have to do with me, Christian person?What does that have to do with me, secular person? Whereas when we were coming at this we started from a purely secular perspective. And so we were like, these are the ways that make sense for everyone, regardless of your [00:37:00] religion or faith system. And then when we went. Back into a harder religious system and we built that for our family and then ended up believing that happened to us Because we were genuinely like what's best for our kids?What's the system that's best for our kids and we built that and we ended up believing it. But When I think a lot of people they look at us and they're like you don't you know, really believe right? And what i've noticed is the only people who say that are the christians you know i'll explain why You Because I think a lot of atheists who are interested in believing in a religious system when they look at our system, they're like in the same way where when Dawkins was talking to the other person, he goes, you don't really believe that, Jesus was born to a virgin.He was like, oh, there's this logical inconsistency, which is the type of thing that would hang me up, right?.Whereas our system is just completely un fraught with this. And so you're not going to have, I think most atheists who look at it are like, yeah, no, I bet they really believe all of this.Because it doesn't trigger any of the. I just [00:38:00] can't bite that as an atheist problems. That many of the other traditions do, which is why we call it a secular religious system. Which I think religious people are confused by, but atheists, when they look at it, they go, Oh, it's a materialist monist system that doesn't believe in things like souls, but believes in a God.Okay, that's makes perfect sense. Like I can see why they would believe in that. Whereas religious people, I think are more like, you can't make something up and then end up believing it's true just because you found evidence that it's true, believing something requires faith. And I think that this is actually the difference.Like we don't really have faith. I believe my system because I believe it explains things that I can't explain using any other world metric or any other, what is it? Like metaphysical system for understanding reality. Not because God came to me and talked to me or like it helped me out of this rough time or anything like that.Like what's weird is we believe in our system and I think that many of these ACS who are reconverting, they believe [00:39:00] in these systems and they follow these systems. Almost in the way an atheist would without, and then after that they develop the blind passion, which I think the religious community has a trouble model. And I'm wondering why they have trouble modeling that could happen. It might be because for them so much. I can tell you a couple camps that I can understand why they can't believe it. One is the religious community. That's really. Only persuaded by the awe that these giant things like cathedrals and temples are able to inspire in them.Like it's a very sort of emotional, like the ceremony and the cathedral and the antiquity, like that's What makes these things true in my mind and so it's really that they were persuaded through emotion rather than through logic and that is why the other is the group that was raised in a tradition and these individuals don't understand how you could convert into a tradition.Because [00:40:00] they've just never done it. So they've never switched traditions. They've never deconverted from a tradition. Just the idea that you could can genuinely convert into something and believe it is surprising to them, especially if that thing doesn't have antiquity. They're like things that are true must have antiquity.And we would argue our system is a derived system, but I would argue it's actually truer to the antiquity of Christianity, which has always been an evolving religion than many of the other forms of Christianity, which I see is. As lacking that because they're LARPing a stasis that didn't really exist.But the other thing that I would point out here is I think that a problem that they have, oh, I would point out here with the antiquity. Is we even know from the biblical tradition. I always mention this but it is worth noting whenever the concept of antiquity comes up Because I know you know, not everyone watching has seen all their episodes we know anyone in the abrahamic tradition from the snake staff of moses That ended up being put in the temple and worshiped which was a form of idolatry not worshiped But it was prayed to you know in the same way people today pray to rogues [00:41:00] that it then was commanded by god that it was broken.After 500 600 years of being there and the antiquity of a tradition doesn't mean that God approves of it. He's basically just waiting for you to figure out that what you're doing is idolatry. And some people never figure that out until he's finally screw it.I'm sending, a messenger and people need to know that this is not okay what you're doing. And I do find that, most of the traditions I think have trended towards idolatry. And I actually think What? is the problem and what's prevented many atheists from fully returning to the faith is that most of the new faith systems which are trying to attract them are ultimately mystic systems and use mystical appeals.And those are never going to be palatable to somebody who left religion for these logical inconsistency reasons. And I say who is buying into these mystic systems? I actually think the core groups is buying into these mystic perennialist systems are the, I guess I call them crystal worshipers.They're the people [00:42:00] who left their original religion to For emotional reasons, like they were mean to gays or they didn't treat women well enough or they didn't allow women preachers which never would have pushed me out of a faith community. Now, again, I was raised in an atheist community, so that wasn't even a thing.But something like my dad's question around the arc that would have pushed me out of a community. The thing that deconverted my dad's, I should say, like how I ended up becoming a deconverted person. Was he got in trouble for trying to figure out the logistics of how Noah's Ark could possibly have worked.And kept all the animals alive. And he didn't like the magic answer. Because he's if magic's the answer, then why doesn't it say that there was magic in the story? That seems like a pretty big plot hole. Like why it's giving me like specifics on the sides of the boat But it doesn't talk about the magic that was making the food like it doesn't mention that they were in like embryos like some sort of i'm imagining like a jurassic park thing[00:43:00] But anyway, do you have any final thoughts on this because people love to hear your ideas simone You are the star and I know in the future we're gonna have people who just go to the end for your Summations.Simone Collins: I just find this really interesting. It's amazing to me how entire movements flourishing online can be totally missed by Me and huge other swaths of the you knew about the anti nudistMalcolm Collins: movement, or did it just never catch your algorithm?Simone Collins: It never really caught my algorithm, because why? I'm looking at cooking and fashion and decorating online or, even when I was in the Men's Rights Activist I got really into MGTOW and the Red Pill and Pickup Artistry subreddits back around when things like Gamergate were happening But Gamergate didn't really bleed into them.They were talking about dating strategy. They were talking about building a better independent life and becoming better people. But they weren't really talking about the wider world. [00:44:00] And I just find it so fascinating how so many of these things can happen with only a small number of people really being aware of what's going on.And I see that happen so much in other realms. Like you started out talking about NatCon. And going to this conference was so bizarre to me because these people were living in an extremely bounded world where everyone knew each other. Everyone kind of played with their own internal languages and internal networks and they read each other's stuff and they didn't really interact with the world outside of that.And we see something similar with effective altruism and rationalism. And there are these worlds and they all are in different ways, definitely impacting the larger world and changing the way that society unfurls. But we don't, they don't really understand larger society. Larger society doesn't understand them.And a lot of people are being affected by these various groups, by the political elite, by [00:45:00] rationalists and effective altruists, by men's right, or by, anti feminists or by atheists.without understanding that they are being affected by them by not understanding who they are or by not understanding how they work. So it's like the blind leading the blind in a really interesting subcultural way. And I love that you are one of those few people that seems to be able to look from a higher level, down into the terrarium, that all of these different ecosystems And get a picture of how they're affecting each other and their blind spots while not necessarily being lost in any in particular.I don't really consider you a member of any of these communities, but you are watching very carefully how they're interacting with each other, or really not. How they're affecting each other, how they interact within their own groups and it's just, it's fascinating.Malcolm Collins: I love it when you talk because you always give me so many ideas.So there was two things I wanted to mention. One that I thought was really interesting here is I was talking to a group of people at NatCon. So this was supposed to be like [00:46:00] the conservative intellectuals who are writing our bills. And I mentioned GamerGate 2, not only were they unaware of the Sweet Baby Inc controversy.No surprise to meSimone Collins: again, just exactly my point, right?Malcolm Collins: Unaware of GamerGate 1. They were unaware. They are making national policy decisions And they are unaware of the core conservative progressive battles that have happened in the past decade. Not at all surprised. It was shocking to me personally. I was like,Simone Collins: like you, you are in a different world.I guess you're aware of what these distinct groups are doing, but you weren't aware before of the extent to which they didn't even know of each other's existence or norms or effect on broader society.Malcolm Collins: Absolutely. Yeah. Like you thought theySimone Collins: knew about each other.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. I, yeah, that's that.I thought that at least they were broadly aware that these other groups existed. And now that we are. Didn't we learnSimone Collins: this though? Like when we first went into private equity and we started exploring other industries and we told them [00:47:00] things like, oh, I used to work in VC and now I'm in PE and they're like what's that?They did not know what. VC was, or even if we called Adventure Capital, they wouldn't know what it was.Malcolm Collins: Here's, here is something I wouldn't know. I went into the conference expecting this is what I say, I had a misunderstanding of the various groups, due to the Heritage Foundation, like they have the weird anti porn thing in the 20, Project 2024.Heritage Foundation I went in expecting them to be one of the most gatekeepy and they were not at all. They are actually interested. I've been talking to them about putting on a conference for them to meet with online conservative influencers and build some connection there. And Heritage Foundation was like the most gung ho about this.The people at the Heritage Foundation. They seemSimone Collins: like really willing to play ball, which is surprising for an organization that's take away porn.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. The people at the Heritage Foundation were out of all of the groups. I talked to by far the most willing toSimone Collins: Learn from the outsideMalcolm Collins: world.Learn from the outside world and learn how the Republican base had [00:48:00] moved to new ideas and passed where they are now. The other groups, and I'm not going to call it specific groups because I don't want to damage our ability to work with any of them in the future. But some of the other groups.We're just like, when I pitched this idea, they go, why would we care what the base thinks? Like we are going to staff the white house. We are going to control policy. And it doesn't matter what the people who are voting for Trump want him to do. Our plan is a socialist Christian state. That was basically what they were pushing for.Simone Collins: Wish you were. I'm not lying about this, butMalcolm Collins: ISimone Collins: wasMalcolm Collins: there too. I saw this.Simone Collins: ItMalcolm Collins: happened. I wish it didn't happen. You even see this within the pronatalist movement. So like Lyman Stone, he wrote this manifesto that we'll do a full piece on. Where he's everyone needs to stop. listening to the Collinses because their form of pronatalism doesn't involve socialism, just because socialism doesn't work.And he, he lies through the moon to say it works, but we've gone over the stats. It just doesn't work. It was so funny. Even at the conference, like we were at a table with a bunch of Heritage Foundation guys, they're like, [00:49:00] why would he write that? He does know it doesn't work, right?And I'm like, yeah, but he is just a, when I say it doesn't work, like cash handouts just do not seem to work. He will not stand any form of perinatalism that is not first and foremost socialist in its nature. And he'll evenSimone Collins: point to data that indicates that cash handouts don't work and be like, Don't you see?This proves that cash handouts work, which isMalcolm Collins: Yeah it's almost interesting. He is a socialist before he's even a Christian. It is wild. I don't understand but what I've learned is that there's a lot of people like him in the conservative movement. They are Christian. Yeah, we thought it was,Simone Collins: we thought it was him being weird and it's not him being weird.Malcolm Collins: No, yeah they're in this conservative intellectual group. There are eight. And when I say socialist, I mean bordering on Marxist. And I say he borders on a Marxist who are just happen to also be Christians. And so they think the way that they create their Marxist Christian utopia. is through the Republican Party.But if you're wondering how these people gain so much power, this is another thing I've realized, the reason they gain so much power is I think that they're the only conservatives. There's a lot of reasons a person may be a conservative. But [00:50:00] one is, you held very strict religious values, but you're also a Marxist, and so the Democrats just won't talk to you, basically.Is that, These individuals are the only ones who can stand bureaucracies and work their way up through bureaucracies because other conservatives who actually, understand the damage that bureaucracies and large government does just don't stay in those departments long enough. And so these departments in this sort of upper conservative bureaucratic class are actually, christian Marxist. And they keep trying to infiltrate the departments. And I think that Trump needs to be incredibly watchful of this. This form of Christian Marxism will destroy his presidency. The public does not want banned pornography. Okay. They don't want banning IVF which was part of the thing for project 2025.I was like, why would you do that? Why would you, that's not like the conservative position. What? That's 10 percent of the conservative base wants that. Like what? Why are you trying to obviously this is going to damage Trump. But I think that they can update and they can get better.And I'm really excited about that. [00:51:00] Specifically the heritage foundation. So you can update more with what the conservative base actually wants. Now the final thing I was going to note, which I hadn't noted until you were talking and I was like, Oh my God, like great idea here is I had mentioned that women are much more spiritual than men on a historic basis.Like you see this in much more religious. When women deconvert, they much more likely are going to become some form of spiritualist. They're going to become a Wiccan, they're going to become a spiritualist, they're going to do little spells, they're going to become pop culture spiritualists. There's lots of types of spiritualists they're going to become.They are very unlikely to become hardline atheists. Whereas when men deconvert, they're much more likely to become hardline atheists. And so the atheist movement was always overwhelmingly male, which also meant that as the internet became more of a fight of women versus men the witches the deconverts who went to the women community all just went to the progressive sphere.But then the hardcore atheists. Were mostly [00:52:00] autistic women and men. And they then intrinsically identified more with the men's rights movement and reg pill and mgtow and stuff like that. And then the modern online conservative movement is very much, I call it the mig the red pill diaspora, because those movements basically died, split up, spread out, and that created the seed bed of what is now the online conservative culture, which is also I think the culture of.The active part of the conservative base, like the intellectually active part of the conservative base where the, where conversation is still happening. Yeah.Simone Collins: That makes sense.Here's actually a second part of this weird phenomenon that I didn't get to in this video, but I want to cover briefly. , women when contrast it was men have historically. That you considered the much more religious gender. , and , they just seem hard coded to be more spiritual in the way that they relate to reality. When men relieve their traditional religious structures, they often become atheist. Whereas [00:53:00] when women leave their traditional religious structures. They often become Wickens that were pagans or some other form of spiritualist tradition. Well, this created a very interesting phenomenon that meant that the online atheist community wasn't disproportionately male.So when you begin to have the battle between men and women in the anti-feminist, , birth feminist debate, , the atheist community was already predispositioned to fall into sort of the red pill side of that debate. In addition, because the atheist presumably is looking for what is true. We're as the, , you know, Wiccan or pagan is just using spirituality to, , for themselves and sort of self masturbate. , there isn't any reason for the Wiccan pagan to go back to religion, but there is a reason for the online atheist to go back to religion.If they can find a logical structure for doing that. , which is, I think, why you've seen a lot of reconversion on that side, but [00:54:00] not on the other side. , another really interesting thing that I noted when I was talking with some people is if you look at the four Hertz men of the atheist movement, all except for Sam. , have since basically said this was a bad idea and religion is good and it was wrong to roll religion back.Malcolm Collins: I love you to death, Simone. You are amazing. Any final thoughts?Simone Collins: No, let's go get the kids.Malcolm Collins: I will go get them. Don't you worry.What do you want to eat tonight? Or what are you thinking of cooking? DoSimone Collins: you want to do hot dogs?Malcolm Collins: Yeah, I'd love to do hot dogs. Or do you want to do ravioli?Simone Collins: Or pizza? Or potstickers?Malcolm Collins: What I'm gonna do is hot dogs and some tomato soup if I could do that. And I've got the cut up shallots, so I can use those for sprinkles and Oh, but the one thing I don't have is, we don't have any sauces for the hot dogs.Simone Collins: We have a billion sauces.Malcolm Collins: No, they're all like cooking sauces now. Like the last time I checked the fridge, somebody had dumped like all theSimone Collins: Somebody? I don't dump your sauces. That's [00:55:00] sacrilegious. I do not. Regardless of expiration date.Malcolm Collins: You are so sweet to me. You know my things. I would never. I would never.I dumped them, but I just haven't thought to re get them yet. I might go pick up the kids and then swing by Redner's and get like a sauce.Simone Collins: Okay. How many hot dogs do you want? Two? Two. How many buns do you want?Malcolm Collins: Three. Wow. Because I also want some tomato soup.Simone Collins: So you're going to dip the bun in the soup?Malcolm Collins: I'm going to toast it. Or you're going to toast it. Toast it with butter. Toasted bread goes really well with tomato soup.Simone Collins: Oh, okay. There we go then. I'll get a bunch of bread out. Please do not forget the yoto player. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Get in the kitchen and cook me some food, you disgusting animal of a woman.And you get the yoto player?Simone Collins: Yes. Okay, I love you. I love you. I'm gonna take a little while to get down because she has a majorMalcolm Collins: Great section here. [00:56:00]Simone Collins: Thanks for doing all this prep. You rock for that. It's so much work. And I just show up with a gassy baby.Malcolm Collins: You are amazing and fans want to hear more from you. I've got to remember at the end of episodes to have you do a little spiel. Like I did that one time because fans really like that.Simone Collins: Oh my diatribe. Simone's corner where she. I get angry about something because she has PMS again. Ha. People areMalcolm Collins: like, oh, Simone's spitting truth. That's what they always say.Simone Collins: Yeah,Malcolm Collins: spitting. Everybody loves you, Simone. You're the hero of the show. You're the smart one. That's been confirmed.Again,Simone Collins: because. I keep my mouth shut. Okay. Do you want me toMalcolm Collins: introduce myself? Like, all good women should. Anyway, hold on. Alright. Get started here. Get full access to Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm at basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe

Former Trump critic turned ally J.D. Vance, picked as VP candidate for the 2024 election, is analyzed in-depth. Topics include the two main factions in conservative politics, rise of tech conservatives, Vance's background, Trump's strategy in choosing him, immigration policy, religious engagement in conservatism, and implications for upcoming elections.