How Mitt Romney Catalyzed The Emergence Of The New Right

Join us for a compelling discussion on how Mitt Romney's candidacy unintentionally sparked political realignment in America and globally. This conversation explores the rise of the 'new right', the coalition of diverse conservative groups, and the controversial topic of genetic modification and designer babies. We delve into the evolving ideologies within the tech-right alliance, debates around reproductive technology, and the significance of preserving cultural autonomy against the urban monoculture. [00:00:00] Malcolm Collins: Hello Simone. I'm excited to be talking to you today. Today we are going to be talking about how MIT Romney of all people instigated the chain of events that led to the political realignment of America. And then from there, the political realignment of the right and the left across many countries around the world. And that in a way his candidacy. Birthed the new right now. I note it did not come from support of his candidacy. It actually came from a faction of the right that was disappointed with his loss and where the party had gone. But he also opened doors that really changed a number of things. Simone Collins: So inadvertently he loosened the lid on the tight jar of the new right. Yes. Yes. How exciting, and I love this theory Malcolm Collins: and I want to discuss this in the context of a friend of ours who works for the Heritage Foundation. Emma Waters did a, a tweet chain [00:01:00] recently saying that people who do things , like us, that want to. Improve intergenerationally. , because right now, you know, let's be honest, we are talking about like polygenic selection, which, you know, we do, Elon's does like a lot of the tech elite do. Simone Collins: but what El the waters is criticizing more broadly 'cause it's not just polygenic risk selection. Yeah. Is this concept of designer babies, which. We are totally for, we're like Yes designer babies. Yes. CRISPR editing. Yes. Like all of the things, we are 100% into that and, and I, I don't want people to misconstrue it. Yes, of course. Right now we're choosing birth order largely based on cancer risk to buy time for cures for our kids who have higher cancer risk. That doesn't mean that when we get the chance. Yeah. Malcolm Collins: Well, and I think that the, the polygenic risk conversation occludes the morality of the larger conversation. Mm-hmm. Because zero, you're focused more on not using all of the embryos. Mm-hmm. When the real question at hand was in the next 20 to 30 years is, should we be genetically Simone Collins: modifying [00:02:00] humans? Yeah. And that, that is, it's such an important conversation. And I texted Emma when she posted it, when I saw it. That I was just so glad that she's bringing this debate up because it's not discussed enough and what we're heading toward, because this is what's happening at scientific conferences. I was just checking in on this recently. Is people just like, this is unethical. Let's just not do it. Let's just not do it. And it's really, it's stifling research. It's stifling development. And what I want instead are very productive discussions of, okay, why, why exactly is this so bad? Malcolm Collins: Well, what's what's interesting here is a lot of the pushback against it is coming from the left. The, the vast minority of the pushback against it is coming from the right. Yeah. And this is the first time we've really seen a right-leaning mainstream individual who we've been working with, like do this level of pushback. And IW you know, one of the things that we pointed out to her, well, and it's Simone Collins: very explicit, I wanna point out that from the moment we first met Emma Waters, which was at the first natal con two years ago, her whole stance was IVF is not good. Any sort of repro tech [00:03:00] is something that should be avoided at all costs. And really what we need to do is give it the root causes fertility that we don't want to move toward these abominations of rep tech, and instead we want to. Find natural. You know, let's go back to tracking our cycles, getting to know our bodies, not taking birth control, avoiding endogenous irritants or pollutants that harm fertility, which is a very legitimate stance, but what we don't agree with is that like, oh, but you can't or shouldn't do these other things. Malcolm Collins: No, no. That's not even what we disagree with. What we disagree with is it makes sense to split this political allegiance over or alliance that's been building over this issue. And, and that is what she suggested doing in her chain of tweets. Yeah. She said, we cannot have a prenatal movement with people who use this type of technology. Yeah. She's like, good Simone Collins: ISTs don't do designer babies. Which we, which is a Malcolm Collins: bigger problem because what she's essentially saying as she says that, is we cannot have the tech right new right alliance, which is we [00:04:00] cannot. Damaging, we cannot have the tech Right. MAGA alliance. Yeah. Which is crippling going forwards if we take this dance for the right. Being able to win. So just explain that before we get into the whole Romney chain here. The areas where we differ with people like her are incredibly small in terms of what could actually pass in policy. Mm-hmm. So if you're like, okay, what are your guys like? And, and when I say small, I mean like 2% maybe. We have policy differences, which I think surprises a lot of people, but because they haven't thought through, it's like, well, you two have radically different views on the world, but. Where your views differentiate, neither of you could actually win any legislation. So it doesn't make sense to split up alliances based on those differentiations. Exactly. So an example of this would be is we would campaign for stricter access to abortion earlier laws around abortion. Mm-hmm. She would campaign for stricter access to abortion. Earlier laws around [00:05:00] abortion. Right. You know? Mm-hmm. In, in, in her perfect world, it wouldn't happen at all, and it would be completely illegal. Mm-hmm. And in ours it wouldn't be except. That'll never pass in the United States, right? So it doesn't make sense to split the alliance over this because it's not something that can pass. Or in her perfect world, you know, you might end up outlawing IVF, but outlawing IVF. Would destroy the Republican party's base. Mm-hmm. Like it is not a popular idea or in, in certain factions. I don't think that this is her views, but in certain factions of this, this split, some people are like against gays and gay marriage, right? Like, they're like no gay marriage in the United States. And it's like. Fine. I would disagree with that, but it's not, we're splitting the alliance on, because you couldn't win a any, you couldn't even win among only Republican voters if you were anti-gay marriage in the United States. Yeah, that's how silly that is. Or at least it would be close. Like, and, and so there's these areas where we [00:06:00] have these differential perspectives, but it is really important that we don't do what the wokes do, that we don't do what the Democrats do and say. Okay. Yeah. We're you, you're, you're different on any one issue, like JK Rowling different on just one issue. Let's kick her outta the party. Mm-hmm. And, and villainize her and say that we can't work with her. We work as a coalition because we're being practical about actually getting stuff done. And if you look at what the White House is doing right now, they are achieving things that Republicans have wanted to achieve for the past two decades. You know, in, in an amazing rate. And it's the tech bros who are doing it because they're not, I don't wanna say deep state bureaucrats. But what I will say is that if you are pulling from entrenched political players, you are going to get people, whether they are Democrat or Republican in their leanings, that have deep connections to the deep state and therefore have deep connections in the status quo not changing. Mm-hmm. And that's one reason why this alliance has been so fruitful at the level of [00:07:00] implementation. But, so we'll get to like what the alliance means, what the alliance's goals are, but I wanted to start here by being like, please, the Democrats are constantly trying to break us up. Don't, don't let, they're constantly trying to get Trump and Elon to fight. They're constantly trying to, when one of us succumbs to that, instead of being like and this is, this is why this tweet got to me because it didn't say. You know these two, I disagree with them. Let's talk about the philosophy on this or check Right. People not specifically calling out like I disagree. It said they are not ISTs. Mm-hmm. And if we are not ISTs, then we are not part of the new Right coalition and that's a big problem. And we have been, and the tech right I would say was in this coalition has been incredibly charitable to the Heritage Foundation. They have taken over the IVF, like the PRO IVF bills. Well, the, sorry to follow Simone Collins: up. The first strictly prenatal list executive order release was basically one promising to figure out [00:08:00] how to reduce the cost of IVF in the United States. Heritage is one of the leading contingents advising the White House on how to reduce those costs. But they're only doing it by, well. The best form of IVF is no, IVF isn't that so much less expensive? It's $0 to IVF. Here's how we do it. Which again, is totally in line with their philosophy, but not actually addressing. Yeah. And Malcolm Collins: there is easy things that could be done. The I, I forget, just call, so like the, the licensing agency for embryologists only licensed 80 a year. It's one of those like, artificially created monopolies to increase their salary, like the beers. Simone Collins: Someone described it to us, which is Yeah. The de Yeah. That's insane. That, Malcolm Collins: that is a very low hanging fruit and yet very easy to fix. But of course, they wouldn't think to look at things like that because, and, and we haven't put up a stink about this, right? Mm-hmm. Like we are like. Okay. This is the terms of the alliance. You guys don't come for IVF. You can, you know, restrict it or, or not make it cheaper in the ways you want to in working with the administration. But, and, and none of the [00:09:00] other, like pro IVF, pro embryo like selection parts of the tech right, have come at the White House for choosing the Heritage Foundation to be the ones to execute on this. Mm-hmm. Like, I know that, like we have been incredibly gracious in terms of. Our role was in this, and we want to make sure that nobody pushes anyone else off the table. When we, for example, have have said things critical of lineman stone, a lot of that for us was driven by him attacking other people who wanted to be a part of the coalition who came out saying, I'm a prenatal list. And he's like, oh, well I disagree with you here, here, here, here, here. And it's like, look, if somebody's new in the movement, we need to do what we can to raise their status or a new convert. And not belittle them because that's how we create this harmonious alliance that doesn't become what the Wokes became. Simone Collins: Yeah. Even if we disagree with their policies, it's important to be a Big 10 movement. So I mean, I, I get that. You know, Lyman is a very passionate person and [00:10:00] he, it's in his personality to criticize things that he doesn't. Agree with, and I get that, but we're, we're really trying to be a Big 10 movement. And if people feel like they're being shoved out or this is being fractured, we all lose power. We all lose the ability to raise awareness about this and do something. Malcolm Collins: Yes. And, and do something about our mini, mini shared goals. Whether it's, you know, education reform, making abortion less common, you know, it, it strengthening America and ensuring that we are a powerful country. And in the, the argument I. Argued with her because her whole thing was against like genetically modifying humans as like, fundamentally like an un-American thing. And what I pointed out is, you know, if we don't do this in America somebody else is going to do it. And eventually, within a few generations, you know, your children are going to be under the Jack boot of. Chinese super soldiers. When we tell the left, we we're like, Hey guys, if you don't have kids, you're not gonna exist in the future. And they rear us. You know, they're rearing, but it's obviously true what we're saying, [00:11:00] if we tell people on the right, if you deny technologies that allow for intergenerational improvement in human capacity whether it is genetic augmentation or human AI integration and stuff like that. BCI, that's where I started my career was in brain computer interface. Eventually groups that are engaging with these technologies are going to be able to exert power over you so long as they actually do increase their capacity. And if they don't increase their capacity, then people are gonna stop engaging with them. So what are you fighting over, right? Mm-hmm. So you're essentially ensuring the death of the American Empire and anyone who might be able to protect your right. To not use technologies like this to stay granola. Whereas we, the tech right, have a philosophy of we want to have the choice to engage with reproductive technologies we engage with, and the, and the human, you know, AI stuff we engage with but we don't. Want that to ever be forced on anyone else. Mm-hmm. We want everyone to [00:12:00] have the right to make these decisions for themselves. And as I pointed out, you know, this is not like the idea of human augmentation and advancement is not anti-America. The avatar of patriotism in America is Captain America. Captain America is a human who was augmented by scientists to be better. We didn't hate the Nazis because they were trying to make people healthier or better. We hated the Nazis because they were forcing other people into coercive fertility decisions. Mm-hmm. Whether it was having more kids than they would've, or having less kids than they would've how they were having kids. And that's the position you are taking when you try to restrict our access. To this sort of technology. And it's a fundamentally N Cs an un-American position. Because America is a country that is defined by alternate cultural hypotheses, competing, but in an environment where the one thing we all agree on is you [00:13:00] won't force your way of life on us and we won't force our way of life on you. Mm-hmm. So that we can protect. Each other's ways of life. Mm-hmm. And I think that this is where the old right, really sort of makes mistakes because they think about the country in a context where they had enough of votes with their broadly agreed upon Judeo-Christian traditionalist value set to win national election to then enforce those values on the population. Mm. Don't have that anymore. If you want to protect traditional 1950s, Americana is the left, which has the dominant power. The urban monoculture is the dominant power. They won't elect you into office. You protect that by aligning yourself with other people who are running cultural experiments that are also alternate to the left. Simone Collins: Yeah. Malcolm Collins: But let's get into the MIT Romney thing. 'cause this is really interesting to me. Simone Collins: Interesting. Yeah. I, I wanna see your argument for this. I'm not [00:14:00] sure. I'm like, I don't, I don't see how it could be. Because I, I, I, at first I thought, well, you're gonna say it's because he was Mormon and that made him different from this sort of evangelical Protestant base. That was GOP Inc. But we had previously elected Catholics. Yes, they were Democrats, but like still, no, no, no. Malcolm Collins: Hold on. You, you are, you are glossing over this, the Republican party in its entire history mm-hmm. Has never had a Catholic front runner. Even till today for presidential office. Mm-hmm. In fact they've never had a non Protestant other than MIT Romney. Simone Collins: Yeah. Making JD Vance quite notable actually, but yeah. So, so let's, but let's go, let's go into Romney. I wanna, I wanna hear your take here. Okay. Go Malcolm Collins: into Romney. Before this, the, the Alliance, the Judeo-Christian Alliance, it sort of looked at where the shadows of the various Christian denominations overlap and said, this is the culture we want to enforce upon. The United States and its citizens through laws, through the way we govern, through the way the state [00:15:00] operates. Okay. And this created a winning coalition for a long time, and the backbone of that coalition was evangelicals. Catholics were mostly even today Catholic vote majority Democrat. And historically they were far Democrat. And if you wanna understand why it was because the mainstream American system the. Like what the KKK was trying to protect against is, it was blacks, Jews, and Catholics, that those were the groups that they lynched. And I think, I remember I mentioned this in the previous ESSA code, and somebody was like, wait, the KKK was predominantly interested in Catholics as much as black people. And I'm like, yes. Jews were a bit of an afterthought for them, but it was like blacks and the, and the Catholics these were the two primary un-American forces that they were intent on stamping out. When, rFK became a nominee for president. Many people freaked out because they were like, well, isn't he gonna be loyal to the Pope and not to the American people? Yeah. Yes. And [00:16:00] this look, it's, it's, it's, that's like electing Simone Collins: a, a, a woman and being like, well, but isn't she gonna be loyal to her husband, Malcolm Collins: not the right. Well, I mean, and people ask this about Mitt Romney, isn't he gonna be loyal to the Mormon church over the American people? And this is a viable question to ask, right? Like. Historically speaking, if you're creating this alliance of different Christian denominations mm-hmm. But you're like, but you know what we say, it's like Judeo-Christian values. What we mean is Protestant values and traditionalist American Protestant values. Right? Yeah. And, and then. Mitt Romney comes in and he increasingly runs and increasingly normalizes. When he first started running, everyone was horrified that he was Mormon. Simone Collins: Yeah. How, how can there be this Mormon freak president, but also he looks so like, well, like many Mormons. So clean cut, corporate friendly, spotless, and this, Malcolm Collins: this is part of what created the new. Right. So we'll get to this. Mm-hmm. So, so. Mitt Romney comes into office [00:17:00] and he not, not office, but he comes into like the, the dominant position was in the American Republican coalition. Right. And largely by the time he does most of the evangelicals had actually gotten okay with him. If you're looking at white evangelicals 62% strongly favored Romney. Only 28% had reservations and only 9% were only voting for him as a rejection of Obama. Wow. So. That it, it consider that of Mormons. 2% were primarily voting for him out of a rejection of Obama. So they were only like three times more than that. Right. And Mormon's view of the metaphysical nature of, of the world is quite different from the traditional Christian view. Hmm. And what was interesting is the, he captured. Wholesomeness and a wholesome family and a, you know, like Tea Toler, like doing everything the correct way, lifestyle, much [00:18:00] more than the other Protestant groups were doing, as Mormons have for a while. Hmm. And so the idea, and this has happened to me a number of times, was in, you know, if, if you go to modern conservative spaces online, you know you're gonna get people talking about figures. Like, you know, John Vinky or Jordan Peterson. And these are individuals who are definitely not Christian in a normal context. But nobody would see them as antagonistic to the modern conservative cause. If you look at people like us with our weird techno puritan beliefs I mean we are 100% Christians from our perspective because we base our religion off of the Bible. And, and really straight. Like if you go to our, our, our track series, we may have a lot of heretical beliefs, but they come from alternate readings of lines from the Bible, right? And so I will engage with Christians often in these new right coalition. I will drop with them. I'll be like, well, I'm a Christian, but probably not a way that you would [00:19:00] really accept, you know, like we've had redeemed zoomer on our show and stuff like that. And I drop things that I think they're gonna be like, no, I, I hate you. And they're like, nah, you know, I have some friends in this church that, that believe that, or I have some for, you know, that's not really so bad. That's not really so bad. And then it feels a bit like that scene from some like, it hot where, where I'm like, actually. Maybe like I, I, I mean I know that there's some areas where they're like, okay, that is definitely heretical. Like that our version of Christianity does not believe, if you watch our last track that Jesus Christ claimed to literally be God's son. We point out that in the Old Testament, people said, I'm God's son all the time. Even today people are like they call God the father. They don't mean he's literally their father. To give more color here. What is written in the Bible is that. God impregnated Mary using Joseph's DNA. We know he used Joseph's DNA because if he didn't, then Jesus wouldn't be the Messiah because the Messiah had to be Patri. Lineally descended [00:20:00] from the house of David. , and that makes God's role closer to an IVF doctor's role. And yet no one would say that an IVF doctor is the father of my kids. , , even though all my kids were conceived through IVF. Nor do we describe God to be the literal father of other children. He helps them miraculously conceive throughout the old in New Testament. Malcolm Collins: And so we go through all this stuff in that track. If you wanna get into like why we have this theoretical understanding, but it's in part because we believe that it, it's what the text is actually arguing. Yeah. When you go and read the text in context. But, but that's like a super heretical belief that I expected would have us pushed far more out of Christian circles or far less accepted. And I think, and, and, and people can look at us and be like, wow, that's really heretical. But it's not as heretical as Jordan Peterson who just doesn't accept the Christian faith at all. It's not as if heretical as John Vinky who's like, well, Christianity is good, but more as like a set of like metaphysical stories and stuff like that. You know, they, they're, they're seen as very like in offensive within this movement. [00:21:00] So in a way, the ways that we're offensive is because we actually like deeply believe the text in a way that these other individuals don't. So they're like, okay, maybe they'll, they'll be brought over. But the point I'm making here is, is this allowed for this broader coalition to build? And what was interesting is it actually began to build in opposition. Because Mitt Romney failed. He failed against Obama, and the way he built his coalition, sort of expanding this theocratic framework to a wider ray of denominations also fundamentally failed to win at the electorate. Mm-hmm. And then. He was one of the early ones to turn on Trumpism. MAGA is the new form of the Republican coalition as it began to grow, which was an alliance of essentially every group that was against the urban monoculture instead of just one or two groups that was against the urban monoculture. So it's much more focused on preventing the urban monocultures, imperialist tendencies [00:22:00] around the school system, around messaging, around media, around art. Than trying to impose our own imperialist tendencies in, in many ways it's the anti-imperialist faction because that's the only way we can preserve multiple minority traditionalist factions. So, so, MIT Romney comes out attacks. This is like, oh, we need to get back to, you know, being reasonable and well buttoned and everything like that. Mm-hmm. And in so doing, he made that form of Christianity, kind of distasteful to the average American. The, the overly sober, the overly, I don't push people's buttons. The overly wholesome in a way where the wholesomeness isn't offensive. Yeah. Like I think if you look at a lot of. Messaging we're wholesome, but in a way that is offensive, is deeply offensive Simone Collins: to people. Yeah. And that, that looks weird. And Mormons are really, really good at at almost overcorrecting for the weirdness of their history or religion [00:23:00] in a way that involves them looking to your point, like pod people. But of course, this is coming from us weirdos who are deeply uncomfortable with conformity. So I think that goes to show. How conformist and how crowd friendly or, or normy friendly the general Morman aesthetic is. Right? Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yeah. And I think that he made that a, you know, aesthetic sort of uncool on the intellectual side of the Right. Hmm. And as an immediate response to him, that's where you had, what was it called, the dark aca? The dark. Simone Collins: Oh, the intellectual dark web. Malcolm Collins: The intellectual dark web. Simone Collins: Oh, you were gonna talk about dark academia. The, the fashion? No, no, Malcolm Collins: no, no. The intellectual, the dark academia. Like a, a style, which is cute. Yeah. I like it. Yeah. You, you, you know, I, I dated my girlfriend before Simone was very dark academia style. She was, I was Simone Collins: immediately thinking Malcolm Collins: of her. I was like but the, the the inte, the intellectual dark web arose in that post Romney [00:24:00] era. Um hmm. Of sort of we, if we're going to like, seriously engage with this, we need to be subversive because the dominant culture no longer agrees with the form of overly concerned what other people think of them. Wholesomeness, mm-hmm. That MIT Romney represented. Simone Collins: Interesting. Huh. Wow. So, yeah. And then she was like this catalyst that triggered a domino effect. Malcolm Collins: Well, there was a secondary catalyst, which was an alliance of when people talk about the tech elite, they're like, okay, so who, who are the tech elite? Are they like. The people who work at like Amazon, are they like No, they are people who live within tech environments. This is the four chan diaspora, the red pill, the tech natives. Yeah. It, it really shouldn't be tech elite. It should be edgy, atheist diaspora. Yeah. The gamer Gate. Diaspora. Diaspora, diaspora. All of these have been ruled into one alliance, which where, where they say elite, they mean it like. PC Gamer [00:25:00] Master Race. They don't mean it in a they mean it in like a, a vitalistic. They're proud of who they are and they're different, you know? Oh, so Simone Collins: they mean to, to quote the old, the old term L three three T seven, Malcolm Collins: I don't know what that means. Simone Collins: Elite. Malcolm Collins: Oh, elite. Oh, okay. Oh my God. Simone Collins: Am I that old? I'm sorry. Yikes. Malcolm Collins: Tech Elite. Okay. So yes, the, the tech elite are very. Non-traditional elitist, and I think this is also something that people miss out, but they think that the tech ELs like us and Elon and stuff like that, and like obviously we're figures in that, but that is our culture. The culture of Doge. Like literally the apartment he's running comes from like a meme that got popular on four chan was the culture of. Four chan before it turned all what's the word they used to me? And the place has a bunch of feds glowy. That's the term four chan these days is a little glowy. Before four chan got glowy. [00:26:00] That, that culture that it embodied. Is the culture that a lot of us grew up within, within these online environments. I remember somebody who was like, oh, this is like a boomer's version of four chan and our four chan episode. And I was like, you do understand that my generation was the one that created four chan at the height of four Chan's. Cultural relevance? You, you might be. Not understanding how old four Chan culture is. And if you're still like, unapologetically like a four chan or today instead of on one of the other sites, or would say it was some qualification you probably were not an OG four chanter. Your, your a new sort of replication of that culture because it appealed to you. The culture that was fostered by people of my internet generation. Mm-hmm. And sorry that, that really got me when they were like, oh, boomer understanding of it is like, I, how old do you think I am? And how old do you [00:27:00] think four chan is? Anyway, anyway, no, but that's, that was actually a pretty interesting to me, this conceptualization of this online counterculture as being forever young. It's not forever young. It, it, it, it was something that. Was cooked within the bowels of stuff. Like if you see our video, this weird How the new Right came from like the new atheist movement in a way, like the, the, not the new atheist, I say like the counter new atheist, the original online like skeptics movement, and we sort of chart that. Progression was one of the factions that ended up becoming the base of the new, right? It wasn't the only one. You also got the red pillars, you also have the four chan diaspora. You also have. You know, a lot of these groups, the, the, the diaspora that was que squeezed off of Reddit today, we think of its Reddit as being an incredibly leftist place. Mm-hmm. But you know, there was the era of you know, things like Tumblr in action, right? Like Tumblr in action was a big, very commonly used site for tracking what was happening Was in leftist culture in a negative context [00:28:00] or what was the fat one that I used to always love? Was it called fat People Hate? No, I don't think it was. I know that was one of them, but I, God, I'm, I'm blanking on. I'm pretty sure it's called Fat People Hate, which I'm like, whoa. Okay. We really went there. I, I thought it was so funny to like laugh at the haze movement. Oh, the, the catter ham tails and the catter ham tails. The juiciest red, the catter ham tails. That's some internet deep lore there. Yeah, man. But, but these were and, and that's also something that I think people are surprised about. They're like, wait, like Reddit burst apart of the modern, right? Yeah. Reddit Was the. Meeting place of a lot of the red pill movement. Like the red pill was a Reddit phenomenon. Yeah. Predominantly in its early days where a lot of people were like, oh, why would you guys get, like, people could be like, well, there were red pillars on other sites. Like, you know? Yeah. Simone Collins: But I mean, I think even when the red pill had its height on Reddit, for example, they knew, oh, sorry. Malcolm Collins: It was a Reddit phenomenon in its early days. Simone Collins: They also knew its days were [00:29:00] numbered on Reddit. Malcolm Collins: Yeah, so they, they knew it would eventually how many plates of, of the, the early early red pill movement was Reddit. That was where you would go if you're old enough to be like me or my wife's age. And you were in that community that was the main place ideas were aired, was in that community, and you had sort of auxiliary conversations happening in other areas. But Reddit was the center of that culture. And that culture is what sprung out into the phe. Andrew Tate, other ideas on the right. So this is one sort of an explanation of how this movement came together, but also if you want to go back to within your own culture, within your own kids and churches and everything like that. Traditionalist values, like if you're like completely set on the cargo cult of the 1950s Americana. Christian Traditionalism. That's fine. We want to be allied with [00:30:00] you. We want to be on the same team with you, but you don't have a voter base to win elections. Mm-hmm. You need to work with everyone who's working against the urban monoculture or we all fail. And I'm not saying this like as an attack on people. I understand the instinct for intergroup signaling to be like. These guys are weird. This part of the movement is different and new. Jordan Peterson isn't a real Christian. John Vinky isn't a real Christian. You know what, why do we have Jews like, what's his face? Who runs the, the real, the the main main Jewish political activists on the right. Simone Collins: Ben Shapiro. Malcolm Collins: Ben Shapiro. Yes. Why do we have Jews like Ben Shapiro running huge media organizations on the right? And it's because you can't win on your own anymore. And, and in fact, it has become so fractionalized that the evangelicals who only spoke to evangelicals have. Basically disappeared from the public media environment. They've disappeared from the internet, they've disappeared from the [00:31:00] airwaves. And, and you can ask why did this happen? Where did they all go? Why is the evangelicals, I hear from today, people like Rudy z Zoomer, who we've had on the show. He's not a classic evangelical. He's like a, a a, what do you call them again? The ones from. He's a form of Calvinist Presbyterian. Okay. You know, why is it only like more understanding ones like him? And it's because they're willing to create media environments which compel outsider interaction, which is as, as he mentioned in a recent video, his audience is majority Catholic, right? Like very antagonistic to his beliefs, not like. Outwardly antagonistic. I just mean there's a lot of friction there. But he creates content in a way that engages that audience as well. If you look at our audience, you know, very Catholic, very Jewish, right, like very Mormon actually. And the iterations of the movement that say, oh, we're only gonna talk to one faction, have mostly fizzled out. And I think that this is a [00:32:00] problem where. If you are not within like the online influencer space within in the right, you don't realize this. You know, if you're like just working at the Heritage Foundation, you don't realize how unpalatable a message like we need to kick anyone who is engaged with reproductive technology that we don't like out of the movement is. To the actual base or you know, another thing that they did when actually I was like, oh my God, this would pull really bad among like the actual like red pill four chan diaspora is banning pornography. I was like, because that was part of Project 45 and we've talked with the people at the Heritage Foundation we're like, look like this is why I. The ba a lot of the bases against this you know, if you look at like the online fights recently, like Tracer, but, or like the Skull Girls controversy, the left has always been on the pro censorship side because they basically just wanna punish male sexuality. And we can capture that land, but we capture that land by. Saying, okay, I can teach my own kids something. I can tell my own [00:33:00] kids. I wouldn't be okay with this, and I can have a very different perspective for what I am Okay. With tolerating within the groups that are allied with me. Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah. But I mean, to a certain extent, I don't think there is much that, for example, organizations like Heritage Foundation can do given their donor base and the opinions of their donor base and their dependence on their jobs. I. So I don't blame them for holding the stances that they hold. They're. Malcolm Collins: I don't feel like any antagonism is, this is very different than like why I was mad at lineman stone. Like I was mad at lineman stone 'cause I thought he was being pointlessly spiteful to new people within the movement and putting out information that I didn't think was accurate. And that is, is a very different form of anger to this where I'm just like. Look, I, I get the game you're playing. I understand your donor base. I understand what you have to signal. I am totally okay with you making these arguments publicly. The only argument that I would push against [00:34:00] is these people can't be part of the new Right alliance. These people can't be part of the prenatals movement. Yeah. Because it's then we move into woke territory, and it's why the Wokes failed, because they didn't allow any ideological diversity was in their movement. Simone Collins: Yeah. And to be fair we've buried the hatchet with lime stone. We've, we've talked, it's, we're, we're good now. We, we like him. Malcolm Collins: We've talked and, and yeah, I'm, I'm totally fine as long as he doesn't attack like new people. Because look like, as people are sort of seen as like the face of a movement, I feel like really personally hurt when people come into this movement expecting a diverse and thoughtful environment. Then they get attacked by people either because of beliefs that they hold or their sexuality or something like that. And I'm like, that is not the movement that we're trying to cultivate here. Right? Like, I, I want people to feel safe with ideological diversity. So long as in terms of the policy that we're all working together to [00:35:00] implement we, we, we remember. Because it's true, we have like 98% overlap in policy goals. Yeah, exactly. In, in, in realistically implementable policy goals. You know, would, would we like to fund like genetic research in humans more? Of course. Simone Collins: But we can. And would they like to ban abortion? Well they can And would limestone love for, you know, a paid family leave and free childcare? Yes, but we can't have that. No, that's not gonna work. Work that won't pass. So like, we don't have to disagree about these things 'cause they're not gonna happen. Let's focus on the few things that actually can get passed, which is a great point to focus on. Malcolm Collins: And I think that, that that's what makes this, this alliance work, and it's something that we should rather than, because there's sort of this woke right idea that some people have been trying to push. And while I understand the sentiment behind it, I think a better way to, to align with this stuff is, look, you want to be more [00:36:00] extreme than me on some issues. We're not the left. I'm not gonna re you out of the room because you tell me something. Mm-hmm. I want to engage in constructive debate around like, what is actually gonna come as a result of this. Simone Collins: And we love those debates. They're really good debates. We, again, we love debating ironic material on the internet and the, you know, legality and when life begins. Of abortion with Heritage Foundation team members, which we do. That is fun. It's, and we, we love it and we all enjoy it. Like it's, I've, I've changed my perspective on issues. Yes. Yeah. And help us get to a more nuanced perspective. Like all of these things are positive and so it's good to debate, but it's also really good to focus on this stuff that we actually can address. 'cause we pretty much all agree on those things. Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And so I think that that within the new right alliance or the Tech Right Alliance the, this continues to work only in so far as we do not become gatekeepers. There's a big difference between disagreeing with people and attempting to gate keep support for our [00:37:00] combined cause. And where I would say even within this logical framework, gatekeeping makes sense is gatekeeping around issues. That you can actually win with on your own. Right. And gatekeeping around things like intergenerational improvement of Americans is not something you can, like, she was like, they don't want more Americans. They want better Americans. And I'm like, of course we want, do you not want better Americans? Like our instate is Captain America. That's what we're striving for. You know, we're, we're, we're striving for the, the, when people look at us and they're like, oh, this is like. Weird you know, transhumanist nonsense, right? Where it's like they want to create some sort of like post gender weirdo is like blue hair, but they Simone Collins: dress up their five-year-old son in a Captain America h Halloween costume. So whatever, Malcolm Collins: you know what, but the point I'm making is that if Elon Musk is going to represent, you know, [00:38:00] fundamentally like the. Tony Stark of this timeline. Mm-hmm. We aim to represent with our countercultural wholesomeness, the Captain America of this timeline. We aim to represent. Yes, we can make better Americans and that they don't represent a subversion of American values, but a fulfillment of everything America has ever stood for, which is pushing humanity to its absolute limits and then pass them to landing on the moon to, you know, that is what America to the, the. The atomic bomb project to the, like America has always been about over the top boundary pushing science. And I think if, yeah, we as a movement are like, no, we needed to go back to like a pre AI era and a pre-human, you know, augmentation era and a pre I want to protect the Amish Right. To be [00:39:00] that way. And I want to protect your culture's, right? Yeah. 'cause if we, if we're Simone Collins: not the ones to do it, no one's gonna protect the right of the Amish. To not be a part of some dystopian AI world, and it's not gonna be America Run, and we can't afford that. Malcolm Collins: Don't attack the one like pro technology group. Yeah. That core ideological mission is to protect you in a future where other groups will have this technology. Simone Collins: Yeah. Malcolm Collins: The, the right to be a granola human is right now something that I think a lot of people take for granted. But they don't take into account the long term of what's gonna happen if they create an environment where the granola humans become existentially hostile to the non granola humans. Simone Collins: Yeah. Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Did you like my term? They're granola human. I don't, I, do you understand what I mean when I say it? Like the crunchy granola mom? That's Yeah. Simone Collins: When we, when yeah. People hear the term granola mom or crunchy mom. They, they, it's all the same thing. I guess. Almond mom is a little different, [00:40:00] but yeah, they get it. Malcolm Collins: We, we don't push it. This stuff in the way that some technologists do for like no reason we push at it to defeat those who would impose their culture on us. Mm-hmm. And today that might be kus, which, you know, we've fought against with our school system. You can check out. IO is absolutely amazing now I really would just unmitigated be like, this is in most ways better than I'd say at least 50% of the colleges in the United States, if not 75% of the colleges in the United States. And soon I think it will be better. Unapologetically to all the colleges in the United States. Like that's where we are with the ways that we have been adapting AI to break the choke hold that the urban monoculture has on our youth. And we've made this something that you can edit whatever your religious traditions are, whether you're a Conservative Mormon or an Evangelical, or an Orthodox Jew, you can just delete nodes and we can help you with that, right? Mm-hmm. [00:41:00] We have created a system that is designed to help protect not just our values, but yours. And I think that that's where the new right is, is people with diverse values saying, I'm not here to protect just my values. I am here to protect your values. So long as you're not pushing those values on me, Simone Collins: this, which I think is closer to what the founding fathers wanted. Malcolm Collins: Oh, absolutely. This, the, the founding fathers, if you look at early America, I mean, the different colon needs were culturally radically different from each other. In all of the initial debates within getting them all to come together in one country was like, okay, but we all hate each other. Right? Okay. We all hate each other, but we work better to protect all of our independent ways of life working together. And I really like that analogy for the new right. The new right is the founding fathers against the British. It is a bunch of radically different cultural experiments and. I might think, you [00:42:00] know, what you are doing in the deep South or over in you know, Quaker Philadelphia is like a bit fruity, but like, so long as you don't impose your values legalistically on me in the back woods, like we can work together. Mm-hmm. I think that, and not just, we can work together, we can be proud to work together and build a, a wider vision of vitalism that works. And a lot of people have been like, well then what is that like? Is the new right just reactive to the left? And it's like, no, it's absolutely not. It has very clear goals, which is to one, preserve the multitude of conservative traditions that make up the American tapestry, whether that's traditional, you know, Catholic Irish or traditional Deep South Baptist or traditional Orthodox Jews or the always moving forwards form of Puritan that we represent where like the founding Father Diaz would like scratch out and be like, okay, let's try to rethink this. Let's try to rethink that. Those are [00:43:00] all classical strains of American thought that worked together in the past and can continue to work together to create, a bright future for us. So that's one thing is we work together against the urban monoculture, but it is preserving our cultural autonomy, which is first and foremost on the social front. And then on the economic front, it's about whatever works. You know, like Trump's American Academy, which is meant to create, like socializing the American educational system to destroy the. College system as it exists right now. That's very right. That's very new. Right? It's very socialist as well, you know, JD Vance's like minimum wage stuff, like our stuff around like, Hey, UBI might be necessary in an age of ai. The Doge is, hey, we need to destroy these inefficient government departments that are just burning cash right now. Or, or spending it on, you know, extending the urban monocultures reach. This is something that we can just, so all. Universally agree whi like why are we splitting hairs when there's so much left to be done [00:44:00] in the areas which we agree? Simone Collins: Does something like this coalition of ideologically very different parties aligning in the name of sovereignty exist elsewhere. I. Like, is this what the far, far right people in Germany are fighting for? Or is this just not something we really see anywhere else? Malcolm Collins: I think that this is something that we, if the far right of the like the a FD and, and and Nigel Farages party in the UK are going to survive they are going to need to learn from this form. Of quote unquote far right ideology. Mm-hmm. And I think they're doing it to an extent. But it is articulating that we are a diverse set of conservative cultural traditions where conservative is mostly just how different we are from the mainstream culture. Yeah. And we. All are working together to preserve human flourishing in the future and to preserve the flourishing of our own nation states, which we have a degree of patriotism for. But that patriotism is going to look very [00:45:00] different. One person said to me, I was talking to like a leftist report. I was on like a, B, c or something recently. They were like, you know, well, like why? Why are you trying to, or they, they said, well, certainly you wouldn't side with like the nationalist, right? And I was like, why wouldn't I side with the nationalist? Why is it such a crime to have pride in who you are in your ancestors? But in America, nationalism, if you go back to the time of the founding Fathers, is intrinsically a collection of diverse groups. And, and we don't even not represent one of those groups like anyone who knows the stories of the founding fathers, knows that they were Christian, a number of them, but they were like weird Christians. A lot of them were as well. And, and us being weird Christians doesn't make us not like part of the team that made up the founding coalition of this country. And we want to recreate a team like. That so we can fight and have a, a shot at fighting those would oppose us. We want to create the party of Captain America, not the party of the Pearl Clutcher. The left is the party of the Pearl Clutcher, not [00:46:00] us. Simone Collins: Well, it's just, it's so odd to me that we've allowed political baggage of some past movements to make pride in something that you've built and contributed to a bad thing. Yeah. Like. If you are proud to pay taxes and you're proud of what your country stands for and fights for, then why would you not be nationalistic? Although I do understand that there's plenty of people who don't like their country. But then, I don't know, get out like, or find something better because it's really, I think we're doing pretty well in, in a large scheme of things. I was just listening to. A very, very, very long analysis of the weird corruption and, and cult associations slash shaman associations of past Korean Prime ministers. And I'm just thinking like, wow, man, we're, we're doing all right. It's okay. Malcolm Collins: [00:47:00] Yeah, no, I mean, in the US we're doing really strong and I, we just wanna make sure that we don't. Take too much like over our handle because we're like, okay, we're on the winning side now and accidentally crash this alliance over things that are irrelevant from the perspective of policy that we can actually get past. Absolutely. And I also, you know, and I point out historically speaking, the idea of the American versus the, the, for example, Nazi super soldier has always been an idea of. The American chooses, you know, their culture chooses to undergo this. You know, this is them, this is their family. Whereas wizz Nazis is always forced upon some poor unsuspecting test subject. Mm-hmm. Who's from, you know, a, a differential cultural group and, and I think in America, like in other countries. In China, they might not be able to get their super soldiers without forcing people. So that becomes culturally normal. But within America, we have enough internal diversity that you have weird groups like us that are going to engage with that stuff [00:48:00] and do want to protect you. And I think that that should be seen as a blessing rather than something that you want to stamp out. Simone Collins: Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, I agree, but I am also way too aligned with you for. Steel Manning some other view. I'm, I'm MyAlly too much in your camp, so I just hope this keeps up and that we don't let this movement become fractured because that is 100%. What the left is trying to do as is shown in countless media stories of, oh, president Elon. Well, that plus these attempts to, for example, characterize the prenatals movement is deeply ideologically divided when in the end, yeah, we have raucous debates, but we have those debates with smiles on our faces and in the same room, you know, we go to each other's events. Malcolm Collins: Yeah, and it's, it's very much like, you know, and I debate the Heritage Foundation people over stuff. Like, you know, when, when does life begin, for [00:49:00] example it's not like the left where they hold this for like dogmatic and insane reasons and it's really clear that they're just trying to look like good people. They don't actually care about what's true. They clearly believe what they're saying, which is why I don't hold it against them. It reminds me of when somebody was like. You know, early was, was, you know, one of the people we work with and they're like, oh, this guy is, is homophobic, like you shouldn't work with him. And I, and I thought that about him for a while and then I looked it up and I was like, wait, he's just a Mormon. Are you saying like, I can't be friends with a Mormon, like that's just religious discrimination, right? Like he doesn't have these beliefs because he hates gay people. He has these beliefs because of his religion. Like, and it's the same with with these groups at like the Heritage Foundation. They have these beliefs where I think, you know, if you talk somebody outta IVF, you functionally killed their kids, right? Like. It's a very big deal to me because those are kids that would have existed had you not done that. And this is something that they do regularly was in their cultural groups. And then they [00:50:00] can be like, well, how do you have no animosity about that? And it goes, because I don't believe they're doing it with a single ounce of malice. I think they a thousand percent believe everything they're saying. And I think that that the movement works because they know, like when I look at my kids and I'm like, why am I pro IVF because I've hugged my kids every day. Right. Like, and in a world where that's not there, those kids don't exist. Yeah. And you can say, well, yeah, I didn't kill them, technically speaking. And it's like, well, yeah, let's be clear. There's, Simone Collins: there's just no way that Malcolm and I could have had kids without IVF. So No way. No way. She does not Malcolm Collins: have periods. Simone Collins: We tried not just that, like we tried everything leading up to that, like forcing. The periods forcing, more ovulation, forcing, like measuring everything, working with an IVF clinic on every step of the, no, none of it worked. And then we got a diagnosis and like there's just also other, other complications anatomically with me that would make it impossible. For me. Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Our kids do [00:51:00] not exist in a no IVF world. Yeah. And, and that makes it really hard for me to support that world when you love your kids as much as you love your kids. Right. Like people love their kids. Right. And the, the thought that those kids wouldn't exist is horrifying to me. So obviously I'm ideologically very invested in this mm-hmm. But not so invested that. I can't see where they're coming from and I can't see the arguments that they're making. And the way I convince them is with logic, not with dogmatism or shrieking or exclusion. Simone Collins: Yeah. Oh, well. Oh, Malcolm Collins: well anyway, love you to DeSimone. Simone Collins: I love you too, and I love that you're a big 10 kind of guy. I am so excited for this though. Anytime someone mentions mittens Romney, I'm like, this, this is the best. Let's do it. Let's, let's [00:52:00] talk. I'm so disappointed by what could have been I. Malcolm Collins: That was during the Obama era. No way. He was gonna win. Simone Collins: I know, I know. You can't win against Obama. And I was so excited when Obama won everyone. And this is where you, MIT was probably excited when Obama won. This is where you get the Malcolm Collins: craziness of supposedly if you believe the, the posted numbers that Biden beat Obama by 16 percentage points. Which is just comical in terms of turnout. But we won't go into that 'cause that's too spicy a topic. Okay. Wait, why do you need golden pants? Because if you give me the, so I, I love you. So if you trade me, so if you trade me golden pants, then I'll get anything you want. Even golden pants and golden skirts. And golden glasses. But if you give me golden pants. Will you have golden pants, mommy? Yeah. Well, I can also, I'm gonna get you [00:53:00] Umma Infinity dollars when I become a adult if you give me those golden pants. But how will having Golden pants give you Infinity dollars? No, I can just make it when become a doctor. Oh, so you'll pay me back later? Yeah, when I go on the cruise because. 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Then, then, um, so when you like us, the graph to the channel and put it down the wall, what you like, it'll give you it. If you went that, wow, it'll give you it when I become an adult because I'm already kid. I, my fees sold. I don't have that much money. I just have my collector. And do you see some cars and a box and. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit basedcamppodcast.substack.com