Guest Aydin Paladin: The First Right Wing Youtuber We Watched

In this episode of Based Camp, Malcolm and Simone Collins sit down with longtime right-wing creator and social scientist Aydin Paladin (one of the earliest anti-woke voices online).

They discuss her path from trying Norse paganism to Christianity after a near-death experience, starting her channel during the 2016 Trump campaign, the replication crisis in social science, and why the right needs its own researchers.

Aydin shares details on the Beowulf Foundation’s projects—including Wolfings Publishing (reviving out-of-print and banned books), the Witan conferences, and upcoming parallel-economy tools like VPN and DNA services.

The conversation covers the evolution of the online right: from libertarian edginess and Gamergate-era aesthetics to pro-natalism, tech optimism, monarchist thinking, and building real community instead of pure reaction. They also dig into what the left’s next major cause might be, the gender dynamics shift on the right, cancellations, the mentorship gap for young creators, and why democracy as currently structured is under strain.

Check out Aydin channels (AydinPaladin + ScienceSibyl) and Wyflings Publishing for books by Ed Dutton, historical works, and more.

[00:00:01] Malcolm Collins: I am very excited to be with you all today. Today, we have on a guest, Aydian Paladin, who is a online right-wing content creator that I watched before we became right-wing. When we still voted Democrat, I watched her channel. So you can thank her channel in part for converting...

[00:00:25] I don’t know what you did, Simone. But for converting both of us. And, and tha- this is one of the things that I often tell people about- Mm-hmm ... you know, you end up converting somebody between teams. , You often don’t think about it as just, like, a numbers game. But that person can then one day go on to be influential themselves, or, and I think the most important thing, is the positive impact it often has on individuals’ lives.

[00:00:49] When they start being like, “Hey, you know what? Maybe I should do, like, a monogamous marriage.” Like, or, “That, that’d be neat.” And then you end up you know, having a bunch of kids and being like, “Oh, this is, is pretty fun.” But Welcome on the show. What I wanted to start with, because you’re very unique among the guests that we’ve had, in that you were part of wave one anti-woke, right?

[00:01:14] Yeah. Like, Nux has been on the show, and he’s been making stuff for him forever, but he didn’t become a right-wing guy until fairly recently. Yeah, yeah. Right? But you were out there so long ago, and I actually find this to be very interesting the... Your contemporaneous voices were people like ShortFatOtaku when he was still somebody who people listened to in this space.

[00:01:38] Simone Collins: Yeah.

[00:01:39] Malcolm Collins: And I find the difference in both of your careers sort of since then, and both of your ideologies since then, to be sort of an interesting story in how this wider movement developed. So can you sort of talk about that? Like, what first got you into this? And, and a quick note for people, you used to be a...

[00:02:00] actually, maybe a more interesting question. You used to be i- into Norse mythology. Like, that was your religion. Oh,

[00:02:04] Aydin Paladin: yeah. What made you change? Well, I didn’t, I didn’t talk about it too much on the channel, but I, I, I was you know, I was trying to be spiritual, faithful, because I’d read the research on it, and it’s- it’s a positive thing.

[00:02:15] Well, I never really believed in it, but I tried to convince myself of it. I had a near-death experience now six years ago. I was in hospital for months. And then I you know, saw that I thought that was my calling to Christ, and I’ve been a Christian ever since. So, you know, that was my path there.

[00:02:29] Was it

[00:02:29] Malcolm Collins: really just the near-death experience? Or were there- Yeah ... like, things you were reading around that time or other things you were doing?

[00:02:35] Aydin Paladin: It may have been as well. I, I never f- felt anything for the, the Norse paganism stuff. It was, that was a response to research says that this is good for you, that this helps provide meaning in life and the sense of purpose.

[00:02:47] But it didn’t... I, I guess I couldn’t really... I never really believed in it in the way that, you know, having a near-death experience, as many, as, as often reported will give people a, a different kind of perspective on things, right?

[00:02:59] Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

[00:02:59] Aydin Paladin: And going, “Oh, maybe I need to reconsider this a little bit more seriously as your weight of your soul is on it,” you know?

[00:03:05] One way or another potentially.

[00:03:07] Malcolm Collins: This is, it’s very interesting that you answer that way because it’s literally the same thing happened to us- Mm. Yeah ... where we first became religious because we were having kids- Mm-hmm ... and we were just like, “Well, all the research says they’re better off if they’re raised in a- Yeah

[00:03:20] religious household, so we’ll pretend.” Yeah. And then we started reading the Bible and being like- Mm-hmm ... “Wait a second, this seems, like, weirdly true and sense-making- Yeah ... in a way I didn’t expect given the, you know, prejudices I had.”

[00:03:34] Aydin Paladin: Yeah. It was- Same thing for me as well. Yeah, I, I’d grown up with, particularly growing up in the ‘90s, I think there was a lot of, at that period of time, and late ‘80s and 2000s as well, I guess, up until quite recently there have been these very negative connotations in public sort of mass media about Christianity being or, or any kind of faith as being ascientific.

[00:03:54] Whereas actually I found that many things that are presented in the Bible and in you know, biblical [00:04:00] narratives going all the way back, ‘cause to, to the Christian story itself are actually- Yeah ... cogent with the scientific narrative as well.

[00:04:06] Malcolm Collins: Yeah. But it- I, I often, you know, at, when I’m telling parents, like, how do you keep your kids in the religion and everything like that?

[00:04:14] Arguing with the science is not a bad way to go, to be like, “In just reality, like, look at society right now. It doesn’t- Yeah ... seem to be working, right? Like, do you want to...” I, I wanted to get, when you created your channel originally, did you conceive it as, like, a science and psychology channel?

[00:04:31] Aydin Paladin: No, I don’t. I, well, sort of.

[00:04:32] At that time I was taking a sabbatical from doctoral school. I had been in doctoral school at the time. I, it, I ended up just leaving, but at the time it was just a sabbatical ‘cause I was really stressed out and I was, I was talking to my... I used to call my dad every day and I’d talk to him about... It, this was during 2016.

[00:04:48] I, I, or it would’ve been 2017. It was right before the election. Mm-hmm. Trump’s first election. And it was during that el- that campaign cycle. I would just call him every day and I’d talk to him about politics, and he said, “Why don’t you go make a YouTube channel and talk to people in the ether instead of calling me up every day and talking to me about it?”

[00:05:05] Malcolm Collins: What a thing for a parent to say. Oh my God.

[00:05:07] Aydin Paladin: Well, I wasn’t, I wasn’t in grad or that would’ve been doc school. I wasn’t in doctoral school at the time ‘cause I was taking some time off, and I just ended up, I really liked doing it. I was very stressed out with doc school, so I just decided not to go back, and I got to do what I wanted, which was talk into the ether about politics you know, as as it interested me, but also be able to talk about my first passion and what my background is in, which is social science and statistics, and talk about how, you know, even though it’s social science I think this is a, a bit of a, something I lament with the right wing more broadly.

[00:05:38] There’s sort of a distrust of science, and particularly- Mm ... a distrust of social science. That is warranted. Yeah. And it is the replication crisis is 49.3% of all studies in behavioral science can be replicated, so it, there’s a major, major problem in social science, and there’s a lot of political bias that goes into it.

[00:05:55] But if you know how to read the studies and look sort of through the BS and just look at statistics, then you can actually find a lot of useful information, and largely it aligns with right wing perspectives on the world because- Of course it does. So, you know-

[00:06:10] Malcolm Collins: Well, no, I, I, I think that this is a really important point I wanna flag here, which is yes, the field is heavily captured, but that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t be doing as much research into it as possible.

[00:06:23] Mm-hmm. Because with understanding how people think, how society moves, the differences between men and women- Mm-hmm ... we can act in a way and build systems that are better in the long term. Yes. And so- Yeah ... that requires that we have our own people out there doing stuff. Before we get too far into this, I want to now plug this new thing you’re working on- Yes

[00:06:48] ‘cause it’s really cool. And it fits this idea of we need to have our own social scientists, but not just our own social scientists, but when, you know, people are getting canceled all the time, and people pulling sponsorships from them, and recently I’ve been like, “You know what I wanna do? I wanna get our company to a place where we can just give people sponsorships whenever they lose one.”

[00:07:06] And we can just make a product for whatever product that’s been pulled from them. And you’re already working on a wider project like this. Can you talk about that?

[00:07:14] Aydin Paladin: Yes. Yeah, recently I was brought on to do marketing and PR kind of stuff, which is why I reached out to you in the first place, to see if you would wanna work together with this.

[00:07:21] Mm. It’s actually not one company. There’s sort of a, an overarching company that runs things. But which is the Beowulf Foundation. But from this one organization, we have a lot of different companies and organizations that work with us. Now, for a couple of years now, we’ve had our publishing house, which is Wolfings Publishing, and we not only have contemporary works from people like, Dr.

[00:07:41] Ed Dutton, The Jolly Heretic. Mm. But we also have historical works, many of which were previously out of print or outright banned. So for example, one of our, our top sellers is Like the Roman: The Life of Enoch Powell by Simon Heffer. That was originally published in 1998, but it was out of print for years because, well, talking about Enoch Powell is a little bit [00:08:00] of a taboo subject for some people.

[00:08:01] He’s considered too extreme, too right-wing for some people. We also have our magazine, The Corncrake, that we you can buy there as well. And there, we constantly have new publications and old publications that we are reviving and bringing back. So that’s kind of been our flagship is our publishing house, which makes a lot of sense coming from th- you know, this kind of side of things.

[00:08:19] A lot of these books have been lost, or they will be lost if we don’t preserve them. And then we’ve also started taking over Shieldings and, and working with Shieldings, which is our live events, and we’ve been putting on the Witan now for, ooh, I think it, this is the fifth year, which is a live conference in England.

[00:08:34] We also now do them in Germany as well. I’ve lived in the UK for the last seven years, and actually it is in not this, this upcoming weekend, but the weekend after, this year’s Witan- Oh, cool ... in in England. Witan. Which it is always a great event. Just it’s- Oh ... a live talk. Sorry, continue.

[00:08:49] Malcolm Collins: Well, a, a, a Witan is traditionally the name- Mm-hmm

[00:08:51] for, like a, a Celtic council, right? Yes. So they, they, that’s what they named it after?

[00:08:56] Aydin Paladin: Yes, it’s a meeting of, of kings or lords and, and learned people. So that, that is where the name comes from there. And I, I think it has been five years now they’ve been putting it on. It’s a fantastic event.

[00:09:06] Malcolm Collins: You’ll- And you said they had other projects-

[00:09:08] come to LA ... like VPNs or something? Yes.

[00:09:10] Aydin Paladin: That is planned. I can’t announce it officially yet, but we do have a VPN. We will also have a DNA ancestry analysis. And again, the whole kind of point of this is to have many heads of the Hydra, many arms of the octopus so that we can provide alternative service or alternative access to these same services that people already use except for, from an ideologically and politically aligned group.

[00:09:30] And I’ve always- Oh ... wanted people to do this stuff ... I have some connections- Yeah ...

[00:09:33] Malcolm Collins: with your DNA-

[00:09:34] Aydin Paladin: Mm-hmm ...

[00:09:34] Malcolm Collins: project that might be useful. Oh yeah,

[00:09:37] Aydin Paladin: for sure ...

[00:09:37] Malcolm Collins: because, you know, we know some companies that the more DNA they can get, the better. Yes, exactly. For, for doing better research. Mm-hmm. Because a lot of the, the companies, the, like the big national data banks like the UK National Data Bank shut down public access- Yes

[00:09:51] the moment somebody noticed that one sub-demographic had smex with their daughters at a rate of- Yes ... like 5,000% any other demographic, and then they said, “Publishing that is hateful.”

[00:10:04] Aydin Paladin: Which was unfortunate, ‘cause the, the- Yeah ... UK’s DNA stuff was some of the most well-copped. It was extremely- Yeah ... extremely useful.

[00:10:11] I had done research using their databases before, but yeah, of course you can’t get access to that now for political reasons.

[00:10:17] Malcolm Collins: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

[00:10:17] Aydin Paladin: Unfortunately.

[00:10:18] Malcolm Collins: Okay. So to go back to so guys, go check that out. We’re gonna mention it again at the end of the episode. Beginning to build our own products, our own counter community of, of, like, networks of products I think is really, really important.

[00:10:33] Yeah. That way we have Chud Tech on where you can up-vote and put your own products- Yeah ... in, on, on RFAB. It’s the, it’s the- Yeah, yeah ... control button. Yeah. Trying to share other people’s projects who are making cool stuff, just because the, we have such an enormous capability anyone who’s watching this right now, to make your own things.

[00:10:50] And that’s the only way w- we can... It is going to be very hard for us to recapture the institutions, right? Like, when organizations go woke we might be able to starve them like what happened with, like, E- what, what, what was the company? Ubi- Ubisoft. Oh, yeah. But, like, we can’t... No matter... They’d literally rather go bankrupt- Yeah

[00:11:10] than hire, like, a consultant like you or me to come in and clean it up, right? You know. And so that means the only option for us is a, a parallel economy.

[00:11:19] Aydin Paladin: Yes, indeed.

[00:11:21] Malcolm Collins: But to continue, when you first came on YouTube during that Trump election- Mm ... did you consider yourself right wing or did that happen later?

[00:11:30] Aydin Paladin: You know, I, I was very... I’d never been very, very political. I was a little bit when I was a teenager, and I was a libertarian. So, I, you know, Ron Paul libertarian. I loved Ron Paul. I wrote in Ron Paul- Yeah ... in 2008. So I’ve always been, I guess, right leaning. So it wasn’t, there wasn’t a big shift for me.

[00:11:45] But, you know, I did buy into some, a lot, a lot of the sort of common ideas that are, are left-leaning of the popular gestalt about, like, gay marriage and things like that and homosexuality more broadly. S- you know, there were a lot of things that were just kind of in the milieu [00:12:00] where it had become normalized to such a degree that, yeah, sure, I went, “That’s...

[00:12:03] I don’t see the problem with that.” Of course, you know, love is love or whatever it happens to be. I’m, I’m not like, you know, and I hate gay people now, but however, there’s certainly issues there, and that requires some thinking outside of the heterodoxy, or excuse me, the orthodoxy and the homogeneity of thought within pop culture.

[00:12:20] So.

[00:12:21] Malcolm Collins: What’s really interesting about what you’re saying here is, I mean, I would have during that time period considered myself a libertarian. Mm-hmm. Although I never would have said the word libertarian- ... because I, I find libertarian groups obnoxious. Yeah. But I would like... I, I almost feel like there was a period where the being a libertarian was the basic bitch option in life.

[00:12:40] Yeah. Yeah. And I was choosing that option. And having the same types of subjects that I was afraid to really, you know, the trans stuff I was afraid to look into too much. The- Yeah ... you know, i- e- a lot of the stuff around same-sex attraction I was afraid to look into and talk about. And what I think was really interesting about you as a creator is when you first went out there, while you said stuff that I knew would get me scolded if I said at work or something like that-

[00:13:12] It, it wasn’t really over the line. It was still in the same general field of, like, the type of stuff that ShortFatOtaku was talking about. Yeah. Where it just felt like edgy, original. But you over time evolved to become eventually, like, with the rest of the movement, ‘cause it wasn’t just you and me, it was like-

[00:13:36] Aydin Paladin: Oh

[00:13:36] a generation I mean, Sargon’s been around, you know, he’s been around since that time. Some of the people, a lot of them are gone somebody, a lot of them are gone. Like, I used to be pretty good friends with this guy Dr. Layman. I loved his stuff. He did stuff that was very similar to sort of what SFO or Sargon were doing at the time.

[00:13:51] V is still around. He’s, he’s been around- Yeah ... since, since that time. Arch is still around. So a lot of them are, but a lot of people have just come and gone with, you know, at the time. Well, Arch

[00:13:59] Malcolm Collins: Cast wasn’t political back then, right?

[00:14:01] Aydin Paladin: No, it wasn’t. Well, you know, I, I guess like sort of at some point it started to c- become that.

[00:14:04] But he, he’s been around in the same space for a long time, and so the, some of those people have become more political, some of them have become less political. But who’ve just been around since that time. When you say V, you

[00:14:12] Malcolm Collins: mean Romanian Troll?

[00:14:13] Aydin Paladin: Yes, yes. Okay The Romanian Troll, yes. That’d be- Who

[00:14:15] Malcolm Collins: recently became a what are, what we call them, face fags.

[00:14:19] Oh, yeah ... like who are not, yeah, g- going, going public with their identity. Sorry, she used to be, or like the relationship, my para-social relationship with her- Yeah ... is with like a Sims wave avatar because that’s ... w- was it a- Yeah ... Sims wave style or?

[00:14:35] Aydin Paladin: I don’t... No, V, because he’s the Romanian guy.

[00:14:37] Malcolm Collins: No, you.

[00:14:38] Aydin Paladin: Oh, me. Yeah, sorry. I got... Sorry, I got

[00:14:41] Malcolm Collins: confused. You used to have an image. Yeah. You weren’t always a, a face person.

[00:14:43] Aydin Paladin: Yeah, right. Yeah. I, I, I still I know occasionally, not rarely, or excuse me, rarely anymore, but occasionally I will use the avatar. Yeah, I, I was the, the, you know, cartoon... Everyone did that back then with the PNG tube stuff where you just change out your PNG every couple of after you say something to look like it’s reacting to what you’re saying.

[00:15:02] It was very common. But yeah, I had like a- Oh, wow ... vaporwave, synthwave thing aesthetic, yeah.

[00:15:06] Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Why did you choose that, by the way? Because Simone was re- we did our website in a synthwave style and she goes- Ooh ... “Why, why is this so common in like right-wing conversations?” Yeah,

[00:15:14] Simone Collins: why do we all choose synthwave?

[00:15:15] Yeah.

[00:15:16] Aydin Paladin: I d- I think it’s like fash wave ki- it’s like the- ... the cool aesthetic of it. It’s like this, well, that was the future we were promised, I guess, is that maybe not a cyberpunk- Ah ... dystopia, but it’s like everything will be shiny. And I’m feeling the ‘90s. It’s like everything in the future’s gonna be shiny and neon.

[00:15:31] Simone Collins: So. Yes,

[00:15:32] Aydin Paladin: so

[00:15:32] Malcolm Collins: true. Yeah. You know? Well, actually that brings me to an idea here where I think a lot of what our site has increasingly coalesced around fighting for, and I think Leaflet did a good job of sort of synthesizing this with her stellar humanism concept, is this idea of a very optimistic, bright future for humanity where humanity is thriving.

[00:15:54] And actually, I, I don’t know if you’ve commented on this yet, but what’s your take on [00:16:00] the weird sort of way that the right has become the party of technology and AI, and the left has become very anti-technology and AI?

[00:16:08] Aydin Paladin: Well, I, I mean, I think the whole way that the left currently operates is on this it’s not, the sort of third worldest stuff is part of it, but it’s, it’s all very regressive actually.

[00:16:17] They call themselves progressive, but they are regressive. It’s about f- you know, getting people bogged down in the differences between each other and just constant grievance, constant intr- so that you get distracted by the little differences between me and you, between men and women. But we have to also paste all over it at the same time, but be constantly aware of it at all times.

[00:16:36] You can’t move past that. Mm-hmm. You can’t just accept that things are sometimes a way. Mm-hmm. Sometimes things just exist. There are differences between people. They can’t be ameliorated. They will always exist. They have to go in constant... And this is, this is the c- comes from the Hegelian dialectic of everything has to be deconstructed all of the time.

[00:16:51] Mm-hmm. You can’t progress actually towards any sort of future if you are stuck engaging in the Hegelian dialectic and deconstructing everything forever. So I think that’s why they get basically stuck.

[00:17:03] Malcolm Collins: What are your, what are your thoughts on... One, one of, I think the big questions right now culturally is the left sort of abandoned environmentalism.

[00:17:11] Like, you know, even Greta Thunberg- Yeah ... gave it up. They seem to have abandoned a lot of their like the trans movement seems in heavy retrograde right now. Yeah. The, you have the the, they, they, Gaza, when Trump ended that, that really blew their sails out on that thing. Like, what do you think is the next thing for them?

[00:17:32] Their, their next BLM?

[00:17:35] Aydin Paladin: Yeah, I, you know, I’ve been speculating on this, and I can see that what, what interests people, why, what I see them talking about, I think it’s gonna be gender politics again. I think it’ll be right back in 2014 feminism kind of stuff in many ways. Mm. And that might lead back into introducing the transgender stuff.

[00:17:50] They just went too far with it. They went way too far with the transgender stuff. It’s still, it’s, I am seeing it come back up in common discourse more commonly, particularly- Mm ... with the women’s basketball stuff that happened recently. That all stuff, I think particularly in r- talking like very different world now in many ways politically than it was in 2014.

[00:18:09] In everything that has happened in Iran, everything that has happened in terms of foreign policy issues, things like Gaza that the left were very fired up about for years about Palestine.

[00:18:18] Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

[00:18:18] Aydin Paladin: And now that’s dissipating. I, I, I feel like, a- and all of the, the more intense sort of racial animus and, and racial discourse of the summer of love, that stuff I think got too intense for people.

[00:18:29] They wanna go back to a little bit of the safe zone where let’s talk about gender politics, because comparatively, that’s more comfortable and safe. That’s- Things got too serious in, in the Middle East.

[00:18:42] Malcolm Collins: That’s fascinating. I, but we’ve sort of had the, the opposite take where we sort of look at, like, Hasan locking Destiny- Yeah

[00:18:48] out of the DNC, and see this as sort of like the, the middle ground guy, Destiny-

[00:18:53] Aydin Paladin: Yeah ...

[00:18:53] Malcolm Collins: being the, the outside, and then the centering of, I guess, what I call, like, the terrorist left, the left that just, like, hates the West.

[00:19:03] Aydin Paladin: Yeah.

[00:19:03] Malcolm Collins: And, and I, so I thought maybe just, like, anti-Western sentiment would be the next thing.

[00:19:08] Aydin Paladin: Well, I think from the right, I’m already seeing a very lot of what I, I would call counter jihad of or return to freedom fries, which is a lot of ruh roh, we are back. It is George Bush as president again in the many of that kind of sense. And on the left you get the opposite, is essentially we’re the pro terrorism side.

[00:19:24] We are- Mm ... pro jihad. Mm-hmm ... and, and that’s the third worldest mindset that I did, I did mention briefly. I’ve seen that as well. I think, yeah, with, with Hasan, I, I don’t know how long his utility lasts to the left, ‘cause you’re also seeing them saying, “Woke one was crazy.” All of the, you know, that stuff, that’s what AOC has said, woke one is crazy.

[00:19:43] I’m seeing more and more of them come out and say, “No, we’re woke too,” which is clearly gonna be something different than maybe the, I think not the transgender stuff. I think that was a massive failure.

[00:19:52] Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

[00:19:52] Aydin Paladin: So for them.

[00:19:53] Malcolm Collins: Well, with Hasan, actually, we might be getting him. We’ll see if w- it ends up getting him the platform, but we’re working- Yeah

[00:19:58] right now with the Senate, [00:20:00] what committee?

[00:20:01] Simone Collins: The Senate Commerce Committee

[00:20:03] Malcolm Collins: Yeah, and we put together a big dossier Okay ... like, like 18 pages or something like that of going through the differential treatment that Twitch and YouTube- Yeah ... have been giving people. So we’ll see if we can get something triggered there.

[00:20:13] But I mean, like, the, it, it, it, it’s in the best interest of the administration, so. Yes. I would, I would really like to be fighting against the left where it’s just, like, gender politics again.

[00:20:23] Aydin Paladin: Yeah.

[00:20:24] Simone Collins: Oh, that would, that would be gender again. See, I think e- When you were like, “It’s gonna be gender again,” I’m like, “Please make it gender again.”

[00:20:28] I,

[00:20:29] Aydin Paladin: I think, it’s a hunch, I think there’s gonna be the counter-jihad versus the, yeah, jihad sort of sides, the Third World aside. I do think that’s probably likely as well. But I, I also think people were burned out, and a little bit of comfy gender politics- Comfy ... I think would make some people quite happy.

[00:20:45] So comfy’s so boring.

[00:20:46] Simone Collins: You know, I think, I, I honestly didn’t believe that was the case until this morning, because I thought the big war was gonna be pro-AI, anti-AI. Oh, yeah. Which of course is another really huge thing. But then although I’ve been avoiding coverage of it, the, the Lindsey Clancy trial, someone sent me that a, a huge portion of the internet apparently is just vehemently refusing to believe that this woman killed her own children.

[00:21:10] Aydin Paladin: Yeah.

[00:21:10] Simone Collins: And they’re like, “Obviously the husband did it. And even if she did it, she didn’t do it. He did it.” No, it, ‘

[00:21:16] Aydin Paladin: cause of-

[00:21:16] Simone Collins: Like, they refuse ...

[00:21:17] Aydin Paladin: his, her, their star signs. I mean, it’s, it’s very- Yes ... very, very woman-coded stuff going on there, but women are- It’s so strange ... I, “He’s, he’s got a scary m- he’s got this scary face, I can tell that he’s

[00:21:28] Simone Collins: dark triad.”

[00:21:28] No, it’s merely because he’s a man. Yes, okay. Like, a woman is not she did not do it. Yes. Even if she did not do it, just like this, like, I remember someone saying to me, a notary being like, “Vote blue no matter who.” Yeah. And I was like, “Wait, do people actually do that?” Yeah. Do they just like, “Look, I’m gonna blindly toe a line and no matter what you tell me, I’m gonna toe that line.”

[00:21:47] And I feel like there’s a new line of, like, “I don’t care what you tell me. You know, either men or women, they’re evil. They’re wrong.” Yeah. “They’re evil, they’re bad, and they always murder, and they’re always the wrong one. It doesn’t matter what the evidence is.” So you are probably onto something really good there.

[00:22:01] Malcolm Collins: Well, what’s very interesting if they do go that direction- Yeah ... is that the right of today is not the misogynistic right that existed, like, eight years ago, or like d- during woke one. Yeah.

[00:22:14] Simone Collins: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:22:15] Malcolm Collins: The, the, the A- and anti- Andrew Tate ... Gamergate-

[00:22:17] Simone Collins: Yeah, Andrew Tate’s off. He’s, he’s gone

[00:22:19] Malcolm Collins: to like, The Gamergate community was really mixed with the red pill community- Mm-hmm

[00:22:25] and the pickup artist community, and the Andrew Tate-o-sphere.

[00:22:29] Simone Collins: Yeah.

[00:22:29] Malcolm Collins: And he’s-

[00:22:30] Simone Collins: But now he’s a Taliban icon. It’s a totally different world. Yes. Yeah.

[00:22:33] Malcolm Collins: Yeah. What’s really fascinating is as w- we evolved as a movement, a big part of that evolution has been about, hey, like- Treat women well, right? Like be, be decent, right?

[00:22:49] Like we don’t like the gender war stuff, but like be decent, right? And I think that part of that we’ve, we’ve talked about like why this happened. Actually, what are your thoughts? Why did that happen?

[00:23:01] Aydin Paladin: In terms of why did the right... Well, I mean, there’s still some of that going on. There’s that whole sort of s- side of what I would call, like, right adjacent.

[00:23:08] They’re not explicitly political, but they end up in the same spaces of, like, the looksmaxxers, the clavicular type people who are popular right now.

[00:23:14] Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

[00:23:15] Aydin Paladin: Which is... And I, I actually have a scientific rationale for why I think that’s happening. S- and we won’t get more into it with the right people. Go into it, by the way, but

[00:23:20] Malcolm Collins: continue.

[00:23:21] Aydin Paladin: I d- I don’t know. I think part of it is some people have to have figured out at some point that it... Just throwing women out and hating women is not going to be a successful strategy. Yeah. Particularly for a right-wing movement that should have, that should be pro-natalist. Like, the, you know, if y- you at least have to figure out how to tolerate women if nothing else, and not just this, ‘cause, like, MGTOW has massively dropped in popularity. That was a huge thing for years. Not, Yeah ... not, like, men’s rights stuff. There’s still work obviously that needs to be done, particularly in the legal system with that. But the men who were just kind of checking out of society, one of the things I, I came up in my recent research is that women are checking out of sexual relationships as well.

[00:23:59] It’s all of Gen Z. Yeah. [00:24:00] So all of them are increasingly reporting not having relationships for the last three to four months in ways that are much higher than they were just 10 or 15 years ago. So I think people are starting to realize that there is, there have ac- has actually been a gender, sex schism that has been created where people, oh, because of the s- situations in which they grew up.

[00:24:20] If you were growing up during the 2000s or the 2010s in particular, you were coming of age during the 2010s, and during the era of Me Too. And during the era of- Yeah ... also where women are constantly told that no man is good enough for you, you know, that you, you, you have to be, hold, have the highest standards possible.

[00:24:36] Mm-hmm. No wonder those people who are now adults aren’t seeking out relationships.

[00:24:40] Malcolm Collins: Well, I think part of what drove this change that happened in the community is, you know, when I first entered the, the proto version of this community I had been a young man. I’d been socialized to be like, “Your value in society is the women you have sex with,” right?

[00:24:57] Like, that is the measure of a man, how many women you have sex with and how hot they are. And so, you know, going out there and sleeping around a lot, but I want, I want to sleep around more. I want more of that, right? And it is the women who are preventing me from having the more of that. Mm-hmm. And then the community began to coalesce, and the, the, the thing that sort of drove it above all else was a search for what is actually true.

[00:25:24] Yeah. And I think it became obvious even outside of religious mores and everything like that, that wait, this, the, the me wanting to sleep around with a ton of people, that was actually part of the lie. Yeah. That was part of the, the stuff being held over my eyes. And so the, the problems to that, like when you look with Andrew Tate, he converts to Islam so he can have a harem and everything like that.

[00:25:49] Yeah. And I think, That and the getting more into, I’d say, Christian or traditional Western values for a lot of the movement has also been like, “Wait, that’s not cool.” Right? Like, “That’s not a cool thing to do. That’s not a cool way to treat a woman,” right? Mm-hmm. Like, why would you... I wouldn’t want my-

[00:26:06] Simone Collins: Yeah

[00:26:06] Malcolm Collins: and people start thinking daughter and stuff like that. And then the other thing that really changed it, which I’ve mentioned, and I don’t know how much you track this, is the Vtuber community becoming popular in right-wing- Yeah ... spaces and becoming accepted in right-wing spaces- Yeah ... allowed for older women, and when I say older women, I don’t mean old women.

[00:26:23] I just mean it, it, it’s fairly hard to become a female influencer with your face if you’re, like, 30 plus, right?

[00:26:30] Aydin Paladin: Yeah.

[00:26:30] Malcolm Collins: And so-

[00:26:31] Aydin Paladin: I, I’d say it’s probably hard if you’re, if you’re not started, I, I mean, unless you’re willing to, like, unless you’re willing to show a lot of skin and stuff and you’re quite hot, you, you, really, women have- Yeah

[00:26:39] are at a, you know, timescale there, where if you, if that’s, ‘cause that’s the way that the vast majority of women get very popular in terms- Yeah ... of doing live streaming is being very attractive. But yeah, if you’re, you know, a little bit older or something, or you don’t feel comfortable with that, Vtubing a lot, which it, either, it could be all sorts of reasons why you might prefer to be, do Vtubing over being on camera.

[00:26:58] Yeah. It gives a whole new degree of latitude for women to enter the space without feeling like they’re forced to be on camera, they f- forced to look a certain way.

[00:27:07] Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yeah. And well, and that caused, I mean, you were one of the first female influencers in this space, but that allowed for many more offering, I think a female perspective helps moderate us.

[00:27:18] Mm-hmm. But what, what the, the wider point I’m making is if the left goes full on misandrist again, they’re going to be crashing against a force that doesn’t look like the misogynistic opposite that existed on the right in the past, and I think it’s gonna look really bad for them.

[00:27:35] Aydin Paladin: They’re gonna have... If they do, I mean, you know, I live in the Channel Islands, which is, it’s, where it’s not part of the UK, but it’s it’s basically the UK.

[00:27:41] Yeah. And s- so I of course see the Islamification of things, the, the counter-jihad is much more, and, and the jihad aspects are forming marching lines here much more staunchly. That’s all the Green Party is here.

[00:27:52] Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

[00:27:52] Aydin Paladin: For example. They have made that pretty much explicitly clear that they are a you know, pro third worldist they are pro jihad, and [00:28:00] Islamic takeover party.

[00:28:01] And I, you, I’m seeing that also as well in the Democrats too, and that’s been going on for years, particularly with the, you know, conflicts involving Israel and Iran, et cetera, et cetera. So you are gonna end up with the left in many ways probably taking over the pro third worldist, pro-Islamic positions.

[00:28:18] And then if you’ve got all, you know, but the left is full of women. It’s full of, of young- Mm ... you know, full of feminist women and old feminist women, people who’ve lived their whole lives, you know, believing in a, a whole slew of very left-wing feminist beliefs now being asked to take in men who don’t believe that they should have any rights-

[00:28:35] Simone Collins: Mm.

[00:28:36] Mm ...

[00:28:36] Aydin Paladin: whatsoever. And, and say, “No, we can get along.” Now this has been a conflict that’s been boiling there for years, but sort of you’ll reach a saturation point, particularly in places like the UK, particularly in parts of Europe that are increasing in, and just not the, you know, flood of the immigrants does not stop.

[00:28:51] So at some point a lot of, it’s gonna, I mean, obviously it was the rape and inquiry report that came out earlier this year. But which is, you know, just a fraction actually of, of how bad things really are. You can’t have feminist beliefs and a feminist you know, pro feminist society that’s also full of people who don’t believe that women should have any rights- Well, I mean, yeah, but then-

[00:29:11] particularly not women of your group that aren’t, isn’t part of their group.

[00:29:14] Simone Collins: Yeah.

[00:29:14] Malcolm Collins: I, yeah, I, I mean, I, I, I wonder, Yeah, and I think this is the fundamental conflict on the left is, is which way does it go? Mm-hmm. Does it go back to moderate feminism or does it just become the party of a third world takeover, right?

[00:29:25] Like specifically a jihadist. Like there, there are parts of the left, what I’ve noticed recently, are more specifically just pro-Islam than anything else. Yeah. And, and sort of violent Islam. That that’s become like the cool edgy thing to be about and we’re increasingly seeing leftist influencers being of, of these- Yeah

[00:29:47] these groups, like Mondami and stuff like this, right? And that terrifies me because I don’t want to be fighting against a group that is that fundamentally evil. Like I, I prefer the two parties of the ‘90s or wherever, where it’s like a polite disagreement. And this, because when it gets existential, what I don’t think the left realizes when they’re letting in more and more people is the right is moving to a more and more extreme position.

[00:30:10] Yeah. And when I talk to the other people I know in this sphere and stuff like this, the takeaway from ICE isn’t like, “Oh, that looked terrible,” or something like that. It’s like, “They didn’t, they did all of that and they still didn’t make that much of an impact?” Yeah. Then we need to go 100 times harder.

[00:30:29] Yeah. A- and then when this happens in places like the UK or Germany where you have much larger populations, it’s gonna look awful.

[00:30:35] Aydin Paladin: Oh, yeah. I mean, that’s, that, that is the major contention currently is, is, you know, Rupert Lowe says, “Millions must go.” Nigel Farage is not, will not go that far, won’t give any kind of numbers.

[00:30:44] But even so, yeah, with all of the, the chaos involving ICE earlier in just this year, which is, it feels like, I don’t know why, maybe it just feels like it was already an age ago when all of the stuff with Alex Preddy and Renee Good occurred in Minnesota, right? Which was a huge, huge news about, you know, oh, we need to stop ICE.

[00:31:02] We need to put a stop to either they’re separating families. Mm-hmm. People were innocent people were getting killed. And largely put the kibosh on a lot of that stuff. It did, it really did slow down and it was like the, you know, Trump’s, well, I think it’s ‘cause Iran happened. But, you know, all of Trump’s sort of pushes at the time, which were all directed towards getting people, illegals out of the country, just kind of was like

[00:31:20] I think people also, they fell out of the news cycle ‘cause they, they realized also, yeah, how difficult it is going to be to get those people out of the country- Yeah ... if you have to drag every single one of them kicking and screaming. Now, there’s other ways you can get them out, you know, that, that they will self-deport under certain conditions.

[00:31:36] But yeah, I, I think that has enough people, I think in many ways dis- feeling disheartened because it is gonna be very difficult. There’s millions and millions of these people in countries, not just, not just the United States. Yeah. But again, you know, Europe is facing a very serious problem, in some ways that is worse than the United States-

[00:31:55] Malcolm Collins: So, so when she says these people-

[00:31:57] because of the origin ... I want to, for anybody who’s watching this with, like, a, a [00:32:00] negative skew- Yeah ... keep in mind, in the UK right now and this is from The Guardian, okay? Yeah. A very left-leaning source. Over 50% of Muslims in the UK do not believe it should be legal to be gay. Note here, I did not say get gay married.

[00:32:14] Yeah. I said be gay. Yeah. Just to be a same-sex attracted individual living your life. That is a value system... Oh, my God. Hmm? Sorry, I am wearing my shirt inside out. I need to-

[00:32:28] Simone Collins: Oh,

[00:32:29] Aydin Paladin: no. Oh. Well, I’ve a- I’ve had it happen to, to... Luckily not me, I don’t think, but I’ve had it, I’ve had other friends do that before-

[00:32:36] where it’s just, you don’t think about it sometimes.

[00:32:39] Simone Collins: With men’s clothes, I think it’s harder. Yeah. And I- Yeah ... I’m, yeah. It, with, with women’s clothes, hardly-

[00:32:45] Aydin Paladin: You can pretty much tell ...

[00:32:45] Simone Collins: poorly constructed. Like, you know, like, clothes are so bad. Oh, yeah. Well, now the giant seams are here and I can see them.

[00:32:52] Aydin Paladin: Some of the terrible, like, stitching. I u- I haven’t done seam work in forever, but some of the stitching’s only, stitching on the inside is awful in women’s clothes.

[00:33:00] Simone Collins: Yeah. It’s, it’s

[00:33:00] Aydin Paladin: painful. But with men’s, they tend to be made a little bit stronger, I think. A little bit tougher. Yeah. At least.

[00:33:06] Simone Collins: More subtle.

[00:33:06] Yeah.

[00:33:07] Malcolm Collins: Yes, okay. But the thing is why- So I’m back. I’m, I, I’m wearing it the right way now, you see? Okay. I’m a very, I’m a very intelligent person, guys. Yes. Yeah. You

[00:33:16] Simone Collins: can put

[00:33:16] Malcolm Collins: on clothing. That’s who you’re getting your, your, your opinions from, right?

[00:33:20] Simone Collins: Oh, my God.

[00:33:23] Malcolm Collins: But actually, have, has there ever been a cancellation campaign against you?

[00:33:28] Aydin Paladin: Not one that’s, that’s- Gotten your tea ... really, I think has gotten too far. You know, way back in the day there was stuff with that guy Crouton Tea, but I was on a big list. I was on a big list with like- Oh ... Sargon and V and all those people I mentioned before. They were all on a list of people who needed to be taken out, but all that was was people being weird on Discord and LARPing.

[00:33:45] Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Well, I, I think that actually brings up a, one of the things that really protects you from cancellation is just admitting that you’re right-wing and, and having like right-wing opinions, and it makes cancellations way harder to run.

[00:33:59] Aydin Paladin: Yeah, in a sense. They’ll try to, they’ll... I mean, the whole idea, a lot of the cancellation stuff, a lot of that era, it’s not over.

[00:34:06] It’s just changed sort of in, in the way that it manifests. Mm-hmm. I mean, it’s, it is always the case that people get “canceled” quote unquote for something related to some sort of sexual impropriety, but that’s been going on for, I don’t know, all of human history is, you know, some crimes or sexual impropriety things.

[00:34:20] It’s just the nature of them have kind of changed it, I guess a little bit. People don’t get canceled anymore for so much so, sometimes perhaps, but nowhere near the, the way they used to for just being conservative. Too many people lose their jobs. I mean-

[00:34:33] Malcolm Collins: Yeah ... the

[00:34:34] Aydin Paladin: most insane- Dude,

[00:34:34] Malcolm Collins: yeah, you literally, we’ve- Yeah

[00:34:35] we’ve lost, you- Yeah ... investors, job opportunities and stuff like that just for being... This was before we were extreme. Yeah. This was just over the people aren’t having enough kids, and it’s gonna be a problem for social security. Yeah. That, that is what got us in trouble. And I think- For us, and it doesn’t seem like this is what happened to you, but it definitely was what happened for us, is seeing ourselves be canceled for n- normie fucking opinions- Yeah

[00:35:01] Pushed us to associate with other right-wing individuals, right-wing spaces- Yeah ... right-wing influencers. And they were just really, really nice, and it was very different than being in left-wing spaces- Oh, yeah ... where I felt like I was constantly, you know... like I remember early in right-wing spaces I had this experience of going to one and I was like, “Well, you know, I believe X thing.

[00:35:25] I believe Y thing,” thinking I was finally gonna say the thing that would get them to condemn me, right? Like- Mm-hmm ... and they’re like, “No, it’s okay. Yeah, whatever. You know, you’re, you’re on our team now. We, we work together.” Yeah. And I really like that feel, and it’s something that I’ve been trying to do more proactively.

[00:35:39] We’re gonna have a, a collab soon with a a VTuber who recently got canceled for saying- Oh ... that men can’t have periods. And, you know, she was- How

[00:35:47] Aydin Paladin: are we still saying that in 2026? Indeed.

[00:35:50] Malcolm Collins: Right? But it’s the Vtubing space, okay? Yeah.

[00:35:52] Aydin Paladin: Right.

[00:35:53] Malcolm Collins: But I think the... Doing things like that within our community, when we see somebody get canceled [00:36:00] for a mild opinion, to immediately go to them and be like, “Hey, come on.

[00:36:05] We support you. You know, we’re here for you. You don’t need to agree with us on everything.”

[00:36:10] Aydin Paladin: Yeah. Yeah, I, I mean, I was fired. Well, I wasn’t fired. I was kind of told to not come back to my doctoral, doctoral program after I started doing the- Yeah ... I started doing YouTube. So that was the only canceling, but that was, that was related to Destiny, by the way.

[00:36:21] It was his community. They... I, I... It was a very, very embarrassing debate. I didn’t know who he was. I’d never heard of him. I just saw someone say, “Someone go debate this liberal.” I was on 4chan and, just browsing. And I was like, “Oh, sure, I’ll debate this stupid liberal.” I was-

[00:36:36] Simone Collins: Oh, no ...

[00:36:37] Aydin Paladin: hanging out at home. I was drunk and high.

[00:36:39] I didn’t know who he was. Oh, no. And so I w- I made a terrible idiot of myself, ‘cause I had no idea I was about to be in front of, you know, 15,000 people. I wasn’t doing YouTube. I was just a random person browsing the internet. But they connected that to me, and so, you know, yeah, then I got canceled for, for that, all that stuff.

[00:36:55] That, that was very, very deeply embarrassing. Hanging

[00:36:56] Malcolm Collins: out on 4chan- A long time ago ... drunk and high, doing public debates. This is very much... you can tell she’s very much on, on tribe, on community.

[00:37:04] Aydin Paladin: Oh, this was- Yeah ... about 10 years ago, though, at this point. This is ... it’s, it’s been nearly, yeah, about 10 years.

[00:37:09] That was a long time ago.

[00:37:10] Simone Collins: It’s a good story.

[00:37:11] Aydin Paladin: Crazy though. Yeah. Oh, man, it was very embarrassing. But- But, you know, they, what they did, they, they called my school. They, they made all these complaints about how I was racist. This was shortly after what had happened with Destiny and JonTron, if you remember that or heard about that, where JonTron, who was a hugely, you know, popular and beloved sort of gaming content creator on YouTube at the time, he got into a alm- it sounds like a very similar thing happened, where he ended up on a, on a public debate with Destiny- Oh, no

[00:37:36] talking about race and IQ. Big topic in 2016, very common No And it was just, yeah, he got, he got canceled. He was removed from a bunch of projects and things. They, they... No, he’s fine now, but that’s, and has been fine for a long time. But I think things were probably at their zenith of, like, left-wing power back, like, maybe up until after, or about, like, the end of COVID.

[00:37:58] Mm. That’s when I think things started to, to cool off a little bit. It’s always awful, but just the extremity. Some guy got canceled because he had... Remember, he wa- he landed a, a probe on a comet or an asteroid? They canceled him ‘cause he had, like, a- Oh, because his shirt ... attractive lady on his shirt Because he had, like, anime

[00:38:12] Malcolm Collins: girls on it.

[00:38:13] Aydin Paladin: Yeah, and it- And

[00:38:14] Malcolm Collins: his friend had made it, a female friend I don’t remember this.

[00:38:15] Simone Collins: That, that’s

[00:38:16] Aydin Paladin: unhinged And

[00:38:16] Malcolm Collins: he was trying to

[00:38:18] Aydin Paladin: That stuff though, the insa- the levels are just, the nitpicking, it’s untenable. Society cannot function if everyone has to be constantly afraid of every single thing they do. What- It just doesn’t work long time, long term.

[00:38:30] Malcolm Collins: Mm-hmm. What’s been really fascinating to me is, it, it very clear that like we’ve been in the same spaces for a long time. We likely went on, on a similar like political journey. But it’s not just that like my personal politics has changed throughout that journey, but there’s been this ... And I think that this really happened post-COVID.

[00:38:51] This merger of our online right with institutional political right. Yeah. Where like we, our people, other former 4chaners are the people staffing the White House’s X feed now and stuff.

[00:39:06] Aydin Paladin: Yeah. And it- It

[00:39:07] Malcolm Collins: cut

[00:39:07] Aydin Paladin: pretty clearly.

[00:39:08] Malcolm Collins: Very obvious, right? Yeah. We were, we were saying this like when Fauci’s diaries came out, and somebody at the, at the team styled it like a, a teenage girl’s diary.

[00:39:17] Yeah. And it’s like very obviously this is like our community and our culture. And it’s been such a feeling of like ... It, it feels really nice. Because b- back in the day when you started I’m sure you probably felt very different from whatever you thought of as Republican.

[00:39:35] Aydin Paladin: Oh, yeah. I mean, ab- absolutely.

[00:39:37] Well, you know, I, I was a libertarian, right? Yeah. I was a, I was a right-leaning libertarian, but I was a libertarian. Y- I’ve changed in a lot of my opinions in, in that sense. But, you know, that, that was always where I fell was in, in that direction. But of course I had nothing to do with, and wanted nothing to do with the neocons.

[00:39:53] I had grown up- Yeah ... despising those people. I still despise them. You know? It, people like Lindsey Graham, you know, rest in peace or [00:40:00] whatever. But, you know, I ... Those people do not represent me, they never represented me. Yeah. They certainly don’t represent young people in any way. No. Anyone who could ... ‘Cause you need young people to be involved in politics in order for political movements to do anything.

[00:40:13] And- Yeah ... the GOP had, was, up until Trump really, was doing an absolutely horrific job of trying to make anyone under the age of 60 consider them. So.

[00:40:24] Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Well, and, and what’s interesting is it feels like to me, that battle we’ve won. Like GOP Inc- Mm ... the neocons, the old conservative, they don’t really have a base in our generation or younger, right?

[00:40:37] Aydin Paladin: Yeah.

[00:40:37] Malcolm Collins: But the, the big fight right now, and I feel like we’ve basically already won this fight as well, is against the gripers. Mm. And against the, you know, the, the radical the people who want to go into just like explicitly racist territory and stuff like that. Yeah. And, and or explicitly misogynistic territory.

[00:40:56] And it’s like we don’t need to- But that fight feels pretty won as well

[00:41:00] Aydin Paladin: to me. They’re, they’re reactionaries. Which, you know, I’m, I’m a reactionary in my own way. I, in that, you know, I re- I, I am not pro-democracy. I’m a monarchist. That’s, that’s like, I don’t know, that’s going back the, well, a couple ways.

[00:41:10] It’s in the opposite direction. Yeah. But a, a lot of young men in particular have been massively disenfranchised. Mm-hmm. Yeah. They’re told from their whole lives that they’re evil and they’re terrible, and they go, “Okay, well I am evil. I’m a Stormtrooper.” You know, I’ll do as e- Yeah. They, they ... I’ll be

[00:41:22] Malcolm Collins: as

[00:41:24] Aydin Paladin: evil as

[00:41:24] Malcolm Collins: possible.

[00:41:24] That’s a really good, they got an idea of what the evil Republican was-

[00:41:29] Aydin Paladin: Yeah ...

[00:41:29] Malcolm Collins: from progressives. Yes. And then they decided to embody that, whereas-

[00:41:34] Aydin Paladin: They were told they were

[00:41:35] Malcolm Collins: You have this other- You

[00:41:35] Aydin Paladin: are that thing. Yeah.

[00:41:36] Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And by the way, you know, we’ve had Curtis Yarvin on. Oh, I

[00:41:39] Aydin Paladin: love Curtis. Yeah ...

[00:41:40] Malcolm Collins: through, through Monarchist’s, it’s two takes, right?

[00:41:42] Yeah, he’s a, he’s a friend of our... I, I, I really like him. He’s got really good... We should have him back on, Simone, actually. You should make a note to reach out to him. Sure. That episode did really well. But yeah, the, well, and, and we’ve had Aristocratic Utensil, who’s a monarchist- Yes ... as well on. We have said explicitly on the show multiple times, and this is where the monarchist thing comes from, I think everyone, I think both the left and the right realizes this at this point, that democracy as it’s currently structured is probably not going to continue to work.

[00:42:10] The- No. No ... the, the DSA party, we’ll have an episode on them soon. This is a, the party that, like, Mondame’s associated with, and AOC’s associated with, has now said explicitly they want to banish the Senate and the, and the Supreme Court, right? Like, they, they, the leftists want to move in this direction.

[00:42:25] And- The question is, is basically which party cancels elections first at this point.

[00:42:31] Aydin Paladin: Pretty much. Ar- Aristotle predicts this. You know, he says that that, that cultures will move in these cycles of politics. And at some point, democracies and republics, they will give way, and the next stage after that is autocracy and, and, and monarchies.

[00:42:44] Those are gonna be- Yeah ... the next stages, and then it will go in a cycle like this forever. And by the way, and now history doesn’t follow a perfect pattern there. But y- yes, sometimes you get despots and then you get monarchs, and that tends to be sort of when things collapse after a, a democracy or a republic, a, you know, a system in which people collectivize their action, then a lot of times it ends up in chaos.

[00:43:03] And then afterwards- Yeah ... there needs to be stability. And the most stable s- system, system tends to be something that looks like a monarchy.

[00:43:10] Malcolm Collins: Well, monarchies like even if we just, even if the US government doesn’t collapse, even if the governments in Europe don’t collapse- Mm-hmm ... given the strain on social security that’s gonna come as people get older, and the effect that that’s gonna have on the government’s tax base, and thus ability to operate at the same time as the AI tech lords get richer and richer and richer, you functionally have a...

[00:43:33] What, what’s the word that they use for... They used to call us it, Simone. Techno,

[00:43:38] Aydin Paladin: Techno-oligarchism.

[00:43:39] Malcolm Collins: Techno-feudalism.

[00:43:40] Aydin Paladin: Techno-feudalism. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:43:42] Malcolm Collins: And so we’re functionally moving in that direction anyway. Yeah. Which is one of the reasons I often point out to people in the wider new right and stuff like this, that it is important that we keep the tech lords on our side, right?

[00:43:53] Like, you know, you, you can have your opinions on stuff and think, “Well, maybe that’s not good for, like, all of [00:44:00] society,” but then if you move to positions that are going to really piss off the tech lords you’re likely gonna freeze yourself out of history.

[00:44:08] Aydin Paladin: One of the reason that the GOP, w- I mean, it’s, it’s terrible for so many reasons, but just one of them, and the reason why they fell out of favor, why the right-wing fell out of favor with young people for a long time is because they were sort of anti-tech.

[00:44:20] They, they weren’t, you know- Yeah ... they, because that’s what traditionalists are. Traditionalists, tr- being a traditionalist means to be a,

[00:44:27] a troglodyte. Yeah. Which it doesn’t in any way. Yeah. And that’s sort of, I think that idea particularly with, yeah, the tech bros, the crypto bros who w- you know, very often... Look, if you wanna keep your money and you’re a crypto billionaire you’re gonna end up with a little bit more right-wing politics.

[00:44:41] Just generally speaking, not always. Yeah. But yeah, so there’s a lot of that movement in that direction on the right of being not troglodytic about technology and embracing it, and realizing how we can use it. The right has been very good at adopting, I mean, because we were, that’s why we, the whole meme war stuff of the 2014’s era.

[00:44:59] Why places like 4chan were able to, in a way, influence Trump into getting elected on some small scale, by turning everything into memes, which are now what the White House posts. The same- Yeah ... I mean, not as extreme, but the same kind

[00:45:10] Malcolm Collins: of stuff.

[00:45:10] Aydin Paladin: I,

[00:45:10] Malcolm Collins: I, no, I d- I don’t think there’s a chance in hell Trump would’ve won the primaries if not for 4chan.

[00:45:15] Aydin Paladin: Yeah.

[00:45:15] Malcolm Collins: 4chan is what made him seem like a viable candidate. Yeah. And then that’s why he ended up getting elected. He is the 4chan president.

[00:45:22] Aydin Paladin: Yeah. In many ways. But that’s, that was the embrace of tech. And, and that inherently the, the right, like the Tr- post-Trump, Trump-era right has all been very pro using new technologies rather than- Well-

[00:45:33] rejecting them ...

[00:45:34] Malcolm Collins: I, I, I think that that’s- More so, yeah ... been a big part of it. But the, I, I think another really big part of it is the performative vulgarity and edginess as a cultural authenticator. Mm-hmm. And as I said, this has always been part of a part of right-wing culture in the US. You know, the, the sexy woman on a mudflap of a trucker- Yeah.

[00:45:52] or the, the you know, the, the what do we call them? Truck nut conservatives. Yeah, yeah. You know, like the idea of this performative, sexualized edginess that- 4chan figured out how to make cool for kids. Yeah. Right? And then they grew up into a movement where this stuff is more normal, like sexy anime girls are normal, and that has given us a lot of cultural power that the left has removed from itself.

[00:46:22] Aydin Paladin: Yeah. Well, that’s- You know, that’s why Hollywood is in the state that it’s in. Mm-hmm. It’s all controlled by these leftist who have no idea... They’re s- they are so removed via academia or via their belief system, and it’s usually a combination of both, from knowing what it is that people not only find entertaining or, or tolerable morally, but what anyone would find remotely cool.

[00:46:42] And they’ve been putting out that stuff for the last 15 years now, and they can’t make any... I mean, every once in a while I guess, you know, still you can have a Christopher Nolan movie that disrespects history do well. But other than that it’s just been- Yeah ... flop after flop.

[00:46:55] Malcolm Collins: W- I, I think one of the cool things that we’re gonna see in the near future is right wing made content using AI that has, like- Mm

[00:47:03] actually coherent. Like I was talking with Nux offline recently, and he was saying that he wanted to use AI to make an anime. And I suggested, I was like, “Bro, I bet if you storyboarded something, that Skybrow’s team would love to make it,” right?

[00:47:16] Simone Collins: Like- Well, it kind of already has been done a little bit with the,

[00:47:19] Aydin Paladin: It’s the, Sorry

[00:47:20] Emily Yukis, who’s doing the Will Stancil Show.

[00:47:22] Simone Collins: Oh. Oh, that

[00:47:23] Aydin Paladin: too.

[00:47:24] Simone Collins: Yeah.

[00:47:24] Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yeah. And then there’s the- There’s that and

[00:47:25] Simone Collins: then there’s this,

[00:47:26] Malcolm Collins: like- The video about Twitch, w- which, which is Leaflet and Powder against the guy who runs Twitch, and it was like a 25-minute anime episode.

[00:47:33] Aydin Paladin: Oh, wow. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there’s...

[00:47:36] Yeah, Emily Yukis I know has been doing that. She’s been an animator for years, and now she’s able to put out, you know, at a relative re- decent frequency some, you know, really, like, crazy content of course, but it’s very funny. The Will Stancil Show, and she did the JD Vance Show, which is just- Mm. It’s kind of, you know, taking the piss out of some right wing politics.

[00:47:53] But it’s really funny stuff. It’s v- very vulgar, by the way. Yeah. Just to be clear if you’ve not seen it, but yeah. And yeah, she can do [00:48:00] all that with AI in a fraction of the time, and it would... I- we should use that technology when available, yeah.

[00:48:05] Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

[00:48:06] Aydin Paladin: When able.

[00:48:06] Malcolm Collins: Well, one of the things that the, th- that I found interesting, and this was a thread I pulled on earlier, but I think it’s been a very interesting cultural phenomenon to me, was- The politics of short fat otaku.

[00:48:21] And that he went out there and had this sort of mild right-wing position that a lot of us held back, like when you started doing YouTube and stuff like that. Yeah. But with the rest of the movement, all of our opinions have evolved, and he still has like all exactly the, the, the mild opinions that we all sort of pre- pretended to have or sometimes sort of did have and then we began to scratch on things like trans research a bit more or, you know, I, I want same sex attracted people to have the best lives possible.

[00:48:57] It’s just like, as time has gone on in my own life, for example, the ones who I know who are sane, who are attractive, and who are professionally successful and tried to make gay relationships work with a family, not a single real instance in my life did it work. And these are sane, attractive, hardworking, moral in all other senses, people, and it didn’t work out for them.

[00:49:22] Yeah. And then that makes me be like, well just does it not work? Like, is it hard to make work? S-

[00:49:28] Simone Collins: Well, I mean- I don’t

[00:49:29] Malcolm Collins: know ...

[00:49:29] Simone Collins: obviously yes. It, I mean just- If, if you’re a gay male couple, at least

[00:49:35] Aydin Paladin: But yeah, I mean, what the rates for domestic violence are, of all groups, it’s highest among lesbian women.

[00:49:41] Simone Collins: Yeah, I can

[00:49:41] Aydin Paladin: see how.

[00:49:41] Yeah.

[00:49:42] Malcolm Collins: We actually... Well, no, no, no. There is a group that’s higher than lesbians, which is bisexuals. Oh,

[00:49:46] Simone Collins: right.

[00:49:46] Aydin Paladin: Bi.

[00:49:47] Malcolm Collins: Oh, bi- oh,

[00:49:47] Aydin Paladin: bisexuals?

[00:49:48] Malcolm Collins: Okay. We have an episode on this. Yeah. Bisexuals are worse than gays or lesbians on basically every me- Oh ... on mental health they’re worse, on- I didn’t know that ... abuse rates they’re worse, on graping or getting graped they’re worse.

[00:50:02] And it’s very weird because you think of bisexual as like the midpoint between- Yeah ... being straight and being a lesbian or being gay. So you would expect them- Yeah ... to be in the middle, not like off the charts on everything. Yeah. And we, we do an episode trying to understand why that’s the case. It could be a fun episode for you.

[00:50:16] I bet you you’d do a good

[00:50:16] Aydin Paladin: job on that. Oh, yeah, sure, yeah. Yeah, I didn’t actually know that either. R- relating to, to ShortFatOtaku in particular I, I can’t stand that guy. So you’ll, you’ll have to forgive me for a minute. He’s personally been just awful to me for years. We used to be something like friends or friendly with each other.

[00:50:31] He’s just terrible. But so I can give some insight into that psychology which I don’t think is unique to him. It’s, it’s things that happened to a lot of people back- Oh, explain

[00:50:38] Malcolm Collins: it. Why haven’t his views changed?

[00:50:41] Aydin Paladin: Because, When

[00:50:41] Malcolm Collins: all of the rest of ours have ...

[00:50:42] Aydin Paladin: there’s a lot, because there’s, there were a lot of people who got involved, particularly as it concerned and revolved around GamerGate.

[00:50:49] And these were people who actually didn’t have any concerns for politics. They just wanted to goon. That was really it. There was nothing more important or more, or deeper. It was just that shallow. It was entirely about sexual ratification. There, there’s been a lot of these people who’ve been around over the years where th- there, it wasn’t actually about, you know, censorship.

[00:51:09] It wasn’t about making good games first and foremost. It was just, I just want to goon to this.

[00:51:15] Malcolm Collins: I want sexy characters. Why are you censoring them?

[00:51:17] Aydin Paladin: Yeah, that was it. I mean, but it wasn’t about the principle of censorship. It really was just that shallow. And in Dev’s case, he, I think he’s just kind of a degenerate.

[00:51:26] You know, he’s into the trans women or whatever and just I think that was it. I think he had, he got involved in GamerGate or sort of tertiarily related to GamerGate for that v- and again, very common shallow level response and then ended up in politics where he really didn’t belong. He, he likes gaming and has ended up, and again, I think this is common, commonly happened, not just to him.

[00:51:48] Simone Collins: Daddy, I clearly hear something.

[00:51:49] Aydin Paladin: Ended up sort of just being stuck. Have to go with the flow and go, “Well, I’m, I’m here now making money doing this.” Notice it. “I guess I have to-” We heard something ... keep doing something,” but they don’t actually believe in it, but they’re [00:52:00] leftists ultimately. And then as the right moves they go, “Well, no, no, but I’m, I’m- No I’m s- I’m happy here.

[00:52:06] I’m

[00:52:06] Malcolm Collins: happy where I am. I was really about Max- You know? Max Go- Yeah. That is a very interesting point, and it’s also interesting how a portion of the right genuinely converted a portion of... That so many people got into morality through gooning, right? Like- Yeah. ... Young starting as, like, a hentai reviewer. It, it- Leaflet used to do that too, right?

[00:52:26] Like, and-

[00:52:27] Simone Collins: Path-based morality.

[00:52:29] Malcolm Collins: Well, it’s, it’s, it’s a fascinating phenomenon. And it’s something that I think should be, like, highlighted more as part of the birth of our movement. We have a video- Yeah ... where we go on how part of the movement grew out of the online atheist movement, actually. Yes, yes.

[00:52:44] Right? Like, because it, like, atheist skeptics were part of our movement- Mm-hmm ... in the very early days. Whereas we, just like anti-feminist, anti-whatever, we were, we were in the world of internet politics. The world of politics politics, we didn’t think we’d ever touch that. We didn’t think we’d ever have anything to do with that.

[00:52:59] We wanted sexy women in games and stuff like that. Yeah. And then- It was

[00:53:02] Aydin Paladin: a simpler time.

[00:53:03] Malcolm Collins: Simpler time, right. And then I think what happened, or this is for me, you can tell me if it was for you, is getting into those particular battles got me exposed to ideas and research I would not have been exposed to had I not been in those battles.

[00:53:22] Aydin Paladin: For sure. I mean, I wasn’t involved in Gamergate directly. I was actually involved in Gamergate in a very different way than most people in this space. Oh,

[00:53:28] Malcolm Collins: explain.

[00:53:29] Aydin Paladin: Mm-hmm. My primary area of research is game studies. I, I, I come, I’m a social psychologist with emphasis in game studies. Mm-hmm. I helped found the Game Study, the National Communication Game Studies Caucus.

[00:53:40] So when all of the stuff with Anita Sarkeesian was happening, I was i- in a, you know, my doctoral school office talking to my advisor and his wife, who were the founders of the Game Studies Caucus, and we’re going, “Oh no, what is, what’s happening? Why is this woman, who doesn’t know anything about any of our research, being put as the face of some sort of, a- and being treated as an academic and being treated seriously. Yeah. And we just wanted people to, like, actually be aware that the things that she was saying are not accurate, and they’re not based on any kind of data whatsoever. So, from, that is how we got involved. And I remember it was very hush-hush though, even at the time, ‘cause- It much like how there was academic sides that were taken in do the games cause violence debate, which is one of the greatest academic rap battles of all time.

[00:54:27] The back and forth on that one w- is, is truly an a- an excellent and fantastic read of how the games cause violence people got kind of, as they would have said at the time, epically owned. This is probably- ... what, 20- 2012. But

[00:54:38] Malcolm Collins: The days ...

[00:54:39] Aydin Paladin: but then the, the, the feminist stuff and, a- and is, are games harmful to women specifically- Mm

[00:54:44] none of that literature was being looked at when all of the Gamergate stuff happened. No one was looking at the academic literature, and we had just founded this game studies caucus that was supposed to be focused on exactly that. So I ended up learning about the Gamergate phenomenon entirely from, as an academic going, “Oh, no, what’s this?”

[00:55:01] Like- What? ... this is... We didn’t know how to really respond to it, and it was hush-hush, where people didn’t want to comment on it at all because they were afraid they would be labeled as right-wing, as misogynistic, as this, that or the other if they just said, well, if they had gave any kind of public criticism of people like Anita Sarkeesian.

[00:55:19] That’s how it was behind the scenes in, in the ivory tower back in- Yeah ... 2015. Well,

[00:55:23] Malcolm Collins: you know- You know? ... now she’s happily married.

[00:55:26] Aydin Paladin: To herself, yes. To

[00:55:27] Malcolm Collins: herself, yes. I’ve, I’ve just- So ... like the end of that timeline didn’t, didn’t go-

[00:55:35] Aydin Paladin: No ...

[00:55:35] Malcolm Collins: which is another thing that’s, that’s sort of we’ve seen with our side is a lot of our side did get happily married and- Yeah

[00:55:43] and, and did form functional relationships. And th- this is this joke whenever, like, a right-wing figure gets doxxed these days, he always turns out to be, like, a muscular guy- ... with, like, a wife and kids, right? You know.

[00:55:56] Aydin Paladin: Yeah.

[00:55:57] Malcolm Collins: And when a left-wing person gets doxxed, they’re, like, a crazy, the, [00:56:00] you know, g- person with, like, a rap sheet or something.

[00:56:02] Aydin Paladin: Yeah, yeah. Long rap sheet and all sorts of very embarrassing photos of them online. To be fair, that sometimes happens to the right as well. But, you know.

[00:56:10] Simone Collins: Absolutely.

[00:56:12] Malcolm Collins: Absolutely. Well, it’s been wonderful to have you on. I, I enjoy talking about this because you’re very unique in terms of how long you’ve been at this.

[00:56:22] Do you have any sort of final comments of having been in this movement for so long- Yeah ... in terms of how it feels different today versus then? Mm-hmm. Or one of the things I found interesting is the sense of community. Like, you seem to have been in the it crowd. You know- ... even being friends with, like, D- I used to love ShortFatOtaku.

[00:56:40] I, I got a lot- Yeah ... of ideas from his videos. I thought they were very insightful back in the day. To be in that community, to be in that wider friend network Are you connected to, like, the new friend network? Is that something that’s been absorbing you in the, in the ways that it- Sure ... it’s been expanding?

[00:56:55] Or, yeah, how does all that feel?

[00:56:58] Aydin Paladin: I mean, yeah, sure, like, you know, I, I can say, sure, I have lots of... Actually, part of m- my job is doing this marketing for Wolfings, which I’ll bring up again. Wolfings Publishing, which is our publishing house that, you know, we’re promoting right now. But a part of my job in doing marketing for that means reaching out to a bunch of influencers, and one of the reasons why they ask me to do this is ‘cause, “Well, Aiden, you’ve been around for 10 years.

[00:57:19] You know everybody.” And I was like- Yeah ... “Yeah, I guess.” Or, or I, I would feel a pe- or people know me or have heard of me or something, so it’s like maybe you have a negative opinion, maybe you have a, a positive one. But whatever, you might have heard my name at least, ‘cause I’ve just been around for so long.

[00:57:32] Mm. Which rather than being approached by somebody that nobody knows, and they might go, “I don’t know if this person’s legitimate or whatever,” there may be a benefit there. We’ll see how it works out, I guess. But I don’t know how people have changed. So many of them, like I said, so many people are still around.

[00:57:46] This event that I’m going to in two weeks very often Sargon is a speaker there. He’s not this year.

[00:57:51] Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

[00:57:52] Aydin Paladin: But another, I mean, one of their main speakers is Millennial Woes, and he’s been around f- forever. A lot of these people really have been around for a long time, but we also have a speaker, and Harry Robinson of Lotus Eaters will be speaking there.

[00:58:02] I will be speaking there. We also have this guy Blonde Blas Britannica who’s, I don’t know, he’s like 22, 23? Yeah. And he’s only recently started his channel and really blown up. So there’s, you know, it’s a constant sort of... A- and then, you know, we’ve got people older than us, like A.N. O’Think Academic Agent will be speaking this year, but he’s, that’s sort of, it was, the event’s highly tied to him, or originally was.

[00:58:23] And he’s a generation sort of older than me, not in terms of being on YouTube, but a different, he’s a couple years older than me. And it is just this constant churn though. One thing that I, I hope that the right wing is able to do is to facilitate and help young people as they get involved in this, right?

[00:58:38] Mm. Yeah. To, to actually, yeah, be cool with them. Don’t, don’t try to cut them out or something ‘cause they’re not in the, your old guard club, right? It, it is important to give them- Well, we recently

[00:58:48] Malcolm Collins: had on,

[00:58:49] Aydin Paladin: They seem- ...

[00:58:49] Malcolm Collins: Basic Logic ...

[00:58:50] Aydin Paladin: down to earth. Yeah.

[00:58:50] Malcolm Collins: I don’t know if you’ve seen his stuff.

[00:58:52] Aydin Paladin: So yeah. He’s- He’s one of the people also that I, I wanna reach out to on this because I really like his content and he-

[00:58:57] Malcolm Collins: I, I can offer to connect you with him

[00:58:59] Aydin Paladin: you know, we’ll face messaging. Oh, for sure. Yeah.

[00:59:00] Malcolm Collins: Yeah, yeah. That’d be awesome. We, he, he’s done our stuff and he’s he’s been blowing up- Hello ... like crazy. Yeah, yeah. Hello. Are you trying to join, Octavian? But

[00:59:09] Simone Collins: the biggest issue that Basic Logic pointed out for his generation was a complete lack of mentors.

[00:59:14] Oh

[00:59:14] Aydin Paladin: yeah? Is you are real hearing things? Yeah,

[00:59:17] Malcolm Collins: she’s hearing things. Yeah. Yeah, this happens every time you record, Octavian. For real. Do you wanna show them your, your teeth, Octavian? You lost two front teeth- Oh no. ... waiting for Christmas.

[00:59:26] Simone Collins: God.

[00:59:28] Malcolm Collins: Special age

[00:59:29] Simone Collins: But yeah, the, and, and I, I had never- The mentorship gap

[00:59:32] thought about it until they brought it up, that there really is this lack of mentorship, that a lot of young- Yeah ... younger people would love to engage with an older generation that largely, and there are notable exceptions, is just absent, is like- Yeah ... checked out, retirement communities, traveling, whatever.

[00:59:48] But like they’re not interested in young people, and that used to be for thousands of years kind of their thing during- Yeah ... this time of life.

[00:59:54] Aydin Paladin: Now you do have quite literally an old guard of people, because we’re like 10, 15 years out from [01:00:00] those.

[01:00:00] Simone Collins: Yeah. That’s refusing to leave office. They’re refusing to quit their jobs as well.

[01:00:03] Yes. Yes. Like when many, many people are not able to get jobs out of school anymore or out of high school- Yep ... because people are not retiring with these two. No. ‘Cause they need the money. Yes. Which I get, it’s not their fault. It’s not their fault. But also like-

[01:00:14] Aydin Paladin: No ...

[01:00:15] Simone Collins: people are just living longer and not leaving office, and that’s- Exactly.

[01:00:17] Someone said-

[01:00:18] Aydin Paladin: And you’re bringing in H-1Bs, and you’re making it a lot harder for young people to even enter the... Yeah, so- Yeah, yeah ... more people are doing things like social media as a job. Yeah. It’s, it, more people want to do it than be an astronaut from Gen Z. I know that’s the famous statistic there. I don’t know about that.

[01:00:30] Yes.

[01:00:30] Simone Collins: Yeah. Well, the

[01:00:32] Malcolm Collins: thing

[01:00:32] Simone Collins: that’s changed for me the

[01:00:33] Malcolm Collins: most this year, and this may not have been a thing for you that feels very different, is the online nerd right creator community is way more interconnected now- Oh, yeah ... than they were at the beginning of this year. Like in terms of the collabs that they do, you’ll regularly see- Yeah

[01:00:52] you know, like Tectone and Goth Conservative Guy. Yeah. Name I always forget. And Goth Conservative Guy ... nux on like d- doing a collab. I know who you’re talking about, yeah. But like we’ve had collabs with all these people, and talk to all them a lot offline, right? And try to help them, like us doing this thing with the Senate committee to try to get, one, it, it started as a project to get Nux unbanned Yeah

[01:01:11] and, and smuggle

[01:01:12] Simone Collins: him in and now on, on the- Yeah, but I looked for the numbers. Like um, I don’t know if you’re aware of Arctotherium, but he did a really good long piece about, I guess, the, the end of the open internet, Hmm ... that really goes into extensive and detailed- detail linking to everything on how the platform started in a very skewed way, Mm-hmm

[01:01:31] deplatforming and, and removing certain types of content with a very- Yeah ... clear skewed bias. And he goes platform by platform after gi- giving a really big overview, pointing out also using, like, really quantitative graphs that words like deplatforming didn’t exist until, like, super- No ... yeah, and hate speech.

[01:01:49] Yeah. Like, these words were not things, and now we’re like, “Of course deplatforming is a word.” Yeah. “It’s always been a word. Even when I was a young girl in the 1990s.” Yeah. You’re like, “No, actually. There were, there were no platforms.”

[01:02:01] Aydin Paladin: Yeah. We had to come up with these terms. Yeah.

[01:02:04] Yeah. I, I, I haven’t... I guess I have noticed that now that I, you mention it.

[01:02:07] I have seen people doing a lot more collaboration, collaborative work. I think maybe it, it is because there’s there’s... But the political energy doesn’t know where to go right now. Mm-hmm. I, I, in so many wa- That’s why we, I, we talked about earlier. What, what’s gonna be the next thing? ‘Cause I think a lot of people are going, are also confused as to what way is the, the winds are blowing in terms of what will be the next thing that will preoccupy people’s time and energy.

[01:02:33] Simone Collins: Yeah.

[01:02:34] Aydin Paladin: Where that political energy will be directed. B- I, I think they’re in a bit of a fugue state, particularly after Iran. Because, because the right wing got split on that, got split pretty heavily- Yeah ... on, on the Iran stuff in a lot of ways.

[01:02:44] Malcolm Collins: Well, I, I think a lot of the... So if you look at the Iran thing, like, 80 to 90% of MAGA was pro that.

[01:02:50] Yeah. I think what happened with that is on the internet there’s a lot of third-worlders. Mm. And people don’t really realize it. And so it felt like it was a 50/50 thing in the right on the internet, but it was really, no, you just have a lot more Pakistani followers than you realize. And a- and this, I think, pulled is, is what sort of defeated the gripers finally.

[01:03:12] Is it pulled them out and sort of made them realize that their positions are not in alignment- ... with a lot of the mainstream right right now. And here you

[01:03:21] Aydin Paladin: go. Yeah.

[01:03:22] Malcolm Collins: Octavia?

[01:03:25] Simone Collins: Oh, that

[01:03:26] Malcolm Collins: Do I need to get my bonk stick?

[01:03:28] Aydin Paladin: Uh-oh.

[01:03:31] I, I think that’s probably largely right. Well, in that... ‘Cause some of the, the polling on it, though, in terms of the favorability towards the Iran war itself, it, it, it didn’t, like, divide people so much as it turned down the, I think, the hype.

[01:03:44] Malcolm Collins: Hmm ...

[01:03:44] Aydin Paladin: particularly after the- Well, we- ... assassination of Charlie Kirk, people were, had so much political energy.

[01:03:49] They wanted to go, they wanted to do something about it. They wanted to make sure that that didn’t happen again, and people were very split. Be- a, a lot- Yeah ... of people who are my age in particular, and I, and I think around my [01:04:00] age who, and a little bit older, who lived through Gulf War, who lived through post 9/11, they think- Yeah

[01:04:05] “Oh, no, I don’t wanna go.” Not again. No, no, no, no. “I, we don’t wanna act in this quagmire again.” Yeah. “I’ve been, I’ve seen this.” And so I think that that did ha- lead people into the... Particularly when Trump had said it wasn’t gonna happen. He had also said it was. Yeah. So he’d given, you know- Mm-hmm

[01:04:19] conflicting messages on that. But that’s, I think, how a lot of people felt, and they went, “Okay, well, I, my energy has been exhausted.” Mm-hmm. “Because I thought you weren’t gonna do this, and now I feel maybe not betrayed, but a little bit like this, well, where’s the wall, and where’s the deportation? Where’s ICE?”

[01:04:36] Yeah. You know. Yeah. Why did that stuff fall into the background? It is happening. Why is it not happening at the speeds that you said it would happen? Mm-hmm. People are l- I think a little bit burned out. However, the positive way to look at that, and I hope what people do, is use that to try and find things that they do have in common rather than arguing- Yeah

[01:04:51] because I think people are real tired of arguing as well.

[01:04:53] Simone Collins: There’s also the longer game, which is, I think it makes a lot of my... Maybe this is so dumb, but I feel like intuitively it makes a lot of sense to do all the unpopular things and tank in the midterms so that people are angry enough at any- Yeah

[01:05:06] far left movements that picked up steam in the following two years that you don’t take a major hit with the next presidential election. Yeah. So, I, and I- There’s gotta be work to- Like, to get it out of the way ... be

[01:05:17] Aydin Paladin: done there. Yeah.

[01:05:17] Simone Collins: Yeah. Right now. Yeah. Just, like- Mm-hmm ... if it looks bad, if it makes people angry, do it now.

[01:05:22] Yeah. Get the backlash so that there’s enough time for people- Yeah ... to get angry at the backlash. Otherwise- Yeah, I

[01:05:28] Aydin Paladin: agree with, I

[01:05:28] Malcolm Collins: agree with that completely. Well, I mean, and the, and the backlash- It’s gotta be a- ... is starting to look pretty ridiculous, right? Yeah. Like, the left that we’re facing right now is a lot more evil than the left we had before, so I hope you’re right in your predictions about them going back to-

[01:05:38] Simone Collins: Oh, yeah.

[01:05:38] And we’re, we’re- Yeah ... I, I, I did recently, like, a research deep dive. Well, not even really. I didn’t have to do a deep dive. I just went through the DSA’s published policies, and I’m like, “Whoa.”

[01:05:47] Aydin Paladin: Like- Well, then they just tell you openly I guess who they are. That’s scary.

[01:05:51] Simone Collins: No, it’s a lot more than I thought it was gonna be in its intent.

[01:05:53] Oh, really?

[01:05:53] Aydin Paladin: Oh, no.

[01:05:54] Simone Collins: Oh, yeah. You should just read their page. I’m like, “This is what...” Th- there are reasonable expectations of, of the left. Oh,

[01:05:59] Aydin Paladin: okay. Yeah.

[01:06:00] Simone Collins: I

[01:06:00] Aydin Paladin: will do then. Yeah.

[01:06:01] Simone Collins: What’s an

[01:06:01] Malcolm Collins: example, Simone?

[01:06:02] Simone Collins: Well, I mean, you pointed out one that was really big, but also, like- Oh, God. Hold on. I, I have some highlights.

[01:06:09] Malcolm Collins: You, she’s researched an episode on this Look,

[01:06:11] Simone Collins: I am comatose, all right? This is, I, I’m in my first trimester and it is not, it’s not working well with my brain. Oh, yeah. They want to nationalize- Congratulations, though ... large corporations. They want non-citizens and incarcerated people to have the right to vote.

[01:06:22] They want all individuals to have access to government-funded gender-affirming care, all student debt canceled, race-based reparations, basically limitless immigration, and a path to citizen- citizenship for everyone. It doesn’t matter how they got to the country. No more electoral college, no more president or Supreme Court, and instead a Congress-run executive and judiciary-

[01:06:46] Aydin Paladin: Oh, I can, I can hear some of this ... chosen

[01:06:47] Simone Collins: by and subordinate to Congress. So. Okay. Wow. Yeah. And it goes on.

[01:06:50] Aydin Paladin: Well, I, DSA declares for, yeah, as you said, I, I didn’t know the, the extent of that, but DSA declares against democracy openly. Yeah, just like with- I thought we had to defend democracy.

[01:06:57] Simone Collins: Bro, well, and capitalism.

[01:06:59] Capitalism and democracy, bad. Oh. They’ve gotta go. And please have the government pay for my gender affirming care. Of course. Right. And housing and everything else. And, and job. Y- you have to have, like, a basically guaranteed job if you want one.

[01:07:10] Aydin Paladin: Well, you, you, you need to, you know, pretty specific type of government to do that kind of stuff, so I guess they’re just- Yeah

[01:07:15] being open about it at this point.

[01:07:16] Simone Collins: Look, I mean, you’re gonna have to be open about it, and I think the thing is right now, AOC is leading in, in the prediction markets for becoming the, you know, Democratic nominee. And it, look, she’s already moving in that direction. I tell you, there’s wasp back there.

[01:07:28] The National DSA has- I wouldn’t want to climb

[01:07:30] Malcolm Collins: back there ...

[01:07:30] Simone Collins: backed down from endorsing her just so she can adopt- Wasp ... the mainstream platform or, and, and policies that are necessary for her to run for president. Right. But she’s still very much endorsed by the extremely influential New York chapter of the DSA, and I’m sure, like, technically she holds all of those, those views, so.

[01:07:48] Malcolm Collins: Well I think- Yeah ... popularizing the idea- For sure ... which you’ve been doing longer than we have, that eventually a democratic process is likely not going to end in the United States, and you want it to [01:08:00] end when we’re in power. Yeah ... the, the, not when the other team’s in power. And popularizing that idea so when it does eventually happen, everybody doesn’t freak out like they did in Korea.

[01:08:11] Mm. Which was very stupid of his own party being like, “I can’t believe...” You know, we all need to be in the, “This isn’t really working anymore,” and they want to grab the flag and run away, right? Yeah. You know?

[01:08:23] Aydin Paladin: Now, I would say this. Al- although the, the, you know, left does have its history in terms of o- openly advocating for communism them being overt about it is a little bit, I mean, I don’t know.

[01:08:33] They, they really competes with the right. Both have a lot of theory and, and thinkers and people who know a lot about this stuff in terms of- Yeah ... if you’re, in terms of the, people like Curtis Yarvin- Yeah ... who have been talking about how democracy is the god that failed, you know, in terms of Han- Hans-Hermann Hoppe.

[01:08:48] You’ve got a whole bunch of people who have talked about this stuff for a very long time on the quote unquote right. The right has a lot of academic and theory behi- you know, academic work and theory behind it to say, “Okay, democracy has flaws.” The left has really worshiped sort of, you know, like, it’s our sacred democracy.

[01:09:05] That’s what they always say, “This is a threat to our democracy. Trump is a threat to our democracy,” was such a refrain. This, that, or the other is a threat to our democracy. Well, now that’s a lot of- You know, work for them to, to make and- Well, I think- ... sort of keep up with it ...

[01:09:18] Malcolm Collins: what they mean by that, we saw this was the no kings protest, we saw this was a, you know, against an- Yeah

[01:09:24] elected official who won the plurality of the vote. Yeah. Right? Like, the, when they say X is a democracy or a threat to the democracy- Yeah ... they don’t actually mean like- Oh ... the democracy, they mean- To us winning ... the, the bureaucrats- Yes ... having control.

[01:09:38] Aydin Paladin: Right. Which by the way is how almost everyone actually feels about it.

[01:09:41] Everyone wants to win. Yes. Everyone wants their side to win. Yeah. And so that inherently creates a conflict in democracy. And like, just, well wait, I lost, and so I didn’t get what I, what I want for, and because it’s not just something, you know, pointless like my sports, my favorite sports team lost. This is my future lost, my security- Mm

[01:10:00] my safety, the things that I value lost. That’s very- Yeah ... you know, the, my, my, the future of my children has been lost, potentially at least, or put on hold. And so that’s why politics inherently gets people quite animated. But it is ultimately about win, ve- lose, and yet people inherently will take sides in it.

[01:10:17] And that, you know, that is also in of itself a problem with democracy, because it means- Well- ... that people are always divided because your future, your children’s future, is dependent on somebody else going along and voting the same way as you.

[01:10:29] Malcolm Collins: And- And it’s important for people to remember that when the left has historically won democracies, they make it so the right can’t win again.

[01:10:38] Yeah. This happened in Germany where the conservatives won the plurality to get the vote, but the parties colluded to prevent the ADL from having any power. This happened in France, where the two leftist parties ran in a-

[01:10:50] Aydin Paladin: 50 ...

[01:10:51] Malcolm Collins: th- whatever way- Yeah ... to prevent the, the French conservatives from winning.

[01:10:54] And we see this in institutions like the UN and the EU. Why, when’s the last time they had a conservative person in power? When’s the last time they had a conservative voice? Like, never. It’s once the left has captured the institutions, you will never see it again. Yeah ... and the, this is an existential fight, and it’s not one we have to keep playing.

[01:11:16] I think we need to normalize some ideas first. We need to normalize some inevitabilities first. But within a couple election cycles There’s going to be a choice is does America let the barbarians win, or do we transition from a, a republic to an empire? Yeah. And I’m, I’m all about the... I mean, th- that’s Octavian right there, right?

[01:11:40] You know. Let’s,

[01:11:40] Aydin Paladin: Yeah, let’s go. I h- I certainly hope that’s the outcome, ‘cause that sure would be my, my, my favored one of the two over

[01:11:49] Simone Collins: barbarism.

[01:11:50] Aydin Paladin: I sort of think it’s one of those things

[01:11:50] Simone Collins: that, like, it branches the divide, though. I think both the left and the right in the end implicitly prefer empire and colonialism.

[01:11:58] Because in the end- Oh, yeah ... when people are arguing for [01:12:00] immigration, they’re really arguing for just colonialism 2.0. Like, let us let us modernize these backward people by bringing them to our land instead of this time going to theirs. Ooh,

[01:12:10] Malcolm Collins: that’d make a great episode, Simone. Can you outline one on is immigra- unrestricted immigration colonialism 2.0?

[01:12:16] Simone Collins: It is. It is colonialism 2.0. It’s, it’s, im- it’s, it’s explicit pretty much. Yeah, yeah. So you know, in the end, yes, everyone, everyone wants an empire. It is it’s, it crosses the aisle. And that’s great. Woo-hoo. Good. Yay. Yeah.

[01:12:28] Aydin Paladin: That,

[01:12:28] Malcolm Collins: that- Yeah. It’s just, it’s just who runs that empire- Interesting idea, too.

[01:12:30] Yeah ... the, the Islamists or the West, right?

[01:12:32] Simone Collins: That- Yeah. It depends on what, yeah, what kind of empire. Yep. That, that, that does matter.

[01:12:36] Aydin Paladin: Indeed. Yeah.

[01:12:37] Malcolm Collins: All right. Well, it was wonderful to have you on.

[01:12:40] Aydin Paladin: Yeah, thank

[01:12:40] Malcolm Collins: you for having

[01:12:41] Aydin Paladin: me ...

[01:12:41] Malcolm Collins: if you, if people have not seen her channel I

[01:12:45] Simone Collins: would s- Two channels actually now, which is very important Yeah

[01:12:46] Malcolm Collins: I’d suggest it if you like this channel. It’s very much like, a s- a, a science channel first and foremost, right? But it talks about- Well, no, no ... naughty

[01:12:57] Aydin Paladin: science. Wait, it’s, it’s S- S- Savian Science. Oh Sci- the Sciencible one or Aidan’s

[01:12:59] Simone Collins: biology? Yeah, Sciencible. Yeah, Sciencible’s the new channel, and that’s more science-focused, right, and

[01:13:02] Aydin Paladin: then you’re- Yes. It’s gonna be... I mean, mo- most of what I’ve done is just, it’s not, it’s not political. But it will be just, like, for science stuff where I’m just gonna be, I’m just tell you the truth about it.

[01:13:11] It’s not, it’s not going to be in any way censored or, it you know, shying away from topics that Might offend people in any kind of way, but it is just science. So whereas the Aidan Paladin channel, I’m mostly going, my main channel, my older channel, mostly for scientific topics or the intersection of science and explicitly politics.

[01:13:29] So- Hmm. Yeah ... you know, I re- my, I recently did one about, like I said, to talk about gender politics. I did one before about elections, the, the psychology behind elections actually. So that kind of stuff will be more explicitly political, and the stuff on the science-typical channel will be more variety science- Yes

[01:13:43] less focused, yeah.

[01:13:45] Malcolm Collins: And,

[01:13:46] Simone Collins: That’s perfect. Where can people learn more about The Beowulf Foundation?

[01:13:48] Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

[01:13:48] Aydin Paladin: Oh, yes. So, explicitly what we’re promoting right now is our publishing house, Wylfings, which is W-Y-L-F-I-N-G-S. And we have a ton of different books. Like I, we have the en- entire collected works of Major General Richard Hilton.

[01:14:02] If you’re interested in military history in particular- Mm-hmm ... I would definitely check those out. Imperial Obituary: The Mysterious Death of the British Empire, particularly if you’re interested in British military history. His books are fantastic. As I mentioned before, Like the Roman: The Life of Enoch Powell by Simon Heffer, that book was out of s- no one was publishing it.

[01:14:20] It was in many senses a banned book because Enoch Powell is a, you know, no-no right-wing figure in, in history. We publish it, and it’s not the only one. We also have some other books that have previously been out of print, and then we do also have, for example, I mentioned Ed Dutton. He does the his channel’s The Jolly Heretic here on YouTube.

[01:14:38] We have his most recent book, The Quaker Question, which is you know, Oh, I didn’t

[01:14:42] Simone Collins: know that he had a new book. Oh my

[01:14:43] Aydin Paladin: gosh. Yeah, he does. And-

[01:14:44] Simone Collins: Is it pro or anti-Quaker?

[01:14:46] Aydin Paladin: I think, I’ve not read it yet. I, I’ve read a little bit of it. Yeah. But I, I think he just goes into sort of the idea that the Quakers actually are the ones running society secretly from pulling the strings.

[01:14:57] It’s

[01:14:57] Malcolm Collins: just like- We, we’ve argued that as well.

[01:14:59] Aydin Paladin: Yeah. Really? Okay.

[01:15:01] Malcolm Collins: We argue that wokeism is a form of a, it descended from Quaker values and culture. And, I think- ... that it’s a form of Quaker culture that is fighting against right-wing culture, which is- Mm-hmm ... a form of Puritan culture. Or at least like the new right culture is, is, is a form of Puritan culture.

[01:15:17] Yeah, yeah. But a lot of people are unaware of this because Quakers have distorted the actual Puritan positions.

[01:15:23] Simone Collins: Yeah.

[01:15:23] Malcolm Collins: Like one of the things we point out about Puritans that a lot of people are unaware of is until the 19th century, a lot of Puritan works had to be censored because they were so sexually explicit.

[01:15:32] Simone Collins: Oh,

[01:15:32] Malcolm Collins: wow. The Puritans were not an anti-sex people. They were, they would’ve been if they were in the modern era- They’re just enthusiastic sex within marriage ... the sexy anime women- Oh, okay. Yeah ... but monogamous marriages and kids, which is very much like what our faction has become. Yeah. Because they, they, they sort of had this belief of like if you, if you’re sh- shying away from something you’re still letting it control you.

[01:15:55] Aydin Paladin: Ah, I see, yeah. Yeah. I’ve not read it. I, I, I’ve read some of D- Ed’s other books, but [01:16:00] this is a little bit outside of what I, I typically knew him to cover. So this is actually... And knowing you’ve covered it as well, I’ll definitely have to actually read it myself. But we have that book. We’re about to publish My Friend Scrump.

[01:16:09] He’s published a book with us before and he... Which was oh my gosh, he does... It’s not on my list here, but it’s Anti-Politics volume one. There we go. That’s his first book. Mm. And it’s about to publish Anti-Politics volume two. So yeah, we’ve got all kinds of stuff that’s both contemporary, things that are banned and things that are just difficult to find.

[01:16:25] And it’s largely, it’s everything from like politics to history, everything in between. And we also do publish basically a yearly magazine that includes works from people predominantly in the British right who have written pieces for that magazine The Corncrake.

[01:16:39] Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

[01:16:40] Aydin Paladin: So yeah. Okay. Check, check out Wolfings Publishing.

[01:16:42] It’s part of a, again, broader organization that is trying to bring all sorts of things under the same umbrella so that you can support other people who are ideologically aligned while just buying things that you were, you already want to buy or would be interested in anyway. You know?

[01:16:55] Malcolm Collins: Great. And if there’s any way, I, I, I’m happy to work with you guys with RFAB if any way you want to.

[01:17:01] Obviously RFAB is probably too coded because like one of... We do not-safe-for-work like, Mm ... chatbots and stuff like that as well on the site. Mm-hmm. Which is probably not okay with a, a lot of right-wing organizations. But nobody in our community cares. So- you know, if, if somebody wants to do that stuff, that’s, that’s the internet.

[01:17:19] People are like, “Oh my God, what if a kid sees it?” It’s like, bro, if a kid’s on the internet- ... okay, and, and, and, and they’re gonna get one shot by seeing something, they’re already one shot. Like- Yeah, yeah ... you’ve, you’ve lost that game already. They’ve... If they can type into Google you know-

[01:17:33] Aydin Paladin: Yeah ...

[01:17:34] Malcolm Collins: that’s, this, I don’t, I don’t care about any of that.

[01:17:35] But yeah, I, I just always get annoyed by these Discord controversies. Mm. “Can you believe that X was on somebody’s...”

[01:17:42] Aydin Paladin: Fuck

[01:17:43] Malcolm Collins: off. You fu- I’ve, it’s al-

[01:17:45] Aydin Paladin: it’s always high school forever. That’s what that is. It’s just always

[01:17:48] Malcolm Collins: high school forever. Yeah, I’m like, oh, you’re so... It... What are you talking about? Anyway, have fun.

[01:17:54] Have a great day. You too. Go check out her stuff. Check out these events if you’re in the area. And yeah, it was great to have you on. And-

[01:18:00] Aydin Paladin: Yeah, great. Thank you so much for having me ...

[01:18:03] Malcolm Collins: we went really long. Oops.

[01:18:05] Aydin Paladin: Whoop. Oopsies.

[01:18:06] Speaker: Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday dear

[01:18:22] Octavian. Happy birthday to you. Now, before you blow your candles out, make a big, big wish, okay? I wish- No, no, no. Toasty Octavian’s gotta wish, okay? Oh. Yeah, you’ll wish them for your birthday. Can I keep it a secret though? Yeah, keep it a secret. Don’t tell anyone

[01:18:45] Man down, but don’t worry, you can still make your wish You gotta make your wish. Make your wish Now you can blow out your candles

[01:18:56] Speaker 4: Now. Whoa. Okay. Whoa, whoa,