Malcolm argues conservatives have been falsely portrayed as more racist than liberals. He analyzes poll data showing white Democrats were more opposed to a black president and living in mixed neighborhoods than Republicans until recently. Malcolm argues the stereotype comes from progressive elites being disconnected from their base and extremist views getting amplified online. He makes the case that real racism today comes more from progressives self-segregating and conservatives actually having more diverse friend groups. Overall he argues both parties have racist factions, so neither should claim moral superiority.

Malcolm: [00:00:00] the guy who wrote Rich Men , north of Richmond, said, we are the melting pot of the world. And that's what makes us strong, our diversity. And we need to learn to harness that and appreciate it . And progressives was like, Oh, now he's going to get beaten up by all the conservatives because they hate that talk. And it hasn't really happened. where did this idea that there's like a conservative racist come from, .

Malcolm: I am going to send Simone a poll. By 538. So they did a series of polls on this. Okay. And you grew up in the democratic movement. So you grew up being inundated with this lie that the conservatives are the racist party in this country.

Malcolm: Oh, totally. So let's see, you see the actual statistics here. Just sent you the

Simone: first one. Whites who say they would not vote for a black president.

Malcolm: Democrats were higher at this until Obama became president.

Simone: Yeah. Between 15 and 7%. Of white Democrats said that they would not vote for a black president, whereas by comparison, only 5% of [00:01:00] white Republicans reported that they would not vote for a black president.

Malcolm: So, this isn't like hidden racism. A lot of the time when conservatives say Democrats are racist, they mean like affirmative action is a fundamentally racist policy in many ways. Right. But there's sort of , twisting things around a bit. I mean, just like actually blatantly normally in the normalist sense of the term, the democratic base is about as.

Malcolm: Racist in the most traditional sense as the Republican base. There was never this grand flip.

Malcolm: but hold on, I'm going to show you more stats here.

Malcolm: So now I'm gonna get to the spicy take here Okay. When I look at the conservative intellectual sphere, where do I see the actual like loud racists, right? . I call them in like the Nick Fuentes sphere. I think when you think through the ideology, you realize it's almost so stupid that no one could actually hold it. And it's so incongruous with actual right wing ideology that there is no way that these individuals could [00:02:00] have real large followings within the right wing sphere, which leads me to believe they might be plants either by the CIA or a foreign government.

Would you like to know more?

Simone: Oh, Malcolm, how long has it been since we've spoken?

Malcolm: It has been too long. There's been this song that went viral in.

Malcolm: First conservative circles and then progressives freaked out about it, which was Rich Men , north of Richmond which started out, which I love very appealing to like progressive audiences. Like the first half of the song is like how hard it is to be a working man in today's society. And then it starts talking about, you know, welfare queens and you know, protecting minors.

Malcolm: And they are, obviously they have a meltdown about this, but what's been very interesting is the followup to this, which liberals are being very. Smug amount, which is the guy who wrote the song, then said, we are the melting pot of the world. And that's what makes us strong, our diversity. And we need to learn to harness that [00:03:00] and appreciate it and not use it as a political tool.

Malcolm: To keep everyone separate from it. And progressives was like, Oh, now he's going to get beaten up by all the conservatives because they hate that talk. And it hasn't really happened. There have been a few, like your typical, like crazy racist who have gotten mad at him. But in general, his base still really likes like.

Malcolm: If you actually hang out with the conservative base, if you hang out with like real conservative voters in this country, you would intuitively know this is what most of them think. And this is really interesting for me because it's, it's, it got me thinking a few questions. One, where did this idea that there's like a conservative racist come from, which, you know, historically the Democrats were the party of the Klan.

Malcolm: , yes, parties, quote unquote, switched at one period, but not exactly. They [00:04:00] switched about as much as they did when Trump was president. And by that, what I mean, you know, when Trump was president, now all of a sudden the right is more protectionist, the right is more anti war, the right, you know, it just, it just, a lot of things switched, but not everything switched.

Malcolm: So how did, how did one party go from being the party of the Klan to then the other one being the racist party? And what I'm going to argue is that never actually happened. Oh, Republicans were never actually the racist party. And we're going to go over a lot of stats here. But also some, some.

Malcolm: Narrative stuff but first, the, the, the first way that this perception has happened that I want to dig into, because I find it very fascinating and it's something that you've definitely seen as well, is we know a lot of the political elite of the conservative party. You know, I've had presidents, there were people who would be president or past presidents.

Malcolm: I've been to house parties that they're hosted and stuff like that. I know the type of people that they're associating with and the vast majority are progressives. And the question is why this is the fun thing, so [00:05:00] Simone, for example, she was managing director of Dialogue, which was a secret society that was originally founded by Peter Thiel and Aron Hoffman, so you know, very conservative founding, you could say, right?

Malcolm: And yet they had to institute an affirmative action, a policy for getting in if you were conservative because so few people of the type of people that they're admitting you know, leaders in, in, you know, fortune 500 companies, major tech companies, stuff like that were like out conservatives.

Malcolm: And this is something you see across the political sphere is that typically the ultra wealthy who live in cities in our society and control a lot of the wealth, there's just not many conservatives than those groups. And so when the politicians are associating with people who they see as their peers, the truth is, is they interact with very few actual conservatives, very few actual people in their base.

Malcolm: And so when they are constructing an image of who their base is. They often rely more on the stereotypes [00:06:00] progressives have of their base than on their actual base. Wow. And an open secret in, in D. C. and Simone, you've had these conversations with people before as well we talk with, , conservatives in D.

Malcolm: C. and they're like, it is an open secret that a lot of the campaign staffers of the major, you know, Senate campaigns and stuff like that presidential campaigns who are in the conservative group are actually just Democrats who are holding their nose. And the reason for this is, is there are very few people with the right degrees to hold these positions who are also willing to be mindless bureaucrats to like a giant bureaucratic machines.

Malcolm: Who also have a conservative ideology. So not only within the political class in this country, if you're talking about conservatives is, is their friend network often really, really progressive in their mindset, but their staffers who, when they're asking, you know, what does my base think and because there's become some, you know, don't, don't.[00:07:00]

Malcolm: poll that was seen as sort of an overly Democrat thing to do to do all this polling. So they use their intuition and their intuition is often the intuition of a progressive based on the stereotypes progressives have of conservatives. And so it has created a picture for a lot of politicians, which can lead them to act in ways which genuinely seem like they're trying to pander.

Malcolm: To a racist demographic that I will go further to argue doesn't really exist.

Simone: But really interesting. I've never heard this theory before. I'm loving it. Okay.

Malcolm: You're loving it. But hold on. Here is where it's going to get really fun. Okay. So I decided to go out there and try to find I was like, okay, what percentage of conservatives are actually racist, right?

Malcolm: So I was looking through statistics and I could find news articles being like, okay, a lot of conservatives are racist. Look at the way they answer these questions. So I'll go over the questions that they were saying proved that they were racist. [00:08:00] Okay. God granted the United States a special role in human history.

Malcolm: 64% of Republicans said yes, 32% of Democrats did. That just seems obvious to me if you believe in God. I mean, the U. S. has a very important role in, in the world.

Simone: And if God makes everything happen, then therefore God did that.

Malcolm: That, that is an intuitively true thing and obviously not a racist thing. Right. So the next one would be, this is spooky conservatives when asked has America become too soft and feminine, uh, 63% of Republicans agreed and 24% of Democrats did.

Malcolm: Would you say that's just intuitively true? I think most sane people would say that.

Simone: I mean, I think that progressives. It's a very feminized political affiliation, whereas the conservative political affiliation is more masculine. I did see a really interesting set of stats showing that actually the male to the [00:09:00] female gap between conservatism and progressivism in some nations are actually like very low.

Simone: So it's

Malcolm: hard to say. I will pull up this stat on the screen. It's really interesting. So there's a few countries, U. S. is actually unique. Not totally unique, but it's not a truism that in every country, the more conservative faction is more male. And the, the more progressive affection is more feminine.

Simone: Exactly. But I would say at least in the United States, that is true. So while it isn't universally true, it does seem to be somewhat of a truism that in, in the United States, it's, it is a, a cracy the, the

Malcolm: progressive. Okay. But it's certainly not a racist. It's like they're not proving any racism there.

Malcolm: No. That, that only

Simone: has to do with being like, I guess more male oriented versus

Malcolm: female, I guess. Guess they thought it made conservatives look bad or something. Oh, here was the one where they really thought they had gotten them. Okay. 57% of Republicans believed that whites face, quote unquote, a lot of discrimination.

Malcolm: Well, just [00:10:00] 52% believe blacks do. And among Democrats, 13% said whites do, and 92% said blacks do. So keep in mind, for Republicans about the same number believed that whites face discrimination as black space discrimination. Mm-hmm. , that seems. Intuitively true to me, and certainly not a racist

Simone: claim. Well, I mean, you could argue that everyone faces discrimination because everyone has views about different groups, whether they want to admit it or not.

Malcolm: Oh, here's another statistic I found, right? Yeah. Okay. When respondents were asked whether they approved of the teaching of critical race theory, 78% of Republicans disapproved with only 16% said they were in favor of the practice and 75% of Democrats said that they approved of teaching it while only 15% disapproved.

Malcolm: Critical race theory isn't like about racism.

Simone: I mean, it's, it is one theory around how to view systemic racism that started in the legal profession, as I understand it, yeah, it's, it's not [00:11:00] necessarily a, a, an endorsement of being anti racist. I think it's interesting because a lot of the differentiation is on.

Simone: Certain specific performative anti racist views that are really held strongly by one group. And then another group that I guess just isn't that interested in having all those conversations and I think is more in through its actions anti racist. Yeah.

Malcolm: So I'm going to keep going through statistics here.

Malcolm: I actually collected a lot more statistics to go through. Wow. Okay. I don't want to bore before I get to the, the fun part. Okay. What's the fun part? . So, I am going to send Simone a poll. So this was done by 538. So they did a series of polls on this. Okay. And you grew up in the democratic movement. So you grew up being inundated with this lie that the conservatives are the racist party in this country.

Malcolm: Oh, totally. Yeah. And so, and so you totally believe this going into this, right? Yes. Okay. [00:12:00] So let's see, you see the actual statistics here. Just sent you the

Simone: first one. All right. Whites who say they would not vote for a black president. We have white Republicans versus white Democrats, and they're basically neck and neck until...

Malcolm: Except Democrats were higher at this until Obama became president.

Simone: Yeah, like basically in, in 96 white Republicans hit an all time low where only 5% of Republicans who are white said they wouldn't vote.

Malcolm: Well, I guess our podcast listeners can't see what's happening. Yeah. So up until Obama, more Democrats said they would not vote for a black president than

Simone: Republicans.

Simone: Yeah. Between 15 and 7%. Of white Democrats said that they would not vote for a black president, whereas by comparison, only 5% of white Republicans reported that they would not vote for a black president. So that's very interesting. This is from the general

Malcolm: social survey. Did that you, given what you grew up

Simone: [00:13:00] hearing?

Simone: Yeah. Well, I don't know. I mean, I do, I do get the impression that a lot of white Democrats or white progressives in general are a lot. More racist because they're like, to a certain extent, I think they're overthinking race, like it, just to the point of them ending up being really racist or like even avoiding other races.

Simone: The

Malcolm: recent poll that I saw that I think explains it. Really? Okay. What is this poll of both Republicans and Democrats, how many black friends they had, white ones? Republicans had more

Simone: black friends. No, that, that makes sense. But that's, that's my point is I think that because white progressives are way, way, way more sensitive about racism and like all the performative things they're supposed to do around racism and that they just, they're supposed to feel really bad about racism and they're the bad guy.

Simone: Like it's frankly just too stressful to have friends outside your own race. And when you actually look at,

Malcolm: when you look at the progressive would tell themselves, but I think it's a, it's a lie. [00:14:00] The truth is, is that Republicans are just less racist. The Democrat, look, you saw the statistics that you're, you're acting like, oh, they're just too sensitive.

Malcolm: They literally said they would not vote for a black person for president more than Republicans until Obama became. Simone, and this is 538. This is like a completely nonpartisan polling thing that is known for very good polling data, right? And, and you're here being like, oh no, it's just that they care so much.

Malcolm: No, the truth is, is that they are actually racist. And they have a lot of racists in their party. And that, and no, no, and the truth is, and when you, when you hang out with you know, we, we have a lot of black friends, right? And of the, the, and this is where I, where I think it's actually going, going on here of the black friends.

Malcolm: I know the ones who are most comfortable hanging out with a lot of non black people are typically more conservative. And I think that's a big part of it, right? Like it's the people who [00:15:00] just don't care about race, who are often going to end up sorting into these more Republican circles, largely because I think.

Malcolm: If you are, if you let go of all this racial identity politics, which you really need. So for example, they'll say Oh, Republicans are racist because they want to keep out immigrants. Right. Right. And what they really mean is they, because even Trump wanted a skilled immigrants like policy plan to let in skilled immigrants, like we have proposed.

Malcolm: What they wanted to do was keep out like a flood of unskilled immigrants. And that's not like a racial issue, that's just like sane economic policy. And, but hold on, I'm going to show you more stats here.

Simone: Okay, but let me just, let me just argue though that I think ultimately the progressive Perspective on race is actually for group separation.

Simone: Like Robin D'Angelo and many of her seminars that she would, she would lead. She's the one who wrote white fragility would actually encourage employees at companies to create race [00:16:00] affinity groups, like the white people group. So they could talk about their experiences. Stop acting like the

Malcolm: Klan.

Malcolm: They just took off their hood.

Simone: Well, that's, that's why the Klan, I think also the Klan has gotten along so well with some leaders of the nation of Islam, for example, because both groups are like, yeah, you stay in your group. I'm going to stay in my group. We do not mix. We do not hang out with each other.

Simone: We just agree to not like each other.

Malcolm: Hold on, hold on. I'm going to continue to send you more statistics. Okay. So here's the next poll that they ran. All

Malcolm: Whites who say blacks are more unintelligent than intelligent. Again, you can see here that the lines, sometimes Republicans are at the top, sometimes Democrats are at the top of

Simone: this. No, no, no. Hold on. So they've been pretty much neck and neck always, however, white Republicans up until about 2009.

Simone: We're a slightly more racist on this front than white Democrats. And then

Malcolm: this is not the perception you're getting in the media. If I was a politician and I was pandering to a racist base, and these are the polls I was seeing, it would [00:17:00] not make sense for a Republican to pander to racism any more than it would make sense for a Democrat to

Simone: pander to three percentage points with this graph.

Simone: This graph is showing that like the rates peaked in. Like maybe the late eighties at, for Republicans, maybe 43% and then for, sorry, 33% and for Democrats around 30%. So that's 30 versus 33%. It's still a minority and it's still, yeah, very, very close. So I, I see, I see what you're saying. This is

Malcolm: interesting.

Malcolm: Okay. Okay. So next one, right? Okay. This one is whites who oppose living in a half black neighborhood.

Simone: .

Simone: Wow. Okay. So these are like genuinely, I mean, maybe one percentage point apart in the late eighties, but they're neck and neck through 96 and they start to diverge. Yeah.

Malcolm: But even with Democrats, even still, it's 20%, you know?

Simone: Yeah. They're, they're, they're again, extremely close. I'm making with

Malcolm: these. Is it, there is not a clear, like racist Republican faction and clear, like non racist Democrat

Simone: faction.

Simone: [00:18:00] Yeah, no, this is a, this is really interesting because you definitely, if you'd asked me to predict what are the differences on these things, you know, would, would not vote for a black president who would not want to live in a half black neighborhood, like I would have thought. That there would be at least a 20 percentage point difference.

Simone: And here we're seeing like two to three percentage points different. And in some cases, sorry, Democrats being more racist than Republicans, which is

Malcolm: wild.. So, this isn't like hidden racism. Like I think a lot of the time when conservatives say like Democrats are racist, they mean like affirmative action is a fundamentally racist policy in many ways. Right. But there's sort of like, you know, twisting things around a bit. I mean, just like actually blatantly normally in the normalist sense of the term, the democratic base is about as.

Malcolm: Racist in the most traditional sense as the Republican base. There was never this grand flip. And there is a great article that actually goes over the history of this and how this [00:19:00] lie sort of started and how it was propagated. So the article I suggest, and I can link to it is the myth of the racist Republicans, the truth about the Southern strategy, and basically what it points out is this was all a lot more nuanced and it's very similar you know, to calling somebody who's against affirmative action or somebody who is, you know, against unrestricted immigration racist.

Malcolm: Okay. We're like, yes, I suppose somebody could be motivated by race to believe those things, but the vast majority of people who are against these things are not motivated by racist reasons. And so then this gets me to a really interesting point. So there's, there's a few things here. Where is actual racism in the U.

Malcolm: S.? Like where is this coming from if it's not coming from the Republican actual base? If this guy who wrote this song you know, Richmond, North, North of Richmond. I, I think very much represents the actual concerns of the Republican base. Where's it coming from? One is this misunderstanding of what Republicans think [00:20:00] that is taken on by politicians, but I also think that this misunderstanding is taken on by a lot of young.

Malcolm: Like firebrand conservatives who don't actually have real conservative friends like rising intellectual class. This guy at Harvard decides he wants to be a dissident or whatever. And so he's well, I guess I'm a conservative and I need to appeal to other conservatives. And so I'm going to go out there and act racist.

Simone: The acts, the caricature of a conservative. So all, all of these views, you think. Are people acting like they think

Malcolm: Republicans? Yeah, I think that that's a huge part of it. I think another big part of it is coming from what we call the tyranny of the unemployed problem. And this is to say within any online community, the most interaction you're going to see, if it's like a completely unfiltered, like just based on how much they comment or how much they upvote or something like that.

Malcolm: People who have disproportionately been kicked out of society for being like a turd or like annoying or a twerp. They are going to disproportionately comment in these environments, right?[00:21:00] And so, and they are going to disproportionately upvote stuff. They are going to disproportionately interact with stuff, right?

Malcolm: And this is what you see on Reddit. This is what you see on YouTube comments often. Although we have the best audience, so we don't see it. But you see it in other environments. And it can create a perception of, for people that this is actually the mainstream view within this person's fan base or within the, the, the, the base of people who consume this content when it's actually not.

Malcolm: And so I do think that there are a lot of right now, like unemployed people who have an extremely, you know, external locus of control. So these are like slovenly white people who just blame all of their problems on other, you know, on. Whether it's women or black people or something like that and they feel like when they're looking and they say who do I identify with, which political party has my back they think the conservative party is going to have their back. So they're like, okay, I'm going to go online. I'm going to engage with, with these people, but their actual ideology does not really align with a [00:22:00] cohesive right wing intellectual theory or view of the world.

Malcolm: They are just. Random whiners that really have almost nothing to do with real conservative politics. They just appear in online circles a lot. A final thing that I think is really interesting is when we talk about the media coverage around this How far the left has to go?

Malcolm: To paint a picture that the right is racist. Remember how I was going through all those leading survey questions? Yeah. Something like the Proud Boys, for example. The guy who runs the Proud Boys. Or at least he's not white. I don't know what ethnicity he identifies with, but he's, he's far from white.

Malcolm: And I think black and it's wild. Is it, so when the left is trying to categorize this Republican movement as racist, they will go out. And I saw a documentary that was trying to show that the Plowboys were racist and like the best they could do. It was like random. Okay. Hand signs from like nobodies who happened to be at the rallies, [00:23:00] right?

Malcolm: Uhhuh, . You could go to any rally. I, I have imagine them filming, being like, s**t, we're not getting anything racist here. Hey you, Jim, can you go stand in that crowd and flash some okay. Signs? Oh God, I, I, I saw on 4 Chan that that's how racists communicate with each other. Now, anybody who doesn't know, it was actually a fake thing on four chan.

Malcolm: They were originally trying to show. that the news had just gone insane and would see anything as a racist sign. So they pretended the okay sign was an actual racist sign. Now some racists have picked it up, but I don't, I think that this is more just like internet idiots who didn't know, who didn't know that it was a joke to begin with.

Malcolm: When you're talking about like actual racists, you're typically talking about like the lowest common denominator, intellectually speaking. But anyway. So, so then where, where are, so I talked about the lowest common denominator intellectually speaking. So now I'm gonna get to the spicy take here.

Malcolm: Okay. When I look at the conservative intellectual sphere, where do I see the actual like loud [00:24:00] racists, right? I am predominantly seeing them. I call them in like the Nick Fuentes sphere. This is the Catholic integralist sphere. And yet the more I think about it, like I talked about how stupid this ideology is before.

Malcolm: But I'm actually going to go into it because I think when you think through the ideology, you realize it's almost so stupid that no one could actually hold it. And it's so incongruous with actual right wing ideology that there is no way that these individuals could have real large followings within the right wing sphere, which leads me to believe they might be plants either by the CIA or a foreign government.

Malcolm: I love this theory. All right. It's time to go into it. What Catholic integralists want from the world, right, is they want a world in which the entire world is ruled under a single Catholic monarchy. They, they want sort of a Catholic caliphate to rule the entire world. However, they're also like anti immigrant [00:25:00] and racist, which makes no sense.

Malcolm: The majority of the immigrants coming to the U. S. are Catholic, right? Presumably if you thought that the whole world could have... operate under a Catholic caliphate interculturalism within our country, in which that interculturalism is represented by a larger Catholic voting bloc, should not be a concern at all.

Malcolm: Second, Catholicism more broadly is, I think, one of the least racist religions on the planet. Yeah, seriously. Let's talk about what I mean when I say that. And it's the only religion I know of in the planet You, within other religions, saints would be essentially demigods. So you have whatever you want.

Malcolm: They have miraculous powers given to them by the one true God. They are the only religion I'm aware of that has saints of like literally every ethnic group. They have many Hispanic saints. They have a Hispanic. Pope! They what are you, this does not make sense that this [00:26:00] is an anti Hispanic group, or that they would have this big anti Hispanic contingent.

Malcolm: They have many black saints, you know? But it, it gets more insane to this. Then what you're saying is that this ideology is popular among U. S. conservatives who are predominantly Protestant and predominantly anti globalist. That this globalist ideology, like super globalist ideology, has somewhile taken over, no, no, no, no, no it's, it's almost a Looney Tunes villain esque ideology, I want to rule the entire world, and I am also racist, and I want to, but when you put it all together, it like doesn't hold together, it falls apart, it is the The, the insane ramblings of the worst that progressives assume of conservatives.

Malcolm: Well,

Simone: yeah, because something has to not be true. Either the, the caliphate, the Catholic caliphate is not an actual end goal or because there's no, there's no other explanation as [00:27:00] to how it's really going to effectively take place unless like the Catholic populations are. able to coalesce and unite and move more freely in a way that helps them create strong coalitions of power.

Malcolm: Yeah, and it's not that there aren't Catholics that do eventually want to convert everyone. I mean, Catholicism is at the end of the day a dominating religious group. But Catholicism as a dominating religious group is incredibly intercultural. They are just incredibly intercultural. And in fact, they're even structured in a way, the hierarchical structure of the Catholic Church is really useful in for, because all people are intrinsically racist to some extent when they meet a group that they're not familiar with, or they're around another group, and that hierarchical nature of the Catholic Church has historically allowed them to say.

Malcolm: Hey, you know, you colonizers are going a little far right now, you need to tone this down, you know, even though the popular zeitgeist is saying do this stuff, you need to not do this stuff, you need to stop, you know, you need to stop having [00:28:00] unconsensual sex with, with, with people you're meeting, you need to start doing nice things for them, you need to start setting up schools for them.

Malcolm: That has been the core of Catholic doctrine for a long time. And so, yes, there are some Catholics that want the entire world under, you know, a Catholic state, but they are also intrinsically some of the least racist people in terms of how they view this. You know, Well, you have to be,

Simone: I guess, if you have a dominating thing.

Simone: Yeah. I don't know. It's interesting, right? I could argue that both a dominating and symbiotic cultures are racist, but in very different ways, and they're inclusive in very different ways, right?

Malcolm: But, but, but Consolacism is not. How is a dominating culture often racist? I, I am aware of almost no dominating culture that's racist.

Simone: They're well, so I would argue that they're racist and they're not allowing differences in the end, like dic, but that's

Malcolm: not about

Simone: race. Yeah, I guess, yeah. I mean, yeah, I guess, yeah. They don't require like everyone to, they, [00:29:00] they're culturalists,

Malcolm: they're cultural supremacists. Yeah. But they're almost never racial supremacists.

Malcolm: Yeah,

Simone: that's that's fair. Yeah.

Malcolm: That's fair. And, and, and this is, It's really important because it means that this ideology. So where could this ideology be coming from if it's not a CIA plant job, which I still think it might be. Why?

Simone: What would be the benefit of that? To paint one party is like the racist

Malcolm: party.

Malcolm: Okay. Well, so this is actually interesting. So the deep, the Republicans are not wrong when they say the deep state, you and I know a lot of people in DC. Okay. We know a lot of high profile people in DC Democrats and people with progressive leanings, as well as this, frankly, culturalist, racist, whatever you want to call it, view of urban Americans are the dominant cultural faction there.

Malcolm: Okay. They do not want, when Trump was coming into power, they saw that as an existential threat.

Simone: I guess you could argue that like DC is run by elitist technocrats who typically come from progressive backgrounds. So they're not representative of the [00:30:00] rural disenfranchised. They're not representative of The

Malcolm: CIA literally, like they have been caught in these cases having lied.

Malcolm: Or might've been the FBI. I can't remember which one trying to get Trump indicted, you know, these communications, Oh, you know, you don't know the text chains that came out. Like we have to get Trump. We have to, Oh, really? Oh yeah, it was a guy talking with his girlfriend who was also in the institution.

Malcolm: And Oh dear. I'll try to put the chains, but they were like, yeah, obviously Trump can't happen. We need to make sure that doesn't happen. So we sat in

Simone: rooms where people said that to people with a lot of power and influence in

Malcolm: the Republican party as well.

Simone: Yeah. So, I mean, I don't know, it was like everyone's saying that,

Malcolm: but no, but the point I'm making is this was actually felt within like there are large, I'd say near unanimous factions of major government security organizations who believe this.

Malcolm: And I, and I think that anyone who's pretending that's not true okay, the deep state might be a kind of in, you know, you can say it's a conspiratorial concept, but I think [00:31:00] anybody who actually has a lot of friends in government does know that they are predominantly Democrat leaning even in the intelligence services these days.

Malcolm: And this idea that they wouldn't like, this is an impossible thing to happen. I think is almost a fever dream. Of course, of course they might think this could be a threat to our country. Of course they might think, oh, we need to discredit this party. Of course they may think, oh, we can use this as a honeypot to discredit people.

Simone: Right? Yeah. It's not, not a crazy idea. I mean, I

Malcolm: think. No, but hold on, hold on. I'm not done. Okay. I'm not done. So what I was going to say is, okay, but let's say realistically, how could people come to this? Suppose they're not like, not realistically, but like, how could people come to this if this wasn't a plant job?

Malcolm: Like this insane ideology, right? Okay. Because you here were telling me, you know, trad cath is trending these days, et cetera. What's actually going on here. Yeah. So what I think is actually going on here. Is there might be a small portion of people out there because I think this [00:32:00] is how these, these plant jobs often work is they wait for some idiot individual to come to this ideology on their own, and then they'll manipulate algorithms or stuff to promote that individual to make them seem like they're a bigger deal or have a bigger audience than they actually have.

Malcolm: So, there's these, these it's just so an individual is out there and he's he just has a very hierarchical mindset. A very sort of like, everything must be hierarchical. Everything must go back to the origin. I'm going to be as traditionalist as possible. And so they accept the aesthetic of traditionalism.

Malcolm: That has been taught to them by progressive culture, right? Yeah. So they, they ask themselves, what are the way that people used to be? Oh, they used to be racist. Oh, what are the way people used to treat women? Or they used to be, you know, misogynist. Oh, what was the oldest iteration of Christianity? Oh, it's Catholicism.

Malcolm: But here's the thing. They were actually an intellectual. I think very few. Okay. So again, I know we have a lot of Catholic viewers here and I say very positive things about Catholicism. However, [00:33:00] I think from an outsider's perspective and from every Christian traditions perspective, they're the original iteration of that Christian tradition.

Malcolm: From an outsider's perspective, Catholicism is not the oldest iteration of Christianity. Orthodoxy has a slightly better claim to that, although I can see how the claim could go either way. For people who aren't really familiar with what happened Originally Christianity, and you can see this from the early, you know, Christian letters, mostly due to how hard it was to communicate and Christianity was just like this.

Malcolm: group that was just trying to do anything to convert people in the early days. It was run by essentially you would have a collection of cities and then within each city you would have a sort of a local patriarch, like a person who was known as like the most important Christian in the city. It's actually.

Malcolm: Very similar to modern Judaism, but a bit more hierarchical. And then and of course it would be similar, it came out of Judaism, right? And then after Constantine and Rome was made the official head of of, of Christianity because the Roman Empire became officially Christian, [00:34:00] right?

Malcolm: And so the, the Roman patriarch became much more important than the other patriarchs. Then you had the division of Rome between the East and the West and, and, Obviously, that began to build tensions because for a long time, there was a reason for the Roman Patriarch to be the Patriarch in charge, right?

Malcolm: But after a while, this began to get on other Patriarchs nerves, especially the other really important Patriarch, which was the Byzantine Patriarch, because they were the other capital of this major Christian empire. And these two people got in a head it was over really silly stuff like whether or not it was acceptable to use unleavened bread in the sacrament of communion. And things like the explicit wording of the Nicene Creed so really like detailed, nuanced stuff. It wasn't really over a matter of faith.

Malcolm: It was over a personality conflict. And the Orthodox group you know, I'm not saying that they weren't at fault for this personality conflict. But they said, okay, well, let's go back to this [00:35:00] system where it's a council of sort of equal patriarchs. And the, the Roman group said, no, let's keep this hierarchical system.

Malcolm: But what that means, very interestingly,

Malcolm: Is that Catholicism has always been unusually hierarchical in its power structures.

Malcolm: And so if you have an individual. And this is actually something that was a problem for, so Simone has a lot of friends who are nuns and you were talking to one and they were talking, can you tell that story about this, having to screen people?

Simone: Oh yeah, no we, a good family friend is a Carmelite nun, now she's a, like a mother, like she's, she's head of the order, and she spoke to us about how they really need to screen.

Simone: Novices who want to join the order because many of them are just joining because of mental health problems, not because they're really dedicated to

Malcolm: that particular. Specifically, they wanted a very structured life.

Simone: It's well, yeah, and this is, I mean, Carmelite nuns live a uniquely structured life.

Malcolm: So, but what I'm saying is, as a religious unit, it's very appealing to people who crave sort of [00:36:00] structure.

Malcolm: And that's 100% hierarchy. I want a structured world order. And so if you get a sort of it's some sort of pseudo educated individual who intensely craves structure and traditionalism and isn't more like broadly educated on, on, on what Catholicism actually means, which is, I, again, I've said before, more than anything else, Catholicism as a system is defined by inclusivity, and they just wouldn't get that because they're not culturally Catholic. And so they come at this tradition thinking of it more okay, I'm this new sort of version of a neo Nazi.

Malcolm: What is the most hierarchical and structured system I can choose without understanding the heart behind this, this older tradition. And so that's the way I could see it happening, but I want to give these people more credit than that. And so I'm going to say that there are CIA

Simone: plants. Well, so I, I would argue though, that maybe this is just kind of a market forces thing.

Simone: Like we found personally that when. [00:37:00] Frankly, inaccurate caricatures of us end up in the media, we get a lot more attention and growth. And so it could be that to your point earlier about like young educated college students just kind of want to be a major conservative figure. It's like an audience capture thing where they just keep leaning in.

Simone: to this caricature because it causes the most controversy and hate and hate is what draws the most attention. So, of course, it would be the racism that comes out. It would be the bigotry and the misogyny that comes out because that drives more shares and that ultimately drives more followers.

Malcolm: Yeah, no, I think you might be right.

Malcolm: And so they may just be about capturing public mindset instead of capturing, you know, legitimate followers.

Simone: Yeah, like nuanced views that most reasonable people hold, while that resonates with people, it's not something that drives clicks and shares. Whereas the, the really racist, misogynist, crazy, whatever views.

Malcolm: So here's where it gets really [00:38:00] interesting. So I'm going to go on another tangent here because we do have a lot of You know, black for actually something I wanted to mention because we were talking about the black thing friends things where, you know, conservatives have more black friends and progressives this is why progressives have to constantly parrot having black friends.

Malcolm: Does it make you not racist? Because

Simone: that's like a point like that. Robin DiAngelo makes saying you have a black friend or that your best friend is black is like a super racist thing to do. And that's, of course, do that. Yeah.

Malcolm: Because so many Democrats don't actually have any black friends or know any black people.

Malcolm: And it was a great thing where they were calling somebody racist for saying, my wife and kids are black. You know, that frequently happens. I married a black woman. I have black children. Obviously I'm not racist. And they're like, that's the most racist thing you could say. And the reason they need to say this is because they need to control what the word racism means to not meaning I don't negatively judge black people.

Malcolm: I mean. Obviously, if you have a black wife and kids, you don't negatively judge black people but to meaning, I agree with your [00:39:00] ideology. I am a slave to your ideological group. And so the only way you can get categorized as not racist is being a slave to this ideological group. But here I'm going to get into something that's, that's actually we'll, we'll save it for another video.

Malcolm: This video was, was really interesting. Have I convinced you, you know, you who grew up in progressive sphere that it was always sort of a lie that the conservative base was racist or more racist than the democratic base and that this is just sort of a narrative Democrats tell themselves to justify their othering and dehumanizing of the rural poor, really.

Simone: Yeah, I guess having, after having met you and moving out of the Bay Area. I do definitely feel like we've met a ton more conservatives and they are. So it really depends on how racism is defined, of course, but I think functionally, when it comes to befriending, working with, respecting, you know, et cetera people of different [00:40:00] racial backgrounds, conservatives are less racist um, 100%.

Simone: Like, They, they seem Mm hmm. But, but, but I think many progressives would be like, but how dare you because they'll tell racist jokes and they will acknowledge differences between groups and that is like the core of racism. So I think it's really the difference between performative. anti racism or, you know, performative non racism versus like genuine demonstrated lack of racism.

Simone: Like obviously progressives win when it comes to performative anti racism. You know, they're like so careful about what they say. No politically incorrect jokes. There are zero differences between racial groups. And then you have this other group that's actually They have a diverse friend group, they actually employ and work with and, and vote for a diverse range of people.

Simone: But they will make racist jokes. They will make, and also, you know, we have to admit also like among the conservatives we know who make the most racist jokes, they are definitely not white. So,

Malcolm: yeah, no, it's funny. You actually say this one of my favorite jokes and I know I'm probably going to get in trouble one [00:41:00] day for saying this jokes, but it was, it was about me.

Malcolm: So, I have a friend and they come to a number of events that we've hosted. And they were like Malcolm, why do you have so few white friends? And one of my friends was like, oh, he's way too racist to have white friends.

Malcolm: Um, And I thought that was really funny because I know because there's this acceptance within, I think you know, genuinely multi ethnic communities. Yeah, we are different and we talk about it and it's fun and it's interesting to explore the ways that we're different. And progressives call that racism being like, Oh, you people do this.

Malcolm: Why do you do things this way? We do things this way. That's really interesting. And that's sort of the whole point of this channel and stuff like that. So that's what they meant by that. Not like I have negative views, but that I, I, I do see race. I thought that was really funny because it's, it's, you know, we have in our episode about comedy.

Malcolm: What is comedy? It's surprising, but it's true in context. Yeah, I could see how that might scare away white people from being [00:42:00] his friends, but not, you know, a multi ethnic group. Yeah. Anyway.

Simone: That's really interesting. Yeah. Very

Malcolm: interesting. And yeah, and I, I actually think that, that progressives would become less of an insane party if they actually went out there and did realize that, yeah, not having any black friends probably does make you racist.

Malcolm: And yeah, you should go out and, and meet, not like. You know, your other rich is similar socioeconomic group, similar cultural group, black people, but like actual black communities and you might learn that they're very different than you think. Um, I think

Simone: that the number one, driver. The number one driver of racism is isolationism.

Simone: If you are not exposed to other people, if you're not living with them, befriending with them, like watching their content, like working with them, whatever, right? If you're not exposed, you're going to be kind of afraid because they're an unknown quantity and you don't really have a lot of good information to run on.

Simone: And if you can't predict someone, Or a group, you cannot trust them. Just period. If you can't model something, you're going to be nervous because you can't [00:43:00] trust it. Like

Malcolm: positively or negatively. This is something that we see. I mean, I'd say that the things that progressives would be most surprised about if they actually engaged with other ethnic and cultural groups.

Malcolm: is one, how much the Hispanics hate wokeism. They, they do not like you guys. Um, uh, No, broadly Hispanic, they might think that you are useful politically in the short term, but broadly, you are not a long term ally to these communities. Even that, I don't know. And, and how anti Semitic Black communities are.

Malcolm: But that is a different video. Just so people know that I'm not like... Making up something here and the 1970s there was a poll where 73% of blacks in their 20s were high in the index of anti Semitism. 42% of blacks, this is 1984, versus 20% of whites agrees that Jews have too much power in the United States.

Malcolm: In 2021 42% of black liberals versus 15% of white liberals endorsed antisemitic views. And I, and this is one of those things where they see Kanye come out and they're like, where did this come from? This is wild. And it's like [00:44:00] these views are not that unusual if you actually went out there and engaged with these communities instead of just viewed them through your stereotypical lens of who they are they, they actually have very nuanced views of the world.

Malcolm: And, and some of them might be justified, you know, based on history. I'm, I'm not saying that antisemitism is justified, but within the black community, like. We can explain where it comes from. It's, it's very interesting but a different video. Yeah. Interesting stuff. I love you, Simone. And I love that you're able to dig into these concepts and I'm able to even shock you still by shaking some of these stereotypes that you grew

Simone: up with.

Simone: Yeah, man. Every day coming out with new surprises for me. I love it. I love it. Yeah. Can't wait to my next conversation. Love you.

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