Are Cancelations Over? Wendigoon vs. In Praise of Shadows

This episode explores the controversial topic of cancellation within the horror community, focusing on a dispute between two horror content creators, Wendigoon and In Praise of Shadows.

1. Ideological extremism can lead to divisive and exclusionary practices within communities.
2. Historical parallels are drawn between current cancel culture tactics and fascist ideologies.
3. The importance of maintaining ideological diversity and resisting gatekeeping in communities.
4. The potential societal impact of unchecked ideological extremities, suggesting a slide towards greater divisiveness.
5. The episode underscores the need for self-reflection within communities to prevent the spread of harmful memetic viruses.

1. Introduction to the Controversy

The hosts introduce the episode's focus on the cancellation attempt against Wendigoon by In Praise of Shadows, framing it within the broader context of ideological purity in the horror community. Malcolm Collins: "The horror community, being a normal, welcoming community, welcomes people with all ideological perspectives into it."

2. Analysis of Ideological Extremism

This chapter explores the dangers of ideological extremism, comparing tactics used in the horror community with historical fascist movements. Simone Collins: "A society where people like this person are tolerated is a society that is walking towards a holocaust."

3. Implications for Society

The discussion expands on how the attitudes in the horror community reflect broader societal issues, emphasizing the risk of societal breakdown due to ideological rigidity. Malcolm Collins: "It begins to infect a community... they now think they own the entire cultural category, in this case, horror."

1. Promote Diversity: Encourage diverse viewpoints within your community to prevent ideological homogeneity.
2. Engage in Self-Reflection: Regularly evaluate your own beliefs and practices to guard against becoming the extremist you oppose.
3. Resist Gatekeeping: Challenge exclusionary practices in your communities, advocating for openness and inclusion.
4. Educate on Historical Parallels: Use historical examples to highlight the dangers of extreme ideological purity to others.
5. Foster Dialogue: Engage in conversations with people of differing viewpoints to understand and possibly integrate diverse perspectives.

In this thought-provoking episode, Malcolm and Simone Collins delve into the recent controversy surrounding the attempted cancellation of YouTuber Wendigoon by the channel "In Praise of Shadows." The couple examines how this incident serves as a disturbing case study of the rise of extremism and dehumanization within certain ideological groups.
Malcolm and Simone analyze the rhetoric used by "In Praise of Shadows," drawing parallels between their language and tactics to those employed by the Nazi regime. They discuss how the dehumanization of perceived outsiders, the justification of violence against them, and the attempt to police and purify communities are all hallmarks of fascist ideologies.

The conversation also explores the importance of intellectual diversity, the dangers of ideological echo chambers, and the need for a sane and principled opposition to counter the spread of extremist views. Malcolm and Simone emphasize the value of cultural sovereignty, pluralism, and the fight against bigotry and radicalism from both sides of the political spectrum.

Throughout the discussion, the couple reflects on the broader implications of this controversy, the state of online discourse, and the potential for a return to civility and understanding in the face of increasing polarization. They also touch on the importance of holding individuals accountable for their actions to discourage future attempts at cancellation and dehumanization.

People

Malcolm Collins, Simone Collins

Content Warnings:

None

Malcolm Collins
The horror community, being a normal, welcoming community, welcomes people with all ideological perspectives into it. But once you get a critical level of this ultra progressive, ultra urban monoculture perspective, they now think they own the entire cultural category, in this case, horror. And they now have a duty to police entrance into this community. Only people who, who one think like them and fit their cultural rules belong in this community. But then he also reveals his hand about what he thinks about general society.

And at first he said they should not be welcome in our space, but then he says they should not be welcomed in public in general. Wow. Okay. The argument being that they spread harmful messages, presumably. No, I mean, so look at the arguments that he might use to justify this in his head.

But generally he sees them as subhuman, not deserving of the same dignities of other human groups and that they should be treated as such. And a lot of people don't understand how people can walk towards something like a holocaust. And society may not recognize that they're walking in that direction. A society where people like this person are tolerated is a society that is walking towards a holocaust. Yeah, well, dehumanization is the first step of any of this.

Simone Collins
You can't do these things to people. Elevating the murder of this family just for being in the wrong area is a positive thing. But the most important thing is understanding how this larger memetic structure works. Is for memetic structure to stay stable like this, it needs to not encounter pushback. Right.

Simone
Speaker one, would you like to know more? Hello, Simone. I am excited to be here with you today. We are going to cover the recent controversy around the attempted cancellation of Windigoon by in praise of shadows. However, we're not going to just spit the facts of the case and then react to them.

Malcolm Collins
I think, like a lot of people do, I want to be very based in the way we do this. I'm a very unique take on this, and I think that there is a unique takeaway and a pretty big one to be had by this. Honestly, I found learning about this case, it's shift some of my perspectives, because I think it perfectly encapsulates two things. One is how the mind virus of the urban monoculture works, how it has looped around from general progressive to basically just being nazism, or at least a form of fascism. Although I think now that they've become anti semitic, it's hard to call them anything other than Nazis.

But anyway, so how it had turned into this fascist nazi ideology, but also how individuals within it can't see that this has happened to them. Even though they've taken these extremist positions. So an example of one of these positions that this guy took. So I'll just give you a few. One was he talked about in a previous video, the Hills have eyes movie.

And that's what motivated this video. That people didn't like his take on that movie from a couple years ago or something. And his channel wasn't doing as well as it used to. And he was bitter about that. But anyway, his take was that it was good that these white middle class people were brutalized.

Because they had entered into another cultural group's territory. And then he analyzed that cultural group. Like the crazy mutant savages in that movie with Native Americans. And he's so this is a good thing. It's them taking back their further adds.

In Praise of Shadows
To the commentary that this family doesn't belong here. Just by the way that they look. You can tell that they do not fit in with this vast desert landscape. They are an economic invading force. What is both home and hardship to one is a curiosity to pose in front of and take pictures to a group of others from a wealthier background.

On the most basic, surface, superficial level, this is a film about cannibals killing and eating a family who get lost on their summer vacation. And psychologically, most when they watch this. Will be on the side of the vacationing family. And wish for them to survive and make it out and get back home. And why is that?

Because if you look at this from the perspective of the hill people. They are only defending what is theirs. This land that they call home. The Carter family would have never been killed if they had stayed in that monstrosity of industry that is New York, that their own kind created. It can stand in that way as a bit of an allegory as well of that fact that even though we are housed under the umbrella of America.

We are many different countries comprising of many different people that do not get along or like each other. To say that the hill people and the New Yorkers are of the same nation. Would only be true in the strictest definition. And that they happened to live within the same borders. But culturally, they couldnt be more different.

The hills have eyes is a clash of. When you take two types of people who hold absolute contempt for one another. And then you proceed to call them both american and equals. Who supposedly have the same opportunities at birth, father Jupiter and his family are filled with murderous rage. But why shouldnt they be?

Do you see the surroundings that they are forced to put up with. At one point he says to the father, Bob Carter, your dog made sport of my blood. You pig. Im gonna kill your kids for that. You come out here and stick your life in my face.

Stick your fingers in my pie. That was a bad mistake. I thought you were smart and tough. Youre stupid. Youre nothing.

Im gonna watch your goddamn car rust out. Yes, I will. Ill see the wind blow your dried up seeds away. Ill eat the heart of your steel thinking memory. Ill eat the brains of your kids.

Kids. There is a tangible fury here, a pure, unadulterated need for blood. And through that, vengeance, vengeance at their situation and the systems in place that have forced them into this, in a way, are they not justified for their actions? The hill people can be representative of anything that you want them to be, really. They can be Native Americans, and the hills themselves can be allegorical of them being forced back onto reservations.

They can be black Americans that have for hundreds of years been forced to live within a dehumanizing system that has balances in place that assure that they. Never get ahead when people were like one. It shows the level of dehumanization he has of both groups, both the native groups, to see them as like these monstrous individuals, but also the level of dehumanization he has of people he sees as representative of his cultural enemies, which generally conservatives. And you actually see this throughout a lot of stuff that he talks about. So in one part when he's talking about how you know that Windigoon is a bad guy, in part he says, because he's from Appalachia.

Malcolm Collins
And you need to assume that every white person you meet in Appalachia is a racist unless they actively prove to you that they aren't. He has said many times publicly that he lives in east Tennessee. It is about as white as you could possibly get. Deep. Appalachia is very white country and for the most part is exceptionally racist.

In Praise of Shadows
Genuinely, in this part of the country, you have to assume that any white person you meet is racist unless they show you otherwise. This is a remarkably racist take. And I think a lot of leftists initially, when they took this position that you can't be racist against whites and stuff like that, they didn't understand that when you remove groups like this, like when you remove protections around groups like this, that these protections existed for a reason, like we did in the nineties when I was growing up. We understood that you shouldn't make large, bigoted assumptions about a group that has, like, deleterious externalities. And that's why racism is bad for the leftist framework to work for it, to dehumanize people outside of its framework so much that memetic sets from those groups can't reach them.

Malcolm Collins
It absolutely must fully dehumanize those groups. Yeah, it feels a lot like Tucker and Dale versus evil, which we've referenced heavily in another podcast. Our Tucker and Dale force the versus medieval problem. It is about the way that the people from the urban monoculture dehumanize people outside of the urban monoculture to such an extent that they can only see them as like freaks and murderers, no matter how nice they're trying to be to them and end up like murdering themselves in the process. Oh, good, look, your friends are here.

Hey, you're supposed to want to have children and this is your ultimate goal in life. It is a very archaic idea and old idea and representation of a woman.

Simone Collins
You're getting people to sign a pledge basically saying that they will not have children until the canadian government takes serious action on climate change. Is that your blood? What? No, no, it's college kid blood. And how many people have signed on so far?

1381 as of right now. I know what this is. This is a suicide pact. Oh my God, that makes so much sense. We have got to hide all of the sharp objects.

In Praise of Shadows
Genuinely, in this part of the country, you have to assume that any white person you meet is racist unless they show you otherwise.

Malcolm Collins
Holy mother of God. Some kid, he just hooked himself right into the wood chipper. What? Headfirst, right into the wood chipper. It looked like it might have been one of the college kids.

Yeah, which is actually Tucker and Dale versus evil talking about conservative horror. Another really interesting thing is the way that he tries to other conservative groups from a community that he has claimed ownership of, that his cultural group has. So in the movie, he says that the horror space is a progressive space, which is. He called it punk and everything like that. Horror is an intrinsically left punk, anti establishment, countercultural art form that is primarily concerned with social issues and pushing boundaries beyond what is deemed acceptable by traditional, more conservative, polite society.

In Praise of Shadows
Oh, he's just a youtuber. Why does it matter? Or so what if he's a conservative? Is that a problem? Which the answer to that is yes, but the reason that I care is because this does not belong in horror or anywhere.

I care deeply about horror. And everything that he does has demonstrated so far in his career that he should not be welcomed in our spaces or even, you know, just in public. In general, while also noting that there are two types of horror content out there because there are talented right wing horror creators and we need to be vigilant for them so we can expel them from our space. Oh, Lord. And then he categorizes horror in two broad categories.

Malcolm Collins
One is horror made for artistic, to give people an alternate perspective on the world and give them access to minimized perspectives. This is the progressive lens, like a horror made for art. And then there's this horror that's just made to be entertaining to watch. And that's human centipede. I don't think that's entertaining for anyone to watch.

The date started off so well. Hey, girl, what's your favorite feeling? Centipede on hyper. The costume design was a highlight. I like it.

For the boy. Tell me what the blood's about. No, he's talking about horror where, like, specifically he was talking about how in a movie that was released recently, they took out some violent stuff because then it could get a pg 13 rating and reach a larger audience. Intrinsically conservative thing to do, like making your movie entertaining and fun to watch. For him puts it in this negative category.

Simone Collins
Okay, horror with broad appeal. But if it's more like horror, that's a documentary that teaches people, then it's okay. Yeah, artistic merit to it from his perspective. But if the artistic marriage is in service to a conservative message like Tucker and Dale versus the force of evil, which is about how people in the urban monoculture dehumanized conservatives. So much the american rural poor, so much that they can't see them as anything other than worthy of death and basically inhuman.

In Praise of Shadows
Genuinely, in this part of the country, you have to assume that any white person you meet is racist. And you'll see that this is his. Very much his perspective, which. So he first, and this was really interesting. So I was talking about how he's like, we own the horror space and we should not allow voices like his in the horror space.

Malcolm Collins
This is a really interesting thing to say. And it shows how this memetic virus works. It begins to infect a community. And when I say infect a community, what I mean is the horror community, being a normal, welcoming community, welcomes people with all ideological perspectives into it. But once you get a critical level of this ultra progressive, ultra urban monoculture perspective, they now think they own the entire cultural category.

In this case, horror. And they now have a duty to police entrance into this community. Only people who think like them and fit their cultural rules belong in this community. But then he also reveals his hand about what he thinks about general society is at first he said they should not be welcome in our space. But then he says they should not be welcomed in public in general.

Simone Collins
Wow. Okay. The argument being that they spread harmful messages, presumably. No, I mean, so we'll get to the arguments that he might use to justify this in his head, but generally, he sees them as subhuman, not deserving of the same dignities of other human groups and that they should be treated as such. And a lot of people don't understand how people can walk towards something like a holocaust.

Malcolm Collins
And society may not recognize that they're walking in that direction. A society where people like this person are tolerated is a society that is walking towards a holocaust. Yeah, well, dehumanization is the first step of any of this. You can't do these things to people. Elevating the murder of this family just for being in the wrong area as a positive thing.

And then he's also talking about who is the other. Because he segments christians. He's. This is how we know he's bad. As Appalachians.

This is how he's always bad. But the most important thing is understanding how this larger mimetic structure works is for a memetic structure to stay stable like this, it needs to not encounter pushback. Right? A normal human, like, if he had ever interacted with, like, normal human content or normal human beings, somebody would put a mirror to his face and be like, you are becoming a Nazi. You are becoming the thing that you say you hate.

And he would then have this moment of self reflection and maybe move away from these perspectives or double down, whatever, but it keeps them from seeing that. And keep in mind, I don't think that these memetic structures are designed or they're done with self interest. It's just that certain iterations of them, structures spread better than others and are extinguished better than others by preventing individuals in those groups from interacting with anyone who might reflect back to them what they are becoming, anyone who might disagree with this extremist, progressive view and the way that they identify these individuals is just general bigotry, like appellations, bad christians, bad, et cetera. But then also, if a person has ever interacted with anyone else who they have identified as immune to this memetic structure, then that person also cannot be interacted with. And the reason I think that this has gone viral is actually this.

It was his list of associations of Windigoon, and he saw these associations as tainted. Oh, boy. And therefore, Windigoon cannot be allowed at horror conventions, cannot be allowed to create horror content without being dogpiled on. They want to expel all memetic structures that are antagonistic to theirs from any community that they have infected. And keep in mind, people can be like, why are you calling it like an infection?

Or something like that? Dehumanizing. And it's like when you have a group that so dehumanizes other individuals, whether it's Nazi, like traditional German Nazism or this modern form of Nazism, there is a reason that you need to go back and look at it like. Like it's working, which is as a memetic virus. Because I don't think any human comes to these views intentionally.

I think if you played back this video of him today to him when he first started encountering these progressive views, he'd be horrified. He would recognize that for what it is, which is fascism, traditional fascism. But was really interesting what always actually really hurt me whenever I was watching because I watched tons of videos on this to prep for. This is Windigoon's list of friends. Yeah, his friends was like shoe on head and Mister Baldwin and Brandon Buckingham.

And, okay, what hurts me is I'm just like, wow, this guy is so cool. Windigoon is a horror conspiracy theorist youtuber with several million subscribers, has a dark past with deep ties to far right extremism. Windigoon is very publicly friends with Turkey Tom. He is friends with Mudahar. He is publicly friends with Shu on head, who is a conservative masquerading as a leftist.

Could I ever be that cool to hang out with all of these famous YouTube personalities who, like, I have parasocial relationships with through watching tons of their content? Like Mister Ballin. What a bro. Everything about Mister Ballin is the nicest thing ever. And he's so cool.

And then he calls and this very interesting is the way he attacks shoe on head. He is publicly friends with Shoe on head who is a conservative masquerading as a leftist, who has built a career off of lazy, anti woke content complaining about sjws, who says stuff like Karl Marx rising from the grave, finding out his movement has been taken over by fat, ugly, mentally ill losers. I mean, God, I'd love to do something with shoe on head sometime. So shoe on head, he said that she's a fake liberal and she's actually a conservative because she's anti woke extremism. And this shows how this sort of extremist mimetic structure works.

Is somebody like Shuan Head, who broadly from our position perspective, it's pretty far progressive, isn't? Please correct me if I'm wrong. I'm so bad with names. But isn't Shuan like one of the OG breadtube people? A lot of people consider her that, but I wouldn't call her a breadtuber.

I generally don't like breadtubers. And I like she one head. She's actually an atheist skeptic community person. Later became a leftist who isn't left on the crazy left positions. And the fact that he felt that being friends with her was a cancelable offense.

That's really interesting to me in how this mimetic structure works. Yeah. And that it's not just anti conservative, it's anti anything that isn't extremist. He's Robespierre. Honestly.

Yeah, Robespierre. So explain what you mean by that. You could think of Robespierre and the french revolution as being one of the leaders. It's associated with all the wench hunts and the beheadings. And what happened with the french revolution, very broadly speaking, I'm butchering this.

Simone Collins
Ha. Pun intended. Is that after basically all of the usual suspects and obvious people were beheaded in the french revolution, everyone just started turning on each other and it was chaos, and suddenly no one was really safe. And I think this is already happening, and this is maybe what's indicative of what's happening now within the woke movement is having run out of conservatives to cancel or centrists who are open about their opinions to cancel. They're left canceling or attempting to cancel or attack people within their own, we'll say, like Broadway culture, because they're the only ones left talking.

They're the only ones left standing. And I think. I don't think that's what's happening here. Yeah. What's happening?

Malcolm Collins
I think what's happening here is they see shoe on head, even though she is culturally aligned with their interests. Yeah. Being immune to the medic architecture which makes up the virus, and because she is immune to some elements of it, it's best to just remove her. Excise her. Yeah, excise her and anyone who interacts with her, because then any of these alternate memetic structures that she clearly has access to that have given her this immunity are going to enter and potentially destroy the cohesion of their community, which isn't like, I can see why you'd have an evolutionary pressure to move in that direction.

Simone Collins
She's being so cute. She's like smiling and stuff. I don't know, you'll be able to see, but we're getting more and more smiles each day. Malcolm, I'm so excited. Oh, I love that.

Malcolm Collins
You're so sweet. But anyway, so another thing that's really interesting is how he justifies his dehumanization is very nazi like in structure. So a lot of people don't know. But he literally accuses him of being a Nazi for associated with people who at one time have owned or had or held guns that Nazis used. He's really grasping at straws here.

No, not guns. That Nazis knew just had guns. According to one YouTube analysis of this, I've heard, at one point, there was one person who had or used a type of gun that Nazis used at one point, and that was enough of a tenuous association. This YouTube arguments of Hitler breathes air. So do you.

Simone Collins
Therefore you are like Hitler. This guy wore hawaiian shirts. Oh, how dare. How very boogaloo. This guy has repeatedly denounced the group.

Malcolm Collins
No, you can't not denounce a group. If you have any association. Best to just remove you. Only pure people. And this is interesting, right?

Even if somebody now agrees with most of disguised physicians, they lack purity. You can only be allowed in their spaces, or at least have a loud voice within their spaces if you are pure. And it really reminds me of this sort of idea of korean purity and everything like that. But it's more than that because I want to talk about how the Nazis actually began to talk about the Jews and the groups that they would eventually cancel. Let's cancel.

Sorry, genocide, whatever. Is that what we're calling it now? We got to cancel them? So they would say that these groups were a threat to them. And I think that's what people forget.

They said that these groups have taken most of society's wealth and that they control all of the businesses and that they now utilize this power to be a threat to us. They caused us to lose world war two. They've been sabotaging us. And it's really reminiscent of, and I should be clear, Jews in Germany did not do this. That this is very reminiscent of the way that he.

Because he identifies as queer. Who even knows if he's gay? He's probably one of those we would consider as somebody who actually supports the real lgbt community. Fake iterations of trans. Or it's like a cis guy who just identifies as whatever non binary so that he can get access to spaces that really he doesn't have any business being in, but anyway, identifies as queer.

And he sees Republicans, like this alternate group as trying to exterminate his group, even though we haven't seen that at all. And people are like, oh, but what about all these anti trans laws? And I need to be clear, and we talk about this in other videos. There is a huge difference between being against people who are born in the wrong body and want to live their own lives and people who are actively sexualizing minors who are actively which is happening. You can't like say this isn't happening like it is something that's happening.

I can post a clip here of from a turkey Tom oh turkey Tom with another person who got mad at the guy for knowing a turkey Tom is such a leftist he actually annoys me at times. It's genuinely really good grooming advice. On April 4, 2023, postcard reveals he's in contact with four minors aged nine to 13. Ive so far sent it to four minors between the ages of nine and 13. I hope it encourages them to transition.

Malcolm
When the Onkazone animation became a meme, they got excited over its virality among kids. Man and Orion also fantasized about getting kids on hormones. Orion was the manager, coercing him every step of the way. This is apparent by how we talked about him to others. Has he started hormones yet?

Yes, but not effectively. I guess thats what youd expect just telling a reheard to buy hormones. They bought estrogen but no antiandrogen. It would have been more fun if he started hormone blockers at like twelve. Haha isnt that true for everyone?

Dont worry, ill make him into a good girl. Dont blow up our spot bro. All t slurs are like that. If you can trust me around your kid itd be transphobic. Not to me with daycare tots.

To Orion and many of his associates, their identity was little more than a political shield. It clearly worked given he publicly fantasized about assaulting women in bathrooms. Me when transphobic little girls ask me what im doing in the womens restroom when im obviously a woman. The two fantasized about assaulting JK Rowlings grandchildren. Not letting t slurs get with your kids is transphobic.

Someone should. Harry Potter woman's grandkids. Orion then goes on to call them turf meats. But anyway, turkey Tom talking about this guy who's like yeah, we want to target these underage people and try to get them to convert for our sexual gratification. Like this is something that's happening and conservatives are trying to prevent this because you don't want these types of people in and around kids and some of the ways that they try to handle it might be ham fisted, but it's not.

Malcolm Collins
I think wrongheaded and I think that if you actually cared about the trans people who are just trying to live their own lives, you would see that this group of people who is using the trans identity to protect terrorist actions is a genuine threat to real trans people. They're a genuine threat to lesbians. They get in lesbian spaces and they harass them constantly and beat them up. But we have another video on this. They are a genuine threat to real gay men.

45% of gay men voted for Trump in the last election cycle, at least according to the one poll I could find on this. They don't identify with this, and yet they get smeared, and they have to deal with the negative consequences of these types of individuals. So the point being is that there isn't actually a right wing attack on the queer community at all. If anything, the group most defensive of the real og queer community, people who just want to live their own lives instead of aggressively forcing ideology on other people, which is more of an ideological movement than a movement about, just let me be who I am. That is the right leaning community, because they are doing what they can to fight the Mal actors.

But anyway, I think that they have. It's just that the structure of their arguments and the way they've been able to motivate this fear and justify these immoral acts in their community are so reminiscent of Nazis and the way that the nazi movement came to power. And it is interesting that they have no internal reflection on this, that at no moment does he. Wait. I just said that all of a population groups thinks a certain way or acts a certain way.

Or I just said that all of a certain population group shouldn't be allowed in public. And this group includes things like christians. That's a religious culture. Like, how can you say that's any different than being Jews? Right?

Simone Collins
Oh, my God. Christians have structural power and money in our society, and it's. That's what the Nazis said about the Jews. Like, that is the way this. No, I don't think it descends directly from nazism.

Malcolm Collins
I just think it's a convergently evolved memetic structure that is very good at purifying spaces. They enter a community, and this is also why you've got to be so vigilant within your communities about individuals like this. Yeah, because they enter a community, and then eventually they say, no, this is our community and the best way to fight against this. And this is the other thing I've really found interesting about this whole event. It's very much like Tom and Jerry, like, shooting himself in the face trying to, Jerry bends the gun back and then it shoots him in the face.

Is that it completely backfired on him and he's being hard canceled right now. And I don't think this would have happened a year or two ago. I think a year or two ago something like this may have been partially successful. And so I think that we are actually seeing, even from within leftist spaces, an understanding of the toxicity of this extremist mimetic subgroup and an isolation and quarantining of it, or at least a shaming of it to the extent that other people will stop doing this. I don't want to do it so sloppily.

Simone Collins
This was very sloppy. Yeah, but that's how you end cancellations of the concept. Yeah. Like we might be seeing the beginning of the end of cancellation. This could be the last cancellation.

Malcolm Collins
I'm not saying it's the last. But look, last weekend somebody tried to cancel us, right? There was an article on us and people tried to cancel us for using corporal punishment with our kids. Very like corporal punishment with our kids, which like 75% of Americans do. And the research backs, and we've done episodes on this, but there was old research in the eighties that didn't back this.

But I love how so many people are like living in eighties world where they're like, the world population is growing forever. Republicans hate the gays. Or I'm like, bro, like, none of that stuff has been true for a long time at this point. Or what was I talking about here? Or corporal punishment.

Everyone agrees that's bad. It's a large amount of study showing, no, actually it's probably lightly beneficial. So you, where are they going with this? So what we could see is society corrects, we get a sane republican base again and a sane progressive base again. And I really like to see that.

And that is when people say what is one of our core agendas, and it's something we talk a lot about internally, is to create a sane republican party, a republican party that has a philosophical consistency throughout it, like a larger philosophical underpinning behind it instead of the broad populism. And I'm not saying that that's all Trump is these days. I actually really support Trump. I think he's a great president. Speaking of gays, the first president in american history that supported gay marriage when he was elected.

Obama didn't do that. So let's be clear here. This is what I'm talking about when I'm talking about, like, their old narratives are just off. But I think that the larger structure of. There isn't a deep philosophical sophistication behind the new cluster of ideas that's making up the modern republican movement.

And I, some individuals trying to bring that in, who I like, like Bronze Age pervert, I think is fantastic. I think he's like the artsy version of maybe what we're doing. Then there's individuals like us and before us, like Curtis, who have been trying to, I think, create a philosophical theory of the modern or post Trump republican ideology, which for us is very much one bull moose. Republicanism, not just big government bad, but all large bureaucracies bad, big companies be everything like that bad. And that we should see the conservative movement as a diverse, pluralistic alliance against the urban monoculture.

Again, unanimity. This idea that this other guy's pushing for, that everyone needs to think the same, everyone needs to act the same, that there should be allowed no diverse perspectives, and that is achieved through cultural sovereignty, through allowing for homeschooling, allowing the money to follow the student, allowing somebody to not take a vaccine when they want to. It's allowing this cultural autonomy that I think can drive this next iteration. So a hatred of large bureaucracies and cultural autonomy above all else. And I think you can build a larger cultural framework around that as being antagonists to the urban monoculture and the pluralist alliance against the urban monoculture, which is driven by an undercurrent of vital fighting.

The nihilism that we increasingly see on the progressive side. Now, I think that the nihilism on the progressive side can be subverted. And I've really been heartened by the progressive response to this guy, because before was progressive. What we thought was Gamergate one and Gamergate two have always said that their biggest mistake is that they don't. They always back the bad guy.

The five guys, girl who was colluding and sleeping with people she was writing stories about was clearly the bad guy. She did not deserve to be defended. Sweet baby, Inc. Was clearly the bad guy. They were creating bad games.

They were destroying franchises. They were. I've described it as, like, buying somebody's, like, childhood home. And people can't understand why people hate, like, remakes and stuff like this, where it's a bunch of woke stuff. They're like, just don't watch it or something.

I feel like if somebody, like, bought your childhood home and then covered in banners about how much they hate you and how much. How stupid you are and how racist you are, even if you're not racist, how homophobic you are, even if you're not homophobic. You'd be like, they put, like, blaring signs around it and walked around shouting mean stuff about you all day that would have the nostalgia mixed with the degradation would hurt. And it's designed to hurt. And, yeah, I can understand people's reaction to Sweet Baby, Inc.

And the bigotry of sweet baby Inc. These are people like, the people who are running it said a lot of bigoted stuff against white people. And I think that this is the other thing that the Republican Party, we were looking at starting an anti dei consulting group. And what we're looking at is like anti bigotry or something like that, because that's what I see this as. And I think that's what republicans need to stand for going forwards is fighting bigotry and radicalism.

And I think that when you are fighting bigotry and radicalism, you are fighting Dei, you are fighting people like this who represent, I think, forms of bigotry that everyone across the spectrum can agree is morally abhorrent. Yeah, it's encouraging. I love not only, though, that we're seeing this backlash, but the politeness of the backlash. And I feel like Wendigoon's response to this was so gentlemanly, in such good form that it also gave me a lot of hope, because it's one thing for there to be a backlash. It's another thing for the backlash to represent civility, cordial behavior, kindness, understanding, empathy.

Simone Collins
And that's all stuff that was present in Wendigoon's response, because obviously a witch hunt to solve a witch hunt isn't really going to make this problem any better. And one of my concerns recently with regard to the backlash against woke has been that as much as there is an increase in pushback, really what we're seeing is not a return to some kind of normal, a market correction of society so much as it is increased polarization and just that more people are moving to the other pole because they're getting rejected from one. And this suggests that we might have some hope of reaching a new equilibrium of broad sanity instead of just extreme polarization that just gets worse and worse over time. Yeah. And the goal of everyone like us trying to make the conservative party more sane, I think that most progressives should be doing everything they can to cheer us on for what we're trying to do.

Malcolm Collins
Right. We accomplish their aims much better than they do. But for us, the progressives that are fighting against him also are accomplishing our aims better than we can within the progressive side, because what we want America to become is two parties that are having a disagreement over the best way to run the country. Yeah, we all care. We all care.

Simone Collins
We want good outcomes. It's not like people are acting in bad faith here. But when I think there's this group. That genuinely want to exterminate another group, you can't relate to them in that way. When you get people like him who so dehumanize somebody like me, that he would be excited about our family being murdered, that is because we see in a family like the hills have eyes.

Malcolm Collins
That I also think that also the rules that he was using there are interesting that it was okay for them to be murdered because they had encroached on another cultural group's space, yet he thinks nothing. And so one that shows his justification of what he thinks is appropriate to do when conservatives enter progressive spaces that he believes they have ownership over. Like the horror community. Yeah, but in addition to that, it shows how much the rules apply to you, but not me. He thinks his cultural group should be able to invade anyone's space because it is the correct cultural group.

He should be able to tell other people, which he does in the video, how they should be able to use native american words and stuff like that, even though Windigoon actually does have native american heritage and this guy doesn't. Oh, really? He should be able to police use of the word windigo because he has the right views, the progressive views, and therefore he can encroach on native ideological spaces and weaponize them for his agenda. Which just shows the way that I'll add the clip from my favorite gap year song. I was in Africa, in Tunis I saw this woman malaria and she looked at me with vacant stare as if to say, despite our differences, you and I are one.

Simone
Yeah. And then I just thundered everywhere because that really reminds me of this time. Oh my God. Yeah. Yeah, I was in South America, in pera pera.

No, paradal, in para, Peru. Wonderful country, you know. Beautiful people. Yeah. Um, yeah, I knew that we were trekking in the andes and the sun was just rising and glinting off the snow, creating this sort of ethereal haze.

And I really got a sense of the awesome power of nature and the insignificance of man. And then I just chandled everywhere that. Progressives relate to other cultural groups. Beautiful people. Oh, lovely country.

Malcolm Collins
Beautiful people. Like, tapping them on the head, like just completely dehumanizing them. He sees them as nothing other than set dressing for his ideological perspective instead of this is what we say about progressives like, they think that everyone's the same. Like, how can we, how can diversity have value of everyone's the same? Right?

Diversity only has value because we're different in our proficiencies, perspectives, et cetera. And that all of these have value until they reach a state where their goal is to erase everyone who's different from them. And I think that this is actually really interesting is if you look at these two ideological perspectives, they can be like, Malcolm, aren't you doing what he's doing? I'm like, no, I am. Okay.

And we've always said this with every group, no matter how distant they are from us existing, so long as their end goal isn't to erase every other ideological group on earth. Now, this puts us at odds with some christian groups and stuff like that. And we're able to work with them now because we have short term reasons to work together well. And to keep in mind we're also not trying to dehumanize those groups. Those groups are in some ways less of an asshole than our groups and in some ways more of an asshole, which is to say we're in the mind of not everyone can be saved.

Simone Collins
People who are not among the elect are just going to. Which in a way makes us more of an asshole. Right, exactly. Christianity. These other groups are like, yes, we want to save everyone, but therefore everyone has to be like us, which is both not ass holy because they care about saving anyone.

Everyone but assholey because it's also very. Similar to his ideological. So if he can hate these christians who are like, we're just trying to save your soul, man. He thinks that if everybody acted like him and was part of this cultural group and this is what we talk about is this when they attack us for spanking or like 90% of black families spanked and they're like, oh, obviously my criticisms of you don't apply to them, but secretly they do. Secretly you do plan to wipe out that practice in their communities even though it is what's culturally normal for them.

You have this actually not even been secretive about that. They're just like, oh, they're just less educated because I'm watching the discourse online. Often people are saying, yeah, and that's not acceptable either. Yeah, so they do have this cultural imperialism goal, but they believe that there's this positive instate from their goal. And then if they come to us and they're like, how are you so sure there isn't a positive instate for my goal?

Malcolm Collins
And I'm like, bro, have you been around an ultra progressive community. You guys want to have terrible mental health. You're riddled with anxiety, you're riddled with depression. You're constantly infighting. You are barely staying stable without your, like, weekly visits to psychiatrists, which you're not seeing in conservative communities.

It's clear that this sociological structure that you've built doesn't work, and that's why we don't want you spreading it to our kids. They're like, oh, we're going to rescue your kids. And I'm like, what the hell? You're not rescuing my kids. I have seen how terrible this structure you have built is.

Maybe in the nineties you could have claimed that it would work if enough people tried it, but I think that's lost plausible deniability at this point. Yeah, and yeah, but I do believe that there is a sane progressivism, like, shoe on head progressive. I think that there is a place that they can go. And wouldn't it be so great if this isn't the first of the cancellations we see blow up in someone's face? And I was mentioning, like, the cancellation on us, it basically just increased our public footprint.

That was it. That's what came out of it, which we are incredibly lucky that happened. Yeah, that's exciting. What a good development. And, yeah, so go to more cancellations and hopefully one day, if any of the people mentioned in this video, other than the imprisoned shadows guys, he just seems to be completely are like, hey, I watch your content.

I'd love to reach out sometime. Please do. Because this guy seemed to have the coolest group of friends ever, and I'm jelly. But then I reflect on, like, our group. We got, like, pearly things watches us, and we've done her show before.

She's one of our subscribers. I don't know how much she actually watches us, but I like her a lot. Be cool if we did more stuff with her. And then we've got the normal crew. I guess some people are like, yeah, but you get to hang out with Scott Alexander and Richard Hanania and all that.

I'm like, yeah, and Curtis Yarvin the nerd is really cool. It is. But I love how within the online influencer spheres, there's, like, our sphere, which is like, nerdy intellectual dissidents, and then there's, like, the cool, popular dissident circle. The non rationalist adjacent. Yeah, the non rationalist adjacent.

Simone Collins
The people who look more like they lost popular kids. And I really see them as that. Like, he's listing off his list of names and I'm like, oh, that's like the aspirational, same popular people. Anyway, I love you to Destamon. You are amazing and I really appreciate you.

Malcolm Collins
And do you have any final thoughts on this? No. I'm glad you shared the story with me. I had not heard anything about this, so love me some Internet gossip. All right, have a good one.

One quick side here where I would actually criticize Windigoon's response to this is he was very big on saying that people should not attack this person for what he's done. And I appreciate the optics of that statement. But if this man is not seen as being attacked for what he has done, then more people will attempt this sort of behavior in the future. It is very important not from the perspective of this person being hurt, which I think is bad and everything like that, because, you know, clearly he's just a mentally disturbed person at this point, you know, but that mental disturbance that he has is a contagious one. And if the public doesn't see that there are negative repercussions for these kinds of actions, then this is going to happen more in the future to people who may not have so many high profile friends.

And so it is very important that publicly this guy gets taken down. Do it and let the English see you do it. And I will say in the response to this, if you're like, maybe with a good person, maybe it was an off day, he said my heart was in the right place. You know, you can't know whether your heart is objectively like a good or bad heart, but you can know the heart you really have. And what he said was, that is, I still believe in my heart of hearts that what I did was right.

And as such, he shows that who he is in his heart of hearts is just a black heart. He is a bad person at this point. And I don't know. I don't think he was born a bad person, but he has gotten to that point. I don't think the Nazis were born bad people necessarily, but that's where he is today.

He was susceptible to a certain self reinforcing set of memes that has led him to this point. And yes, he can break out of it, but it would be the equivalent of cult deprogramming at this point, which is very hard in a society that's controlled by a particular cult. I hate episodes where I have to have my notes up because your picture is smaller. You are so romantic. How did I on earth earn someone as wonderful as you?

Simone Collins
Although you know what we've gone kind of full circle with me dressing weird. You met me when I dressed like a weird ass hipster, and now I'm back to dressing like a weird ass hipster. I don't think you look like a, you look like a, I'm probably gonna label this video something like trad wife reacts or something like I did with the, what was it? Gamergate two controversy. I was just watching a YouTube video commenting on tradwives.

And kind of the, one of the big points they were making is tradwives don't publish content about actually being trad wives. Like, they never actually show themselves vacuuming or anything. It's always preparing elaborate meals or talking about serving their husbands. And I should just create a treadwife series where I'm like, this is me wiping up shit again. Here's me pulling pebbles of shit out of the bathtub.

Here's me scraping shit out of underwear. This is most of a trad wife's life is just around cleaning shit off of things. Yeah. Here's me using a tool to get shit in between the floorboards. Oh my God.

Malcolm Collins
I am just delighted to be talking to you because today we didn't do our strategy walk and I'm putting all this at the end like I normally do. Like. Or just chat. You don't have to put it in at all. No one needs to know about how much shit I put up with.

Oh yeah, we want to make being a parent look good, right? We got. Yes. You gotta make fun. This is why Trad wives don't publish that and or hire people to do it for them, unlike us, because we're too cheap to do that shit.

Simone Collins
Plus we don't shoot. What was this guy's channel's name again? Oh, the one that, that talks about Wendigo. It's, I'll compose myself for this because this is one where I'm not probably going to put hot takes at the beginning because I'm going to start with.

Malcolm Collins
It's, I'll compose myself for this because this is one where I'm not probably going to put hot takes at the beginning because I'm going to start with.

Simone Collins
It's, I'll compose myself for this because this is one where I'm not probably going to put hot takes at the beginning because I'm going to start with.

Malcolm Collins
It's, I'll compose myself for this because this is one where I'm not probably going to put hot takes at the beginning because I'm going to start with.