How Online Atheist Communities Birthed the Modern Right

Join Malcolm and Simone Collins as they explore the fascinating transformation of online political discourse from the early days of the internet to the present. This in-depth discussion covers the journey from atheist communities to the birth of modern online conservatism, touching on key movements like anti-feminism, GamerGate, and the rise of the "red pill" ideology. The Collins couple offers unique insights into how these shifts have shaped today's political landscape and the disconnect between online conservative culture and traditional conservative think tanks. Key points covered: The evolution of online atheist communities The transition from anti-religious to anti-feminist content The rise of the "red pill" and men's rights movements The disconnect between online conservative culture and traditional think tanks The role of platforms like YouTube and Reddit in shaping political discourse The impact of these shifts on modern conservative politics The potential future of conservative ideology and religious belief Whether you're a political junkie, a student of internet culture, or simply curious about how online communities shape real-world politics, this video offers a thought-provoking look at the unexpected twists and turns of internet-age political evolution.

Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] Hello, Simone! I am excited to be talking to you today. We just got back from NatCon, which is the National Conservative Convention, where all of the high and mighty conservative thought leaders, not real thought leaders, i.

e. they don't lead the public's conservative mindset, they actually seem almost completely disconnected from the mainstream conservative movement which was a real takeaway for me when I was there. So these are all the people who work in the Washington conservative think tanks.

Simone Collins: I heard Tower people.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, and I heard some thoughts there that really made me be like, wow at one point I was like, why are you doing this? The base doesn't want this, and they literally said, f**k the base. And I was like, wow, what one person where you got all mad where he's bureaucrats are good. Actually, we just need conservative bureaucrats.

We need a larger bureaucracy and we need it to be conservative. And then another person was like, Don't complain about like socialism's okay. So long as it's within our value set and this is where you get like insane things. Like the heritage foundation did project 2024 where [00:01:00] they put out like this plan 2025 2025 for the trump administration and in this plan one of the things that they had was banning pornography And I was like, that is a leftist position, but what, are you not familiar with the stellar blade?

Malcolm, they're

Simone Collins: coming together. Unity at last. We can finally agree on something.

Malcolm Collins: No, it's a bunch of woke bureaucrats, it was like, Mild conservative overlay. Between

Simone Collins: NOFAP, men's rights activists, and radical feminists, we finally found common ground! Porn is bad! Except that you guys know No, but I mean Making porn illegal, and making porn something that's shameful is the one number one thing no, hold

Malcolm Collins: on.

When you're talking about the base Like, NoFap is about self control. Even NoFap people are mad about the Stellar Blade controversy. Even NoFap people are mad about the Tracer butt controversy. Even NoFap people are mad about the Skullgirls controversy. Every time a group has attempted to censor male sexuality, [00:02:00] it has been a progressive leaning group.

But I want to talk about how these groups became so Wildly different from each other. Why is the conservative online base which is the group that really got Trump elected, like Trump was the 4chan candidate to begin with. That is the group that made Trump happen. That is where Pepe came from. That is where emperor, god emperor Trump came from from the Warhammer stuff.

That is where basically most of modern. Conservative internet culture came from a lot of people would say, okay a lot of this is downstream of 4chan, and it is, but it's not just downstream of 4chan, a very bizarre thing happened in internet history, which is the atheist movement online became the birthplace of the culture That is [00:03:00] now internet conservatism.

Or internet republicanism, or internet Trump base, basically. Interesting. And the question is, how did this happen? you grew up a Muslim.

Like, why did you convert to Christianity? Instead of just being

Simone Collins: atheist,

Malcolm Collins: like, why did you first try Christianity when you started praying to God? And she goes, of all these years, when I was attacking and preaching against religious individuals the Muslims, would send me messages about how they were going to kill me.

The Christians would send me messages about how they hoped they were praying for me and they were praying for me to be saved and they wanted me, and this is actually true of most of the atheist community. When they were attacking the Christians and then when their value system started to align more with the Christians, they were very open to be friends with these people because these people had always been.

Nice to them, even when there was conflict, [00:04:00] whereas the opposite side group had always been very antagonistic. The wokes send us death threats constantly

Would you like to know more?

Malcolm Collins: And let's chart the history of this for people who are too young. Now, if you are young and not familiar, like you have not been, like if you are my age and chronically online, I just said something that is completely uncontroversial to you.

You're like, oh, yeah, I remember when that happened. That was weird. Because everyone who has been actively engaged with online culture for a long time and, mildly open to conservative ideas knows that this happened. But if you aren't, then you might think that's a controversial claim.

Or if you just haven't been engaged with online culture, like if I said this NatCon, they'd be like, that can't be true. They'd say something like that. And then Somebody at the table would like lean over and be like, actually that did happen. So let's talk about how this happened, what happened and why it happened.

So first we need to go back to the early days of the internet. If you are talking [00:05:00] about the early days of the internet, the war between the fundies and the atheists was absolutely enormous. It was like the core show on the internet. It was the core conflict on the internet. It was as big a conflict as something like woke vs.

anti woke is today.

Simone Collins: Okay.

Malcolm Collins: It is what everyone was talking about. And then and I should note that people can be like, oh then the modern conservative movement must have come out of the early online religious movement, right? That's it. The people who are fighting the Atheists. The problem is Those people were always like 1 to 10 versus the Atheist community in the early days of the internet.

They were the vast minority. They were people that brought on for people to take who had no internet illiteracy for other people to take potshots at that was basically what was going on for years and then even the people who [00:06:00] were online were more dedicated to their individual communities i.

e. like promoting Catholicism or promoting some brands of Protestantism than any sort of wider political battle. So those were two of the things that caused that. And partially because of this shift, but partially fueled by this shift is the theocratic portion of