The highlight for me is coming up with some weird pseudoscience justification for why it’s okay to hit your kids.
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Every article on pronatalism in the past few years has been these two Thiel-sponsored white nationalist dweebs and nobody else. Why the fuck does the Guardian fall for this shit too.
I contacted the reporter via her website, to ask what motivated the story when the Guardian just wrote about them last year, and if the couple’s PR rep (who I assume exists) had instigated it.
I don’t really expect to hear back but it sure would be interesting to know.
It’s worth noting in the Grauniad’s defence that the piece which mentioned them (among others) last year wasn’t a commissioned interview article, it was a column by Arwa Mahdawi. Columnists usually have a regular gig to write opinion pieces on some topic relevant to their interests and then submit them for publication – in other words, they don’t have an editor telling them to go and cover something, they write about what they feel like writing about even if it turns out to be at odds with the paper’s editorial policy (e.g. Simon Jenkins, who is a Guardian columnist despite regularly expressing some highly un-Guardian-reader views). As Mahdawi is a columnist who regularly focuses on feminist issues and the United States this would be entirely within her field of interest.
Still doesn’t mean these people deserve yet more coverage, though. I hope their kids get out of this toxic family having suffered as little harm as possible from a mother who apparently thinks that the only solution to “cheap, good-quality snowsuits bought from Russia” not fitting when you’re pregnant is dressing like a tradwife and a father who really doesn’t seem to like them and who does an abuse in front of a journalist which he thinks he can just explain away with pseudoscientific bullshit as “hey, that looked like abuse but it wasn’t, it was SCIENCE”.
I really really don’t get how wearing a corset* while you’re pregnant is somehow the most rational option
*Don’t come @ me corset fans, I’m sure they are very comfortable, but while you’re pregnant? Eight months pregnant?
i pinged her on twitter too
That’s because there is no “movement” and the whole thing is a stunt to promote the ideas of the least thoughtful of all the unthoughtful people who nonetheless consider themselves intellectuals.
My Papaw has ten brothers and sisters and dropped out of the sixth grade to become an entrepreneur, but I don’t see the Guardian beating a path to his door.
Honestly any day the Guardian isn’t publishing transphobia wearing a feminism mask is a good day for them.
The Collinses are atheists; they believe in science and data, studies and research. Their pronatalism is born from the hyper-rational effective altruism movement
This is just gonna be eugenics, isn’t it?
Malcolm describes their politics as “the new right – the iteration of conservative thought that Simone and I represent will come to dominate once Trump is gone.”
What’s that now? Neo-alt-right? You can’t just add another fucking prefix anytime your stupid fascist movement goes off rails.
One of the reasons why I chose to have only have two children is because I couldn’t afford to give more kids a good life; the bigger home, the holidays, the large car and everything else they would need.
Yeah, what about giving them love or a warm relationship, or, you know, time?
And then they wonder why those generations have shitty relationships with their parents when they seriously believe that what they need is a big fucking car, as if that’s the variable that was missing in all of this.
Excuse me while I go and hug my daughter. I need to de-rationalize myself after reading this.
What’s that now? Neo-alt-right?
I assume it is neoreaction. Not sure if you are a recent poster here, or were aware of sneerclub when it was on reddit but we talked about NRx there every now and then. (Not a fan).
I don’t know if the Collins are NRx, what I do know is that neoreactionary podcasters love the Collins. (According to a quick google search). And bonus for David Gerard, Grimes has reached out to the Collins source is the grimezs long post on Grimes her links to all this shit
they are sponsored by Thiel, so ‘ave a bleedin’ guess
Ow yeah, it certainly paints them in a very bad light, and I will not argue against others calling them NRx, or neo-nazis, I just like a little bit more proof myself because im a bit pedantic at times, but in practice it doesn’t really matter if the ‘we worry about great replacement r-strategists(*) racists’ are NRx/nazis or not).
*: For those just tuning in. (Turn back! Stop reading! Go away, innocence once lost cannot be regained!) claiming non-white people are r-strategists while white people are K-strategists is a big far right foghorn. (wiki page on the theory) In their bs theory they ignore that this is about differences between species (of course they are also racists so yeah, this isn’t hypocritical on their part, just a sign of racism), and r-strats are physically impossible for humans, as we don’t have enough nipples + we take too long to mature etc.
yeah, at that point we’re past “quacks like a duck” and “precise subspecies of mallard” into which groups are hanging out in which ponds this week
Yeah and a lot of “precise subspecies of mallard” people don’t really seem to care that the ducks keep attacking the children playing in the park and have learned to shit on peoples heads. In fact, they start to call the people who are being attacked by the ducks, ducks themselves (some of the ‘worried about subspecies’ people even look suspiciously like 3 ducks in a trenchcoat).
Well damn, I used to lurk on old sneer club, but I gotta admit I missed that particular rabbit hole so far.
What’s that now? Neo-alt-right? You can’t just add another fucking prefix anytime your stupid fascist movement goes off rails.
It reminds me of how terrible sports teams will frequently change their logo and uniforms. (e.g. Vanderbilt’s University’s gridiron football team). Obviously, their lack of success is a branding problem.
I love how the journalist just reprints their reskinned Great Replacement theory at face value.
And importing people from Africa to support a mostly non-working white population – because you didn’t put in labour to support non-working white people – has really horrible optics.
Ah, so the reason you’re concerned about falling white birth rates and don’t want immigration is because it’s racist to allow “people from Africa” to immigrate to your country. Got it.
I appreciate that the journalist was shocked by the bad parenting but I’d have appreciated a little more fact checking on the naked racist conspiracies.
They bought this house and the one next door for $575,000; they allow their neighbours to live in the second house rent free, in exchange for childcare.
Seems normal !
Wow, these people have not planned anything at all. They’re going to homeschool all 7+ kids? And go into politics, a job that infamously has long, unsociable hours?
No, they’re counting on not spending time with their children. Their worldview is all about populating, not educating.
In fact, if you pester any of these people how they would plan to educate all these millions of new children you’ll quickly find out that either:
- That is actually not planned for at all (hand waving).
- They actually only want certain (White people of means) to be having lots of kids.
Or option 3: they subscribe to the mudsill theory, under which education will no longer be wasted on the lower orders of society, whose lot is to die in harness.
No need to plan things when you can use Rationalism, nominative determinism, and first principles to get over any troubles. Also the people who give them gifts are very rich.
This is part of a whole thing where the journalist keeps presenting their framing without question. Is it “allow their neighbours to live in the second house rent free, in exchange for childcare” or is it “they have unpaid live-in nannies in a staff apartment”? Do they “give everything they can spare to charity” or are they landlords who own property they don’t live in? Is she wearing a corset and chemise from etsy because it’s practical, or because these weirdos have put on staged cosplay performances for every journalist who’s ever interviewed them, and you’re no exception?
This is part of a whole thing where the journalist keeps presenting their framing without question.
Yuuup, and at no point is it explicitly mentioned that what they’re doing is entirely unfeasible on a societal level. How on Earth will a couple dozen rationalist having 4, 7, or even 11 kids make up for the hundreds of millions of women in America having 1.5? Or the billions of women having under 2.1 kids in the rest of the world.
On top of that, they only have 3 kids and they’ve already put a shit ton of time and sunk themselves over half a million in debt just for housing and childcare. I absolutely believe these two can afford it, but this isn’t something most Americans can achieve, much less most global families. One couple trying to outfuck global population decline would be like if I tried to end global poverty by becoming really, really rich.
like if I tried to end global poverty by becoming really, really rich.
I have some exciting news for you. Have you ever heard of “effective altruism”?
😉
Yeah these people have found their weird PR niche. There’s nothing separating these people from other rich white Americans who can also comfortably provide for ~3 kids with good schooling and higher education. The real pronatalists are the scary Quiverful people who are a lot more numerous but are also religious fundies. There’s no way the Collinses can compete with them because that subculture already believes around 90% of what they believe but are more effective at spreading their memes.
Malcolm and Simone Collins with their children – Octavian George, four, Torsten Savage, two, and Titan Invictus, one – at home in Pennsylvania.
bye
Guardian failed the “don’t promote these specific cunts for 14 months challenge”
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2023/apr/20/pro-natalism-babies-global-population-genetics
Perhaps the NRx-curiosity is a natural consequence of the Guardian’s “gender-critical” editorial stance? Look at all the other TERFs jumping into bed with actual masks-off Nazis.
My vibe is that the Guardian UK still thinks it’s a left wing feminist stance to be transphobic 1, and unrelatedly, the Collins articles keep getting printed because everyone involved — the Collinses, their PR people, the Guardian – know perfectly well what ragebait is. A click is a click.
1: Somehow. What the hell is in the water in the UK? 2
they definitely missed out on naming two of the daughers ursa minor maior and ursa maior minor.
Their next kid will be named Ultima Thule, and they will claim very loudly that this is just because they are so big fans of astrology and that they never heard of the controversy regarding the name.
jfk
Ultima Thule was a Swedish white nationalist band back in the day.
Ow yeah I’m joking here. But it was really weird that they tried to name the asteroid Ultima Thule (and it is also odd that this controversy isn’t on the wikipage).
@gerikson The name predates the white nationalist band by *several centuries*. Per wiki: “In classical and medieval literature, ultima Thule (Latin “farthest Thule”) acquired a metaphorical meaning of any distant place located beyond the “borders of the known world”.”
I suspect they renamed the KBO Arrokoth precisely to avoid the unfortunate recent connotations of the name.
Oh I am aware of the term’s history[1], but just like the humble swastika some stuff can become tainted (although I believe that Ultima Thule the band is only locally infamous here in Sweden). I do know that if someone presented themselves as Ultima Thule I’d do a spit-take, but so would I if I was presented by someone named Titan Invictus.
Arrokoth is a fucking metal name tho.
[1] pretty sure the first I heard of it was in one of Evan S Connell’s great collection of essays.
In the spirit of denying the regular suspects any unearned cultural territory…
This discussion reminded me of a story that Margaret Killjoy at Cool Zone Media released last year about the residents of Valhalla doing some anti-fascist work. Alas, I couldn’t find a transcript.
Nazis Don’t Go To Valhalla https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/nazis-dont-go-to-valhalla-spooky-week-5/id1449762156?i=1000540089027
and here i just assumed the name was original to ffxiv
“Dad, why is my sister’s name Octavia George?”
“Because your mother loves the Roman Empire.”
“Thanks Dad.”
“No problem Industry Americus.”
Looks like someone’s behind the times; all the cool kids are into the Eastern Roman Empire this season. That’s why my kids are named Constantine Cataphractus and Velociraptor Paleologus.
Next: “Are you coming to the baptism of little Deductio Tributus?”
Sad they’re dissing the classics, like Incontinentia Buttocks.
"Malcolm had a turbulent childhood that he clearly doesn’t want to talk about. He comes from a wealthy family and grew up in Dallas, but was sent to a “troubled teen” residential facility when he was 11. The only reason he can give me for being sent there was that his parents were getting divorced and were locked in a bitter custody dispute, and the judge “thought I shouldn’t be with either parent”. After that, he lived at a private boarding school, with his fees and expenses covered by a family trust. “I have no beef with my parents. My childhood was hard, but my adulthood has been easy. Can I say a parent did a bad job if I’m happy with my life today? I don’t think so.” "
L to the O to the motherfucking L. These people are just reacting to their trauma and acting like they’ve found some magical answer to life being hard. Their poor children.
The combination of the mother being all “I got raised by hippies, which I hated so I am doing the opposite”, “we are very rational”, " our kids will obviously be like us, only better". Can’t they put these pieces together?
Well, with that many children, at least one will write a book about how their childhood sucked.
Chapter 1, I am so cold When I think about my childhood, I think about freezing…
Chapter 12, Stop hitting me dad!
And so on.
These people are just reacting to their trauma and acting like they’ve found some magical answer to life being hard.
Big Kissinger energy
After that, he lived at a private boarding school
expenses covered by a family trust
My childhood was hard
oh no trust fund baby had hard childhood
however, it’s nowhere as hard as their children childhood is gonna be
some weird pseudoscience justification for why it’s okay to hit your kids.
It is to me so weird how often this comes up. A big plot point in starship troopers (the book) was that due to not hitting kids (and a vague handwave at criminals but mostly kids) western democracies fell for example.
Now I wonder how the NRx with their pro corporal punishment stance (which iirc Scott liked) feel about hitting kids.
Im also annoyed at how much words are written about the Collins. Stop promoting these doofuses. (They have come up in sneerclub before) (Late edit: She said she was really unsettled by this interview on twitter Sorry to hear you stared into the abyss Jenny, and I didn’t mean this as a personal attack towards you (not that you will read this but yeah))
E: a thing I was wondering about, with the pronatalist technofetishists, who say that both we will all die out by lack of births as old people starve, and who fetishize AGI and robot labour causing a post scarcity world, that seems contradictory, I wonder how the Rationalists deal with this contradiction.
Im also annoyed at how much words are written about the Collins. Stop promoting these doofuses. (They have come up in sneerclub before)
Apologies. First time poster, all that stuff.
The corporal punishment thing is a weirdly Anglophone obsession – assaulting (sorry, “smacking”) your kids has been a crime here since 1977 and the kids seem to be alright as well as having the bonus of being less likely to have grown up surrounded by violence and the threat of violence. In 7 years here I’ve seen exactly one person hit a child in public (looked a lot like a visiting grandma from elsewhere) and it came as a real shock. The more the Collins types (and, of course, fundie types) try to justify this as “normal” the less normal it appears to everyone else.
Starship troopers was written in 1959 so it predates the ban by a bit at least. (I assume there was already research on it being bad in the works then, as ST goes out of its way to decry the social sciences as fake research, but their moral system which is based on math (never explained in the book, which is prob good as it would be highly contradictory, as going to war to save a few POWs is seen as just, no matter the number of lives lost) is correct. It is a really weird book to read in 2020).
I’ve actually read Starship Troopers a long time ago and it’s probably not too far out of line politically from other “silver age” SF. Heinlein had a weird career…
FWIW from memory Samuel R Delany (Black gay SF author) wrote somewhere that the realization that Johnny Rico was from the Philippines (he speaks Tagalog near the end) was very liberating for him personally as a form of inclusion. And Heinlein could probably truthfully state the only way he was “racist” was he was against the Bugs but for the entire human race.
The movies’ lack of any PoC character whatsoever was probably Verhoven’s way of playing with the Nazi imagery.
The movie and the book are a lot closer together than you would think btw. Might want to give it a re-read, esp with what you know now about the common (far)-right arguments. Not that the arguments in the book are good mind you, it mostly falls back on ‘this is a science trust us’ which is quite weak.
The movie also does have black people in it, in fact the strategic savior of the human race was a black woman. Source (the rest of the propaganda clips also has quite a lot of poc in it, even if the principle cast included none.
And that brings me back to the racism in the book, while it doesn’t have overt ‘I need to shout slurs at nonwhite people’ racism, it contains quite a lot of 'other species/animals/countries (it nicely never uses the terms in a racist way, but it speaks about these groups in similar matters, so it is quite obvious that this just leads to racist bs as we have seen a lot in our times) as in conflict and the one breeding faster (!!!) wins the conflict. It seemed clear to me on which side of the debate about for example native americans vs europeans the book would be (I’m from city X and I say …).
Other fun fact about the book vs movie. You prob know the ‘violence solves more problems bla bla bla’ ‘what would the cityfathers of hiroshima say’ lines from the movie, these are also in the book, but there the argument (due to in part being about animals) is worse.
So long story short, I’m happy for Samuel R Delany that there was some liberation for him which is good (also note that the realization about the non-white people should have come a little bit earlier as the girl is called Carmencita Ibanez (I’m very western European btw, so I might be wrong here as I’m not that great about all the subtleties of various racial interplays in the Americas), also she was apparently a bit of a hussy according to Juan “Johnnie” Rico) esp as it was a different time, and science fiction from that era can be dire (before that it gets even worse!) compared to our current morals, but the book itself is still very problematic (it gets weirder if you interpret the book as being told by an unreliable, slightly dumb nepobaby, which imho the book supports).
yes, it was deliberate choice (along with using nazi-borrowed uniforms and tons of visual quotes from fucking leni riefenstahl.)
And for many people, the references whooshed over their heads in low earth orbit.
now you’ve got me wondering if it’s anglophone imported culture war, or are there some other influences, like catholic church, and to what degree
when corporal punishment was banned in my country in 2010, it was preceded by informational campaign on the state side and intolerable bitching by conservatives. when the law passed, conservatives shut the fuck up about it seemingly forever, it would make sense if it was cultural import that is if they never really held these opinions
I believe it’s true of more or less any country: most people are pro-hitting kids until you ban the practice and it becomes obvious that it’s unacceptable (at least in overt discourse). Premier exemple of the educational potential of a law. (And now the right can pivot to racist rhetoric about which demographics don’t accept our rules and hit their kids.)
I mean in this article they claim that girlfriend will be able to have seven kids, spaced a year and a half apart, and homeschool them, and still keep her career. They’re obviously not too concerned about contradictory statements.
Yeah saw the whole longread reddit comments tear them apart over this, esp as she is 36 already and had a few c-sections or something, which isn’t all that great for your body.
She is obviously not a very nice person but he really is a piece of work. Yeah, go on, encourage your wife to risk her health and her life to have kids you aren’t even interested in.
the fascism is strong in those
the eugenicist language and narrative should’ve been at least strongly challenged
These people are full of shit popping off like they do after THREE kids. Big fucking deal, my parents had three, and my brother and I were accidents. And they let us have heat in the winter and they didn’t hit us. Three is still normal!
There are some more lovely sneers in r/longreads
Nice link ,but man is Reddit shit to read nowadays with the newish layout.
old.reddit.com still works… but for how long?
even the old version randomly hides comments under “load more comments”, for no ohter reason than for literal clicks as far as I can see
Everyone’s least favourite rationalist couple
Valley Forge, PA
Yep, checks out.
hmm I don’t actually know the context here, mind sharing?
York and the surrounding counties are currently very much a culture war battleground. There’s a bunch of school board initiated censorship, bomb threats against libraries (and then subsequent defunding of those unless they promise not to do anything that could cause offense to domestic terrorists), that sort of thing. (Edit: forgot to mention the hate tracker, some more stuff I didn’t think I wanted to know about my own neighbors)
That crap is done by people and I imagine these folks are among those doing it, and so are their friends and neighbors.
City very much in the heart of Pennsyl-Tucky
Not really? It’s just the Philadelphia suburbs. 14 miles northwest of where I saw Fishbone and Primus.
Pennsylvania gets a looooot more Pennsyl-tucky than that.
“Suburbs of Philadelphia” is pretty funny to me - it’s a 2:15+h car ride there from Philly. Americans might consider 100 miles a short commute, but dang. When does a part of PA stop being a Philly suburb and start being a Pittsburgh suburb?
50 miles, not 100 miles.
25 miles each way is not that big of a deal. In college I spent six months commuting 40 minutes each way (traffic gods willing it wouldn’t be longer) from 31st street to Springhouse, PA.
Valley Forge is definitely at the limits of what I’d put up with though, unless there’s good train service.
I was wondering if we are looking at the same map, and then it turns out there are two Valley Forges: one is a neighborhood in (yep!) the Philly suburbs, the other is a township next to York, PA. The latter is what I was referring to!
Ah, that explains it. I wonder which one they live in.
Actually it’s probably the York one because “Valley Forge" by Philadelphia apparently isn’t really a town in its own right.
Fair. I always thought of Pennsyl-Tucky was more a state of mind/politics rather than an area, but I’m not a local and haven’t been in the area for years so I’m inclined to believe you.
(fwiw this reply was only like 0.01% more informative than the original thing, but from other people’s comments I got to figure things out. please try to remember that there is more world out there than just eaglegunscountry)
I saw this unprompted in my social media feed and now so must you: these two think it’s racist to criticise them for hitting their kids, because black people hit their kids. Apparently. Can you genetically select for shamelessness? How about vicious stupidity?
The couple both said they found the backlash they faced on social media to be racist since, they argued, minorities often hit their children without the same backlash.
“We are kind of shocked by the racism threaded throughout this recent controversy. It is pretty well-documented that African Americans and other minority groups practice corporal punishment much more than other groups,” Simone Collins said via email, linking to a CNN article published in 2011.
Malcolm Collins said it was “uniquely offensive” to him considering “the majority of Americans practice some form of corporal punishment, as you can see from the statistics with specifically that being the minority groups of Americans. So yeah, I think it’s an arguably racist position.”
this is the stupidest fucking thing I’ve read all year
I will have to agree.
well, they are fascists, being obnoxiously racist is par for the course.
I’m calling it now: these kids will have terrible childhoods, and seeing the moral bankruptcy of right wing ideologies up close will radicalize them into being militant leftists.
Ah these are the dudes with the unbelievably cringe Reddit dating history.
I don’t know where to start.