Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm Collins
Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm Collins
Podcast
Episodes
Listen, download, subscribe
The Data: Was Racism Stoked By Corpos To Distract from Occupy Wall Street?
Malcolm & Simone Collins break down Asmongold’s viral “American History Conspiracy Timeline” — the theory that identity politics and racial tensions were deliberately amplified after Occupy Wall Street to distract the public from corporate and elite power. They examine explosive evidence: skyrocketing funding for the SPLC, NAACP, HRC, and GLAAD right after Occupy Wall Street, massive corporate donors (JP Morgan, Bank of America, Coca-Cola, George Soros, etc.), changes in FBI hate crime training and reporting guidelines, polling shifts on race relations, Google Trends/Ngram data, and more. Is modern identity politics organic cultural evolution or an astroturfed wedge issue? They also discuss antisemitism’s resurgence, Russia’s role in BLM, corporate vs. industrialist interests, and why class conflict was redirected into identity warfare. A data-heavy, no-holds-barred episode that connects the dots between Occupy Wall Street, the explosion of “woke” terminology, and today’s cultural divisions. Show Notes Asmongold’s Thesis On a YouTube clip of Asmongold’s stream titled Alex Jones was right, in which Asmongold went over the Southern Poverty Law Center’s support of racist groups, he presented his conspiracy timeline regarding racism in the USA. He drew up a timeline (the “asmongold American history conspiracy timeline”) * 2005: “racism basically defeated everyone is getting along generally” * 2011: “lives improve but what about all these corpos? Occupy Wall Street * 2014: “look at that black person, they took your future” * 2025: “omg the jews” I hadn’t heard this before but… it sounds credible? How credible is it? I checked to see how Asmongold’s theory tracks with key word search volume, changes in police training programs, ngram word volume in books, reported hate crime data, polling data, and fundraising data for top identity politics orgs versus Occupy Wall Street. I was surprised by what I found. For example: While most nonprofit fundraising curves I looked at appeared to go up mostly linearly over time, the fundraising for identity-politics-related (e.g. NAACP, SPLC) skyrocketed after Occupy Wall Street. I’ve got graphs and numbers. Checking Asmongold’s Argument Asmongold lays out a simple four‑step “conspiracy timeline” where elites redirect public anger from class issues to identity conflicts, moving from “racism basically defeated” in 2005 to renewed racism and surging antisemitism by the mid‑2020s. 2005: Racism “basically defeated” * He describes mid‑2000s America as a time when most people of different races got along and pop culture normalized multiracial friendship and cooperation (e.g., movies like Rush Hour 3 with a Black and Chinese lead that everyone was excited to see). He frames this as racism being “basically defeated” and society getting more progressive each year on race and sexuality, with growing acceptance of gay people and gay marriage and then the election of Barack Obama as a symbol that things were going right. * He emphasizes that everyday social life felt edgy but unserious: people said offensive things (like racial slurs in online games) but “everyone knew it wasn’t real,” and the overall vibe was that people joked harshly yet still generally got along instead of seeing each other as mortal enemies. Checking in on hate crime In 2005, in the US, did various measures (e.g. racially-motivated violence, racial hate crimes, revelations of serious discrimination) indicate low relative measures of racism vis a vis the rest of American history? TL:DR: Yes. 2005 marked one of the lowest points for racism in U.S. history relative to prior eras (slavery through the Jim Crow and Civil Rights periods). Overt, lethal racial violence had plummeted from its peaks in the late 19th/early 20th centuries and even from mid-20th-century levels, with no comparable mass events or systemic terror campaigns. * FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) hate crime data, which began in 1991, shows 2005 with 7,163 reported hate crime incidents (involving 8,380 offenses and 8,804 victims). This was explicitly noted by the FBI as the lowest total in more than a decade. Racial bias motivated about 54.7% of single-bias incidents. * Overt racism (legal segregation, mass lynchings, race riots as tools of social control) had been declining since the mid-20th century. Studies of discrimination trends (e.g., in employment/housing) show persistence but also overall reductions post-1960s civil rights reforms Did police departments get trained to report more hate crimes? After 2012, were there any known training programs that took place among police departments that might have increased the percentage of crimes reported as being racially motivated hate crimes? YES. After 2012, multiple federal and state-level initiatives provided or promoted training programs for police departments specifically aimed at improving the identification, investigation, classification, and reporting of hate crimes—including racially motivated ones. Here are some sources of these changes: FBI Hate Crime Data Collection Guidelines and Training Manual (updated multiple times post-2012): * Version 1.0 (December 2012): Merged prior guidelines and training guides; included learning modules on bias-motivated crime definitions, a two-tier review process (responding officer flags “suspected” bias → expert review), case study exercises, and model procedures for agencies to build their own training. Explicitly intended to help departments establish/refresh hate crime training programs. * Version 2.0 (February 2015): Added new bias categories (e.g., anti-Arab, expanded religious biases) and corresponding training scenarios. * 2021–2022 major revision: Updated for the full transition to the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) (phased in ~2016–2021, mandatory by 2021). Removed Summary Reporting System references, added federal/tribal offenses, new anti-Asian scenarios, non-binary gender identity guidance, and tips for victim interviews. NIBRS’s detailed incident-based structure made it easier to flag and code bias motivations (including racial) at the offense level. NIBRS Transition Support (2016–2025): DOJ/BJS and FBI provided targeted grants, technical assistance, and training to thousands of agencies on properly coding/reporting hate crimes in NIBRS. Examples include the FY2023 Law Enforcement Transition to NIBRS grant (explicitly to “improve hate crime reporting”) and FBI training of ~19,500 participants from 9,500+ agencies (2016–2022). This shift alone is associated with better capture of bias indicators. DOJ/COPS Office and BJA programs: Ongoing grants and resources (such as the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Training & Technical Assistance Program) funded specialized training, resource centers, and outreach for identifying/investigating bias crimes. COPS released recognizing/reporting hate crime training in 2022 (with later updates). Post-2020 awards emphasized investigation and community collaboration. THIS IS IN ADDITION TO STATE-LEVEL CHANGES * California (2017 onward): Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training (POST) developed and mandated the video course “Hate Crimes: Identification and Investigation” (November 2017). AB 57 (enacted ~2017–2019) required its inclusion in basic academy training, made it available online, and mandated periodic in-service training for all officers (every 6 years). * Other states passed similar mandates or funded programs (e.g., Illinois proposals, local collaborations with groups like the Matthew Shepard Foundation) Checking in on general perceptions of racism racism Gallup (satisfaction with race relations / “very/somewhat good”): * Early 2000s–2014: High (often 60%+ “good”; peaked near 70–80% post-Obama election). * 2015 onward: Sharp drop to ~30% “good” (lowest in decades amid Ferguson-era protests). Hovering 22–36% since; 2022 reading ~28% satisfied. * 2025: 64% say racism against Black people is “widespread” (tied for highest since 2008 tracking; up from 51% in 2009). Civil rights progress views also down from 89% (2011) to lower levels post-2020. Pew Research: * 2019: 58% called race relations “bad”; 53% said worsening. * Post-2020: BLM support peaked (67% in 2020) then fell (~51% by 2023). Discrimination perceptions peaked ~2021 (60% saw high levels against Blacks) but declined to 45% by 2025. * Recent (2025–2026): Diversity viewed positively (~75% “good thing”), but partisan divides widened; some softening on specific discrimination claims, yet overall pessimism on relations persists vs. early 2000s. 2011–2012: Occupy and class conflict * In his view, the real break comes with the 2011–2012 Occupy Wall Street moment, when people start focusing on economic power rather than identity, asking whether their problems come from the ultra‑rich and corporate “leadership class” who own capital and keep wages low in the post‑2008 crash recovery. * He argues this terrified the elite, because public attention was turning away from blaming minorities or women and toward questioning the people who own everything, so there was a strong incentive to deflect anger away from class and back onto identity categories. How did American sentiment change about wealth disparity and class conflict when the occupy wall street movement gained momentum in the USA? The most direct and widely cited data comes from Pew Research Center surveys: * Perceptions of class conflict: In a December 6–19, 2011, Pew survey of 2,048 adults, 66% of Americans said there were “very strong” or “strong” conflicts between rich and poor people—an increase of 19 percentage points from 47% in a 2009 survey. The share saying “very strong” conflicts doubled from 15% to 30%—the highest level since Pew first asked the question in 1987. * Class conflict was now see
Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm Collins RSS Feed
