Episode Details

In this spicy Based Camp episode, Malcolm and Simone Collins tackle a sensitive but urgent topic: why Jews must stop defending bad actors within their communities — and why failing to do so is fueling rising antisemitism in America.

With 24% of young Americans now endorsing antisemitic tropes (vs. just 5% of those in their 80s), the Collinses examine welfare fraud in Orthodox Jewish communities, the ADL’s deplatforming of critics like Tyler Olivier, the Chabad-linked push to pardon a $33M healthcare fraudster whose actions killed elderly patients, and the collapse of historic Jewish self-policing institutions (kehillot and beit din) that once prevented exactly this problem.

They argue that protecting bad actors creates massive negative externalities, damages alliances with the new right, and threatens the long-term survival of Jewish communities — especially as ultra-Orthodox populations grow rapidly. A blunt, data-driven conversation about group accountability, cultural self-preservation, and why every community (Jewish, Somali, or otherwise) must police its worst members.

Episode Transcript

Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] Hello Simone. Today is going to be a spicy conversation and it’s going to piss off a lot of people, but it is one that needs to be had right now in America. We, we mentioned this on another episode, but Jews need to be paying attention to this.

24% of young people in America today endorse anti-Jewish tropes, right? Like are what you would be seen as antisemitic. Oh, oh, no. If you go to people in the, their eighties, it’s around 5%. Oh. So it’s one in four versus one in 20. This is a massive generational change.

Simone Collins: Wow.

Malcolm Collins: And I would point out here that the sentiment against Jews among use higher than it is against groups like blacks in the United States.

Now where it is 17% have anti-black resentment in the United States where it’s 24% anti-Jewish resentment.

Simone Collins: That’s so [00:01:00] funny because I grew up on like seventies, eighties, and nineties content that pretty heavily made fun of Jews. Like, I’m thinking about Mel Brooks Films, the Princess Bride all these shows that would have like a ton of like, seen

Malcolm Collins: it as safe because nobody actually, when I used to, ‘cause

Simone Collins: no one believed it.

No one

Malcolm Collins: edgy fake humor, like racist humor. I would make racist jokes about Inuits. That was like the core commun Eskimos, you know, they, you know, make Oh

Simone Collins: right.

Malcolm Collins: Make, make fun of their fake kisses. They don’t even know how to love, you know, like, everybody thinks Eskimo jokes are funny because nobody is aware of Eskimo discrimination.

At least if you’re in the United States, like it’s not something that you are around or you see. So it comes across as funny. Sure. The idea of Jews being actually discriminated against in the eighties and the nineties was actually comical. It, it was,

Simone Collins: right. So we, we, we could make fun of them because we knew that they were [00:02:00] fine and they weren’t.

Doing anything

Malcolm Collins: sauce. It was so comical that when Jewish directors and producers were making the Star Wars prequels, they literally made this character

Simone Collins: Oh God, yes. No,

Speaker 14: My trick don’t work on, I make only money.

Simone Collins: and

Malcolm Collins: thought nothing of it. Yes. Alright. They didn’t think this could one day be a problem for our community. And the, the problem, like the thing that makes this entire conversation so dangerous for the Jewish community long ter