In this eye-opening episode, Malcolm and Simone Collins dive deep into shocking findings from U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee reports (2019) showing that Russia’s Internet Research Agency (IRA) played a far greater role in astroturfing and amplifying the Black Lives Matter movement than in any alleged support for Trump during 2016.

Key revelations:

* 96% of IRA YouTube content focused on police brutality against African Americans

* 5 of the top 10 IRA Instagram accounts targeted Black audiences exclusively

* Over 66% of IRA Facebook ads revolved around racial division, overwhelmingly pro-BLM narratives

* IRA organized real-world rallies, paid activists, and even funded self-defense classes — all unknowingly

* Activity spiked post-2016 election and again in 2020, perfectly aligning with BLM surges

Malcolm explains why this well-documented information never became mainstream on the right, how both parties had incentives to downplay or ignore it, and why viewing Russia as an “ally” against progressive causes is dangerously misguided.

If you’ve ever wondered how certain movements explode seemingly overnight — or why the “Russia helped Trump” narrative dominated while this one stayed buried — this episode will change how you see modern information warfare.

Episode Transcript:

Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00 ] So, wow. Of their top 10 accounts, five only targeted at black people.

Simone Collins: That is insane. That is not at all like the impression I was, I was given. That like in, in general, right? This is

Malcolm Collins: not the narrative that we are told. Yeah. and then you have me going through this and like, wait, this is all in like spin committee reports and stuff like that, like that Russia was behind Black Lives Matter.

Like what? So crazy. Or, and you could be like, well, Russia wasn’t everything behind Black Lives Matter. And I’d say. Okay. Maybe they weren’t, but they were more behind Black Lives matter than they ever were behind Trump. And that’s really important to the narrative that’s out there right now.

Simone Collins: Oh yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Wow. This the, the rallies. The Charlotte rallies. This is the

Simone Collins: good people on both sides. Yes.

Malcolm Collins: This is the people on both sides. One Trump was praising Russian [00:01:00 ] operatives on that one. Vi Eagle was praising the Democrats ‘cause that’s who the Russian operatives helped on that one.

Simone Collins: It’s a lot of people.

Would you like to know more?

Malcolm Collins: Hello Simone. I am excited to be here with you today. . So sometimes I’ll be doing an episode and I’ll be just like fact checking something and then I’ll notice some statistics and some numbers, or I’m like, wait, this can’t be real. And then I start going down a rabbit hole. On the rabbit hole. I went down this time.

And what’s weird about this rabbit hole is this is all outlined clear as day and like senate reports and everything like that, which we’ll be going over. And yet I haven’t heard this as a mainstream position on the right. And you guys can be like, oh no, X blew this up long ago, or whatever. But the Russian collusion operation, the IRA, like the thing that was Russiagate, the Democrats said, got Donald Trump elected.

Mm-hmm. It was significantly more involved [00:02:00 ] with the astroturfing and creation of the BLM movement than Trump’s. What, and this is both well documented and incredibly well attested, and yet it is like not part of the popular imagination at all.

Simone Collins: That can be we, because we would’ve heard something about that.

No, right? I mean, at least from conservatives, it’s not as though conservatives don’t have a voice anywhere. And we listen to a lot of conservative influencers and, well, not media outlets, but, but influencers.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, so my thought as like a concern, and the weird thing about this is this information is not new.

It’s been out there for a while. And I’m not here saying, because this is the perception I had historically. It was like historically, the perception I had is that the, the IRA. Helped both sides in that particular election cycle. They helped the, you know, there were many instances in which two sides of a protest were both organized by the IRA by Russia [00:03:00 ] Plots, basically does the

Simone Collins: IRA stand for,

Malcolm Collins: I don’t know what it stands for.

I don’t speak Russian. Anyway so the IRA, and, and so I was like, and the reason why it appeared to people as if the IRA was more pro-Trump than pro Clinton was solely because it believed Trump to be the spoiler candidate and Bernie to be the spoiler candidate. So if you’re unaware, oh, IRA was actually incredibly pro Bernie.

They worked really hard to help Bernie in the primaries and everything. I

Simone Collins: didn’t know that either. Okay. Wow.

Malcolm Collins: So the, so my sort of perception was, is it was probably about 50% Republican stuff, 50% Democrat stuff. And then of the Republican stuff, it might have looked like it was more Trump just because they saw him as the spoiler candidate.

Hmm.

If

you actually go into the documentation. That is not the case. It is significantly more Democrat stuff and it is significantly Black Lives Matter focused stuff, and it [00:04:00 ] was Black Lives Matter focused stuff. And we’ll go into the timeline right as the movement was beginning to get big. And what you also might not know about is the height of IRA or the, the second height of IRA interference because there were two.

PI spikes. One was during the election cycle and after the election was had, so it wasn’t 2016 or

Simone Collins: 20 20, 20 16.

Malcolm Collins: Okay. And, but the second was actually at the height of the BLM movement. They, they went back in with more. Fake stuff. So we’re gonna be going over all of this, how they AstroTurf the movement and what’s important to know before I go any further than this.

‘cause it really disgusts me when I see Rightis fall for this nonsense is they act like Russia is our ferre. Because Russia realizes that like the alphabet soup crowd is like toxic to a society. And that, you know, you know, there might be problems with secularization and they’re like, look, they recognize all of these things, [00:05:00 ] therefore they’re on our side.

And it’s like, no, when you go to sleep every night, they’re injecting that into your neck in hopes that you die horribly. Right? Like they are as almost as ex. Essential an enemy we can have, like China does hit us with like China does try to like mess up the us Like they like come in and they’re like, don’t trust your government.

Speaker 3: evil, evil, evil, evil, evil.

Malcolm Collins: Don’t trust your government. But that doesn’t work on Americans. ‘cause Americans are like, yeah, we don’t really trust our government. Very. Yeah, we never

Simone Collins: did. Yeah. Like China.

Malcolm Collins: Sucks at, at PSYOPs in America, right? Outside of TikTok, which has done amazingly well in scrambling a lot of people’s brains incredibly well.

Yes. But Russia gets it. You know, Russia will come in and they’ll be like, don’t, you know, the, the, the, the, the, the Black Lives Matter movement. We will go into how they did this. And that’s why they’re incredibly dangerous and we should not think of them [00:06:00 ] or treat them as an ally. Like there might be like individual Russians who can be cool and friends and everything like that, but the country itself is, is working oppositionally to us.

, And, and I’d also say that the Republicans, the like quote unquote Republican influencers who like side whiz. And I think you’re seeing this increasingly increasingly countries like Russia and Qatar and Iran I may be talking about Tucker Carlson and Dick Witches here.

They’re not really on our side, right? Like these countries hate us. And they want to destroy our civilization. And when you glaze them, you are saying, oh, I won’t work with people on my own side who are trying to preserve the civilization because of minor ideological differences. But I will work with people who are actively injecting this stuff, who are actively creating movements like you do that way.

So let’s go on here. So Senate Select Committee on Intelligence [00:07:00 ] SSCI report volume two. Russia’s use of social media released in 2019 as part of a multi-volume investigation into Russian active measures. During the two 16 YouTube channels uploaded hundreds of videos of police brutality and BLM related topics.

The SSCI. Report reveals that the IRA operated 17 YouTube channels uploading approximately 1,100 videos totaling 43 hours of content. COVID

Simone Collins: happens

Malcolm Collins: approximately 96% of this. Was targeted at BLM type issues.

Simone Collins: Oh,

Malcolm Collins: like, police brutality o often mimicking Bri LM narratives to build credibility, a complimentary finding of new knowledge reports, specifics that 500 something one of these videos directly were related to police violence against African Americans.

And, youTube citations post-election, and this is really important. The majority of the IRA’s work happened after the [00:08:00 ] election cycle, not during the campaign. Okay. They were not trying to