The Forces Behind Britain's Downfall - Konstantin Kisin

Chris Williamson 0:00 US streamers are using UK downfall protests as an entire content niche-

Konstantin Kisin 0:06 Hmm.

Chris Williamson 0:06 ... now. That can't be a good sign.

Konstantin Kisin 0:08 It's a rich vein (laughs) from which to mine. I mean, look, the, the, the, the downfall of the UK, the death of the UK is greatly exaggerated but it is happening. Uh, and it's not... Downfall actually might well be the sign of a recovery in the sense that you're starting to see people going out on the street, they're being peaceful, which is really important 'cause the moment you, you're not peaceful, that will immediately get used to discredit the entire thing. And then you can see it changing the political consensus in real time. So, a lot of the discussion is about illegal immigration, um, controversial term, 'cause it actually turns out this is part of why we're where, where we are. Coming to this country without permission is not actually illegal.

Chris Williamson 0:54 Okay. Explain that to me.

Konstantin Kisin 0:55 So if you come into the country and say, "I'm an asylum seeker, I would like asylum," you're not an illegal immigrant.

Chris Williamson 1:00 You're like a Cuban or a Venezuelan-

Konstantin Kisin 1:02 Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:02 ... arriving at the American border or whatever?

Konstantin Kisin 1:04 Uh, but e- I mean, in America it is illegal, right?

Chris Williamson 1:07 No.

Konstantin Kisin 1:08 I think.

Chris Williamson 1:09 I thought that when you got there you just needed to... Go on.

Konstantin Kisin 1:13 Well, the point being, maybe it's also true in America, uh, so until 2000, uh, 2023 when the conservatives tried to do something about it, uh, if you came here and made an application or said you were an asylum seeker, irrespective of whether you had a case or not, you're not an illegal immigrant. So technically there's no such thing as an illegal immigrant, right? Anyway, that's why I said the term's controversial. But anyway, the, the point being that, uh, the reason, part of the reason that's able to happen is something called the European Convention on Human Rights, which Britain actually helped to create, uh, immediately after World War II. And the consensus, the entire consensus for decades was, "Well, we can't leave this, we can't reform it, it just is what it is and we can't change it." Suddenly when there's people on the streets you get, like, people from across the political spectrum whose parties have been saying this entire time, "You can't do anything about this," going, "Actually, we really need to leave the ECHR." Um, so I don't know whether it is downfall. I actually see, as long as the movement remains peaceful, it actually is being quite impactful and constructive as things stand.

Chris Williamson 2:17 Right, because downfall would suggest that this is the beginning of the end as opposed to the beginning of something better.

Konstantin Kisin 2:23 Yeah. And I, I, we, none of us can predict the future obviously but if this pressure carries on, and as I say, if it can't be dismissed as a handful of violent thugs, um, which I don't believe it is, um, then what you will end up is actually having real impact on the political situation, and that's great.

Chris Williamson 2:42 Yeah, I would certainly say the, uh, people in America and some of them in the UK that are covering it being more, um, outlandish, being more, um, inflammatory in the way that this is being covered is definitely... I don't know, i- it seems to me like the UK might be at boiling point. I'm not here, I'm not on the ground-

Konstantin Kisin 3:01 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 3:01 ... I don't know what's going on. Is that being overblown, boiling point?

Konstantin Kisin 3:04 I, I think it's being overblown by some people. It doesn't mean that o- in the round it's being overblown. There are definitely people who are like, "The UK is about to explode right this very second." The UK's not about to explode right this very second. But if those pressure valves are not allowed to vent the pressure and achieve actual change, then we... And I've, you, you know this, I've been saying this for some time, like, we're not on a good path generally speaking.

Chris Williamson 3:28 Mm-hmm.

Konstantin Kisin 3:28 It is headed in a bad direction if the people at the top continue to try and keep the lid on the pressure cooker down.

Chris Williamson 3:35 Mm-hmm.

Konstantin Kisin 3:35 If they actually go, "Oh wait, wait, no. It's not just a handful of thugs, it's actual human beings that, th- just mothers, fathers, people who care about their country protesting about this," and then they convert that into action that results in the concerns that people have being addressed. And by the way, we should, we should talk about what those concerns are 'cause they're, they're pretty reasonable concerns. I mean, one of the things that hap- so (laughs) I always give this example just 'cause it puts this into, into numbers that are easy for people to digest. When I came to Britain, 1996, uh, 55,000 people a year came into Britain legally. Legal immigration, like, just people applying for a visa, coming here.

Chris Williamson 4:14 The, the, uh, understood version of the word legal.

Konstantin Kisin 4:17 Right.

Chris Williamson 4:17 Yes.

Konstantin Kisin 4:18 If you apply for a visa, you get permission, you come through-

Chris Williamson 4:20 Formal process.

Konstantin Kisin 4:21 ... formal process, you come through a port of entry, they go, "Welcome in." Right? That was 55,000 people a year. That's the number of people broadly speaking that come to Britain illegally every year now. And what happens when they get here is they get put in a, in a hotel or in a house th- and the taxpayer has to fund all of that. And of course (laughs) it's, it's a statement of the bleeding obvious that these are by definition... Like why, if you think about it, just zoom out a little bit, like, why do you have an immigration system? What's the point of having a system that controls immigration? What's the point of having a border?

Chris Williamson 4:58 To keep people out?

Konstantin Kisin 5:00 It's to... Like the door in your house, it's to keep people out that you don't want in your house and to allow people to come in that you do want in your house.

Chris Williamson 5:07 Mm-hmm.

Konstantin Kisin 5:08 So by definition, it's about excluding some people. Now, who are the pe- if someone is breaking through a window into your house, are they likely to be the sort of people that you (laughs) want in your country? Probably not. And what happens as well is, uh, you know, for, for years now, uh, the government refused to release the data on crime committed by people that are coming from certain parts of the world. We now have that data and now we know why it is that they didn't want to release it.

Chris Williamson 5:37 Why?

Konstantin Kisin 5:37 Because people are not the same, not all cultures are the same. And if you have people who come from areas of the world where women are considered something akin to cattle, then when you have lots of those people coming to your country, they don't treat women very well. I know it's a shocker, but they might commit sexual assault at a very different rate.

Chris Williamson 5:55 Does that mean that there is maybe a crime blast radius around some of the places that these people are being housed?

Konstantin Kisin 6:01 Uh, I, I don't know that I have the data to say that exactly, but, but what we do know is that there are very high profile cases of people who have been put in one of these hotels or multiple occupancy buildings, et cetera, who have sexually assaulted 12-year-old girls.... people, et cetera. So what you have is just ordinary people now going, "I don't want this next to my house 'cause, uh, my daughter's gotta walk to school tomorrow."

Chris Williamson 6:27 Mm-hmm.

Konstantin Kisin 6:28 And if, if you don't address those concerns, I don't mean you (laughs) specifically, I mean the government, then you are really stirring up a lot of trouble. If you find a way to deal with this then that's actually the system working as intended-

Chris Williamson 6:42 Mm-hmm.

Konstantin Kisin 6:42 ... which is you've done this ridiculous extreme thing, you've got pushback, you adjust.

Chris Williamson 6:47 This only works, this is only a good thing if the government actually steps in and makes some changes, though. This is all predicated on a very hopeful vision of what might happen top-down in the future.

Konstantin Kisin 6:58 Yeah. Or what might happen electorally.

Chris Williamson 7:02 Which would then bring in a new organization that would do that top-down again.

Konstantin Kisin 7:07 Well, I mean, if you think about what happened in the US and why you have a Trump administration now, illegal immigration was a huge part of it. And that's one of the reasons that I think a lot of people across Europe as well are kind of going, "Wait, wait, this is actually fixable." 'Cause in America it is fixable. Like, we see that it was always fixable.

Chris Williamson 7:23 And they didn't have 23 miles of border.

Konstantin Kisin 7:25 Yeah. Exactly. And they have a giant border that's quite difficult to main- police and, and so on.

Chris Williamson 7:31 Is there a different sense to the way that people see immigrants coming to the UK than Mexicans going to the US? The, the difference between asylum seeker, war-torn country, on a boat, there's this sort of, uh, vision of, uh, deprivation, of poverty, of need, i- it's almost like a charity that needs to be given to these people. Whereas you don't have the s- quite the same disparity, uh, between Mexico and the U- or at least supposed disparity between quality of life in Mexico and in the US. So, I don't know, it seems m- less, uh, philanthropic to give that stuff away. Does that make sense?

Konstantin Kisin 8:07 Uh, I, I know what you mean. I mean, I always say, you know, I, I, and it's important to make, to make this point, right? It's like I understand why people are coming across the channel, you know, in search of a better life. Like, I wouldn't want to stay in France either. Joke I've made many times. And my point being, the, by the time these people have got here they've been to, through quite a lot of countries where they are perfectly safe.

Chris Williamson 8:27 Mm-hmm.

Konstantin Kisin 8:28 If, if they are in fact genuine asylum seekers as opposed to just economic migrants. And again, don't blame people for wanting a better life, in the same way that I don't blame people for wanting a bigger house. I just don't want them breaking into my house 'cause my house is better than theirs. Does, is, is, that's quite a reasonable point.

Chris Williamson 8:46 Yeah. I think so. What-

Konstantin Kisin 8:47 Can I say some stuff about Britain and America, 'cause it's actually very important to address, particularly given that both of our audiences are kind of mixed around those two things. So, America and Britain, because we speak the same language, we think that we're the same. I think you'd agree with me that we're really, really not, on so many different things.

Chris Williamson 9:05 That's correct. That's correct.

Konstantin Kisin 9:06 Um, you know that saying about Britain and America, two countries divided by a common language? Um, so America, and this is something that actually very few people really understand, particularly those who haven't been to America. America is an incredibly pro-immigration country. It's probably, in my experience, the most pro-immigration country that I've ever been to in the world.

Chris Williamson 9:25 I would agree.

Konstantin Kisin 9:25 Right? However, Americans don't like illegal immigration, particularly when it gets to the levels that it had got to for a period of time. So, the American attitude broadly speaking, there are of course, you know, there's a spectrum of opinion. But if you were to kind of go what is the, the broad consensus in the US, I would put it, based on my experience, Americans are broadly like, "We are a country of immigrants. That's how this country came into being. Uh, and as long as you wanna come here and buy into the American dream, respect the flag, respect the Constitution, respect the way of doing things, contribute, you know, set up your own business, do whatever, then that's great." And, and I know that you've, you, I'm sure you've experienced this. Like, I remember there was a point, uh, like people were saying to us, "Oh, you guys should move to America," and we were kind of thinking about it. Uh, and anyone that I ever mentioned the possibility of that who was American they were like, "We'd love to have you."

Chris Williamson 10:16 Mm-hmm.

Konstantin Kisin 10:17 And they didn't mean me, or Frances, they just, they just meant people like you, people who are gonna come here with their own thing and contribute, right? Britain is not a nation of immigrants. It has never been a nation of immigrants. Uh, I, I ho- I wrote a whole article, and there's a video on our channel if people want to watch it, basically breaking down immigration to this country. And until, until basically the late ni- uh, actually the, the, the 2000s, the number of people coming to Britain and the number of foreign-born people in Britain was negligible. It was one, two, three percent total of the population. And then what you had i- under the Blair government was so much immigration in about, uh, in a short period of time, around a decade, that in that decade more people came than had come in the entire history of this country in like a thousand years.

Chris Williamson 11:12 (laughs) I didn't know that. Okay.

Konstantin Kisin 11:14 More people came under the Blair government than had come since the Battle of Hastings in 1066, right? Now, if you think about what that represents, like people go, "Well," you know, the i- the people who are concerned about levels of immigration, "they are extreme." And you go, "Well, no, no, no. You did this extreme thing."

Chris Williamson 11:30 Mm-hmm.

Konstantin Kisin 11:31 "You, you brought more people in in 10 years than you had in a thousand years, and then you're surprised that that-"

Chris Williamson 11:38 Has been noticed.

Konstantin Kisin 11:39 That's been noticed and that not everybody's happy about it. Um, and of course what that was followed by is 10, 13, 14 years of a Conservative government that was even worse. And the, and, and, look, immigrate- like when we had a large wave of Polish people come in the 2000s, it was, it was disruptive to people's wages, particularly in, in the, in the kind of, the sparkies, the builders, et cetera. But broadly speaking it was not disruptive to the cultural fabric of this country, 'cause they, they had the simi- similar religion, similar values, et cetera. When you have people come from very disparate cultures, that becomes much more difficult to digest. And when the numbers are such, it's just impossible to assimilate people that quickly. So, where you are now is y- as I said when my st- we started this bit, w-We now have more, uh, same numbers of illegal immigrants coming as we did legal immigrants (laughs) within my lifetime. That's (laughs) , that's, that's crazy. And so when people are pushing back against that, they've got legitimate concerns that have to be addressed. And if they're not, you will see a political revolution, uh, uh, inevitably. And I hope it's a political revolution 'cause if you keep storing these frustrations up, it could spill out into worse things-

Chris Williamson 12:49 Yeah, I've

Chris Williamson 12:50 hea-

Konstantin Kisin 12:50 ... which none of us want.

Chris Williamson 12:50 I've heard you say the most important thing is to not allow immigration to become a moral issue.

Konstantin Kisin 12:56 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 12:57 Why?

Konstantin Kisin 12:58 Because it's a practical issue. It's a practical issue. Uh, y- of course, we would want to provide refuge to people who are genuinely fleeing persecution, but that has to be on the terms that the people of this country have voted for because we live in a democracy, right? So, in the same way that you decide who comes into your house, you might well say, you know, there's someone fleeing persecution by the Chinese Communist Party in Hong Kong, or there's someone fleeing war in Ukraine, or there's someone fleeing war in Sudan, or, or whatever, and you go, "I'll, I'll actually, you know, house a ha- family in my home while they get on their feet," right? But I don't think there's a single person in the world who would appreciate just tens of thousands of people coming and breaking into their house without their permission-

Chris Williamson 13:41 Mm-hmm.

Konstantin Kisin 13:42 ... no matter how destitute they were, actually, right? So it's about balancing the interests of British people, French people, American people, whatever, with, with other concerns. Um, and if you, if you just take it as a moral issue, you, you cease to be pragmatic and practical about it, which is how you get to where we've got to, and then reality strikes back. And, you know, my, my, uh, my gr- favorite Thomas Sowell quote is, "You can ignore reality. You can't ignore the consequences of ignoring reality." And that's where we are.

Chris Williamson 14:12 W- w- how does that apply to this situation back here?

Konstantin Kisin 14:15 Well, the reality is you cannot have these levels of immigration without creating very serious problems. So you can have your head in the sand about it and go, "Anyone who cares about this is a racist," blah, blah, blah, but eventually, the consequences start to bear fruit, and then you are, end up in a position where you get protests just by ordinary people outside of every migrant hotel in the country.

Chris Williamson 14:36 Beyond the obvious, why are people not staying in France? Why are they coming to the UK? The di- I'm interested in the difference between asylum seeker and economic migrant.

Konstantin Kisin 14:45 Well, there's a different... An asylum seeker is someone who's, uh, look, I'm not a lawyer, but basically, m- the broad picture is someone who is fleeing persecution. They're gonna get killed. They're gonna get tortured, et cetera. They're gonna, because they are, you know, uh, of, of the wrong religion in their country, or they're gay, or they're just f- you know, fearing political persecution, whatever. An economic migrant is someone who isn't being persecuted but that lives in what some controversial people might describe as a shithole country, right? And they don't wanna live in a shithole country, and I don't blame them (laughs) .

Chris Williamson 15:20 Mm-hmm.

Konstantin Kisin 15:20 I don't blame them. But that does not mean that they get to circumvent the rules that we've instituted for our country.

Chris Williamson 15:29 Mm-hmm.

Konstantin Kisin 15:29 Right? And, and, and un- until you get the perfect communist utopia globalized across the world where every country is the same, those pressures will be there. And the main thing that's actually happened in the, in the last hundred years, and the reason that mass immigration's become a, uh, the issue that it has, isn't actually anything to do with the rules that we have about it, or global inequality, or the poverty of the Global South, or any of this other bullshit. It's technology. Travel has become much easier. It's much easier, it's much safer, it's much more comfortable to travel across the world. So these mass waves of people seeking a better life... Like, if you think about the way that the modern world around the globe has been created, waves of immigration from Europe into Australia, into New Zealand, into South America, into North America, those were very, very dangerous. Many, many people died on the journey. Many people died when they got there. It's not the case anymore. You can get there much quicker, much cheaper, much safer, and so you get these massive pressures. You have to update the way that you do things. Otherwise, the whole system becomes overwhelmed and, and, you know, people are gonna be very angry about it.

Chris Williamson 16:37 Why the UK? What is it about the UK specifically that is so attractive?

Konstantin Kisin 16:42 Uh, I don't know how comparatively attractive we are. I know that in France, for example, and many other y- Germany, many other European countries also have these issues.

Chris Williamson 16:52 Mm-hmm. Do you know if they're at the rates that the UK's got?

Konstantin Kisin 16:54 I, I don't know what the comparative rate would be, but the thing is that Germany had a, Germany has this, uh, you know, they've got some guilt for, for understandable reasons, but... (laughs)

Chris Williamson 17:03 (laughs) Still repaying that debt. Reparations.

Konstantin Kisin 17:05 Well, y- uh, I mean, th- if you actually speak to a lot of Germans, I don't know if it's the case with the generation below ours, but our generation, they s- they're still infused with World War II guilt, for understandable reasons, right?

Chris Williamson 17:18 Mm-hmm.

Konstantin Kisin 17:19 I just don't see the connection between like, we killed, you know, however, tens of millions of people, and now we've gotta let people from Somalia in 'cause I, I don't see-

Chris Williamson 17:28 Karmic debt that we need to repay.

Konstantin Kisin 17:29 Yeah, that doesn't make much sense to me, but that, that was their approach.

Chris Williamson 17:32 Yeah, yeah.

Konstantin Kisin 17:32 So when the s-

Chris Williamson 17:33 Which, uh, yeah, yeah.

Konstantin Kisin 17:34 When, when the Syrian, uh, when there was a l- civil war in Syria, they let in loads of people without r- really being very careful about who it was they're letting in 'cause of that, right?

Chris Williamson 17:44 Mm-hmm.

Konstantin Kisin 17:44 My point is, there's an illegal problem across Europe, uh, but the reason people might wanna come to Britain is we are incredibly generous to people who come, I would consider, illegally. Uh, and that's, that's a pull factor. That's a pull factor.

Chris Williamson 18:00 What does that generosity look like?

Konstantin Kisin 18:02 We're gonna put you in a hotel. We almost certainly will not deport you. Uh, there's a possibility that you actually... Like, if you, I don't know if you've, in the time that you've been here, if you've ordered an Uber, a Uber Eats rather, not Uber. Uber Eats or...

Chris Williamson 18:14 Yes.

Konstantin Kisin 18:15 You're right. Q- Have you noticed that quite a lot of the time, the person on the app, whose name is on the app is not the person that turns up?

Chris Williamson 18:22 No.

Konstantin Kisin 18:22 You haven't seen that?

Chris Williamson 18:23 No.

Konstantin Kisin 18:23 That is a very common occurrence now. And the reason is that people are basically selling their identity-... to be used by illegal immigrants who then actually do the work.

Chris Williamson 18:33 Wow.

Konstantin Kisin 18:34 Uh, so there's a possibility you will effectively disappear into the black economy and you'll basically be allowed to stay here, to the point where even if you commit crimes you probably won't get deported. "And we will look after you. We will make sure that..." Like, if you, if you go to Somalia as an illegal immigrant, the Somalian government is not going to make sure you stay alive. If you come to Britain as a Somalian illegal immigrant, we will make sure you have somewhere to live, food to eat, you're broadly speaking comfortable. And like I say, you probably won't be deported. So if you get here, you've made it-

Chris Williamson 19:06 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Konstantin Kisin 19:06 ... so to speak, right? That's the pull factor.

Chris Williamson 19:08 What's happening with the phone contract thing, is that true?

Konstantin Kisin 19:11 I don't know the details of that. Uh, we, uh, there's a lot of debate about this, about whether it's actually happening. Some of them have been given phones, some haven't. I don't know the details of that.

Chris Williamson 19:20 Right, that's interesting. Uh, one thing I did notice in New York, I spent the last month in New York, and I don't think that there was a single English-speaking Uber Eats delivery person.

Konstantin Kisin 19:33 Right.

Chris Williamson 19:33 I also noticed when I was here last year that a lot of the Uber Eats guys, and just a lot of people in general on, um, 50cc mopeds, had learner plates on.

Konstantin Kisin 19:44 Hmm.

Chris Williamson 19:46 I get the sense that that's something to do with you don't need to register for a license if you've got the learner plate on, because any 16-year-old that was, "Look, I'm learning to drive on the..." Is that what's-

Konstantin Kisin 19:56 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 19:56 Is that some fugazi that's happening?

Konstantin Kisin 19:58 I, I don't know the exact legal details, but that is basically s- it's something like that, whereby if you make an application but, but you don't actually get the... It's a way of driving without having the...

Chris Williamson 20:08 Seems to be some fuckery or-

Konstantin Kisin 20:10 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 20:10 ... one of the e-bikes that doesn't require any sort of a license at all-

Konstantin Kisin 20:12 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 20:12 Nothing needs to be registered.

Konstantin Kisin 20:14 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 20:14 So again, I, I know it's not on the same scale you were talking about before, but technology enabling travel-

Konstantin Kisin 20:19 Yes.

Chris Williamson 20:19 ... also unlocking some opportunities for people to stay.

Konstantin Kisin 20:23 And one of the interesting things, uh, uh, I don't know if Eric Weinstein has ever said this on your show, but he made a very good point, we were just having a conversation over dinner the other day. Uh, which is, uh, a lot of the time we're told that like, "Well, we've got to import the slave class," basically, people who are going to work for peanuts-

Chris Williamson 20:39 Mm-hmm.

Konstantin Kisin 20:40 ... uh, because otherwise no one's going to do these jobs. "We've got labor shortages," right? And he went, "You can't have a labor shortage in a market economy. It's not possible."

Chris Williamson 20:51 How so?

Konstantin Kisin 20:52 The way the market works is if there's a shortage of something, what happens? The price of that thing goes up until there's a sufficient supply of that thing.

Chris Williamson 21:01 Demand comes back down, yeah.

Konstantin Kisin 21:02 Not demand... Well, demand comes back down and supply goes back up, right? So if you've... To, I mean, the way he illustrated this point might be a bit extreme, but he said, "At the right price, I will come to your house and lick your toilet clean with my own tongue."

Chris Williamson 21:16 Mm-hmm.

Konstantin Kisin 21:16 Right?

Chris Williamson 21:17 Mm-hmm.

Konstantin Kisin 21:17 And there is a price point at which most people will do that.

Chris Williamson 21:20 Yeah.

Konstantin Kisin 21:20 So the point being is this idea that we have to have all of these people who are effectively being used as slave labor come in to do these jobs. Just, it's a way of effectively depriving British people of the opportunity to be well paid for, for doing that job.

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Konstantin Kisin 23:02 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 23:04 ... Rylan Clark was not the vanguard of culture wars.

Konstantin Kisin 23:07 Mm.

Chris Williamson 23:07 And I've come back, for the Americans that are listening, Rylan Clark was on X Factor?

Konstantin Kisin 23:14 This is not an area of expertise for me.

Chris Williamson 23:15 Really?

Konstantin Kisin 23:16 No.

Chris Williamson 23:16 Okay.

Konstantin Kisin 23:16 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 23:17 Um, Rylan Clark did reality TV, some sort of-

Konstantin Kisin 23:20 Right.

Chris Williamson 23:21 He pivoted that, as many British people do, into presenting and commentary and fluffy morning TV show type stuff.

Konstantin Kisin 23:30 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 23:30 And said, at least from what I saw, which may not have been the entire clip, but at least what I saw, as close to a heavily caveated, highly equivocating, very gentle approach of actually not even commenting about immigration, but saying, "If immigration continues, people will get upset. And this is what people are saying."

Konstantin Kisin 23:51 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 23:51 "Not what I'm saying."

Konstantin Kisin 23:52 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Chris Williamson 23:53 "This is what some people are saying, and they seem to be upset." And the issue of reporting on reporting was sufficient to get Rylan Clark tip of the spear of the culture wars.

Narrator 24:07 (laughs)

Konstantin Kisin 24:07 Well, right. And he also, he was so heavily cave- caveated in that clip, as you say, to the point where he said the thing that I just debunked five minutes earlier which is, he said, "Oh, Britain has always been a nation of immigrants," which it hasn't.

Chris Williamson 24:19 Mm-hmm.

Konstantin Kisin 24:19 But what he's doing is he's basically saying, "I'm not a, I'm not a bad person. Here's some things that some people, not me, here's some things that some people, not me, are saying," right?

Chris Williamson 24:29 (laughs)

Konstantin Kisin 24:29 Which, which is how you kind of, you dip your toe into the waters of... And what I think is probably happening is, like most people in the country now, when you speak to normal people, like ordinary people who are not on TV every day-

Chris Williamson 24:41 Mm-hmm.

Konstantin Kisin 24:43 ... it's, there's a kind of cons- like to the point where the LibDems are privately acknowledging that illegal immigration is a massive problem. Right?

Chris Williamson 24:49 Mm-hmm.

Konstantin Kisin 24:49 So basically the point is the overwhelming majority of people in this country think this is a big deal and everybody knows it. It's just that in the media you're not, still not supposed to say it.

Chris Williamson 25:00 Yeah. And you've got to do the hand-wringing and this weird land acknowledgement thing beforehand.

Konstantin Kisin 25:04 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 25:05 Uh-

Konstantin Kisin 25:05 Well, the, it's interesting though because if you did land, im- imagine if you did land acknowledgements in Britain, they'd look very different to, to the... (laughs)

Chris Williamson 25:13 (laughs) Yeah, that's-

Konstantin Kisin 25:14 "I acknowledge that we stand here on indigenous land. Bigot!" (laughs)

Chris Williamson 25:19 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 25:20 Uh, 22% of Brits think immigration levels should remain where they are, 69% think that most illegal immigrants do not share the same values. So yeah, I mean when was that? Was it Newsnight? This was forever ago that Newsnight did a, a phone-in survey, a text-in survey or something, and it was, um, uh, how many people, uh, think that multiculturalism has failed.

Konstantin Kisin 25:42 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 25:43 And it was, this must have been at least five years ago, and it was like 89% of respondents thought that multiculturalism-

Konstantin Kisin 25:51 Right.

Chris Williamson 25:51 ... had failed. And I have to assume that if you did the same thing again, that did seem kind of high to me at the time, like, okay, uh-

Konstantin Kisin 25:58 It might seem kind of low nowadays. Yeah. And look, again, I think it's important to d- delve into the nuance of it because a lot of people who haven't looked into this properly, they sort of, they, what they think multiculturalism means is like Black people and Brown people being in the country.

Chris Williamson 26:14 Correct.

Konstantin Kisin 26:15 That's not multiculturalism. That's a multiethnic society, which can work. Uh, it absolutely can work. Multiculturalism is the idea that actually there's no s- there's no such thing as British culture, there's no such thing as British identity, there's no such thing as British values. And what we really need to do is just bring people from all over the world and say, "Oh, you know, you want to practice your religion, your culture, your this? That's great. Everybody live in their own ghetto and we're all living in this beautiful multicultural utopia and diversity is our greatest strength."

Chris Williamson 26:43 Mm-hmm.

Konstantin Kisin 26:44 Diversity is not a strength.

Chris Williamson 26:45 Why?

Konstantin Kisin 26:47 Because I- I- (laughs) I remember this great scene from Game of Thrones. Have you, have you seen Game of Thrones?

Chris Williamson 26:52 Of course.

Konstantin Kisin 26:52 Do you remember when, uh, Cersei and King Robert, they're discussing the potential Dothraki invasion.

Chris Williamson 26:59 Mm-hmm.

Konstantin Kisin 26:59 And she goes, "Yeah, but we've got five times as many, we've got five kingdoms. They've got just the one." And he goes, "What's a bigger number, five or one?" And she goes, "Five." And he goes, "Five, one." Right? Unity is a strength when you are attempting to do things. Common purpose, common values, a sense of shared identity, these are things that allow you to overcome difficulties. One of the reasons the concern about immigration is as high as it is, it's not just the levels of immigration, it's also the fact that Britain's become poorer.

Chris Williamson 27:32 Mm-hmm.

Konstantin Kisin 27:33 Our GDP per capita is lower today than it was in 2008. In other words, people's living standards are being eroded for reasons we can get into. So addressing that requires quite a lot of difficult challenges. We've got, you know, a bloated welfare sector, so you're gonna have to deal with the fact that far too many people are not working and being paid not to work. You're gonna have to deal with the national debt, which is way too high. The deficit. You've got like big, big challenges, right? And those challenges are quite easy to overcome comparatively speaking when we all feel like we are ultimately, at the end of the day, this is our country and we're gonna sort it out. But if we have become multicultural in that everyone really only cares, you know, we keep hearing from politicians, "We need to look at the concerns of the British X, Y, Z community." You know, British Jewish community, British Muslim community-

Chris Williamson 28:28 Mm-hmm.

Konstantin Kisin 28:28 ... British Pakistani community, British Hin- all of this stuff, right? Then it, we're no longer British people trying to sort the same thing out. We're people who are looking out for our own community. Our own community is Britain. That's what we should be looking out for. So diversity can be a strength in one sense, which is when you bring in people of talent and drive and ambition from around the world and they all buy into the values of that place and then pull together in one direction, that's a strength. Just bringing lots of people from around the world and then not integrating them and not encouraging them to become British, and also bringing people who are probably not easily integratable into our society-

Chris Williamson 29:07 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Konstantin Kisin 29:07 ... that's not a strength. That's a weakness. Um, so that's a big part of the problem that we have, is multiculturalism is essentially a, an ideology of divisiveness and disparity instead of an ideology of cohesion and unity. And if you want to solve problems, like you've got a big team working on your show, we've got a team working our show, imagine you just had 15 people working for you who all had the exact opposite ideas to each other of what's right and wrong, what you, direction the show should be moving in, you know, who should be presenting the show, et cetera, et cetera.

Chris Williamson 29:39 Mm-hmm.

Konstantin Kisin 29:40 That would never work.

Chris Williamson 29:41 Mm-hmm.

Konstantin Kisin 29:41 So diversity is a strength in that you've got some, you know, some variance of opinion, you don't have only one opinion-

Chris Williamson 29:47 Mm-hmm.

Konstantin Kisin 29:47 ... about things. But there's a limit to everything. And we've gone way, way past that limit. So multiethnic society is fine. No one's got a problem with people with different skin colors per se. The problem is ideology and worldview. And those have to be aligned for people to be able to work together well.

Chris Williamson 30:04 Mm. Are Britain's core values at risk of disappearing? Is that a, a real concern?

Konstantin Kisin 30:10 Well, the, uh, what I would say is Britain's core values are actually kind of have become quite impossible to define in public. So that to me seems like a problem. I keep, every guest we have on Trigonometry, I'm like, "You know, what are British values?" "Uh, uh, uh, uh, you know, uh, uh" and, and I don't blame them 'cause I'm not sitting here with like a coherent vision of what it means to be British. But one of those things, and it's interesting 'cause this is what you asked about, is you talk about people's concern about illegal immigration, 69%, whatever, and they're not compatible with British values. Well, as you well know, one of the, I would say probably the core British value is a sense of fairness-... and orderliness-

Chris Williamson 30:48 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Konstantin Kisin 30:49 ... and which has manifested itself in the idea of queuing properly.

Chris Williamson 30:52 Mm-hmm. We love a queue.

Konstantin Kisin 30:53 Love a queue.

Chris Williamson 30:53 Yep.

Konstantin Kisin 30:54 And Britain- and, uh, you know, this is- it's like a hack joke that everybody does about Britain, British people love queuing, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But if you think about what queuing is fundamentally, queuing is civilization. Queuing is civilization. It's a process by which we go from the law of the jungle, who's got the sharpest elbows, who is going to get to the front of that line by being the biggest, strongest, roughest, most violent, et cetera. And it's a way of saying we're actually gonna have a civilized society. We're gonna do things in order, we're gonna respect each other, we're gonna be tolerant of each other. And by the way, in that process of spending time together, waiting collectively for something, we can all talk about how terrible it is, and through that we actually bond and connect and, and we're kind of connecting with the people around us. So illegal immigration is fundamentally antithetical to what it means to be British because it's about respecting the law-

Chris Williamson 31:47 Hmm.

Konstantin Kisin 31:47 ... and it's about fairness. And i-

Chris Williamson 31:49 As opposed to jumping the queue.

Konstantin Kisin 31:50 As opposed to jumping queue. And I'll give you an example. My mother applied for a visa to come here, uh, uh, two or three years ago to spend time with me and my family, right? And despite, I don't- I don't know, maybe there was something imperfect about her application. My mother's been to the UK dozens of times. She's got plenty of things to do back home. She's no intention of staying and working in the Uber Eats economy, I assure you. Right? Her application was denied. And I'm having to spend quite a lot of time and money to, to get that sorted so that she can come while at the same time tens of thousands of people are getting on a boat in France and coming here illegally. I just don't think that's where the British people think the system should be at.

Chris Williamson 32:34 How does being an immigrant shape your views on immigration?

Konstantin Kisin 32:37 I just think I don't have the political correctness BS approach to it so I can be honest and say I think some immigration's good, uh, if it's carefully selective and if we're bringing people who have the potential to contribute.

Chris Williamson 32:51 Mm-hmm.

Konstantin Kisin 32:52 Uh, and, but it's- I, uh, and so I, I, I'm just not constrained by this. Like, well, I ... Like, 'cause no one can accuse me of hating immigrants, right? So then I don't have to deal with that before I say my actual opinion.

Chris Williamson 33:04 It's a very slippery argument because it goes from, uh, you're exclusionary, you don't know what you've got, you've never needed to go through this, to you've pulled the ladder up after you.

Konstantin Kisin 33:13 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 33:13 It just continues to sort of move down the predictable stack.

Konstantin Kisin 33:17 Yeah. But, but the other thing about it is that every immigrant will tell you, some of them will tell you this in private rather than in public, but, like, I know the Russian society, there's some amazing people in Russia and in Ukraine and all of Eastern Europe, talented, creative, driven, ambitious, you know, really, really, uh, resilient in, in ways that are hard for people actually in the West to even comprehend, really brilliant people. But there are also some awful people in Russia. Now, if we are going to allow people to come from that country or any other country, which o- which of those groups of people do we want? Right? Like, we'd all acknowledge that every country has within it the, the types of people that you'd want more of and the types of people you might want less of if you wanted a, a cohesive dynamic society. So I can say without being called a bigot, I do not want the dregs of Russia's society or the dregs of Ukrainian society-

Chris Williamson 34:12 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Konstantin Kisin 34:12 ... or the dregs of Armenian society or the dregs of the Pakistani society in our country. But I do want some of the best people-

Chris Williamson 34:21 Mm-hmm.

Konstantin Kisin 34:21 ... who might want to come from all of those countries to come here and contribute.

Chris Williamson 34:24 And I suppose the less desirable that you make the country, the less likely it is to get those upper echelons of the people that you really do want to come in.

Konstantin Kisin 34:32 And that's the great tragedy of where Britain's got to. And I think we talked about this last time, where when we talk about net figures on immigration, what that conceals is you're getting a lot of people from, let's be charitable and say the bottom end of the jobs market, many of them might not be working at all. And you're losing all the people who'd actually want to live in a nice country 'cause they go, "Well, why would I come here, pay 50% tax, be unsafe, and watch a country deteriorate where I could go somewhere else?"

Chris Williamson 35:00 Mm-hmm.

Konstantin Kisin 35:01 So i- if you want good, a good immigration policy, you have to not welcome the worst people from around the world-

Chris Williamson 35:09 Mm-hmm.

Konstantin Kisin 35:09 ... and you have to create the conditions that attract the best people from around the world. That's what you want.

Chris Williamson 35:14 It's kind of a morphing argument, you know, the economic implications for supporting people, the cultural, uh, uh, uh, absorption and, and integration of them, the concerns that British people have for their quality of life outside of that, this brain drain thing that's happening. What does this mean overall in terms of trajectory? And at each one of these points, there is five or ten accusations of bigotry-

Konstantin Kisin 35:40 Mm.

Chris Williamson 35:41 ... that can be thrown at you, which you need to sort of wipe off all of the slime and go, "Okay, it's not that, and it's not that, and it's not that. I'm actually trying to say something which hopefully real people would actually be really, really concerned about."

Konstantin Kisin 35:51 Hmm.

Chris Williamson 35:51 And then, again, uh, uh, not to use Rylan Clark as, you know, the light bringer of all of this, uh, sort of, uh, issues. You can say the most milk toast thing in the world-

Konstantin Kisin 36:03 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 36:04 ... and still get castigated and des- destroyed for it.

Konstantin Kisin 36:08 I also think, though, that is a very kind of what we call Westminster bubble type of thing. Like-

Chris Williamson 36:14 Mm-hmm.

Konstantin Kisin 36:14 ... in the ... This argument does not wash even remotely in the majority of

Chris Williamson 36:18 You think people in Newcastle are too concerned about Rylan Clark?

Konstantin Kisin 36:20 I, I think we've got to the point now where you just, like I said, that lid is not gonna go back on the pressure cooker unless you really try and force it, in which case you're gonna get serious disorder in the streets.

Chris Williamson 36:30 Is the UK doing enough to culturally assimilate immigrants? Should it be doing more? Is there such a thing as that?

Konstantin Kisin 36:37 I, I, well, I actually think we should be doing a hell of a lot more, and historically speaking especially, but that requires us to not have all of this conversation about-

Chris Williamson 36:46 And to identify that there is a difference because if you deny that there's a difference, then assimilation isn't needed. Ah. Ha-ha-ha.

Konstantin Kisin 36:54 How can you as- how- are you saying cultures are different? Ooh.

Chris Williamson 36:58 Yeah. Well, if diversity is our strength-

Konstantin Kisin 37:00 Then-

Chris Williamson 37:00 ... and there is no such thing as a British culture, then assimilation doesn't exist.

Konstantin Kisin 37:03 Right.Right.

Chris Williamson 37:04 Y- uh, no, no, no, no, no. The, the job is to have this pick and mix of things that are all disparate and separate inside. It's not to have a bag of different colored sand that you turn over to c- turn into like a mostly the current color with a little bit of new color in it that's... yeah.

Konstantin Kisin 37:19 Well, if you, if you think about the insistence on the simulation or integration, right, it... presupposed within that is, A, that there's a difference between cultures, which is something that we pretend isn't true, and then it also implied within that is that there's a difference, there's a superiority of one culture over another. One culture is better than another, for this country at least, right?

Chris Williamson 37:41 Mm-hmm.

Konstantin Kisin 37:41 Now, I'm not saying people in Afghanistan need to adopt British culture, that's up to them. But for our country, people should be adopting British culture, which means that we are implicitly making the claim that it is better and you can't say that.

Chris Williamson 37:56 And without... I mean, even if you've had this challenge of asking your guests on your show, "What is British culture?"

Konstantin Kisin 38:02 Mm.

Chris Williamson 38:02 If you struggle to identify it, it's going to be very hard to, um, enforce it, encourage it, uh, b- b- provide a roadmap for people to assimilate into it. It's... yeah, it's this ouroboros of non-culturalism.

Konstantin Kisin 38:15 If we lifted the cultural restrictions on actually talking about these things, I believe we would get to an answer very quickly on what British culture actually is. And I'm not saying I have th- all of those answers, but if we had a conversation as a country about, um-

Chris Williamson 38:28 Queuing.

Konstantin Kisin 38:29 ... then, w- then we'd get there. The problem is we, we, we've, we've got to a point where people are ashamed, frankly, and embarrassed to actually talk about what that might be. Uh, and there's a lot of discussion to be had about it, is I'm... I certainly wouldn't pretend to... because an immigrant myself, to like have every single part of it. But I think fairness and orderliness and a sense of respect for each other is a big, big part of it. And a lot of people in, in Britain and the West more broadly don't realize how unusual that is. It's one of the things Francis and I always talk about on Trigonometry when him and I are just doing a conversation, like his background in Venezuela and my background in Russia, teaches me that it's not actually that normal. Like in Russia and Venezuela, we discovered this, uh, just talking, is like if you screw someone over that has allowed themselves to be screwed over, the general consensus is, "Well, th- they, they're the dickhead. They let them get... themselves get screwed over."

Chris Williamson 39:24 Okay.

Konstantin Kisin 39:24 "And you're right to screw them over." Of course. We even have this phrase in Russian which is Что-то плохо лежит , which means that something is lying in the wrong way. Like if, if you left, um, your phone in the wrong place and someone took it, that... it was... yeah, it was, it was not lying in the right way as in you like left it there. Of course, someone's going to steal it, right? So not everywhere in the world has these cultures. I mean, if you go to Japan, right? You discover that cultures are very different when it comes to these things.

Chris Williamson 39:53 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Konstantin Kisin 39:53 Like i- uh, if you li- you can leave valuables on a table. They're not going to go anywhere.

Chris Williamson 39:59 Mm-hmm.

Konstantin Kisin 40:00 Um, and so there's lots of conversations to be had about what it means to be British, what it's our attitudes to women, relations, all sorts of things-

Chris Williamson 40:09 Mm-hmm.

Konstantin Kisin 40:10 ... uh, that are an important part of it. Uh, speaking English is going to be a very important part of it.

Chris Williamson 40:15 Yeah, that would b-... uh, is that not the f- the most basic approach to this?

Konstantin Kisin 40:18 Well, you can't connect with other people unless you speak the same language, basically.

Chris Williamson 40:23 Mm-hmm.

Konstantin Kisin 40:23 So, all of these things should be hashed out, and we should be very muscular about forcing people who are already here to comply with those basic requirements.

Chris Williamson 40:34 Just rolling the clock forward a little bit, I have to assume that if you have an ever-increasing number of migrants coming across the channel that don't speak the English language, eventually they're going to have children, and those children are going to need educating, and those children will only speak the language of their parents if they're not doing the cultural assimilation thing. So, we're going to end up with schools or the requirement for schools that are going to be in different language, an increasing number of different languages in and around these areas.

Konstantin Kisin 40:59 Because diversity is our strength, right? So we can't say to them, you know-

Chris Williamson 41:02 Need to learn English-

Konstantin Kisin 41:03 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 41:03 ... your kids should learn English.

Konstantin Kisin 41:04 And look, the children of... or e- even of illegal immigrants do tend to assimilate and pick up the language. Kids are very good at that. But there are schools in this country where English is not th- the, the most common language-

Chris Williamson 41:14 Mm.

Konstantin Kisin 41:14 ... already. Um, so yeah, all of these things just need to be like... y- they just need to be forced to be w- c- to be... a- everything in our country has to be angled towards cohesiveness and cohesion.

Chris Williamson 41:27 Mm-hmm.

Konstantin Kisin 41:28 Um, because we've been angling towards disparity and difference for far too long.

Chris Williamson 41:32 W- I suppose so w-... one other way to look at it is that it's kind of a fake cohesion that it's been angling toward, that we don't need to make a big deal about this-

Konstantin Kisin 41:41 Yes.

Chris Williamson 41:41 ... where, uh, we are cohesed around our mutual acceptance of anything that happen-

Konstantin Kisin 41:46 Mm.

Chris Williamson 41:46 ... like some Brazilian jiu-jitsu thing that's going on where you flip it upside down, you go, "Well, actually, there's nothing to even cohese against."

Konstantin Kisin 41:52 Mm.

Chris Williamson 41:52 Um, well, you went to a migrant protest-

Konstantin Kisin 41:54 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 41:54 ... and again, this is another... this is an entire content niche, whether you're a streamer on Twitch or Russell Brand or whatever, like c- covering these things is a big deal. And I know that you did. What did you learn from being at these migrant hotel protest things?

Konstantin Kisin 42:09 Uh, well, it's interesting. So I went there... and as I go to... I've been to a number of different kinds of protests and document them, as you know, Palestine ones, pro-Israel ones, all kinds. And I always go there with a genuine open mind, because I think that's the only way that you're actually going to learn anything. If you go there to validate your priors, you're not really actually learning anything. So one of the things I found is that, um, y- y- what's happening now is you tend to have protesters against illegal immigration, and then you have a bunch of counter-protesters.

Chris Williamson 42:40 Protesters against protestors against illegal immigration.

Konstantin Kisin 42:43 That's right.

Chris Williamson 42:43 Okay.

Konstantin Kisin 42:44 And what's interesting is that what seems to be happening is the protests against illegal immigration are broadly speaking organic in the sense that like people know it's happening, they pop along, um, and, you know, it's a mixture of people as, as a protest... I mean, protests...... by definition, usually attract quite unusual people. Um, and this is not a disparaging comment but like, most people are, are, like they've-

Chris Williamson 43:07 Busy.

Konstantin Kisin 43:07 They're busy doing other things. So to get British people out, normal British people out onto the streets-

Chris Williamson 43:12 There's a selection effect going on here.

Konstantin Kisin 43:14 There is but I'm also, what I'm also saying is the point we're at now is things have got so bad-

Chris Williamson 43:19 It's motivating.

Konstantin Kisin 43:19 ... that you are getting normal people going out to a protest and that is-

Chris Williamson 43:23 Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Wow.

Konstantin Kisin 43:24 That's telling you quite a lot.

Chris Williamson 43:25 Left the tea behind.

Konstantin Kisin 43:25 So what you've got on the, on the anti-illegal immigration side of things is a mixture of people who are, you know, angry about illegal immigration, uh, e- the one I went to was kind of close to the Isle of Dogs which is, uh, an area that there's a lot of kind of football supporters there who might be up for a bit of a ruckus, uh, who were very peaceful by the way, but you know, like they did look like-

Chris Williamson 43:47 Handy.

Konstantin Kisin 43:48 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 43:48 Peaceful but handy.

Konstantin Kisin 43:49 Peaceful but handy. You wouldn't want to be on the wrong side of them. Um, and on the other hand, and this was something that I found very, very interesting is you had a highly organized counter-protest.

Chris Williamson 44:02 Mm-hmm.

Konstantin Kisin 44:03 So you get a bunch of people turning up who've all got the same placard, it's professionally printed, uh, they've got songs that they all sing-

Chris Williamson 44:11 (laughs)

Konstantin Kisin 44:11 ... they've got ... i- it's all organized and, um, I didn't know, it's a, it's an organization called I think Stand Up To Racism or something like that, uh, which I didn't know anything about. So I went over and I tried to talk to them and the main organizer said, "Oh, we only talk to professional journalists, we don't talk to incels in their bedrooms."

Chris Williamson 44:28 Oh, he knew who you were. (laughs)

Konstantin Kisin 44:29 Uh, yeah, exactly. I mean, it's, I'm a famous incel in my bedroom. Um, and so he wouldn't talk to us and lots of the other people there wouldn't talk to us and you're going, "Isn't the point of a protest to get your message out? And yet none of these people will talk to you?" But what you have is you have this hard organized core and then you have a few stragglers who've come along because they actually think like, this is about-

Chris Williamson 44:53 Yep, yep.

Konstantin Kisin 44:53 ... you know, they're against racism or whatever, right?

Chris Williamson 44:56 Yes, yep.

Konstantin Kisin 44:56 But what was interesting is when, when, when I, we posted the video of that guy saying that to me, people very quickly found out who he was and he is a self-identified revolutionary Marxist, I think, or Communist. Well, same thing basically and the entire organization comes from the Socialist Workers Party which is a Communist organization so what you've basically got is the far-left organizing in a very, very, um, kind of meticulous way to be at every protest to, to, to act as if it's an organic protest against the organic protest-

Chris Williamson 45:35 Mm-hmm.

Konstantin Kisin 45:35 ... when what actually is happening is you've got organic protesters, ordinary people coming to a place and then you've got these people coming there to try and shut them down.

Chris Williamson 45:43 Contrived protests.

Konstantin Kisin 45:44 Yeah. Contrived protests. Probably well-funded, I don't know where their funding comes from but, but they're well-funded, you can tell because they're very organized.

Chris Williamson 45:51 Professional placards-

Konstantin Kisin 45:51 Yeah. A-

Chris Williamson 45:52 They've spent time i- in singing class learning the chants.

Konstantin Kisin 45:55 And those people, a lot of them go from protest to protest to protest to protest, so it's the same people around the country acting as if the entire country has risen up in opposition to the evil racist far-right.

Chris Williamson 46:07 Yes, okay.

Konstantin Kisin 46:07 Right. Um, so the, now, look, the, they're both, as I say, you know, the people who are attracted to protest are quite, quite unusual, atypical people, generally speaking, but I think broadly speaking, that is my experience of what I saw is mostly normal people against mostly organized counter-protesters showing up at these places.

Chris Williamson 46:28 A quick aside, you've probably heard experts like Dr. Rhonda Patrick talk about the benefits of Omega-3s. They support brain reduction, they support brain reduction, they support brain function but they reduce inflammation, they improve heart health and are backed by hundreds of studies. It's really tough to get enough through diet. No one's eating that much salmon. Come on. And with Momentous, you know you're getting the highest quality Omega-3s on the market. They're NSF certified for sport and they're tested for heavy metals and purity. Huge deal if you're getting anything that is seafood supplement related which is why Momentous is unparalleled when it comes to rigorous third party testing. What you read on the label is what's in the product and absolutely nothing else. Best of all, they've got a 30 day money back guarantee so you can buy it, try it, how many ... There's 60 capsules and you take two per day, you could take this entire bottle and if you don't love it, they'll just give you your money back so it's risk free. And they ship internationally. Right now, you can get 35% off your first subscription and that 30 day money back guarantee by going to the link in the description below or heading to livemomentous.com/modernwisdom and using the code MODERNWISDOM at checkout. That's L-I-V-E-M-O-M-E-N-T-O-U-S dot com/modernwisdom, and modernwisdom at checkout. Are there any arguments against ... Rebuttals to the migrant protesters that doesn't just boil down to some sort of disdain of class or intelligence? Because it seems to me like a lot of the time, it's this sort of tongue-wagging, these racist work- you know, they don't, these bigoted people, they don't understand what they're doing here, we're more elevated than that, have we not transcended our need for exclusion. It, it seems like anyone protesting outside of an immigrant hotel just means that person is racist but also probably a bit poor, stupid and uneducated.

Konstantin Kisin 48:15 Yeah. But the thing is, you know, I've always found this a very strange way of arguing things. If you live in a democracy, you have to accept that there's a spectrum of people's in- informa- informedness and intelligence.

Chris Williamson 48:27 Mm-hmm.

Konstantin Kisin 48:27 So why is a guy-

Chris Williamson 48:29 Even if it's true.

Konstantin Kisin 48:30 Even if it's true, why is a guy who drives a whi- white van and maybe isn't intellectually that smart and maybe doesn't have a, a First in PPE from Oxford, why is his opinion by definition less important? Like if you live in a democracy, his opinion is just as important as yours.

Chris Williamson 48:47 Mm-hmm.

Konstantin Kisin 48:47 And you ought to try and persuade him if you genuinely think he's wrong to your way of argument. But the problem is that just because you can dismiss someone for not making their argument in the most articulate way doesn't mean that their core concern is incorrect. If you have-... 50,000 people a year coming into this country illegally, being put up in hotels, causing an increase in sexual offenses, et cetera. Just because a guy with a face tattoo is there talking about it, doesn't mean that the concern isn't valid. So my, my interest in all of this is always, is the claim, the, the core of the claim that's being made, is it true or false? Is it true that there's a problem with illegal immigration? Okay. Then I don't really care if there's a guy you can demonstrate is actually racist complaining about that, 'cause it's about the problem, not that particular person.

Chris Williamson 49:42 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Konstantin Kisin 49:43 There is extensive concern in the country about this issue because the problem is real. The fact that you can find a handful of people who don't look good on TV to make the case that they're all stupid or bad, doesn't... i- it doesn't nullify their argument.

Chris Williamson 49:59 It wouldn't invalidate the claim.

Konstantin Kisin 50:00 No.

Chris Williamson 50:00 It's the same thing as, uh, you're having an argument with your wife and you happen to be a good debater. You win the argument, but ultimately we're in the wrong.

Konstantin Kisin 50:08 Well, yeah. You win the battle, you lose the war on that one. Believe me, I've gone... (laughs)

Chris Williamson 50:12 (laughs) Yeah, o- okay. Um,

Chris Williamson 50:16 it seems to me there's a bunch of, I mean, there's an awful lot of, not hypocrisy, but blindness going on here. So, um, if we say that it's mostly people on the left that are pro-immigration, uh, asylum seeker, informal immigration we can call it. Well, one of the things that they would pushing for presumably is increases in living standards for particularly people from underprivileged backgrounds and the working class, or the underclass. Mm, but the heart of money that is being shared around is now being diluted down by all of the people that are coming from overseas. Presumably that's not too good.

Konstantin Kisin 50:54 Well, you, you're, you're speaking like an evil right-winger. What we actually need to do, Chris, is tax the rich.

Chris Williamson 51:00 Uh-huh. But even if you were to do that, it would still be diluted down more, regardless of how much-

Konstantin Kisin 51:05 No, no, no.

Chris Williamson 51:05 ... rich taxing.

Konstantin Kisin 51:06 It's all about tax evasion by the super rich.

Chris Williamson 51:08 Okay. I guess-

Konstantin Kisin 51:08 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 51:08 Sorry.

Konstantin Kisin 51:08 And y- and you're falling into the right-wing rhetoric of the right-wing media-

Chris Williamson 51:12 Okay.

Konstantin Kisin 51:13 ... who are telling you-

Chris Williamson 51:13 I do watch a lot of Trigonometry, so-

Konstantin Kisin 51:14 Who are bla- ... Yeah, exactly.

Chris Williamson 51:15 (laughs)

Konstantin Kisin 51:15 Who are blaming the poor, innocent asylum seekers when it's actually the super rich who are screwing the country over.

Chris Williamson 51:21 Understood. Okay, let me ... Thank you. Uh-

Konstantin Kisin 51:23 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 51:23 Le- let me give you another one. Um-

Konstantin Kisin 51:25 I've been watching a lot of Gary's Economics, as you can tell.

Chris Williamson 51:27 (laughs) As you can tell. Um, on the, uh, a similar vein to that, a lot of these people from the left would probably care about women's rights, believe all women, we need to protect women.

Konstantin Kisin 51:36 Mm.

Chris Williamson 51:36 We would be concerned about, uh, uh, women walking alone through parks at night, and, uh, concerns like that. Uh, this seems a little anathema to that as well. The-

Konstantin Kisin 51:45 Well, no, no, no. Uh, again, I think you've just been buying the racist tropes of the right-wing media. The real problem, Chris, is, is men. Who is it does, does all the r- (censored) and the sexual ... It's men, isn't it?

Chris Williamson 51:54 Okay.

Konstantin Kisin 51:55 So what we need to deal with is that problem. It's men.

Chris Williamson 51:57 Mm-hmm.

Konstantin Kisin 51:57 'Cause there's no, there's no-

Chris Williamson 51:58 Immigrant men?

Konstantin Kisin 51:59 No, no, no, men. Men. 'Cause there's no difference between cultures, remember? It's very important that you remember this. There's no difference between cultures, there's no difference between cultural values. The problem is men.

Chris Williamson 52:08 Okay.

Konstantin Kisin 52:08 To the point when ... (laughs)

Chris Williamson 52:10 Mm-hmm. How long can you keep this up?

Konstantin Kisin 52:12 Well, I can c- ... I, I've, I've studied these arguments very well, so I can play. This is the difference, right, is the people on my side of the argument mostly speaking, have actually explored both sides of the debate. And I can pr- I can argue with you all day from that progressive position.

Chris Williamson 52:25 Mm-hmm.

Konstantin Kisin 52:26 They don't know anything about the other side of the argument, 'cause their argument is ba- based on moralizing, which is why we talked about the problem with making immigration a moral issue. Um, to the point when you had a Labor MP after the last election who was heckled by Muslim men in her community af- at the, during her election victory speech. She then was asked, "Well, isn't there a problem?" She said, "Well, it's men, and yeah, men are ... misogyny is a big problem in this country."

Chris Williamson 52:52 (laughs)

Konstantin Kisin 52:57 So, I, I can, I can play this game all day long and I enjoy it, so carry on.

Chris Williamson 53:00 Okay.

Konstantin Kisin 53:00 Have you got any other questions?

Chris Williamson 53:01 Uh, uh-

Konstantin Kisin 53:02 What else have you heard from the evil right-wing media?

Chris Williamson 53:04 Uh, well, I guess the, the, the main question that I have, which is ... Above that, I, m- what is it that the left is trying to achieve? Or why is it ... Again, I fucking hate ... I, I, I actually would really love to have something around this conversation to point my finger at the right about. And there may be many things that, that we're not.

Konstantin Kisin 53:25 Mm.

Chris Williamson 53:25 But I hate it always being this like ... It's, this seems, to be honest, like a, an evolution of woke. Like a new version-

Konstantin Kisin 53:35 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 53:35 ... of this, like the British version of that. Because that word's sort of been and gone, especially in our s- side of the internet. It was cringe before it was even cool.

Konstantin Kisin 53:41 Mm.

Chris Williamson 53:42 Um, and I don't wanna bring it back. I do not intend on Lazarusing that f- fucking thing from the dead, um, but maybe we need a new word for it. But this feels like a very sort of British brand of woke.

Konstantin Kisin 53:54 Mm.

Chris Williamson 53:54 Of that, um, toxic empathy, sort of denial of real world implications, uh, purposeful subverting of the facts. Uh, all coming from, it seems, a sort of a left-leaning side.

Konstantin Kisin 54:12 There are also, we should say this, a hell of a lot of people who are on the left that are not remotely on board with this.

Chris Williamson 54:17 Mm-hmm.

Konstantin Kisin 54:17 So it's a v- I, I would say it's a very progressive-

Chris Williamson 54:20 Right. Okay, yeah.

Konstantin Kisin 54:21 ... thing. And, uh, Maurice Glassman who's, who's a, a Labor peer in the House of Lords, he, he alwa- he has this great line, he says, "If you go to the doctor and they say it's progressive, it's not good." (laughs)

Chris Williamson 54:30 (laughs)

Konstantin Kisin 54:31 So, it's, it's a progressive world view. And, um, it's what our mutual friend Rob Henderson's, uh, Rob Henderson calls luxury beliefs. Um, my, my experience if you look at the demographics of the people who are the counter protesters, y- you go, "How many of those people are married? How many of those people are parents? How many of those people have a business?" And you strip out those categories of people, and you go, "Well, th- that's where all these ideas are coming from." Because if you, if you, if you're a parent ... Like, the first thing that happens when you're a parent is all your fake bullshit ideas about how things are supposed to work just disappear 'cause you go, "Here's this thing."... and it doesn't work the way it's supposed to, it works the way it works.

Chris Williamson 55:15 Mm-hmm.

Konstantin Kisin 55:16 And you have to roll with that.

Chris Williamson 55:17 Idealism comes into contact with reality.

Konstantin Kisin 55:19 Number one. The second thing that happens is you experience a, a, an intense vulnerability of a kind that you've never experienced before, which is you go, the illusion that you are in control of your life and the things that matter to you, it vanishes the moment your child is born, and probably before.

Chris Williamson 55:35 Mm-hmm.

Konstantin Kisin 55:36 So, uh, the concern about what, security of the environment, safety, et cetera, all of these things are, become much more important to you because there is a part of you that's no longer even within your body that matters to you much more than you.

Chris Williamson 55:51 That's at the mercy of this thing-

Konstantin Kisin 55:52 Yes.

Chris Williamson 55:52 ... that's out there.

Konstantin Kisin 55:53 Which is the environment, right? That you care about. Um, so, and when you run a business, as you well know, you don't have the luxury of having beliefs that don't match reality because every time you are wrong, you lose money. Every time you're wrong, it hurts you, it costs you something, it means you can't employ another person or you're losing things that really matter to you. So, a lot of the people that take this worldview, they're simply, uh, usually insulated from the consequences of the things that they actually advocate for.

Chris Williamson 56:25 Mm-hmm.

Konstantin Kisin 56:26 And that is a large part of why this is happening, it's just people who don't reckon with the reality of what they're advocating for.

Chris Williamson 56:35 They're not having to come into contact with the real world consequences of this because of the luxury beliefs thing. Is that, does that explain it sort of exclusively, or is there something else going on? Is there a reason beyond fear of being called racist, sort of misplaced toxic empathy, and luxury beliefs, "I don't need to deal with the implications of this?" Like that seem, does seems like kind of small motivations in order to have, uh, maybe the fear, the fear of being called racist actually scales quite a lot.

Konstantin Kisin 57:03 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 57:03 Um...

Konstantin Kisin 57:06 There's also a lot of ideological things that people have. I- you know, if you adopt the central tenets of the worldview that's dominant in these circles, which is there are no differences between people, there are no differences between cultures, et cetera-

Chris Williamson 57:20 Mm-hmm.

Konstantin Kisin 57:20 ... then all of this is a logical consequence of that. Because how can you say that this person shouldn't be allowed into our country when we're all the same?

Chris Williamson 57:27 They are us.

Konstantin Kisin 57:28 We, we're all the same. We're all, we're all, there's no difference-

Chris Williamson 57:31 Mm-hmm.

Konstantin Kisin 57:31 ... right? So imagine, imagine there's no borders, it's easy if you try.

Chris Williamson 57:36 Mm-hmm. Is there something in Britain's past, is there something to do with having a landed gentry, and this sort of exclusion top-down of the aristocracy? Is there some kind of k- karmic debt, sense that we shouldn't be walling off people in the way that this happened in the past? Is there, is there still a class system that's going-

Konstantin Kisin 57:54 That's something I have talked about, but in relation to a different issue. I think the, the c- the hatred of successful people and wealthy people comes from that.

Chris Williamson 58:02 Mm, mm.

Konstantin Kisin 58:03 Because in Britain, we conflate success with privilege. We think that if someone has wealth or a business or money, that's because they have privilege, they have been privileged. Because 200 years ago, someone with money probably was privileged. They almost certainly would've been rich because they were the grandson of somebody as opposed to because they've created something. That isn't really true anymore, but that is, I think, why there's this disdain for people who are successful, and that's why these narratives about tax the rich, tax the rich, tax the rich-

Chris Williamson 58:34 Mm-hmm.

Konstantin Kisin 58:34 ... which doesn't work in practice, but nonetheless, it's really appealing to people. But the reason I think the ideological part exists is partly to do with World War II because it's not just Germany that's guilt-ridden after World War II, because, um, much of Europe reacted to what was happening in Germany in terms of dealing with people who were being persecuted in Germany in a way that when they look back on it, they were very ashamed of, right? Not allowing people to flee Germany and come here, et cetera. So there was this genuine sense that, like, we, we, we watched, uh, the worst catastrophe in human history be perpetrated right on our doorstep, and we didn't do enough.

Chris Williamson 59:16 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Konstantin Kisin 59:17 And so that's when you get these mechanisms that Britain was a pioneer in bringing through the ECHR and all of these mechanisms that we're now talking about, because they were like, "Okay, well, what we need to do," right? Is, well, the problem was we had these nationalists, right? Like, like in Germany, who, who, who looked at things at the national level and they would do whatever they wanted within their country because they were allowed, and we can't allow that anymore. What we need is a more globalized approach where, where you have globalized supervision or at least EU level supervision of these things so that we collectively make sure that none of us goes too far. Which in and of itself is a well-intentioned and reasonable idea. The problem is that once you give those people that power, they don't stop until they're legislating the shape of bananas across the Euro- European Union. So that's kind of where I think a lot of this comes from, it's, it's the sense that in the wake of World War II, mistakes were made and they had to be corrected.

Chris Williamson 1:00:13 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:00:16 What about this sort of culture around productivity? I think that's interesting that-

Konstantin Kisin 1:00:21 Mm.

Chris Williamson 1:00:21 ... if you look at America, great country, I very much like it there. Not much heritage, right? Not a massive amount of heritage, which means that you haven't had time to accumu- first off, uh, class hasn't ossified in quite the same way. Posh is just a word that when I use it, most Americans understand it but look at me like it's something they haven't heard for a decade or so.

Konstantin Kisin 1:00:43 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:00:43 Um, class hasn't sort of stratified out in that same sort of way, but importantly, if you're wealthy, uh, at most, you're only like five generations away from the person that made it. So yeah, like maybe you were privileged, but you were probably still working on the business at that time, whatever. Uh, the same isn't true in the UK.

Konstantin Kisin 1:01:00 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:01:00 And yeah, when, when I was growing up, I would say the country felt a little negative in the micro but proud in the macro-

Konstantin Kisin 1:01:12 Mm.

Chris Williamson 1:01:13 And now it feels negative in the micro and negative in the macro as well.

Konstantin Kisin 1:01:18 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:01:18 Does that make sense?

Konstantin Kisin 1:01:18 It makes perfect sense.

Chris Williamson 1:01:20 Yeah. Do, is that something that you've sensed as well as a trajectory?

Konstantin Kisin 1:01:22 Absolutely. Well, it's one of the reasons I talk about the things that I talk about, because within our lifetimes, I've watched this great country go from that to what we have now.

Chris Williamson 1:01:33 Mm-hmm.

Konstantin Kisin 1:01:33 Uh, and I, I think it's a tragedy. Uh, it's a terrible tragedy because, um, you know, I'm, I'm, um, I have weird interests, so I'm watching a lecture by this Russian, um, his, oh, Ukrainian actually, well, Russian, Ukrainian both, historian, um, who talks about the way the, the Manhattan Project.

Chris Williamson 1:01:52 Mm-hmm.

Konstantin Kisin 1:01:52 The nuclear, the way it was made. And it turns out, I didn't know this, but, uh, the Germans, at the early stages, the Germans and the Americans and the Brits were basically at the same point-

Chris Williamson 1:02:03 Okay.

Konstantin Kisin 1:02:03 ... of the development. But what the Germans and the Americans did is they looked at what it was likely to take to get to a nuclear weapon. And I don't remember the exact particular factor, but basically the Germans overestimated the difficulty by a factor of a hundred, and the Americans underestimated the difficulty-

Chris Williamson 1:02:20 (laughs)

Konstantin Kisin 1:02:22 ... by a factor of a hundred. But that false positivity and false optimism-

Chris Williamson 1:02:27 Mm-hmm.

Konstantin Kisin 1:02:27 ... is often how you get things done.

Chris Williamson 1:02:29 Mm-hmm.

Konstantin Kisin 1:02:30 So when you have a negative mindset, it's self-fulfilling. Uh, it causes you not to go for things that actually you might have been able to do. They, they may well have been more difficult-

Chris Williamson 1:02:39 Mm-hmm.

Konstantin Kisin 1:02:39 ... than they, in, you know, than, than people would've thought, but they might not have been as difficult as you thought. And so if you actually go and attempt things, you'll, you'll get somewhere much more often than if you just have a negative mindset. So it's a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Chris Williamson 1:02:52 Mm-hmm.

Konstantin Kisin 1:02:53 And so when you have a country that's, that's engaged in this kind of constant negativity and this down, this, this is why I've opposed this, all this stuff about British history as much as I have, because there's been so many lies told about the history of this country.

Chris Williamson 1:03:07 Mm-hmm.

Konstantin Kisin 1:03:09 And then I go, well, okay, if, if you're teaching children in school all this nonsense about how their country was like the worst slave-owning empire in history and all of this other stuff-

Chris Williamson 1:03:20 When in fact it was the one that started the stopping of it.

Konstantin Kisin 1:03:22 Right. Then you go, well, then why, why would they feel proud to be British? Why would they fight to defend this country? If you think this country is a piece of shit, like why would you, like, lay down your life for it? It doesn't make any sense. So likewise, when it comes to starting a business here or contributing in some other way, why would you do that if you don't believe in this thing?

Chris Williamson 1:03:44 Mm-hmm.

Konstantin Kisin 1:03:45 Uh, and the reality is, and I think this doesn't get said often enough, is Britain is a great country-

Chris Williamson 1:03:50 Mm-hmm.

Konstantin Kisin 1:03:50 ... with a great history. Actually, uh, we have some of the most intelligent, driven, passionate, creative, sensible people in Britain, you know, and if we harnessed their skills and talents and, and took the boot off their neck and stopped blaming them for the problems actually created by the government, you'd have a revival. You'd have a national revival because partly of the heritage, of the accumulated capital over the centuries this country's had. But you've gotta actually be willing to do that.

Chris Williamson 1:04:18 Yeah. Unlocking that potential requires a culture that fosters it, and it's the difference between tax the rich and become the rich, like, uh, own the Ferrari and scratch the Ferrari.

Konstantin Kisin 1:04:28 Right.

Chris Williamson 1:04:29 Uh-

Konstantin Kisin 1:04:29 And l- I mean, and I, I think you're a good example of this, right? Like, you've gone to America. Now, that should not be happening. That shouldn't be happening, because I imagine moving to a different country, I know, I know from my experience, it's dislocating. It, it, it causes you to, you, you have to make new friendships, you're far from family. These are all inconveniences-

Chris Williamson 1:04:48 Mm-hmm.

Konstantin Kisin 1:04:48 ... that many people would rather avoid. Like, I, I love America, but at the moment I have no interest in moving there, and partly because I actually love Britain. I love this country. I love the culture in so many ways.

Chris Williamson 1:04:58 Mm-hmm.

Konstantin Kisin 1:04:58 Um, so if you're forcing people like you and me to think about m- that, that tells you something.

Chris Williamson 1:05:05 Mm-hmm.

Konstantin Kisin 1:05:05 That tells you what you're doing-

Chris Williamson 1:05:07 Yeah.

Konstantin Kisin 1:05:07 ... to this country.

Chris Williamson 1:05:08 Yeah.

Konstantin Kisin 1:05:08 And, and if you keep doing that, more and more people will leave, and then you're gonna be left with people who are, you know, not contributing as much, and w- why would you want that?

Chris Williamson 1:05:16 Yeah. Uh, the sort of psychology of decline thing, I've really reflected on it a lot because it is easy, uh, as is shown by all of the US streamers that are doing it, to sort of point at previously glorious country that now appears to be in decline.

Konstantin Kisin 1:05:31 Mm.

Chris Williamson 1:05:31 Here are all of the problems. Uh, implicit in that is sort of this, uh, standing on the shoulder, "Oh, I would never." You know, "We, we, we, we, we..." It's, it's good for me to comment on this because it's not an issue of mine, or the grassroots version of this, that, "We need to fight back." But all of that has sort of psychology of decline baked into it, whereas it does feel a lot like just latent untapped potential-

Konstantin Kisin 1:05:52 Mm.

Chris Williamson 1:05:52 ... in the UK. Uh, you know, we have as many... I think we have as many universities in the top 10 globally as America does, but we produce five times fewer entrepreneurs.

Konstantin Kisin 1:06:02 Mm.

Chris Williamson 1:06:04 We, in terms of education, in terms of heritage, in terms of history, cultural impact, until so recently, we were the goats. It's... It really should be a dip in the market as opposed to an actual decline.

Konstantin Kisin 1:06:20 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:06:21 Uh, but yeah, I, I-

Konstantin Kisin 1:06:22 Well, we're about to be overtaken by Poland in GDP per capita.

Chris Williamson 1:06:26 That's not great.

Konstantin Kisin 1:06:28 It's great for Poland. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 1:06:31 (laughs)

Konstantin Kisin 1:06:31 And I, I love Polish people and it's a great country.

Chris Williamson 1:06:33 Uh-huh.

Konstantin Kisin 1:06:34 But if you think about Britain historically, it, it's punched so far above its weight, even in the 20th century when it was declining from its true glory days.

Chris Williamson 1:06:45 Mm-hmm.

Konstantin Kisin 1:06:45 Uh, and it can still do that. It can still do that if it chooses to.

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Chris Williamson 1:07:41 (air whooshing) I saw this stat, the UK is the second most depressed country in the world. The 2023 Mental State of the World report collected answers from 500,000 respondents across 71 countries. Countries are then given a mental health quotient. The UK came second last, just above Uzbekistan and below South Africa. Ukraine came in comfortably high with a score of 60, despite battling Russian President Vladimir Putin's invading forces. While Yemen, which is also suffering one of the largest humanity crises in history, also fared better. Uh, in addition to the UK ranking second lowest, it also scored the highest in respondents who are distressed and struggling, had low drive and motivation scores, and struggled heavily with adaptability and resilience. Fuck, dude. I... Look, I don't like the bashing on the UK thing, and I really-

Konstantin Kisin 1:08:31 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:08:31 ... battled with it, especially after our last conversation, and every time I see these stats, there's this bit of me that wants to highlight them to galvanize people. But I'm aware it also sounds like I've fucked off and now I'm like sort of-

Konstantin Kisin 1:08:42 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:08:42 ... sticking my middle finger up at where I was. I spent 15 years in this country.

Konstantin Kisin 1:08:48 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:08:49 I employed 3,000 18 to 25-year-olds during that time. I personally coached 150 young entrepreneurs through the business that we had that ended up being an accelerator, and these guys went on to go to London to do finance, to move to Singapore, to do all of these sort of things.

Konstantin Kisin 1:09:09 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:09:09 Fucking brilliant. (sighs) But every British person understands this. Oh my God, like, it's, it's so fatiguing to try and sort of lift this up, and I think that's part of the beauty of the Brits that we do have this sort of stoic feet on the ground thing-

Konstantin Kisin 1:09:28 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:09:28 ... that's good. There's a humbleness to it. I am concerned that the weight of overcoming that, which does create a competitive advantage and drives you to do great things in many ways, in a different way than the Americans do-

Konstantin Kisin 1:09:39 Huh.

Chris Williamson 1:09:39 ... with blue sky vision and you can become whatever you want, and victimhood mentality, which is downstream from that immediately. The UK does not have that in the same way. There is a little bit of a heavier gravity here-

Konstantin Kisin 1:09:50 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:09:50 ... for overcoming certain things.

Konstantin Kisin 1:09:52 Definitely.

Chris Williamson 1:09:52 And I think that's fine until you start piling additional weights on people's backs.

Konstantin Kisin 1:09:57 Right.

Chris Williamson 1:09:57 And I think that my concern is we had a challenging but relatively overcome-able, stable sort of system, and then when you add in the stats around the economy, the... I loved your episode with Daniel Priestley. I thought that was brilliant. I think y- I think he's fantastic.

Konstantin Kisin 1:10:15 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:10:15 Um, these difficulties that people need to over- ju- those are raw, objective difficulties that people need to overcome, and then we're gonna have these problems and concerns that we have to do with multiculturalism.

Konstantin Kisin 1:10:27 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:10:27 And then there's gonna be some issues in the education system as well, and then we're gonna be talking about what it actually means to be a culture and whether you should have some sense of belonging or, uh, uh, uh, pride. Uh, then we've got all of the issues to do with the British flag-

Konstantin Kisin 1:10:39 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:10:39 ... the English flag.

Konstantin Kisin 1:10:39 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:10:40 And you go, "These are heavy weights to bear," when it was already a little bit of an uphill battle to kind of r- reach escape velocity, and, "I'm gonna believe in myself-

Konstantin Kisin 1:10:50 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:10:50 "... and I'm gonna do a thing. Like, this is really good." I, it's t- it's become increasingly tough to watch.

Konstantin Kisin 1:10:59 It has, um, but I'm always optimistic.

Chris Williamson 1:11:03 Mm-hmm.

Konstantin Kisin 1:11:03 Uh, weirdly enough. Maybe it's 'cause I'm not really British. Um, I don't know. Uh, I, my, my sense is, uh, I think... I can't remember who, wh- whose quote this is, but something that can't go on, won't.

Chris Williamson 1:11:15 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Konstantin Kisin 1:11:16 And we are getting to that point. I mean, a lot of people have written, uh, Liam Halligan, who I really respect and with his economic analysis, he's brilliant. He's, he keeps writing that we're about to have a financial meltdown, and in some ways, if you look at the last time we had one, I was thinking 1976, that's almost immediately followed by a period of great revival because... And the, the, the '70s, I didn't live through them, but as I understand them, they were kind of similar to where we are now in, in terms of many of the, the problems we face. So, um, in many ways, I've become a bit of an accelerationist. Like, I think the wor-

Chris Williamson 1:11:51 (laughs)

Konstantin Kisin 1:11:52 I think the worse things get, the better it is.

Chris Williamson 1:11:54 So E slash ACC is England accelerationist?

Konstantin Kisin 1:11:58 Yes.

Chris Williamson 1:11:58 Yeah.

Konstantin Kisin 1:11:58 You know, I, I just think the... We've got to a point where pe- it's y- it's actually something you, you, uh, explained to me very well, which is that six out of 10 relationship where it's quite bad but not bad enough to leave, and so you end up stuck.

Chris Williamson 1:12:13 Mm-hmm.

Konstantin Kisin 1:12:14 That's where Britain is. It's in that place where things are tolerable-

Chris Williamson 1:12:17 Mm-hmm.

Konstantin Kisin 1:12:18 ... and they're not bad enough for like a real revolt.

Chris Williamson 1:12:22 Comfortable complacency is a very difficult place to be in. Uh-

Konstantin Kisin 1:12:25 And the way you get out of it is you have-

Chris Williamson 1:12:27 Make it worse.

Konstantin Kisin 1:12:27 ... make it worse.

Chris Williamson 1:12:28 (laughs)

Konstantin Kisin 1:12:28 And, and that's where I think we're headed.

Chris Williamson 1:12:30 So someone asked me that at a live show. Uh, they said, "I'm stuck in region beta. Do you think it would be an idea for me to purposefully torpedo my own life to motivate myself to get out of it?" Like, ah, that's a bold strategy, uh, but if it's happening already... I mean, that is a counterintuitive but second order interesting way to look at, uh, this situation with positivity that, look, you can have a long period of misery if nothing happens, or you can have a short period of pain-

Konstantin Kisin 1:12:58 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:12:58 ... and that hopefully spurs some sort of

Chris Williamson 1:13:02 reaction. Uh, speaking of that, the, the flag thing, again-

Konstantin Kisin 1:13:05 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:13:05 ... another niche of content, um, British flag on roundabouts is horrific, but the pride flag on crosswalks and the Palestinian flag on campuses is somehow, like, enlightened.

Konstantin Kisin 1:13:18 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:13:19 Does this row about the English flag actually matter, or is it just window dressing for other shit?

Konstantin Kisin 1:13:24 I think it's symbolic of, of the broader thing that's going on. First of all, all the hypocrisies of the ideology that we've all been living under are being exposed.It, it is, so, it's amazing to me. I- I was just- w- I said this on Twitter, it's like, it's amazing that all the people with flags in their bio are now very upset-

Chris Williamson 1:13:40 (laughs)

Konstantin Kisin 1:13:41 ... about people flying the English or the British flag. It's incredible.

Chris Williamson 1:13:44 It's the wrong flag.

Konstantin Kisin 1:13:45 It's-

Chris Williamson 1:13:46 Flags are okay.

Konstantin Kisin 1:13:46 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:13:47 It's that flag.

Konstantin Kisin 1:13:47 And I, it's one of the things I actually love about just literally physically arriving in the US, you've got, every building's got a giant American flag on it, right? And it's the flag of the country.

Chris Williamson 1:13:56 Mm-hmm.

Konstantin Kisin 1:13:56 That's great. I think, I- I'm all down for that. Um, but it's a proxy for these tensions that are bubbling under the surface. And so to the elite class, the appearance of England flags everywhere is like, "Oh, the racists are now trying to blah, blah, blah."

Chris Williamson 1:14:13 Mm-hmm.

Konstantin Kisin 1:14:14 Um, when I think the reality is, it's a reassertion of Britain's national identity and an attempt to say, "Actually there is such a thing as British culture and there is such a thing as Britain."

Chris Williamson 1:14:24 So what's, what's the flag argument really about then? If, if the people-

Konstantin Kisin 1:14:28 The flag argument is really about the idea that you're not supposed to be proud of your country.

Chris Williamson 1:14:33 And why is that prevalent-

Konstantin Kisin 1:14:34 'Cause your, your country's a piece of shit. It, it did slavery, it did colonialism, it did this, it did that. And so you're supposed to apologize for the rest of eternity, and that's why you must have the Palestinian, Ukrainian... And as you know, I'm a big supporter of Ukraine, but nonetheless, that is not the flag of this country. You've gotta have the Palestinian, Ukrainian, trans, et cetera, flags everywhere, as long as it's not the flag of your country, because your country's a piece of shit. That's what this is really about. And the reason people are now using it in an act of defiance is saying, "Actually no, fuck you. My country's not a piece of shit. I love my country. I should love my country. You should love our country. And if you don't love our country, maybe you should go to another country."

Chris Williamson 1:15:10 That's a good microcosm for your idea of the, uh, bad situation galvanizes people to change, because there will be more English flags than there would have been had this not have been a situation that occurred. So it's a perfect example of people are actually going against this. It's an act of, uh, rebellion-

Konstantin Kisin 1:15:29 Yes.

Chris Williamson 1:15:29 ... to put this flag out there.

Konstantin Kisin 1:15:30 And the most important thing, and I said this right at the top, is, that movement carries on. It's very important that people continue to protest about things