Modern WisdomThe Forces Behind Britain's Downfall - Konstantin Kisin
EVERY SPOKEN WORD
150 min read · 30,222 words- 0:00 – 7:31
Will Immigration Be the Death of the UK?
- CWChris Williamson
US streamers are using UK downfall protests as an entire content niche-
- KKKonstantin Kisin
Hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... now. That can't be a good sign.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
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.
- CWChris Williamson
Okay. Explain that to me.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
So if you come into the country and say, "I'm an asylum seeker, I would like asylum," you're not an illegal immigrant.
- CWChris Williamson
You're like a Cuban or a Venezuelan-
- KKKonstantin Kisin
Yeah. Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... arriving at the American border or whatever?
- KKKonstantin Kisin
Uh, but e- I mean, in America it is illegal, right?
- CWChris Williamson
No.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
I think.
- CWChris Williamson
I thought that when you got there you just needed to... Go on.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
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.
- CWChris Williamson
Right, because downfall would suggest that this is the beginning of the end as opposed to the beginning of something better.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
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.
- CWChris Williamson
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-
- KKKonstantin Kisin
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... I don't know what's going on. Is that being overblown, boiling point?
- KKKonstantin Kisin
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.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
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.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
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.
- CWChris Williamson
The, the, uh, understood version of the word legal.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
Right.
- CWChris Williamson
Yes.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
If you apply for a visa, you get permission, you come through-
- CWChris Williamson
Formal process.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
... 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?
- 7:31 – 12:50
Immigration in UK vs the US
- KKKonstantin Kisin
- CWChris Williamson
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?
- KKKonstantin Kisin
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.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
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.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah. I think so. What-
- KKKonstantin Kisin
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.
- CWChris Williamson
That's correct. That's correct.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
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.
- CWChris Williamson
I would agree.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
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."
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
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.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs) I didn't know that. Okay.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
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."
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
"You, you brought more people in in 10 years than you had in a thousand years, and then you're surprised that that-"
- CWChris Williamson
Has been noticed.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
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-
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah, I've
- 12:50 – 16:37
We Can’t Let Immigration Become a Moral Issue
- CWChris Williamson
hea-
- KKKonstantin Kisin
... which none of us want.
- CWChris Williamson
I've heard you say the most important thing is to not allow immigration to become a moral issue.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Why?
- KKKonstantin Kisin
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-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
... 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.
- CWChris Williamson
W- w- how does that apply to this situation back here?
- KKKonstantin Kisin
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.
- CWChris Williamson
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.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
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) .
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
I don't blame them. But that does not mean that they get to circumvent the rules that we've instituted for our country.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
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.
- 16:37 – 25:20
Why are Immigrants Choosing the UK?
- KKKonstantin Kisin
- CWChris Williamson
Why the UK? What is it about the UK specifically that is so attractive?
- KKKonstantin Kisin
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.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm. Do you know if they're at the rates that the UK's got?
- KKKonstantin Kisin
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)
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs) Still repaying that debt. Reparations.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
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?
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
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-
- CWChris Williamson
Karmic debt that we need to repay.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
Yeah, that doesn't make much sense to me, but that, that was their approach.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah, yeah.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
So when the s-
- CWChris Williamson
Which, uh, yeah, yeah.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
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?
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
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.
- CWChris Williamson
What does that generosity look like?
- KKKonstantin Kisin
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...
- CWChris Williamson
Yes.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
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?
- CWChris Williamson
No.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
You haven't seen that?
- CWChris Williamson
No.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
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.
- CWChris Williamson
Wow.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
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-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
... so to speak, right? That's the pull factor.
- CWChris Williamson
What's happening with the phone contract thing, is that true?
- 25:20 – 32:34
Has Multiculturalism Failed?
- CWChris Williamson
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.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
And it was, this must have been at least five years ago, and it was like 89% of respondents thought that multiculturalism-
- KKKonstantin Kisin
Right.
- CWChris Williamson
... 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-
- KKKonstantin Kisin
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.
- CWChris Williamson
Correct.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
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."
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
Diversity is not a strength.
- CWChris Williamson
Why?
- KKKonstantin Kisin
Because I- I- (laughs) I remember this great scene from Game of Thrones. Have you, have you seen Game of Thrones?
- CWChris Williamson
Of course.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
Do you remember when, uh, Cersei and King Robert, they're discussing the potential Dothraki invasion.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
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.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
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-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
... 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-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
... 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.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
That would never work.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
So diversity is a strength in that you've got some, you know, some variance of opinion, you don't have only one opinion-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
... 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.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm. Are Britain's core values at risk of disappearing? Is that a, a real concern?
- KKKonstantin Kisin
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-
- 32:34 – 36:30
Konstantin’s View on Immigration as an Immigrant
- CWChris Williamson
How does being an immigrant shape your views on immigration?
- KKKonstantin Kisin
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.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
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.
- CWChris Williamson
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.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
It just continues to sort of move down the predictable stack.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
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-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
... 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-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
... who might want to come from all of those countries to come here and contribute.
- CWChris Williamson
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.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
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?"
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
So i- if you want good, a good immigration policy, you have to not welcome the worst people from around the world-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
... and you have to create the conditions that attract the best people from around the world. That's what you want.
- CWChris Williamson
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-
- KKKonstantin Kisin
Mm.
- CWChris Williamson
... 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."
- KKKonstantin Kisin
Hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
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-
- KKKonstantin Kisin
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... and still get castigated and des- destroyed for it.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
I also think, though, that is a very kind of what we call Westminster bubble type of thing. Like-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
... in the ... This argument does not wash even remotely in the majority of
- CWChris Williamson
You think people in Newcastle are too concerned about Rylan Clark?
- KKKonstantin Kisin
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.
- 36:30 – 41:52
Cultural Assimilation Needs to Improve
- KKKonstantin Kisin
- CWChris Williamson
Is the UK doing enough to culturally assimilate immigrants? Should it be doing more? Is there such a thing as that?
- KKKonstantin Kisin
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-
- CWChris Williamson
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.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
How can you as- how- are you saying cultures are different? Ooh.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah. Well, if diversity is our strength-
- KKKonstantin Kisin
Then-
- CWChris Williamson
... and there is no such thing as a British culture, then assimilation doesn't exist.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
Right.Right.
- CWChris Williamson
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.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
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?
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
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.
- CWChris Williamson
And without... I mean, even if you've had this challenge of asking your guests on your show, "What is British culture?"
- KKKonstantin Kisin
Mm.
- CWChris Williamson
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.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
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-
- CWChris Williamson
Queuing.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
... 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."
- CWChris Williamson
Okay.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
"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.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
Like i- uh, if you li- you can leave valuables on a table. They're not going to go anywhere.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
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-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
... uh, that are an important part of it. Uh, speaking English is going to be a very important part of it.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah, that would b-... uh, is that not the f- the most basic approach to this?
- KKKonstantin Kisin
Well, you can't connect with other people unless you speak the same language, basically.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- 41:52 – 50:16
Are the Left Over-Organising Protests?
- CWChris Williamson
- KKKonstantin Kisin
Mm.
- CWChris Williamson
Um, well, you went to a migrant protest-
- KKKonstantin Kisin
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... 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?
- KKKonstantin Kisin
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.
- CWChris Williamson
Protesters against protestors against illegal immigration.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
That's right.
- CWChris Williamson
Okay.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
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-
- CWChris Williamson
Busy.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
They're busy doing other things. So to get British people out, normal British people out onto the streets-
- CWChris Williamson
There's a selection effect going on here.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
There is but I'm also, what I'm also saying is the point we're at now is things have got so bad-
- CWChris Williamson
It's motivating.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
... that you are getting normal people going out to a protest and that is-
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Wow.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
That's telling you quite a lot.
- CWChris Williamson
Left the tea behind.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
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-
- CWChris Williamson
Handy.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Peaceful but handy.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
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.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
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-
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- KKKonstantin Kisin
... 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."
- CWChris Williamson
Oh, he knew who you were. (laughs)
- KKKonstantin Kisin
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-
- 50:16 – 1:00:16
What are the Left Trying to Achieve?
- CWChris Williamson
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.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
Well, you, you're, you're speaking like an evil right-winger. What we actually need to do, Chris, is tax the rich.
- CWChris Williamson
Uh-huh. But even if you were to do that, it would still be diluted down more, regardless of how much-
- KKKonstantin Kisin
No, no, no.
- CWChris Williamson
... rich taxing.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
It's all about tax evasion by the super rich.
- CWChris Williamson
Okay. I guess-
- KKKonstantin Kisin
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Sorry.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
And y- and you're falling into the right-wing rhetoric of the right-wing media-
- CWChris Williamson
Okay.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
... who are telling you-
- CWChris Williamson
I do watch a lot of Trigonometry, so-
- KKKonstantin Kisin
Who are bla- ... Yeah, exactly.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- KKKonstantin Kisin
Who are blaming the poor, innocent asylum seekers when it's actually the super rich who are screwing the country over.
- CWChris Williamson
Understood. Okay, let me ... Thank you. Uh-
- KKKonstantin Kisin
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
Le- let me give you another one. Um-
- KKKonstantin Kisin
I've been watching a lot of Gary's Economics, as you can tell.
- CWChris Williamson
(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.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
Mm.
- CWChris Williamson
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-
- KKKonstantin Kisin
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?
- CWChris Williamson
Okay.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
So what we need to deal with is that problem. It's men.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
'Cause there's no, there's no-
- CWChris Williamson
Immigrant men?
- KKKonstantin Kisin
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.
- 1:00:16 – 1:07:41
Negativity is Breaking the UK
- CWChris Williamson
What about this sort of culture around productivity? I think that's interesting that-
- KKKonstantin Kisin
Mm.
- CWChris Williamson
... 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.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
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.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
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-
- KKKonstantin Kisin
Mm.
- CWChris Williamson
And now it feels negative in the micro and negative in the macro as well.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
Does that make sense?
- KKKonstantin Kisin
It makes perfect sense.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah. Do, is that something that you've sensed as well as a trajectory?
- KKKonstantin Kisin
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.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
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.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
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-
- CWChris Williamson
Okay.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
... 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-
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- KKKonstantin Kisin
... by a factor of a hundred. But that false positivity and false optimism-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
... is often how you get things done.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
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-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
... 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.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
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.
- 1:07:41 – 1:13:02
Why is the UK So Depressed?
- CWChris Williamson
(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-
- KKKonstantin Kisin
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... 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-
- KKKonstantin Kisin
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... sticking my middle finger up at where I was. I spent 15 years in this country.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
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.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
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-
- KKKonstantin Kisin
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... 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-
- KKKonstantin Kisin
Huh.
- CWChris Williamson
... 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-
- KKKonstantin Kisin
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... for overcoming certain things.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
Definitely.
- CWChris Williamson
And I think that's fine until you start piling additional weights on people's backs.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
Right.
- CWChris Williamson
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.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
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.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
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-
- KKKonstantin Kisin
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... the English flag.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
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-
- KKKonstantin Kisin
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
"... and I'm gonna do a thing. Like, this is really good." I, it's t- it's become increasingly tough to watch.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
It has, um, but I'm always optimistic.
- 1:13:02 – 1:18:06
Have Racists Hijacked the English Flag?
- CWChris Williamson
reaction. Uh, speaking of that, the, the flag thing, again-
- KKKonstantin Kisin
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... 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.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
Does this row about the English flag actually matter, or is it just window dressing for other shit?
- KKKonstantin Kisin
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-
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- KKKonstantin Kisin
... about people flying the English or the British flag. It's incredible.
- CWChris Williamson
It's the wrong flag.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
It's-
- CWChris Williamson
Flags are okay.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
It's that flag.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
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.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
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."
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
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."
- CWChris Williamson
So what's, what's the flag argument really about then? If, if the people-
- KKKonstantin Kisin
The flag argument is really about the idea that you're not supposed to be proud of your country.
- CWChris Williamson
And why is that prevalent-
- KKKonstantin Kisin
'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."
- CWChris Williamson
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-
- KKKonstantin Kisin
Yes.
- CWChris Williamson
... to put this flag out there.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
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 that they're not happy about, they continue to make their voices known, they continue to put pressure on their MPs, they continue to just discuss this. But it's got to be done in a peaceful way, because the moment this becomes in any way violent, it'll just get dismissed, and then all of this stuff is gonna get worse. So it's gotta be the most positive, constructive, non-violent movement. And as long as that kind o-... And, I mean, of all people, we had Tommy Robinson on, on our show a while back. This was his point. It's not me saying, Tommy Robinson is saying this has got to be non-violent.
Episode duration: 2:17:27
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