The West Is Under Attack By Woke Culture - Konstantin Kisin

1. 0:00 – 0:21

   Intro

   1. KKKonstantin Kisin0:00

      Political correctness is saying to people, "Yes, what you're saying may be factually correct, but it is inconvenient to the party line. It is politically incorrect." And that is one of the reasons that I've been so troubled by many of the developments we've seen in the Western world in recent times. (wind blows)

   2. CWChris Williamson0:17

      Konstantin Kisin, welcome to the show.

   3. KKKonstantin Kisin0:19

      It's good to be back, man.

2. 0:21 – 6:34

   Jordan Peterson & Dave Rubin Banned From Twitter

   1. CWChris Williamson0:21

      Jordan Peterson and Dave Rubin are banned from Twitter. What's going on?

   2. KKKonstantin Kisin0:25

      Well, (laughs) nothing new there, really. (laughs) It's just, uh, more of the same, I think. Uh, no, it, I was, uh, talking to, with my co-host for Triggernometry, Francis, about this in the studio today, and I was saying, can you imagine that- that they've- we've got to a point where to- to state a historical fact about someone's biography is now a crime, essentially, es- at least in Twitter's eyes. You're gonna get banned from a social media platform for- for stating historical fact about a- an individual, which is what both, uh, Jordan and Dave have done here. Uh, and it- I think it speaks to the situation that we're in, which is, uh, the ideology behind all of this has just become so perverse and has been allowed to run amok so far that we live in this clown world, uh, and unless E- Elon Musk is able to take over and change some of this, I don't s- I don't really see how- how we're gonna get out of it.

   3. CWChris Williamson1:15

      Do you think Twitter's that important as a... Is it still the town square for public discourse?

   4. KKKonstantin Kisin1:21

      I do think that, and of course, you could say, well, only whatever percent of the public, even in- in Western countries are on Twitter, and it's true. But then that is where the discourse happens, 'cause most people aren't on Twitter 'cause they don't wanna be part of the discourse. They actually have, you know, jobs and kids and- and things they actually wanna achieve in their life instead of getting angry with each other. So, I do think it's the public square and I do think it's really important, and I also think it's essential that correct principles are modeled in the space, because the sort of high culture discourse then leaks out into the rest of society, and you see it, you know, in my former career of comedy, people now f- happily getting up in the middle of a gig and shouting stuff at comedians. Not in the old way where it used to be a sort of heckling and battling, and that used to be fun. I really used to enjoy that. But it's like, no, they'll go to complain to the people who run the club afterwards and demand that this comedian's never allowed to perform. So it- I think the sort of behavior that's modeled in this type of public square is actually really important, and of course, the rules they impose then get filtered down to other areas as well. And other people feel, well, you know, if Twitter's gonna shut these people down, well, we're allowed to shut them down in real life, where they, you know, not invite them to speak or ban them from speaking and so on. So I do think it's really, really important actually, yeah.

   5. CWChris Williamson2:34

      So the culture of censorship on Twitter has more downstream impacts perhaps. One of the interesting things now is that tweets become news, right?

   6. KKKonstantin Kisin2:42

      Mm-hmm.

   7. CWChris Williamson2:42

      Previously, people were tweeting about things that happened in the news, but now the news can be derived from what people tweeted. So there's this very sort of cyclical game. So just for the people that haven't seen it, the actual tweet that Dave got, uh, suspended for, there's a difference between a suspension and a ban. Uh, the ban is if you would, I think, been com- completely removed from Twitter. A suspension, you have to do this kind of struggle session where you-

   8. KKKonstantin Kisin3:06

      Mm-hmm.

   9. CWChris Williamson3:06

      ... admit that the tweet was wrong and delete the tweet and acknowledge the fact that the tweet broke terms of service. But Dave's tweet was, um, "The insanity continues at Twitter. Jordan Peterson has been suspended for this tweet about Ellen Page. He just told me he will never delete the tweet. Paging at Elon Musk." And the warning from Twitter says, "You may not promote violence against threatened or harassed-"

   10. KKKonstantin Kisin3:30

       (laughs)

   11. CWChris Williamson3:30

       "...other people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, or serious disease." And that was, uh, enough to get Dave a strike.

   12. KKKonstantin Kisin3:43

       Yeah, and there's a couple of points I pick up there. The first one is, you talk about the struggle session, and it's a really good reference 'cause you're talking about, of course, Soviet Union and- and, uh, China. Uh, and, uh, this is exactly, you know, one of the things I talk about in the book, I know we'll get onto it later, is how Soviet some of- some of the things that we are now doing are, because this is exactly what used to happen in the Soviet Union. If you wanted to- if you made some kind of faux pas and you were not politically correct enough, again, as you know, I talk about the origins of political correctness in the book, then what you would have to do is you'd have to publicly come out and say, "I, Comrade Kisin operated," you know, and you'd have to give this whole speech about how you- you'd messed up. And this is what they make you do. They make you sort of admit that you'd done something wrong instead of just f- you know, even just punishing you for breaking the rules, even if, as in this case, I- (laughs) I don't think there's any credible evidence that Dave Rubin was inciting violence or hatred towards somebody by using a name that person used to use until about three seconds ago.

   13. CWChris Williamson4:43

       So deadnaming is, it seems like, the thing that Dave's being popped for there?

   14. KKKonstantin Kisin4:49

       Yeah, well clearly, and I- I- I- it's funny to me as well, because I don't know if you saw this, obviously, you're in the US now, but in the UK, we have these sort of supposed conservative parliamentarians, uh, they've banned protesting too loud in public, and one of the ministers tweeted about it saying, "Finally, we've put an end to the violent speech of blah, blah, blah." And this was somebody who was just using a megaphone in public, right? So even the conservatives are buying into all this bullshit, because once you accept that words are violence, this is the inevitable consequence. I- i- if you buy into this completely nonsensical dogma that words are actual violence, then of course, you know, we- we do have laws and rules that are aimed to prevent and regulate, uh, violence, and so you're gonna end up regulating people's speech.

   15. CWChris Williamson5:35

       What was the origin of political correctness?

   16. KKKonstantin Kisin5:39

       The origin of political correctness we've basically already covered, which is it was created in the Soviet Union and then later used in Maoist China, uh, and the purpose of it never had anything to do with politeness, with being respectful, with being kind, with not offending people. It had one purpose and one purpose only, Chris, which was to ensure that the political party line of the Communist Party was enforced in terms of how people spoke and behaved. Political correctness is saying to people, "Yes, what you're saying may be factually correct."... but it is inconvenient to the party line. It is politically incorrect. And that is one of the reasons that I've been so troubled by many of the developments we've seen in the Western world in recent times, because they're not coming from nowhere. We've tried these things before, and they come from a very specific place and have a very specific meaning, and they have very specific consequences.

3. 6:34 – 12:18

   How Konstantin’s New Book Compares with Douglas Murray’s

   1. KKKonstantin Kisin6:34

   2. CWChris Williamson6:34

      A lot of similar themes between your new book and Douglas Murray's most recent one. What do you think you two are both converging on there?

   3. KKKonstantin Kisin6:44

      Uh, I don't know. I think Douglas is a very impressive man. I'm a huge admirer of his and always have been, and honored like you to have had him on our show many times. Uh, I think that he's one of the few people in, in the Western intellectual world who, uh, who is born here and grew up here, who nonetheless has access to the rest of the world. And so he's able to look at what's happening in the Western context, whereas many people in the West, uh, just ex- think that the way... The world has always been the way it is currently in, in, in 21st century America and Britain and other Anglosphere countries. Uh, Douglas, for, for reasons I'm sure due to his extent, you know, the fact that he's well-read and traveled and so on, he's able to appreciate how unique what we have is and how unusual it is. And so when he sees it being destroyed, denigrated, and attacked, as I do, uh, I think that's when he starts to realize th- this is a problem about which he needs to speak. And, and I feel probably it's easier for me, you know, I haven't had to read nearly as many books or think about it nearly as carefully he, as he has because of where I come from, you know, growing up in the, in the late Soviet Union, hearing stories of my family and what they went through, you know, my grandmother being born in a gulag, another w- you know, her, uh, or down my mother's side, my grandmother living through the Holodomor in Ukraine, watching her brother starve to death because they were politically, you know, the wrong type of people, being exiled to Siberia. Like, all of the stuff, you know, it, I just see a, a context and we, we have a saying in Russian, "Everything is understood in context." I think people in the West, and this is why I really wanted to write the book, don't appreciate just how brilliant the world is. And I talk in the book, by the way, about things that I think are wrong in, in 21st century Anglosphere countries. You know, the book is called An Immigrant's Love Letter to the West, but more accurately it should be, uh, An Immigrant's Love Letter to the Anglosphere, not quite as catchy. Uh, but, uh, you know, that's what I think is going on. This, this ideology that we're seeing has particularly infected Anglosphere countries, English-speaking countries. Um, and I, I think it's because, uh, these ideas come from the English-speaking world and they've really landed very hard, particularly I think with younger people. Um, and that, that I'm afraid, I think is, it's just the lack of context which Douglas has and I hope I have as well that I'm able to share with people.

   4. CWChris Williamson9:07

      Do you think that there's maybe a part of the reason why it's landed a little bit more hard in the US than in the UK? Because in my experience having spent a good bit of time in the US, there's a lot of people here that have never been outside of the country.

   5. KKKonstantin Kisin9:17

      Mm-hmm.

   6. CWChris Williamson9:17

      Now in the UK, that would be pretty rare. Now maybe you've only ever been to Majorca or Cyprus or Benidorm or something, but at least you've seen people that drive on the other side of the road or use different currency than you or different metrics of measurement than you or anything. It's a lot less myopic when it comes to a worldview.

   7. KKKonstantin Kisin9:34

      Mm-hmm.

   8. CWChris Williamson9:35

      And anybody that's spent a modicum of time traveling around the world simply has to see that there are wild variations in the quality of life that you could live.

   9. KKKonstantin Kisin9:46

      Mm-hmm. It's an interesting point. I'm wary of, of the point you're making, even though I do agree with it, because I... We, we do a lot of America bashing here in Britain, and I actually, I'm not a fan of it because as someone who's been to America who really admires many things about, uh, America, I, I, I sort of understand why many people don't travel outside, because it's like why would you? You've got everything you need. Like, do you like surfing? Great, you've got California. Do you like skiing, snowboarding? You've got that somewhere else. Do... You know, uh, you've got incredible range of food, you've got incredible diversity of, you know, political views, culture, in terms of the different states and attitudes to freedom and attitudes to safety and whatever. You can really pick what you want. So, I don't blame people for not traveling as much outside America as they might do outside of the tiny UK where the opportunities are, are lesser.

   10. CWChris Williamson10:37

       Where they're significantly worse and so on and so forth.

   11. KKKonstantin Kisin10:39

       Right.

   12. CWChris Williamson10:39

       Well, it's, it is, it's basically 50 countries all attached together-

   13. KKKonstantin Kisin10:43

       Yeah.

   14. CWChris Williamson10:43

       ... where you have freedom of trade, it's the same currency, the same language, you can use your driver's license. I, I totally get it.

   15. KKKonstantin Kisin10:49

       Right.

   16. CWChris Williamson10:49

       Um, that's... I don't-

   17. KKKonstantin Kisin10:50

       Yeah.

   18. CWChris Williamson10:50

       ... have a... It's not a criticism.

   19. KKKonstantin Kisin10:51

       And also think about COVID. No, no, I know, I w- I'm gonna get to answering your, your question for sure. I just wanted to put that caveat in 'cause I think we bash America so much. I, I actually admire many things about America, uh, and, uh, I understand why people would just enjoy what it is instead of traveling somewhere else. Although I do think obviously traveling, uh, around the world gives you a perspective that you otherwise aren't gonna get. Uh, but even during COVID, you know, Frances and I, we were so concerned about some of the restrictions that were being applied here in the UK. But it's not like America where if you're Joe Rogan and you're in California and you don't like what the government is doing, you just move to Texas. Like what are we gonna do, move to Belgium? Do you know what I mean? Like, it's not gonna happen. So, I, I, I like that that freedom is there and, and you can move around and, and I think that's one of the reasons people travel less. But I do very strongly agree with you, I think it's very easy to take for granted what you have if you've never experienced an alternative. And I see that around the Western world quite a lot which is why I think it's one of the reasons that younger people are more, more prone to be affected by it, uh, because they've had less experience of being in other places and speaking to different people and, uh, you know, all of these, all of these things that we talk about whether it's racism or sexism or, or whatever. You know, when you put it into the context of the global experience of women or people who are from minority backgrounds, it gives you a different perspective on it.

   20. CWChris Williamson12:13

       Take a trip to Saudi Arabia or-

   21. KKKonstantin Kisin12:15

       Quite.

   22. CWChris Williamson12:15

       ... somewhere in the Middle East and have a little bit of a look there. Okay,

4. 12:18 – 16:39

   Moving to the UK from the Soviet Union

   1. CWChris Williamson12:18

      so-

   2. KKKonstantin Kisin12:18

      Yeah.

   3. CWChris Williamson12:18

      Talk to me, speaking of travel, what were the first decades of your life like? How did you arrive in the UK?

   4. KKKonstantin Kisin12:24

      Well, uh, my father was a, a mixture of things in, in... Uh, so in the Soviet Russia, he was a biochemical engineer, not particularly wealthy. When I was born, my dad was barely 20 and my mum had barely, was, she'd been 18 for four days. So born into two students, very poor, um, and then the Soviet Union collapsed. And that was a moment where there were a lot of opportunities for people.

   5. CWChris Williamson12:47

      How old were you when that happened?

   6. KKKonstantin Kisin12:49

      Uh, so I would have been nine.

   7. CWChris Williamson12:51

      Okay, so you must have memory of, a little memory before and after as well?

   8. KKKonstantin Kisin12:54

      Oh, sure, sure. I remember going to school in the Soviet Union, I remember. It's actually the opening chapter of my book, I talk about the, the talk that my parents gave me before I went to school about how we mustn't share in school the stuff that we talked about at home, because it was still, even in late Soviet Union, you know, it was still dangerous. So that was the environment that I grew up in, and then it all collapses overnight. You know, and people's careers broken, lives upended, it was suicide rates spiked because it was so unstable and difficult. You know, inflation many of the years, uh, during the '90s in Russia was like 84% to hu- you know, hundreds of percent at one, at one point or some months. Uh, you know, war, a lot of terrorism going on. So it was deeply unstable time, but it also was a time of a lot of opportunity. And my dad was a person who managed to capitalize on some of those opportunities, and, uh, he, you know, his- him and his friends, they started a small business, and then it grew, became a bigger business, and then became a bigger business. Suddenly they, they owned Russia's biggest bank (laughs) . That's how, that's how things worked in the- in the early '90s in Russia. Uh, so he made a lot of money very quickly, uh, and then he became a minister in Boris Yeltsin's government. Um, and when that happened, he was there for a couple of years before, uh, there was various political shenanigans going on in Russia at the time, and he was forced to flee Russia under a false identity, uh, and essentially went from being very successful and having lots of money to moving to another country under false identity, basically not ever really properly working for 20 years after that, uh, because he couldn't, you know, rely on his past career. Um, and so during that small period of time in my family's history when they actually had some money, they wanted to send me to a better place in- in the West, and Britain was that place. So they sent me to boarding school, uh, in Bristol. Uh, I think I- I would have been about 13 at the time. And then I grew up, uh-

   9. CWChris Williamson14:52

      So parent- Sorry, parents are still in...

   10. KKKonstantin Kisin14:55

       Parents are in Russia, and then they moved to Armenia, uh, because of these false allegations against my dad, while I am in the UK, uh, you know, living the h- the- the- the great life of a, of a boarding school, uh, boy.

   11. CWChris Williamson15:07

       Talk to me about arriving in the UK with Comrade Kissin's accent and his dress sense and his cultural affectations.

   12. KKKonstantin Kisin15:17

       Yeah, it was pretty brutal. I talk about it in one of the chapters of the book as well. It's like, it was a difficult adjustment, but it was a really important one because I think it's only when you've gone through that sort of adjustment that you are able to be flexible and understand different cultures. And I'm really grateful to be not only bilingual, uh, but also bicultural. I can dip in and out, uh, of the different cultures, and I've just spent a couple of weeks in Armenia. I was there for my sister's wedding. And as I was leaving, I was saying to my family, like, "You have no idea how different a world I'm going back to." It's like, I said, "If I was going to the moon, it would probably be less of a contrast," 'cause that's how different the cultures are. And so coming as a boy especially, it was, yeah, it was difficult. It was really, really difficult. Uh, uh, not speaking the language particularly. But you know, it's funny, one of the things I always remember is like, the kids used to make fun of my accent, and I would make fun of the other stuff, and they w- that they were doing or they looked like and whatever, and it was, you know, it was banter. But, uh, when- when the kids used to make fun of my accent, 'cause I used to speak like this, you know. Um, I would always say, "Well, stop doing that." And they would say, "It's a free country." And I actually really took that to heart. I kind of thought, well, actually, I mean, look, it's not necessarily pleasant that people have the right to say things that I don't like, but it is a free country, and over time I've really grown to like and appreciate that. Uh, and it's again one of the reasons I feel very strongly about some of the stuff that we talk about.

5. 16:39 – 20:59

   Konstantin’s Views on Immigration

   1. KKKonstantin Kisin16:39

   2. CWChris Williamson16:40

      Given the fact that you're an immigrant yourself, what are your views on immigration?

   3. KKKonstantin Kisin16:45

      Uh, again, a chapter in the book, I talk about it extensively. And my view on immigration is essentially that I think, uh, a- a modest amount of immigration, uh, that is democratically chosen by the people of the country, uh, I think is a good thing. I think it's a very healthy thing. I think we need, uh, people to come, uh, to have a bit of vibrancy and drive. Immigrants are from the- the very cream of the society from which they've come. If they're chosen correctly, if they're- if they're filtered correctly, if they are-

   4. CWChris Williamson17:12

      What does that mean?

   5. KKKonstantin Kisin17:14

      Well, e- essentially, you know, Australia has a system that I think more or less, uh, has got it right, which is, if you have the right skills, if you have the- the certain talent, if you prove yourself to be a law- a law-abiding citizen, if you come in legally, if you don't break any rules, uh, if you- if you pursue an education or a career, if- if the- if the people of the country feel that you're gonna make a positive contribution to the country and you're gonna be a net benefit to the country, then you're welcome. And on the other hand, if you attempt to enter illegally, you simply have no chance. And in my opinion, that is how it should be. Uh, there- there- there are small... Now, that's not to say that I think, uh, you know, people who are fleeing war and conflict should just be forced to go back to where they've come from, and- and it's one of the frustrations I have with the more right side of politics. You know, as you know, I'm not party political and I'm not left or right. I have concerns about the way both parties and both sides of the discussions approach things. You know, for example, like, I am very reluctantly but in favor of allowing abortion until viability, right? That is my view. Like, very reluctant, I do think you're killing a- a being, but just the way that society is, I don't- I don't think you're gonna get a better solution than that. Now, people will, of course, disagree with that. So I'm- I'm okay with that...What I'm not okay with is like, "Abortion is, like, great and we need to celebrate it." I, do you know what I mean? And likewise, with the immigration issue, with the, with the right side of, of saying things, my concern is, like, I do think people shouldn't be encouraged or allowed to come in illegally. But also, I don't think we should celebrate sending people who are fleeing war and conflict back to the terrible countries that they've come from. We, we, we, I think that, that sometimes we get into this habit of, like, really enjoying the suffering of people we dislike or disagree with or we who we think are doing something wrong. And I, and I am not on board with that at all. But I do think people shouldn't be able to come illegally. I'm actually in favor, certainly with things like refugee crisis, of western richer countries helping to fund refugee centers that are better in areas around the countries from which people are fleeing and doing so more effectively. 'Cause I've seen with, with the situation in Ukraine, I have family, uh, who are, have been in that position. And I know that they, that none of them is desperate to, like, go to America. What they actually quite like to do is go to a nearby country, get a bit of help, and then once the war's over, come back and rebuild their country and their homes. So, that's kind of where I'm coming from. I'm really in favor of pragmatic solutions to these things, uh, instead of all the sloganeering and the send them back or whatever people come up with. How- however, having said that, I also feel that democracy is really important. And, uh, if the people of Britain, for example, were to vote to have no immigration ever again until somebody else votes to, to reverse that, well, the people of this country are entitled to do that. Likewise, if the people of this country vote to have no borders, I mean, I think that's a moronic idea, but again, they're entitled to do that. And I think one of the problems we've had, both in the United States and in the UK, is we're not seeing the democratic decisions of the public filtering through into public policy. I don't think the democratic wishes of the US public are to have a porous open border on the south, on the southern, uh, side of the United States. I don't think the British people voted to have thousands of people to come into Britain on boats illegally, uh, completely unchecked and unfiltered a- and we have no idea who they are and where they're coming from. So, my concern is dual. I think, yes, you have to have a, a modest level of immigration. You can't go too far too quickly, and at the same time, I also think the lack of respect for the wishes of the public has been really the thing that's troubled me the most in recent years.

6. 20:59 – 29:36

   How the Media Encourages Extreme Views

   1. KKKonstantin Kisin20:59

   2. CWChris Williamson20:59

      The problem that you have at the moment is that online, it's the people with the most outlandish views that are the ones that get the most airtime.

   3. KKKonstantin Kisin21:05

      Yeah.

   4. CWChris Williamson21:05

      And you don't need to be a, a commentator on YouTube like me or you doing stuff. You can just be some bloke with a Twitter account, and yesterday you were nobody, and tomorrow your tweet's gone hyper viral because somebody's somebody picked it up and retweeted it and now it's on the Post Millennial and now everybody wants to know your opinion on something or you're the center of a news headline.

   5. KKKonstantin Kisin21:23

      Mm-hmm.

   6. CWChris Williamson21:23

      And one of the problems is that that creates, because of the perverse incentives of the way that news works, it creates a disproportionate view of how news is actually presented. You very rarely get news stories that rise to the front with someone saying, "Well, I'm not actually that keen about this particular policy, but I think it's sort of the best of a bad bunch. It's really sort of all we can hope for." Who's going for that? No, you want the person that's the, the flag-waving lunatic for whichever side or the other, and what this means is that most of the culture war consists of people sneering at the other side's extremists.

   7. KKKonstantin Kisin21:59

      Mm-hmm.

   8. CWChris Williamson21:59

      That's it. And this is something I learned from one of the Weinsteins ages ago, like three, four years ago, right? And they said, "It should be the job of the moderates of the same side of the people that are being the idiots to rein them in."

   9. KKKonstantin Kisin22:14

      Mm-hmm.

   10. CWChris Williamson22:14

       Because you should not want your own side to be represented by somebody that has such an extreme viewpoint. It doesn't damage the other side. To the other side, it's ammunition. To your side, it's an embarrassment. That's why you're supposed to step in and rein people back.

   11. KKKonstantin Kisin22:27

       I agree with you completely, and that's why as someone who... You know, I, I don't think I was ever, like, massively, like, all the way out on the woke left, but I certainly, you know, in my 20s and early 30s would have considered myself on the left. And it, only the experience of doing trigonometry has really cemented my position as a moderate who's in the center. But I, I'm definitely not someone who's coming from the right. I'm coming from the left. And the reason that I am so critical of wokeness in particular, or progressivism I think is a better term for it, is because I think, uh, it does a disservice to the good things about the left, number one. And I also, uh, I am wary that, as you say, extremists exist on both sides. And, and I think, uh, the extremes of progressivism are creating a backlash, uh, of, of a kind that we don't wanna see. The backlash I would like to see against the, the extremes of progressivism is moving the left closer to the center. But I'm afraid what will probably happen is portions of the right will move further to the right a- and attempt to roll back a lot of what I actually think are quite legitimate and, and useful achievements of the left. So, uh, one of my concerns is whether the pendulum is swinging back or whether it's slowing. I, I feel it's more slowing than swinging back, is that when it swings back, it usually swings back too far and too fast. And it, it's quite possible that three or four years from now, maybe even, uh, shorter, I'll be one of the most, uh, fervent critics of whatever the, the equivalent of wokeness is gonna be on the right as it forms. Do you know what I mean?

   12. CWChris Williamson24:03

       Are you more concerned about the far right than the far left then, long term?

   13. KKKonstantin Kisin24:07

       Uh, I think that, um, I, I have, uh, a, a greater fear of the far right, uh, in terms of if they were equivalent in terms of their numbers. The far right, I think, is you're, you're likely to see that within that, there are people who are much more comfortable with violence, who are much more, uh, uh, skilled with weapons, who are much more into that sort of way of behaving. Whereas the far left generally are useless idiots. So, the, the, like, they're, I'm not so bothered about them. Do you know what I mean? Uh, but of course, in, in the situation that we find ourselves in, the far right has rightly been put in the evil don't-open box.... uh, the far left, on the other hand, is encouraged and supported by every major institution and corporation in the world. So, that's the disparity. So as things stand, I'm more concerned about the far left. Uh, but if they were equivalent in terms of numbers, prominence, support from the general public, then of course I'm more concerned about the far right, yeah.

   14. CWChris Williamson25:02

       What are your thoughts on both sides-ism? Because both sides-ism is accused of being a grift on the internet. People believe that you're supposed-

   15. KKKonstantin Kisin25:10

       Mate, it's the worst fucking grift in the world. 'Cause you get hated by both sides. It's like the, if I, I keep saying this to people, like, for me, the best thing to do would just to be, come out and, and say, "I'm a conservative," right? 'Cause as someone who's spent a lot of time criticizing the excesses of progressivism, I have a lot of people who would really love for me to be a conservative, right? And that would be the grift, for me to be like, "Oh, yeah, I'm a conservative, you know, dollar, dollar, dollar, dollar. Give me, give me all that, uh, conservative money." Uh, to me, that would be the grift. Saying what I actually think is often quite painful and uncomfortable, and I get attacked by both sides for-

   16. CWChris Williamson25:47

       What, what makes you-

   17. KKKonstantin Kisin25:48

       ... my opinions.

   18. CWChris Williamson25:49

       What makes you most not a conservative? What are the things that you get pushback from the right about the most?

   19. KKKonstantin Kisin25:56

       Well, I think, I mean, I imagine that any religious conservatives, uh, who've been listening so far would not be, uh, enamored with my stance on abortion, for example. Uh, but that's a very American issue. Uh, you know, it, I guess, you know, we did, uh, we did an interview with David Pakman, the progressive commentator, and he's tried to sorta screw us over, and we did-

   20. CWChris Williamson26:15

       I texted you about that afterwards.

   21. KKKonstantin Kisin26:17

       Yeah, yeah.

   22. CWChris Williamson26:17

       It felt oddly ... So, I, I never want to see my mates get, get sort of rumbled over. However, there was something about it that felt oddly like Cassandra complex, 'cause I texted you once you'd done it, and I'd had, I'd watched maybe half of it. And I me- messaged you and I was like, "Oh, dude, like congratulations, I think you got a better conversation out of David than I did." Because mine just felt a bit kind of janky and discordant and I wasn't sure what was going on. And you were like, "Oh, right, yeah, whatever." And then (laughs) a couple of days later, he decided to release two or three different videos about you guys. "I was on the right-wing channel Triggernometry," and it's him-

   23. KKKonstantin Kisin26:52

       Yeah.

   24. CWChris Williamson26:52

       ... sort of kind of sneering a little bit about-

   25. KKKonstantin Kisin26:55

       Well, it's, it's him basically taking what was, uh, an attempt at a good faith conversation from us and, like, conceding points just to move on with the conversation and stuff like that, and presenting that as him, like, destroying us with facts and logic or whatever it was. When, look, you know me, I go on TV and debate stuff all the time. Like, if I wanted to destroy them, that's what I would have done. But when I'm the interviewer, I, like, very much like yourself, I'm more interested in hearing what the guest has to say, and letting them say it even if I don't agree with it, right? And then the audience can decide for themselves. But my point is, we put out a video in which we kind of said, like, "There's a lot of people on YouTube who think, who think and talk about how the other side is stupid and evil. And at Triggernometry, we're not like that. We think both sides are stupid and evil," right? And both have valid points too. And, and that is my approach. I think there's a lot of stuff that conservatives, uh, get wrong. I think there's a lot of stuff that they get right. Now, you know, b- uh, Bret, uh, Bret Weinstein and I had a conversation about this, uh, a few weeks ago on here. And one of the points I made to him is, "I don't understand people who have a fixed political ideology," because it's like me saying to you, "Chris, well, here I am, I'm driving a car. Do I speed up or do I slow down?" Well, it's very dependent on the context, isn't it? Right? There's times when you need to speed up, there's times when you need to slow down. Conservatism is about slowing down or stopping change, progressivism is about having or accelerating change. So, I think it really depends on where you are geographically, where you are in terms of time, where the country is in terms of what is happening. Uh, so, you know, the whole human history, we go through these ebbs and flows of periods of rapid change followed by stability. And when we're stable, maybe a little bit more change is good. When we're, uh, changing too quickly, like I feel that we are now, then, uh, you, you know, you've gotta p- pump the brakes a little bit. So, at the moment, I am aligned with conservatives mainly on, on, on the sort of runaway craziness of, of the, the sort of, uh, ideology. Uh, but it doesn't mean that I am in favor of, you know, religious, uh, a revival of the religious right, for example, the way it was in the '80s and '90s when my great heroes, people like Bill Hicks and George Carlin were taking the piss out of it, right? That's, that's the sort of people that I used to admire as a kid. And that's how I think of myself now. Maybe not as, as great as them in terms of comedy or whatever, but in terms of what I am opposing. I'm opposing the religious dogma of the 21st century.

   26. CWChris Williamson29:27

       It's interesting to think about that, man. It's interesting to think about how, um, the dynamics are the same, but the, the flavor of the conversation-

   27. KKKonstantin Kisin29:34

       Mm.

   28. CWChris Williamson29:34

       ... is kind of the same.

7. 29:36 – 33:52

   Are We Past Woke?

   1. CWChris Williamson29:36

      Do you think that we've passed peak woke at the moment? Andrew Sullivan wrote this piece a couple of weeks ago, and me and David Fuller from Rebel Wisdom were in, uh, Denver at the Heterodox Academy Conference. And he sent it to me, and I read it, and I was like, "That is really, really interesting." Basically, what he says is that peak woke was around about June of 2020, in, in his opinion.

   2. KKKonstantin Kisin29:55

      Mm-hmm.

   3. CWChris Williamson29:55

      That that was the moment at which the highest fervor, the, the greatest velocity of, of woke stuff was going on. And if you're to look now, most of the thought leaders at the absolute top probably don't ... I mean, who genuinely believes, that is a thought leader that's in a position of power, that trancing their kids is a good idea? Who genuinely believes so on and so forth? And you can roll that across a bunch of different things. And his argument is that those are the people that are kind of like the canary in the coal mine. Downstream from that are going to be, um, public, uh, opinion, and then downstream from that, institutions, this big behemoth leviathan that's being sort of dragged behind it. But he basically sees it as us having reached the apogee of woke and then come back down. What's your opinion on that?

   4. KKKonstantin Kisin30:42

      I like Andrew. We had him on the show recently. I think he's a very intelligent man. Um-I, uh, admire his courage in making predictions in the world that we live in today. Uh, I, I don't know that I agree with that characterization of th- the thought leaders and, and the people with, uh, with power, uh, because, uh, it may be true that Joe Biden doesn't think that trans and kids is a good idea. Uh, it may be that people in power in the UK don't think that it's a good idea. But to me, that isn't really the question. The question is, are they allowing it to happen? Are you seeing the sexualization of children in the classrooms? I think you are. Uh, are you seeing the bringing in of transgender ideology into the classroom? I think you are. And these are processes that play out over decades rather than hours or minutes or, or days. Um, so it may be, my opinion is the pendulum is slowly starting to slow down, but I still, I think, still think it's swinging in the wrong direction, personally. Uh, but yeah, y- you know, I don't, I don't, I don't think it's extremely unwise to make predictions, particularly given the last couple of years. I mean, think about this. When COVID first happened in March 2020, there was a real moment, I'm, I'm sure you'll remember this, Chris, where it was like, "Maybe we're just, we're all, we're all gonna come together."

   5. CWChris Williamson32:01

      Dude, I-

   6. KKKonstantin Kisin32:01

      Do you remember that?

   7. CWChris Williamson32:01

      ... I wa- I was adamant-

   8. KKKonstantin Kisin32:02

      Do you remember that?

   9. CWChris Williamson32:03

      I was adamant about this. Do you remember-

   10. KKKonstantin Kisin32:05

       Right.

   11. CWChris Williamson32:05

       ... it was that, it was a, uh, American president that said something along the lines of, "Can you imagine if there was an alien foe that was trying to attack us, how quickly our differences would be forgotten and we would bind together as a species?" And I thought, "Fuck, this could be it. This could be the thing." And then within (laughs) -

   12. KKKonstantin Kisin32:22

       Mm-hmm.

   13. CWChris Williamson32:22

       ... within-

   14. KKKonstantin Kisin32:22

       And it was. It was. It was for nearly three months.

   15. CWChris Williamson32:25

       Briefly, yes.

   16. KKKonstantin Kisin32:26

       For three months nearly, it was. You know, uh, people were helping out their neighbors and dropping off food and-

   17. CWChris Williamson32:31

       Clap for the NHS.

   18. KKKonstantin Kisin32:32

       ... clap for the NHS and political lines were broken and Brexit seemed to have been forgotten in the UK and all of that, right? And then all it took is one incident, and people who'd been locked in their houses for three months, and it just exploded in a way that I don't think anybody could have imagined. So, uh, you know, you're seeing that obviously the Supreme Court in the US is, you know, the conservative, uh, element of the judiciary is doing what it was put in place to do, which is reversing a lot of what they would argue is liberal overreach. Uh, and, uh, you know, liberals are not that great, in my experience, of taking the L. So, uh, I, I don't know that (laughs) , I don't know that, uh, that, that, that necessarily is, is gonna be as smooth a process as people hope. Uh, I, I'm, I'm concerned about what's happening in the US. Uh, I hope that the pendulum can be brought back to a sensible moderate position. And, and I do believe eventually it will be. Whether we've reached peak woke is like peak oil. I've been, you know, since, well, I remember being as a kid. When I was a kid at school, like, oil was supposed to have run out by now, you know. So, uh, these predictions are, are usually made by people who, who, who, who are either pessimistic or optimistic bey- beyond the level that I'm, I'm willing to engage them.

   19. CWChris Williamson33:49

       Going back to your experience when you first moved to

8. 33:52 – 44:07

   Is the UK Racist?

   1. CWChris Williamson33:52

      the UK from your homeland-

   2. KKKonstantin Kisin33:54

      Mm-hmm.

   3. CWChris Williamson33:55

      ... you mentioned that there was a little bit of teasing and stuff like that, but you're a darker skinned person that had an accent-

   4. KKKonstantin Kisin34:00

      Mm-hmm.

   5. CWChris Williamson34:00

      ... probably for almost all of your youth. What, do you think that Britain's racist? Have you, have you seen examples of racism since you've been in Britain?

   6. KKKonstantin Kisin34:08

      Yeah. Uh, I, I've had, I, I had someone at school tell me to go back, to go back to Russia, you Paki.

   7. CWChris Williamson34:14

      (laughs)

   8. KKKonstantin Kisin34:16

      You know, and I, and I used to do a whole routine about that when I was doing standup because it's funny. It's funny. This is the point-

   9. CWChris Williamson34:24

      (laughs)

   10. KKKonstantin Kisin34:25

       ... is like, you, you gotta make fun of racists because it's, it's stupid-

   11. CWChris Williamson34:28

       (laughs)

   12. KKKonstantin Kisin34:28

       ... people that are racist. Do you see what I'm saying? Like, when someone tells you to go back to Russia 'cause you're a Pakistani, that, that shows you the level of intelligence that this person has. And I was fortunate to have parents, uh, you know, my parents were by no means perfect, but the one thing they really did teach me is not to pay attention to stupid people, you know. And, and that's one of the reasons I think I'm able to do what I do now, giving, getting quite a lot of flak from both sides, as we talked about. Not really paying too much attention to it because I never thought that the opinions of random people or the insults of random people who I don't respect should affect how I feel about myself or affect how I feel about the country in which I live. There are racist people in Britain, absolutely. Uh, they're a tiny minority of people universally despised, uh, whose views are not shared by the vast majority of the public. The vast majority of the public in Britain are extraordinarily welcoming and tolerant. That has always been my experience. It's the experience of almost anyone you speak to who's actually sensible on these issues. Um, and of course, historically and geographically speaking, Britain and other Western Anglosphere countries are the best places to live as a minority. Not just in the world today, but the entire history of our species shows that those are the best places to live. So, it, it really, but, but of course we've got to a point where definitions of words are up for grabs. And so if you say, "Is Britain a racist country?" Some people think that if they've got one example of someone experiencing racism, uh, that means that Britain is a racist country. Well, by that definition, every country and every human being and every, you know, beetle in the world is, has got some prejudiced opinions. But, uh, I don't think that, that is the way to, to approach this. I think you have to consider it from a historical perspective and a geographical perspective and go, "Are we doing as well as human beings could be expected to be doing?" Well, we're some of the best people in the world at having a multiethnic society where people come and live together and work together. And, and, you know, and it's amazing to me in terms of doing what we do because with Triggernometry we, we have our core team which is me, Francis, and our producer, Anton, who you know.

   13. CWChris Williamson36:35

       Shout out.

   14. KKKonstantin Kisin36:35

       Uh, yep, big shout out to Anton. And, and we have between probably seven to ten part-time and full-time staff that work with us as well. And the only thing we've ever cared about was-... hiring the best people for the job. And we hire only people who wanna work on the show, and who've, who've come forward and have put themselves forward. Uh, but we've naturally got, like ... I don't think we have any, like, just pure British straight white men working on the show. You know? We've got a couple of Scots- we've got a Scottish guy and a Welsh guy, so we're doing a bit of charity work as well, but-

   15. CWChris Williamson37:08

       Very diverse, yeah, yeah. (laughs)

   16. KKKonstantin Kisin37:09

       Yeah, yeah. But, you know, like, we've got people from every skin color, every background. We've got trans people who work on the show, we've ... Like, all of that. And it's never been our agenda to make that happen. But if you live in a society that is mixed up, like the ones that we live in, and you hire people on merit, you're naturally gonna end up with all of that di- quote, unquote "diversity", which is a word that I hate now. Uh, and so I think we live in one of the most welcoming, tolerant, open societies in the history of the world. And one of the things I really wanted to, to explain to people in the book is, maybe we should just pause for a moment and appreciate that before we, we beat ourselves up.

   17. CWChris Williamson37:47

       It's difficult to have that context, right? I, I've had this guy on, Gwindo Bogle. I've had him on twice. You guys would absolutely adore him. So he's kind of like, uh, another Rob Henderson. Similar to Rob.

   18. KKKonstantin Kisin37:57

       Uh-huh.

   19. CWChris Williamson37:58

       Um, and I'll, I'll loop you guys in, I think you'd have a fantastic conversation-

   20. KKKonstantin Kisin38:01

       Yeah.

   21. CWChris Williamson38:01

       ... with him. And he taught me about a, a couple of different mental models. One of them's called, uh, the Tocqueville Paradox. And what this talks about is that as the living standards within a society rise, people's expectations rise with them. But reality can only deliver your ideals for so long, and then after a while, your ideals begin to overtake what reality's able to deliver to you. And that's when you start to feel a delta between what you were promised and what you're actually getting.

   22. KKKonstantin Kisin38:25

       Mm-hmm.

   23. CWChris Williamson38:25

       And you combine that with the fact that the demand for racism currently outstrips the supply, because a lot of people have attached either their monetary income or their status or their sense of belonging or whatever, to continuing to point out instances of racism. And what that means is that you need to continue to expand the definition of racism over time in order to keep the water level at the same height. So when you combine those two things together, the concept-

   24. KKKonstantin Kisin38:49

       Mm-hmm. (laughs)

   25. CWChris Williamson38:50

       ... creep and the Tocqueville Paradox, you end up with i- it's very easy to construct a low resolution narrative that says to people, "Society's getting worse. This is an absolute apocalypse, you should be really, really concerned." And what you're saying is ... What, what's the term in Russian, the context thing? Can you say it in Russian?

   26. KKKonstantin Kisin39:07

       Uh, vso poznayetsya v srovneniye.

   27. CWChris Williamson39:10

       Much cooler.

   28. KKKonstantin Kisin39:10

       Everything i- everything is understood in comparison. Uh, uh, and yeah, I agree with you. And of course, you know, one of the quotes I, I love is, uh, uh, from Eric Hoffer, uh, the psychology, The American Psychologist, which is, "Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket." And diversity, inclusion, you know, whatever you wanna call it now, it's a racket now. The people who are th- who are benefiting the most from that are not minorities, they are individual people who are diversity officers at universities and television channels and institutions, who get paid hundreds of thousands of dollars every year, uh, to ca- to you to put in trainings that don't work and make people more antagonistic and more intolerant of minorities, et cetera. Uh, and that's why you're seeing this continue to progress, because, of course, once you are on a crusade, and you don't have a set goal, it's like even if you've captured Jerusalem, well, there's other lands you could liberate from the evil infidels, right? And I think that we've got to a point where progressivism has become a crusade. And prog- it's kind of ... You know, progressivism has a role to play. We do want to progress as social beings, and there's innovations that can come of that. Uh, but the problem with progressivism is, is inevitably based in utopianism. And utopianism is, is a f- whichever type of utopianism it is, whether it's left, right, up, down, whatever, it is based on, on a fundamental misunderstanding of human beings. This is why I'm such a big admirer of Thomas Sowell's writings. Uh, he talks about this in The Conflict of Visions. Uh, he talks about the constrained vision of the world and the unconstrained version, vision of the world. And the c- the constrained vision of the world says, "Well, human beings are flawed, they're never gonna be perfect, so we have to learn to live with our imperfections and accept that we're never gonna get to th- that perfect dream world that we would ideally like to live in." The unconstrained vision says, "No, no, no, no, we're gonna keep going until we've got utopia." And that's why I, I say I think 10, 15 years ago, the, the sort of leftwards movements that were making sure that gay people could be treated equally in terms of the law and all of that sort of stuff, I, I think they were good. I, I don't, I n- never had any problem with, with them. I, I, I want people to be treated equally. But we've got to a point now where people are not treated equally. That some groups are given preference to, uh, over other groups, whether that's in, uh, education in the United States, where you have to have a higher SAT if you're an Asian person because of the, the racial quotas, or, or whatever, whatever it is in the UK. You know, a, a straight white man in his mid-40s is not gonna get on the BBC as a presenter unless he already has a 20-year career. Um, and when you get into this level of, of actual discrimination, particularly when it's against the majority group, you, you're building up a lot of resentment that, that I don't think is healthy for a society going forward. So, I talk about a couple of examples of this in the book where, you know, people were outright explicitly saying to me ... You know, I, I was once involved in a conversation on television around this issue. And when I walked off the set, one of the presenters, who I think ... I, I don't think they were particularly bright maybe is ... An so they just said what they, people in that world actually think. They said to me, "You know what? I'm really glad we didn't have any white people on this panel having this conversation." And I, I, and I was like, "What? Like, h- how have you just said that?" Do you know what I mean? And I think once you get to that level where ... And I, I, I couldn't work out why she said it, because I was like, "You realize I don't hold these opinions."... and I have quite a large public platform and if I wanted to, at the time, I could've put this out. And you'd be in a lot of trouble. And so would your station and, uh, all, all the rest of it. But what I realized later when I got home was, the reason they, that person was comfortable saying it is, that's the world in which they live. That's how people think in that world. And, and that troubles me tremendously, because as I say, look, racism is bad when it's against a minority. Uh, but a minority is limited in terms of the, of the, of the backlash it's going to have. Once you start saying this to, you know, a country like Britain where it, you know, it's 80 plus percent white, and a country like the United States which is dom- you know, the dominant group is white people, and you want, you wanna make them second-class citizens, explicitly? You think that's gonna, you think they're just gonna l- take that lying down and that it's not gonna cause any resentment or tension or backlash? It's a recipe for very dangerous things, Chris, I think we all know that. Um, and I'm deeply troubled that, that the, in the pursuit of this utopian dream of making sure that minorities aren't discriminated against, that we don't, we don't go too far in another direction. And I fear that we already have.

9. 44:07 – 48:49

   The West is Demonstrating Weakness

   1. KKKonstantin Kisin44:07

   2. CWChris Williamson44:07

      I've noticed since I've been in America, more of a tribal mentality, even amongst people that are super, super smart and probably a bunch of them when you come out to Austin we, we may even go for dinner with.

   3. KKKonstantin Kisin44:18

      Mm-Hmm.

   4. CWChris Williamson44:19

      People identify themselves. I've never heard the word based used in an unironic way in the UK.

   5. KKKonstantin Kisin44:25

      Mm-Hmm. Mm-Hmm.

   6. CWChris Williamson44:26

      But over here, it, it's actually something that people need to plant a flag in the ground about because it is a, uh, show of fealty to, "Look, I, I am not a part of this." And I think that, kind of like the only reason that Bruce Wayne turns into Batman is because there's the Joker, I feel like one of the reasons that people feel the need to kind of put on that mask a little bit more is because-

   7. KKKonstantin Kisin44:47

      Mm-Hmm.

   8. CWChris Williamson44:47

      ... they see it as a bigger, bigger threat. So rolling the clock forward, you know, this, th- this conversation up to now can kind of sound a little bit culture wary, right? It's, it's-

   9. KKKonstantin Kisin44:56

      Mm-Hmm.

   10. CWChris Williamson44:56

       It's us discussing the current milieu of the day, what, you know, licking our finger and putting it in the air and what's the temperature and stuff like that. The interesting insight I think that you have coming from the Soviet Union and, and, and under- understanding what's happening in that area of the world is just how dangerous those dictators and those sort of regimes can be. And it's, think it's Douglas Murray who said, "When the barbarians are at the door, we'll be debating about what gender they are." And this insight that some of the smartest minds of our generation have been spent, their time's been spent working out how to get people to click on ads or debating over whether a man is a man and a woman is a woman or not. No matter what your view on politics, that simply can't be the best use of our great minds, right?

   11. KKKonstantin Kisin45:42

       I, I agree with you, and I would go further. I think Douglas is right about the barbarians at the gate. Uh, but I would also say that it's not just a simple matter of the barbarians have showed up and we're debating about pronouns, it's that we're inviting barbarians by demonstrating weakness and distraction a- and, uh, corruption and perversion and all of these things o- of our brains before, before anything else. And, uh, that's why I've been warning... You see, th- th- I've been making this point for some time, and it's, there's a record of it, uh, that I've been saying well before the invasion of Ukraine and all of that. Like, people in China and Russia are watching what we do. The most people in the West have no idea what's happening inside of China or Russia. Most people in Russia know very well what's happening in the West, because the West is the reference point for the entire world, because it's the dominant center of power and wealth and trade and everything else. So people in Russia are watching very, very carefully what the West is doing, and there's no question in my mind that if we'd not been engaged in this obsession with things that don't matter, uh, that what is happening now in Ukraine would not be happening. Um-

   12. CWChris Williamson46:55

       You really think that? You think that if we weren't so captured with the woke stuff that that would've altered the mindset of a leader like Putin from invading Ukraine?

   13. KKKonstantin Kisin47:05

       Well, ask yourself this. Why was Donald Trump not reelected? My opinion is that this never would've happened if Trump was still in power. Why was he not reelected? I think-

   14. CWChris Williamson47:15

       He was heavily lambasted by the press and-

   15. KKKonstantin Kisin47:20

       Yeah.

   16. CWChris Williamson47:20

       ... also-

   17. KKKonstantin Kisin47:20

       But for what? What was he lambasted for? He was racist, he was sexist, he was a bigot, right? Those were the issues that he was attacked on. That's wokeness, right? The, the idea that someone who wants to restrict illegal immigration into a country is automatically a xenophobe and a racist. Uh, that is where that comes from. So to my mind, Joe Biden is president because n- people didn't want someone as brash and obnoxious as Donald Trump, and that's largely down to wokeness. And, uh, so yeah, of course I think that. I, I think that, uh, presenting ... And we've had, you know, uh, Andrei Larionov, uh, Putin's former economic advisor on the show, and he said this. If, if Trump was in power, this never would've happened. Uh, so I, and, uh, we recently had a political scientist, uh, Dr. John Lee, he's an Australian of, um, and he's an expert in China, and he was making the same point. It's like the Chinese are watching and they're seeing how distracted the West is and, and they capitalize on that distraction. Uh-

   18. CWChris Williamson48:17

       They're lining up Taiwan, they're lining up Hong Kong.

   19. KKKonstantin Kisin48:21

       Well, he was actually making the point that maybe the, because of the way that Russia's faltered in Ukraine and, and the strength of the international response, which just surprised me in how, how strong it's been, uh, that may have bought us a few years in Taiwan. But the broader point remains, which is if you appear weak, distracted, divided, and, and b- busy destroying your own culture and society, uh, people will seek to take advantage of that. And, and I'm, I'm certain that that is a huge contributing factor to what we're seeing now.

   20. CWChris Williamson48:48

       For the people

10. 48:49 – 59:39

    Who is Yuri Bezmenov?

    1. CWChris Williamson48:49

       that aren't familiar with Yuri Bezmenov-

    2. KKKonstantin Kisin48:51

       Mm-Hmm.

    3. CWChris Williamson48:51

       ... can you explain who he is, why he's important, and what you've learned from studying him?

    4. KKKonstantin Kisin48:59

       Well, I think people should go and watch a couple of his lectures, which are available on YouTube. But very, very brief summary, he was a Soviet defector, I think in the '70s and maybe '80s. Uh, he was a KGB agent who was sent to India. And when he was there, he was disgusted with the way that the s- the supposedly fraternal and friendly Soviet Union was treating the Indians, and he said it was far worse and more racist than anything the colonial powers had ever done in India. Uh, he disguised themselves, uh, himself as an American hippie, uh, and, uh, eventually managed to make his way to Germany, then Canada, and eventually the United States. And it's, uh, the reason that it's, he's relevant to our conversation is my book is called An Immigrant's Love Letter to the West. He wrote a book, I don't know if you know this, called A Love Letter to America, which is one of the reasons I called my book what I called it, because I'm referencing him. And what he talked about is the Soviet Union's deliberate attempts to destabilize the culture of, of, of the United States in particular, uh, by supporting and encouraging people within the United States who hated that society, he wanted to see it undermined. Which is one of the reasons that a society that was deeply racist towards Black people, like the Soviet Union, supported Black liberation movements in America. Not because they agreed with, with Black people having equal rights, but because they saw it as a destabilizing force at the time. Uh, and so, uh, Russia has been playing from the same playbook. They've, they've invested a lot of money into cyber warfare, manipulating what people in the West see. I mean, you know, one of the biggest problems Elon Musk has identified with Twitter is the number of bots. Now, a lot of those bots are coming from Russia and China, and are seeking to shape the, the way people feel about different events and what's happening. Uh, and you see, of course, China using, uh, cultural power, whether that's the NBA or whatever, to influence how people in the West perceive their own country. So, uh, China are a country which puts its minorities in concentration camps and, uh, amputates their organs, uh, in order to sell them elsewhere, without anesthetic often, and kills them for this, is telling America that it's a racist country and encouraging Americans to see it. You know, there is a war going on and it ... No, no great society can survive the destruction of its own culture from within. And if you raise generation after generation of people who hate your society and hate your culture and refuse to defend it, eventually the barbarians will realize that your, your society is weak and they will be at the gates, and what their agenda is, is not even gonna be that important at that point.

    5. CWChris Williamson51:33

       What would be strategies that Bresnanov detailed Russia would use in order to destabilize?

    6. KKKonstantin Kisin51:39

       Well, one of them, there's quite a lot, which is why I recommend people go and watch his full lectures. But, uh, it, it was essentially funding people who were destructive to the fabric of the society, destroying the family unit. We've seen some of that. Destroying people's cultural loyalty to their society. His point was also about religion. You know, I'm not a, a believer, but his, he believed very strongly, and I'm starting to agree with it, to be honest, that absent a religion, uh, a society begins to disintegrate and, and, and sort of eat itself from the inside. Uh, or d- or as in our case, develop a new religion, uh, uh, one that is far more destructive than the one that we have, we- we've had in the past. Um, and it, it's essentially about dividing people. It's about creating conflict between people and finding areas where there already is conflict and exacerbating it, so that people with different opinions and people with different political views no- are no longer able to converse, they're only able to debate. And conversation is much more important than debate. Debate is usually about point scoring and looking better than the other side, and look, I can do that, we- you can do that, we can all do that, and that's fun and great and it gives you a clip you can put on your YouTube channel. But conversation is, is what actually brings people together. Um, and any conflict that I've ever been involved with that's actually got resolved in one way or another has always been through people coming together and having a conversation and hashing out their differences, while having the idea of a common good in mind. Um, and I'm ... And the concern that I have, particularly with identity politics, is it encourages people not to think of the greater good of their country, because instead of encouraging people to think of themselves as Americans first and their ethnicity later, it encourages them to think of their ethnicity and to hell with America, to hell with Britain. That's a problem. That is not a society that is gonna be willing to defend itself strongly enough, or at least won't be perceived as being willing to defend itself strongly enough against foreign threats. And I think that's where China and Russia have been emboldened.

    7. CWChris Williamson53:41

       Even more than that, it, uh, the atomization, I think, of society and the fact that people don't have that same degree of, whatever, local collective sense of belonging. That, to me, seems like one of the most dangerous ways to, um, remove the attachment to your country, because there is nothing, there is no footing for you to hold onto. And this fire hosing, the, the complete overwhelm of information, I don't know anybody that actually wants that. I don't know anybody that wants more information.

    8. KKKonstantin Kisin54:12

       Mm.

    9. CWChris Williamson54:13

       In the last 15 years, the best performing people, the smartest people, the people that have been the most, um, quick to make progress and to better their own lives, has gone from being someone that could seek more information to somebody that is able to, um, filter more information. So we've gone from not having enough in maybe 2008 or something, to now having way too much in 2022. And for almost all of our history, ancestrally, more information gave you a better chance of survival, it meant that you knew where the berries were, it meant that you knew how to make a new type of blanket for you and your family or whatever. And now within the last 15 years, it's switched, it's completely pivoted, and it's the people that are able to distinguish noise from signal. And-

    10. KKKonstantin Kisin54:58

        Mm.

    11. CWChris Williamson54:59

        ... you have to ask yourself, look, do I genuinely believe that this ...... overwhelm of conflicting narratives, this sort of fire-hosing of information that I'm being hit in the face with, do I think that that is a byproduct of social media? Or do I think that this is perhaps a cultivated, crafted, weaponized strategy being used by people that want to actually confuse us? Because that, to me, seems to be the single most effective strategy from the stuff that Bezmenov was talking about, which is that when you flood so much information over a population, the, the goal isn't to get people to agree on one thing or agree on another thing and, and then create dis-, uh, disagreement within the two. The goal is to make everybody feel so overwhelmed that they simply don't know what's true anymore and they become passive and they become much easier to conquer then.

    12. KKKonstantin Kisin55:53

        Yeah. Uh, I do think that what, the last part of what you said is accurate. I don't think that, uh, I think this is technology driven, first and foremost, and I think Russia and China are just using the technology that's emerged, uh, rather than, "This was always the plan all along," or whatever. I just think they're piggybacking on existing infrastructure too, uh, which, which they always have done. They would've used other stuff that was there before, uh, you know, Russia, uh, the Soviet Union rather, was very careful about recruiting people who would end up being, you know, jo- journal and paper editors and TV people and whatever. Uh, that, that, that has always been the way. Um, but Chris, what I would say on, on all of that is, uh, I think one of the things we, we should say in this conversation is, I don't believe that we ought to be concerned about China or Russia. We, we have nothing to fear from them if we're willing to ensure that our societies are strong and healthy. Barbarians are always gonna be at the gates. There will always be barbarians at the gates if you're the dominant, hegemonic superpower in the world, which we are part of. You in the US now are there, and we in Western Europe are under that umbrella. The barbarians will always be at the gates. But if you've got a, a well-trained Roman legion, a, a strong governmental structure, a true democracy that respects the wishes and rights of the people, you're not, you have nothing to fear from the barbarians. You are better, you're stronger, you're more, much more technologically advanced, um, uh, so my f- I don't worry too much about China or Russia. What I'm worried about is making sure that we in the West are strong, we're capable, we love the, the, the culture that we've created and we improve it, of course. We should always be improving our societies. And if that is the case, we have nothing to fear from anybody.

    13. CWChris Williamson57:47

        Dude, I agree.

    14. KKKonstantin Kisin57:47

        Anybody.

    15. CWChris Williamson57:48

        I, I, I appreciate that point of view. I think that given the background and where you grew up, the fact that you're able to see that, uh, it makes me feel, um, it makes me feel more confident, because there is a part of me that almost feels... I make a joke about it whenever someone brings up China, and I say, "I do welcome our new oriental overlords," like, just in case they're listening over my iPhone.

    16. KKKonstantin Kisin58:08

        Mm-hmm.

    17. CWChris Williamson58:08

        But there is a little bit of a part of me that thinks, "Fuck, is there even anything that we can do here? Is this too far gone?" And the fatalistic, uh, nihilism that, that comes through isn't part of my nature, and yet I've just, I don't know where that's come from. I, I, I feel like-

    18. KKKonstantin Kisin58:23

        Well, I think it's 'cause you're a smart guy and you're able to project into the future, and I think what your brain is telling you is, "If we continue down this path, we're gonna end up in a bad place." And I do agree with you, but I also have hope that we can change the direction of travel and get back to a situation where the moderate voices triumph over the extremes. And I think if we can do that, we're gonna end up in, in a very good position, because, you know, difficulty makes you stronger, and we are in a position now where the West was in this sort of cloud cuckoo land for a while, and then we saw what happened in Ukraine, and I think it's, it's given a lot of people, uh, an opportunity to rethink some of their strategies and some of the approaches they've been taking, whether that's Germany getting rid of its nuclear power plants or whether this endless obsession with things that don't matter in terms of the political discussions that we have. It's given a lot of people a wake-up call, which I think they needed. Um, so I believe we can do it. It's gonna take a lot more effort from everybody, people like us and all sorts of other people, uh, reversing some of the terrible changes we've seen in our institutions, some of the terrible changes we've seen in education particularly. It's gonna, it's gonna take some time, uh, but I do believe that we can do it. And if we can, we have absolutely nothing to fear.

    19. CWChris Williamson59:38

        Konstantin

11. 59:39 – 1:00:44

    Where To Find Konstantin

    1. CWChris Williamson59:39

       Kisin, ladies and gentlemen. If people want to check out the stuff that you do and keep up to date, where should they go?

    2. KKKonstantin Kisin59:44

       I am @KonstantinKisin on t- Twitter, Facebook, uh, Instagram, whatever, and uh, the book is called An Immigrant's Love Letter to the West. You can order it on Amazon UK and Amazon US. You can also pre-order a signed copy if you just go to my Twitter, it's a pinned post there. And, uh, by the way, Chris, it turns out my signature actually devalues the book, so if you get the pre-order signed, it's cheaper than getting it at the full price on Amazon.

    3. CWChris Williamson1:00:08

       (laughs)

    4. KKKonstantin Kisin1:00:09

       So go for it.

    5. CWChris Williamson1:00:10

       Okay, mate. Well, I know that you're coming out to Austin at some point soon, so I'm looking forward to seeing you in a few weeks. Is Francis coming with you as well?

    6. KKKonstantin Kisin1:00:17

       Absolutely.

    7. CWChris Williamson1:00:17

       Oh, yes.

    8. KKKonstantin Kisin1:00:17

       And so is Anton, so you can talk gym-

    9. CWChris Williamson1:00:19

       Oh.

    10. KKKonstantin Kisin1:00:19

        ... gym tips as well.

    11. CWChris Williamson1:00:20

        Fantastic. Fantastic. Well, I look forward to seeing you then, mate. Good luck with the rest of the book tour.

    12. KKKonstantin Kisin1:00:24

        Thanks very much, man.

    13. CWChris Williamson1:00:25

        What's happening, people? Thank you very much for tuning in. If you enjoyed that episode, then press here for a selection of the best clips from the podcast over the last few weeks. And don't forget to subscribe. Peace.

Episode duration: 1:00:44