Approval To Speak Freely | Konstantin Kisin | Modern Wisdom Podcast 235

Konstantin Kisin is a comedian and podcaster. Growing up in Russia gives you a unique insight into culture, identity and politics. Hopefully this episode doesn't end up with us in the Gulag. Expect to learn why Darren Grimes being called in by the MET Police is bad for everyone, what the current day and the Soviet Union have in common, who Konstantin thinks will win the US Election, how empathy is being weaponised and much more... Sponsor: Get 20% discount on the best coffee in Britain with Uncommon Coffee’s entire range at http://uncommoncoffee.co.uk/ (use code MW20) Extra Stuff: Follow Konstantin on Twitter - https://twitter.com/KonstantinKisin Subscribe to Triggernometry - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7oPkqeHTwuOZ5CZ-R9f-6w Get my free Ultimate Life Hacks List to 10x your daily productivity → https://chriswillx.com/lifehacks/ To support me on Patreon (thank you): https://www.patreon.com/modernwisdom #konstantinkisin #triggernometry #chriswilliamson - Listen to all episodes online. Search "Modern Wisdom" on any Podcast App or click here: iTunes: https://apple.co/2MNqIgw Spotify: https://spoti.fi/2LSimPn Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/modern-wisdom - Get in touch in the comments below or head to... Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx Email: [email protected]

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Konstantin Kisin?

  If you allow politicians to to conduct themselves in this way and to delegitimize the democratic process, which both sides have done, but particularly, in my opinion, the Democrats in America and the left in this country as well, then what you end up with is a situation where we are now, where thirty-six percent of both Democrats and Republicans feel that violence is justified to achieve your political ends. So a third of both supporter groups are quite happy to use violence, which has gone up from eight percent about two years ago. So if you've got that situation, the election is in dispute, both parties are undermining the democratic process and encouraging their followers essentially to feel like violence as a way of resolving this issue, not a good recipe.

• 0:43Chris Williamson?

  The stakes have been raised now, haven't they? Based on the Darren Grimes incident, I'm now culpable for what you say. So please go gently on me, or I'm going to be in prison, and you'll be in a Gulag.

• 0:56Konstantin Kisin?

  Well, I'm going to struggle to say anything now, aren't I?

• 1:00Konstantin Kisin?

  Apparently, I'm so ridiculously controversial with my very mainstream opinions that, yeah, we're both in trouble.

• 1:07Chris Williamson?

  If we sit in silence for the next hour, that is one surefire way that we can't get in trouble.

• 1:12Konstantin Kisin?

  That could offend people who really wanted to listen to us talk, though, and they might report us to the police. And, yeah, you never know, man. But if you remember, you came to see my show in Edinburgh last year, and this is exactly what I was talking about. Should it be illegal to have offensive opinions? And here we are, and essentially the police are investigating people, not even for their own opinions, for stuff someone else said on their show that they broadcast. And, you know, you add to that the response to the pandemic and how that's affecting our civil liberties as well. It's not a great time.

• 1:46Chris Williamson?

  No, not at all. So can you give us a brief overview and take us through what we've learned from the Darren Grimes situation, in your opinion?

• 1:52Konstantin Kisin?

  Well, so for people who don't know, Darren Grimes is a conservative, right-wing commentator. He, I think, is rather hated by many people on my side of the referendum debate, people who voted Remain, as I did. A lot of people who are sort of very obsessed with that issue, in a way that I'm not, felt that because he was part of the campaign to make that happen, he was investigated three times by the Electoral Commission for his involvement in that. So he's got a lot of enemies. I think that's part of it, for sure. But basically, he had Dr. David Starkey, controversial historian, who made some, what I thought were ill-judged comments. And I know, David, we've had him on the show, he didn't

• 2:36Konstantin Kisin?

  say anything like that on our show. But on Darren's, he did make some controversial comments, which I, as I say, I thought were all ill-judged. And this happened a few months ago, there was a big furore, Dr. David Starkey was properly cancelled for it. He apologised, eventually Darren apologised for not challenging him on what he said. And that was sort of the end of the matter. I think a lot of people felt that, even though, I think many people felt that it was appropriate that David Starkey suffered some consequences for what he said. Equally, many people felt that maybe the consequences were quite harsh. Wherever

• 3:17Konstantin Kisin?

  you sit on that, I respect both views on that personally. And that was sort of the end of the matter, for most people, I think. Until we found out last week, as we record this, that the police had invited, initially we learned that it was Darren Grimes, and then also then David Starkey, had both been invited for what is euphemistically called a voluntary interview. Interesting it's called that, because if you don't attend, you get arrested. So the voluntary nature of that interview is a little bit interesting. And yeah, so essentially, we're talking about the police investigating people for things

• 3:59Konstantin Kisin?

  that they say, and for interviewers for things that their guests say. We had Darren Grimes on the show pretty much straight away, because we felt it was a very important issue to raise to the public awareness. There were lots of other mainstream media coverage as well. And hopefully, as a result of all of that publicity that happened, the police said they've got a senior officer reviewing the case, they've postponed the interviews that they were supposed to have. And at the time, actually, everyone from Afsharka, all the way through to Priti Patel and Sajid Javid and many, many other people, who at the time felt that David Starkey's comments were completely wrong, some of them said

• 4:42Konstantin Kisin?

  they were horrible, racist, etc. Even those people were saying, aren't the police going too far here? And so, as a result, it seems that the police have rode back, they've realised there's a public backlash. How that ends, we don't know, because they haven't closed the investigation. Yeah, but it's a troubling thing, because I would imagine, and what I found really surprising about this, and I'm not, again, one of these sort of defund the BBC people, but I do think the BBC is biased. And what I found fascinating was, they didn't cover the story on the mainstream news at all. So, while it was being talked about in The Telegraph, in The Times, it was on the front

• 5:25Konstantin Kisin?

  page of The Times, I think, at least on the online version, the BBC simply pretended it wasn't happening, which I thought was very interesting.

• 5:31Chris Williamson?

  Why do you think that's happening?

• 5:33Konstantin Kisin?

  I don't know exactly, but I've felt for some time now that the BBC are not reporting on cultural issues objectively, whether you, you know, the economy or all that sort of thing, there's more of a conversation to be had about which way they lean, some people might even argue that they lean to the right on those things. But certainly when it comes to people like Darren, who as I say are hated by many people on the remain side and many people on the left as well, I don't think he got a fair shake at it. If you remember, you know, a couple of years ago when I turned down that safe space contract, that was in every newspaper in the country and the BBC covered it very prominently. It was right up there, and that was an issue that many people felt had a lot to do with

• 6:18Konstantin Kisin?

  free speech. Well, to me, this isn't an issue of Darren being conservative or not, or whatever, I don't share many of his views. The point is, something like that is an issue that everyone should care about, because if you're a BBC journalist, well, you know, the BBC has had people like Tommy Robinson and Katie Hopkins on their show, people that I would not have on my show, right, on Trigonometry, we wouldn't have them on. So... You know, they are more liable to that sort of problem than we are in a way, and yet they're not saying anything about it. And I think it speaks to some kind of bias. Now, what exactly that is, I don't know. I've been on the BBC many, many times. And my perception of it is that it's it's full of well meaning people who all think the same. So no matter

• 7:01Konstantin Kisin?

  how how hard they try, and I think a lot of people genuinely do try on the BBC to introduce balance. But if everyone in your organization thinks the same way on these cultural issues of the culture war, then it's very difficult to then present a balanced view of an issue. And with the news coverage of Darren Grimes, I think they just, you know, they genuinely just like basically they suppressed it.

• 7:26Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, man. I mean, when I first delved into the situation, I'd missed the original David Starkey interview. So I had to track back and kind of get a grasp on everything in real time. But man, I'm really, really concerned, or would have been concerned had this backtracking by the police not occurred. The ability or the the potential for me as an independent podcaster, doing it's a lovely bedroom, but doing it from his bedroom. The potential that I could have anyone on. I've spoken to porn stars. I've spoken to the girl who started the UK version of OnlyFans. I've spoken to Douglas Murray, like all the same thing, obviously. And like.

• 8:08Konstantin Kisin?

  You know how to pick your guests, man. You go for the top.

• 8:10Chris Williamson?

  I really do.

• 8:11Konstantin Kisin?

  You just go for the creme de la creme. Yeah.

• 8:13Chris Williamson?

  Filtering, exactly.

• 8:14Konstantin Kisin?

  We should reconsider. We talked to all these boring political analysts and stuff like that. You've gone straight in there with the best.

• 8:20Chris Williamson?

  Brazzers, that's who the top 10 on Brazzers, that's who you need to speak to. And so I've got these people on, they could say anything. And somehow, I would be liable for what they say. Now, I'm going to guess that the only potential justification for this would be to treat an independent podcaster like Darren is, like you guys are like I am, as a broadcaster, as if we're as if we have some sort of network in the traditional media sense of the word that we are broadcasting media, and therefore we are liable for what occurs on our channel. Is that if you were to steel man the argument, do you think that's kind of where it comes from?

• 8:57Konstantin Kisin?

  Yeah, I think that's exactly where it comes from. And look, we're all dealing with a new world in which all of this stuff is unusual. I mean, podcasts have only been around 10, 15 years. And so our laws. Probably not all that well adjusted to the whole situation. So I think, you know, obviously, big media corporations, they have whole legal departments that deal with these, that train the presenters, you know, what you can and can't allow guests to say, what can and can't go unchallenged. Even there, there's quite a lot of bias in how all of that's treated. So it's perfectly possible. I mean, you talk about Douglas Murray, one of the most prominent conservative commentators in the country, and maybe, you know, a lot of the stuff he's been talking about lately, you wouldn't even say that it's a conservative

• 9:41Konstantin Kisin?

  view particularly. But it's perfectly normal for him to go on the BBC and be called far right by a fellow guest. Without necessarily being challenged, that guest being challenged in the moment, he then has to threaten to sue, they then apologize, right? Whereas if you'd gone and slandered somebody from the other side, it wouldn't be the same. So for someone like me, who's bang in the centre of politics, those hypocrisies are very difficult to ignore because they're just right there staring you in the face. But, but yeah, I think the steel man version of the argument is, we're broadcasting stuff to an unspecified number of people, and that means we're subject to broadcasting regulation, and that means that we are responsible

• 10:22Konstantin Kisin?

  to some extent for what people say. Having said that, there is a difference between television and a podcast, because television or radio, that is broadcast into an unspecified number of people who may or may not have opted in for that particular content, right? So if you've just got the radio playing in the background, and then someone comes on and starts, as in David Starkey's case, talking about Dan Blacks or something like that, you know, that's different to you clicking on a podcast which is clearly discussing, you know, the history of slavery, let's say, and then being triggered that that's happened. So there is a, there is a difference to be had. But I'm not, you know, I don't necessarily think I have the answer

• 11:06Konstantin Kisin?

  particularly, because should we be able to just have anyone on to say whatever they want without any repercussions whatsoever? Probably not, you know, there is some responsibility. I mean, we are subject to the laws of the land. If you have someone on who, you know, incites violence, well, I don't think that should be exempt simply because you're doing it from your bedroom, right? So there is, there's a way to calibrate it. But I think holding us to exactly the same standard as the BBC or ITV, I think that that's taken it a bit far. So I guess we'll wait and see what, what, what, what our legislative bodies come up with.

• 11:41Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, for sure. Both you just now and during the discourse I heard this week with Darren as well. One of the things that he said in his defense is, um, I was basically starstruck by David Starkey, stark struck, um, and I didn't challenge his views as I should have done. Does that make any difference? Like, does it make any difference about whether or not you decide to challenge someone's views? The views are out there in the ether based on your broadcast. I'm not sure what my position is about whether or not him saying, hang on a second, David, you can't really say that. Like, does that change what he said in its essence?

• 12:23Konstantin Kisin?

  Well, I, I don't, I'm not a lawyer, so I don't know the law on that. That seems to certainly be the mainstream approach, right? If you get someone controversial on, you don't let them talk. That's, that's how they do it, right? So, so maybe that's what exempts you from being associated then with those views. Maybe people assume, uh, that, you know, if you let me talk, that means you agree with everything I'm saying.

• 12:45Chris Williamson?

  Silence is compliance.

• 12:47Konstantin Kisin?

  Well, yeah, there was during this whole, uh, episode recently, people said that silence is consent, which I thought was quite interesting, given, uh, the Me Too stuff we've had before. I mean, it doesn't seem to fit necessarily.

• 13:02Konstantin Kisin?

  With that argument, I just thought that was an interesting linguistic quirk, if anything. And it sort of shows how ridiculous it is, you know, uh, my, our friend Lou Perez, uh, from We the Internet, who we had on the show a few months ago, uh, you know, he posted at the time of the BLM riots that were happening. He said, uh, silence is violence, right? Uh, speech is violence, but actual violence is not violence. When people were saying these are peaceful, you know. So that's where we are. But I think, yeah, I think because we are used to the mainstream media format of interviewing people, which is you get someone on for a maximum of 10 minutes. And the moment they say anything that is in any way perceived as controversial,

• 13:42Konstantin Kisin?

  you have to jump in and offer a counter argument. Then maybe when you see someone like us having a conversation, then people assume that because you haven't interrupted me, you've agreed with every single word that I've said. And therefore, that lack of challenge is perceived as endorsement.

• 13:59Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, yeah, you are right. The paradigms are shifting. I got an email. So I got such an interesting email, man, on the day that the Darren Grimes story broke. Hey there, I'm Matt, the founder of Influencer Protect. I specialize in helping podcasters with all their insurance needs. I offer a bespoke service to help support areas such as making an untrue statement that results in reputational damage, breaching an advertising ruling unintentionally, copyright infringements, a brand making a claim against you, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Am I, hang on, am I gonna have to buy insurance to be a podcaster now? Like, this is obviously an emerging market. I think it was coincidence rather

• 14:38Chris Williamson?

  than entrepreneurial foresight that he got that particular email. But like, man, it really is, I'll be very, very interested. I got a DM off Darren earlier on today. For anyone who's interested, today is the day, the morning of this, Friday, the 16th of October, was when Darren was supposed to be in the police station for the voluntary, not voluntary interview. And he sent me an update over his, the email, Dear Mr. Grimes, we're writing to inform you that the senior officer has been appointed to conduct the review of this matter and ensure that it remains proportionate and that all appropriate lines of inquiry are being considered. While this review takes place, please note that this time you are no longer required to attend Kingston Police Station. We will contact

• 15:21Chris Williamson?

  you in due course with further updates. I mean, that's what happens when you marshal the forces of darkness on Twitter, which was absolutely happening. But yeah, man, I, it's worrying. That's, you know, previously, the Count Dankula stuff, I appreciate that there are this sort of. A death by a thousand cuts situation going on. I was able to distance myself from that and feel quite detached because I'm like unlikely that I would be in the situation where that occurs. But you know, Darren is slap bang in my wheelhouse. Andy's a northern lad as well. So yeah, that that really that sort of shook me a little bit considering how much I care about this project. That was that was uncomfortable to find out.

• 16:02Konstantin Kisin?

  I know what you mean about Dankula. And of course, he's not the only person that this has happened to. We can go down the list. Harry Miller, who who retweeted a supposedly transphobic poem of some kind on Twitter, gets a call from the police saying, we need to check your thinking. Right? That's happened. Posey Parker, again, a gender critical former feminist. She was interviewed by the police for expressing some of her views on trans issues. Chelsea Russell, who I talked about in my in my show last year, the girl from I think she was from Liverpool, she she posted the lyrics of a song on her Instagram in tribute to a friend of hers who'd

• 16:44Konstantin Kisin?

  been killed in a car crash. And it was a rap song, so it contained the N word. And she was actually prosecuted and convicted for whatever it would have been offensive language or something like that. Eventually got overturned on appeal. So we're seeing a lot of these cases coming through in the pipeline. And what it essentially means is, yes, of course, I understand your feeling of like, well, look, Dankula didn't really affect me, whereas Darren is more in my wheelhouse. But the reality of all of this stuff is, none of us can afford to only look at our own situation on this issue. You know, it's like, it's a bit like saying, you know, would you approve of summary execution for people who commit certain offenses? Well, you you might never commit that particular offense. But that doesn't mean you would necessarily approve of people being, you know,

• 17:29Konstantin Kisin?

  pulled up on the street lined up against the wall. And it's the same with the free speech issue. Yes, a lot of people weren't on board with Dankula. They didn't think his his sketch or whatever it was was funny. But that doesn't necessarily mean that he should have been convicted of hate speech or fined eight hundred pounds or or and be a hate criminal for life, which is essentially where he's he is now. So I think you principles like this always require you to defend people that you don't agree with and don't like. And that's just an inevitability. Most people prefer to just stick to the comfortable, which is, well, I like this guy, therefore I'll defend him. But actually, none of us can afford to do that.

• 18:12Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, a principle isn't a principle until it costs you. Moving on, moving on from the Darren Grimes situation, what unique insight has your cultural heritage given you when looking at the world in 2020? Have you got some particularly interesting insights based on where you're from?

• 18:30Konstantin Kisin?

  Hmm. Well, I grew up in Russia in the 90s, immediately during and after, well, before as well, but before, during and after the collapse of the Soviet Union. So I saw a very stable society where everything was going smoothly, very predictable. Everybody went to work from nine o'clock, left work at five o'clock, went home, made food, spent time with the children. Everything was very stable, very consistent, very predictable, to overnight society being transformed into something completely different and largely unrecognizable. People who, up to that point, were very successful, wealthy, they had a good income, they had a predictable future, they had a solid career ahead of them, suddenly

• 19:13Konstantin Kisin?

  for some people that just disappeared overnight. And equally, there was lots of opportunity for other people who had, you know, new ideas, or as in the Russian case, were just prepared to be moral, or whatever it was, all the opportunities in between, to build something new. And I think what we're seeing now with the coronavirus and the response to it and how our countries are dealing with it, is much less shocking to me. Also, my co-host in Trigonometry, Francis, who's a family are from Venezuela, where he's seen something very similar. You know, we are not really shocked or particularly troubled by this situation in the same way, because we're like, well, yeah, this is, you know, this idea that everything was always going to continue in the same way and be stable and

• 19:57Konstantin Kisin?

  predictable and comfortable, that's never going to be true over the long term. These shocks will always happen. So for me, that background of growing up in a very unstable environment that literally flipped overnight, it gives me an insight into what's going to happen now. And, you know, I feel... Desperately sad for a lot of people whose lives have been thrown up into complete chaos, many people losing work, jobs, security, you know, and it's going to run and run because the economic impact of what's happened hasn't even been felt yet. We're probably going to have the biggest recession we've had for centuries.

• 20:35Chris Williamson?

  Well, that's the thing. We've got the pain now in the immediate, but it's our children who are going to pay the financial burden with either inflation, interest rates, whatever way that the governments decide to try and recuperate all of this expenditure. It's all well and good, people having parties in the street because Rishi is going to throw eight billion at you, but that eight billion needs repaying at some point.

• 20:59Konstantin Kisin?

  Sure. And the eight billion is a tiny fraction of what we're really talking about. There was a story in The Times yesterday about the people who are designing this government app for track and trace, doing it mainly on Excel, as we now know. They're getting paid about seven and a half grand a day. So they're basically on Premier League footballer wages to make the shitty app that doesn't work. And the total cost of that is about £12 billion just for that. So we're basically throwing bad money after bad money after bad money at this whole problem. And I think your analysis is somewhat optimistic. You say it's our children who are going to pay for this. No, no, it's going to be us first. We're going to pay.

• 21:40Konstantin Kisin?

  And then their children are going to pay for it too. But equally, as I say, a time of crisis is also a time of opportunity. The people who adjust and adapt and learn from this and understand that, you know, the traditional way of doing things isn't going to work and respond to that with ingenuity and creativity, they will benefit tremendously too. And so my background, I think, gives me the understanding that this shit happens. This shit always happens and you've got to be ready to adjust and move with the time. So for us, for example, you know, Trigonometry used to be a one-episode-a-week show.

• 22:24Konstantin Kisin?

  And we might do a livestream once a week as well. When the lockdown hit, we were like, well, we're two comedians who don't have a stage to perform on anymore. Let's do more interviews, let's do more livestreams. So we are now broadcasting a piece of content, and now, long, every day except Monday. Right? We've ramped that up and our fans have responded. We've grown our audience massively. The support for the show has been great as well. Although, we're starting to see it, you know, it's starting to dip now as people struggle with, you know, with what we're talking about, with the economy, people are losing jobs. You know, somebody who was supporting us at quite a high level, giving us fifty quid, a hundred quid a month, those people who you'd think, well, they're going to be safe and sound and protected from all of this stuff.

• 23:08Konstantin Kisin?

  Actually, you know, some of them are writing to us saying, "Look, we loved the show and my family watch it every Sunday on our TV, but, you know, I've lost my job," or, you know, "my hours have been cut," or whatever it might be. So people, you know, people are being affected. But my broader point is, in this sort of environment, a lot of people are going to suffer and it's terrible. There will be some people who benefit, and I guess the question for all of us is, well, everything else being the way that it is, which one of those two do you want to be?

• 23:39Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, very much so, man. I really like the insight that you've got, that you lived through a period of change and chaos, and so you sort of straddled both before, during, and after, which again, a very, very unique view. I've been thinking a lot, especially over the last few months, about the fact that all of the catastrophes that we've had over the last eighty years, since the end of World War II, really just have been kind of nerfed versions of proper problems. You know, like the Spanish Flu, serious, serious, big pandemic, proper existential shit. Or the World War II, proper, serious war.

• 24:20Chris Williamson?

  People dying. Yep, Iraq, big deal. Desert Storm, big deal. You know, Afghanistan, big deal. 9/11, not to be made light of. 2008 financial crisis, not to be made light of. But all of these versions were, these incidents were dealt with in ways that were manageable and were fairly quickly rebounded from. And this really is a reminder, I think, of just how tenuous humanity's grasp on existence is. You know, like if anyone thought like, what are some of the, the human institutions that we usually rely on? Finances. Yeah, the banks will look after it. The economy will be okay. Health. Oh, well, at least grandma and granddad are all right. Or at least there's a future for my kid. Education. Oh, well, at least like little Timmy can go off to school. All

• 25:03Chris Williamson?

  this sort of stuff. Like, there's very few areas that haven't been shaken to their core. And I appreciate both sides of the fence with people now saying, well, look, the lockdowns and stuff, there's mental health problems that are coming through. I'm not convinced that, opening, I'm fairly ambivalent about the, about the lockdowns. It's just kind of, I leave it to the epidemiologists and the virologists and public health experts. But I think that the lockdowns are only a small part of this. I think the ambient anxiety is due to a lot more of what's going on. It's the fact that everyone has been wildly reminded of their own mortality and they're staring it in the face. Look at just how

• 25:40Konstantin Kisin?

  And we don't like it. We really don't like it, do we?

• 25:43Chris Williamson?

  Well, I mean, think of anyone who's read Ernest Becker's Denial of Death. Like, that is about the fact that everything we do in life is to escape our, our awareness of death. And if there's ever been a year like 2020 is the year that death is stared all of us in the face. Financial death, educational death, career death, health. Scary, man.

• 26:02Konstantin Kisin?

  It is. And I think as you're pointing, I mean, I share your analysis, by the way, on the series of smaller crises we've had since World War II. The only thing I would possibly add for a broader picture is, of course, the Cuban Missile Crisis, which, in which we were literally minutes away from everyone on the planet dying. But it didn't feel as visceral on an individual level. It wasn't like we were all, you know, sitting in our bunkers. But apart from that, I agree with you. But I think in terms of death, the thing that we've seen is we're so desperate to push it out of our awareness as something that we don't even recognise as existing, that we're making very bad decisions. Because, you know, sure, we can leave the lockdown

• 26:45Konstantin Kisin?

  stuff to the epidemiologists, but we've interviewed doctors on the show, we've interviewed people on the show, and a lot of people now have concluded that the lockdown, while not necessarily preventing many Covid deaths, there's not any particularly strong evidence that that is the case, is definitely having a huge impact on the number of deaths we're going to see in the months and years to come. Because what's happening is, you're saving the lives of elderly people who end up living a few months longer or a year longer. And the cost of that is that you are delaying cancer diagnosis, you're delaying other treatments for other very serious conditions in younger people, you're delaying dealing with mental health,

• 27:29Konstantin Kisin?

  exacerbating people's problems with many, many things. And the chances are, more people will die as a result of the lockdowns than of Covid-19.

• 27:38Chris Williamson?

  Can you explain what weaponising empathy means?

• 27:43Konstantin Kisin?

  Hmm. So this is from an interview I did with the former Deputy Prime Minister of Australia, John Anderson. And he was very kind to have me, and I really enjoyed talking to him. One of the things we were talking about is how identity politics has been used to antagonise different groups against each other. And identity politics, for people who aren't familiar with it, being the idea that the way we should think of ourselves in terms of our political discussions, isn't, you know, I'm Constantine and I'm Chris, and I, Constantine, think this about the economy, and I think this about culture, and I think this about immigration, and you have your own individual thoughts. But rather, we should think of it as, well, we're two men. Or, I'm an immigrant, and I assume you're

• 28:28Konstantin Kisin?

  British born and British descent, right? I love the confidence with you. Yeah, yeah, definitely.

• 28:34Chris Williamson?

  Mate, I'm from the north east of England with a mum who's like one sixteenth Scottish, and a dad who's from Newton Acliff. I'm like as born and bred salt of the earth as you're going to find.

• 28:45Konstantin Kisin?

  Right, exactly. So, so, so, identity politics basically says that you should think of yourself as a straight white man. I assume you're straight, I don't know, it may be, yeah, straight, so whatever you are, straight white man, I am a straight, possibly white man, but I'm also Jewish and I'm also an immigrant, and I should think about myself and my political views through that prism. So let's say that, instead of being straight, white and male, you were a black gay woman, well, your views wouldn't be dictated by your individual personality, but rather, the views that you have are shaped primarily by the fact that you're black, that you're gay, that you're female, and that the way you should view politics is through that prism, and the way that society

• 29:29Konstantin Kisin?

  should view you is also through that prism. In other words, by looking at you, I can already tell that you, as a straight white man, massively privileged, been oppressing people for centuries, your people are evil, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and equally, if you're a black gay woman, well, the chances are you're super oppressed, and therefore, that means you're supposed to have certain political views as well. That's identity politics. So, and this is a view of politics that has completely taken over our cultural institutions in society, and many other institutions too. It's the way we talk, you know, there was a liberal MP today or the other day who suggested that we need all ethnic minority shortlists, right? This is the sort of product-

• 30:13Chris Williamson?

  Like a team sheet, like a roll call. Can all of the Latinos put their hands up, please?

• 30:20Konstantin Kisin?

  Right. So saying the way you get MPs from ethnic minority backgrounds into parliament is not allow white people to stand in certain constituencies essentially, right? Because white people are quote-unquote privileged, therefore, they don't deserve that opportunity. They've had too many opportunities already, and we need to raise up people. And of course, what this ignores is, almost exclusively, the ethnic minority people who do come, in many, many cases,

• 30:44Konstantin Kisin?

  You know, they've been to a private school, went to Ox- Oxbridge, uh, you know, did PPE there uh, at Oxford and then became a parliamentary assistant and worked or, or in Rishi Sunak's case, you know, very prominent family, et cetera, um, with, with links to banking or whatever his background is, right? So it's taking this very blunt force view of, of racial relations, uh, of, of relations between men and women and of how we conduct our politics. Now, how has that, and my point was, when I was talking about this, is how has that happened? How has this ideology, which is antithetical to everything Western society is built on? Western society is built on the idea that we're all individuals, right?

• 31:29Konstantin Kisin?

  And, and that what matters about us is not the color of our skin. I remember a guy called Martin Luther something that was talking about this, right? How we should not be judged by our skin color, but rather we should be judged by the content of our character, by who we are as individuals. How did this collective idea, identitarian idea, how did that embed itself so firmly into our political discussion? And, and the way it has is, it's, it's a very powerful tool, because if I say to you, "Well, look, excuse me, as an immigrant, I am deeply oppressed," or "My life has been difficult," well, unless you're a psychopath, your instinct is to go, "Oh, I'm sorry to hear that, like, what's, what's been your life experience?" Right? Uh, and that's most people's instinct, because most people are compassionate and caring

• 32:14Konstantin Kisin?

  and they want to, you know, to express support and sympathy for people who, who are victims of life, because some people genuinely have had difficult experiences, we all have, uh, but some people more than others. Uh, and so you take that, the, and you use people's empathy against them. If you say to people, "Well, look, uh, you know, Britain is the most evil racist country in the world."

• 32:38Konstantin Kisin?

  A lot of people initially will go, well, okay, especially in this country where the culture is sort of very apologetic and, well, I'm sorry, you know, you stepped on my foot, but I apologize to you, that sort of attitude. People go, okay, well, you know, let's look at, maybe, maybe, you know, did we had slavery in this country and we had this and we had that and, you know, our ancestor did certain things. Let's maybe look at that. You know, if you're saying that you are discriminated against in modern society because of your skin color or your sexuality or whatever else it might be, well, maybe that's true. Let's have a look at that. And I think there's definitely some room for that. You know, when I came to this country in the 90s, it was certainly less tolerant than it is now.

• 33:21Konstantin Kisin?

  And I think that progress has been a result of that sort of attitude of like, let's make sure that we learn the lessons from the Stephen Lawrence murder and cover up by the police, right? Let's learn the lessons from certain things that have happened that are atrocious and tragic. Let's learn the lessons of, you know, the racism that was quite common in this country 30, 40, 50 years ago. But what it's got to now is the people who've, who, who create that sort of grievance industry, some of which was initially needed, they now want to survive and sustain their lives. And so you've got these professional race baiters on TV who go on and talk about how, you know, they're even more oppressed than they've ever been and life is terrible. And what they're doing is they're using decent, ordinary

• 34:05Konstantin Kisin?

  people's empathy against them.

• 34:07Chris Williamson?

  I really like the weaponizing empathy terminology. I think it nicely encapsulates the weakness that is being targeted. And as someone who does have excess empathy, it makes for a very difficult, it makes me confused about my own views because I get scared about saying the wrong thing, about upsetting someone. Then, as you'll be aware, and, you know, as a little bit of insight behind breaking the fourth wall for how you guys and both me will be, I wonder whether you have felt the increase in ambient anxiety about saying the wrong thing as you're Platform grows like when it's a full on bedroom project that no one gives a shit about.

• 34:52Chris Williamson?

  You're like, well, so what? Like, I've got all this other stuff that's going on. But as your baby, as a independent podcaster or broadcaster or radio host, or whatever it might be, as that becomes a bigger and bigger part of your life financially, passionately, career wise, as that grows, you're actually, hang on a second, I got something to lose here. I genuinely have something that I should be afraid of. With that, you get more stability because presumably you would have the support of a larger audience. You also have a greater backlog of content. Jordan Peterson has always said, if you want to call me a right wing Nazi, there is hundreds of hours of me lecturing online, please find the point at which I've done that.

• 35:35Chris Williamson?

  But yeah, have you felt that? Because I certainly little twinges in the back of my mind. I'm like, there's something to lose here now.

• 35:43Konstantin Kisin?

  Yeah, I think I've got a very sort of perverse personality in that way in that I actually feel much freer to speak my mind now than I've ever done. Because first of all, I'm very clear that not everyone's going to agree with me. You know, that contract that we've referenced when I turned it down two years ago became a big story. And that sort of, it like broke everything for me like in a moment, you know? Sometimes you stretch a band and stretch a band and stretch a band and eventually. But for me, it was just like snap the fucking things literally in two weeks.

• 36:17Chris Williamson?

  Baptism of fire.

• 36:19Konstantin Kisin?

  Yeah, baptism of fire, exactly. So I went from literally, no one really knows me. I don't have any public profile. I'm a comedian on the comedy circuit. I'm doing pretty well, but not, not anything spectacular. I'm moving up the ranks. I get on with most people very well. I don't, comedians sort of like me, other comedians and my colleagues, whatever. To in the space of two weeks going, okay, well, half of the comedy industry now hates me.

• 36:49Konstantin Kisin?

  And from that moment, just the number of fucks I give has rapidly plummeted towards zero very, very quickly. And the thing is, the bigger the platform grows, in terms of trigonometry and my own following, I just feel people have got our backs, man. You know, the people who watch our show, they'll back us. And if we come under attack, they will chip in and they'll help us out. And if we get sued for something, there'll be people to help us out. The Free Speech Union is a big factor in Darren Grimes' case, but in many others, they're helping people deal with, you know, libelous accusations, being sacked from work for saying something controversial, whatever.

• 37:29Konstantin Kisin?

  So I feel like there's actually, you know, on trigonometry, we probably have about 200,000 subscribers across the different platforms, if you put YouTube and other stuff together. Those 200,000 people, many, many of whom really believe in what we're doing, they agree with the principle of what we're doing, which is trying to have honest conversations with interesting people, which is what you do. And if they feel that that is being destroyed, I have every confidence that our audience will back us up. And, you know, we were just chatting today in the studio with the guys, with the team about, you know, we posted a joke, I posted a joke about the vaccine on my Twitter.

• 38:08Chris Williamson?

  About being good with mathematics.

• 38:10Konstantin Kisin?

  Yeah, about, I basically said that I'm gonna take a rushed vaccine, I'm not worried about it, because I've always wanted to be good with maths. The idea being that vaccines, some people say, give you autism, right? And the first comment under that Facebook post on our page was, "I am autistic and I'd just like to say I'm not in any way offended by this part." The audience we've built are people who really appreciate what we do, and they'll back us up. And I hope that's not naive, and as long as we stick to our principles, I think, you know, people have your back. And that's really the great power of the internet, is in the past, I think cancelling people was much easier, because all you did is, you know, you burned them at the stake, or you get them fired, or whatever it might have been. Now...

• 38:53Konstantin Kisin?

  You know, for people like me and you, being cancelled may actually be quite beneficial.

• 38:57Chris Williamson?

  Clout, man. Everything, everything's, as my good friend and social media marketer buddy Johnny says, clicks are clicks. And that's the situation you found yourself in with the contract. You know, it's like, I think everyone gets a couple of cracks at like the viral moment, Zuby's deadlift video, Darren Grimes is being called in by the Met Police, your contract thing. My early one was Love Island, but we don't talk about that. So, you know, we have these opportunities to, to, to kind of capitalize on it. And you're totally correct that that

• 39:34Chris Williamson?

  first order effect of being a weakness might second, third, fourth order effect actually be the platform, the springboard that you need to then further the, further the audience. So yeah, man, I, I hope, I hope that you're right. I really do think decentralizing the control and, and being your, going to great lengths to make yourself uncancellable, as Sam Harris says, is strong. Build a following on a platform, then build an email list that is not mediated by anyone. Try and cancel it. Like go to move your platform, move your audience anywhere. Once you have an email list, they can go anywhere. And that's bulletproof.

• 40:14Konstantin Kisin?

  Yeah, obviously there are exceptions to that. And some people have been sort of censored way off, but you know, I'm not, as I sort of joked at the beginning, I'm super controversial. Actually, I have very centrist opinions on pretty much everything. It's just the weird world we live in. So I don't ever anticipate, you know, being taken off all these platforms for saying what I say. But I'll still, you know, insist that other people shouldn't.

• 40:39Chris Williamson?

  I love it. What is your prediction for the 2020 election?

• 40:45Konstantin Kisin?

  Uh, I, every day I wake up and I change my mind.

• 40:50Chris Williamson?

  What's today then? Today is Friday the 16th of October 2020. What's your prediction?

• 40:55Konstantin Kisin?

  Yes, so yesterday I thought Biden was gonna win.

• 41:00Konstantin Kisin?

  Today I think Trump is gonna win, but it's gonna be close and it's gonna get very messy.

• 41:05Chris Williamson?

  Take me through, take me through the thinking.

• 41:08Konstantin Kisin?

  Okay, so, national polling, and I invite people, they, is it, how soon after we record this is this going out?

• 41:16Chris Williamson?

  Less than a week, so pretty quick.

• 41:17Konstantin Kisin?

  Okay, so, I interviewed with a guy called Jim Rickards, who was one of the analysts who predicted Trump's first election, very early on, will be going out at some point in the next week or two after this goes out. And, uh, we've had him on the show a number of times, and what he was saying was, yes, Biden is up in the national polls by 10 to 12 points. He is, uh, but national polls don't matter because in America they don't have national elections, right? It's all done state by state, so you have to win the battleground states. The fact that Biden and Harris are gonna get, let's say, 4 million more votes in California than Trump, doesn't really matter because you can only win California once.

• 42:02Konstantin Kisin?

  So, the national polling isn't necessarily indicative of the result. If you remember in 2016, Hillary won the popular vote by quite some margin, didn't really help her because of the electoral college. So, that's another, well, that's one part of it. Obviously, the shy Trump voter is a huge phenomenon, right? Uh, and also, I think, it's not been much covered in, in the mainstream media, uh, in this country, or much of the mainstream media in America, but what is happening in many cities, or several cities in America now, is full-blown riots, burning down of property, shops, people are being killed in the streets for, you know, turning up to some protests and being pro-Trump, literally being shot in the head, et cetera, et cetera.

• 42:45Konstantin Kisin?

  Uh, and the Antifa people who are doing this are now taking that fight to the suburbs. They're taking it into where the middle class, quote-unquote, people live. And I can tell you one thing that I know from experience. The moment you start messing with people's sense of safety... The moment a middle-class couple with two children and a nice car and a garage or whatever suddenly feel like there's armed people outside who may well burn their house down, that is the moment when people will vote for anyone, as long as they promise to prevent that, which is my greatest fear with all of this, right? And I don't know if you remember, when we had the BLM riots in London, I had a massive

• 43:27Konstantin Kisin?

  super-viral thread on Twitter talking about this very thing, that the greatest danger of allowing these riots to happen and then being biased in terms of saying they're largely peaceful when police officers are being attacked, etc., is that if you show people these scenes of disorder long enough, and you show the police backing down and not tackling and not addressing the sort of disorder, then what they will eventually go is, "Look, I don't care what this guy, I don't care if he's racist, I don't care if he wants to deport immigrants, I just care that he or she is going to deliver stability and order." And my sense is that there will be many people in America who don't want to see their cities

• 44:09Konstantin Kisin?

  burned down, who are gonna look at what's happening and go, "Look, I don't like Donald Trump, I think he may be a bit racist, I think he shouldn't talk about women the way he talks, I think he's obnoxious, I think he's brash," but they're gonna look at that and go, "What's the choice here? I can either have a racist sexist president, if that's how they see it, or I can have my house burned down." Now, you put that in front of any certain person, right? That's what I see. So, I've sort of been disenthralled of this idea that the national polls are necessarily a strong predictor.

• 44:48Konstantin Kisin?

  It's gonna be close, and it's probably gonna end up not being a result on election night. We may not see a result for two, during which time Donald Trump is almost certainly going to be the leader, because Republicans tend to vote in person, Democrats much more do the voting via post. So, what you're gonna have is a week or two, when Donald Trump, quote-unquote, "won," but the election result isn't unconfirmed, and then those ballots may come in, and he may then lose.

• 45:23Chris Williamson?

  Man.

• 45:24Konstantin Kisin?

  That's not a healthy situation, my friend. I'm glad, you know, one of my biggest criticisms of Trump is that he refused to say that he would hand over power peacefully until yesterday, which is when he finally did, which I'm glad. But because I think, you know, that's completely unacceptable in a democracy for one party to say they wouldn't accept the result of an election. On the other hand, it's equally deeply unacceptable for Biden to refuse to talk about whether he's going to pack the court or not, because if you start messing with the Supreme Court and the number of justices on that to suit your political agenda, well, that's the end of the American project as well. So both of those things are completely unacceptable. I'm glad Trump has wrote back on that.

• 46:05Konstantin Kisin?

  I hope Biden and Kamala Harris now say they're not going to do that as well, because that is very, very important, but it's going to get messy.

• 46:14Chris Williamson?

  It is. Douglas, I asked Douglas the same question. This has been a theme I asked Adzad, I asked Andrew Doyle, I've asked Douglas, I've asked yourself, and Douglas gave the most, he had to pull the fence out of his ass in order to be able to actually speak, but he said, whatever happens, it's not going to be very well accepted. And he's got some quite big fears, which is interesting because he's now in America. Like, he's now over there. So, like, fair play, mate. Like, if stuff gets set on fire, you've decided to pop yourself in amongst it. Yeah, I agree. I think that no matter your political leaning, trying to undermine the democratic process at large really has to be one of those things that's unacceptable.

• 46:57Chris Williamson?

  It's like, look, you can two-foot slide tackle me, I can push you while you're off the ball, but no one can come in and pick it up and run away or shoot the referee. Like, these things are outside the rules of the game. In fact, they change the rules of the game. If we're supposed to be playing chess and you rugby tackle me to the floor, like, that kind of just, what are we, what are we doing here? There has to be some upper bound. But again, like, what have we been, this disintegrationist left, as Ben Shapiro and Dave Rubin refer to it, like... That game of one-upsmanship, we'll do something, we'll break some rules, so we'll break some rules, so we'll break some rules. And think as well, everybody's self-branding, everyone looks in some form or another, for some reason, there is a particular minority

• 47:41Chris Williamson?

  who look to political leaders as examples, as role models of how they should spend their lives morally, or just, you know, Trump says something, then you get it regurgitated, or Biden says something, then Kamala Harris says something, then you get it regurgitated. Like, if they are saying, well, we can break all of the rules, and they're supposed to be these paragons of diplomatic virtue, right? They're supposed to be the ones who are the least at the mercy of trends, you know, the fucking lighthouse in the storm type bullshit, that's what your politicians are supposed to be. If they're prepared to keep on changing all of the rules, what precedent does that set for everybody else? And it really, it

• 48:21Chris Williamson?

  really can quite quickly become a vicious cycle. So yeah, I think the next, when is the, is it the 22nd of November? When is it?

• 48:29Konstantin Kisin?

  The 3rd of November.

• 48:31Chris Williamson?

  Oh shit. It's soon, man. Wow. So I mean, the next three weeks are gonna be, they're gonna be compelling.

• 48:40Konstantin Kisin?

  Well, let me add, yeah, compelling, if you like horror movies. There is another aspect to this, and I think you speak to that very well, which is that if you allow politicians to conduct themselves in this way, and to delegitimize the democratic process, which both sides have done, but particularly, in my opinion, the Democrats in America and the left in this country as well, then what you end up with is a situation where we are now, where 36% of both Democrats and Republicans feel that violence is justified to achieve your political ends. So a third of both supporter groups are quite happy to use violence, right? Which has gone up from 8% about two years ago.

• 49:27Konstantin Kisin?

  So if you've got that situation, the election is in dispute, both parties are undermining the democratic process and encouraging their followers essentially to feel like violence is a way of resolving this issue, not a good recipe.

• 49:43Konstantin Kisin?

  Not a good recipe.

• 49:44Chris Williamson?

  Not at all. And I think, you know, to see, we often see these tip of the spear moments that they're like the maxim pithy aphorism quote that everyone remembers that tells them about what a wider concept means. And some of the things that we've seen, like Trump not being presidential during the debate. Like perhaps four years ago, it was cool and quirky and new and made people feel like he was going to drain the swamp and do this cool thing. And, oh, isn't it interesting to see someone who's not diplomatic and doesn't play by the rules. Whereas now you're like, yeah, okay, mate, like this is, this is kind of old hat now. I'm not so fussed about, I just want to hear the debate. Let's get back to that rule and that, you know, we vacillate between two different extremes

• 50:29Chris Williamson?

  and finally find something somewhere in the middle. But then you've got it on the left as well with the way it's much more of a, how would you say? It's the sneaky fucker game that's being played on the left. It's the brash hit it with a mallet game that's being played by Trump. But yeah, man, I am going to be, like you say, compelled for the horror movie over the over the next couple of months. Couple of questions left. Why are comedians getting involved in political dialogue? Like, people might not have expected individuals like you and Andrew Doyle would have been the vanguard of free speech.

• 51:05Konstantin Kisin?

  Well, for comedians, it's something that we feel viscerally because every time you go on stage, you are already self censoring because you're trying to find that point between what you are saying and what the audience wants to hear. And you're trying to find that line, right? So we're constantly playing with it. And of course, we say things that we don't mean, right? So this literalism, the idea that we should take jokes literally, and if I made a joke about autistic people, that means I hate autistic people, right? That is a problem for us on a sort of practical level, if you like. I also think comedy attracts people who are rebels by nature.

• 51:47Konstantin Kisin?

  And so we're naturally drawn to, or at least that's what I thought until I went into the comedy industry and found it to be the most conformist monoculture I've ever seen. But I did think, you know, watching, you know, people like Bill Hicks and George Carlin and people like that, that, you know, comedy is for, for people who like have a different opinion, man, and they, you know, they wanna say something that some people don't wanna hear, right? Like, that's what I thought, but now apparently that's not what comedy is about. Comedy is about making sure that you, you make fun of the right people and, you know, make, whatever this workshop is, I can't even be bothered to talk about anymore. So I think comedians are naturally sort of rebellious by nature, or at least some of us are.

• 52:32Konstantin Kisin?

  So it's a sort of professional hazard to us, the restriction of free speech, and there's also the other thing of like, we don't like restrictions, we are pro-freedom. And restricting people's speech restricts how they think, and Jordan Peterson hammered this point home a lot, which is without being able to speak freely, you can't think freely. And if you can't think freely, well, we're all fucked. So I think that's, that's kind of where it's coming from.

• 52:56Chris Williamson?

  Are comedians the saviors that we need at the moment, you reckon? More comedians?

• 53:00Konstantin Kisin?

  I don't know. I, I think, I think it takes everybody. Look, I mean, I think, look, look at the Free Speech Union, which I've mentioned, they're doing great work. Shows like yours and ours, you know, we're not strictly comedians in this context, but we're doing what I think is good work. There are some journalists who are starting to push back against all of this stuff. I, I think everybody's got a hand in this. I think the main thing is, the people need to, to think about, do you want to live in a society that judges everybody by their skin color, their race, their sexuality, their gender, et cetera? Or do you wanna live in a society that we all remember that we're individuals and we come together based on what we think, how we feel about things, what are, what are our views?

• 53:44Konstantin Kisin?

  And if we want to sort of divide ourselves, ourselves up, which we'll always will do because we're tribal by nature, then the healthy way to do that is, is to sort of do it on a voluntary basis of, well, I think this and you think that, and we both believe in free speech, so let's form a free speech society, or whatever else it might be, as opposed to going, well, we're both men, men need to stick together.

• 54:08Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, well, I mean, we do. Which guest have you enjoyed most or been most surprised by this year?

• 54:15Konstantin Kisin?

  I don't know. I always hesitate to answer this question because it's like saying, you know, one of my heroes, Michael Jordan, basketball player, was once asked which of his six championship titles was his favorite. And he said, well, that's like asking me which of my kids I love the most. Right. So to me, you know, obviously, we have brilliant guests and some guests, some stronger than others or whatever. But I try not to sort of evaluate it that way. We've had so many brilliant guests.

• 54:42Chris Williamson?

  Which one were you most surprised by? Was the one that you particularly were pleasantly surprised by?

• 54:51Konstantin Kisin?

  Well, I actually would say Darren Grimes. I mean, he comes across as incredibly intelligent, articulate, interesting, original, thoughtful, not in any way sort of unpleasant or, you know, controversial even. The guy is pretty, you know, he has the views of half the country on pretty much every issue. So I was surprised at that because I didn't really, I wasn't all that familiar with him. I knew him as the right wing commentator, you know. And so, yeah, I mean, that's the one that comes to mind straight away. It's just he was, you know, we were both very, very impressed with Darren.

• 55:28Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, he, for someone who has that accent, I love the fact that he's so erudite and yet will say like, off to me mums to go and get myself some fish and chips. You know, like, hang on, how is this? There's some bizarre world because it's so London centric, right? Especially the publishing in the UK. To hear someone who for me is a very, very familiar accent, deploying some incredibly complex and nuanced thoughts. I'm like, yeah, yeah, that's, that's cool, man. Last question. What is the one thing that we're not talking about that we really should be?

• 56:04Konstantin Kisin?

  Shoes on your other foot now, how's that for you? And unlike us, you didn't warn me this was coming, so I have to think for my teeth. I think the one thing we're not talking about is the end game of all of this. The end game of identity politics. What is that? If you play the movie forward, where do you get to? And I think if more of us thought about that and were prepared to speak about that openly and more people considered those outcomes, we would be much more careful and much more reluctant to proceed in the direction that we've been going because the truth is that they tried it with

• 56:48Konstantin Kisin?

  men and women. They tried to antagonize women against men and they managed to some extent, but no matter how hard you try, there's, as somebody said, I can't remember who, there's too much fraternizing with the enemy between men and women. So you can't quite drive them apart. Deep down, even if you teach one young woman at university that all men are bad, all men are evil, whatever, eventually the biology kicks in and they go, I want a partner, I want to have children, I want this, I want that. Not all of them, but many will do. So you can't really drive them apart. But the racial issue is very different. It's not written anywhere in stone

• 57:30Konstantin Kisin?

  on a tablet that Moses brought down from the mountain that we have to have a multi-ethnic society. It's not written anywhere. That is an experiment that we've willingly engaged in and suspended our human tribalism to actually try to make it happen. And we've said, look, the American dream is, right? We don't have a British dream, but in America, if you come to this country, right? And you work hard, you get your head down, you learn the language, you integrate, you are American. If you come to Britain and you settle down here, you make a route, you learn the language, you integrate, you become part of society, you drink tea and apologize and whatever else you're supposed to do, right? You are British.

• 58:17Konstantin Kisin?

  That's what we've said, and that is an experiment that was working and working very well and getting better and better and better. Now, if you look across the world, that's not how most countries are. Most countries are essentially ethno-states, right? Now, we've said we're going to have a multi-ethnic society. Well, the only way a multi-ethnic society works, the only way a multi-ethnic society remains peaceful, the only way a multi-ethnic society remains coherent is if people set aside their racial categories and actually don't say, "Well, I'm a black person, or I'm a brown person, or I'm a white person." No, you say, "I'm British." Right? That's not to say you have to discard your black or white or whatever identity, but it can't be the first thing that you think of when you think about yourself, because

• 59:02Konstantin Kisin?

  otherwise you're driving people apart, and the endgame of that is very, very ugly.

• 59:09Chris Williamson?

  That is an apocalyptic answer, but one that I agree with. I said this to Andrew when he came on the show the other day, that the hopeful counter to this, I'll give you my thesis for us moving forward, or my hope, I would guess, is that in the same way that the pandemic has been quite piss week, I know it's done a lot of damage, but really COVID, it just doesn't have the mortality that it needs to cause a real existential threat. Now, it still might mutate and all that stuff, like disclaimer, disclaimer, but it was quite a weak version of it, and yet we were wholly unprepared for it.

• 59:49Chris Williamson?

  But if and when a new pandemic comes around that's got smallpox-level mortality, we understand how to lock down more effectively, we understand how to shut travel routes, we can get PPE produced more quickly, we've got the 3D printing, we've got the ventilators, we've got all that stuff, right? So we are prepared because we would delivered a kind of a weak dose of something that may be worse in the future. My hope is that the identity politics game, which is being promulgated over the last few years, that has attached itself to the wrong horse. The Trojan horse that it's tried to deliver a particular ideology in is inherently so self-contradictory and just a losing race that everyone can see the hypocrisy in it,

• 1:00:32Chris Williamson?

  the ridiculousness of it, and it's so self-defeating because it fractures its own group into competing different levels of hierarchy to the point at which the snake just eats its own tail. And in future, if some other ideologues decide to come along and get themselves behind a particular cause that we go, hang on a second, I remember that you played this game once before, like we've been here. Now, this one might seem a little bit more seductive or more polished and a bit more virtuous, truthful, whatever. But no, no, no, no, no, we, we, we had this. So I'm wondering whether or not this ridiculous example of trying to push a particular ideology has been attached to the wrong, the wrong racehorse and is

• 1:01:17Chris Williamson?

  potentially going to inoculate us against it happening in future.

• 1:01:21Konstantin Kisin?

  It's a very optimistic view, one that I shared in March. I thought that in March, we had about a month, up until about Dominic Cummings and then immediately after George Floyd. There was that moment, we had an opportunity, you know, we all quote unquote came together.

• 1:01:39Chris Williamson?

  Shared humanity.

• 1:01:41Konstantin Kisin?

  Shared humanity, clap for the NHS, et cetera, et cetera. And even then, some people tried to go on about how, you know, BAME people are more likely to die from COVID and somehow that's society's fault. When in fact, it's just vitamin D is harder to obtain for people with darker skin. But, but it was sort of ignored mostly and we sort of pulled together. But I think the lockdown, the impact of people spending more time on social media, worrying about the future, being stuck indoors, many people in, you know, if you, if you are living in a happy family and, and you work from home and you, you know, you've got a garden and a nice house, then your mental health is probably

• 1:02:25Konstantin Kisin?

  fine. If your job is safe and all the rest of it. But for a lot of people, it wasn't like that. I know people, young people who, for example, you know, they were stuck with somebody else in the house, a stepparent who was abusive, you know, or, or just people stuck in the wrong environment with flatmates that they've meaning, they've been meaning to leave that flat and that they were in dispute, or people stuck in loveless marriages or whatever. That mental health impact, I think, is what then exploded with BLM. That pent up frustration, anger, confusion. That's why we had protests about George Floyd in the UK, which if you think about it, doesn't really make much sense.

• 1:03:05Chris Williamson?

  Man, I agree. Konstantin, thank you so much for today. People want to check out trigonometry or yourself, where should they go? Where do they, where do they direct themselves?

• 1:03:13Konstantin Kisin?

  I am on Twitter at Konstantin Kisin and the show is at Trigger Pod. We're on YouTube, all the podcast apps. Just search for trigonometry as in gun trigger, T R I double G E R.

• 1:03:25Chris Williamson?

  Amazing, man. If I get a call off the Met Police, we can share an Uber there together. Hopefully, we haven't crossed any boundaries. I've really, really enjoyed today. I think that you guys are doing fantastic work. I'm proud to be of the, the particular little sort of weird fucked up community that we've got of British podcasters doing good work at the moment. So long may it continue.

• 1:03:48Konstantin Kisin?

  Thanks. I appreciate it and, and right back at you. And also, if we do have to share an Uber, that would be illegal because we need to socially distance.

• 1:03:57Chris Williamson?

  Thank you, man.

• 1:04:11Speaker 02

  Mr. President, my company told me of the explosion on our rig on October 2nd. Causing massive water displacement and triggering a tsunami. They all heap the blame on me. Tom Cruise is. Digger got us into this mess and Digger's gonna dig us out. From the director of Birdman and the Revenant.

• 1:04:27Speaker 03

  What would happen if I stopped drilling? You're stalled, you're freezing there. That's what.

• 1:04:31Speaker 02

  With great power comes great deniability.

• 1:04:35Speaker 03

  I'm not the first then.

• 1:04:36Speaker 02

  Digger. See the trailer online. Only in theaters October 2nd. Rated R. Under 17 and under 17 without parent.