#1003 - Konstantin Kisin - The Forces Behind Britain's Downfall

Summary

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Modern Wisdom #1003 – Konstantin Kisin – The Forces Behind Britain's Downfall

Podcast: Modern Wisdom
Host: Chris Williamson
Guest: Konstantin Kisin
Date: October 6, 2025

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Overview

In this episode, Chris Williamson sits down with Konstantin Kisin—comedian, commentator, and co-host of TRIGGERnometry—to diagnose the "forces behind Britain’s downfall." Their robust conversation spans the UK's immigration dynamics, the concept of national decline, freedom of speech erosions, multiculturalism, the economic squeeze, and the cultural and psychological state of modern Britain. Kisin brings his distinct perspective as a Russian-born immigrant to the UK, drawing sharp contrasts between British and American approaches while challenging the narratives driving public discourse.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Terminology & Reality: Immigration in Britain

• Illegal vs. Asylum Seeker ([01:20]–[02:44])
  • Kisin explains the technicalities and legal nuances, noting it was not technically "illegal" to claim asylum upon arrival in the UK until recent changes.
  • The influence of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) restricts Britain's ability to reform immigration policy—debates about leaving the ECHR are now mainstream due to public pressure.

"If you come into the country and say, 'I’m an asylum seeker,' you’re not an illegal immigrant... So technically there's no such thing as an illegal immigrant. That’s why I said the term is controversial."
— Konstantin Kisin [01:22]

• The Scale & Perception of Immigration ([04:40]–[06:03])
  • Kisin draws a direct line from 1996 (55,000 legal immigrants annually) to the present, where a similar number arrive illegally each year.
  • The government now reluctantly releases crime data by immigrant origin, increasing public concern about cultural integration and crime rates.
  • Kisin warns of the dangers of suppressing legitimate grievances, highlighting risks of social unrest if the government doesn’t act.

"If you think about it, why do you have an immigration system? What's the point of having a border?... Now, who are the—if someone is breaking through a window into your house, are they likely to be the sort of people you want in?"
— Konstantin Kisin [05:27]

2. The Cultural Clash: UK vs. US on Immigration

• Foundational Attitude Differences ([09:33]–[11:39])
  • US: Pro-immigration, “nation of immigrants,” focus on legal entry and assimilation into the American dream.
  • UK: Historically not a nation of immigrants; huge demographic shifts in the last 20 years have unsettled the population.

"America is an incredibly pro-immigration country... Britain is not a nation of immigrants. It never has been."
— Konstantin Kisin [09:52]

• Integration & Multiculturalism ([26:41]–[30:30])
  • Kisin distinguishes between a multi-ethnic society (different skin colors) and multiculturalism (different, unassimilated value systems).
  • Argues multiculturalism and celebrated “diversity” can undermine unity and social cohesion.

"Diversity is not a strength... Unity is a strength when you are attempting to do things. Common purpose, common values, a sense of shared identity."
— Konstantin Kisin [27:12]

3. Democracy, Elite Disregard & Civil Protest

• Impact of Public Dissent ([00:35]–[03:31])

  • Recent "downfall" protests are seen not purely as a negative but perhaps as a healthy pressure forcing debate and possible reform.
  • Kisin notes that if movements remain peaceful and focused on legitimate concerns, meaningful change is possible.

• Media, Class, and Silencing ([23:40]–[27:17])

  • Discussion of media figures like Rylan Clark and the climate of fear around raising immigration concerns.
  • Kisin underscores that mainstream and political elites often dismiss working-class grievances as ignorant or racist, further deepening divides.

"If you live in a democracy, his opinion is just as important as yours. And you ought to try and persuade him if you genuinely think he's wrong..."
— Konstantin Kisin [48:42]

4. British Values, Decline, and the “Queue Principle”

• What Are British Values? ([30:30]–[33:00])
  • Kisin finds it telling that British values are now hard to define—but identifies fairness, orderliness, and “queuing” (waiting your turn) as central.
  • Unrestricted or illegal immigration is seen as violating the fundamental British sense of fair play and rule-following.

"Queuing is civilization. It's a process by which we go from the law of the jungle... to actually having a civilized society, we're gonna do things in order, we're gonna respect each other."
— Konstantin Kisin [31:19]

• Personal Perspective as an Immigrant ([33:00]–[34:51])
  • Kisin argues from experience that selective immigration benefits society, but without proper vetting and assimilation, it becomes a liability.
  • Approval for immigrants should hinge on both skills/cultural adaptability and legal process.

5. The Trap of the Welfare State

• From Net to Hammock to Trap ([109:09]–[111:43])
  • The welfare system, designed as a “safety net,” in many cases acts as a “trap” discouraging work and ambition.
  • 25% of people under 35 are on benefits; over half of households get more from the state than they pay in taxes.

"If you create a trap for people, a lot of them are gonna fall into it."
— Konstantin Kisin [110:56]

6. Economic Stagnation & the Net Zero Dilemma

• Energy Costs & National Wealth ([101:00]–[104:11])
  • UK now has some of the world’s highest energy prices, driven by net zero policies.
  • High costs hurt industry, reduce competitiveness, and ultimately shrink the economic pie.

"GDP is energy transformed. The more energy you consume, the more prosperity you have..."
— Konstantin Kisin [101:01]

• Prosperity, Scarcity Mindset, and Class Resentment ([114:04]–[118:50])
  • Kisin critiques the popular left-leaning narrative that blames the super-rich for everyone else’s struggles. Instead, he points to poor growth policies and a dearth of aspiration.
  • Britain risks becoming a low-aspiration, scarcity-minded country, in contrast to the growth-oriented US.

7. Freedom of Speech & Cultural Taboo

• UK’s Weak Speech Protections ([82:15]–[90:11])
  • Kisin describes the UK's lack of a “First Amendment,” noting arrests for “grossly offensive” speech and the phenomenon of “non-crime hate incidents.”
  • He warns this curtails honest public debate and disproportionately silences those without platforms.

"Thirty people a day are being arrested for things that they say... You don't have freedom of speech in Britain."
— Konstantin Kisin [82:51]

• The Erosion of National Pride ([73:50]–[75:59])
  • Arguments around national symbols like the English flag reflect deeper anxieties; public displays of patriotism are now controversial.
  • Kisin sees the backlash against the flag as a proxy for anti-national sentiment and an attack on collective identity.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Multiculturalism vs. Multi-Ethnic Society
  "Multiculturalism is the idea that...there’s no such thing as British culture, there’s no such thing as British identity... Diversity is not a strength."
  — Konstantin Kisin [27:12]

• On British Decline
  "Within our lifetime, I've watched this great country go from that to what we have now. And I think it's a tragedy."
  — Konstantin Kisin [61:48]

• On Political Protest
  "It’s got to be the most positive, constructive, nonviolent movement...there’s actually nothing they can do to stop it."
  — Konstantin Kisin [75:57]

• On Class, Justice, and Free Expression
  "[If] you say something that is considered grossly offensive or hateful... you can be prosecuted for it."
  — Konstantin Kisin [89:36]

• On Net Zero Economic Policy
  "We've basically deliberately, purposefully destroyed our own prosperity. And the reason we've done this... is taking for granted what you have."
  — Konstantin Kisin [103:57]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 00:35 – US streamers covering UK protests; themes of British civil unrest.
• 01:22 – Legal definitions: asylum seeker vs. illegal immigrant in UK law.
• 04:40 – The changing scale of legal and illegal immigration since 1996.
• 09:32 – Core differences in US and UK immigration history and mindset.
• 11:41 – Tony Blair era immigration boom and aftermath.
• 26:41 – Multiculturalism vs. multiethnicity: definitions and consequences.
• 31:19 – British values distilled: the civilization of queuing.
• 33:03 – How being an immigrant affects Kisin’s view on immigration.
• 48:42 – Elitism and the delegitimizing of working-class protest voices.
• 75:57 – Flags, national pride, and the symbolism of the backlash against the English flag.
• 82:51 – Freedom of speech limitations in the UK and implications for public life.
• 101:01 – Energy consumption as a direct driver for prosperity; critique of net zero.
• 109:09 – The welfare system as a trap, not a safety net.
• 114:04 – Britain’s scarcity mindset, leftist economic narratives, and the need for growth.

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Tone & Style

The tone of the episode is candid, nuanced, and often wry—blending Kisin’s sharp analytical style and immigrant outsider’s perspective with Chris’s thoughtful, self-reflective interviewing. Both speakers punctuate hard data with stories, analogies (“queuing is civilization,” welfare as a “trap”), and British humor. The discussion is unsparing in its criticism of government, media, and cultural complacency, but ultimately aims for constructive diagnosis rather than mere pessimism.

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Final Thoughts

Konstantin Kisin and Chris Williamson deliver a wide-ranging, provocative examination of the UK’s current malaise. They peel back layers on immigration, cultural identity, economics, and the sapping effect of unaddressed grievances—both cautioning against tribalistic, moralizing discourse and advocating for practical, values-based reform.

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For listeners interested in the intersections of politics, culture, and economics in contemporary Britain, this episode stands as a revealing, rich diagnostic—and a call for clarity, candor, and constructive action.

Transcript

[Chris Williamson]

Before we get started, I'm going on tour this winter around the US and Canada and you can join me. It's an hour and a half long show. There's a half hour Q and A at the end, there's meet and greet, there's music warmed up before I get started by Zach Talander. And tickets are limited and you can get yours right now. New York, Boston, Chicago, Austin, Salt Lake City and Denver still have limited tickets left at ChrisWilliamson Live. That's ChrisWilliamson Live. All right, let's get into it. US streamers are using UK downfall protests as an entire content niche. Now, that can't be a good sign.

[Constantin Kisin]

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

[Chris Williamson]

Okay, explain that to me.

[Constantin Kisin]

So if you come into the country and say, I'm an asylum seeker, I'd like asylum. You're not an illegal immigrant.

[Chris Williamson]

You're like a Cuban or a Venezuelan arriving at the American border or whatever.

[Constantin Kisin]

But I mean, in America it is illegal, Right?

[Chris Williamson]

I think I thought that when you got there you just needed to go on.

[Constantin Kisin]

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

[Chris Williamson]

Right. Because Downfall would suggest that this is the beginning of the end as opposed to the beginning of something better.

[Constantin Kisin]

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

[Chris Williamson]

Yeah. I would certainly say the people in America and some of them in the UK that are covering it being more outlandish, being more inflammatory in the way that this is being covered is definitely. I don't know, it seems to me like the UK might be at boiling point. I'm not here, I'm not on the ground. I don't know what's going on. Is that being overblown? Boiling point?

[Constantin Kisin]

I think it's being overblown by some people. It doesn't mean that in the round it's being overblown. There are definitely people who, like, the UK is about to explode right this very second. The UK is not about to. To explode right this very second. But if those pressure valves are not allowed to vent the pressure and achieve actual change, then we, and I've, you know, you know this. I've been saying this for some time, like we're not on a good path. Generally speaking, it is headed in a bad direction. If the people at the top continue to try and keep the lid on the pressure cooker down, if they actually go, oh, wait, wait, no, it's not just a handful of thugs. It's actual human beings that just mothers, fathers, people who care about their country, protesting about this. And then they convert that into action that results in the concerns that people have being addressed. And by the way, we should talk about what those concerns are, because they're pretty reasonable concerns. I mean, one of the things that happens. So I always give this example just because it puts this into numbers that are easy for people to digest. When I came to Britain, 1996, 55,000 people a year came into Britain legally. Legal immigration. Like just people applying for a visa coming here.

[Chris Williamson]

The understood version of the word legal, right? Yes.

[Constantin Kisin]

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

[Chris Williamson]

To keep people out.

[Constantin Kisin]

It's to like the door in your house, it's to keep people out that you don't want in your house and to allow people to come in that you do want in your house. So by definition it's about excluding some people. Now who are the. If someone is breaking through a window into your house, are they likely to be the sort of people that you want in your country? Probably not. And what happens as well is, you know, for years now the government refused to release the data on crime committed by people that are coming from certain parts of the world. We now have that data and now we know why it is that they didn't want to release it.

[Chris Williamson]

Why?

[Constantin Kisin]

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

[Chris Williamson]

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

[Constantin Kisin]

I don't know that I have the data to say that exactly. But what we do know is that there are very high profile cases of people who have been put in one of these hotels or multiple occupancy buildings, et cetera, who have sexually assaulted 12 year old girls, people, et cetera. So what you have is just ordinary people now going, I don't want this next to my house because my daughter's got to walk to school tomorrow. And if, if you don't address those concerns, I don't mean you specifically, I mean the government, then you are really stirring up a lot of trouble. If you find a way to deal with this, then that's actually the system working as intended, which is you've done this ridiculous, extreme thing. You've got pushback, you adjust.

[Chris Williamson]

This only works. This is only a good thing. If the government actually steps in and makes some changes, though. This is all predicated on a very hopeful vision of what might happen top down in the future.

[Constantin Kisin]

Yeah. Or what might happen electorally, which would.

[Chris Williamson]

Then bring in a new organization that would do that top down.

[Constantin Kisin]

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

[Chris Williamson]

And they didn't have 23 miles of water.

[Constantin Kisin]

Yeah, exactly. And they have a giant border that's quite difficult to main police and so on.

[Chris Williamson]

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

[Constantin Kisin]

I know what you mean. I mean, I always say, you know, and it's important to make this point right? It's like I understand why people are coming across the Channel, you know, in search of a better life. Like, I wouldn't want to stay in France either. Joke I've made many times. And my point being, by the time these people have got here, they've been to through quite a lot of countries where they are perfectly safe if, if they are in fact genuine asylum seekers as opposed to just economic migrants. And again, don't blame people for wanting a better life. In the same way that I don't blame people for wanting a bigger house. I just don't want them breaking into my house because my house is better than theirs. Is that. That's quite a reasonable point?

[Chris Williamson]

I think so.

[Constantin Kisin]

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

[Chris Williamson]

Correct.

[Constantin Kisin]

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

[Chris Williamson]

I would agree.

[Constantin Kisin]

Right. However, Americans don't like illegal immigration, particularly when it gets to the levels that it had got to for a period of time. So the American attitude, broadly speaking, there are, of course, you know, there's a spectrum of opinion. But if you were to kind of go, what is the, the broad consensus in the U.S. i would put it based on my experience, Americans are broadly like, we are a country of immigrants. That's how this country came into being. And as long as you want to come here and buy into the American dream, respect the flag, respect the Constitution, respect the way of doing things, contribute, you know, set up your own business, do whatever, then that's great. And I know that you've, I'm sure you've experienced this. Like, I remember there was a point like people were saying to us, oh, you guys should move to America. And we were kind of thinking about it. And anyone that I ever mentioned the possibility of that, who was American, they were like, we'd love to have you. And they didn't mean me or Francis, they just meant people like you, people who are going to come here with their own thing and contribute. Right. Britain is not a nation of immigrants. It has never been a nation of immigrants. I wrote a whole article and there's a video on our channel if people want to watch it, basically breaking down immigration to this country. And until basically the late night, actually the 2000s, the number of people coming to Britain and the number of foreign born people in Britain was negligible. It was 1, 2, 3% total of the population. And then what you had under the Blair government was so much immigration in about, in a short period of time, around a decade, that in that decade more people came than had come in the entire history of this country in like a thousand years.

[Chris Williamson]

I didn't know that. Okay.

[Constantin Kisin]

More people came under the Blair government that had come since the Battle of Hastings in 1066. Right. Now, if you think about what that represents, like people go, well, you know, the people who are concerned about levels of immigration, they are extreme. And you go, well, no, no, no, you did this extreme thing. You brought more people in in 10 years than you had in A thousand years. And then you were surprised that that has been noticed, that's been noticed and that not everybody's happy about it. And of course what that was followed by is 10, 13, 14 years of a conservative government that was even worse. And, and, and look, immigra, like when we had a large wave of Polish people come in the 2000s, it was, it was disruptive to people's wages, particularly in, in the, in the kind of the sparkies, the builders, et cetera. But broadly speaking, it was not disruptive to the cultural fabric of this country because they, they had the same, similar religion, similar values. E. When you have people come from very disparate cultures, that becomes much more difficult to digest. And when the numbers are such, it's just impossible to assimilate people that quickly. So where you are now, as I said when we started this bit, we now have more, same numbers of illegal immigrants coming as we did legal immigrants within my lifetime. That's crazy. And so when people are pushing back against that, they've got legitimate concerns that have to be addressed. And if they're not, you will see a political revolution inevitably. And I hope it's a political revolution because if you keep storing this frustrations up, it could spill out into worse things, which none of us want.

[Chris Williamson]

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

[Constantin Kisin]

Yeah.

[Chris Williamson]

Why?

[Constantin Kisin]

Because it's a practical issue. It's a practical issue. Of course we would want to provide refuge to people who genuinely flee in persecution, but that has to be on the terms that the people of this country have voted for, because we live in a democracy. Right. So in the same way that you decide who comes into your house, you might well say, you know, there's someone fleeing persecution by the Chinese Communist Party in Hong Kong, or there's someone fleeing war in Ukraine, or there's someone fleeing war in Sudan or wherever. And you go, I'll actually house a family in my home while they get on their feet. Right. But I don't think there's a single person in the world who would appreciate just tens of thousands of people coming and breaking into their house without their permission, no matter how destitute they were actually. Right. So it's about balancing the interests of British people, French people, American people, whatever, with other concerns. And if you just take it as a moral issue, you cease to be pragmatic and practical about it, which is how you get to where we've got to. And then reality strikes back. And you know, my favorite Thomas Sowell quote is you can ignore reality, you can't ignore the consequences of ignoring reality. And that's where we are.

[Chris Williamson]

How does that apply to this situation?

[Constantin Kisin]

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

[Chris Williamson]

Beyond the obvious, why are people not staying in France? Why are they coming to the uk? I'm interested in the difference between asylum seeker and economic migrant.

[Constantin Kisin]

Well, the difference, an asylum seeker is someone who's, look, I'm not a lawyer, but basically the broad picture is someone who is fleeing persecution, they're going to get killed, they're going to get tortured, et cetera. They're going to, because they are, are, you know, of the wrong religion in their country, or they're gay, or they are fearing political persecution, whatever. An economic migrant is someone who isn't being persecuted, but that lives in what some controversial people might describe as a shithole country. Right? And they don't want to live in a shithole country. And I don't blame them. I don't blame them. But that does not mean that they get to circumvent the rules that we've instituted for our country. Right? Until you get the perfect communist utopia globalized across the world, where every country is the same, those pressures will be there. And the main thing that's actually happened in the last hundred years and the reason that mass immigration has become the issue that it has, isn't actually anything to do with the rules that we have about it or global inequality or the poverty of the global south or any of this other bullshit. It's technology. Travel has become much easier. It's much easier, it's much safer, it's much more comfortable to travel across the world. So these mass waves of people seeking a better life. Like, if you think about the way that the modern world around the globe has been created, waves of immigration from Europe into Australia, into New Zealand, into South America, into North America, those are very, very dangerous. Many, many people died on the journey. Many people died when they got there. It's not the case anymore. You can get there much quicker, much cheaper, much safer. And so you get these massive pressures. You have to update the way that you do things, otherwise the whole system becomes overwhelmed. And, you know, people are going to be very angry. About it.

[Chris Williamson]

Why the uk? What is it about the UK specifically that is so attractive?

[Constantin Kisin]

I don't know how comparatively attractive we are. I know that France, for example, and many other. Germany, Many other European countries also have these issues.

[Chris Williamson]

Do you know if they're at the rates that the UK's got?

[Constantin Kisin]

I don't know what the comparative rate would be. The thing is that Germany had. Germany has this. You know, they've got some guilt for understandable reasons, but still repaying that debt reparations. I mean, if you actually speak to a lot of Germans, I don't know if it's the case with the generation below ours, but our generation, they're still infused with World War II guilt for understandable reasons. Right. I just don't see the connection between, like, we killed, you know, have a tens of millions of people and now we've got to let people from Somalia in because karmic debt that we need to repay. That doesn't make much sense to me, but that was their approach.

[Chris Williamson]

Yeah.

[Constantin Kisin]

So when.

[Chris Williamson]

Yeah, yeah.

[Constantin Kisin]

When. When the Syrian. When there was a civil war in Syria, they let in loads of people without really being very careful about who it was they're letting in because of that. Right. My point is there's an illegal problem across Europe, but the reason people might want to come to Britain is we are incredibly generous to people who come, I would consider illegally. And that's. That's a pull factor. That's a pull factor.

[Chris Williamson]

What does that generosity look like?

[Constantin Kisin]

We're going to put you in a hotel. We almost certainly will not deport you. There's a possibility that you actually like, if you. I don't know if you've. In the time that you've been here, if you've ordered an Uber. Uber Eats. Rather not Uber. Uber Eats or. Yes, you're right. Have you noticed that quite a lot of the time the person on the app, whose name is on the app is not the person that turns up?

[Chris Williamson]

No.

[Constantin Kisin]

You haven't seen that?

[Chris Williamson]

No.

[Constantin Kisin]

That is a very common occurrence now. And the reason is that people are basically selling their identity to be used by illegal immigrants who then actually do the work. Wow. So there's a possibility you will effectively disappear into the black economy and you'll basically be allowed to stay here to the point where even if you commit crimes, you probably won't get deported. And we will look after you. We will make sure that, like, if you, if you go to Somalia as an illegal immigrant, the Somalian government is not going to make sure you stay alive. If you come to Britain as a Somalian illegal immigrant, we will make sure you have somewhere to live, food to eat, you're broadly speaking comfortable and like I say, you probably won't be deported. So if you get here, you've made it, so to speak. Right. That's the pull factor.

[Chris Williamson]

What's happening with the phone contract thing, is that true?

[Constantin Kisin]

I don't know the details of that. There's a lot of debate about this, about whether it's actually happening. Some of them have been given phones, some haven't. I. We don't know the details of that.

[Chris Williamson]

Right. That's interesting. One thing I did notice in New York, I spent the last month in New York and I don't think that there was a single English speaking Uber Eats delivery person. I also noticed when I was here last year that a lot of the Uber Eats guys and just a lot of people in general on 50cc mopeds had learner plates on. I get the sense that that's something to do with. You don't need to register for a license if you've got the learner plate on because any 16 year old that was. I'm learning to drive on there. Is that what's. Is that some fugazi that's happening?

[Constantin Kisin]

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

[Chris Williamson]

Seemed to be some fuckery or one of the E bikes that doesn't require any sort of a license at all. Nothing needs to be registered. So again, I know it's not on the same scale you were talking about before, but technology enabling travel.

[Constantin Kisin]

Yes.

[Chris Williamson]

Also unlocking some opportunities for people to stay.

[Constantin Kisin]

And one of the interesting things, I don't know if Eric Weinstein has ever said this on your show, but he made a very good point. We were just having a conversation over dinner the other day, which is a lot of the time we're told that like, well, we've got to import the slave class. Basically people who are going to work for peanuts because otherwise no one's going to do these jobs. We've got labor shortages. Right. And he went, you can't have a labor shortage in the market economy. It's not possible.

[Chris Williamson]

How so?

[Constantin Kisin]

The way the market works is if there's a shortage of something, what happens? The price of that thing goes up until there's a sufficient supply of that thing. Yeah. Not demand. Well, demand comes back down and supply goes back up. Right. So if you've to the. I mean, the way he illustrated this point might be a bit extreme, but he said at the right price, I will come to your house and lick your toilet clean with my own tongue. Right. And there is a price point at which most people will do that. So the point being is this idea that we have to have all of these people who are effectively being used as slave labor come in to do these jobs. Just it's a way of effectively depriving British people of the opportunity to be well paid for doing that job.

[Chris Williamson]

Right, Understood. Understood. Yep. You've probably heard me talk about Element before. Come on. Frankly, that's because I'm dependent on it and it's how I've started every morning for the last three years. Element is a tasty electrolyte drink mixed with everything that you need and nothing that you don't. Each grab and go stick pack contains a science backed electrolyte ratio of sodium, potassium and magnesium. With no sugar, no colouring, no artificial ingredients or any other junk. It plays a critical role in reducing muscle cramps and fatigue while optimizing brain health, regulating appetite and and curbing cravings. The orange flavor in a cold glass of water is like a sweet, salty, orangey nectar and I genuinely feel the difference versus when I've started it and when I've used it and when I haven't. Anyway, they've got a no questions ask refund policy with an unlimited duration. So you can buy it and try it for as long as you want. And if you don't like it for any reason, they will give you your money back. And you don't even need to return the box. That's how confident they are that you'll love it. Plus they offer free shipping in the US and right now you can get a free sample pack of elements most popular flavors with your first purchase by going to the link in the description below heading to drinklmnt.com modernwisdom that's drinklmnt.com ModernWisdom Rylan Clark got in bother for an anti immigrant rant. I don't know what's happened since I left the country. When I was here, Rylan Clark was not the vanguard of culture wars and I've come back for the Americans that are listening. Rylan Clark was on X Factor.

[Constantin Kisin]

This is not an area of expertise for me.

[Chris Williamson]

Really?

[Constantin Kisin]

No.

[Chris Williamson]

Okay. Rylan Clark did reality tv some sort of. He pivoted that, as many British people do, into presenting and commentary and fluffy morning TV show type stuff and said, at least from what I saw, which may not have been the entire clip, but at least what I saw as close to a heavily caveated, highly equivocating, very gentle approach of actually not even commenting about immigration, but saying if immigration continues, people will get upset. And this is what people are saying, not what I'm saying. This is what some people are saying and they seem to be upset. And the issue of reporting on reporting was sufficient to get Rylan Clark tip of the spear of the culture was.

[Constantin Kisin]

Well, right. And he was so heavily caveated in that clip, as you say, to the point where he said the thing that I just debunked five minutes earlier, which is he said, oh, Britain has always been a nation of immigrants, which it hasn't. But what he's doing is he's basically saying, I'm not a bad person. Here's some things that some people, not me. Here's some things that some people not me are saying. Right. Which. Which is how you kind of. You dip your toe into the waters of. And what I think is probably happening is like most people in the country now, when you speak to normal people, like ordinary people who are not on TV every day, it's. There's a kind of cons, like to the point where the Lib Dems are privately acknowledging that illegal immigration is a massive problem. Right. So basically the point is the overwhelming majority of people in this country think this is a big deal and everybody knows it. It's just that in the media you're not. Still not supposed to say it.

[Chris Williamson]

Yeah. And you've got to do the hand wringing and this weird land acknowledgment thing beforehand.

[Constantin Kisin]

Yes. Well, it's interesting because if you did imagine if you did land acknowledgements in Britain, they'd look very different to.

[Chris Williamson]

Yeah, that's.

[Constantin Kisin]

I acknowledge that we stand here on indigenous land.

[Chris Williamson]

22% of Brits think immigration levels should remain where they are. 69% think that most illegal immigrants do not share the same values. So, yeah, I mean, when was that? Was it Newsnight? This was forever ago that Newsnight did a. A phone in survey, a text in survey or something. And it was. How many people think that multiculturalism has failed? And it was. This must have been at least five years ago. It was like 89% of respondents thought that multiculturalism had failed. And I have to assume that if you did the same thing again, that did seem kind of high to me at the time. Okay.

[Constantin Kisin]

It might seem kind of low nowadays. Yeah. And look Again, I think it's important to delve into the nuance of it because a lot of people who haven't looked into this properly, they sort of. They. What they think multiculturalism means is like black people and brown people being in the country.

[Chris Williamson]

Correct.

[Constantin Kisin]

That's not multiculturalism, that's a multi ethnic society. Which can work. Absolutely can work. Multiculturalism is the idea that actually there's no. There's no such thing as British culture, there's no such thing as British identity, there's no such thing as British values. And what we really need to do is just bring people from all over the world and say, oh, you know, you want to practice your religion, your culture, you're this. That's great. Everybody live in their own ghetto and we're all living this beautiful multicultural utopia. And diversity is our greatest strength. Diversity is not a strength.

[Chris Williamson]

Why?

[Constantin Kisin]

Because I remember this great scene from Game of Thrones. Have you seen Game of Thrones? Do you remember when Cersei and King Robert, they're discussing the potential Dothraki invasion and she goes, yeah, but we've got five times as many. We've got five kingdoms, they've got just the one. And he goes, what's a bigger number, five or one? And she goes, five. And he goes, five, one. Right. Unity is a strength when you are attempting to do things. Common purpose, common values, a sense of shared identity. These are things that allow you to overcome difficulties. One of the reasons the concern about immigration is as high as it is, it's not just the levels of immigration, it's also the fact that Britain has become poorer. Our GDP per capita is lower today than it was in 2008. In other words, people's living standards are being eroded for reasons we can get into. So addressing that requires quite a lot of difficult challenges. We've got a bloated welfare sector. So you're going to have to deal with the fact that far too many people are not working and being paid not to work. You're going to have to deal with the national debt, which is way too high, the deficit. You've got like big, big challenges, right? And those challenges are quite easy to overcome, comparatively speaking, when we all feel like we are ultimately, at the end of the day, this is our country and we're going to sort it out. But if we have become multicultural in that everyone really only cares. You know, we keep hearing from politicians, we need to look at the concerns of the British X, Y, Z community, you know, British Jewish community, British Muslim community, British Pakistani community, British Hind all of this stuff, then we're no longer British people trying to sort the same thing out. We're people who are looking out for our own community. Our own community is Britain. That's what we should be looking out for. So diversity can be a strength in one sense, which is when you bring in people of talent and drive and ambition from around the world, and they all buy into the values of that place and then pull together in one direction. That's a strength. Just bringing lots of people from around the world and then not integrating them and not encouraging them to become British, and also bringing people who are probably not easily integratable into our society. That's not a strength, that's a weakness. So that's a big part of the problem that we have is multiculturalism is essentially an ideology of divisiveness and disparity instead of an ideology of cohesion and unity. And if you want to solve problems like you've got a big team working on your show, we've got a team working on our show. Imagine you just had 15 people working for you who all had the exact opposite ideas to each other of what's right and wrong, what direction the show should be moving in, you know, who should be presenting the show, et cetera, et cetera. That would never work. So diversity is a strength in that you've got some, you know, some variants of opinion. You don't have only one opinion about things, but there's a limit to everything, and we've gone way, way past that limit. So multiethnic society is fine. No one's got a problem with people with different skin colors, per se. The problem is ideology and worldview, and those have to be aligned for people to be able to work together.

[Chris Williamson]

Well, are Britain's core values at risk of disappearing? Is that a real concern?

[Constantin Kisin]

Well, what I would say is Britain's core values are actually kind of become quite impossible to define in public. So that, to me, seems like a problem. I keep every guess we have on trigonometry. I'm like, you know, what are British values? And I don't blame them. Cause I'm not sitting here with, like, a coherent current vision of what it means to be British. But one of those things, and it's interesting because this is what you asked about, is you talk about people's concern about illegal immigration, 69%, whatever, and they're not compatible with British values. Well, as you well know, one of the. I would say probably the core British value is a sense of fairness and orderliness and which has manifest itself in the idea of queuing properly.

[Chris Williamson]

Love a queue.

[Constantin Kisin]

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

[Chris Williamson]

About fairness as opposed to jumping the queue.

[Constantin Kisin]

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

[Chris Williamson]

How does being an immigrant shape your views on immigration?

[Constantin Kisin]

I just think I don't have the political correctness BS approach to it. So I can be honest and say I think some immigration is good if it's carefully selective and if we're bringing people who have the potential to contribute and. But so I'm just not constrained by this, like. Well, I like. Because no one can accuse me of hating immigrants, right? So then I don't have to deal with that before I say my actual opinion.

[Chris Williamson]

It's a very slippery argument because it goes from, you're exclusionary, you don't know what you've Got, you've never needed to go through this to. You've pulled the ladder up after you. It just continues to sort of move down the predictable stack.

[Constantin Kisin]

Yeah, but, but the other thing about it is that every immigrant will tell you, some of them will tell you this in private rather than in public, but like, I know the Russian society, there's some amazing people in Russia and in Ukraine and all of Eastern Europe. Talented, creative, driven, ambitious, you know, really, really resilient in, in ways that are hard for people actually in the west to even compre brilliant people. But there are also some awful people in Russia. Now, if we are going to allow people to come from that country or any other country, which, which of those groups of people do we want? Right. Like we'd all acknowledge that every country has within it the types of people that you'd want more of and the types of people you might want less of if you wanted a, a cohesive, dynamic society. So I can say without being called the bigger. I do not want the dregs of Russia's society or the dregs of Ukrainian society, or the dregs of Armenian society or the dregs of the Pak Pakistani society in our country. But I do want some of the best people who might want to come from all of those countries to come here and contribute.

[Chris Williamson]

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

[Constantin Kisin]

And that's the great tragedy of where Britain's got to. And I think we talked about this last time where when we talk about net figures on immigration, what that conceals is you're getting a lot of people from, let's be charitable and say the bottom end of the jobs market, many of them might not be working at all. And you are losing all the people who'd actually want to live in a nice country because they go, well, why would I come here, pay 50% tax, be unsafe and watch a country deteriorate where I could go somewhere else? So if you want good, a good immigration policy, you have to not welcome the worst people from around the world and you have to create the conditions that attract the best from around the world. That's what you want.

[Chris Williamson]

It's kind of a morphing argument. You know, the economic implications for supporting people, the cultural absorption and integration of them, the concerns that British people have for their quality of life outside of that, this brain drain thing that's happening. What does this mean overall in terms of trajectory. And at each one of these points there is five or ten accusations of bigotry that can be thrown at you, which you need to sort of wipe off all of the slime and go, okay, it's not that and it's not that and it's not that. I'm actually trying to say something which hopefully real people would actually be really, really concerned about. And then again, not to use Rylan Clark as, you know, the light bringer of all of this sort of issues. You can say the most milquetoast thing in the world and still get castigated and destroyed for it.

[Constantin Kisin]

I also think though, that is a very kind of what we call Westminster bubble type of thing, like in this argument does not wash even remotely in the majority.

[Chris Williamson]

Newcastle are too concerned about Rylan Clark.

[Constantin Kisin]

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

[Chris Williamson]

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

[Constantin Kisin]

Well, I actually think we should be doing a hell of a lot more. And historically speaking especially. But that requires us to not have all of this conversation about to identify.

[Chris Williamson]

That there is a difference. Because if you deny that there's a difference, then assimilation isn't needed. Ahahaha.

[Constantin Kisin]

How can you. Are you saying cultures are different? Yeah.

[Chris Williamson]

Well, if diversity is our strength and there is no such thing as a British culture, then assimilation doesn't exist.

[Constantin Kisin]

Right? Right.

[Chris Williamson]

No, no, no, no. The job is to have this pick and mix of things that are all disparate and separate inside. It's not to have a bag of different coloured sand that you turn over to turn into like a mostly the current color with a little bit of new color in it. That's. Yeah.

[Constantin Kisin]

Well, if you think about the insistence on the simulation or integration, right. Presupposed within that is a. That there's a difference between cultures, which is something that we pretend isn't true. And then it also implied within that is that there's a difference. There's a superiority of one culture over another. One culture is better than another for this country, at least. Right now I'm not saying people in Afghanistan need to adopt British culture, that's up to them. But for our country, people should be adopting British culture, which means that we are implicitly making the claim that it is better. And you can't Say that and without.

[Chris Williamson]

I mean, even if you've had this challenge of asking your guests on your show, what is British culture, if you struggle to identify it, it's gonna be very hard to enforce it, encourage it, provide a roadmap for people to assimilate into it. It's. Yeah, it's this ouroboros of non culturalism.

[Constantin Kisin]

If we lifted the cultural restrictions on actually talking about these things, I believe we would get, get to an answer very quickly on what British culture actually is. And I'm not saying I have though all of those answers, but if we had a conversation as a country about doing, then we'd get there. The problem is we've got to a point where people are ashamed, frankly, and embarrassed to actually talk about what that might be. And there's a lot of discussion to be had about it. I certainly wouldn't pretend, particularly as an immigrant myself, to have every single part of it. But I think fairness and orderliness and the sense of respect for each other is a big, big part of it. And a lot of people in Britain and the west more broadly don't realize how unusual that is. So one of the things Francis and I always talk about on trigonometry, when him and I are just doing a conversation, like his background in Venezuela, my background in Russia teaches me that it's not actually that normal. Like in Russia and Venezuela, we discovered this just talking is like if you screw someone over that has allowed themselves to be screwed over. The general consensus is, well, they're the dickhead. They let themselves get screwed over and you're right to screw them over. Of course. We even have this phrase in Russian which is Stotoplokhe leit, which means that something is lying in the wrong way. Like if you left your phone in the wrong place and someone took it, it that it was. Yeah, it was not lying in the right way. As in you like left it there, of course someone's going to steal it. Right. So not everywhere in the world has these cultures. I mean, if you go to Japan, right, you discover that cultures are very different when it comes to these things. Like if you, you can leave valuables on a table, they're not going to go anywhere. And so there's lots of conversations to be had about what it means to be British, whether it's our attitudes to women relations, all sorts of things that are an important part of it. Speaking English is going to be a very important part of it.

[Chris Williamson]

Yeah, that would. Is that not the most basic approach to this?

[Constantin Kisin]

Well, you can't connect with other people unless you speak the same language, basically. So all of these things should be hashed out and we should be very muscular about forcing people who are already here to comply with those basic requirements.

[Chris Williamson]

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

[Constantin Kisin]

Because diversity is our strength. Right. So we can't say to them, you.

[Chris Williamson]

Know, need to learn English, your kids should learn English.

[Constantin Kisin]

And look, look, the children of even of illegal immigrants do tend to assimilate and pick up the language. Kids are very good at that. But there are schools in this country where English is not the, the most common language already. So, yeah, all of these things just need to be like, they just need to be forced to be. To be. Or everything in our country has to be angled towards cohesiveness and cohesion because we've been angling towards disparity and difference for far too long, I suppose.

[Chris Williamson]

So one other way to look at it is that it's kind of a fake cohesion that it's been angling toward, that we don't need to make a big deal about this, where we are cohesed around our mutual acceptance of anything that happens. Like some Brazilian jiu jitsu thing that's going on where you flip it upside down, you go, well, actually, there's nothing to even cohese against. Or you went to a migrant protest. And again, this is another. This is an entire content niche, whether you're a streamer on Twitch or Russell Brand or whatever, like covering these things is a big deal. And I know that you did. What did you learn from being at these migrant hotel protest things?

[Constantin Kisin]

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

[Chris Williamson]

Protesters against. Protesters against illegal immigration.

[Constantin Kisin]

That's right. And what's interesting is that what seems to be happening is the protests against illegal immigration are broadly speaking, organic in the sense that like people know it's happening, they pop along and you know, it's a mixture of people as a protest. I mean protests by definition usually attract quite unusual people. And this is not a disparaging comment, but like most people are like, they've busy, they're busy doing other things. So to get British people out, normal British people out onto the streets, selection.

[Chris Williamson]

Effect going on here.

[Constantin Kisin]

There is. But I'm also, what I'm also saying is the point we're at now is things have got so bad motivating that you are getting normal people going out to a protest. And that is.

[Chris Williamson]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Constantin Kisin]

That's telling you quite a lot. So what you've got on the, on the anti illegal immigration side of things is a mixture of people who are, you know, angry about illegal immigration. The one I went to was kind of close to the Isle of Dogs, which is an area that there's a lot of kind of football supporters there who might be up for a bit of a ruckus, who were very peaceful, by the way. But you know, like, they did look.

[Chris Williamson]

Like peaceful but handy.

[Constantin Kisin]

Peaceful but handy. You wouldn't want to be on the wrong side of that them. And on the other hand, and this was something that I found very, very interesting is you had a highly organized counter protest. So you get a bunch of people turning up who've all got the same placard, it's professionally printed, they've got songs that they all sing, they've got. It's all organized. And I didn't know it's an organization called I think Stand up to Racism or something like that. That which I didn't know anything about. So I went over and I tried to talk to them and the main organizer said we only talk to professional journalists. We don't talk to incels in their bedrooms.

[Chris Williamson]

Oh, he knew who you were.

[Constantin Kisin]

Yeah, exactly. I mean, I'm a famous incel in my bedroom. And so you wouldn't talk to us and lots of the other people there wouldn't talk to us. And you're going, isn't the point of a protest to get your message out? And yet none of these people would talk to you. But what you have is you have this hard organized core and Then you have a few stragglers who come along because they actually think like this is about, you know, they're against racism or whatever. Right. But what was interesting is when, when, when I, we posted the video of that guy saying that to me, people very quickly found out who he was. And he is a self identified revolutionary Marxist, I think, or communist. Same thing basically. And the entire organization comes from the Socialist Workers Party, which is a communist organization. So what you've basically got is, is the far left organizing in a very, very kind of meticulous way to be at every protest, to act as if it's an organic protest against the organic protest. When what actually is happening is you've got organic protests of ordinary people coming to a place and then you've got these people coming there to try and shut them down.

[Chris Williamson]

Contrived protests.

[Constantin Kisin]

Contrived protests, probably well funded. I know where their funding comes from. But they're well funded, you can tell because they're very professional placards.

[Chris Williamson]

They've spent time in singing class learning the chants.

[Constantin Kisin]

And those people, a lot of them go from protest to protest to protest to protest. So it's the same people around the country acting as if the entire country's risen up in opposition to the evil races.

[Chris Williamson]

Far right, yes.

[Constantin Kisin]

Okay, so the, now look, the, the both, as I say, you know, the people who are attracted to process are quite, quite, quite unusual, atypical people generally speaking. But I think broadly speaking, that is my experience of what I saw is mostly normal people against mostly organized counter protesters showing up at these places.

[Chris Williamson]

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[Constantin Kisin]

Yeah, but the thing is, you know, I've always found this a very strange way of arguing things. If you live in a democracy, you have to accept that there's a spectrum of people's informedness and intelligence. So why is a guy, even if it's true, even if it's true, why is a guy who drives a white van and maybe isn't intellectually that smart and maybe doesn't have a first in PPE from Oxford, why is his opinion by definition less important? Like if you live in a democracy, his opinion is just as important as yours. And you ought to try and persuade him if you genuinely think he's wrong to your way of argument. But the problem is that just because you can dismiss someone for not making their argument in the most articulate way doesn't mean that their core concern is incorrect. If you have 50,000 people a year coming into this country illegally, being put up in hotels, causing an increase in sexual offences, et cetera, just because a guy with a face tattoo is there talking about it doesn't mean that the concern isn't valid. So my interest in all of this is always, is the claim, the core of the claim that's being made, is it true or false? Is it true that there's a problem with illegal immigration? Okay, then I don't really care if there's a guy you can demonstrate is actually racist, complaining about that because it's about the problem, not that particular person. There is extensive concern in the country about this issue because the problem is real. The fact that you can find a handful of people who don't look good on TV to make the case that they're all stupid or bad doesn't nullify.

[Chris Williamson]

Their argument, invalidate the claim. No, it's the same thing as you're having an argument with your wife and you happen to be a good debater. You win the argument, but ultimately we're in the wrong.

[Constantin Kisin]

Well, yeah, you win the battle, you lose the war on that one. Believe me, I forgot.

[Chris Williamson]

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

[Constantin Kisin]

Well, you're speaking like an evil right winger. What we actually need to do, Chris, is tax the rich.

[Chris Williamson]

Uh huh. But even if you were to do that, it would still be diluted down more regardless of how much.

[Constantin Kisin]

No, no, no. It's all about tax evasion by the super rich.

[Chris Williamson]

Okay, okay.

[Constantin Kisin]

Yeah. And you are falling into the right wing rhetoric of the right wing media who are telling you I do watch.

[Chris Williamson]

A lot of trigonometries.

[Constantin Kisin]

Yeah, exactly. Who are blaming the innocent asylum seekers when it's actually the super rich who are screwed.

[Chris Williamson]

Thank you. Let me give you another one.

[Constantin Kisin]

I've been watching a lot of Gary's.

[Chris Williamson]

Economics, as you can tell on the. A similar vein to that. A lot of these people from the left would probably care about women's rights. Believe all women. We need to protect women. We'd be concerned about women walking alone through parks at night and concerns like that. This seems a little anathema to that as well.

[Constantin Kisin]

No, no, no, Again, I think you've just been buying the racist tropes of the right win. The real problem, Chris, is his men. Who is it does all the. And the sexual. It's men, isn't it? Okay, so what we need to deal with is that problem is men, because there's no immigrant men. No, no, no men. Men, because there's no difference between cultures. Remember, it's Very important that you remember this. There's no difference between cultures, there's no difference between cultural values. The problem is men. Okay, to the point when.

[Chris Williamson]

How long can you keep this up?

[Constantin Kisin]

Well, I can, I've. I've studied these arguments very well so I can play this is the difference right is the people on my side of the argument, mostly speaking, have actually explored both sides of the debate and I can argue with you all day from that progressive position. They don't know anything about the other side of the argument cuz their argument is based on moralizing. Which is why we talked about the problem with making immigration moral issue. To the point when you had a Labor MP after the last election who was heckled by Muslim men in her community during her election victory speech. She then was asked, well, isn't there a problem? She said, well men and yeah, men are. Misogyny is a big problem in this country. So I can play this game all day long and I enjoy it. So carry on. Have you got any other questions? What else have you heard from the evil right wing media? Well.

[Chris Williamson]

I guess the main question I have which is above that, what is it that the left is trying to achieve or why is it again I fucking hate. I actually would really love to have something around this conversation to point my finger at the right about. And there may be many things that were not, but I hate it always being this. Like this seems to be honest like an evolution of woke, like a new version of this, like the British version of that. Because. Because that word's sort of been and gone, especially in our side of the Internet. It was cringe before it was even cool. And I don't want to bring it back. I do not intend on Lazarus ing that fucking thing from the dead. But maybe we need a new word for it. But this feels like a very sort of British brand of woe of that toxic empathy, sort of denial of real world implications, purposeful subverting of the facts all coming from it seems sort of a left leaning side.

[Constantin Kisin]

There are also, we should say this, a hell of a lot of people who are on the left that are not remotely on board with this. So I would say it's a very progressive thing. And Maurice Glassman, who's a Labor peer in the House of Lords, he has this great line, he says if you go to the doctor and they say it's progressive, it's not good. So it's a progressive worldview and it's what our mutual friend Rob Henderson's Rob Henderson calls luxury beliefs. My My experience, if you look at the demographics of the people who are the counter protesters, you go, how many of those people are married? How many of those people are parents? How many of those people have a business? And you strip out those categories of people and you go, well, that's where all these ideas are coming from. Because if you're a parent, like the first thing that happens when you're a parent is all your fake bullshit ideas about how things are supposed to work just disappear. Because you go, here's this thing and it doesn't work the way it's supposed to. It works the way it works and you have to roll.

[Chris Williamson]

Idealism comes into contact with reality number one.

[Constantin Kisin]

The second thing that happens is you experience an intense vulnerability of a kind that, that you've never experienced before, which is you go the illusion that you are in control of your life and the things that matter to you, it vanishes the moment your child is born and probably before. So the concern about what, security of the environment, safety, et cetera, all of these things become much more important to you because there is a part of you that's no longer even within your body that matters to you much more than you.

[Chris Williamson]

It's at the mercy of this thing.

[Constantin Kisin]

That'S out there, which is the environment. Right. That you care about. So, and when you run a business, as you well know, you don't have the luxury of having beliefs that don't match reality. Because every time you are wrong, you lose money. Every time you're wrong, it hurts you, it costs you something, it means you can't employ another person or you're losing things that really matter to you. So a lot of the people that take this worldview, they simply usually insulated from the consequences of the things that they actually advocate for. And that is a large part of why this is happening. It's just people who don't reckon with the reality of what they're advocating for.

[Chris Williamson]

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

[Constantin Kisin]

There's also a lot of ideological things that people have. You know, if you adopt the central tenets of the Worldview that's dominant in these circles, which is there are no differences between, there are no differences between cultures, et cetera, then all of this is a logical consequence of that, because how can you say that this person shouldn't be allowed into our country when we're all the same? They are us, we're all the same. There's no difference, right? So imagine there's no borders. It's easy if you try.

[Chris Williamson]

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

[Constantin Kisin]

That's something I have talked about, but in relation to a different issue. I think the hatred of successful people and wealthy people comes from that. Because in Britain we conflate success with privilege. We think that if someone has wealth or a business or money, that's because they are privileged. They have been privileged because 200 years ago someone with money probably was privileged. They almost certainly would have been rich because they were the grandson of somebody as opposed to, because they've created something that isn't really true anymore. But that is, I think, why there's this disdain for people who are successful. And that's why these narratives about tax to rich, tax the rich, tax of rich, which doesn't work in practice, but nonetheless it's really appealing to people. But the reason I think the ideological part exists is partly to do with World War II because it's not just Germany that's guilt ridden after World War II, because much of Europe reacted to what was happening in Germany in terms of dealing with people who were being persecuted in Germany in a way that when they look back on it, they were very ashamed of, right? Not allowing people to flee Germany and come here, etc. So there was this genuine sense that, that like we, we, we watched the worst catastrophe in human history be perpetrated right on our doorstep and we didn't do enough. And so that's when you get these mechanisms that Britain was a pioneer in bringing through the, the ECHR and all of these mechanisms that we're now talking about because they were like, okay, well what we need to do, right, is well, the problem was we had these nationalists, right, like, like in Germany who looked at things at the national level and they would do whatever they wanted within their country because they were allowed and we can't allow that anymore. What we need is a more globalized approach where you have globalized supervision, or at least EU level supervision of these things, so that we collectively make sure that none of us goes too far, which in and of itself is a well intentioned and reasonable idea. The problem is that once you give those people that power, they don't stop until they're legislating the shape of bananas across the European Union. So that's kind of where I think a lot of this comes from. It's the sense that in the wake of World War II, mistakes were made and they had to be corrected.

[Chris Williamson]

What about this sort of culture around productivity? I think that's interesting that if you look at America, great country, I very much like it. There's not much heritage, right? Not a massive amount of heritage, which means that you haven't had time to accumulate. First off, class hasn't ossified in quite the same way. Posh is just a word that when I use it, most Americans understand it, but look at me like it's something they haven't heard for a decade or so. Class hasn't sort of stratified out in that same sort of way. But importantly, if you're wealthy, at most you're only like five generations away from the person that made it. So, yeah, like maybe you were privileged, but you were probably still working on the business at that, whatever. The same isn't true in the uk. And yeah, when I was growing up, I would say the country felt a little negative in the micro, but proud in the macro. And now it feels negative in the micro and negative in the macro as well. Does that make sense?

[Constantin Kisin]

It makes perfect sense, yeah.

[Chris Williamson]

Is that something that you've sensed as well?

[Constantin Kisin]

Absolutely. Well, it's one of the reasons I talk about the things that I talk about because within our lifetime times, I've watched this great country go from that to what we have now. And I think it's a tragedy. It's a terrible tragedy because, you know, I have weird interests. So I'm watching a lecture by this Russian, Ukrainian, actually, well, Russian, Ukraine, both historian who talks about the way the Manhattan Project, the new, the way it was made. And it turns out I didn't know this, but the Germans at the early stages, the Germans and the Americans and the Brits were basically at the same point of the development. But what the Germans and the Americans did is they looked at what it was likely to take to get to a nuclear weapon. And I don't remember the exact particular factoid, but basically the Germans overestimated the Difficulty by a factor of 100 and the Americans underestimate by a factor of 100. But that false positivity and false optimism is often how you get things done. So when you have a negative mindset, it's self fulfilling. It causes you not to go for things that actually you might have been able to do. They may well have been more difficult than they in, you know, than people would have thought, but they might not have been as difficult as you thought. And so if you actually go and attempt things, you'll get somewhere much more often than if you just have a negative mindset. So it's a self fulfilling prophecy. And so when you have a country that's, that's engaged in this kind of constant negativity and this down, this is why I've opposed this, all this stuff about British history as much as I have, because there's been so many lies told about the history of this country. And then I go, well, okay, if, if you're teaching children school, school all this nonsense about how their country was like the worst slave owning empire in history and all of this other stuff.

[Chris Williamson]

When in fact it was the one that started the stopping event, right?

[Constantin Kisin]

Then you go, well, then why, why would they feel proud to be British? Why would they fight to defend this country? If you think this country is a piece of shit, like, why would you like lay down your life for it? It doesn't make any sense. So likewise, when it comes to starting a business here or contributing in some other way, why would you do that if you don't believe in this thing? And the reality is, and I think this doesn't get said often enough, is Britain is a great country with a great history. Actually we have some of the most intelligent, driven, passionate, creative, sensible people in Britain, you know, and if we harness their skills and talents and took the boot off their neck and stop blaming them for the problems actually created by the government, you'd have a revival, you'd have a national revival because partly of the heritage of the accumulated capital over the centuries this country's had. But you've got to actually be willing to do that.

[Chris Williamson]

Yeah. Unlocking that potential requires a culture that fosters it. And it's the difference between tax the rich and become the rich, like own the Ferrari and scratch the Ferrari, right?

[Constantin Kisin]

And I think you're a good example of this, right? Like you've gone to America. Now, that should not be happening. That shouldn't be happening because I imagine moving to a different country. I know from my experience it's dislocating it causes you to. You have to make new friendships, you're far from family. These are all inconveniences that many people would rather avoid. Like, I love America, but at the moment I have no interest in moving there. And partly because I actually love Britain. I love this country, I love the culture in so many ways. So if you're forcing people like you and me to think about that, that tells you something, that tells you what you were doing to this country. And. And if you keep doing that, more and more people will leave and then you're going to be left with people who are, you know, not contributing as much. And why would you want that?

[Chris Williamson]

Yeah, I. This sort of psychology of decline thing, I've really reflected on it a lot because it is easy, as is shown by all of the US streamers that are doing it, to sort of point at that previously glorious country that now appears to be in decline. Here are all of the problems implicit in that is sort of this standing on the shoulder. Oh, I would never. You know, it's good for me to comment on this because it's not an issue of mine or the grassroots version of this that we need to fight back, but all of that has sort of psychology of decline baked into it, whereas it does feel a lot like just latent untapped potential. In the uk, you know, we have as many. I think we have as many universities in the top 10 globally as America does, but we produce five times fewer entrepreneurs in terms of education, in terms of heritage, in terms of history, cultural impact. Until so recently, we were the goats. It really should be a dip in the market as opposed to an actual decline. Yeah, but, yeah, I.

[Constantin Kisin]

Well, we were about to be overtaken by Poland in GDP per capita.

[Chris Williamson]

That's not great.

[Constantin Kisin]

It's great for Poland and I. I love Polish people, it's a great country. But if you think about Britain historically, it's punched so far above its weight, Even in the 20th century, when it was declining from its true glory days. And it can still do the that. It can still do that if it chooses to.

[Chris Williamson]

If you haven't been feeling as sharp or energized as you'd like, getting your blood work done is the best place to start, which is why I partnered with Function. They run lab tests twice a year that monitor over a hundred biomarkers. They've got a team of expert physicians that take the data, put it in a simple dashboard and give you actionable insights and recommendations to improve your health and lifespan. They track everything from your heart health to your hormone levels to your thyroid function and nutrient deficiencies. They even screen for 50 types of cancer at stage one, which is five times more data than you get from an annual physical. And getting your blood work done and drawn and analyzed like this would usually cost thousands, but with function it is only $499. And right now they're giving 1000 Modern Wisdom listeners another hundred dollars off, bringing it down to $399. So just go to the link in the description below or head to functionhealth.com modernwisdom that's functionhealth.com modernwisdom I saw this stat. The UK is the second most depressed country in the world. The 2023 Mental State of the World report collected answers from 500,000 respondents across 71 countries. Countries are then given a mental health quotient. The UK came second last, just above Uzbekistan and below South Africa. Ukraine came in comfortably high with a score of 60 despite battling Russian President Vladimir Putin's invading forces. While Yemen, which is also suffering one of the largest humanity crisis races in history, also fared better. In addition to the UK ranking second lowest, it also scored the highest in respondents who are distressed and struggling, had low driving motivation scores and struggled heavily with adaptability and resilience. Fuck, dude, I look, I don't like the bashing on the UK thing and I really battled with it, especially after our last conversation. And every time I see these stats there's this bit of me that wants to highlight them to galvanize people, but I'm aware it also sounds like I fucked off and now I'm like sort of of sticking my middle finger up at where I was. I spent 15 years in this country. I employed 3,018 to 25 year olds during that time. I personally coached 150 young entrepreneurs through the business that we had that ended up being an accelerator. And these guys went on to go to London to do finance, to move to Singapore to do all of these sort of things. Fucking brothers. But every British person understands this. Oh my God, like it's so fatiguing to try and sort of lift this up. And I think that's part of the beauty of the Brits that we do have this sort of stoic feet on the ground thing. That's good. There's a humbleness to it. I am concerned that the weight of overcoming that which does create a competitive advantage and drives you to do great things in many ways in a different way than the Americans do with blue sky vision and you can become whatever you want and victimhood mentality, which is downstream from that, immediately. The UK does not have that in the same way. There is a little bit of a heavier gravity here for overcoming certain things, and I think that's fine until you start piling additional weights on people's backs.

[Constantin Kisin]

Right.

[Chris Williamson]

And I think that my concern is we had a challenging but relatively overcomeable, stable sort of system. And then when you add in the stats around the economy. I loved your episode with Daniel Priestley. I thought that was brilliant. I think he's fantastic. These difficulties that people need to over, those are raw, objective difficulties that people need to overcome. And then we're gonna have these problems and concerns that we have to do with multiculturalism. And then there's gonna be some issues in the education system as well. And then we're gonna be talking about what it actually means to be a culture and whether you should have some sense of belonging or pride. Then we've got all of the issues to do with the British flag, the English flag, and you go, these are heavy weights to bear when it was already a little bit of an uphill battle to kind of reach escape velocity. And I'm going to believe in myself and I'm going to do a thing like this is really good. It's become increasingly tough to watch.

[Constantin Kisin]

It has. But I'm always optimistic. Weirdly enough, maybe it's because I'm not really British. I don't know. My sense is, I think. I can't remember whose quote this is, but something that can't go on won't. And we are getting to that point. I mean, a lot of people have written that. Liam Halligan, who I really respect him with his economic analysis, he's brilliant. He keeps writing that we're about to have a financial meltdown. And in some ways, if you look at the last time we had 1,976, that's almost immediately followed by a period of great revival because. And the 70s. I didn't live through them, but as I understand them, they were kind of similar to where we are now in terms of many of the problems we face. So in many ways, I've become a bit of an accelerationist. I think the worse things get, the better it is.

[Chris Williamson]

So E ACC is England accelerationist?

[Constantin Kisin]

Yes. I just think we've got to a point where it's actually something you explained to me very well, which is that 6 out of 10 relationship where it's quite bad, but not bad enough to leave and so you end up stuck. That's where Burden is it's in that place where things are tolerable and they're not bad enough for a real revolt.

[Chris Williamson]

Comfortable complacency is very difficult, difficult place to be in.

[Constantin Kisin]

And the way you get out of it is you have make it worse, make it worse. And that's where I think we're headed.

[Chris Williamson]

Someone asked me that at a live show. They said, I'm stuck in Region Beta. Do you think it would be an idea for me to purposefully torpedo my own life to motivate myself to get out of it? That's a bold strategy. But if it's happening already, I mean, that is a counterintuitive, but second order interesting way to look at a this situation with positivity that, look, you can have a long period of misery if nothing happens, or you can have a short period of pain, and that hopefully spurs some sort of reaction. Speaking of that, the flag thing again, another niche of content. British flag on roundabouts is horrific, but the pride flag on crosswalks and the Palestinian flag on campuses is somehow, like, enlightened. Does this row about the English flag actually matter or is it just window dressing for other shit?

[Constantin Kisin]

I think it's symbolic of the broader thing that's going on. First of all, all the hypocrisies of the ideology that we've all been living under being exposed. It's amazing to me, I was just. I said this on Twitter. It's like, it's amazing that all the people with flags in their bio are now very upset about people flying the English or the British flag. It's incredible.

[Chris Williamson]

The wrong flag flags are. Okay, it's that flag.

[Constantin Kisin]

And it's one of the things I actually love about just literally physically arriving in the US you got. Every building's got a giant American flag on it, right? And it's the flag of the country. That's great. I think I'm all down for that. But it's a proxy for these tensions that are bubbling under the surface. And so to the elite class, the appearance of England flags everywhere is like, oh, the racists are now trying to blah, blah, blah. When I think the reality is it's a reassertion of Britain's national identity and an attempt to say, actually, there is such a thing as British culture and there is such a thing as Britain.

[Chris Williamson]

What's the flag argument really about then? If the people.

[Constantin Kisin]

The flag argument is really about the idea that you're not supposed to be proud of your country.

[Chris Williamson]

And why is that prevalent?

[Constantin Kisin]

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

[Chris Williamson]

That's a good microcosm for your idea of the bad situation. Galvanizes people to change because there will be more English flags than there would have been had this not have been a situation that occurred. So that's a perfect example of people are actually going against this. It's an act of rebellion to put this flag out there.

[Constantin Kisin]

And the most important thing, and I said this right at the top, is that movement carries on. It's very important that people continue to protest about things that they're not happy about. They continue to make their voices known. They continue to pressure on their mps. They continue to just discuss this. But it's got to be done in a peaceful way, because the moment this becomes in any way violent, it'll just get dismissed, and then all of this stuff is going to get worse. So it's got to be the most positive, constructive, nonviolent movement. And as long as that. And I mean, of all people, we had Tommy Robinson on our show a while back. This was his point. It's not me saying Tommy Robinson is saying this has got to be nonviolent. And he's someone who's obviously has a history of. Of, you know, getting fisty with people. So that. And I think he's totally right about that. To the extent that there's pushback against what the elite class has been doing, it's got to be channeled in that very constructive, civil way, the British way. Actually, if that carries on, there's actually nothing they can do to stop it. They will have to change.

[Chris Williamson]

Because as soon as the protests become aggressive and handsy, it's much easier to dismiss them as just thuggery from.

[Constantin Kisin]

They'll do what they did when the riots happened last year. Which is they'll say, this is the far right. We're going to send in the police, we're going to give them, you know, we're going to make examples of people.

[Chris Williamson]

Delegitimizes people's real concerns.

[Constantin Kisin]

Yeah. And then what happens is all this thing gets taken out. Best case scenario. I mean, there's a worst case scenario than that.

[Chris Williamson]

What's that?

[Constantin Kisin]

Well, what if you can't take this thing out by locking people up, up. What if you respond to violence with police violence and then there's another response to that? What do you do then?

[Chris Williamson]

Yeah, that's not good. One of my friends brought up when India and Pakistan were, and I think in some way, many ways still are at loggerheads. What an interesting situation that would have caused for the very diverse Great Britain, given that you have lots of Indian and Pakistani communities living side by side.

[Constantin Kisin]

Hmm.

[Chris Williamson]

I, I don't know what it means to have two countries at war with each other, who have huge populations next to each other in a third nation.

[Constantin Kisin]

You, I mean, you already see it with Israel and Palestine to a lesser extent, but you see it. Right. Like the fact that that conflict is happening quite far away from here has caused very significant impacts on Britain. So I think it's a Douglas Murray line. When you import the rest of the world, you import the problems of the rest of the world. Hmm.

[Chris Williamson]

What did you learn from speaking to Tommy Robinson?

[Constantin Kisin]

Well, lots of things really. One, one was about him, which I, I don't think he's the same guy that he was 20 years ago in the sense that I think he's grown up quite a bit, which happens with people over time. I, I think that he, I think he'd be the first to acknowledge it. I think he, he made a lot.

[Chris Williamson]

Of.

[Constantin Kisin]

Mistakes in the past when it comes to certain things, but I also think the scrutiny that he received was completely disproportionate to, to those errors that he might have made. I, I think he's a good example of somebody who was just kind of ahead of his time on some things. And the, the mechanism of suppression, particularly in the absence of new media at that time, was very powerful. And so you could, because you couldn't.

[Chris Williamson]

Directly get a message out that.

[Constantin Kisin]

No. And so you could demonize someone very easily, which is what happened to him. And it's easier to demonize people who are football hooligans, who have that background.

[Chris Williamson]

Who present in the way that he.

[Constantin Kisin]

Does, who present which, by which you mean working class.

[Chris Williamson]

Yes.

[Constantin Kisin]

Right. Etc. So I think he, you know, I'm trying to straddle two things. I personally, like. I thought everything he said on our show, pretty much there was one or two areas where we disagreed, but broadly speaking, were sensible. I think his intentions are good. Doesn't mean I agree with every single thing that he says or does. But broadly speaking, I think his heart is in the right place. And that's one of the reasons that I think a lot of people. I feel very grateful, actually, for him trying to get some of those messages out there. That said, I think there's questions about some of the documentaries has made and all this other stuff. And he's an impulsive guy. You can tell, Right. So he'll jump on a tweet and retweet it without necessarily always checking, like, there's questions. People can. People have criticisms of me and say I've made mistakes, which I'm sure I have. But like I said to you before, my main interest with people is. Is the broad thrust of what they're saying. Correct. And with him, I think it is.

[Chris Williamson]

Does the modern migrant situation in the UK make Tommy Robinson's last two decades feel more prescient? Does he look more like a Cassandra?

[Constantin Kisin]

I think so. I think so.

[Chris Williamson]

Yet stranger that when. Because you never know. This is the thing. You don't know if that person actually saw the future or if they blindly threw their dart at the dartboard and it hit the bullseye.

[Constantin Kisin]

I didn't think. I don't think Tommy saw the future. What I think is he saw what was happening in his town. And Lewton, by his account at least, was quite an outlier. It was already the future. Well, it was the future, but in that time. Right. It was the future now. So he just saw the reality on the ground and he was like, well, this is going to. This is going to be the future of the rest of the country.

[Chris Williamson]

Yeah. The freedom of speech thing, I think, in the UK is also another interesting angle. There was a joke about freedom of speech in the Soviet Union, which you're probably going to be familiar with. An American tells a Russian, I can stand outside the White House and yellow yell, to hell with Ronald Reagan. And the Russian replies, that's nothing. I too can stand outside of the Kremlin and yell, to hell with Ronald Reagan.

[Constantin Kisin]

Right.

[Chris Williamson]

What is happening with freedom of speech in the uk? I'm aware that freedom of speech, those three words mean an awful lot in the us. I never heard it growing up in the uk, but whatever that means over here, it feels like that is being flexed and is under pressure.

[Constantin Kisin]

Well, we don't actually have freedom of speech. As we were sitting down, I took out my phone, I got a message from Graham Linehan, who's just been arrested at Heathrow Airport for three tweets.

[Chris Williamson]

You're kidding me.

[Constantin Kisin]

No.

[Chris Williamson]

Right now?

[Constantin Kisin]

Right now.

[Chris Williamson]

Are the tweets recent? Do you know what they're about?

[Constantin Kisin]

It's Graham Linehan. The tweets are about trans people. It's an issue he's taken quite, quite seriously. With good reason, by the way.

[Chris Williamson]

He's trying to leave or he's coming back in.

[Constantin Kisin]

He was coming back from the US and he's just been arrested at Heathrow for three tweets, which are basically about trans people in women's bathrooms. It's hard, etc.

[Chris Williamson]

Great.

[Constantin Kisin]

And this is what's happening. 30 people a day are being arrested for things that they say. Now, Lucy Connolly, who was one of the. She tweeted something very silly during the.

[Chris Williamson]

Riots about burn the migrant hotels. We should get these bastards out.

[Constantin Kisin]

Yeah. But again, this is partly technological issue, right? Because if you. 40 years ago, if you were sitting in a pub and you saw something.

[Chris Williamson]

You should burn these hotels and get the bastards out.

[Constantin Kisin]

No one would give a shit. Right. But now that. And the government clearly were very keen to make an example of somebody, and they did with her and with others. But, no, you don't have freedom of speech in Britain. And one of the things that really pisses me off about it is you and I have freedom of speech in Britain, mostly. I mean, Graham is a good counterexample to what I'm about to say. But broadly speaking, someone who has a.

[Chris Williamson]

Platform can't be shut down because they get to counter the unnarrative example against them.

[Constantin Kisin]

Yeah. Whereas the ordinary person who tweets something to three people and makes no impact on anything, they can't defend themselves. They can't defend themselves. So this is a mechanism of keeping the plebs in. This is how these people would see it who are doing this, the plebs down.

[Chris Williamson]

So what you're saying is this is an argument for everybody to have a podcast?

[Constantin Kisin]

Well, they're most welcome to try, yeah.

[Chris Williamson]

It's a long road. Lucy Connelly thing, lady who. Who posts about burning the migrant people should get them out. I don't give a fuck. Something like that. Ricky Jones does something very similar at a protest, saying, these are far right Nazis and we should kill them all. We'd slit their throats. Slit their throats. And he draws his thumb across his neck, he gets found not guilty by a jury.

[Constantin Kisin]

Jury, yeah.

[Chris Williamson]

Lucy Conley gets 30 months in prison. Gonna serve at least a year. Ish. Something like that.

[Constantin Kisin]

She's out already.

[Chris Williamson]

Right.

[Constantin Kisin]

But she served the year. So Ricky Jones was found innocent by a jury correctly. Correctly. Because people shouldn't go to prison unless they're actually inciting violence in that moment, saying, go and slit those people's throats. As far as I could tell, he was using the metaphor of we're gonna destroy racism or whatever by slitting a throat. The heat of the moment, blah, blah, blah. But that is also what should have happened with Lucy Conley and everything else, which is interesting because I watched her interview with Alison Pearson in which Lucy makes that very point herself. She says, I am relieved he hasn't been sent to jail like me, because that is actually what should be happening.

[Chris Williamson]

Should be more precedents of Ricky's, not of Lucy's.

[Constantin Kisin]

Yeah, but see, this is one of the. This is one of the things that happens when you have a society that isn't cohesive and it isn't.

[Chris Williamson]

You can't agree on what the fundamental.

[Constantin Kisin]

Principles are, because then you have to start passing laws about everything. Because in order to maintain the pretenses of this multicultural society, you have to start arresting people for things that they say that are counter to that question.

[Chris Williamson]

On that, it's easy to say, well, you know, this is obvious ideological bias. Had this have been somebody tweeting about something that is anti. Right. And somebody talking about something which is anti, the same thing would have occurred. But I get the sense that the medium of communication makes for a massive difference here. That first off, things that you say online are concretized for the rest of time can be screenshotted and reshared. I suppose videos can too. And if something's not videoed, then it's not the same. But still, it feels like an act of. More of an act of commission and sort of an editorial decision about yourself, to write something out or to take a video yourself than the heat of the moment as a tweet doesn't feel the same as the heat of the moment as an expression.

[Constantin Kisin]

But why not? What if you've had seven pints and then you tweet something? You know what I mean?

[Chris Williamson]

I don't disagree. Agree. The question I have for you is, do you think that the situation would have been different if Lucy had said it and Ricky had tweeted it?

[Constantin Kisin]

I don't think so. I think part of what happened with Lucy, she was very badly advised by her duty solicitor and she pled guilty.

[Chris Williamson]

Oh.

[Constantin Kisin]

So that I think is part of the reason that she ended up getting the sentence. She, it's very hard to say, you know, from. I think if she had pleaded innocent and we might have seen a different result, I would hope, but I don't know. But there are a lot of questions about two tier justice in this country.

[Chris Williamson]

What do people mean when they talk about that?

[Constantin Kisin]

What they mean is, for example, during COVID right, we saw anti lockdown protesters being brutally treated by the police. The police would kneel on them and then there were BLM protesters and the police would kneel in front of them. That's what they, they mean. And the same with the criminal justice system. And look, I talk to a lot of people within that system. I, I was talking to a judge at a, at a, an event that I was at and they all kind of go. The profession has become very constrained by the work directives that we get from above. So now I think I always try and be fair. My experience with police officers, including in the protest is they're just trying to keep the peace, man. And I guarantee you the people who arrested Graham Linehan at the airport, they're all deeply embarrassed saying that the police.

[Chris Williamson]

Aren'T themselves ideologically captured.

[Constantin Kisin]

The grunts on the ground, not only are they not ideologically captured, but if you think stereotypically of the sorts of people that are likely to go into policing, they're generally not woke progressives.

[Chris Williamson]

They're doing it with their eyes down.

[Constantin Kisin]

Right. They're kind of embarrassed. But these are the rules and they signed up to enforce the rules. So. So it's all about what's happening at the top, I think.

[Chris Williamson]

How would you describe.

[Constantin Kisin]

It's also about the fact that two tier rhymes with kir.

[Chris Williamson]

Yeah, anything that rhymes is gonna be more catchy.

[Constantin Kisin]

Yeah.

[Chris Williamson]

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[Constantin Kisin]

Well, we see it. See there's, there's the way the law is written and then the way. And then there's what actually happens. What actually happens is if you say something that is considered grossly offensive or hateful or just grossly offensive, grossly saying something that's grossly offensive is, is liable to get you prosecuted in this country. Yeah, that's what happened to Dankula, remember?

[Chris Williamson]

Yes. He made his dog, he trained his girlfriend's dog jog to be able to do a Nazi salute for a joke. Yes. And this was eight years ago. Five.

[Constantin Kisin]

Eight years ago. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And he was prosecuted for being grossly offensive.

[Chris Williamson]

And this is the hate speech.

[Constantin Kisin]

I can't remember which sec. I think it's 127 of the communication Malicious Communications act, something like that.

[Chris Williamson]

Okay.

[Constantin Kisin]

But anyway, the broader point is basically if you say things that can be someone can say a hateful incitement etc in a very defined, in a very loose way, you can be prosecuted for it. To say nothing of the fact that people are routinely getting non crime hate incidents, which is when you haven't committed a crime but you've still been visited by the police and you get what is effectively a stain on your character which might prevent you from finding employment and other things like that. For the things that you said, especially.

[Chris Williamson]

Online, she doesn't have to go to trial.

[Constantin Kisin]

Well, it's not a criminal offence. You're not even found guilty of anything. You're just labeled as someone who's committed a wrong think offense and then that's what you get.

[Chris Williamson]

Is this just the progeny of us not having a freedom of speech clause in our sort of founding document or is there something else going on here? Is this to do with where we're at and sort of progress that we're making?

[Constantin Kisin]

Well, it's both. I mean having a first amendment would.

[Chris Williamson]

Be preclude all of this stuff would.

[Constantin Kisin]

Be the vaccine against all of this. But when you don't have a First Amendment and you have all the social tensions that we've been talking about, where you have to make certain. You have to pretend certain things. Things, then the people who refuse to pretend certain things and the people who've had a couple of glasses of wine and said the wrong thing about immigrants on Twitter and whatever, they all have to be shut down because they're disrupting the fake cohesion that you talked about.

[Chris Williamson]

Right. Okay. So this is the fact that you have tension happening between what is existing on the ground and what people want to have be broadcast, especially on social media, means that you need some sort of prophylactic or breakwater against that, even if you're not going to. And it seems like it is being, you said, 30 people a day, even if it is going to be implemented this, like, weird Panopticon thing where everyone's got a sword of Damocles hanging over their head, where they think, well, I'd better not. You shouldn't bring up that criticism that I'm going to do.

[Constantin Kisin]

Yeah. And I don't know if you saw this. Rogan actually sent this to me because I think Joe is part of this, like watching what's happening in the UK with whole horror. He probably won't mind me saying this. He sent me a video of a guy being arrested in Britain at a protest outside a migrant hotel saying, I love bacon. And then he sent me another one of a British guy who went over to, I think, Morocco, where he bought a. Like a. He bought a bacon product which. Which you're allowed to buy and then said on the street, I love bacon. Didn't get arrested.

[Chris Williamson]

Right.

[Constantin Kisin]

But a guy at a protest in the UK gets arrested for saying, and now bacon is a big part of British culture.

[Chris Williamson]

It is a massive part of British culture. I remember that there was a. And this is. This is the Britain that I remember growing up.

[Constantin Kisin]

Yeah.

[Chris Williamson]

Newcastle and Sunderland football teams for a very long time were in the same league. They are 10 miles apart, something like that. And they have a very fierce rivalry. It is Liverpool, Everton for the Northeast.

[Constantin Kisin]

And the Mackams and the Geordies.

[Chris Williamson]

Correct. Correct. There was a Newcastle supporter who I remember saying, hated Sunderland so much that he refused to eat bacon because it's red and white. I remember thinking, that is a man who is prepared to stand on his principles.

[Constantin Kisin]

That's right.

[Chris Williamson]

That's someone who should be running for office in northeast of the uk. But, yeah, is there, it seems to me, like this sort of legislative fuckery always tends to be locked in. I mean there's even. I remember reading this theory that I can't recall where it comes from that over time because you really mostly accumulate laws rather than getting rid of them. If you run society for long enough without checks on this, it ends up getting to the point where everything is illegal and no one can do anything anymore because you've just accumulated so many laws that the Venn diagram of what is illegal to do and what you can do is now just a single source circle.

[Constantin Kisin]

I think that the saying is that an old, a sick society accumulates laws like an old man accumulates medicines. Right. Like over time you just accumulate all these things.

[Chris Williamson]

Try and box it in.

[Constantin Kisin]

Yeah. And this is where Elon actually I don't know why it didn't happen. Maybe there's some practical reason why it's difficult or maybe politically it's impossible. But he had this great idea that he used to talk about which is every law should have a clause in it that it expires after a certain point and it has to be ruled re legislated again.

[Chris Williamson]

We'll just make sure that this is still applicable.

[Constantin Kisin]

Right.

[Chris Williamson]

And I think the. There's something to do with. You're allowed to bring sheep across Tower Bridge on the morning of the 13th of May, you know, if it's a full moon or something.

[Constantin Kisin]

Yeah. And a lot of these laws just should be getting reviewed every 20 years. And I appreciate that, you know, creates an increasing workload and whatever. But the idea is that a law is passed and then remains in power in perpetuity without any revision. It just doesn't seem to me to, to be on the right side of trade offs of that situation. You know, laws should be reviewable over after a period of time. Necessarily so. And then if we still think 30 years later that we do want this cheap to Tower Bridge whatever thing. Great. And I, I think if you had that a lot of the, the problems of why we are where we are were actually created under the Blair government towards the end of that government. So the, the Equal Rights act all, all. There's lots of the stuff about the independent civil service which now basically means the civil service service is not independent, it's now actually how government is administrated, et cetera. They were all created then. Well we wouldn't be having them now if we actually had those things under review all the time. So I think that's a great idea and I don't know why countries aren't doing it, there may be a good reason by the way, it may be just being practical in some way, but theoretically that would be very interesting proposal.

[Chris Williamson]

I don't know what happens with this ability to speak freely daily problem in the uk because if that stuff's not going to get repealed and it doesn't seem like it is, it's not going to get turned, turned around. There are going to be increasing numbers of examples, precedent set where that thing was unspeakable. So we'll creep it forward another inch and we'll creep it forward another inch and we'll creep it forward another inch. And you know, when it comes to culture, this thing is malleable and it can sort of wax and wane and flex and ebb and flow forward and back. But you, you've got something that's very hard and fast that's sort of written down. There is a bright line about what you can and can't do. And actually here are a bunch of precedents that have creeped it even further.

[Constantin Kisin]

And then you have no choice. So to the point where, look, as you can imagine, I'm not a big fan of this moronic far left Palestine Action organization, but they've been classified as a terrorist organization. So the police are basically now going around arresting grannies who are like Palestine and climate change and like all that, right? Because you have to then enforce these stupid laws that are passed and then you end up basically criminalizing loads of people whose only crime is ignorance and stupidity. And that's not a good outcome, you know. So to the extent that you care about free speech, it's important to care about the free speech of those stupid people as well. I mean, but, but this is the truth is like of those 30 people who are getting arrested every day, most of them are not writing articulate essays about the complexities of geopolitics and, and mass immigration. Most of them are saying stupid shit that we'd probably rather people didn't say.

[Chris Williamson]

Well, also, most of them are probably not real kinetic actual world threats that are going to cause some sort of uprising that, that's my point, is going to upend the country.

[Constantin Kisin]

That's my point, I suppose.

[Chris Williamson]

This, this, what are you focusing on? Question. But again, people in America may not have seen people in the UK have some issues with our. Are public services, as you would say, and infrastructure. We're a country where it's very wet and quite cold a lot of the time and the roads are old. And what that means is you get potholes now. They're not the size of the ones that you get in America, because the size of the ones you get in America. They're entire postcodes of holes. But they're very common. And the roads in the UK can be damaged. What people realized was that there was kind of a cheat code. They managed to find an exploit in the England video game game, which was if you painted the English flag on a pothole, the local council would tend to come and remove it and also fix the pothole while they did that. Or if your bin bags hadn't been taken away, you could also try and do some sort of a similar approach with that.

[Constantin Kisin]

It's that joke, isn't it, playing out in real life? The joke was something like, you know, hi, the police. Can you come to my house? I'm being burgled. No, sorry, we were too busy. Okay. Well, it's a tran. You know, you just misgendered. He just misgendered me. Okay. Turn up the next day. It's kind of like that, but in real life.

[Chris Williamson]

But yeah. This gaming of the system, this sort of weird identification with these rules are so ludicrous. Look at how I'm going to play them.

[Constantin Kisin]

Yeah.

[Chris Williamson]

Is actually part of the British spirit, like the orderliness that we have. There's a fantastic subreddit. Have you heard of r. Malicious compliance?

[Constantin Kisin]

No, I haven't seen folks.

[Chris Williamson]

Awesome. So it's stories of people like my boss said. My boss said that he didn't want to speak to me. So like every time that he rings me, I don't. I don't say anything on the phone and I just let him talk like stuff like that. And the Brits are. Will hold on to a resentment.

[Constantin Kisin]

Yeah.

[Chris Williamson]

And. And the malicious compliance thing is definitely there.

[Constantin Kisin]

If we had a second member, we still wouldn't go around shooting people because just not in the British psyche, really. I don't think.

[Chris Williamson]

Yeah. How much of this discontent is explained by the economy not being where it's supposed to be?

[Constantin Kisin]

I think it's a big part of it, man. It's like, look, I. I think people's concerns about mass immigration are incredibly legitimate, as we've discussed ad nauseam with you today, and illegal immigration especially. But it's also infinitely true that when things are going great, the problems that do exist become less significant.

[Chris Williamson]

They hide an awful lot.

[Constantin Kisin]

That's right. So we got. Yeah, the economy is really struggling and people's living standards are not growing, in many cases, I would argue are declining. Because when your wages are stagnant and infrastructure as you say is crumbling and things are not being worked on and improved, you got a big problem. And the reason for that is, I mean, there's lots of reasons for that, but one of the big ones is this is something that people fundamentally don't understand. But if you look at countries that do well versus countries that don't do well, well, ultimately strip away everything else. It's about how much energy they consume.

[Chris Williamson]

Okay.

[Constantin Kisin]

GDP is energy transformed. The more energy you consume, the more prosperity you have, because everything comes from energy. Everything in this room was created, including me and you, through the consumption of energy. Right.

[Chris Williamson]

New tonic. Yes.

[Constantin Kisin]

Well, again, consumption of energy. So the, the point being that when you, when you create a system where the cost of we, we have the highest industrial electricity prices in the world, or energy. Electricity or energy, and we have the fourth highest retail consumer energy prices in the world. If you have that. And, and the reason for that is, is green levies and, and subsidies, etc. It's, it's all net zero basically because, because the price of energy has become completely divorced from the price of energy at the point of purchase.

[Chris Williamson]

The cost of energy. Yeah.

[Constantin Kisin]

So when the people who distribute energy buy it, it's one price and then there's a huge markup now to the point where even when the price of energy goes up, yeah, those prices go up. But when it goes down, our prices don't go down.

[Chris Williamson]

Right.

[Constantin Kisin]

Now if you have the highest energy prices in the world or one of the highest, that makes it far, far, far more difficult to run a business, especially industry and so on. So, so, and the idea behind net zero is very clear about this. There's no, there's no controversy about this. If we make energy expensive, people will consume less of it. That's part of it. Right. So nowhere on the net zero agenda is let's make clean energy that's really cheap for people. Part of it is about inhibiting demand through making it more expensive. Like if you think about it, this is what we do with cigarettes, is what we do with alcohol, with fuel as well. You whack a massive excise duty on all those things to disincentivize, to disincentivize people from doing it. It's the same thing that's happened within. So we've basically deliberately, purposefully destroyed our own prosperity. And the reason we've done this, I think we just had Catherine Porter on the show who's an energy analyst and expert, and she talked about this, and I've talked about this for a long time in A broader context as well. If you take what you have for granted and think that if you fuck around with the variables that make it what it is, it's not going to change, you will ruin what you have. Right. It's like, imagine you've obviously spent a lot of time focusing on health and physique, et cetera, etc. Imagine you stopped doing all the things you did to get into good shape and were like, well, I'm still going to be in good shape. Well, you might last for a little bit. And you. And for that little bit, you'll be like, oh, yeah, I didn't need to go to the gym, I didn't need to eat. Right. I didn't need to get my sleep, but eventually we'll catch up with you. And that's where the country's at at the moment. So the first order of business for me is you have to get of this suicidal idea that we call net zero, because not only is it making us poorer and energy insecure, it's also not helping the climate at all. Because all that's mainly happened is we've outsourced the things that we make in this country to other countries, which make them in dirtier ways, and then we put them on big ships and sail.

[Chris Williamson]

Them back over here, which also isn't that efficient.

[Constantin Kisin]

No. So we've actually globally probably increased emissions by doing this so that we can pretend to be green, so that a granny at Palestine Action can feel like she's done something.

[Chris Williamson]

I saw a stat around the amount of carbon emissions that a person living in Sudan or Syria has compared with when they move to the uk. There's five times more, I think, around about five times more carbon emissions put out by an individual who is living in the UK than the same individual who's living in Syria and the Sudan.

[Constantin Kisin]

Right.

[Chris Williamson]

So, again, we care about the working class, but what we have to be able to distribute between people who are in need is diluted down. We care about women's rights, but there is a blast radius around some of these hotels where people from different cultures don't necessarily adhere to our slightly more elevated understanding of what it means to treat a woman in the modern world.

[Constantin Kisin]

Uriel and Clarked that very well.

[Chris Williamson]

Yeah, yeah.

[Constantin Kisin]

It's like there might be a blazer.

[Chris Williamson]

Have you ever slacklined? It's kind of like slacklining. And then the same thing with the climate change, you know, And I'm very fascinated by how people sort of square circles of beliefs that don't necessarily comport with each other when you give them these sorts of examples. It's very interesting to me. And this is another one that you think, well, we care about climate change. Net zero is something that's very important. I don't have a particularly strong opinion on Net zero.

[Constantin Kisin]

It's because you don't have it where you live.

[Chris Williamson]

That's true. Most. Yeah. I mean Texas is definitely interesting on that. Most of my stuff about Net zero has come from you. Most of my understanding if that's come from you. I've had Richard Betts, director of the IPCC on the show, had Hannah Ritchie on as well, from our world in data. So I'm not only Rutger Bregman on. Right. The guy that called out all of the billionaires at Davos. I'm not right coded when it comes to, to this.

[Constantin Kisin]

Me neither. I'm just, I've explored this issue and I've come to the conclusion that even if you really care about climate change and you think it's a major problem, etc. What we're doing is the opposite of what you'd want to do to fix that problem.

[Chris Williamson]

It's kind of, it's toxic empathy at a sort of global climate level.

[Constantin Kisin]

And also it's ignorance.

[Chris Williamson]

Yeah. And, and wanting to be able to stand proselytizing, self pedestalizing. Look at how you are so green. We're doing all this. We might have outsourced this, if what you're saying is accurate, to just some other place that does it with lower wages, for lower living standards, with more emissions, less clean. And then we've got to transport the fucking thing back.

[Constantin Kisin]

And look, there's obviously the obvious point that you made as well, which is about the moralizing aspect of this, which is why, you know, little Greta, she gets involved in this now. She's onto the next big moral crusade of Palestine. She's moved on from climate change because that's not as important anymore. But the reality is as well. And Francis always makes this point and I think he's right, particularly when it comes to your point about incompatibility of beliefs that people hold. At the same time, it's hard having beliefs that are compatible with each other because that requires thinking through things. It requires studying and knowing things and talking to people and listening to things. But it's so much easier to just go, well, I really care about the planet and I really care about working class people and I really care about immigrants and I really care about this. And, and that is often what most people's positions actually are when you Talk to them. So I remember last time I was in dc, I was talking to a guy who was an immigrant, like 40 years ago. I think he'd come. I can't remember where exactly was he came from. I think it was Ethiopia, Eritrea, somewhere like that. Lovely man. And he told me that I was staying in the hotel where Ronald Reagan was assassinated, the attempt was made on his life where he was shot. And I said, oh, yeah, that's interesting. What did you think of Ronald Reagan? He said, oh, he was a great American. I loved him. And I said, oh, really? Did you vote for him? And he went, no, I voted for the other guy. And I was like, oh, really? That's why. And he was like, yeah, because he was. He was better for me. Right. Like people. People will have ideas about things, but then they will also do things that are counter to that when it comes to their own pocket. And there's a lot of. A lot of people have incompatible beliefs. I think we all do to some extent. And our journey at trigonometry has been an attempt to educate ourselves on the issues so that we are not in.

[Chris Williamson]

That position blindly ununified.

[Constantin Kisin]

Yeah, but those positions are very often unpopular because if you are saying to people, well, you can't have everything that you want, you can't have this belief, and also this belief when both of those beliefs make you feel good about yourself, that that's more difficult and it's uncomfortable, it's much easier just to go, well, you know, the reason the country is, is we hate the Tories and, and, and rich people are stealing everyone's money and whatever it is, it's just not true. I wish it was true because then the solution would be a lot easier than what the actual solution is, which is you have to create a country where businesses create wealth and, you know, then you have the tax revenues from it and you have to reform government and reform the civil. Lots and lots of difficulties.

[Chris Williamson]

Things beyond net zero and the cost of energy. 25% of people under 35 are on benefits and 52% of households receive more in benefits than they pay in taxes.

[Constantin Kisin]

Right.

[Chris Williamson]

This feels a lot like the difference between a safety net and a hammock.

[Constantin Kisin]

Yeah.

[Chris Williamson]

What does that say about the. Because again, it's very easy to be like the. These benefit fraudster people. They don't really have seen some scheme where you can get. The cheapest way to get a new BMW is to get it through the disability allowance fund or whatever it is, and it gets. And you can upgrade it every two Years or something like that.

[Constantin Kisin]

If you create a system that incentivizes people to say that they're mentally unwell and then to be rewarded with whatever it is that people want, which is money, housing, etc, for that, people will take advantage of it. I don't blame them. I blame the terrible system. I mean, we had a great interview with Fraser Nelson in which we talked about this. And that was, that was basically his entire argument is like, you've created a system that traps people in welfare. And I guarantee you, even this driven, as passionate as you and I are, if we, if we found ourselves in our early 20s a little bit depressed as I was, I don't know about you, I was certainly depressed in my early 20s. Cause I had lots of difficult things in my life. If you'd given me 25 grand a year and a house to live in, wouldn't I take it?

[Chris Williamson]

Just follow the incentives.

[Constantin Kisin]

It's very difficult to see yourself, and I think it's probably fair to say you and I both have established that we have quite a lot of ambition and drive in our lives. Nonetheless, I would put it to you, I think, would struggle to get out of that situation. So if you create a trap for people, a lot of them are gonna fall into it.

[Chris Williamson]

Yeah, that's a better way to put it. That's a better way to put it. The difference between a safety net, a hammock and a trap.

[Constantin Kisin]

Yeah, it's a trap.

[Chris Williamson]

Yes, yes.

[Constantin Kisin]

And it's a trap with no incentive to get out. Look, I'll be honest with you, right? Like if I wasn't doing what I do now, my dream job would be to be a video game streamer.

[Chris Williamson]

Okay, Yeah, I can see you doing that.

[Constantin Kisin]

Yeah. I love video games. I really enjoy them. I'm not good enough at them to do it, but if I could be.

[Chris Williamson]

You'Re good enough at shit talking to do it.

[Constantin Kisin]

If I could be an amateur video game stream streamer while the government paid me 25 grand a year and I had a house and I was relatively comfortable, how many people wouldn't take that? So if you make a trap for people, they will fall into it. And part of it is you have to take the trap away and a lot of people aren't going to like it.

[Chris Williamson]

How much of this explains the rise of Gary's economics and that wing of talking?

[Constantin Kisin]

Look, I think Gary. I feel bad about saying anything about Gary because before he got as big as he did, he was booked to come on Trigonometry. And the person who was responsible for our bookings, left and forgot to do a proper handover. So we were in America filming.

[Chris Williamson]

He turned up at the studio.

[Constantin Kisin]

Gary turned up at the train station.

[Chris Williamson]

Sorry, Gary.

[Constantin Kisin]

And I actually saw him at that migrant protest. And I apologize to him, but I got a very clear sense that he's not coming back on the show. I don't think it's because of that. I just think he's got some so big he doesn't want to talk to people who probably don't agree with him. But anyway, Gary's economics and the fact that he is as successful as he is is a symptom of the fact that ordinary people are really struggling. And when people are struggling, they will look for an explanation of what's going on. And the rich have screwed you is the most appealing explanation that you are ever going to get. It's very appealing.

[Chris Williamson]

How much accuracy do you think is in that?

[Constantin Kisin]

I think it's true that. That the very, very rich have got very, very, very, very, very rich. I don't think it's true that the fact that they've got very, very, very rich is the reason that people's living standards have fallen. The reason people's living standards have fallen is that we do not have a dynamic economy. If you look at America, the fact about America that I told you about Britain just isn't there. America's GDP is way higher today, per capita, than it was in 2008. But in Britain, it's not right. We have the same levels of debt. America's huge, hugely indebted America just has a much more dynamic economy. And the reason we don't have one is partly the culture we've talked about is partly the benefit system that we've talked about. And it's a lot of it is about net zero. And if we strip all of those things away and actually start going, how do we grow the economy fast? How do we build businesses in this country? How do we encourage our people to. To work hard, create things, have the sort of vision that, you know, there were a lot of problems with Thatcherism, but under Thatcher, there was that drive and ambition and celebration for success and aspiration. If we did that, we'd grow our economy very quickly. So I don't think the issue is that there is an elite class of the super rich, because that elite class of the super rich also exists in America where living standards are going up.

[Chris Williamson]

Yeah, yeah. I. It seems to me the difference in the UK between an abundance and a scarcity mindset of we need to Tax people more as opposed to create more. Tax the people who already have it as opposed to generate a bigger pie. Yeah, yeah. There's this idea. I read Bill Perkins book Die with Zero and he's got this interesting idea from economics called consumption smoothing. Have you come across that?

[Constantin Kisin]

No.

[Chris Williamson]

Really? Cool. I'm probably going to butcher it, but I'll get close. Consumption smoothing basically allows you in the moment to anticipate your future economic position. So it means that if you anticipate that things are going to grow, you can borrow against your own future. And in the same way, if you can anticipate that things are going to decline, you can save against your own future. His justification that one of the biggest predictors of, of wealth is age across people's lives. For the most part, assuming that you don't get into any trouble, you are going to have more money in future than you're going to have now. But most people who are frugally minded tend to underspend their current earning when they should be spending at their future earning and that allows you to capture most of the gains. He's got a.

[Constantin Kisin]

Sorry, I'm slightly skeptical, but carry on.

[Chris Williamson]

He's basically applying consumption smoothing to your own life. Yeah, For a particular cohort of people I would put myself in that class, grew up super not rich. Spending money is something that I've, it's a skill I've had to learn. And it's one of the ways that he justifies people in learning how to spend money. Hey, you're going to have a little bit more money in future. Maybe you should be less scared about spending it now.

[Constantin Kisin]

I see. Yeah, look, there's a context, contextualized truthness to that in that if you're someone whose ingrained mentality is not to spend any money, you might need that advice. Broadly speaking, though, if you look at the, the central look, there's, there's a lot of claims that this study has been debunked. You know, the marshmallow test thing. But broadly speaking, I think it's undeniable that people who are willing to forego immediate gratification for benefits later do better.

[Chris Williamson]

Across, regardless of whether it's built around a marshmallow or not.

[Constantin Kisin]

Exactly. And so I think, and this, it's culturally true as well. Cultures that teach people, people to save and accumulate tend to do better over time as well, work hard, etc. But see, where I would say about Gary, and where he's absolutely right is I think there's undeniable evidence that the more inequality There is in society, the worse it is for everybody, including the super rich. This is something that's talked about a lot in the spirit level. And if you plot the, the kind of the markers of social disease, disease, social disease, like percentage of the population in prison, teenage pregnancy, violent crime, etc. After you get once you get to like a, a moderately wealthy country be any gains in gdp beyond that, if the inequality, they don't really matter. What matters is the level of inequality. So if society is very unequal, it's bad for everybody. And it makes sense, right? Because even if you're the super rich, you're living in a society where everyone hates you and probably wants to, to rob you. It's not a good place to be. So he's right about that. The problem with a lot of his analysis, I think in my opinion, I'd love to discuss it with him because I may have blind spots that I haven't considered is maybe he's so British that he's just built in zero growth into his model. So whenever I've watched a video of his, it's always about how do you divide the pie? Which is always the left wave of looking at economics.

[Chris Williamson]

There is not going to be a.

[Constantin Kisin]

Bigger pie, there's not going to be a bigger up high. And if you look at the world the way that a lot of people look at that world, and if you live in Britain the way it's currently constituted, that actually is true.

[Chris Williamson]

That was why I was bringing up the consumption smoothing thing. When you apply it to an entire country.

[Constantin Kisin]

That's right, that's right. So, but what I'm always. And that is an important conversation. Inequality is a very important conversation. The reason that there are social tensions in the UK is partly about that. But just like we talked about immigration, if everybody's feeling feeling of prosperity and wellbeing was rising, we wouldn't be having the conversation about that. I don't care that there's so many people who are so much richer than me. It never bothers me because I'm doing pretty well, right the moment I'm not doing well, that's a problem. So what we need to do is lift everybody up and then I don't think people are going to care that someone's got a yacht. I don't care if someone's got a super yacht. It doesn't bother me. It doesn't change my life in any way. And in fact, them having that yacht built in the UK is probably a good thing for the UK economy.

[Chris Williamson]

Yeah, it's a difference between one person with abundance, another person with lack, and two people with abundance, just one having more.

[Constantin Kisin]

That's right.

[Chris Williamson]

No, I think that in terms of how human psychology works, that seems to make an awful lot of sense.

[Constantin Kisin]

We compare ourselves to others. I mean, if you think about how we define inequality, we're all incredibly prosperous compared to people 100 years ago.

[Chris Williamson]

But there are bigger inequalities today. Another thing that's interesting, if you have areas of high inequality quality, you get more sexy selfies from women. So Candice Blake University in Australia did this great study where it's like millions and millions of selfie photos that are uploaded. And they were looking for one of the correlates of what's called self objectification and also beautification too. And the biggest predictor was levels of inequality and the.

[Constantin Kisin]

Are you saying you're in favor of inequality?

[Chris Williamson]

Well, look, there is a scarcity of sexy selfies online. Yeah, clearly, certainly from me, if you look at.

[Constantin Kisin]

But is the logic behind that basically that when there's a bigger reward for success and a bigger punishment for failure, then you're gonna amp up the.

[Chris Williamson]

Precisely correct. When again, very reductive stakes are higher? Basically, yes, correct. It's a reductive way to look at it. But basically, basically when women are shown how high they could climb and how low they could fall, they use their. One of their primary tools in order to be able to get themselves away from what they feel like would be a bad future and toward one that they think would be a good one. What I'm saying is human behavioral ecology would suggest that your behavior, your psychology can be highly, highly, highly impacted by what's happening around you in your environment. And you know, this is, is. You might think that this would be mitigated because, well, we're part of a globally connected information system. Why would the local inequality impact something which is being broadcast around the world? Well, because locally, still your environment still does have an influence on you. So for everybody that thinks, well, it doesn't really matter. I can, you know, working with WFH from home, my Internet business, it doesn't. No, no, no. This still has very much real world implications for how you behave, for the way that you see yourself, for the way that you see your future. And you know, when you scale this across an entire country, the UK is in many ways unified around certain principles. Just some of those principles are not so great. And yeah, I'm kind of fascinated by Gary too. He was supposed to be on last year. He was supposed to be on this week. But he is a very vertical commentator on this. I do want to know where he goes for three months at a time. He's sort of, he's, I don't know, he's like sleep token. He comes and releases an album and then fucks off for two years and then comes back with another album. So he is, he's definitely sort of.

[Constantin Kisin]

Like goes abroad somewhere, it seems like man of the people maybe just takes a break. We'll see. I'm only kidding, Gary. No, I genuinely, I'd love to have a conversation with him because I think what he is doing very well is capturing people's concerns and then it's about what is, you know, once you've identified the problem, diagnosed the problem, what is it that you're prescribing. And that's where I think a lot of the conversation is to be had.

[Chris Williamson]

Yeah, I mean, people did say the same thing about Andrew Tate. Correctly identifies the problem wrongly, prescribes the solution.

[Constantin Kisin]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think he's, I think he is much less accurate in his diagnosis than Gary.

[Chris Williamson]

But yeah, it's been fascinating to watch that unfold. You know, I, I didn't get chance to say this to Jimmy the Giant, but I think, and I, I genuinely hope that the interaction that you had with him, because I would put sort of Jimmy and Gary and like that sort of left leaning content creator online, you know, regular video essay, slightly different. I really think that there is a lot of important stuff for those guys to be talking about and I think, think that there is a, there is a dearth of good, reasonable content creators from the left in the UK that I would watch. And it's not like I don't watch any other stuff that comes out of the U.S. but yeah, I'm like, okay, I understand that there are shows like yours I would certainly watch. Lodest thing. And I'm like, right, okay, well, what if we've got this? What's that? Where's the other leg of this triangle, so to speak. And yeah, I look forward to. I saw Jimmy's thing about immigration that he did the other day. This big video essay about you're being lied to. It is sometimes predictable in terms of its angle, but often seems to be insightful. I'm like, oh, wow, that's really cool. So if there's a burgeoning left leaning content creator thing that's young and engaged and actually is able to use the platform correctly and doesn't get captured and doesn't start saying things In a stupid way, fucking, let's go for it. Because in. Interestingly enough, I know that Gary kind of discounts his own ability. Like, if he is making an example, he is the exception to the rule that he is trying to prove, which is, you can't make something of yourself if you come from a background where you haven't inherited something. Daniel pointed out in his debate with him, he's like, well, are you not a living breeding? He's like, oh, no, Daniel, you don't understand. That's not. But if you have more people from the left who are, by virtue of their own existence, given an example of success and of sort of upward mobility, and I'm able to do something, unless you continue to sort of derogate your own exceptionalness, you do become an example for other people to sort of take and run with. Does that make sense?

[Constantin Kisin]

Yeah, it does, it does. Now, the interaction with Jimmy was very interesting in all sorts of ways, but one of them is, it's that thing we talked about in connection with immigration, about making things immoral issue, like. And I think that. So for people who. Who didn't follow it, basically, he made a video calling a bunch of people, I being one of them grifters. I invited him to talk to me on our show. And it kind of derailed into him having a go at me, which he then apologized for because he got a lot of backlash for the way that it happened. Right. And ultimately, what I think he took away from that is he. He came in, it was such a strong moral sense, sense of, like, this is a bad person, when talking to me, that the way he behaved was really terrible and unacceptable. And he kind of had to reckon with that, which is full credit to him for doing that. Because it's hard to make a mistake, admit that you're wrong. Right? But this is what I mean is right. And one of the things I hope that comes out of it is like, he actually goes into investigating the counter arguments a lot more. Because the problem with a lot of the people. And we talked about this, you know, when. When I was giving you the example of the progressive arguments that challenge what you're saying, saying a lot of it is if you're in that kind of worldview, you read a book from somebody that agrees with you, and then you got, now this explains everything, and then you make a video about it.

[Chris Williamson]

Everybody does that, though, right? Confirmation bias. Everybody that hasn't decided to purposefully expose themselves to things that make them uncomfortable.

[Constantin Kisin]

Unless you have an unpopular opinion, which I often do. And you're constantly confronted with the fact that it's unpopular and people give you the counter argument to what you're saying, in which case you actually sharpen your argument and then you kind of hopefully do actually know what you're saying.

[Chris Williamson]

So anti echo chamber by being constantly exposed to doses of whatever the opposition is.

[Constantin Kisin]

But don't you think that's exactly what happened when I invited him on and he suddenly had to deal with the reality that all these ideas that he had about people like me, whatever, as a young guy.

[Chris Williamson]

I think it was a formative event.

[Constantin Kisin]

And that's what I'm saying.

[Chris Williamson]

Sometimes those formative events happen in public and sometimes they happen in private.

[Constantin Kisin]

That's what I'm saying.

[Chris Williamson]

It can be a heartbreak, it can be a bankruptcy, it can be the loss of a loved one, it can. It can be a professional failure getting fired from a job, or it can be a debate that goes wrong on the Internet. It's just usually it's not watched by half a million people.

[Constantin Kisin]

That's right. But my point is, if you are going to make arguments about things in public, it's very, very important that you recognize two things at once. On the one hand, there are a lot of cliques to be had and money to be made by regurgitating arguments that your audience wants to hear, irrespective of how true they are. But that will lead you to bad places quickly, in my opinion. You might still get the clicks and the money, but you're still going to be in a bad place in other ways. The other option is you actually explore the argument and you go, where is the truth of this? And you explore the counter arguments in detail. And that's what I hope that he takes away from and more people just in general do, because this happens on the right as well. There are loads of people on the right in podcasting who are not remotely interested in the the truth.

[Chris Williamson]

You've been making friends with Tucker Carlson.

[Constantin Kisin]

I've always been friends with Tucker Carlson. In fact, I've been on Tucker Carlson's show a couple of times when he was on Fox.

[Chris Williamson]

What happened recently?

[Constantin Kisin]

I'm trying to think what exactly happened? Oh, what happened was the last time he had me on his show, I said to his producer, why don't we have a discussion about Ukraine? Because I don't agree with Tucker and I think it would be great. And we'd have a great discussion because what Tucker was doing at that point is just putting out blatant links, lies about Ukraine, just outright complete Just the opposite of the truth on a number of issues. And I was like, why don't we have a debate? It'll be great. And they were like, no, no, no. Basically like I was, it was communicated to me that if, if we had a debate in which we disagreed, I'd be banned from the show, basically.

[Chris Williamson]

This was when he was on Fox.

[Constantin Kisin]

Yeah, right, yeah. And since then I, I wrote an article after he went to Russia called Tucker Carlson and the Woke. Woke. Right. In which I basically made a fairly complex but I think important argument that there's a fringe of the right that is becoming like the woke left in some ways an obsession with identity, obsession with identity based victimhood, the desire to like destroy people that don't agree instead of engaging in genuine debate, all of these things. And I don't think he took well to that. And particularly, you know, he's into a Daryl Cooper and describing him as the most honest and best historian in America just thought was irresponsible and stupid. But apparently he's called me out like I'm just like, I'm not interested in ego games. I criticize people for things that they do and I praise people for things that they do. Whether people like me or I like him, it's just irrelevant to me.

[Chris Williamson]

Is the right. Especially sort of cultural commentary, right, Fracturing in a novel or interesting way at the moment?

[Constantin Kisin]

Yeah, I think so. I think. Well, look, every, that big discussion topic that comes along splits people in new ways, right. I don't know if you've noticed this. So there was broadly speaking like an anti woke coalition and then the war in Ukraine came along.

[Chris Williamson]

Well, that was a large umbrella, right. That was a big sort of.

[Constantin Kisin]

And it sort of held, right?

[Chris Williamson]

Yeah, yeah, that was a big global organization.

[Constantin Kisin]

That's right. And then the war in Ukraine came along and before that there was Covid. They came along kind of simultaneously. Right. You had Covid, then you had Ukraine.

[Chris Williamson]

And I think just to interject, I think most people that were probably anti Woke would have also had the same sort of opinion around Covid. So that might have ossified.

[Constantin Kisin]

There's slivers to that. Right. Because there was the. My position, which is if you are really vulnerable, you probably should get vaccinated.

[Chris Williamson]

And.

[Constantin Kisin]

I don't think vaccines are the root of all evil, generally speaking niche position, but government authoritarianism really is a big problem. And by the way, all the evidence shows the virus came from a lab.

[Chris Williamson]

Unnecessarily complex, Right?

[Constantin Kisin]

That's one position. The other position, this is like what was it the, what they call it the hoax demic or whatever. What was it called?

[Chris Williamson]

I don't know. I missed this or deleted.

[Constantin Kisin]

There's a lot of people think that it was like. Anyway, right, there's that. Then the one Ukraine came along and that's when the really big split happened. Then you have Israel and Gaza and you're going to have the next thing going along yet again. So every single time something happens, it splits left and right.

[Chris Williamson]

I mean, even with this Trump, Trump's success or failure that we've seen in whatever eight months of his term so far.

[Constantin Kisin]

So the strikes on Iran were very interesting in terms of the splitting.

[Chris Williamson]

Is it warmongering, is it defending, is it supporting Israel, Is it.

[Constantin Kisin]

Well, it's not even about Israel. I just think there's a section of the right for very understandable reasons, especially in America, which is following Iraq, Afghanistan and probably even Vietnam. Vietnam is like any, any conflict is automatically something to, to be avoided, which if you want to run a global empire, isn't really going to work. But it is a very like, it appeals to the heart, kind of like war is bad. Well, of course war is bad. Everyone agrees on that. The question is, do you want the mullahs in Iran to have access to a nuclear weapon? I think not. Right. And what was interesting, what happened there was a lot of these people had a panic attack. Basically, basically the Tucker Carlson's, the Dave Smith. You know, Smith called for Trump to be impeached. Right. Ultimately, Trump basically styled it out and was proven completely right by all the events. So that was another one. Then there's Epstein, you know, and then you just. So my point is all the different issues are going to come and go and people are going to split in all their different ways. And what I think is really important to do for everybody within that, I hope, is to actually seek the truth of each issue issue on its own merits as opposed to going, what's the tribe that I'm belong, I belong to?

[Chris Williamson]

Especially given that the right accuses the left of doing this, this sort of absolutionist, puritanical, exclusionary group think, where if you don't adhere to 100% of the things that we agree with, then you're not even a part of the tribe anymore. So yeah, I mean, how much of this is just when you're inside of the tent pissing at. It's way less sort of revolutionary and it doesn't feel like there's much attention on you and you need to come up with ways to Be a little bit more relevant maybe.

[Constantin Kisin]

I don't know. For me, the reason I criticize people on left and right for saying and doing things that I don't agree with is I think that's what a healthy society and a healthy debate looks like. Like, I don't have to agree with Tucker and everything. I thought during the summer of BLM he was the funniest comedian on tv. The way he was satirizing what was happening was amazing. Right. But when he, when he says dumb shit about Ukraine, I'm not gonna sit here and pretend that it's true while my family are 30 km from the front line being bombed. Right. I'm not gonna sit here and go, oh, yeah. Well, I agree with Tucker Carlson on this and he's had me on his show and he's a big personality. He'll probably criticize me, therefore I'll pretend it's all true. Well, it's not gonna happen. And it's the same on every other issue. So if Tucker Carlson starts saying things that I think are really important and valid, I will be the first appraiser. And that applies to everybody and vice versa.

[Chris Williamson]

Yeah. Not even specifically around Tucker. I just, I have found it interesting to observe what's happened to the right, you know, the Internet. Right, yeah. Over the last 12 months. And it's also, you know, you're right. Ukraine, Russia, Gaza, Trump, Trump wobbles, big wobbles, some small wobbles, some big wobbles. Since he's been in Epstein. Yeah, yeah. It's starting to.

[Constantin Kisin]

And there's more to come.

[Chris Williamson]

It's like pizza slice cutter.

[Constantin Kisin]

The other thing is, once you've won the election, particularly in the overwhelming fashion that they, they did in America, and he's governing in quite a swashbuckling style when it comes to dealing with a lot of things for the right wing media, like they, they really are struggling to get the numbers that they, they'd got used to because it's like, well, you're going to beat up on the Democrat. I mean, he's already dead. You know that meme. Stop, stop. He's already dead. Yeah, like that's, that's where the Democrats.

[Chris Williamson]

I mean about the piss, the inside of the tent pissing out, it's just way less cool. It doesn't, it doesn't seem punk, which.

[Constantin Kisin]

Is why I just would. I always try and encourage people in new media not to become what the legacy media became, which then necessitated the creation of new media.

[Chris Williamson]

Predictable, right?

[Constantin Kisin]

Predictable. Obsessed about personality, Tucker Carson calls out like, who gives of shit, right? All of this stuff is irrelevant. What I'm interested in is what is the truth of this? What is the truth of Ukraine and Russia? What is the truth of Israel and Palestine? How does that get solved? How can we bring on someone to talk about the reality? We had Benjamin Netanyahu on, very controversial, but we actually pushed him more than any interview he's done since the war started. Because we're trying to get to the truth of things. That's what we should be doing. That's the unique opportunity we have in the new media. That's the point. Point. Right. And it's frustrating that to watch this medium that I thought was the antidote to all that become the. Oh, you think I naively thought that this was going to be the antidote? Yeah.

[Chris Williamson]

Do you think that that is likely to be a trajectory that it follows? I'm aware that you're not, you don't have a crystal ball. But what do you think the future of sort of new media in that way looks like?

[Constantin Kisin]

I, I, look, I am always very skeptical whenever anyone accuses of being audience captured. Like people say, oh, this person has been captured by their audience. But we also can't pretend as content creators on the Internet that there are not pressures, if you want to get more clicks, make more money, etc. To produce particular types of content that the person who is producing it might not even at the outset necessarily agree with. And I think it takes a strong focus on something else other than clicks and money to avoid that pitfall. And so what I, what I'm saying is like, did you become a content creator to be famous and make money? Because I didn't. Right. I thought there was like important conversations to be had. I thought there were people to interview that had things to offer the world. I thought that political Debates were becoming 3 seconds here, 10 seconds there, and you never learn it anything. So why don't we do that? Like that. That what? That is what I think new media has the opportunity to do in a way that legacy media has simply ceased doing. And if we spend all our time just discussing these fringe moronic things, because it's like the fastest way to the bottom of the brainstem. What are we doing? What are we doing? It's like, you know, and people always go, well, you know, don't criticize other people, just make different contact. Okay, well, some, some things are just not good for people. Right. So if you turn every political discussion into a kind of Jerry Springer, I don't think you are doing a service to humanity. And I don't think people will still click on it, a lot of them, but they'll walk away from it the way they walk away from having a fast food meal. Like it, you eat it and then you feel bad, you know. So I just hope more people recognize they have an opportunity to either do something good or to do something very bad at scale and actually think about that.

[Chris Williamson]

Heck yeah. Constantin, I appreciate you, man.

[Constantin Kisin]

Thanks for having me.

[Chris Williamson]

When I first started doing personal growth, I really wanted to read the best books. The most impactful ones, the most entertaining ones, the ones that were the easiest to read and the most dense and interesting. But there wasn't a list of them. So I scoured and scoured and scoured and then gave up and just started reading on my own. And then I made a list of 100 of the best books that I've ever found. And you can get that for free right now. So if you want to spend more time around great books that aren't going to completely kill your memory and your attention just trying to get through a single page, go to chriswillx.combooks to get my list completely free of 100 books you should should read before you die. That's ChrisWillX.Com Books.