WBD701 Audio Transcription
The Growing Culture War with Konstantin Kisin
Release date: Friday 25th August
Note: the following is a transcription of my interview with Konstantin Kisin. I have reviewed the transcription but if you find any mistakes, please feel free to email me. You can listen to the original recording here.
Konstantin Kisin is a Russian-British satirist, podcaster, author and political commentator. In this interview, we discuss politics, freedom of expression, and the influence of American discourse on the UK. We also talk about the importance of rational and reasonable discussions, the challenges of self-censorship and the connection between economic issues and "wokeism".
“Freedom has tradeoffs, freedom will mean you’re less safe and freedom will mean that some people will say things you don’t like; I’m okay with that, because I don’t want to live in totalitarian China and I don’t want to live in Soviet Russia, if you do fine that’s fine, go there and live there.”
— Konstantin Kisin
Interview Transcription
Peter McCormack: Good to see you, Konstantin.
Konstantin Kisin: Good to be with you.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, thanks for letting us use your studio for this.
Konstantin Kisin: Oh, it's a pleasure, man. Thanks for coming over.
Peter McCormack: No, beautiful drive. I've been really keen to talk to you for a while, firstly because I mainly talk to Americans.
Konstantin Kisin: I'm Russian, so it's a bit different. You've gone to the other end.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, I know you're Russian, but you're based here in the UK.
Konstantin Kisin: Yeah, I'm British as well.
Peter McCormack: But I'm going to praise you a little bit here. You've become kind of one of my favourite commentators in the UK because I think (1) you recognise the issues, (2) you're not crazy right-wing, (3) I don't feel like you are trying to stoke a culture war to grift people; and I think your observations are excellent. I thought you were great on Rogan, I really enjoyed your interview with Eric Weinstein recently, and so I've just been keen to talk to you for a while. If we don't bring up Bitcoin, that doesn't matter.
Konstantin Kisin: Okay, well that's a relief because I know very little about Bitcoin. I always tell the story whenever people ask me about Bitcoin that I bought, you know, everyone's banging on about Bitcoin, this would have been probably 15 years ago or something, and I was like, "You know what, let's put some money in to see what happens", so I think I bought about $400 worth of Bitcoin. And when the value doubled, you know with any investment, if the value doubles on something as volatile as a cryptocurrency you're going, "Well, I've done well here", so I sold it. I had 0.5 Bitcoin for $400 and I sold it for $800. Well, the point of that story is, I know fuck all about Bitcoin!
Peter McCormack: Well, I sold a lot of Bitcoin for a lot less than that at different times.
Konstantin Kisin: Really?
Peter McCormack: Yeah, everyone's got a Bitcoin story like that. We might get into it.
Konstantin Kisin: Well, you know it's interesting you mentioned that I'm not crazy right-wing, I actually don't think of myself as right-wing at all and I'll tell you why; because all of the things that people might now say make you right-wing, I don't know how old you are, I suspect you're probably similar age.
Peter McCormack: I think I'm a bit older, I'm 44.
Konstantin Kisin: I'm 40. So, when I was growing up and in fact when I was a young man, a young adult, thinking that there's a difference between men and women, or that you can't change your sex by saying some words, or that countries of course should welcome immigrants like me, but we should have borders that are enforced, right? These were all things that Barack Obama and I agreed on, you know what I mean? And so unless Barack Obama has become right-wing, I don't really think of myself as right-wing. And of course, the issue that I principally started talking about when I used to be a stand-up comedian was freedom of expression, and I always thought of that as an extremely liberal value that is what we protect in the West, and that's kind of one of the things that makes the West unique and special.
So, I don't think of myself as right-wing because none of my views are right-wing, it's just what's happened is a bunch of crazy people have taken the left off the deep end. Whereas, I've stayed exactly where I've been. Do you know what I mean?
Peter McCormack: No, I know exactly what you mean.
Konstantin Kisin: So, I'm very relieved to hear you say you don't think of me that way, because quite a lot of people would like to think of me as on that side of the political spectrum, and many of them are on that side. You know, conservatives, they keep thinking that I am one of them, and look, I've got wonderful conservative friends, but I always kind of have to put that disclaimer in because I really believe in creative destruction quite a lot, conservatives often want to keep things exactly as they are, I think creative destruction is important. Coming from a comedy background, I think having a sense of humour is important and conservatives can do, but not always!
So, I'm relieved about that because that's a big frustration of mine, the way that the political climate's changed, where having some very normal common-sense opinions has become controversial. So in many ways, it's not that I'm grifting, it's that the world around me has put me in a position where it's like saying some really obvious and normal things makes you controversial. Well, if that's the situation we're in, fine, I'll say those controversial things.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, but I also think you're framing things in a rational and reasonable way, and I don't think you're trying to inflame situations. Where some people are discussing the same issues that you're discussing, I think they are trying to inflame the issues and they're being provocative, and I don't think you are being provocative. And I think that's why I've enjoyed following you and regularly just having to look through your feed on Twitter. I mean, I looked today, I forgot the comedian, the Scottish comedian's name, but in relation to Roseanne?
Konstantin Kisin: Yeah, Graham Linehan, he's Irish, but he's one of the best comedy writers we've had. He wrote The IT Crowd, Father Ted, all sorts of things. And the show that he was part of has been cancelled in Edinburgh.
Peter McCormack: But you wrote a long and very kind and well-structured response to her. And that's what I think has been missing in the discourse, is that I don't think anyone who's done that has actually managed to break through. All that's managed to break through is people who maybe are inflammatory, who are overly provocative, who are trying to stoke a culture war. And you may say it exists, but you go to America a lot, I go to America a lot, it's certainly not like it is in America. I would hate that to come here.
Konstantin Kisin: Well, I think it has come here unfortunately. I think that we are in a place -- I always say this when I'm in America, whatever you guys flush down the toilet in the UK, we get served for breakfast the next day, and I do feel that that's happened. I mean, obviously you mentioned Graham Linehan, he's controversial because of his views about transgender ideology and various things to do with that, and we've had that issue. Now, I actually think on that particular issue we're doing much better now, because the Tavistock Clinic where a lot of these surgeries were happening has been shut down as a result of various investigations into it. We have an interview with Hannah Barnes coming out, who's a Newsnight journalist, who wrote a book about what was happening there.
So, in many ways I don't think we can avoid the reality that we now live in a kind of almost shared media space with the US, and we inevitably get caught up in many of the of the conversations. I don't know if you know this but abortion, for example, I think when you and I would have been growing up here wasn't really an issue that anyone debated or talked about, it was kind of a settled issue. It's increasingly not and I think that's partly because we're downloading a lot of our memes from America.
Peter McCormack: Yeah I don't think people fully understood though that we have pretty established abortion laws here in the UK. And so, I've not seen that becoming an issue of debate. Am I missing something?
Konstantin Kisin: Yeah, you will see that coming through increasingly, yeah, for sure.
Peter McCormack: Interesting. Well, like I say, I mean it is great to talk to you. I know you focus a lot on the issues of wokeism and the kind of pervasive effect it has been having on society. But my hope is here in the UK, we can be a bit more civilised, rational, reasonable about dealing with these issues, because my thoughts and when I see everything in America is everything seems to be a binary argument, and that nuanced middle ground where issues are discussed tends to be missed. And I think I've found that even if you hold a firm position, you are also diving into the nuance a bit and having a rational argument.
Konstantin Kisin: Yeah, well look, I believe in persuading people, I think that's how you change the culture. You have to meet people where they are and persuade them. And one of the great things about Triggernometry, over the last five and a half years, we've had people on the show who've persuaded us and have changed our minds about issues. So, I know from personal experience that people, when exposed to rational argument that's made without cruelty or without malice, many people, if they give it the time to actually think it through, will change their perspective if they're presented with a coherent argument. And so I've always tried to combine that with a bit of humour and a bit of levity and some facts, which I think is important. And that to me is the way that, if there is such a thing as a culture war, which in my opinion we are in, then the way that gets won is by persuading most people who've got, you know, people have got families and jobs and sick parents and kids that need to be taken to football, or whatever. Most people don't have time to delve deeply into some obscure issue that affects 1% of the public.
However, I think there are some issues on which it becomes important to win the debate, to win the argument. And in my opinion, the way to do that is by coming across as reasonable and rational. But look, I understand as well, on some of the stuff that we talk about, for me for example, my family fled the Soviet Union because they were punished for speaking their mind. I have a bit of a sensitivity when it comes to seeing people shut down for expressing opinions that some people don't like. To me, do you see what I mean? That's like a bit of a trauma spot almost for me.
Peter McCormack: Well, I'm in a five-year lawsuit for a number of tweets.
Konstantin Kisin: Are you?
Peter McCormack: Yeah, so that's my biggest envy of America, is their First Amendment protection.
Konstantin Kisin: I'm the same. So, when I see stuff like that, it sends me up the wall, and so I do understand people who are outraged about things. My feeling though is that that is an unproductive way of being for you as an individual, first and foremost. It doesn't make you feel good, it doesn't make you a constructive person in the world, it doesn't make you a good parent or a good husband or a good anything. And so, more than anything, my journey personally has been to be more relaxed and more understanding of different perspectives, and whatever, and then I think you're much more able to persuade people who don't already agree with you.
So for example, after my speech at the Oxford Union, which did very well, I had Hollywood luvvies reaching out to me going, "You know what, I really liked what you said about this", no one listening to this or watching this would have thought would have anything to do with me or what I'm saying. And that to me is really gratifying, because sometimes you have to rile up your base and there are people who will do that very well. For me, I think we have to win the argument. We have to remind people how valuable it is that we have what we have in the West, and that in our desire to perfect our society, we don't throw the baby away with the bathwater.
Peter McCormack: So, you mentioned earlier you've had some people on who've changed your mind on things. What stands out for you?
Konstantin Kisin: So, we had a very controversial women's rights campaigner, called Posie Parker, early on in the history of the show, this is 2018. I know it feels like we're banging on about trans all episodes, but since you asked me I'm just telling you one of the most -- it's also probably the most or one of the most watched interviews, I think it is the most watched interview on our channel as well, because what you see is Francis and I, my co-host, two comedians wading into an issue, which at the time nobody was really talking about, and we are coming at it with a set of ideas about being compassionate and not offending people, and whatever, and you see this woman come on and be very clear and basically win the argument against us on our own show and change our minds.
Peter McCormack: What was her argument; what was the competing argument?
Konstantin Kisin: Well, I think people should go and watch the interview. But her argument -- the title of the episode is Trans Women Aren't Women, which for us, two comedians at the time operating on an extremely progressive comedy circuit, was like, I remember we were strategising as like, "What happens --" I mean, I'm guessing we were thinking this video would probably get taken down; our channel might get taken down; what are we going to do? And we were thinking about that ahead of time because we knew it was controversial. But we also felt a duty to the truth, and the truth was that she made sense, and most of the arguments that we put forward to her, devil's advocate or counterarguments, didn't stack up to the reality of what she was saying.
I think that is probably why it's one of our most watched episodes, because you're seeing good-faith engagement between people trying to get to the truth, in which they actually get closer to the truth, and you don't see a lot of that happening because in most of our public discourse, public conversations, it's like you've got two people with rigid positions coming together to have a bitch fight. And it wasn't that at all. And you know, for that reason, I think it was very transformative. But then, you talk to all sorts of people. Many of our guests have really opened our eyes to different things. So, that's really one example I would give.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, and it's interesting, because you say there that you were worried on the comedy circuit, the reactions from people, you were worried about your channel, and so there's almost that fear that puts you in a position, "Do we need to self-censor?" which itself is a horrible form of censorship. I self-censor all the time on Twitter, I always think, "I think I'll probably just discuss that in private with my friends". There's certain debates that you want to have that you just aren't willing to have in public because it's not that I don't believe my points of view, it's almost like I haven't fully formed them. You have to almost debate them to get to the point where you formed them.
Konstantin Kisin: Bingo.
Peter McCormack: But if you can't debate them in public, you have to debate them privately. And this is why I think free speech is so important, and I think it's so sad that we don't have it here, because we're not allowing people to find that truth.
Konstantin Kisin: That is such a profound point, I'm really glad you made it. I actually have a whole chapter in my book about language, and this is one of the things that people are not willing to recognise quite often, particularly the people who are more on the side of preventing certain conversations from being had, which is you have to speak to think. And therefore, not everything you're going to say is going to come out as a fully-formed, perfectly-phrased, exactly carefully-calibrated thing, particularly in text where you miss most of the communication that's happening between human beings, which is visual and your tone of voice and the way your face looks when you say it and all of that. And it's condensed into a very short message, which for any nuanced issue is not enough characters.
But I agree with you, man, we have to be able to have conversations, particularly about contentious issues, because they're contentious for a reason, which is that people do not agree, right? And so how do you get to a position where everyone's views are properly formed and taken into account when it comes to making government policy or public opinion about things, and whatever? The only way that happens really is if you have honest discussion and conversation. Now, social media is not the best platform for it necessarily in the sense that it's conducted in public and that creates a set of perverse incentives for people to look good at the expense of others. But I think we're in the early stages of social media. We, as human beings, haven't really -- it's kind of like cars but without seatbelts yet. I think over time, we will hopefully work out ways of communicating online that are more conducive to healthy conversation. And part of that comes from all of us working out, well what is it that I really want to say?
You mentioned, it was kind of you to say, that reply I had to Roseanne this morning. I have to be honest and say that three years ago, I would have phrased that very differently. I would have just been like, "Look, how do I make her look stupid?" etc, because that's how you get attention online and then it's the perverse incentives that it creates. But I think as you will know, as your audience grows and your platform grows, you do feel a sense of, you know, it's important to say the truth, but it's also important to be responsible with what you're saying, which makes it easier for people to hear.
Peter McCormack: Well, I sometimes feel like that, making someone look stupid online, it's a bit like smoking. It might feel good instantly, but afterwards you feel that kind of dirtiness afterwards. And I'm a hypocrite, I do it sometimes.
Konstantin Kisin: We all do.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, other times I try, like you, and have a more constructive discussion with somebody. But just back to that point of fully forming your arguments, it makes me think to my children. Mine are a bit older than yours, I've got a 19-year-old and a 13-year-old, but I still consider the 19-year-old a child and even though he's an adult legally, we don't cancel our children from a very young age. I mean, the first time your child swears is hilarious and then you teach them not to swear, and they start to form ideas about the world and you help shape them if you think they're going in the wrong direction. I don't think that should stop when we become adult. I think that should carry through the entirety of your life, trying to figure these things out.
I think one of my biggest problems we have in the UK is we don't have enough high-quality public debate. This can happen, it can happen on your show, but it's still kind of in the shadows. I could watch something like Question Time or Newsnight and I still feel like people are holding back.
Konstantin Kisin: Yeah, well they are holding back; as someone who's done those shows, I can tell you. But look, I also think I'm increasingly moving away from the perspective on this that I had probably for the first three to four years of us doing Triggernometry, which was about, look, all the mainstream institutions are corrupt and captured by this worldview, whether you want to call it radical progressivism, or whatever. And I'm not saying that as someone as an outsider. I used to go into the BBC, and still do. And this was before I had any profile, which made it easier. So, I've got dark skin, first generation immigrant, foreign name, etc, and they would automatically assume that I was one of them, I thought like them, you know, diversity, inclusion, equity, right? And when they speak openly behind the scenes about how they see the world, you're going, "This institution is completely captured, it is riddled with a particular mindset".
But I also think that rather than looking at that as a disempowering thing, you know, people like us are locked out of the conversation, I mean, look at us, look at you. We're having conversations about the things we want to have them about in the way that we choose to have them. And so increasingly, what I'm thinking about is, this is an opportunity. I always say to everybody, and we've got a lot of big plans in terms of not just expanding Triggernometry, but going beyond a YouTube show and into a media company, and we've got a lot of things that we're going to be announcing in the next few months on that. I think the media empires of the future are going to be built in the next ten years, and the self-immolation of the mainstream media in particular is a huge opportunity for people like us to come along and say, "Well, if you are going to disrespect your own audience, if you're going to give them cocktail sausages, well we're going to open a restaurant that does high quality food", and I think we're going to win in that way.
Peter McCormack: And are you seeing that decay everywhere. You talk about the captured institutions, I mean, it's a Bitcoin show, it's what happens in the world of Bitcoin. You first discover this new form of money that's kind of interesting, and then you start to understand the things like the problems with central banks, and you start to understand the problems with the money, then you look at the governments, you look at all the issues related to bonds and government debt, and you look at all these issues and you suddenly start to the world slightly differently, and then you start to see the decay.
One of the things I've been worried about is that things like woke, the woke issues, the wokeism is actually a distraction from what we're really seeing on the economic side. I mean just this week alone, three things that really stood out. I mean you'll have seen the video of Oliver Antony, the Rich Men North of Richmond.
Konstantin Kisin: Yes.
Peter McCormack: Very interesting song. It's not left or right, it's representative of working middle-class people. Immediately, inflation is considered a right-wing issue when he's just talking about that. And then I've seen two videos from ladies in Canada crying their eyes out because they can't afford to live and they've got good jobs. And so, I'm worried. I think wokeism is an issue, but I also think these arguments are distractions from what's happened on the economic side of things. We are trapped between inflation and high taxation and then people are struggling.
Konstantin Kisin: Well, I agree with you. I don't think of those things as being separate or even counter to each other. If you think about what you said about inflation being right-wing, that is a symptom of what I'm talking about, which is we have dumb conversations instead of addressing real issues. To me, that is the core of wokeness actually. I mean, if you think about some of the key principles behind that ideology, one of them is that instead of looking at people in terms of the circumstances into which they're born and in which they grow up, this used to be kind of how the left used to look at things. If you're born into a working-class family, your outcomes in life are less likely to be as good as someone who grows up in an affluent area, in an affluent family, right? That used to be the way we thought. And so, it didn't used to matter whether you were black or white or whatever. It was more about, are you poor, basically, right? And if you are poor, that's who we should be targeting things at.
Now, we've created this very perverse system where you've got elite people from minority backgrounds being given opportunities and rewarded, not for their skills and talents and merit, but for the fact that they look like some people who had a bad lot in life sometime in the past, or even do today. And so very often, some of the guests we've had on the show will talk about how this is really unhelpful to working-class minority people, because what's happening is, in order to pretend that we're helping them, we're helping some elite people who also have dark skin, and that to me is a big problem.
In terms of economics, I mean I understand what you're saying and I agree with it. And one of the reasons that I think people underestimate the importance of the economic issues is the housing crisis we have in this country. And I always say to my conservative friends, "How do you expect people to have a more conservative-minded frame of the world when they literally have no attachment and no grounding in the place in which they live, where they're living with five people in a flat in London, they can't partner up, they can't marry, they can't have kids, and these are all the things that are going to put you into the real world in a way that you and I both as parents know?" Once you've got kids, you sort of start to see the world in a very different way, right?
Well, if you've got people in their mid- and late-30s who physically cannot have kids, what, you think they're going to be conservative; you think they're going to have that pragmatic approach? It's not going to happen, right? So, I agree with you, the economics is important, but I also think we shouldn't underestimate the nature of the threat to our society from some of the stuff that's being pushed by this ideology, and I'll give you a couple of examples. I mean, one of them is the diversity bureaucracy. If you think about what that is, that is essentially a system of anti-meritocracy, right? Now, if you run a business, which you and I both do, and you operate that business by employing people not because of how good they are at their job, but by what boxes they tick, what is likely to be the economic outcome of that sort of approach?
Peter McCormack: It's negative.
Konstantin Kisin: Negative.
Peter McCormack: Not optimal.
Konstantin Kisin: Not optimal, right? Look at government, look at education, look at any system in which this is heavily practised. This way of looking at the world is anti-meritocratic, is therefore anti-results, it's therefore putting us at a disadvantage against other people and other competitor countries. So, you can see how it starts to affect everything. And so to me, these things are not disconnected, because this way of looking at the world prevents us from accurately responding to the very real challenges that you're talking about.
Peter McCormack: Do you think the primary issue then is that we've elevated people, essentially stupid people who don't think rationally about situations, into positions of power, who are able to rally troops around them with slogans and virtues, a bit like the Just Stop Oil people. By the way, I'm somebody who cares about the environment and also fully understand that their argument is completely stupid. I mean just the point, Just Stop Oil, doesn't make any sense at all. So, is it this elevation of -- it's almost like there isn't a meritocracy to the elevation of power.
Konstantin Kisin: Absolutely, and I think I'm wary of saying that it's stupid people at the top because the more you meet them, the more you realise they're not stupid; most of them aren't anyway. My view is that people respond to incentives. And if you create a perverse incentive structure, then you end up with perverse outcomes. And I think that is much more the situation that we've got. And Just Stop Oil is a very good example of this. Like you, I think the environment is really important. I don't think we're going to fix climate change to the extent that it needs fixing by making billions of people poor. I don't think we're going to fix it by freezing pensioners to death in Britain every winter because we don't have enough energy. I think we have to have a pragmatic approach to all of these problems if we're going to fix them. And so if you create an environment where shouting about how much of a victim you are gets you attention and is rewarded with TV time and I end up debating these people on various shows all the time and stuff like that, they're there not because of merit but because they're making a lot of noise, and therefore the issues that actually ought to be dealt with aren't getting dealt with in a rational way.
Peter McCormack: How have we got here, from your kind of understanding of the background to this; has this been just an organic movement or is there something more sinister going on? How did we get here?
Konstantin Kisin: Yes!
Peter McCormack: I don't know.
Konstantin Kisin: It's all those things in some way. So, one of the things I think is social media has created -- if you think about what social media does to the way that we communicate; first of all, it's happening in public and therefore the incentives are different. It's no longer about, "Let's have a conversation", we're playing to our various galleries. And it's very clear, I always use this example, I used to be an avid fan of watching Prime Minister's Question Time before politics kind of took off in a different direction like all of the rest of us.
There's this very iconic moment when John Prescott, who is a Labour, very working-class guy, he can't string a sentence together particularly, he's debating William Hague, who I think he actually was from a working-class background himself, but he went, I think, to a post school or a grammar school, or whatever, so he sounds like a Tory. And they're having this debate in the House of Commons and William Hague is basically making fun of John Prescott for not being able to talk properly. And John Prescott, instead of saying, "He's making fun of the working class, how dare he", whatever, he says, "Well, on this side of the house, we may get the words wrong, but we get the arguments right". In other words, it was a playful and respectful and non-victim-y debate.
Social media comes in and none of those people are having a conversation with each other any more. They're having a conversation with their own audience who's going to watch that clip on Twitter two hours from now. And I think social media has created a lot of these perverse incentives and there's evidence to bear this out. There's been a lot of research into this that shows that around the time the social media starts to take off, 2013, 2014, the mention of words like systemic racism, structural inequality, all of social justice just skyrockets around the world simultaneously. So, I think part of it is social media, and the reason is that, as you well know from your experiences, social media rewards ideas that that sound good and do not work, and it punishes ideas that sound unpleasant but are actually true. Because anything you say on Twitter is never actually tested by reality, do you know what I mean?
If you go on Twitter and you go, "Look, I think it's really unfair that if I jump out of the window, I hit the ground and injure myself". Well, yeah, it is unfair, isn't it, because why should you be injured? But, whereas if you go, "Well, look, gravity is real, there's no getting away from it", it's constraining on your freedom as an individual because you live in this disembodied online reality. And so I think partly social media.
Peter McCormack: Do you in part also blame the social media companies themselves for juicing this?
Konstantin Kisin: I think they're optimising for engagement, right? And if you optimise for engagement, it turns out our evolution has led us to be negative attention focused. And there's very good reasons for that. You're walking down the path 20,000 years ago, you think there may be a tiger. If you run away, you haven't really lost anything if it's a false positive, if there was actually no tiger. If you don't run away and there is a tiger, you don't pass your genes on. So, we've evolved to be really sensitive to negative information and less interested in positive information.
So, I don't think they're deliberately stoking this, and in fact I imagine that as they got bigger and they realised the impact their platforms were having on the world, they would probably regret it, a lot of them. So, I don't blame them, I blame us. I think it's human beings that are at fault, to be honest. It's the way that we are, and that's why I was talking about being more present to that myself as time goes on and trying to think about how do I communicate in ways that are actually helpful.
But I also think it's very clear that various -- mainly actually, I think this is where I perhaps disagree with the slightly more populist, right-wing take on this issue, where they sort of think the left has done all of this stuff and they've been sitting there since the 1960s plotting all of the stuff. I mean, the left is pretty shit at organising anything, so I don't know that it's that. I think a lot of it, not all of it, there's some people deliberately working to do it, but a lot of it is actually technological changes that have changed the structure of society. And the invention of the pill, and we've had a bunch of people on to talk about this, and plus domestic appliances and so on, they change the nature of the family and the relationships between men and women and the role of women in society, and that changes a lot of other things, the other things that come with that.
The consequence of that is some of the sort of gender antagonism that we now see between men and women, and it all comes from this place where no one really knows what they're supposed to be any more. Men don't really know who they're meant to be, and women increasingly don't know what they're supposed to do, because they've tried the girl boss thing and all the evidence is, it's not really making most women happy. And men are sort of in this limbo state as well, where on the other hand, they have the natural male instinct to be strong, to be assertive, to be dominant, to go out there to do things. But they're also living in a society that's increasingly telling them that that's bad and toxic and whatever. So, we're kind of in this weird state because it's the first time really where the relationship between men and women hasn't automatically produced children, which haven't automatically forced women into a particular role, right? And I'm not saying that that's what we need to go back to at all. What I'm saying is that is where a lot of this stuff now comes from.
One of the things that we have seen in the last 60 years is the rapid breakdown of the family unit; fatherlessness on a scale that human beings have never encountered before, and that has profound impact on people, on their sense of wellbeing, on their mental health, on how they see themselves in the world, on the things that they want. And you know, there used to be these sort of derogatory ways of talking about, you know, "She's got daddy issues", whatever, or, "He's got an attitude problem because his dad wasn't around". But these things are based in truth.
So, if you create a society in which increasing numbers of people are growing up without a stable family environment, no matter how hard that single parent is trying, I can tell you as the father of a 15-month-old, and I'm sure you know this too, it's a bloody hard job raising a kid with two parents. So, you can imagine how hard it is for single parents to do. And also with boys, and girls have their own thing, but with boys in particular, once they start to hit puberty, they do need that slightly more authoritarian male presence to keep them in check. And if they don't have it in the house, they're going to seek it elsewhere, which is one of the reasons in places like London and American cities too, you're starting to see gang problems, or whatever, because these young boys are lost and they're looking for a place to go for male authority, male encouragement, a place that gives them a sense of what they're supposed to be.
Peter McCormack: Well, I've got two points I want to explore with you on that. The first one is, I have a daughter, and at the moment I'm split between that position of, you know, she wants to express herself, does she want a career? If she does want a career, who am I to tell her that, "You should really be thinking by your mid-20s, do you want to have a family?" And the reason that's on my mind as also somebody who is single, has been between the ages of 34 to 44, fairly single, I've dated and there's a lot of girls out there who are desperate to have children, and it's one of the first things they'll bring up and I understand it. They don't want to waste two years dating somebody who doesn't want to have children. They want to find out as soon as possible. And you date girls who may be 38, 39 and they're right at the end of their opportunity and I know how much it upsets them. Yeah, it's a real issue, so that's something I consider with my daughter.
Flip that to the other point where you talked about you know breakdown of the families, this is one I'd bring back to the money. I made a documentary about inflation. I had Dominic Frisby on, great guy.
Konstantin Kisin: Good friend of mine, yeah.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, he's brilliant. And we were talking in that about the pervasive effect of inflation in that you used to be able to survive, a family could survive on one income. Now we've got two-income families who are struggling to survive. And it may be that feminism has led women to believe they can be the boss. It's also the rise of inflation has led families to need to have both parents working.
Konstantin Kisin: Well, and where does that come from? You come back straight to the sexual revolution, because if you double the size of the workforce, what's going to happen to the wages? I mean, I'm not an expert economist, but it's sort of obvious, right? If you double the supply of something, what's going to happen to the price of that thing? And this again, to be clear, this isn't me saying, "Women need to be back in the kitchen". But you have to recognise the reality that when that happens, those technological changes have impacts on the way that we do things. And, yeah, we've gone from one person being able to provide for an entire family, to increasingly you're both going to have to work and you're both going to have to struggle in order for that to happen.
So I think, you know, most of human progress is actually technological and cultural changes are often a reflection of that as well. And both in terms of the sexual revolution in the 1960s and the digital revolution we're living through now, they're both largely driven by the creation of new technology. And what we're arguing about all the time in terms of the cultural stuff is, what is the right response to that? And so, I'm really interested in people like my friend, Louise Perry, who wrote a book, she's a feminist, but she wrote a book called The Case Against the Sexual Revolution and her argument is that of course women shouldn't be back in the kitchen, but we should also stop pretending that women aren't interested in the things that you are talking about and it's important for us to be having these conversations in society.
One of the things that really, really breaks my heart is my wife, who is a very talented photographer, she's decided to be a full-time mum. And I just know that there are people out there, not me, because I'm like, her job's way harder than mine, but there are people out there who will not take her as seriously as a result of that, which just seems like a crazy way of looking at it, because once you see what motherhood is, and how much work it is, and how brilliant she is at it, you just go -- since I've become a father, all I want to do is provide the opportunity for her to do that, because I see the impact it makes on our entire family, on my son, etc, and we need to start talking about that. When you mentioned meeting women in their late-30s, I've had so many conversations with people like that and it breaks my heart, it breaks my heart seeing that.
Peter McCormack: But you can see now why I, as a father to a daughter, I want to empower her, I want her to believe she can compete with the boys in the classroom, in the workplace if she wants to, she shouldn't feel held back. But also, at the same time, recognise that I've seen so many women, I've spoken to so many women who haven't had the chance of a child, and are now facing the fact they might not and they feel terrible about it.
Konstantin Kisin: Of course.
Peter McCormack: They feel like they've been conned.
Konstantin Kisin: They have been conned, that's because they have been conned and this is what no one wants to say, because we live in this... Look, I think capitalism is the best economic system that's ever been invented, by far, so far. But if you value everything in terms of money, you lose all the things that make life worth living. And what no one has been willing to say for a very long time is that the things that enrich your life the most, the things that give your life meaning and purpose, are the relationships with other people and the connections you have with other human beings. They're not always going to be quantified in money. And for women, not all women, there are some women who don't have the maternal instinct, but for many, many of them, the child-bearing drive is so strong that a society that brainwashes women to try and pretend that that isn't true is not doing, first and foremost, women any favours at all and it's hurting them and they have been conned.
It's a challenge for us now because we do live in a society, as we've been talking about, where not only do we want women to be able to make any choice they want, that's what I want. There's plenty of women who watch our show who are like, "I don't want kids, never been in interest, I've had a great life", and that's great. All I want is for those women that would want kids not to be brainwashed into wasting the time and missing their opportunities, which many are increasingly doing, to do the things that make your life really the most meaningful thing that it can be.
Peter McCormack: Well, I was talking about it with my producer before I came over, and we were saying, "How does it really take post-university for your career to get going?" It can be a decade for you to start hitting those kind of management levels where you're maybe thinking about being a director or director level salaries. You could be 30, 31, 32 and then it's almost like, "Well, if I take a career break to have a baby...?" You see, I think sometimes people maybe delay it and delay it, and then suddenly they realise it's a bit too late. And then that's why I keep bringing up my daughter. I'm separated from her mother, what is the right message to give to her and what is the right time to give it? I mean now's too early, she's 13. But there will come a time when she starts thinking about her career, and I want her to recognise that, "If you do think you want to have a child, you have to think about this". And maybe it is a bit unfair on her because she has to think about, "Well, do I have to give something up?"
Konstantin Kisin: The truth is that she has to give something up and so does the man that she may want to have children with, if that's what they want, right? We all have to give something up. And this is the thing that no one's willing to say, right, that there are trade-offs to all decisions. And when you have children, in modern society, children are basically like a pet. Peter Zeihan, who I'm a big fan of, who we've had on the show in the past, he talks about the fact that kids in the past, they would have been free labour on your farm. Now, they're a very expensive pet. That's what they are. And I could be having way nicer holidays than I am and doing lots of cool stuff that I don't get to do, because we've had a child. So yes, it's true you have to give something up.
But what I think the message ought to be is, you have to start thinking at a fairly young age, in my opinion, about what it is that is really, really at the core of what you want from life. And the truth is, it's not money, it's not success of some kind. Most people crave, deep down, the thing that they crave the most is meaning and purpose. That is what we all really deeply want. And when we don't have it, we are sick in one way or another, whether that's physically, whether that's taking drugs, whether that's doing whatever. We're not fully fledged human beings until we really feel that.
Peter McCormack: How old were you when you realised this?
Konstantin Kisin: Probably about 35. But the thing is, no one told me that, no one showed me that. I didn't have anyone around me who said to me, "You know, all of this stuff that you are interested in, that's really good, but have you thought about, you know, why is it that you maybe drink too much; why is it that you're doing -- why is it that you feel aimless in your life; why is it that you don't feel fulfilled in what you're doing?" and I think more people ought to be asking those questions of themselves and of others around them from a much earlier age. So, I'm not in favour of going, "Your daughter must have children", at all because that may not be what's right for her. But what I think is right for every human being is to think about, what is it that is truly going to give you meaning and purpose in your life so that you feel you're living a life that is worth living. And for a lot of people, family, meaningful friendships, the social connections, the contribution to others, the things that you do for other people around you is going to fill that void way, way more than any money, success, expensive clothes, whatever, is going to do.
Peter McCormack: It's like a wisdom that's missing that's to be handed down to our children, and I almost look at schooling itself now as a massively failed institution, especially as my kids are essentially learning the same things I was learning 20 years ago, but they have a supercomputer in their pocket. And I feel like I fully understand why it's important to have these basic subjects, but I also feel like they're missing finance, they're missing philosophy. They're really missing that bit where they can be questioning the world and discussing the ideas about what they want to achieve.
Konstantin Kisin: And the one thing that I never understood why they don't teach well in school is something I spent probably hundreds of thousands of pounds and decades of my life on, which is personal growth and development, how do you run your brain effectively; how do you deal with difficult situations; how do you communicate with people who have got different communication style; how do you understand what other people are feeling just by looking at them? These are all way more important than knowing how far away Pluto is, or whatever, you know what I mean, for most people. Maybe for an astrophysicist, there's a difference. But, do you know what I mean? So, we're not teaching, often, I think, kids the skills that will actually make them successful in life, because I think you and I both know, understanding history is super-important, I think it's really important, but that isn't what's going to make the difference between a successful business person and not.
What is, is going to be, have you got the right mindset; have you got the right attitude; have you got communication skills; can you work as a team; can you be a good leader; can you manage money; can you have conversations with investors in a way that's going to give them confidence that they're not throwing money away? These are all the things that are going to make you successful in life, and we don't spend nearly enough time teaching children about that.
Peter McCormack: But where is the incentive for a change to the curriculum, the school structure to do this? Because, I mean I try and share some of these ideas with my kids. I don't do the best job, I try my best, but where is the incentive within schools and the curriculum, because how do you measure those things on a league table? You can't.
Konstantin Kisin: But this is where we have to get away from this bullshit that we've just been talking about, when it comes to measuring everything in terms of money.
Peter McCormack: But this is what they do in government because they can go, "We did better than the previous government".
Konstantin Kisin: I know. And The Wire, which is one of my favourite series ever, it illustrates that whole thing so beautifully, where everyone is duking the stats so that they can say they've done well. But the truth is, of course, the market isn't perfect, but I do believe in the power of the market to sort these things out, because if you have competition, parents are going to decide. Parents are going to say, "I want my kid to go to this school". We were having this conversation just through there, when we were having lunch, about grammar schools in Kent where I live. We do have grammar schools and grammar schools are a way for children who are academically gifted to be able to get a really good education, even if their parents are not minted.
Peter McCormack: What do the parents do to get their kids into a grammar school? They get additional education. My brother has two kids. They get additional tutors in, they work them hard. They make those kids work hard to try and get into those schools.
Konstantin Kisin: Exactly. And my point is, the proof of the pudding is in the fact that people want their kids to go to those schools. So, what are we not doing to create the types of schools that parents are queuing up and moving house to get their kids into, right? Why don't we have more schools where people have the opportunity to do things in the school the way they believe, and let's see whose school is good and who's not. Competition in that sort of environment is really, really actually, I think, a healthy thing, and we don't have enough of it.
Peter McCormack: It's probably because of too much then decay within government itself. Do you ever listen to The Rest is Politics?
Konstantin Kisin: No, I haven't.
Peter McCormack: Okay, it's a great show, but they have a separate podcast called Leading, where they interview various leaders, and they did interview with John Major, brilliant. Probably similar to you, I remember John Major as this boring Prime Minister, everyone said he was boring, and this interview with him was brilliant. And he grew up very poor, living in Brixton, his parents didn't have any money, couldn't afford anything, and it was a surprise for him to end up as a Conservative. But he said that taught him about, the individual should get the fruits of their success. But he said the biggest problem he thinks there is now in politics is that Labour used to be dominated by people who lived in working-class neighbourhoods and Conservative used to be dominated by people who'd either had success in business or in military. And he said that's all gone now. All we have is career politicians and we're surrounded by people who are making rules for all of us --
Konstantin Kisin: Who've never lived in the real world.
Peter McCormack: Never lived in the real world, don't have any real-world experience. And I'll just give you a great example, just to me on a personal level. I banked with Lloyds for 25 years. I get a phone call from Lloyds saying, "We just want to ask you about a couple of your transactions", it was somebody in a call centre. I said, "That's none of your business". She said, "Well, let's have a look". I said, "If I've done something wrong, speak to the police and investigate me. I'm a 42-year-old man, two kids, run three businesses, I know where I'm spending my money, thanks for your interest, but see you later". They closed down my bank account. And for me, that is just a downstream issue that comes from a government that wants to interfere in everything we do. And so I just feel like the entire political climate is broken. We have people less experienced than you and I creating rules for you and I; does that make sense?
Konstantin Kisin: Well, it makes no sense, but it makes sense in terms of what you're saying. And that is where we are, exactly where we are. I think this is one of my big worries about just the way we're going, and I do think partly it's technological. The government can be up in your business now because we've got the technology for them to be in it. But the other thing is, it enables people who want to meddle in your life to meddle in your life, and you see it everywhere, "Oh, you said this thing not quite the way that I would have said. Okay, let's get rid of it". "Oh, you do banking in a way that we don't like. Okay, let's get rid of it".
We're becoming quite an authoritarian society in terms of -- and when I say authoritarian, people sort of think I'm saying we've got Vladimir Putin and putting people in prison, and that's not what I mean. It's just the amount of freedom you as an individual have over your life is increasingly being constrained. You can no longer say exactly what you think, you can't do exactly what you think, and COVID was just such a good example of this. I remember Francis and I were walking around and we went to Borough Market in London during one of these periods where you could be outside during lockdown. And we were standing there chatting and then a friend of ours came up that we hadn't seen and we were talking, and then immediately out of nowhere, this guy in a high-vis jacket pops up and he's like, "Sorry, no talking".
Peter McCormack: What?
Konstantin Kisin: Yeah.
Peter McCormack: Did you tell him to fuck off?
Konstantin Kisin: Pretty much. I mean, the jobsworths are in charge now, you know what I mean?
Peter McCormack: Yeah, totally.
Konstantin Kisin: And it does my head in, it's so frustrating. I think we need the government to be involved and to sort problems out and there's certain things that aren't going to be taken care of by the market and you need a safety net, and all of that. I'm on board with all of that. I do not want some government bureaucrat or apparatchik telling me what I can and can't put in my body, what I can and can't say, what I can and can't think. All of this stuff is just, to me, completely unacceptable. And the main thing is it's antithetical to the western tradition and the western way of doing things, where we believe in the freedom and sovereignty of the individual. That is the thing that makes the West unique.
In Russia and China, people don't think like this. There's a very collectivist mindset and if you are not fitting in with the group, you will be punished for it. In the West, we generally have succeeded because we've allowed people to flourish in their own right, in the way that they believe they want to do, to seek the things that they want to do, to do the research that they want to do. These are all the things that have made us as successful as we have been, and it worries me that we're moving away from that.
Peter McCormack: Do you think we think in terms of freedom enough in this country? And I say that as someone who goes to America and certainly knows half of that country constantly thinks about freedom. And whilst it is a country with real issues of polarisation, I can also see the positives. I see that pull from the Republican, conservative side, which is always about freedom, constantly pushing for the freedom. And I don't want guns here, I'd love a First Amendment, but I do really appreciate that they have this kind of foundation of freedom, of course because they kicked us out of their country and established their freedom. But I don't feel like many people in my social friendship circles think about freedom.
I do within work, within these environments, talking to people like you, talking to people out there about Bitcoin, but I don't feel like a lot of people think in terms of freedom, to the point whereby, I mean, when the lockdowns happened, I was like, "Yeah, that sounds like a good idea", and I know a lot of people did, and a lot of people got co-opted into being the jobsworth. I also know, as the government tries to bring in a CBDC, which I don't know if you've looked into, but they scare the hell out of me. A lot of people are like, "That sounds great, that sounds like a useful tool". Do you think we avoid thinking in terms of freedom enough?
Konstantin Kisin: They say, "The price of liberty is eternal vigilance", and we've become so complacent; we've become so complacent about our freedoms. We take them for granted like we take everything for granted. That is actually going to be the subject of my next book, which is we've forgotten to be grateful for what we have and as a result of that, we think that no matter what we do, no matter how many stupid decisions they make, no matter how much we mess with the system that got us here, all the good stuff that we like is going to stay the same. And it's not. And I think we are so complacent when it comes to human freedom, because the people who want to take your freedom as an individual away from you, they're always there. And not only that, Pete, they always have good intentions, which makes it much, much worse. They're doing it for your own benefit; that's what they will tell themselves, and they will sleep so comfortably at night doing it, whereas they take away your right to make your own decisions, to bank the way that you choose to bank, to say what you think and to speak your mind. And they will say, "No, we're protecting..."
I've had so many experiences with these people. I remember the last time I was on Question Time, there was a Labour MP, I don't know if you know this, but on Question Time, before the broadcast goes out, they do a test question just to get everybody warmed up. And on this particular occasion, the question was -- this was around the time that Donald Trump had been unbanned from Facebook, so he was allowed back on Facebook. And they were saying, "Should he have been unbanned?" and whatever. They went to me, I was like, "Look, not a fan of his, but I do think the President of the United States should be able to communicate in public, actually, never thought that was a controversial idea".
Then this Labour MP next to me, perfectly lovely in every other way, she went, "I think we need the safest internet in the world". And I was like, "What, safer than North Korea?" People have stopped thinking that --
Peter McCormack: Did she understand your point?
Konstantin Kisin: Well, I didn't say that because it wasn't live. If it was live, I would have said that. But you know what I mean? In my head, I thought, "You want it to be safer, what, than China, which censors what you can see on the internet?" I think people, particularly on that side of the political spectrum, have completely forgotten -- I call these people trade-off denialists. This climate issue is a very good example of trade-off denialists as well. They sort of pretend that spending £1.5 trillion on this stuff has no consequences beyond fixing climate change, right, not that it would do that anyway. And it's the same with the issue of safety.
I think we've become so cowardly as a culture that we think there's nothing worse than being unsafe. And there are so many things that are worse than being unsafe. And being unfree is way worse. I mean, people in the Soviet Union where I grew up went to gulags and were killed, because they wanted to be free to speak their mind, to articulate the world views, to say, "I don't agree. I don't think my neighbour should be taken away for expressing the wrong opinion", and they'd be taken away. And people went to their deaths because they believed in that principle. There are worst things in death in life, there are worst things than being unsafe, there are worst things than being uncomfortable. And so, that vigilance that we need, when it comes to the issue of freedom and the rights of the individual, I just feel we're doing so badly on that, and that's why I'm going to keep making that argument, because freedom is the thing that really unleashes human creativity, human potential, human progress. If you believe in those values as I do, you are not going to get there without people really being free to be themselves.
Peter McCormack: Well, this is why I think we have to establish free speech in our country. We don't have it. When anyone talks about free speech, especially a politician, I always think, "What are you on about? We have libel laws, we have hate-speech laws where you can be arrested for minimal insults". We had a comedian put in prison for something his dog did, which by the way I thought was terribly distasteful, but should he have gone to jail for that?
Konstantin Kisin: Well, he actually didn't go to jail.
Peter McCormack: I thought he went to jail.
Konstantin Kisin: No, he got a fine. You're talking about Count Dankula?
Peter McCormack: Yeah.
Konstantin Kisin: Right, he got a fine, he didn't go to jail.
Peter McCormack: I thought he went to jail for it.
Konstantin Kisin: No, I don't think he did. But your point is still stands; you're criminalising speech.
Peter McCormack: Well we have criminalised, even if it's in the civil courts. Like I said, I've been through a five-year lawsuit, multi-million pounds for saying something that had already been said in public about somebody. I'll probably get redone for even saying it now, but that has a chilling effect.
Konstantin Kisin: Look, libel laws, I've never been a free speech absolutist, I'm not one now. I think there are some areas where you do have to have rules about obviously incitement and things like that. And I think, look, have we got the libel laws correctly calibrated in this country? Probably not. But the hate-speech stuff is just outrageous to me. I just think we've become a pussified culture, man, and I think that's a blunt way of saying it, but that's what it is. I mean, you and I growing up would have heard, "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me". Now I feel like you can stab someone, you'd probably be less criticised than you would for having the wrong opinion on Twitter. It's completely insane.
Peter McCormack: Because we're worried about hurting feelings.
Konstantin Kisin: Exactly.
Peter McCormack: But how do we change this?
Konstantin Kisin: Look, I don't know how we change this. I sort of have a sense of what my role is, and my role is to model the opposite of that, which is to say what I think, but as we discussed earlier, I don't want to say things to be incendiary. And I think, quite often when people first sort of come to these issues, they're like, "Oh yeah, we should have free speech. Anyway, let me tell you what I think". And you just go, "Whoa, mate, free speech is great, but why don't we maybe have a think about what you're saying as well? So, I think the answer is for more people to put reasonable, rational thoughts forward in a way that challenges this very restrictive narrative, without also giving the ammunition to the people who say, "Well, people who want free speech are just people who want to be hateful".
Also, we have to accept, as I said, we have to stop denying trade-offs. Yes, freedom has trade-offs, freedom will mean you're less safe, and freedom will mean that some people say things you don't like. I'm okay with that. I'm okay with that because I don't want to live in totalitarian China and I don't want to live in Soviet Russia. If you do, that's fine, go there and live there. This is not the values of the West, it's not what it was built on. Thank God, it's written into the American Constitution. I, like you, wish we had the First Amendment in this country, because it's a reflection of the values of these societies on which it is built. These societies are built on these values. You take that away, you will quickly lose everything else. The prosperity, the safety, everything that we enjoy here rests on that freedom.
Peter McCormack: We could go on, but I think that's a really good place to end it. At some point, I'm going to come and talk to you about Bitcoin and money a bit more! I've loved it, I've learned so much today. I think you're brilliant and I love the fact that you're out there talking about these things civilly, rationally, with a little bit of comedy. And I just think if we had a little bit more of this, then we would all benefit from it here in the UK. So, Konstantin, thank you for your studio, thank you for your time, and I look forward to doing this again.
Konstantin Kisin: I appreciate it, man, thanks for having me and congratulations on the success of your show.
Peter McCormack: Thank you.
