Optimism for the Western Project

The Law & Liberty Podcast

Konstantin Kisin has emerged as a powerful voice opposing “wokeness”—in part because he has a unique appreciation for what makes Western civilization special. He and Helen Dale discuss the current state of wokeness, his own engagement with it, and the politics of the US, UK, and Australia. Ultimately, our moment calls not just for diagnosing Western malaise, but also gratitude for all the West offers us, and optimism for its future.

Liberty Fund is a private, non-partisan, educational foundation. The views expressed in its podcasts are the individual’s own and do not necessarily reflect the views of Liberty Fund.

Related Links

• Konstantin Kisin’s Substack
• TRIGGERnometry Podcast, hosted by Kisin and Francis Foster
• “We Went to America … What the Media Didn’t Tell You,” TRIGGERnometry episode on Kisin and Foster’s time in the United States
• An Immigrant’s Love Letter to the West
• “To See Ourselves as Others See Us,” Law & Liberty (Helen Dale’s review of An Immigrant’s Love Letter)
• Helen Dale’s Substack

Transcript

James Patterson:

Welcome to the Law & Liberty Podcast. I’m your host, James Patterson. Law & Liberty is an online magazine featuring serious commentary on law, policy, books, and culture, and formed by a commitment to a society of free and responsible people living under the rule of law. Law & Liberty and this podcast are published by Liberty Fund.

Helen Dale:

Welcome to the Law & Liberty podcast, I’m Helen Dale, senior writer at Law & Liberty, a publication of Liberty Fund. I’m here in lieu of our regular host, James Patterson. Today, I am pleased to be joined by Konstantin Kisin, co-host of the well-known TRIGGERnometry podcast, with fellow comedian, Francis Foster. TRIGGERnometry started as a shoestring operation in 2018 and has grown to enormous size. Konstantin’s skill as an interviewer and conversationalist also means he’s worked as a foil for interlocutors as varied as Richard Dawkins and Jordan Peterson at their events and tours. He’s written a book, An Immigrant’s Love Letter to the West, which I reviewed for Law & Liberty in January 2023, and which turned into a surprise bestseller. He returned from the US last month after covering the election, and it’s fair to say he’s in demand, especially just before Christmas. So Konstantin, thanks very much for joining us.

Konstantin Kisin:

My pleasure, Helen, so it’s good to be on the other side of the microphone, so to speak, with you now, as you’ve been on the show many times now.

Helen Dale:

I’ve been on TRIGGERnometry twice, I probably should come back at some point.

Konstantin Kisin:

That is many times nowadays, but you are a very welcome guest, and one of my favorites.

Helen Dale:

Thank you very much. Start off with a sort of general question about your writing career, actually, because you are now, I think, the largest Substack in the UK, or very close, you and Matt Goodwin [inaudible 00:02:10].

Konstantin Kisin:

Yeah, I’m usually slightly ahead of Matt. I haven’t published an article for a few weeks, so he’s probably going to take over, which he deserves, he’s doing great work. Yes, what do you want to know about my writing career?

Helen Dale:

Yeah, it’s just, I saw a recent interview with you where you said you wanted your second book to be more optimistic than your first. How’s that going-

Konstantin Kisin:

Very badly.

Helen Dale:

… and why do you think it needs more optimism?

Konstantin Kisin:

Okay, well, so my second book, I have actually handed back the contract that I was about to sign for it, because I just didn’t have the time to actually write the second book that I wanted to. And also, the mechanics and the economics of the writing market, so to speak, have changed so dramatically that I make more from some articles I write financially than I did from writing the first book in its entirety.

Helen Dale:

That’s just dreadful. That’s really sad.

Konstantin Kisin:

Yes, so you can see why the appeal of writing a second book has gone down, for someone who wants to write a really good second book, but I’m just very time-poor at the moment, and so, that sort of commitment is difficult. But the reason I think … To spend less time talking about me and more about the issues, I think that the concept for me was first and foremost, the realization that those of us who’d spent quite some time and a lot of energy doing our very best to articulate where we thought the western world was going wrong, had not done enough, nearly enough, to say what the correct path should be.

And a very good friend of mine, Winston Marshall and I, we hosted a dinner to which we invited a small number of people, all of whom in some way had been part of this movement. And I sort of went around the table and I pointed the finger of blame at each of us, and I said, let me start with myself, I wrote a book called, An Immigrant’s Love Letter to the West, which is almost entirely about what’s wrong with the direction of the modern West. Louise Perry, a good friend of mine, was there, and I said, well, Louise, you wrote a book called, The Case Against the Sexual Revolution. And Freddie Sayers from UnHerd was there, and I said, your … And before I even got to him, he was like, well, yes, we are called UnHerd, and on and on and went.

And it sort of became very clear that there’s a large movement of people who had got very good at saying, we are heading in the wrong direction, which I believe very firmly, but not very good at articulating the direction of travel that we ought to be on. And so, that needed doing. I think a lot has changed since the election in the United States in recent months, or last month, and a lot will change when the new administration comes in next month, but broadly speaking, I think … The book was going to have one of two titles, it was either just going to be called Gratitude, or it was going to be called, Can We Please Show Some Fucking Gratitude? It was one of those two options that I was toying with.

And the idea is, very briefly, that I think we talk an awful lot, or we have been talking an awful lot, about all sorts of privilege, male privilege, white privilege, straight, all kinds of privilege that is purported to exist in the world. And to some extent, I’m sure there’s elements of truth to all of those claims, elements of truth, even though the broad claims, I think are bogus. But the one privilege that we don’t talk about nearly enough is what Francis and I both call Western privilege, it’s the fact that we live in societies that are extraordinarily successful.

And when I had the great honor of doing a small tour of your country, Australia, the point was incredibly easy to make, I would simply say to the people that I was speaking to in the various cities there, I am making the claim, the Western civilization produces the things that human beings want, and I’m not making the claim that Western civilization is better on some sort of moral or ethical level, although there are claims that could be made of that nature. I just wasn’t interested in having that argument. But what I observe is that, until Tony Abbott, your former Prime Minister, stopped the boats coming, tens of thousands of people every year risk their lives in shark-infested waters to come to Australia. How many young Australians were getting on rickety boats and heading to neighboring countries in the region? And Australia, it seems to me, is the exact test case that you would use to prove the superiority of Western civilization at creating-

Helen Dale:

Australia is an astonishing place to visit, and I have to say, I mean, lots of people in the British press have commented about how incompetent Keir Starmer is, and how incompetent the Tories were before Starmer. You can’t just line Starmer up, he’s continuing with very bad governance, in ways-

Konstantin Kisin:

… Before I go on … Sorry, before we move, I just wanted to finish this point, that even if we take everything you’re saying about poor governance in the UK, and perhaps elsewhere in Europe, into account, nonetheless, the example I’m giving you is still true, there are tens of thousands of people risking their lives across the Mediterranean and across the English Channel, although that’s obviously mercifully less of a risk. And we don’t need to say very much about the United States, where millions of people are risking their lives and paying money to traffickers and being sexually assaulted, and all of that happening. They’re doing so because our societies are better, and if we could actually just be honest about that and remember that, and were grateful for that, and taught our children to be grateful for what they have, we might have some way of recognizing, what are the good things about our society, and therefore, preserving them and advancing them into the future.

Helen Dale:

Yeah, it’s interesting you’ve gone with the gratitude line, and at some point, if not a book, maybe the smaller pieces could go on your Substack, or just go on the TRIGGERnometry website that you do, or however you’d prefer to arrange that, because I actually think … Because I asked about optimism based on an interview I saw of you, and I’m going to come back to that with my next question. But gratitude is related to optimism, but it’s not the same thing. I mean, there’s an Australian expression that if you don’t know where you’ve come from, you will be all duck and no dinner, and gratitude captures that quality, I think.

But just coming back to the optimism point, I can remember Trump, when he launched his campaign in 2015, saying the line, sadly, the American dream is dead. That was in that initial talk, and later on, in 2016, he made some pretty dark speeches, he continued to make some pretty dark speeches. In 2024, by contrast, you and many others, it’s not just you and Francis here, have commented on Trump’s optimism during the campaign. What do you think is behind that shift? That’s a big shift, I mean, he’s a major public figure.

Konstantin Kisin:

Well, I think that frankly, the argument on the fact that we are heading to disaster has been won, and I don’t think anyone really would dispute, clearly, among the sensible majority of people in America and many other Western countries, that the direction of travel over the last 8, 12, 20 years, has really been terrible, and that we can’t continue going in that direction. We can’t continue to have countries with open borders, we can’t continue to reintroduce race essentialism into the way we administer our societies, we can’t continue to position men and women as enemies in some sort of moronic battle of the sexes, we can’t continue to replace meritocracy with victimocracy, we can’t continue to undo the Western project. And I think it wasn’t Trump, but just the entire scale of our public discourse, has made it undeniable that this is the case. And when I was in the US, there was this overwhelming sense of optimism now, including among people who actually didn’t vote for Donald Trump.

If you look at, say, the business community, people who are CEOs and executives, when you talk to them, they are excited as hell about the next four years. Even if some of them will say to you privately, look, Trump’s incredibly obnoxious, and I think he’s, whatever, I don’t like his rhetoric, I don’t like his style. I disagree with him about this, my wife is a … Whatever. But ultimately, there’s an incredible sense of excitement about the fact that, in their world, they see that business opportunities are going to be there for them to create jobs and build companies and grow the economy.

If you look at the team that he built around him, the interesting thing, this is a fascinating thing that Francis and I both observed, but I actually think I should give him credit, because I think he’s the one that pointed this out more prominently, almost everybody, other than JD Vance, in the team that Donald Trump has built, is a former Democrat, including Donald Trump himself. Donald Trump is a former Democrat, Tulsi Gabbard is a former Democrat, RFK is a former Democrat. Elon Musk is, from what I understand, a former Democrat, certainly not a Republican by any stretch of the imagination. Vivek, former … All these big names that he managed to attract are people really crossing the aisle and saying, enough. Enough of this, enough of managed decline, enough of this insanity.

Helen Dale:

There’s an element of, I’m thinking of an expression that Carl Benjamin uses on The Lotus Eaters as he says, congratulations, you’ve elected Donald Trump, a 90s liberal. And it’s true.

Konstantin Kisin:

Yep, and that’s what I am, too. I’m a ’90s liberal, have always been a ’90s liberal, and somehow in the modern world, there is a huge appetite to call me right-wing, even though I haven’t really changed my positions at all, but the world, as we all know, has changed dramatically. But anyway, the point about optimism is, in America, among the millions and millions of people who voted for Trump so overwhelmingly in the last election, there is a feeling that, we don’t know exactly, but there is at least a very good chance that Donald Trump in his second term, for various reasons that we can get into, may well be the antidote to the ideology of managed decline, which has permeated and infected the entire Western elite world.

Helen Dale:

Yes, that, I think, is very true, and just coming back to two earlier points, the point about gratitude and the point about open borders, you’ve spoken widely on this issue, on the issue of immigration, and I have been on TRIGGERnometry discussing Australian policy, abrogating the refugee convention going back to the 90s, that kind of thing, and this is something that Australia has done very well, and it does form the underlying substrate of your first book. You spoke very positively about your experience of immigration, what is a reasonable response to people who hate their country, whether they’re locals or as Australians, say, fresh off the boat? Because you get both sorts.

Konstantin Kisin:

Yes, well, I think that those are two different things and have to be treated differently, necessarily. First and foremost, I think … you have to be very careful when you’re saying this, but ultimately, I do believe that the overwhelming majority of people are good and well-intentioned, which means that if they hate their country, it is something that they’ve been taught to do, right? Because it’s not a natural thing for human beings to hate the place in which they live. I don’t believe that’s a natural thing. And as I look around at young people who do have that worldview in the UK and in other countries, I can see that they have been indoctrinated into this.

And I know this from personal experience, because I remember I was staying with a friend of mine many, many years ago, long before I was involved in any sort of political commentary or anything, but even before I was a comedian, and I picked up a book that he had on the shelf, which was called The People’s History of Britain, and it was written by a woman whose name I no longer remember, but it was the most incredible, fascinating book about British history, told in such a compelling way.

And I thought, wow, surely someone’s had the idea to franchise this to other countries, because I’d love to read The People’s History of Australia, The People’s History of America, The People’s History of France, and so on. And so, I went on the internet and I bought, without looking, The People’s History of America, by a man called Howard Zinn. And I opened it, I read halfway into the first chapter, and I realized that this was a “why you should hate America” manifest.

And that isn’t to say that some of the issues that he was highlighting in the book were irrelevant or not true, but to present them entirely without context, to present them without a comparative analysis of what was happening elsewhere in the West, and the rest of the world, frankly, to present them in this entirely decontextualized, disembodied way, and to inflict this horrific visual imagery onto the minds of young people would undoubtedly produce a generation of people who hated their own country. And that one book is an example of a much broader theme that has swept through academia across the Western world, which has taught young people the … the narrative about slavery in the UK for example is, as you well know, that there was no slavery, and then the British Empire came along and invented it and then well-meaning and wonderful woke people came along and ended slavery, which of course is entirely the opposite of everything that’s true.

Slavery existed throughout human history. The British Empire practiced it just like others, but then actually for very moral reasons due actually to abolitionists who are mainly driven by their Christian understanding of human nature, spent a tremendous amount of blood and treasure to end the slave trade, not only within its own borders, but actually across the world as much as it could. And we’re not taught about the Trans-Saharan slave trade, which was much worse than that and, and, and. You know all this, and I’m sure your audience does too, so I don’t need to go on about-

Helen Dale:

I always used, whenever I hear this completely bonkers impression of British history, this is very much British history, and particularly British naval history, and my father was in the Royal Navy during World War II, so we actually have military naval service in the family in a genuine, nasty, hot war. I hear people saying this and I go … because I started out in life as a classicist, and I just go, “Julius Caesar would like a word,” considering how much money that man made out of all the slaves which were captured people, men mainly in Gaul.

Konstantin Kisin:

Yes, quite, and we could go on further. For example, there’s this very fashionable narrative in Britain now about the Empire. Now, of course, no empire is perfect or without atrocity, and so on. But I’m reading for example, right now, the book right in front of me on my table, you won’t be able to see, but is The Third Tom of Winston Churchill’s History of World War II, in which actually something that most people don’t know becomes very clear, which is that all the imperial countries in the parts of the colonial world that Britain at that time controlled, many millions of people in places like India volunteered to fight against an enemy that actually in many cases had nothing to do with them. There was no reason for Indians to be fighting in North Africa as they did, for example, other than quite a lot of people across the world who were part of the British Commonwealth felt a very strong affinity with the mother country.

This is of course even more true of Australians and New Zealanders who were heroic in what they did. So my broader point is coming back to the original question, sorry, I’m meandering, is that young people for two generations at the very least, and you might correct me and say that it’s more, have been taught things that were deliberately designed to make them hate their own society. And so the first question is how do we rapidly change what we are teaching children and young people in schools and universities? Because we have to live with these people and we have to change the entire conversation around what our history is.

This is why history is so important. If it destroys people … if you can find a way to destroy people’s history and their belief in the fact that their country and history is good, then they will naturally hate it and there will be nothing you can do about it.

So the first part with people who are of our society is education, education, education, education. And we have to undo and redo the things that are being taught. As for people who have come here, my answer is very politically incorrect I’m afraid, Helen. But as someone who enjoys what I call immigrant privilege, which is the ability to say things that other people are not allowed to say, I would say this to anyone coming from any country, including people like me.

If you want to come here from Russia as I once did, and impose your values on this society or demand that your values be incorporated, for example, we in the UK are currently having a debate in Parliament about whether we should allow cousin marriage. This is a complete barbaric practice that the West did practice in medieval times among kings and queens. But broadly speaking, this isn’t something that-

Helen Dale:

As a general rule, just as a matter of history, cousin marriage was gotten rid of in the Roman world, the pagan Romans hated it. They wanted people not to work through their kin groups. They wanted people to participate in civil society through associational behaviors, what we would consider clubs and societies now. And that then passed into Christianity.

Yes, there were people in both the Roman world, posh people, and then in the Christian world who bent the rules, who got papal allowances, dispensations with the Habsburgs. And that’s why you had all the inbreeding. And it’s also why you were inbreeding amongst the Julio-Claudians, but it was hated in their religion in both societies, and it was hated by the great bulk of people. That’s why it can be quite shocking to read Roman writers like Suetonius or Tacitus when legislation … Because specific legislation had to go through the Senate to allow it in the Roman world. And they expressed this extraordinary disgust and people don’t realize how rare that extraordinary disgust at this behavior actually is.

And classicists and anthropologists aren’t even sure why the pagan Romans developed this hostility to what farmers call line-breeding, but they did very early. It appears extremely early in their law.

Konstantin Kisin:

And there are historians, as I’m sure you know who’ve actually argued that the entire foundation of western civilization, and its extraordinary comparative success is the end of cousin marriage. Not because of the genetic dimension of it, but because it forced people to cooperate beyond their familial groups. And it therefore created the ability for meritocracy as opposed to clan-based.

Helen Dale:

And a powerful civil society, people coming together in associations by choice rather than because they’re related to people.

Konstantin Kisin:

And the central idea of the West, when people ask me what that is, I believe it’s the sanctity of the individual. And it seems to me that there’s a very direct line that can be drawn from one to the other. But in any case, my broader point is when you have an MP in the British parliament who’s one of these, let’s say pro-Gaza, he was elected on a pro-

Helen Dale:

One of the Gaza Independents, I wrote a piece about them for Liberty Fund, and that’s what I’ve been calling them.

Konstantin Kisin:

When he stands up in Parliament and insists that we must respect the cultural particularities of certain communities when it comes to first-cousin marriage, the answer should be, “No, no, no.” We’re not going to respect the cultural particularities of communities that want to marry their cousins. That’s not what we do here. No. And if you don’t like that, please go to a country where you can marry your cousin and do it there, and we will be very happy to provide a flight for you to do so free of charge. Very happy to. Very, very happy to. I will do a fundraiser for anyone who wants to go, leave Britain, and go to a country where they can marry their cousin and stay there. I will do a fundraiser. I’m sure you’ll chip in, Helen. I’m sure many of our listeners will contribute as well. Right?

The same can be said of the debate where, not a debate, but certainly a Labour MP stood up and insisted that we need to bring forward blasphemy laws in the UK. Now, the UK has had blasphemy laws in the past, and I thought we were over it. So again, if you want to bring back something from the dark ages of the religious worldview of which we now all I think are happy to have got rid, well, if that’s what your view is, again, I insist that you avail yourself of the opportunity. There are many, many countries in the world which do have blasphemy laws, particularly about the religion, about this, which this gentleman’s concerned. Please take the opportunity to move to one of those countries.

So my view, I’m afraid, as I say, is incredibly politically incorrect, which is if you don’t like it here, you should leave.

Helen Dale:

Bumper stickers, you see that in Australia, “If you don’t love it, leave,” with an Aussie flag. But Australia is the sort of country where you can still get away with saying that.

Konstantin Kisin:

By the way, I have to say this, this is not a rule I apply only to other people. If Britain ever gets to the point where I don’t like it and frankly it is on that trajectory, then I will leave. I will not sit here and whine endlessly about how Britain has gone down the toilet. If I come to a point where I feel like it’s not just going down the toilet, but we are now deeply embedded in the toilet and there’s no way out, I will leave. And that’s what people should do if they’re not happy with the country in which they currently live. But equally, of course, we all have an obligation to try and make the country in which we live better. Hopefully, that is what we are doing.

But yes, the one thing that’s become very unfashionable to say, and again, politically incorrect, but I will say it, and I think it’s important to say as an immigrant, immigration is a two-way street. Immigration is when we give you something and we expect something from you in return. Immigration is not this honor we bestow on you by virtue of your humanness or by virtue. … It’s a privilege. You are chosen out of the billions of people in the world who actually would quite like to live in a prosperous and successful country like Britain or America, you are given a unique opportunity, and in exchange for that opportunity, you are required to fulfill a number of very obvious, to me at least, obligations in the same way that when you go around to your friend’s house for dinner, you have an obligation to maybe bring a bottle of wine or a bunch of flowers or a card, to help with the plates afterwards or to offer your assistance in some other way and perhaps one day to invite them around to your house. Right? This is universally understood.

Well, when you come to live in somebody’s house and they allocate you a room in that house, do you not have the obligation to perhaps attempt to adjust to the way of life that people have there, to perhaps shed some of the things that you did in your house and now find that actually you’re willing to do more of the things that people do in this house? Do you not have an obligation to respect the rules that that house has? Do you not have an obligation to teach your children gratitude for the opportunity that you enjoyed?

All of these things seem to me incredibly obvious, to learn the language of that house if it’s not the native language of … We could go on and on, but ultimately the point I’m making is, people who come to this country and their descendants, this is very important, and their descendants have a duty to integrate, have a duty to do everything in their power to become part of the society, to which they’ve come, to contribute to it, to pay taxes and to become good citizens of that society and to try and make that society better.

That is an obligation that seems to me to be incredibly obvious as something that we should not just suggest, but actually demand of all immigrants that come to our country. And it seems to me something, frankly. … The fact that it has to be demanded is itself a travesty.

Helen Dale:

Yes. Although it has. … Because aware of the history of immigration policy in Australia, because it is so striking in a global context, even going back to just after the Second World War and perhaps even before the Second World War, there were issues in Australia with people who came to the country, and these were mainly Europeans at this point in the country’s history, there were issues then. I remember my father telling me when I was a little girl of people having to be told, “No, you can’t do that in this country.” And you would get the oddest things. You would get, for example, people from Britain who were posh and were used to getting respect. They would try to get Australians to use a courtesy title and that kind of thing if someone had some aristocratic background, did not go down very well at all.

Later on as part of the same process … there were incidents, for example, where high-caste Hindus would demand a degree of deference that they were used to getting in India. So very similar to posh Brits, very similar behavior here, and had to be told, “No, no, Australia is an egalitarian country. You must not do this here. You are at real risk, particularly if you do it in a context like a pub or that kind of thing of actually starting a fight because Australians really resent it.” But people, even going back a long, long time have had to be told these things. It doesn’t come naturally.

Konstantin Kisin:

No, it doesn’t. We have a saying in Russian, which I think is very apt for all of this, which is, “You don’t go to another monastery with your own code of conduct.” And when I go to America, I don’t start lecturing Americans about whether they should have guns or not or whatever else. I appreciate that they’re a different culture and a different worldview. It’s my job when I’m in America to understand how people think there and to adjust myself so that I fit. It doesn’t mean I have to let go of everything that makes me who I am, but if I am going to spend time in America, if the American people through their government see fit to grant me a visa to be there, then it’s my job to act like an honored guest in the house. And an honored guest in your house has both obligations and privileges. It seems to me an incredibly obvious thing that almost is weird to have to say out loud.

Helen Dale:

And it’s also worth pointing out too, that even among liberal democracies, so if we just confine ourselves to the systems of governance that exist amongst the world’s liberal democracies in the Americas and the Commonwealth, and in Europe, they’re quite different from each other. You will have noticed Australia is very distinctively governed. Australia is probably the most different, but all of those countries have very different ways of doing things. And you finish up with odd situations like the country that Australia most resembles is Switzerland, despite the fact that the history and the climate and everything else, but it’s because of the system governance that both countries have chosen. So there’s that too. They’re just different.

Konstantin Kisin:

Yes, exactly. And that’s why, coming back to your original question of what we do with people who refuse to adapt is with people who are here and who are of this place, we have to do everything we can to educate either them or if it’s too late, the next generation. We just have to make sure that our history is being taught properly. And for people who refuse to integrate, they must be given every opportunity to find a place in the world that fits to their needs and preferences better than this one.

Helen Dale:

Yes. Just on the travel point, because you were in America for the elections, and I know you and Francis have jointly recorded a podcast about this, which is very much worth watching, and there will be a link to it in the show notes so that people can have a look in their own time. But I’d like to ask you for a further reflection, if I may. To what extent do people on the progressive side of US politics appear to be learning any lessons from such a decisive electoral defeat? Are there any signs of them doing what the UK’s Conservatives are still having to do, and they’re doing it very publicly because they were so awful, we have to acknowledge this, but is there any sense that, amongst on the other side of politics in the United States, that progressives, and I’m not going to call them left because it’s so odd in America, but that progressives are learning something. Are they acknowledging why they lost?

Konstantin Kisin:

Yes and no. I think we saw certain things of the kind that might be seen as that. For example, AOC removing pronouns from her Twitter bio. But then, I don’t know if you saw the case of Daniel Penny, I imagine as a lawyer, you have quite a lot to say about that, I imagine. But the narrative on that side of the left remains that this was an innocent Black man murdered in cold blood by an evil white man. But I do see BLM, for example, not having nearly as much purchase.

Now, is that because progressives have woken up or is that because everyone knows that the right is currently in charge and you’re just not going to be able to get away with it? I don’t know. I think truthfully, Helen, we will not know until … I feel like we are in one of those moments when the dust is in the air and we don’t know how it’s going to settle yet.

It also fundamentally, of course, depends on how the Trump administration performs because I was on Chris Williamson’s podcast, Modern Wisdom, recently. I don’t believe it’s out yet. But he asked me a question, I actually, I’ve been so enthused by the time I spent in America and the sense of optimism that I hadn’t considered this question, but it is one worth considering, and I think that’s partly because it’s not an eventuality that is impossible, which is, what happens if Trump fails?

Helen Dale:

Because he largely failed in his first term. The blob got him, basically.

Konstantin Kisin:

The blob got him, you might say, and there are some very strong reasons why that shouldn’t happen again, which we can get into if you like, but theoretically, that shouldn’t happen. He should not have the staffing issues that he did last time. He’s not running for reelection. He has the House and the Senate and the judiciary, and not just the Supreme Court, but the entire judiciary is now very strongly leaning in his direction. He won the popular vote. So there’s no Russia collusion BS anymore. He won outright, and everybody knows it.

Nonetheless, that does not necessarily mean that he will succeed. And if he fails, I think that would be one of the biggest body blows to the validity of democracy as a system that’s worth using for government in the twenty-first century because to the majority of Americans who feel that the direction of travel has been completely wrong and unsustainable, if you elected Donald Trump with all of these things that we’ve just discussed, the House, the Senate, the majority, da, da, da, da, da, and you still can’t change anything, you still can’t strip DEI out of government, you still can’t have a normal border, you still can’t grow the economy, you still have racial preferences in hiring, you still have all of this, well, in that case, a lot of people on the right, I imagine some already are, will be asking, “Well, what good is democracy?”

Helen Dale:

And that is very dangerous.

Konstantin Kisin:

Of course, of course.

Helen Dale:

I mean, I’m quite, people at Liberty Fund get used to me because I’m coming out of that Australian tradition, I am quite majoritarian because I am used to democracy and majorities working very well because they do in Australia, but the Australian settlement is that democracy and majorities matter more than liberty and rights. When democracy falls over and you can’t make majoritarianism work, as in people cast their ballots, elect to government, empower the executive, which in Australia, to be fair, the executive can execute. It’s very, very powerful. The legislature is very powerful. Our weak branch is the judiciary. But if people can’t get what they want out of democracy, then yes, they will, left or right, they will start casting around for alternatives and that is really quite dangerous.

Just in an Australian context, the people absolutely flattened the voice referendum, but there have been a couple of state governments, notoriously Victoria, trying to do a smaller version of it at the state level through the back door. And I’m just looking at that and thinking, “You’re trying to do,” to use an American expression, “You’re trying to do an end run around the Australian electorate.” And in a country with compulsory voting and an educated, civically minded electorate, that’s very dangerous. It’ll just blow up all over a lot of people, that. So the next federal in Australia is going to be interesting.

So just coming back, we’ve been to the most recent thing you and Francis have done, but I want to step back into history for a moment because I think this is valuable. For a largely American legal audience that listens to this podcast, what was it that you saw, you and Francis saw, in 2018 that led the two of you to found TRIGGERnometry? And are any of the things that concerned you then still at the top of your mind now? It’s nearly seven years later.

Konstantin Kisin:

Yes. So very briefly, the things that concerned us and that we saw were, for me, the re-racialization of society, which we’ve talked about already. I remember one incident in particular in which I found myself in an altercation with somebody on the street as I was making my way home from a gig, from a comedy performance. I used to do stand up, and I don’t anymore. And in the course of that altercation, the guy was, I don’t want to repeat the term, but used a kind of, you might say, a racial slur that referred to the fact that I have dark skin in the UK context. And then I got home and I got an email about the comedy show I was supposed to be performing the next day, which said, “I’m sorry, we’ve had to cancel your appearance because we have too many straight white men on the bill.”

Helen Dale:

Oh, God.

Konstantin Kisin:

And then I put these two events together in my head and I just went, “Something is very seriously wrong here. Something is very seriously wrong.” So that was one.

And the other thing was that I think in the two years post-Brexit and post-Trump, I saw a face of the left on which I thought I was, and it was a face I didn’t recognize. I didn’t recognize that the movement that I had naturally, by default, I assumed I was part of, would react to electoral failure by dismissing the concerns of the people who were the majority in that election. So the reaction to Brexit, which is half the country’s racist, was quite obviously moronic to me because as a first-generation immigrant who, as I just told you, had some experiences of discrimination or whatever you might call it, or suddenly someone being rude to me because of where I’m from, I knew that that didn’t represent the British people even remotely.

The idea that half of Britain or half of America, these incorrigible evil bigots, is just factually incorrect, and I thought it was childish to pretend otherwise, and therefore there must be another explanation, which is why I spent a year and a half, two years, it would’ve probably been more like a year and a half, we started in April 2018, looking at, well, actually what were the people who were in charge of these movements that I was against? I was against the election of Donald Trump in 2016. I was a remain voter, not with any great passion, but a remain voter by default. And then I just started listening to speeches and interviews with people who were in charge of those movements and I started to try and understand why they appealed to my fellow citizens.

And as I listened to people making the arguments about that, I understood what the Trump appeal was and the Trump appeal was, and I think the Brexit appeal was too, was a sense that our two countries were heading in the wrong direction and that the dominant ideology that had captured the people who were running our countries was what I call managed decline. And that there were many, many people still in our countries that felt that this was not an acceptable ideology for people who run our country to have, and what they would like our countries to be doing is not declining at all. They’d like them to be growing. They’d like them to be strong and powerful and wealthy and prosperous. They want their children to do better than they did.

And given that that promise is now increasingly under threat, as you said, quoting Donald Trump, “The American dream is dead,” well, there never was a British dream, but we know, if we look at the figures … I’m actually working on an article for my Substack now called, “We Need to Talk About Britain,” one of the points I make is even nominal GDP per capita, that’s without adjusting for inflation, has not grown in this country since 2007. We are poorer per head of population today than we were nearly 20 years ago. Now, why on earth would anybody want that for their society? And why would anybody accept that and why would anybody accept, by the way, that we have to do this to ourselves in order to make little Greta happy, which is what we are doing in the UK?

So on all of these things, it was very clear to me that there was a piece of information that was missing from the analysis that I was hearing, including from my fellow comedians on stage who would go on and do 10-minute routines about how anyone who voted for Brexit is racist and should die. You know? And while I never had a problem with them being able to express that opinion or make a joke, I just didn’t think this was a sufficiently good explanation, so I wanted to understand what was really going on.

And then the third issue was, of course, freedom of expression because all of a sudden, as someone like me who’d spent my young, my teens and 20s loving and respecting and enjoying comedians and other people who were at the forefront of saying, “Freedom of speech is extremely important and we must be able to do all kinds of jokes and all of that,” certainly in the UK, I saw the comedy industry celebrating the restriction of speech, and to the point when, at the end of 2018, I turned down a contract to do a comedy show for the reason that it had all these speech restrictions, I was attacked, not by woke members of the public with blue hair. The people that came after me the most when that happened were my fellow comedians and-

Helen Dale:

Yes, I remember that incident because I remember, I can actually remember you tweeted with a screenshot of the rules that you’d been given by this organization, and I’ve never forgotten the last line of it because I read it out to my partner at the time, that, “All jokes must be respectful and kind” was the last line of it. And I’m just sort of going, “That’s not the way humor works.”

Konstantin Kisin:

No, no.

Helen Dale:

It really isn’t, says the person who knows more lawyer jokes. Honestly, lawyers, we know, we tell the best lawyer jokes.

Konstantin Kisin:

I’m sure.

Helen Dale:

And I just remember reading that and thinking … And people who were comedians, and including some quite edgy comedians who, I mean, remember, I lived in Edinburgh and practiced as a solicitor up there for years, and I went to the Fringe every year because I lived in the Grassmarket. It was so easy just to pick 20 shows and they’re not very expensive and you just go to all of them. Some of them are funny, some of them aren’t, that kind of thing. And people who were really quite edgy and who I had heard them tell jokes along the lines of that you get the sharp intake of breath, it’s funny, but that kind of thing, and they were having a go at you and I’m thinking, “You really don’t know which side your bread is buttered on when you are doing this because that’s making your own noose, building your own guillotine.”

Konstantin Kisin:

Yes. So where are we on all those issues? Well, I think that in terms of misunderstanding the majority sentiment in this country, I think that has remained the case. In this piece that I’m writing now, one of the statistics I give is that seven out of 10 Brits feel the country’s in decline, and I think we all know that it is.

Where are we in terms of free speech? Well, we’ve got police knocking on the doors of journalists because they’ve done the wrong tweet. We have a whole host of issues that is simply not being discussed in the public domain to do with Islamism, terrorism integration, and the impact of mass immigration because no one’s allowed to say what the truth on that issue is without simultaneously being threatened by a visit from the police or simply putting your life at risk from people who will kill you for-

Helen Dale:

I always remember in this context, she’s gone to work for Quillette now, but you might remember the editor, Iona Italia. She used to run Areo Magazine and it folded and she went and took a deputy editorial role at Quillette, but she used to put a little note whenever she wrote or published an article that touched on this issue, “No, I am not going to publish the Muhammad cartoons because there are only two of us.” It was her, and they only had enough money for her and one other person. “There are only two of us, and we don’t have 24-hour police protection,” or words to that effect. That is genuinely the situation in some circumstances when it’s images. People are at actual risk.

Konstantin Kisin:

Well, of course, and by the way, most people who are, I mean, I was going to say sane, but I also, I respect people’s courage, but most people don’t want 24-hour police protection, even if it could be made available to them.

Helen Dale:

Yes.

Konstantin Kisin:

No one wants to upend their life in that way and be constantly feeling that they and their family are at serious risk of violence.

So I don’t feel that, in the UK, we have made improvements. However, if I had to make an optimistic case, I would say that the fact that all of the medium of communications is no longer in the hands of one political grouping is a good thing. The fact that Javier Milei and President Trump have been elected in their respective countries is a sign that people can get fed up enough of things going badly and turn things around. And now, I said it on my Q&A that I do with my Substack supporters yesterday or two days ago, Trump needs to deliver.

Helen Dale:

If he gets just immigration and economic growth right, those two big ones, I think will make-

Konstantin Kisin:

You can’t do them without dealing with woke though, Helen. Right? We know that, particularly even for-

Helen Dale:

In the universities. Yes, this is true, yes.

Konstantin Kisin:

No, not just universities. Everywhere. You can’t deal with things that you need to deal with without getting rid of the woke generals in the army. Right?

Helen Dale:

True. That’s a good point. Yes, I’ve got to remember that then.

Konstantin Kisin:

You can’t deal with … You know, this thing about, the phrase I heard, I think it may be a Chris Russo phrase, but it may be something else, which is, “Personnel is policy.” I think it’s incredibly true, particularly in the administrative state. So you have to get rid of the people whose brain is broken and put in people who believe in meritocracy and who believe in making America safe and prosperous. If he can do that, then he can do all the other things that he promised to American people. But this may be a kind of professional occupational disease or professional derangement of my brain, but I do see wokeness as being very central to all of this.

The one area where America really fundamentally differs from Europe, thank God, is even wokeness has not managed to make Americans believe that what they must do is commit ritual suicide that we in the Europe called net zero. The Americans are deeply unpersuaded even on the left that driving up the price of fuel and the price of electricity is the answer to all their problems.

Helen Dale:

This is also happening. … This debate is also happening in Australia as well, I think.

Konstantin Kisin:

Oh, I know.

Helen Dale:

Net zero is well on the way out, I suspect, and it’s going to lose, probably going to lose, Albanese the next election. But it’s … I think in this case for the same reason in both countries, this is one of the few times where the United States and Australia line up. The countries are both enormous and they’re both also have incredible natural endowments. Australia’s lot more because there’s fewer people with all those huge endowments, factor effects that economists talk about. They can both make themselves enormously wealthy and have done so historically with those factor endowments, those resources, that … Quarry Australis it used to get called. You dig a hole and you make yourself rich. If you try to make energy more expensive in two countries that are like that, people will reject it and reject you. They will tell you to go and fly a kite and worse. And I think that that’s to the credit of the electorates in those two countries.

Konstantin Kisin:

Absolutely. And by the way, look, I think your point about how, look, the countries differ is true, but I also think that even in a small country which is not as resource-rich as Australia and the United States, we still have resources that are untapped that we could be tapping. We are just choosing not to for purely ideological reasons. And the current Labour government has promised to do everything possible to get us to net zero as quickly as possible. And all of that means is we’re going to make people as poor as possible as quickly as possible. That’s what’s going to happen.

But if we’re still attempting to make the optimistic and positive case, there is the hope that seeing is believing and British people will watch the United States blossom and prosper over the next four years, if indeed the United States does blossom and prosper. And at that point, I think the choice will be very clear. And of course we’ve got our own Parliamentary and political battles going on and who knows what the parties will be, who lead the fire at the next election. It seems to me like Reform is on a very good trajectory at the moment from the right. I suspect that this Labour government will end up being one of the least popular governments in British history.

Helen Dale:

They’re on track in … I mean, I’ve spent many years covering British politics in the traditional little press gallery, Parliamentary sense going up and sitting in the gallery watching. If Starmer doesn’t get a grip on the civil service, which is doing to him now what it did to the Tories, just basically for our American listeners, just stopping the government from doing anything-

Konstantin Kisin:

It’s what Americans called the deep state.

Helen Dale:

The deep state. And a lot of people have this idea in their head that, “Oh, because a lot of the civil servants are lefties surely they will help a lefty government. They’ll help Keir Starmer.” But that’s not the case because the bureaucracy, the civil service in Britain has so metastasized that it doesn’t serve anybody’s interest except its own. And that is why it gets called The Blob. And I suspected this was the case when the conservatives were in power because they were blaming the civil service for being woke. And yes, there is wokery in the civil service, but above and beyond the wokery is just this extraordinary, “We exist for ourselves and not for anybody else.” So it means now Keir Starmer is experiencing, “I can’t do anything. I can’t even do lefty things. I can’t even get a wind farm built. Nothing is happening.”

So it’s just really … It’s an object lesson what’s happening in the UK at the moment. And just going even further back into history here, I got this question from a listener. We sometimes do ask our listeners for questions. And I do like this one. Going back before Triggernometry, how do you think your childhood and background in the Soviet Union shaped you? Do you think there are ways that you’re very English? And do you think there are ways that you are very not English still?

Konstantin Kisin:

That’s really interesting. Well, we just recorded an interview with Stephen Fry, which was a great honor for us. And one of the things he was saying is, “Well, I can imagine that you guys,” Francis’ mother being from Venezuela, “With your backgrounds, you get pretty irritated by the fact that you’re being lied to as you were and your ancestors were in your countries.” And I said, “It’s not even that we are being lied to. I expect people to be lying to me, especially the government. It’s that I’m not allowed to say that they are lying. That’s the thing that really bothers me.”

So I think my sensitivity around the ability to speak, discuss important things, challenge government, challenge authority is partly from that. I think that the one increasing deviation I noticed between myself and the British sentiment is that article that I keep bringing up that I’m writing now, which is that I think, especially after I spent time in America, I think it’s very clear that there is this beautiful thing about British culture, which is not bragging, not showing off, not talking about how you’re the best at everything. It has a very dark undertone and that undertone is one of … It’s the tall poppy syndrome. It’s that you shouldn’t-

Helen Dale:

Which is actually Australian.

Konstantin Kisin:

That’s an Australian phrase, the tall poppy syndrome. It’s almost like Britain has taken something that in some respects in Australia is quite attractive, the egalitarianism, and turned it into something that it’s not what Australians wanted with the idea of don’t stick your head up too far above the rest of the people, because in an Aussie context, it’s very much about stop thinking that because you’re very successful or because you’ve had a big achievement or because you’re very smart, you then get to tell other people what to do. That’s the way it works in Australia, but Britain hasn’t got that idea.

No. In Britain it’s mostly just like, “You’re not special. Why would you try to do something?” And so in America, when you tell people, “I’ve got this idea for a great thing that I want to do. I want to do a new show. I want to start this. I want to do that,” the reaction in America is always like, “Oh, that’s amazing. Let me help you. I can put you in touch with this guy,” whatever. In the UK, there’s a sort of like, “Who do you think you are to be starting things and doing things?”

Helen Dale:

See, that’s the thing. Australians will be optimistic, like the Americans will, as you’ve seen because you’ve been to Australia in the last year as well, but by the same token, Australia did invent the tall poppy syndrome and it does sometimes go too far. I mean, one of the reasons why a lot of clever particularly intellectuals in Australia have left the country in the past and gone to the UK or the US or sometimes to Europe if they have a foreign language has been because of the tall poppy syndrome. They just get cut too hard. And sometimes it is a case of they get out over their skis and try to tell Australians what to do because they’re clever, all that, they think they have a right to do that. But often it’s just Australians can be mean to high achievers. But it’s not mean in the same way that British people are mean. It’s a different kind of meanness, even though the phrase is the same.

Konstantin Kisin:

That’s really interesting. I saw an example of this very, very recently. So a businessman called Nick Candy, who I actually wasn’t aware of, he’s left the Conservative Party and gone to the Reform Party. These are all minor details for most of your listeners. But the point I’m making is he was privately educated, which means his parents were wealthy and paid for him to go to a good school. He was given a loan of 6,000 Pounds, which is about $8,000, by his grandmother. And this is now being used against him to say that when he built a multi-billion Pound business, from my understanding, he can’t say that he’s self-made, because he converted 6,000 Pounds of an investment from his grandmother into a billion Pound company, but he had a good education, therefore he’s not self-made. This constant attempt to tear people down and say, “Well, you’re only self-made if you grew up on a council estate with no money and one arm,” all of this other-

Helen Dale:

It becomes a Monty Python joke.

Konstantin Kisin:

Yes.

Helen Dale:

I mean, you’re the comedian. The Monty Python routine that with all the fake Yorkshire accents saying, “I was born in a shoe box,” or, “I was born in a coal scuttle.” That’s what it becomes.

Konstantin Kisin:

Yes. Whereas I think, frankly … I was chatting to Mary Harrington at our Christmas party, which you were also able to attend, and her and I were discussing the fact that I really think Britain in some ways must accept its role has evolved. At the beginning of the last century, Britain was the center of the Western world. It was the most powerful and dominant country, culturally and in many other ways. But we are no longer the center of the Western world. That center is shifted to the United States. And if we want to preserve and multiply the achievements of Western society, we may need to look at recognizing that fact, recognizing that we are essentially a periphery now of American civilization to some extent, America’s taken on that leading role, and looking at what they do well and trying to bring as much of that over to our society here. And I think shedding this combination of post-imperial boastfulness and shame at the same time. We’re so-

Helen Dale:

It’s very strange.

Konstantin Kisin:

We’re so successful historically that all we need to do now is talk ourselves down. … Because we’re so powerful that we shouldn’t talk about how great we are. What we should talk about is all our flaws. And this was interesting because at the very end of our interview with Stephen Fry, I said to him, “What does it mean to be British?” And he talked for a long time in a very beautiful way, as only Stephen Fry can, about all of that. And at the end he said, “The thing that makes Britain wonderful is our lack of bragging, our lack of. … We don’t talk about our values. You’re supposed to pick them up. But the truth is Western values aren’t as rare. And maybe we have to actually be less British and start saying, ‘This is who we are and this is why it’s good.'”

Helen Dale:

Yes. That’s some very sound advice. Final question. Back to the past again, but your old job, why do you think having a sense of humor is important? What do you find yourself thinking when people don’t have a sense of humor? And related to that question, what’s your response when you do experience, and I have seen this, online mobbing and controversy?

Konstantin Kisin:

Oh, okay. Oh. Well, if you’re talking about serious ideas, sense of humor is important because it’s like the sugar that makes a medicine go down. Triggernometry is slightly more enjoyable because we keep you occasionally laughing along, and that means that the seriousness of the ideas is made easier to bear. Some people don’t have a very good sense of humor for very good reasons actually. I remember actually a former Australian Deputy Prime Minister, now a good friend of mine, John Anderson, talking about how he lost a sense of humor in a tragic accident that happened with his family.

Helen Dale:

Yes. Yes. It’s well-known in Australian history. He lost a sibling.

Konstantin Kisin:

Yes. I think is understandable, but broadly speaking, I think it’s a case of people who are overly serious and unable to enjoy life. And enjoying life is very important because it mitigates you against all the other things that happen. As for online mobbing, whatever, I’ll be honest with you, I did a personality test a while ago, and I’m in the top-naught point something percentile for disagreeableness. So I honestly really genuinely couldn’t care any less about what other people are saying. I’ve always taken flack from both the left and the right because I’ve tried to just call it as I see it as opposed to being a team guy. That’s always going to be the place where you attract the most criticism. It’s much easier to find a tribe and just to be a partisan of that tribe.

But I’m very happy with that role. It’s very rewarding role. People are … I can’t in good conscience advocate for the importance of free speech and then get upset when other people exercise it. Doesn’t mean that I am not going to block people who are being rude or racist or insulting on Twitter, whatever. But broadly speaking, I believe in allowing people to express themselves even if that speech is unpleasant or rude or whatever. And truthfully, I have a very weird and perverse psyche in that I actually delight in the fact that some people are so annoyed with me saying something that’s obviously true, that I actually will often share with friends unflattering things that people say about me or about Triggernometry because it makes me laugh. So I’m all for it. I’ve got absolutely no problem. And look, and partly this is something that I always say to people who complain about this stuff, who have put themselves in the public eye is like, “You don’t have to be in the public eye.”

Helen Dale:

Yes. This is true.

Konstantin Kisin:

“No one made you. Not only that, but if you disappear from the public eye, if you stop saying what you’re saying or hosting a show that you’re hosting or taking positions that you take or talking to people that you talk to, no one’s going to say a word about you.” So it’s part of the package. You, in many cases, get to make a lot of money and have the ability to influence the culture and influence the direction of travel of your society and of your civilization and the price you pay for that is some idiot on the internet is going to say something unflattering. To me, that’s a price that’s well worth paying.

Helen Dale:

That’s always been my view as well. Yes. Well, thank you very much, Konstantin. That’s quite a good rundown of where you’re at with Triggernometry. We don’t have another book to look forward to, but you can sign up to Konstantin’s Substack. You can also sign up to Triggernometry on Substack. There are two separate Substacks. You will find them referring to each other when you go to Substack and type the names in. You could also subscribe to me as well. I’m on Substack. Also easy to find. And try to do the same sort of thing, but in a smaller and quieter way.

Konstantin Kisin:

All right, Helen. Thank you very much.

Helen Dale:

Thank you very much, Konstantin. See you.

Konstantin Kisin:

Thanks for having me. Bye. Bye-bye.

James Patterson:

Thanks for listening to this episode of Law & Liberty Podcast. Be sure to subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. And visit us online at www.lawliberty.org.