Modern Wisdom - #235 - Konstantin Kisin - Approval To Speak Freely

Episode Date: October 22, 2020

Konstantin Kisin is a comedian and podcaster. Growing up in Russia gives you a unique insight into culture, identity and politics. Hopefully this episode doesn't end up with us in the Gulag. Expect to learn why Darren Grimes being called in by the MET Police is bad for everyone, what the current day and the Soviet Union have in common, who Konstantin thinks will win the US Election, how empathy is being weaponised and much more... Sponsor: Get 20% discount on the best coffee in Britain with Uncommon Coffee’s entire range at http://uncommoncoffee.co.uk/ (use code MW20) Extra Stuff: Follow Konstantin on Twitter - https://twitter.com/KonstantinKisin Subscribe to Triggernometry - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7oPkqeHTwuOZ5CZ-R9f-6w  Get my free Ultimate Life Hacks List to 10x your daily productivity → https://chriswillx.com/lifehacks/ To support me on Patreon (thank you): https://www.patreon.com/modernwisdom - Get in touch. Join the discussion with me and other like minded listeners in the episode comments on the MW YouTube Channel or message me... Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/ModernWisdomPodcast Email: https://www.chriswillx.com/contact  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello people in podcast land. Welcome back. My guest today is Constantine Kissing, comedian and host of the Fantastic Trigonometry podcast. As someone who grew up in Russia, I thought that we might be able to get a unique insight into the chaos that has been 2020's culture, identity and politics. So today, expect to learn why Darren Grimes being called in by the Met Police is bad for everyone. What the current day and the Soviet Union have in common, who constant in thinks will win the US election, how empathy is being weaponized, and much more. In other news, you may have seen that I have set the show a target of hitting 100,000 subscribers

on YouTube before Christmas, so if you are not already subscribed, please take two minutes out of your day, head to YouTube, search modern wisdom and press the subscribe button. It would make me very happy indeed. And video guiding wants that 100k subscriber play button off YouTube so bad. Go do it now.

Go press the button right now. That would be lovely. But for now, it's time for the wise and wonderful Constantine kissing. The stakes have been raised now, haven't they? Based on the Darren Grimes incident, I'm now culpable for what you say. So please go gently on me or I'm going to be in prison and you'll be in a gulag. Well, I'm going to struggle to say anything now and I. I'm so ridiculously controversial with my very mainstream opinions that, yeah, we're both in trouble. If we sit in silence for the next hour,

that is one sure-fi way that we can't get in trouble. That could offend people who really wanted to listen to us talk though, and they might report us to the police. And yeah, you never know, man. But if you remember, you came to see my show in Edinburgh last year, and this is exactly what I was talking about. Should it be illegal to have offensive opinions? And here we are.

And essentially, the police are investigating people, not even for their own opinions, for stuff someone else said on their show that they broadcast. And you add to that the response to the pandemic and how that's affecting our civil liberties as well. It's not a great time. No, not at all. So can you give us a brief overview and take us through what we've learned from the Darren Grimes situation in your opinion? Well, so for people who don't know Darren Grimes is a conservative right wing commentator. He I think is rather

hated by many people on my side of the referendum debate, people who voted remain as I did. A lot of people who are sort of very obsessed with that issue in a way that I'm not, felt that because he was part of the campaign to make that happen, he was investigated three times by the electoral commission for his involvement in that. So he's got a lot of enemies. I think that's part of it for sure. But basically, he had Dr. David Starky controversial historian who made some what I thought were ill judged comments. And I know David, we've had him on the show. He didn't say anything like that on our show, but on DARREN, he did make some controversial comments, which as I say, I thought were all ill judged.

And this happened a few months ago, there was a big Ferrari, Dr. David Stark, he was properly canceled for it. He apologized, eventually DARREN apologized for not challenging him on what he said. And that was sort of the end of the matter. I think a lot of people felt that even though I think many people felt that it was appropriate that David Starky suffered some consequences for what he said, equally many people felt

that maybe the consequences were quite harsh. Where have you set on that? I respect both views on that personally. And that was sort of the end of the matter for most people I think. Until we found out last week, as we record this, that the police had invited, initially we learned that it was Darren Grimes,

and then also then David Starky, had both been invited for what is euphemistically called a voluntary interview. Interesting, it's called that because if you don't attend, you get arrested. So the voluntary nature of that interview is a little bit interesting. And yeah, so essentially we're talking about the police investigating people for things that they say and for Interviewers for things that their guests say We we had Darren Grimes on the show pretty much straight away because we felt it was a very important issue to raise to the public awareness There were lots of other mainstream media coverage as well and hopefully as a result of all of that publicity

that happened, the police said they've got a senior officer reviewing the case, they've postponed the interviews that they were supposed to have. And at the time, actually everyone from Afsak are all the way through to Pretty Patel and Sadjad Javid and many, many other people who at the time felt that David Stonkey's comments were completely wrong. Some of them said they were horrible racists, etc. Even those people were saying, aren't the police going too far here? And so as a result, it seems that the police have rode back.

They've realized there's a public backlash. How that ends, we don't know because they haven't closed the investigation. Yeah, but it's a troubling thing because what I find really surprising about this, and I'm not again one of these sort of defund the BBC people, but I do think the BBC is biased. And what I found fascinating was they didn't cover the story on their mainstream news at all. So while he was being talked about in the telegraph in the times it was on the front page of the times I think at least on the online version the BBC simply pretended it wasn't happening which I thought was very interesting. Why do you think that's happening? I don't know exactly but've felt for some time now that the BBC are not reporting on cultural issues objectively, whether you, you know, the economy or all that sort of thing, there's more of a conversation to be had about which way they lean.

Some people might even argue that they lean to the right on those things. But certainly when it comes to people like Baron, who as I say, are hated by many people on the remain side and many people on the left as well. I don't think he got a fair shake at it. If you remember a couple of years ago when I turned down that safe space contract, that was in every newspaper in the country and the BBC covered it very prominently. It was right up there. And that was an issue that many people had a lot to do with free speech.

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

to introduce balance. But if everyone in your organization thinks the same way on these cultural issues of the culture war, then it's very difficult to then present a balanced view of an issue. And with the news coverage of Darren Grimes, I think they just, you know, they genuinely just like basic, it's suppressed it. Yeah, man. I mean, when I first delved into the situation, I'd missed the original David Starky interview. So I had to track back and kind of get a grasp on everything in real time. But man, I'm really, really concerned,

or would have been concerned had this backtracking by the police not occurred. The ability or the potential for me as an independent podcaster, doing it's a lovely bedroom, but doing it from his bedroom, the potential that I could have anyone on. I've spoken to porn stars, I've spoken to the girl who started the UK version

of only fans, I've spoken to Douglas Murray, like all the same thing, obviously. And like... You know how to pick a guest, man. You go for the top. I really do. To go for the crem, the La Creme. Yeah.

Filtering, exactly. We should reconsider. We talked to all these boring, political analysts and stuff like that. You've gone straight in there with the best. Brazos, that's who, the top ten on Brazos, that's who you need to speak to. So I've got these people on. They could say anything and somehow I would be liable for what they say. Now, I'm going to guess that the only potential justification for this would be

to treat an independent podcaster like Darenes, like you guys are like, I am, as a broadcaster, as if we have some sort of network in the traditional media sense of the word that we are broadcasting media and therefore we are liable for what occurs on our channel. Is that, if you were to steal man the argument, do you think that's kind of where it comes from? Yeah, I think that's exactly where it comes from. And look, we're all dealing with a new world in which all of this stuff is unusual.

I mean, a podcast have only been around 10, 15 years, and so our laws, probably not all that are well adjusted to the whole situation. So I think, obviously, big media corporations that have whole legal departments that deal with these, that train the presenters, what you can and can't allow guests to say, what can and can't go and challenge. Even there, there's quite a lot of bias in how all of that's treated. So it's perfectly possible. I mean, you talk about Douglas Murray, one of the most prominent conservative commentators in the country. And maybe a lot of the stuff he's been talking about lately, you wouldn't even say that it's a conservative view, particularly. But it's perfectly normal for him to go on the BBC and be called far right by a fellow

guest. Without necessarily being challenged, that guest being challenged in the moment, he then has to threaten to sue, they then apologize, right? Whereas if you'd gone and slandered somebody from the other side, it wouldn't be the same. So for someone like me who's bang in the center of politics, those hypocrisies are very difficult to ignore because they're just right there staring you in the face. But yeah, I think the steel man version of the argument is we're broadcasting stuff to an unspecified number of people. And that means we're subject to broadcasting regulation. And that means that we are responsible to some extent for what people say.

Having said that, there is a difference between television and a podcast, because television or radio, that is broadcast into an unspecified number of people who may or may not have opted in for that particular content. So, if you've just got the radio playing in the background and then someone comes on and starts, as in David Starchie's case, talking about damn blacks or something like that, you know, that's different to you clicking on a podcast which is clearly discussing, you know,

the history of slavery, let's say, and then being triggered that that's happened. So there is a difference to be had, but I don't necessarily think I have the answer, particularly, because should we be able to just have anyone on to say whatever they want without any repercussions whatsoever, probably not. There is some responsibility. I mean, we are subject to the laws of the land if you have someone on who, you know, incites violence. Well, I don't think that should be exempt simply because you're doing it from your bedroom, right? So there's a way to calibrate it, but I think holding us to exactly the same standard as the BBC OITV. I think that's taken it a bit far. So I guess we'll wait and see what what what what what what are

our legislative bodies come up with. Yeah, for sure. Both you just now and during the discourse that I heard this week with Darren as well, one of the things that he's said in his defenses, I was basically Starstruck by David Starkey, Stark struck, and I didn't challenge his views as I should have done. Does that make any difference? Like, does it make any difference about whether or not you decide to challenge someone's views? The views are out there in the ether based on your broadcast. I'm not sure what my position is about whether or not him saying, hang on a second David, you can't really say that. Like, does that change what he said in its essence? Well, I don't, I'm not a lawyer, so I don't know the law on that. That seems to certainly be the mainstream approach, right?

If you get someone controversial on, you don't let them talk. That's, that's how they do, right? So, so maybe that's what exempt you from being associated then with those views. Maybe people assume that you know if you let me talk that means you agree with everything I'm saying silence is compliance Well, yeah, there was during this whole episode recently people said that silence is consent which I thought was quite interesting given the me two stuff we've had before. I mean, it doesn't seem to be in the show. What was that argument? I just thought that was an interesting linguistic quirk if anything. And it sort of shows how ridiculous it is.

Our friend, Luke Perez, from We The Internet, who we had on the show a few months ago. He posted at the time of the BLM riots that were happening. He said, silence violence, right? Speech is violence, but actual violence is not violence. When people were saying these are peaceful, you know. So that's where we are. But I think, yeah, I think because we are used to the mainstream media format of interviewing people, which is you get someone on for a maximum of 10 minutes. And the moment they say anything that is in any way perceived as controversial, you have to jump in and offer a counter argument, then maybe when you see someone like us having

a conversation, then people assume that because you haven't interrupted me, you've agreed with every single word that I've said. And therefore that lack of challenges perceived as endorsement. Yeah, you are right. The paradigms are shifting. I got an email, so I got such an interesting email man on the day that the Darren Grimes story broke. Hey there, I'm Matt, the founder of Influencer Protect. I specialize in helping podcasters with all their insurance needs. I offer a bespoke service to help support areas such as making an untrue statement that results in reputational damage,

breaching and advertising, ruling unintentionally, copyright infringements, a brand making a claim against you, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, am I going to have to buy insurance to be a podcaster now? Like, this is obviously an emerging market. I think it was coincidence rather than an entrepreneurial foresight that he really, I got that particular email.

But like, man, it really is, I'll be very, very interested. I got a DM off Darryl Eurene today for anyone who's interested. Today is the day, the morning of this Friday, the 16th of October, was when Darryl was supposed to be in the police station for the voluntary not voluntary interview. And he sent me an update over his, the email, the Mr. Gramswell, writing to inform you that the senior officer has been appointed to conduct a review of this matter and ensure that it remains proportionate and that all appropriate lines of inquiry are being considered. While this review takes place, please note that at this time you are no longer required

to attend Kingston Police Station, who will contact you in due course with further updates. I mean, that's what happens when you marshal the forces of darkness. Which was absolutely happening, but yeah, man, I, it's worrying. That's, you know, previously, the count-dankular stuff, I appreciate that there are this sort of death by a thousand cuts situation going on. I was able to distance myself from that and feel quite detached because I'm like, unlikely that I would be in the situation where that occurs. But, you know, Darren is slap-bang in my wheelhouse and he's in Northern Lad as well. So yeah, that really, that sort of shook me a little bit, considering how much I care about this project. That was uncomfortable to find out.

I know what you mean about Daniela. And of course, he's not the only person that this has happened to. We can go down the list. Harry Miller, who retweeted a supposedly transphobic poem of some kind on Twitter, gets a call from the police saying, we need to check your thinking. Right, that's happened. Posey Parker again a gender critical former feminist she was interviewed by the police for expressing some of her views on trans issues

Chelsea Russell who I talked about in my in my show last year The girl from I think she was from Liverpool, as she posted the lyrics of a song on her Instagram, and tribute to a friend of hers who'd been killed in a car crash, and it was a rap song, so it contained the N-word, and she was actually prosecuted and convicted for whatever it would have been, offensive language or something like that. Eventually got overturned and appealed. So we're seeing a lot of these cases coming through in the pipeline. And of course, it's our coffee machine.

I'm sorry. That's right. You can turn it off, mate. Sorry. This isn't sort of shit I was anticipating. Sorry about it. I love it. So we're seeing a lot of these cases coming through the pipeline and what it essentially

means is yes, of course I understand your feeling of like well look, thank you, I didn't really affect me, where it's darren is more in my real house. But the reality of all of this stuff is none of us can afford to only look around situation on this issue. You know, it's like it's a bit like saying, you know, would you approve of summary execution for people who commit certain offenses? Well, you you might never commit that particular offense, but it doesn't mean you would necessarily approve of people being, you know, pulled up on the street lined up against the wall. And it's the same with the free speech issue. Yes, a lot of people weren't on board with, thank you, though, they didn't think his his

people won on board with Dankula, they didn't think his sketch or whatever it was was funny, but that doesn't necessarily mean that he should have been convicted of hate speech or find 800 pounds and be a hate criminal for life, which is essentially where he is now. So I think you, principles like this always require you to defend people that you don't agree with and don't like. And that's just an inevitability. Most people prefer to just stick to the comfortable, which is, well, I like this guy, therefore, I'll defend him. But actually, none of us can afford to do that. Yeah, a principle isn't a principle until it costs you. Moving on, moving on from the Daringrime situation, what unique insight has your cultural heritage given you

when looking at the world in 2020? Have you got some particularly interesting insights based on where you're from? Hmm, well, I grew up in Russia in the 90s, immediately during and after, well, before as well, but before, during and after the collapse of the Soviet Union. So, I saw a very stable society where everything was going smoothly, very predictable. Everybody went to work from 9 o'clock, left work at 5 o'clock, went home, made food,

bent time of the children. Everything was very stable, very consistent, very predictable. To overnight society being transformed into something completely different and largely unrecognizable. People who up to that point were very successful, wealthy, they had a good income, they had a predictable future, they had a solid career ahead of them, suddenly for some people that just disappeared overnight. And equally, there was lots of opportunity for other people who had new ideas or, as in the Russian case, were just prepared to be moral or whatever it was, all the opportunities in between to build something new. And I think what we're seeing now with

the coronavirus and the response to it and how our countries are dealing with it is much less shocking to me. And also, Mike Corhost from Trigonometry, France, who's, a family are from Venezuela, where he's seen something very similar. You know, we are not really shocked or particularly troubled by this situation in the same way, because we're like, well, yeah, this is, you know, this idea that everything was always going to continue in the same way and be stable and predictable and comfortable. That's, that's never going to be true over true over the long term. These shocks will always happen. So for me, that

background of growing up in a very unstable environment that literally flipped overnight, it gives me an insight into what's going to happen now. And I feel desperately sad for a lot of people whose lives have been thrown up into complete chaos, many people losing work, jobs, security, you know, and it's going to run and run because the economic impact of what's happened hasn't even been felt yet. We're probably going to have the biggest recession we've had for centuries. Well, that's a thing. We've got the pain now in the immediate, but it's our children who are going to pay the financial burden with either inflation interest rates, whatever

way that the Government's decide to try and recuperate all of this expenditure. It's all well and good people having parties in the street because Rishi's gonna throw 8 billion at you, but that 8 billion needs repaying some at some point. But that 8 billion needs repaying some at some point. Sure. And the 8 billion is a tiny fraction of what we're really talking about. There was a story in the times yesterday about the people who were designing this government app for track and trace doing it mainly on Excel, as we now know. They hadn't paid about 7.5 grand a day.

So they're basically on Premier League footballer wages to make the shitty app that doesn't work. And the total cost of that is about 12 billion pounds just for that. So we're basically throwing bad money after bad money after bad money at this whole problem. And I think your analysis is somewhere optimistic. You say, it's our children are going to pay for this. No, no, it's going to be us first. We're going to pay for it. And that's going to be going to pay for it. And then their children are going to pay for it too. So, but equally, as I say, a time of crisis is also a time of opportunity.

The people who are just and adapt and learn from this and understand that the traditional way of doing things isn't gonna work and respond to that with ingenuity and creativity, they will benefit tremendously too. And so my background, I think, gives me the understanding that this shit happens. This shit always happens and you've got to be ready to adjust and move with the time.

So for us, for example, you know, Trigonometry used to be a one episode of week show. And we might do a live stream once a week as well. When the lockdown hit, we were like, well, we're two comedians who don't have a stage to perform on anymore. Let's do more interviews. Let's do more live streams. So we are now broadcasting a piece of content

and now long every day except Monday. Right. We've ramped that up and our fans have responded. We've grown our audience massively. The support for the show has been great as well. Although we're starting to see it, it's starting to dip now as people struggle with, with what we're talking about,

with the economy, people are losing jobs. Somebody who was supporting us at quite high level, giving us 50 qu I would say, I would say, I would say, I would say, I would say, I would say, I would say, I would say, I would say, I would say, I would say, I would say, I would say, I would say, I would say, I would say, I would say, I would say, I would say, I would say, I would say, I would say, I would say, I would say, I would say, I would but I've lost my job or my hours have been cut or whatever it might be. So people are being affected, but my broader point is in this sort of environment, a lot of people are gonna suffer and it's terrible. There will be some people who benefit

and I guess the question for all of us is, well, everything else being the way that it is, which one of those two do you wanna be? Yeah, very much so, man. I really like the insight that you've got that you lived through a period of change and chaos and sort of straddled both before, during and after, which again, very, very unique view. I've been thinking a lot, especially over the last few months about the fact that all of the catastrophes that we've had over the last 80 years since the end of World War II,

really just have been kind of nerfed versions of proper problems. You know, like the Spanish flu serious, serious big pandemic, proper existential shit, or the World War II, proper serious war people dying. Yet Iraq, big deal, desert storm, big deal World War II, proper, serious war, people dying. Yeah, Iraq, big deal, desert storm, big deal, you know, Afghanistan, big deal, 9 or 11, not to be made light of 2008 financial crisis, not to be made light of, but all of these versions were, these incidents were dealt with in ways that were manageable and

were fairly quickly rebounded from. And this really is a reminder, I think, of just how tenuous humanity's grasp on existences. You know, like if anyone thought, like what are some of the human institutions that we usually rely on, finances? Yeah, the banks will look after it, the economy will be okay, health.

Oh, well, at least Grandmarr and Grandad are all right, or at least there's a future for my kid education. Oh, well, at least like littleire and granddad are all right, or at least there's a future for my kid education. Oh, well, at least like little Timmy can go off to school, all this sort of stuff. Like, there's very few areas that haven't been shaken to their core. And I appreciate both sides of the fence with people now saying, well, look, the lockdowns and stuff.

There's mental health problems that are coming through. I'm not convinced that opening up a fairly ambivalent about the lockdowns, it's just kind of, I leave it to the epidemiologists and the virologists and public health experts. But I think that the lockdowns are only a small part of this. I think the ambient anxiety is due to a lot more of what's going on. It's the fact that everyone has been wildly reminded of their own mortality and they're staring it in the face. Look at just how we don't like it. No, we really don't like it, do we? Well, I mean, think of anyone who's read Ernest Beck is denial of death. Like that is about the fact that everything we do in life is to escape

our awareness of death. And if there's ever been a year like 2020 is the year that death has stared all of us in the face, financial death, educational death, career death, health. Scary, man. It is. And I think as you're pointing, I mean, I, I share your analysis by the way on the series of smaller crises we've had since World War II. The only thing I would possibly add for broader pictures, of course, the Cuban Missile Crisis, which, in which we were literally minutes away from everyone on the planet dying.

But it didn't feel as visceral on an individual level. It wasn't like we were all sitting in our bunkers. But apart from that, I agree with you. Let you show, we can leave the lockdown stuff to the epidemiologists, but we've interviewed doctors on the show. We've interviewed people on the show, and a lot of people now have concluded that the lockdown while not necessarily preventing many COVID deaths, there's not any particularly strong evidence that that is the case. Is definitely having a huge impact on the number of deaths we're going to see in the months and years to come because what's happening is you're saving the lives of elderly people who end up living a few months longer or a year longer. And the cost of that is that you are delaying cancer diagnosis, you're delaying other treatments for other very serious conditions in younger people. You're

delaying dealing with mental health, exacerbating people's problems with many, many things, and the chances are more people will die as a result of the lockdowns than of COVID-19. Can you explain what weaponizing empathy means? Hmm. So this is from an interview I did with the former deputy prime minister of Australia, John Anderson. And he was very kind to have me me and I really enjoyed talking to him. One of the things we were talking about is how identity politics has been used to antagonize different groups against each other. Identity politics before people who I'm familiar

with are being the idea that the way we should think of ourselves in terms of our political discussions isn't, you know, I'm Constantin and I'm Chris and I Constantin think this about the economy and I think this about culture and I think this about immigration and you have your own individual thoughts but rather we should think of it as well we're two men or I'm an immigrant and I assume you're British born and British descent right I love the confidence with you. Yeah, yeah, definitely. I'm from the Northeast of England with a mum who's like one-sixteenth Scottish,

and a dad who's from Newton, Acliffe. I'm like, as born and bred salt of the earth as you're going to find. Right, exactly. So identity politics basically says that you should think of yourself as a straight white man. I assume you're straight. I don't know. So of yourself as a straight white man. I assume you're straight I don't know you may be yep straight so whatever you are straight white man. I am a straight possibly white man but I'm also Jewish and I'm also an immigrant and I should think about myself and my

political views through that prison. So let's say that instead of being straight white and male, you were a black gay woman. Well your views wouldn't be dictated by your individual personality, but rather the views that you have are shaped primarily by the fact that you are black, that you are gay, that you are female. And the way you should view politics is through that prism. And the way that society should view you is also through that prism. In other words, by looking at you, I can already tell that you as a straight white man massively privileged, been oppressing people for centuries,

your people, evil, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and equally if you're a white gay woman, well, the chances are you're super oppressed and therefore that means you're supposed to have certain political views as well. That's identity politics. So, and this is a view of politics that has completely taken over our cultural institutions in society and many other institutions too. It's the way we talk, you know, there's a liberal MP today or the other day who suggested that we need all ethnic minority short lists, right? This is the sort of product like a team sheet. Yeah, like a roll call. Can all of the Latinos put the hands up please? Right. So it's saying the way you get MPs of from ethnic minority backgrounds into parliament

is not allow white people to stand in certain constituencies essentially, right? Because white people are quote unquote purdlidge, therefore they don't deserve that opportunity. They've had too many opportunities already and we need to raise up people. And of course, what this ignores is almost exclusively the ethnic minority people who do come in many, many cases. I actually, you know, they've been to a private school, went to Oxford, Oxford Bridge, you know, did PPE there at Oxford and then became a parliamentary assistant and worked or in the Rishik Sunaks case, very prominent family, etc. with links to banking and whatever his background is. So, it's taking this very blunt force view of racial relations between men and women

and of how we conduct our politics now And my point was when I was talking about this is how has that happened? How has this ideology which is Antithetical to everything Western society is built on Western society is built on the idea that we're all individuals right and and what matters about us is not the color rustkin. I remember a guy called Martin Luther something that was talking about this, right? How we should not be judged by our skin color, but rather we should be judged by the content of our character, by who we are as

individuals. How did this collective idea, I, I then to tear an idea, how did that embed itself so firmly into our political discussion? And the way it has is, it's a very powerful tool because if I say to you, well, look, excuse me, as an immigrant, I am deeply oppressed or my life has been difficult. Well, unless you're psychopath, your instinct is to go, oh, I'm sorry to hear that, like what's been your life experience, right? And that's most people's instinct, because most people are compassionate and caring and they want to express support and sympathy

for people who are victims of life, because some people generally have had difficult experience that we all have, but some people more than others. And so you take that and you use people's empathy against them. If you say to people, well look, Britain is the most evil racist country in the world. A lot of people initially will go, well, okay, especially

in this country where the culture is sort of very apologetic and you, well, I'm sorry, you kept on my foot, but I apologize to you, that sort of attitude. People go, okay, well, you know, let's look at maybe, maybe, maybe, you know, did we had slavery in this country and we had this and we had that and, you know, our ancestors did certain things. Let's maybe look at that, you know, if you're saying that you are discriminated against in modern society because of your skin color, your sexuality, or whatever else it might be, Well, maybe that's true. Let's have a look at that. And I think there's definitely some room for that.

When I came to this country in the 90s, it was certainly less tolerant than it is now. And I think that progress has been a result of that sort of attitude of like, let's make sure that we learn the lessons from the Stephen Lawrence murder and cover up by the police, right? Let's learn the lessons from certain things that have happened that are atrocious and tragic.

Let's learn the lessons of, you know, the racism that was quite common in this country 30, 40, 50 years ago. But what it's got to now is the people who create that sort of grievance industry, some of which was initially needed, they now want to survive and sustain their lives And so you've got these professional racebaters on TV who go on and talk about how you know They're even more oppressed than they've ever been and life is terrible and what they're doing is they're using decent Ordinary people's empathy against them. I really like the weaponizing empathy terminology. I think it it nicely encapsulates the weakness

that is being targeted. And as someone who does have excess empathy, it makes for a very difficult, it makes me confused about my own views because I get scared about saying the wrong thing, about upsetting someone, then as you'll be aware and, you know, as a little bit of an insight break in the fourth wall for how you guys and both me will be, I wonder whether you have felt the increase in ambient anxiety about saying the wrong thing as your platform grows? Like when it's a full on bedroom project that no one gives a shit about, you're like, well, so what? Like, I've got all this other stuff that's going on. But as your baby, as a independent podcaster or broadcaster or radio host or whatever it might be, as that becomes a bigger and bigger part of your life financially, passionately,

career wise, as that grows, you're actually a hang in a second that I got something to lose here. I genuinely have something that I should be afraid of. With that, you get more stability, because presumably you would have the support of a larger audience. You also have a greater backlog of content, Jordan Peterson has always said, if you want to call me a right wing Nazi,

there is hundreds of hours of me lecturing online. Please find a point at which I've done that. But yeah, have you felt that? Because I certainly, little twinges in the back of my mind, I'm like, there's something to lose here now. Yeah, I think I've got a very sort of perverse personality in that way in that I actually feel much freer to speak my mind now than I've ever done. Because first of all, I'm very clear that not everyone's going to agree with me. You know, that contract that we referenced when I turned it down two years ago became a big story

and that sort of, it like broke everything for me like in a moment. You know, sometimes you stretch a band and stretch a band and stretch a band and eventually but for me It was just like snap the fucking things in literally in two weeks Yeah, baptismal fight exactly so I went from literally no one really knows me I don't have any public profile. I'm on a comedian on the comedy circuit. I'm doing pretty well But not not anything spectacular. I'm moving up the ranks. I get on with most people very well I don't comedians sort of like me other comedians and my colleagues whatever to in the space of two weeks going Okay, well half of the comedy industry now hate me

And from that moment just the number of fucks I give has rapidly plummeted towards zero very, very quickly. And the thing is the big platform grows in terms of trigonometry and my own following. I just feel people have got our backs, man. The people who watch our show, they'll back us. And if we come under attack, they will chip in and they'll help us out. And if we get sued for something, there'll be people to help us out. The free speech union is a big factor in downgrimes case, but in many others, they're

helping people deal with, you know, liable as accusations, being sacked from work for saying something controversial, whatever. So I feel like there's actually, you know, on Trigonometry, we probably have about 200,000 subscribers across the different platforms if you put YouTube and other stuff together. There's 200,000 people, many, many of whom really believe in what we're doing. They agree with the principle of what we're doing, which is trying to have honest conversations with interesting people, which is what you do. And if they feel that that is being destroyed, I have every confidence that our audience will back us up.

And we were just chatting today in the studio with the guys with the team about, we posted a joke on the vaccine on my Twitter. That being good with mathematics. Yeah, I basically said that I'm going to take a rushed vaccine I'm not worried about it because I've always wanted to be good with maths The idea being that vaccines some people say give you autism, right? And the first comment under that Facebook post on our page was I am autistic and I just like to say I'm not in any way offended by this

The audience we've built are people who really appreciate what we do and they'll back us up. And I hope that's not naive. And as long as we stick to our principles, I think, you know, people have your back. And that's really the great power of the internet is in the past. I think canceling people was much easier because all you did is, you know, you burn them at the stake or you get them fired or whatever it might have been. Now, for people like me and you, being cancelled may actually be quite beneficial.

Cloud, man. Everything's clear. What is my good friend and social media market, but he Johnny says clicks are clicks. And that's the situation you found yourself in, with the contract. I think everyone gets a couple of cracks at the viral moment, Zubi's deadlift video, Darren Grimes is being called in by the Met Police, your contract thing, my early one was Love Island,

but we don't talk about that. So, we have these opportunities to capitalize on it, and you're totally correct that that first order effect of being a weakness might second, third, fourth order effect actually be the platform, the springboard that you need to then further the audience. So yeah, man, I hope that you're right. I really do think decentralizing the control and going being your going to great lengths to make yourself unconsolable as Sam Harris says is strong builder following on a platform then build an email list that is not mediated by anyone. Try and

cancel it. You like go to move your platform, move your audience anywhere. Once you have an email list, they can go anywhere. And that's bulletproof. Yeah, obviously there are exceptions to that. And some people have been sort of censored way up. But, you know, I'm not, as I sort of joke at the beginning, I'm super controversial. Actually, I have very centrist opinions on pretty much everything. It's just the weird world we live in. So I don't ever anticipate, you know anticipate being taken off all these platforms for saying what I say. But I'll still insist that other people shouldn't. I love it. What is your prediction for the 2020 election?

I every day I wake up and I change my mind. What's today then? Today is Friday the 16th change my mind. What's today then? Today is Friday the 16th of October 2020. What's your prediction? Yes. So yesterday I thought Biden would win. Today I think Trump is going to win, but it's going to be close and it's going to get very messy. Take me through the thinking. Okay. So national polling and I invite people, how soon after we record this is this going out? Less than a week, so pretty quick.

Okay, so I interviewed with a guy called Jim Rickard, who was one of the analysts who predicted Trump's first election very early on. We'll be going out at some point in the next week or two after this goes out. And we've had him on the show a number of times. And what he was saying was, yes, Biden is up in the national polls by 10 to 12 points. He is. But national polls don't matter because in America they don't have national elections. Right, it's all done state by state.

So you have to win the battleground states. The fact that Biden and Harris are going to get, let's say, four million more votes in California, the Trump doesn't really matter because you can only win California once. So the national polling isn't necessarily indicative of the result. If you remember in 2016, Hillary won the popular vote by quite some margin, didn't really help her because of the electoral college. So that's one part of it. Obviously the Shite Trump voter is a huge phenomenon, right?

And also I think it's not been much covered in the mainstream media in this country or much of the mainstream media in America. But what is happening in many cities or several cities in America now is full-blown riots burning down of property shops, people are being killed in the streets for you know turning up to some protests and being pro-Trump literally being shot in the head etc etc and the antifa people who are doing this are now taking that fight to the suburbs they're taking it into where the middle class, quote unquote, people live. And I can tell you one thing that I know from experience.

The moment you start messing with people's sense of safety, the moment a middle class coupled with two children and nice car and a garage or whatever, suddenly feel like there's armed people outside who may well burn the house down. That is the moment when people will vote for anyone as long as they promise to prevent that, which is my greatest fear with all of this, right? And I don't know if you remember when we had the BLM rights in London, I had a massive

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

burn down, who are going to look at what's happening and go, look, I don't like Donald Trump. I think he may be a bit racist. I think he shouldn't talk about the women the way he talks. I think he's obnoxious. I think he's brash, but they're going to look at that and go, what's the choice here? I can either have a racist sexist president, if that's how they say it, or I have my house burned out now you put that in front of Right that's that's what I see so I've sort of been disenthralled of this idea that the national polls are Necessarily a strong predictor is gonna be close and it's probably gonna end up

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

Man. That's not a healthy situation, my friend. I'm glad, you know, one of my biggest criticisms of Trump is that he refused to say that he would hand over power peacefully Until yesterday, which is when he finally did which I'm glad But because I think you know, that's completely unacceptable in the democracy for one party to say they wouldn't accept the result of an election On the other hand, it's equally deeply unacceptable for Biden to refuse to talk about whether he's going to panic the court or not. Because if you start messing with the supreme court and the number

of justices on that to suit your political agenda, well, that's the end of an American project as well. So both of those things are completely unacceptable. I'm glad Trump has brought back on that. I hope Biden and Kamala Harris now say they're not going to do that as well because that is very, very important, but it's going to get messy. It is Douglas. I asked Douglas the same question. This has been a theme I asked Gadsad.

I asked Andrew Doyle. I asked Douglas of Asdyself. And Douglas gave the most. He had to pull the fence out of his ass in order to be able to actually speak, but he said whatever happens, it's not going to be very well accepted, and he's got some quite big fears, which is interesting, because he's now in America.

Like he's now over there, so like Fair Play mate, like if stuff gets set on fire, you've decided to pop yourself in amongst it. Yeah, I agree. I think that no matter your political leaning, trying to undermine the democratic process at large really has to be one of those things that's unacceptable. It's like look you can two foot slide tackle me I can push you while you're off the ball but no one can come in and pick it up and run

away or shoot the referee like these things are outside the rules of the game in fact they change the rules of the game if we're supposed to changed the rules of the game. If we're supposed to be playing chess and you rugby tackle me to the floor, like that kind of just, what are we doing here? There has to be some upper bound. But again, like what have we been, this disintegrationist left as Ben Shapiro and Dave Rubin refer to it,

like that game of one-upsmanship, we'll do something, we'll break some rules, so we'll break some rules, so, will break some rules, or will break some rules, or will break some rules, and think as well, everybody's self-branding, everyone looks in some form or another for some reason, there is a particular minority who look to political leaders as examples, as role models of how they should. Like, you spend their lives morally, or just, you know,

Trump says something, then you get it regurgitated or Biden says something then a Kamala Harris says something then you get regurgitated. Like, if they are saying, well, we can break all of the rules and they're supposed to be these paragons of diplomatic virtue, right? They're supposed to be the ones who are the least at the mercy of trends. You know, the fucking lighthouse in the storm type bullshit. That's what your politicians are supposed to be. If they're prepared to keep on changing all of the rules, what precedent does that set for everybody else? And it really can quite quickly become a vicious cycle. So yeah, I think the next...

When is the... Is it the 22nd of November? When is it? The 3rd of November. Oh shit! It's very soon of November. Oh, shit. It's very soon. It's soon, man. Wow. So I mean, the next three weeks,

they're going to be compelling. Well, let me ask Rick compelling, if you like horror movies. There is another aspect to this, and I think you speak to that very well, which is that if you allow politicians to conduct themselves in this way and to delegitimize the democratic process, which both sides have done, but particularly, in my opinion, the Democrats in America and the

left in this country as well, then what you end up with is a situation where we are now, where 36% of both Democrats and Republicans feel that violence is justified to achieve your political ends. So a third of both supporter groups are quite happy to use violence, right, which has gone up from 8% about two years ago. So if you've got that situation, the election is in dispute, both parties are undermining the democratic process and encouraging their followers essentially to feel like violence is a way of resolving this issue. Not a good recipe. Not a good recipe. Not at all. And I think, you know, to see, we often see these tip of the spear moments that, they're like the maximum pithy aphorism quote that everyone remembers that tells them

about what a wider concept means. And some of the things that we've seen, like Trump not being presidential during the debate. Like, perhaps four years ago, it was cool and quirky and new, and may people feel like he was gonna drain the swamp and do this cool thing And oh isn't it interesting to see someone who's not diplomatic and doesn't play by the rules Whereas now you're like yeah, okay, mate like this is this is kind of old hat now

I'm not so fussed about I just want to hear the debate Let's get back to that rule and that you know We've oscillate between two different extremes and finally find something somewhere in the middle But then you've got it on the left as well, with the way it's much more of a, how would you say, it's the sneaky fucker game that's being played on the left, it's the brash hit it with a mallet game that's being played by Trump.

But yeah, man, I'm gonna be, let you say, compelled for the horror movie over the next couple of months. Couple of questions left. Why are comedians getting involved in political dialogue? Like people might not have expected individuals like you and Andrew Doyle would have been the vanguard of free speech. Well, for comedians, it's something that we feel viscerally because every time you go on stage, you are already self-censoring because you're trying to find that point between what you are saying and what the audience wants to hear and you're trying to find that line, right? So we're constantly playing with it. And of course,

we say things that we don't mean, right? So this literalism, the idea that we should take jokes literally, right. So this literalism, the idea that we should take jokes literally and if I made a joke about autistic people, that means I hate autistic people, right. That is a problem for us on a sort of practical level, if you like. I also think comedy attracts people who are rebels by nature, and so we're naturally drawn to, at least that's what I thought until I went into the comedy industry and founded to be the most conformist Monoculture I've ever seen, but I did think you know watching You know people like Bill Hicks and George Carlin and then people like that The you know comedies for for people who like have a different opinion man and they you know They want to say something that some people don't want to hear,

right? Like that's what I thought. But now, apparently, that's not what comedy is about. Comedy is about making sure that you make fun of the right people. And, you know, whatever this work should is, I can't even be bothered to talk about it anymore. As I think comedians are naturally sort of rebellious by nature, at least some of us are. So it's a sort of professional hazard to us. The restriction of free speech and there's also the other thing of like we don't like restrictions. We are pro-freedom. And restricting people's speech restricts how they think and Jordan Peterson hammered this

point home a lot, which is without being able to speak freely, you can't think freely. And if you can't think freely, well, we're all fucked. So I think that's kind of where it's coming from. A comedians, the saviors that we need at the moment, Jurekin? More comedians? I don't know. I think it takes everybody. Look, I mean, I think, look at the free speech union, which I've mentioned, they're doing great work, shows like yours and ours. You know, we're not strictly comedians in this context, but we're doing what I think is good work.

There are some journalists who are starting to push back against all of this stuff. I think everybody's got a hand in this. I think the main thing is, the people need to think about, do you want to live in a society that judges everybody by their skin color, their race, their sexuality, their gender, etc. Or do you want to live in a society that we all remember that we're individuals and we come together based on what we think, how we feel about things, what are our views. And if we want to sort of divide ourselves up, which we'll always will do because we're tribal by nature, then the healthy way to do that is to sort of do it on a voluntary basis of, well, I think this and you think that and we both believe in free speech. So let's form a free speech society

or whatever else it might be as opposed to going, well, we're both men, men need to stick together. Yeah, well, I mean, we do. Which guests have you enjoyed most or been most surprised by this year? I don't know. I always hesitate to answer this question because it's like saying, you know, one of my heroes, Michael Jordan, basketball player, was one-sast, which of his six championship titles was his favorite. And he said, well, that's like asking me, which of my kids kids I love the most, right? So to me, you know, obviously we have brilliant guests and some guests, some stronger than others or whatever,

but I try not to sort of evaluate it that way. We've had so many brilliant guests. Which one are you most surprised by? Was the one that you particularly were pleasantly surprised by? Well, I actually would say Darren Grimes. I mean, he comes across as incredibly intelligent, articulate, interesting, original, thoughtful, not in any way sort of unpleasant or controversial even. The guy has the views of half the country on pretty much every issue. So so I was surprised at that because I didn't really, I wasn't all

that familiar with him. I knew him as the right wing commentator, you know. And so, yeah, I mean, that's the one that comes to mind straight away. It's just he was, you know, we were both very, very impressed with Aaron. Yeah, he, for someone who has the accent, I love the fact that you so erudite, and yet we'll say, like, off to me, Mams, to go and get me self some fish and chips. You know, you're like,

how is this? There's some bizarre world, because it's so London-centric, right? Especially the publishing in the UK. To hear someone who, for me, is a very, very familiar accent, deploying some incredibly complex and nuanced thoughts. I'm like, yeah, yeah, that's accent, deploying some incredibly complex and nuanced thoughts.

I'm like, yeah, yeah, that's cool, man. Last question, what is the one thing that we're not talking about that we really should be? Ah, no. Shoes on the other foot now. How's that for you? And unlike us, you didn't warn me this was coming up. I think the one thing we're not talking about is the end game of all of this, the end game of identity politics.

What is that? If you play the movie forward, where do you get to? And I think if more of us thought about that and were prepared to speak about that openly and more people consider those outcomes, we would be much more careful and much more reluctant to proceed in the direction that we've been going because the truth is that they tried it with men and women. They tried to antagonize women against men and They they managed to some extent, but no matter how hard you try those as somebody said I can't remember who there's too much fraternizing with the enemy Between men and women so you can't quite drive them apart deep down even if you teach one young woman at university

The all men are bad, all men are evil, whatever, eventually the biologic kicks in and they go, I want a partner, I want to have children, I want this, I want that, not all of them, but many will do. So you can't really drive them apart, but the racial issue is very different. There it's not written anywhere in stone on a tablet that Moses brought down from the mountain that we have to have a multi-ethnic society. It's not written anywhere. That is an experiment that we've willingly engaged in and suspended our human tribalism to actually try to make it happen. And we've said, look, the American dream is, right, we don't have a British dream, but in America, if you come to this country, right, and you work hard, you get your head down, you learn the language, you integrate, you are American. If you come to Britain and you settle

down here, you make a route, you learn the language, you integrate, you become part of society, you drink tea and apologize and whatever else you're supposed to do, right? You are British. That's what we've said and that is an experiment that was working and working very well and getting better and better and better. Now if you look across the world, that's not how most countries are. Most countries are essentially ethno-states, right? Now we've said we're going to have a multi-ethnic society. Well, the only way a multi-ethnic society works, the only way a multi-ethnic society remains peaceful, the only way a multi-ethnic society remains coherent is if people set aside their racial categories and actually don't say, well, I'm a black person, I'm a brown person, I'm a white person. No, you say, I'm British, right?

Let's not say you have to discard your black or white or wherever identity, but you can't be the first thing that you think of when you think about yourself. Because otherwise, you're driving people apart and the end game of that is very, very ugly. Man, that is an apocalyptic answer, but one that I agree with. I said this to Andrew when he came on the show the other day that the hopeful counter to this, I'll give you my thesis for us moving forward on my hope, I

would guess, is that in the same way that the pandemic has been quite piss week. I know it's done a lot of damage, but really COVID, it just doesn't have the mortality that it needs to cause a real existential threat. Now, it's still a might mutate and all that stuff, like disclaimer, disclaimer. But it was quite a weak version of it. And yet we were wholly unprepared for it. But if and when a new pandemic comes around that's got

smallpox level mortality, we understand how to lock down more effectively. We understand how to shut travel routes. We can get PPE produced more quickly. We've got the 3D printing, we've got the ventilators, we've got all that stuff, right? So we are prepared because we would deliver a kind of a weak dose of something that may be worse in the future. My hope is that the identity politics game, which is being promulgated over the last few years, that has attached itself to the wrong horse.

The Trojan horse that it's tried to deliver a particular ideology and is inherently so self-contradictory and just a losing race, that everyone can see the hypocrisy in it, the ridiculousness of it, and it's so self-defeating because it fractures its own group into competing different levels of hierarchy to the point at which the snake just eats its own tail, and in future, if some other ideologues decide to come along and get themselves behind a particular cause that we go hang in a second. Like I remember that you played this game once before, like we've been here. Now this one might seem a little bit more seductive or more polished and a bit more virtuous, truthful, whatever,

but no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, we we had this. So I'm wondering whether or not this ridiculous example of trying to push a particular ideology has been attached to the wrong racehorse and is potentially going to inoculate us against it happening in future. It's a very optimistic view. One that I shared in March. I thought that in March we had about a month up until about Dominic Cummings and then immediately after George Floyd. There was that moment we had an opportunity. We all quote and quote came together. Shared humanity. Shared humanity, clapped for the NHS, etc, etc. And even then some people tried to go on about how you know, a BAME people are more likely to die from COVID and somehow that society's fault.

And in fact, it's just vitamin D is harder to obtain for people with darker skin. But it was sort of ignored mostly and we sort of pulled together. But I think the lockdown, the impact of people spending more time on social media, worrying about the future being stuck in doors, many people in you know if you are living in a happy family and you work from home and you know you got a garden and a nice house then your mental health is probably fine if your job is safe and all the rest of it but for a lot of people it wasn't like that. I know people, young people who for example you know they were stuck with somebody else in the house, a

step parent who was abusive, you know, or just people stuck in the wrong environment with flatmates that they've been meaning to leave that flat and that they were in dispute or people stuck in in loveless marriages or whatever. That mental health impact I think is what then exploded with BLM that pent up frustration anger confusion That's why we had protest about George Floyd in the UK, which if you think about it doesn't really make much sense Man, I agree constantly. Thank you so much for today People want to check out trigonometry or yourself. Where should they go? Where do they direct themselves? I am on Twitter at Constantin Kissen and the show is at Trigapod.

We're on YouTube, all the podcast apps just search for trigonometry as in Gun Trigat, T-R-I-D-E-R. Amazing, man. If I get a call off the Met, police, we can share an Uber there together. Hopefully we haven't crossed any boundaries. I've really, really enjoyed today. I think that you guys are doing fantastic work. I'm proud to be of the particular little sort of weird fucked up community that we've got of British podcasters

doing good work at the moment. So long make, continue. Thanks, I appreciate it. And the right back at you. And also, if we do have to share a new, but that would be illegal, because we need to socially distance. Thank you, man. you