Within Reason - #23 Konstantin Kisin - Free Speech and Reparations

Episode Date: March 19, 2023

Konstantin Kisin is a satirist, comedian, journalist, and co-host of the Triggernometry Podcast. He recently went viral for a speech delivered at the Oxford Union arguing that "wokeness has gone too far", which has since been viewed over 100,000,000 times across various social media platforms. Konstantin talks to host Alex O'Connor about the limits of free speech, whether he considers himself to be a conservative or right-wing, and whether there can be a sensible case made for reparations for historical injustices such as slavery. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to Within Reason. My name is Alex O'Connor and Within Reason is a brand new weekly philosophy podcast with episodes releasing every Sunday dedicated to bringing you long-form conversations with interesting guests. Since Within Reason is a brand new podcast, it would be a great help to me if you could go to Spotify or iTunes if you haven't done already and give us a rating as well as subscribing to the audio version of the podcast. My guest today is Constantine Kissin. Constantine is a satirist, journalist, comedian, and co-host of the wildly successful Trigonometry podcast. Constantine has written for publications including The Spectator and The Daily Telegraph,

as well as appearing on BBC's Question Time, and recently went incredibly viral for a speech that he delivered at My Alma Mater on the motion that wokeness has gone too far. I am so tired of talking about woke culture. That speech at the Oxford Union has since been viewed tens of millions of times across various social media platforms and led to Constantine appearing on shows such as Tucker Carlson, Pierce Morgan Uncensored, and the Jordan B. Peterson podcast. The video of that speech was released in January of this year, 2023, but please do note that this episode was recorded on the 8th of September 2022. That shouldn't change anything about the content of the video, but if you're wondering why it is that we don't mention that, viral video, it's because we recorded this beforehand. In this episode, you can expect to hear us discuss and debate free speech. Can words be harmful? And if they can, then what's the morally relevant difference between words harming a person and physical violence harming a person? Why might we be able to restrict one, but not the other? We also talk about whether Constantine considers himself to be right-wing or a conservative, and what that might mean in the UK, as well as whether there can be a sensible case made for reparations for historical injustice such as slavery. I really did enjoy this conversation and I hope that you do too. This is

Within Reason, Episode 23 with Constantine Kissing. Constantine Kissin. Constantine Kissin. Thanks for coming on the podcast. Thanks for having me. Of course. Just before we begin... The delay in my voice was because we're on our set and I was like, Thanks for being on, where you're here, anyway, here we are. Yeah, I remember when I recorded in an episode with Richard Dawkins,

and we did it in his living room, and I opened it by saying something like, thanks for being here. I got absolutely rinsed in the comments. Where else is it going to be, right? Before we begin, I just have a form that I want you to sign that make sure that you're not going to say anything racist, sexist, homophobic, anti-religion. And anti-athism, too.

Anti-athias, is that what it also said? Yeah, for anybody who doesn't know who's listening, you kind of shot to fame in a way, you were all over mainstream news for having refused to sign a similar kind of form to perform at a university comedy night, right? Yes. And they wanted you to sign a form that said that you wouldn't say anything that was going to be offensive to any of these groups, including anti-religion and anti-athias, which seems a little bit broad.

Was that sort of the beginning of being in the public eye for you? Where were you at? Yeah. So we'd just started trigonometry about six months prior to that. And we were just starting. So I'd done a little bit of TV before as a comedian, but not a huge amount. And trigonometry wasn't all that big back then. So it was definitely the first exposure I had to that level of attention, for sure.

Do you think the kind of attention that controversy can bring? makes you tempted to sort of chase out controversy and controversial topics in order to get eyes on the things that you want to say? No. First of all, I wouldn't wish on anyone the experience of being in the public eye in that way, even in my case, which was like 99% positive, I would say. 99% of the general public supported me turning that contract down. And they did because I think, I think, I think a lot of, that's when I really realized I got thousands of messages from people back then

because it kind of didn't really make sense. It was interesting because in the comedy industry where I was coming from at the time, there was all these conspiracy theories about like, how did you get so many people to care about, you know, basically the story was no-name comedian turns down underpaid charity gig from two-bit college.

Like it's not a big story in and of itself, particularly, right? But I think that's when I started to realize actually a lot of ordinary people care about this, not because they care about Constantin Kissin, but because a lot of people feel in their own lives that they are restricted in some way in what they can and can't say. They worry about making the wrong joke in front of the wrong person, maybe saying something inappropriate at work or whatever. There wasn't inappropriate three days ago, but now that it is, and no one's given them the guidebook on how to conduct themselves. So that's when I realized that a lot of ordinary people care about this anyway. But in terms of your question, even though 99% of the feedback that I got, I would say,

was positive. My own experience of it really wasn't all that pleasant because you're exposed to a sudden, a huge wave of criticism, number one. And fair criticism is I don't find that difficult to deal with when people criticize what I've done and engage faithfully with what I'm saying. But what I wasn't prepared for was that suddenly there were a lot of people who had no idea who I was and who were deliberately for their own agenda misrepresenting who I am, why I did what I did, what I'd said. So there was this incident very funny on the Jeremy Vine show, and there's a, I think, a former, she's, I think, a columnist called a Yasmin Alibi Brown. and they were having a discussion about the story

of me turning down this contract and they went actually we've got a clip of Constantine doing a bit of stand-up and she went oh yeah I've seen it it's absolutely horrible and then they played a clip of me talking about how British people have a funny attitude to foreign languages and they all kind of went well that was quite funny wasn't and she went

yeah that was all right and then so do you see what I'm saying so this woman had never seen any of my stand-up she didn't know who I was she had no idea where I was coming from But because I refused to turn down a safe space contract, she immediately was prepared to go on national television and essentially make up lies about me because what I'd done did not fit her narrow view of the world. I was not prepared for that. Isn't it quite a good thing that that happens in a way and that it gives you an opportunity to demonstrate how ridiculous some of the criticisms that you were getting were? That in an ideal world would be the case, but you have to remember that I was not someone who had a YouTube channel with, you know, and a podcast, which together have, you know,

600,000 subscribers at the time. I think we had like 20,000. Right. I didn't have the access that I do to the national media now, where I can, if I want to be on radio or on a TV program, I could probably make that happen. I hadn't been on question time. I hadn't written for any national newspaper at this point.

So I did not have the access to make my argument without it being distorted and misrepresented. I had to go and Good Morning Britain and have three minutes in which another person who again had absolutely no idea about who I am why I did what I did

what had happened as she later admitted to me shouting me down and trying to derail what I was saying so I think challenge is good but I also think people who don't know what's happened

engaging in bad faith arguments I'm not sure that that is necessarily the right way to have these conversations as you say they sort of don't care about you. They don't know who you are. They haven't watched short comedy. It's more like they seem to care about what you represent, which for them, I suppose, is whatever they've been told you represent by a headline. And also, Alex, whatever is convenient to them for me to represent, right? Because if you want to argue with somebody or you already have a world view

and someone is challenging an element of that worldview, in which in this case is the idea that comedy shouldn't be dictated to by, you know, faceless apparatchiks on a university campus. Then that challenges the worldview of the people who say words are harmful and they've got to be controlled and restricted. So it's very convenient and useful to present anyone who challenges that as somehow immoral

or somehow bigoted or somehow prejudice as opposed to engaging with the actual argument, which is, well, should we be restricting comedy? Is that the sort of society that we want to live in? That's a different conversation. But it's much harder one. It's much easier to have the Constantin Kisten as a Nazi, a Jewish Nazi conversation

because that's easier. You just shout and scream and stop someone from talking. It's much more convenient as well. Yeah, you just refer to the position that you were sort of arguing against there as people who think that words are harmful. Do you not believe words are harmful, can be harmful? Do you think that's sort of a distinct category difference?

and the kind of harm that can be caused by words, absolutely, absolutely. There is a distinct category difference between physical violence and words that are hurtful. You cannot reduce the impact of physical violence. If I smash you in the head with a brick, there is no way for you to be less affected by that

because the impact is physical. Words are subjective. Your experience in relation to, words that people say to are subjective. There are things that people can say to me that I would find very hurtful, but you might not at all. And equally, there are things that you might say to me today that I wouldn't find hurtful, but before I did a huge amount of personal growth and personal development and worked on my psyche, which I think is very important, that I would have found very difficult. So the problem with the idea that words are harmful is it introduces

is the subjective element of it, which is, if I say something to you that you find offensive, well, you don't know what my intentions were with that. We don't know how much of the harm that's caused is caused by your interpretation of what I said. If I hit you in the head with a brick, we know that the damage is done by the fact that I physically did that. So that's the difference. Of course, I mean, we recognize that there would be some instances in which certain forms of words would be more harmful than certain forms of physical action.

I could sort of flick you in the side of the head and that would probably hurt maybe a little bit but it might not hurt as much as my mum telling me that she's disappointed in me or something. So there seems to be there's of course a subjectivity but it doesn't seem obvious to me that there's this category

distinction to make that physical harm is always worse and I wonder is there a sort of moral question that can be raised here Unless we believe in a soul, unless we're religious, if we're materialists and we think that the mind is just the brain, then to speak of psychological harm and physical harm, it's really to speak of the same thing, because the mind is just something physical. It's just processes going on in your mind that say, I don't like this. And of course, there's an intuitive difference between the kind of hurt that you feel from words and the kind of hurt that you feel from being hid in the arm or something. But ultimately, it's the same kind of kind of thing going on, which is the brain reacting to stimuli and saying, I don't like this. If it's the case that my freedom to swing my fist ends at your nose just because of the physical harm that that's going to bring you about, why doesn't my freedom to swing

my language end at your ears, given that it can bring about just as physical harm within your mind? What is the sort of moral difference here? You're very clever, Alex, but I shouldn't have afraid. I'm phrased it that way. You are very clever and there's no but. I think we all instinctively understand the difference between physical violence and the impact of communication that's non-physical.

You cannot protect yourself from me punching you in the face if I'm within the distance where I can do that, right? And you cannot, unless you take pain killers in advance of me punching you in the face, You cannot have that experience be any different. Whereas words, while they can be hurtful, one of the most important things for a human being for me is to learn, to process words without having an instinctive emotional reaction that is harmful to you. Yeah, I mean, I think it's an analogy that can be pushed because of course there are

people who sort of condition their shins so that they can be whacked a bunch of times and It just doesn't hurt. I mean, for me, I think that maybe the distinction lies in the utility of restricting it. I don't know about your views on this, but people who are pro-free speech, free speech activists, however you want to describe them, I think are often caricatured, although maybe some think this as saying that if we allow people to say what they want, when they want, with no restriction, we'll live in some kind of utopia where disinformation disappears and

everybody gets to the truth and, you know, reason prevails. I think that's, that's, that's a ridiculous idea, of course, there's still going to be disinformation. Of course people are going to be getting hurt and insulted, and there's going to be liable and slander. My position is just that, it is to, is to trip over myself to recognize that, yes, free speech comes out of cost, that's why it's so valuable. But if it was just this wonderful thing that brought about obvious benefits, then everyone, but it would be trivially in favor of it. It has to come at some cost, and the cost is that it is going to cause this harm, but that restricting freedom of speech, at least excessively, is almost always

going to be worse. In a way that maybe physical harm isn't, you can say, yes, physical harm is really bad, but I don't think you can say similarly something like restricting physical harm will end up being worse unless you worry that the government's going away. And that's where we come back to the fact that we all instinctively understand the difference between the harm that words do and the harm that physical actions do. That's why we don't ever have the conversation of, well, maybe we should allow people to punch each other because that would, you know, there is trade-offs with that that we really want. I think that's also the difference as well. It's like you have to regulate physical violence. You don't necessarily

have to regulate language in the same way because, as you say, the negative trade-offs are very, very bad. If you look at societies that restrict people heavily in terms of the comedy, the satire, their ability to express and share and debate ideas, those are generally not the societies that anybody watching or listening to this would want to live in. And that's a kind of parallel. So I'm not someone who philosophizes too much about these things. I think there's a lot of wisdom in empiricism and observing what is true across different societies. And that's kind of one of the things I're talking about in the book, which you're holding up.

Which is... I haven't waved around yet. This wasn't an attempt to plug it. I'm just trying to say that my attitude to many things is not based... I don't have as much faith in philosophy as I think a lot of people do. I'm interested in what works and what doesn't work. And my opposition to restrictions of speech is not based on some deeply worked-out philosophical concept. It's just I observe that societies that allow people to speak freely are better than society.

that don't. In the book you describe the suppression of free speech as a symptom of tyranny. Do you think it is just a symptom or also a cause, or is it more one or the other? If you see the suppression of free speech, do you think that's more likely the result of tyranny or the cause of tyranny? Hmm. I think it's more of a symptom. I don't see it as a cause because I think by the time people are restricting your speech, they already have their hands on the levers of power. So, you know, when you say as a cause, what do you mean? Well, I imagine sort of the restriction of free speech is often put forward as a way in

which a tyrant can come to power. By restricting free speech, by controlling the press, they're able to put out an image of themselves that goes unchallenged. But they have to be in power first, right? Yes, but there are of course sort of unofficial forms of power that can be used to restrict free speech, as it were, such as sort of the cultural force of cancel culture or something like this. You can see this as the mob that's often described as being this horrendous gang of

cancelers, they don't have any official power. They're not in power, but people fear that the result of their kind of suppression of free exchange of ideas is going to lead to a tyrannical system that everybody wants to. wants to avoid. No, I think the system that exists where if enough people get outraged about something you said, they can get you sacked from your job, that is power and that is tyranny. So it's not a cause, it's a symptom of the fact that the people who have, if you don't want to call that them being in power, which I understand, they're not elected, but there's

no... They have power. They have power. If I can get you fired from your job, I have power over you. This is probably one of the biggest mistakes that people make. in terms of their confidence in political systems or societies, is that they think that power only essentially exists in government. And this is how you end up with tech monopolies, and this is how you end up with cultural fartuars, is by thinking that power is just that which

is officially written down on a bit of paper somewhere, and not just the persuasive force that people can have. And that's why the free speech thing can be quite tricky, because it's quite obvious to people that, at least to people who are vaguely liberal, that the government being able to restrict free speech is at least a touchy subject. I would say it's an untouchable subject. It's something that the government shouldn't really be able to approach. But when it comes to things like tech companies and their ability to silence whoever they like, like what recently happened with this Andrew Tate guy, suddenly drops. off the map because Silicon Valley decides that they don't want him there anymore.

Do you think we need to see the same kind of restrictions on tech companies such as this as we do in the government? I mean, the government couldn't come along and say that Andrew Tate isn't allowed to stand on a soapbox in a public park. Well, actually, that's not true. That's not necessarily true because this is what I was going to take. We'll come back to the big tech in the second. But if you look at what's happening with policing in this country, for example, I don't know

if you followed the recent case, there was a veteran somewhere in England who shared a meme on his Facebook, which was very offensive to somebody who reported him and the police came around to basically, they offered him to either pay a fine and go on a re-education course in Britain in the 21st century, or to have his non-crime hate incident, which is the sharing of the meme upgraded to a crime and for him to be prosecuted for it and he was forcibly arrested as was Harry Miller who was there who we had on the show and the problem you've got is when we talk about power if you look at the way that the police apply the law so you now have laws on the books which regulate what

people are and aren't allowed to say it is an offense in this country to be grossly offensive it is a criminal offense or a non-hate crime incident or non-crime hate incident, whatever it is, right? And the police are then enforcing that. Now, who is it that has created a situation where we have a law against being grossly offensive? Well, you could say it's the MPs. The MPs, they are the people who voted

to pass this piece of legislation. But MPs themselves, I don't think, came up with this idea. It wasn't them that pushed through the idea that we should restrict what people are and I'm allowed to say. who encouraged the College of Policing to give guidance to their police officers

that they should arrest people for the things that they say. So whoever is advocated for that to happen is the person in power because the MPs and people in the House of Lords and people in the policing structures, they've got absolutely no idea what's going on. They are just going, well look,

we've spent, you know, God knows how many decades being all white, all male, all privileged and whatever, And we've got to be better, right? Our grandchildren are telling us we've got to do better on this. And so it is them, the younger generations with some of these views that are pushing through this ideology,

and that's how you get Stonewall being, advising the government on how to manage things and whatever. So power isn't about who has MP, the two letters, MP after the name. Power is about who can stop you from doing what you want. Who can make you do things you don't want to do? That's power.

And whoever that is, whether they have a title or not, that's the people who have power. Now, big tech is a difficult conversation because the new technology has changed the communication environment entirely. And what you have with big tech is a problem of scale where you've gone from, you and I, we had a conversation, I called you a dick, that caused you some harm, you got over it, everybody moved on,

to I went on Twitter and said something or posted a clip of something and before you know it thousands of people are burning down 5G masks around the country so the amplification of communication changes the nature of the communication

and so I don't think you're ever going to get to a position where you have unrestricted speech on the internet in its entirety But I think, you know, that's a difficult problem to solve, actually. It's a much more difficult problem to solve than I think a lot of what you called free speech activists would like to present it as. It's a difficult problem. We're living through a gigantic technological revolution.

No one really knows what to do about it just yet. I mean, I imagine it's as revolutionary, if not more, is the formation of the first human governments. You can imagine it's about 20, 30 years after human beings have figured out that, well, if we say that this person is in charge and these people do these various things and we start sort of taxonomizing the tasks and you invent this thing called government. And 20 years later, people are beginning to realize, well, you know what, I don't really like how this guy at the top can make me shut up if he wants me to because he's sort of in charge of the police.

And so over hundreds, thousands of years, this government machine evolves slowly and you get your Magna Carta's and you get your wars and you get your revolutions and eventually sort of evolves into a position where we recognize this thing called government that we've invented is actually a very special kind of thing that needs to have very particular restrictions. I feel like the social media empires that exist right now are very analogous to this. We're sort of 20 years in and we see it as just this thing you do on your computer or a phone, but everybody knows it's much bigger than that. And so I think in the way that we treat government as being special,

There's like special things about the government. It has special controls, special monopoly on power, this kind of thing. Well, it doesn't anymore. It doesn't. It doesn't have a monopoly on power. It has a monopoly over the police and the army, but it doesn't have monopoly on power. And I think that social media is surely going to need similar kinds of restrictions. What we do in terms of speech is quite important here.

Would you consider yourself a free speech absolutist? No. What kind of restrictions do you think are appropriate to place on free speech? Liable laws. slander, laws around defamation. I think that they are different in different countries, and I think in the UK they're perhaps a little bit excessive, but I do think they're necessary. This is a fascinating subject for me. You wrote, I picked out a quote, well, you quoted Brendan O'Neill, who said, there is such a thing as incitement to violence, which is not

a free speech issue, but a criminal offense. And you describe this as compelling. It seems to me that what Brendan O'Neill are saying in the whole quote there is, you know, I'm very pro-free speech, I'm free speech absolutist almost. But there is this other thing called incitement to violence, but that's not free speech. That's a criminal offence. But that seems to me to beg the question. That seems totally arbitrary. It sounds like somebody saying, you know, well, yeah, I'm a free speech absolutist, but there's a thing called hate speech. That's not a free speech issue. That's a criminal offense issue. That's something that you sort of invent and put the border around yourself. So when it comes to something like libel or copyright laws, let's say,

which any free speech absolutionousis would be very hard pressed not to believe in at least copyright laws. But the question is why? Why do we have this restriction? Why is it? For what reason? It might seem like a silly question, but I think it's worth reflecting on. Why can't? I just type out an immigrant's love letter to the West, available on Amazon.com, find bookshops everywhere, and just sort of printed on my blog. Because it would be very hard for you to sell yourself as a Russian, among other things. Yes. But morally?

Yeah. Why not? Well, I think libel laws are a more interesting example for me, because I think in that sense, our libel laws are probably going to change to some extent as well, because I imagine they were created to deal with the power disparity between someone with a huge platform like a national newspaper. an ordinary person who doesn't have that. Nowadays, the balance is shifting all over the place

because the newspapers are dying and social media allows even an ordinary person, me, you, anybody to express themselves and at least have the chance of that counter argument to whatever's been said to them in a national newspaper to be challenged. But generally speaking, the idea that somebody can go on a massive platform

and just tell absolute lies about you with no repercussions. Seems a bit odd to me. Why? Because it's damaging to the reputation of that person might be damaging to their business. It might bring physical consequences,

very significant physical consequences. But surely this is exactly the same. I'm not talking about they're going to experience a bit of anxiety because someone made a joke at their expense. I'm talking about the fact that if a national newspaper prints that you're a paedophile

with no evidence, you're going to have your life ruined permanently. This is a difference in, what's the word, not kind, but scale or intensity, which is that what you're saying is something like, what it seems to me that you're saying, I don't want to Kathy Newman, you sounds like you're saying, well, I like free speech, but I'm okay with this restriction on libel because if somebody is libelous, then you've got an example of somebody saying something which is really quite significantly harmful.

And because what they're saying is really quite significantly harmful, we ought to restrict them from saying it. ways. I don't mean that this is something that will cause someone a lot of anxiety. What I mean is, I'll give you an example. I went to a school called Clifton College, and some time ago, I don't remember when, there was a young woman who was murdered near my school. And one of my former tutors at the school was investigated as being one of the suspects, his name is Chris Jeffries. And because it was pre-Christmas and there was nothing in the news, every national newspaper ran with this story, made all sorts of unfounded allegations against him

because he was a bit of, he's a bit of a weird character, Mr. Jefferies. And his life was ruined for a very, very, very long time because of legal things that they were able to print. So if I think about if there were no libel laws

what the newspapers would have printed, the impact I imagine would have been even greater. So it's not that it caused him a bit of discomfort. It means that he literally couldn't live in his house for months. He had to move house. he had to, so it's a different nature of the consequence. It's not somebody being a bit offended. You are literally ruining someone's life through the outside consequences of what happens to them. Not always, right.

I mean, of course, such cases exist. I mean, arguably such cases do exist in non-liabless examples of people saying things that do bring about serious physical harm. It probably happens far less, but I'm sure it can happen. But there'll also be instances where people are libelous in a way that isn't seriously detrimental to somebody's physical health and is really just a reputational thing. It's bad for their reputation. Somebody can put out sort of an ideological hit piece on someone that doesn't threaten their safety. It just makes them look like a bad guy. And they could be totally lying. The kind of liable laws that we accept as restrictions on free speech, most of us do, in those cases, are not cases in which we can say, well, this is a totally

different cattle of fish because this person's life is in danger. It's something more like saying, well, look, I'm sorry, yeah, you can say what you like. You can't say that thing, because that's going to damage this person's reputation unfairly. I don't think you're going to get many libel cases in this country that are based on that. Not a lot. I do think our libel laws are a little bit over-restrictive for my liking in this country. But equally, like in the United States, you can just say pretty much whatever you want about pretty much anyone. It sort of feels like that.

Yeah. You know, I don't know what the actual law is. But when we went over to America, people are much looser with comments about other people over there, including in public. So I'm not in favor of, like, if someone writes a hit piece about me saying, I don't know, I believe in something that I don't.

I don't think it's, even if there was a law, I wouldn't necessarily sue them in that situation. People have said all sorts of crazy things about me. But I do think a law that says a national newspaper isn't able to call you a paedophile for no reason. is pretty sound. And to be clear, that's because this is a form of speech which brings about harm.

Yes, again, not in the sense of it might upset me or you, but in the sense that it's going to have very serious repercussions for how you live the rest of your life. To an identifiable person. Yes. So if speech is harmful enough and sort of, let's say, targets a particular person And it's dishonest.

And it's dishonest. So inaccurate. Yeah. Is a deliberate lie? So if somebody says something deliberately untruthful with the intent of harming somebody that in at least some cases it's the kind of thing

that a government has a right to restrict it. In a national newspaper. In a national newspaper. Right. So it has to be on some sort of... So if you said that Constantine Kissin was a paedophile in the chat with your mate in the pub, I don't think I should be able to sue you.

But like Twitter, for example, if I tweeted that out. Yeah, I think it really... It really would have to take into account the extent of the size of the audience, the particular context and all the things. This is where it gets difficult, admittedly. You know, there's a line there. This is why I brought up copyright originally because I think it's a bit sort of clearer to make the... Well, it's a property rights thing, isn't it? I guess the point, yeah, the point that I'm making, which is like the very concept of property rights when it comes to intellectual property.

Famously, intellectual property is a very difficult thing to sort of legally pin down. Because there's a sense in which you sort of own the words in this book. Well, you don't own the words, because I can sort of take individual words or even phrases and quote them and use them in particular ways. But if I were to just type this out on my own computer, post it on my blog, and monetize it, you would probably want to sue me. And the government would probably say you're not allowed to do that. Why not?

It has to be something like that the act of me typing these words and saying this thing somehow harms you. In this case, it harms you like monetarily. It's not really a reputational thing. It's not threatening your life. All it's doing is it's like causing you to make less money. Now, I can imagine situations. I'm Jewish, so to me that's a big problem.

I can imagine situations in which I would say like, in which I could say something hateful towards a group of people or towards a particular person that's going to sort of affect them. It's going to harm them. And it's going to harm them in a way that's not threatening their life. It's not going to destroy their reputation. But it causes them a form of harm. But this kind of justification for hate speech laws is not only rejected, but often laughed out of the room by free speech advocates. It's parodied.

It's seen as infantile the idea that you should be protected from words. They're just words. You need to learn how to toughen up a little bit. I don't care if you're going to be a bit upset. I don't care if you're going to feel anxious. You know, people develop lifelong anxiety problems based on hate speech. And sure, that might be, I'm almost certain that they do. and it might be like a rational, it might be sort of an overreaction, let's say,

but it's not like they chose to be of such a, as you would see, a probably weak psychological constitution. It's not their fault that they're the kind of person that gets affected in that way. I don't think that's what happens. I think what you're talking about is people being bullied as children and called names and mocked for their appearance or for their skin color or whatever, right? But no, I am not saying that children in the playground

should be able to be racist to each other, and that's the point of free speech, right? Because when you're talking about children, there's also an element of, it's an educational environment, right? And these things, but my point is these things are best regulated by the school, the parents, whatever, right? But what would I have to say to you to give you lifelong anxiety? Well, it takes a lot to make me cry, but there are lots of people who, I mean, we see it because we see stories that people take the piss out of, because they'll see a story that someone said something that's, you know, made people feel anxious or that's given someone a panic attack or something like that.

And people often make fun of this because they think it shows how, you know, weak and snowflakey the lips are, right? But the fact that we're able to sort of make a joke like that demonstrates that there do exist such people. No, it doesn't necessarily demonstrate that at all. What it demonstrates is that there are some people who have worked out that complaining about the speech of others is a very good way to get attention for your cause. Let's say them, for example, that I sort of wrote the blog that used your words, and I monetized

it. And I made sort of like 20 pounds off it. It didn't actually do that well because most people were like, well, this is someone else's book. I'm just going to go and buy the book. It's not necessarily about how much money you made. It's about how much money I lost. But carry on. So 20 pounds, let's say. I lost 20 pounds. Or maybe you lost 10 pounds because one of the people wouldn't otherwise have bought the book. Something like that's right. So it's sort of a negligible amount of money. And then you try to sue me. You say, you can't do this. And I say something like, oh, look, man, say it's 10 pounds.

Yeah. You know, like... But that's why I would never see you in that situation. But you'd have the right to, and I think you'd probably want to defend the right of an author to do such a thing. Yes. But couldn't I say something similar, which is that, like... Yeah, sure, these words that you're writing are kind of harmful, but it's so minimal.

Especially in that instance... Yeah, but there's no way for me to avoid the harm. And I don't think there's a way for somebody who's... Of course there is. ...prone to anxiety. Of course there. If you are prone to anxiety and something I said on the internet gives you life long anxiety. It's not me that's the problem. It's you. And you need to get therapy for your

anxiety until you're better. Perhaps, but it's not like somebody chooses to be in that situation to start with, right? I'm not suggesting they do. What I'm saying is they're choosing not to change the situation that they're in by not seeking the support they need to deal with what is an underlying mental health problem. That's possible they don't realize that it's lurking there until it's activated. In that case, I'm doing them a great service by pointing it out, Yeah, well, perhaps that's interesting. This is my attitude to all of the stuff because I am someone who's, as I say, I'm a very different person to the person I was 20 years ago, and one of the reasons is I've purposely

sort out ways of thinking and ways of rewiring my brain to be more resilient, to be able to deal with difficult things, to deal with their anxieties I felt about all sorts of things. And that's why I'm not someone who is careless. I'm not saying what I'm saying as a trying to own anyone. I'm saying what I'm saying from a point of view, which is I know that everyone experiences anxiety over something. And the fact that you experience anxieties, number one, not to be unexpected. You're a human being. Anxiety is part of life. Number two, if you don't like experiencing anxiety when other people say things you don't like, you are the person responsible for dealing with that and that is the best way for you to live your life that's the

best way for me to live my life that's why when like when i turned down that contract and a comedian uh well comedian kate smirthway uh said insinuated that i was all right and a naughty i make jokes about it instead of suing her which i'm sure i could right because while i do think it's important for me to to be able to and go and defend myself in court against deeply damaging allegations. I don't think the fact that Kate Smirthwaite called me something is necessarily detrimental to my reputation and to my character.

What would be detrimental to my character is if every time somebody said something nasty about me on the internet, I decided to internalize that and go, oh, someone called me ugly, someone called me fat, someone called me skinny, someone called me this, therefore I'm now anxious. That would be the worst possible thing for me to do.

So I'm not saying, what I'm saying out of a lack of compassion, I just don't think it's healthy to take the words that other people say and internalize them as something that means you now have to experience emotions about it. You see what I mean? And I am someone who, as we talked about, has a, you know, with Francis, we have a large YouTube channel. You can imagine that not all the comments we always get are necessarily positive and helpful and supportive. Oh yeah. Right. Now, I'm not going out there and going, you know, hurtful comments on my YouTube channel should be controlled or measured or they cause me anxiety. Because if I find that they cause me anxiety, it's up to me to deal

with it in the ways that I've described, or it's up to me not to read them, right? I can't not experience pain if you punch me in the face. I can not read comments that I don't want to read on the internet. Yeah. I mean, there are definitely more nuances to dive into there, but I, well, I want to make sure that we can talk about a few other things, and it's been interesting so far. There's a question that I want to ask you quite broadly, and I know you've been asked this before, and I want us to just press you a little bit more on your answer here. Are you on the right?

Are you a conservative? I'm definitely not conservative. I don't know what being on the right means anymore. The way I conceptualize my political views is, first of all, I hate teams. I like being part of a team that I've chosen to be part of. Okay. I don't want to be on Team Red or Team Blue, and I talk about it in the book, as you know,

which is I am not interested in being tribal. I'm interested in not being tribal. I see tribalism as a big part of the many problems that we have in society. Do I have views that people would consider to be on the right? Absolutely. Do I have views that most people would consider

to be extremely on the left? absolutely do I have views that most people would consider moderate centrist views the majority of my views are in that category

so I have views from all over the political spectrum and it also depends where you're talking about geographically and what you're talking about in time I am definitely in the center

left in America I am definitely in the Uber far far progressive left in Russia where I come from in this country I am in the center I think probably

the way that I see it works is whether you are on the right or on the left or on the center really depends on the issues people consider important at that moment in time. So in a society in which there's been a massive debate for decades now about immigration, immigration is naturally a very important issue

and the fact that I am someone who believes as an immigrant myself and I talk about my experience with the immigration system in the book, not always positive, not always fair, not always the way that a person should be treated. Nonetheless, I do think we shouldn't have uncontrolled immigration. I think we shouldn't have any illegal immigration into this country. That should be dealt with as a priority. Not only because it's a security issue, not only because it's a fairness issue, it's a law enforcement issue. We shouldn't have people coming into this country

by breaking the law. It just shouldn't happen. Well, it makes a mockery of the concept of it being illegal immigration. Right. Now, for some mental reason, Alex, that makes that view right wing in today's society. And because people consider that issue to be important in today's society, therefore it gives them scope to

claim that I am on the right. Sure. Because that is an issue on which I have that opinion. Believing that people should be free to speak their mind, when I was growing up, that was not an issue that put you on the right. My heroes, people like

George Carlin and Bill Hicks, lefty, liberal comedians, were all advocating for this position and pushing against the religious right of their day. Now, when I say, I believe free speech is important, people go, well, that means you're on the right. Well, who decided that? Well, maybe that's got something to do with the fact that, as you say, they were pushing against the religious right, whereas now the people who are most often asserting their right to free speech are pushing against a left, more often than not. Right, but it's not my fault. It's the religious left. The religious left. It's a religion. This ideology is completely religious. What's like an example or maybe a handful of

their small things. Believing things on faith, without evidence? Not, I wasn't going to ask you about the religion thing because believe me, I have comments on that too. Yeah. There are, you said that you have views that sort of place you on the right and place you on the left. Yeah. You've given this your sort of position on immigration as something that would not necessarily put you on the right, but have you perceived as being right. What are some of the views that would have you perceived as on the left? Yeah, I'm massively in favor of the decriminalization of most drugs and treating drug addiction, any addiction really, is a health issue. I am not, while I am in favor of getting the burden of tax of business and individuals, I'm also in favor of having a sensible welfare state where people who are vulnerable or disadvantaged by the circumstances of their life, a given support

as opposed to a more sort of right-wing free market approach where it's every man for himself type of thing and the successful get successful and unsuccessful get unsuccessful get unsuccessful. I think you need a welfare state. I think you need to look after people

who can't look after themselves. I know those are two issues. So I'm in favor of a significant amount of wealth redistribution. I believe that there are many situations where elements of government regulation are necessary, I don't think the market in and of itself

is the solution to every problem. I think the market often ignores significant externalities of the things, you know, the wrong structure creates the wrong perverse incentives for companies to then take advantage of. And sometimes it's the job of government to step in and make sure that's not happening. So, you know, I'm not massively economically on the right.

I think I'm probably somewhere in the center and I have center-left views on that. So decriminalization of drugs is probably the most obvious example. Are there any other sort of cultural left-wing ideas that you... So what would be a culturally left-wing point of view? I guess things that are not economic. Do I think racism is bad, yes. Well, things like being pro-choice or anti-gun or...

Yeah, I am... Well, these are all very American conversations. We don't have guns in this country. An abortion, I would argue in this country is a settled issue. I think abortion is a very difficult issue. I'm delighted that I've never had to personally make any decision of that sort. I'm not in favor of, even though I do think abortion is, it's not murder, but it is killing. I'm not in favor of outlawing it entirely.

I think there's a sensible discussion to be had about the period of time that a person should have before they have to make that decision. And we've had people on the show from both sides. Calamilla, for example. Calamilla and Frank Ferreidi, Anfuretti, who's a prominent advocate in favor of choice for women. I have sympathies with both of their arguments, so it's not an issue on which I have a rigid, firm position. In terms of guns, I have a funny attitude to guns, which is, I'm delighted to live in a society when we don't have guns, but if I lived in America, I would definitely own and train with guns.

Yeah, I understand that. Do you think, the guests that you have on trigonometry, would you say that they, if you ask them to sort of do a self-report survey, would you say that there's a majority left, a majority right, or sort of equal balance? It depends on your definitions again. So if we're saying anyone who believes in free speech is right wing, if we're saying anyone who believes that we should have borders as right wing, then you're likely to find that more people that we've had on the show are right-leaning than left-leaning on those definitions.

those definitions. I'm interested in speaking to different people with different views on this issues. Like we just said, we had people from different sides of the abortion. We had people from different sides of the Brexit conversation. We had people who hate Trump and who love and work for Trump on the show.

And the other thing, of course, is you've got to understand that we're not the BBC. We're not able to attract every type of guests that we would like to have. And we have found that there is more hesitancy about coming on trigonometry from people on the left than there is on the right

by those definitions which I don't accept in the first place. And you've got to also remember as well, the point of trigonometry is to provide balance that does not necessarily mean that we are balanced in what we cover. Important. We are plugging the gaps that are being unaddressed by the mainstream and that will necessarily mean that the channel isn't always going to be balanced because the conversation is a mainstream is not balanced. Yeah, well, it's the biggest mistake that you can make in media is claiming to be unbiased, claiming not to have certain ways of doing things. I think that we'd be

in a much better place of people rather than trying to eliminate bias, which is impossible, would accept the biases they have, be obvious about them and sort of cater for them in that respect, rather. So it's good to hear you say that. One, you were talking about left-wing ideals and you mentioned redistributive policies. One example of such policies that you quite fiercely argue against in the book is that of reparations, which comes up sort of near the, maybe in the first third of the book or something, which I took note of because I wanted to ask you about this. And reparations is also, I think, a trickier moral issue than people often give it credit for.

You seem to think it was quite straightforwardly a ridiculous idea. And I have a quote here which you said, well, you were talking about in the context of modern white people paying reparations for slavery. You said it's ridiculous to think that somebody who exists today can be responsible. for the sins of their forefathers, can be responsible for transatlantic slavery. And the quote is, you, dear reader, are no more responsible for slavery than German millennials are for the Holocaust. Understand how it works?

Question mark. But I don't know anybody who takes that view. I don't know anybody who argues in favor of reparations on the grounds that you are today responsible for these sins that have been committed. Then why am I paying? I think that the argument is better put forward as something like that you are benefiting from a historic injustice. Am I?

Well, not you, but I mean. No, but that's the point. I would be under a system of reparation. This is what I wanted to ask you about, was what it was that you thought was wrong about it and to be specific, to be specific, because it's fine to say something like, well, I'm not actually benefiting from a historic injustice.

But that's a different argument from saying that I'm not responsible for that historic injustice. I'm neither responsible nor benefiting for me. But it seems strange to me that you were so enthusiastic in pressing this idea that you are not responsible for historic slavery when it seems to me that that's trivially, obviously the case and that I don't really know of anybody who holds that view.

Well, no, because if we're the... suggesting that we're all the beneficiaries of privilege inherited from our slave-owning ancestors. I didn't have any slave-owning ancestors. Most of my ancestors were slaves in the Soviet Union. I came into this country in 1995, never benefited. My parents didn't own a slave plantation. My, like I say, my ancestors were mostly slaves in Soviet Russia, experienced a tremendous amount of hardship. My point is, my great-grandfather died on the Eastern Front as a Jewish man fighting Nazis. And we don't know where he died. He might have died in a camp. He might have died on the front line. I don't know. The idea that I am entitled to demand that a German

millennial provide me with money because they live in a country which did something to the country that my great-grandfather lived is the most preposterous, nonsensical idea I've ever heard. And I talk about how even in the Torah, this idea that people should be held responsible for the actions of their ancestors is considered completely absurd. That's right. But when you talk about responsibility, making me pay for something is holding me responsible for it. Well, yeah, I mean, I guess what I'm trying to do here is because I don't think that reparations can work in practice. But then for me, there's an important distinction between arguing that something doesn't, work, wouldn't work. In practice, it's just an incredible project that can never happen

and saying that it shouldn't work. Because most of the more persuasive arguments against reparations come in the form of saying that this just isn't going to work. How are you going to account for this? What are you going to do? Douglas Murray said on my podcast that, like, I mean, you might find that the most oppressed group throughout history have been the Jews. So we're just going to sort of add it all up and give them a lump sum. Like, it's ridiculous. And sure, there's a lot of persuasive power in that. But that's saying that it wouldn't work, not saying that it shouldn't work, if we were sort of able to create this incredible accounting system that we're able to specifically figure

out how much people were benefiting, to redistribute wealth in this way, much in the same way that you wouldn't say that, you know, a corporate conglomerate who you raise taxes on is responsible for the suffering of the people who will benefit. from a welfare state, by saying that we want you to pay a bit more because we think we live in an unfair society where you've got too much money through essentially, you know, meritocracy is a bit of a dodgy subject, but there's an unfair society in which it's ended up that this CEO has a lot of money and this single mother is starving and her kids can't afford to wheat. So we're going to tax this person, we're going to take some of his money and we're going to

put it over here. That's not the same thing as saying that that person is responsible for that suffering. There's a way in which the word responsibility can be used. But the conversation about reparations is presented very differently. But that's what I wanted to ask you about, because when you bring up the biblical injunction that sons will not be punished for the crimes of their forefathers, do you think that this is what people in favor of reparations are asking for? Rather than being something like, we live in an unfair society that has an imbalance of funds in a way that maybe we could sort of redistribute those funds.

to try to equalize. In the way that I think doing that with a huge company and the single mother, it's not the same thing as saying they're responsible. I think there's at least a way that you can make the reparations case without committing yourself to the view that people today are responsible for the crimes of their forefathers. It's not like you're being punished, and I use you generally there, you know, Mr. White Man with slave-owning ancestors. It's not that there will be some people who do want to punish them, of course. There are people who exist like that, but imagine somebody who says, look, I don't want to punish you for this sin that your father created. I should just be compensated for the terrible things that my ancestors

experience. I should be compensated for the resulting inequality that through no fault of either of us, we now find ourselves faced with. And if you want to, I mean, if you want to have the conversation about theoretical stuff that will never happen, if you said to me, I've invented a machine that is able to allocate, to take from the people whose ancestors were responsible for the slavery and give to the people who are suffering today as a consequence of the slavery and balance that out. If you could do that, great, but you're not going to be able to, so why are we talking about it? There's often a distinction made between theory and practice. People say that something's good in theory and bad in practice, but what is theory, if not just

a prediction of practice? I don't know if that makes sense. This is the problem within intellectuals, Yogi Berra, the famous American baseball player who was known for his witticisms, he said, in theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they're not. And one of my favorite movies, when I was probably around your age, was the Matrix, the original Matrix. And there's a moment when I think Neo and Morpheus are talking, and Morpheus says there's a difference between knowing the path and walking the path. When you start to do things, when you get outside of the intellectual world and you start actually putting things in place, you very quickly find out that things are not like they are in theory. All sorts of things that you've been unable to imagine

exist in the real world that immediately start coming up as you start to do stuff, whether that's running a business or having a YouTube channel or whatever dating, whatever that is. It's not the same in theory as there's in practice, nothing ever is. And that's why I come back to the beginning of our conversation about having a more empirical approach. I really have very little interest in theory because theory is just a way of helping you start moving in a certain direction and find out what the real situation is. What's something that people who grew up in the West take for granted that they ought not? Safety, freedom, comfort, stability, freedom from being invaded, freedom from

having their society and their lives turned upside down overnight through no fault of their own everything that we enjoy in the West that we think is normal is actually absolutely not the norm around the world the fact that you don't actually have to care too much I know we all have spent the last six years really caring about who's president and prime minister and whatever It doesn't actually matter. You're still going to be able to provide for your family, for the most part. You're still going to be able to live. You're not going to get killed.

Your society's not going to get turned upside down. You're not going to suddenly find yourself living under a dictatorship. Your country is not going to be invaded. Your country's probably not going to unleash an invasion against another neighboring country and start a massive war. Like all of these things, we have the luxury of that we don't realize. And look, even, we're talking about redistribution. I mean, in most of, you know, Russia, where I come from in Ukraine, where I have a lot of family,

neither of these two countries is the poorest country in the world. But when COVID happened, they locked things down, but they basically provided almost no financial support to anybody. It's like, your business is shut down, deal with it, right? We don't have that. That's not the contract, the social contract that we have here. You know what I mean? The government feels like it's the government's job to look after you.

you because the gas prices have risen. It's not the case in most of the other places. You know, life happens, tough shit, deal with it. And so these things, I mean, one of the messages of the book seems to be that these things are currently under threat, that this Western civilization that's characterized by the kind of things that you talk about is eroding. Who do you think is primarily responsible for this destruction of Western civilization? Primarily responsible is difficult one because it's always a combination of different people. I think the people who are, I mean, and it also depends what you mean by responsible.

I mean, it's very clear to me that the impact on social media on our society is incredibly good, but one of the consequences of it is that it destroys the fabric of our civilization at the same time. And we're going to have to adjust to that. So you could say it's the person who invented the internet or the people who run the big tech companies or the people who've worked out that certain types of views which are harmful to society but sound good on the internet

those things if they're advanced help your career right the activists who use the social media platforms and the way that they impact everything else to boost their profile by complaining about things and endlessly you know demanding the things that changed

in order to suit them and stuff like that could be them You could say it's the weak politicians who go along with all of this stuff and allow these things to happen. So it's a complex process. And I try not to think in such simplistic terms like, you know, the social justice activists are responsible for destroying Western society. I don't think that's what's happening. I'm still going to quote you on that. Yeah, absolutely.

Cut that out and use it as a clip. What about ideologically? What do you think is some sort of one of the most or some of the most pernicious ideological forces that are bringing about? this, at least disrespect towards Western ideals at worst, their inevitable decline and fall? Well, ideologically, it's obviously the extremists on the progressive left who hate the West, who hate Western values, who hate everything that it stands for. And it was interesting. Now, the right has a term problem when it comes to Ukraine, but you can see it with the portions of the supposedly anti-imperialist left. The moment.

Russia acts like an imperialist power, they all side with Russia, because it's not imperialism that they hate. It's America. It's the Western world that they really hate, and anti-imperialism was just the cover they were using for their hatred of Western values and everything the West is. They hate the West for doing imperialism better than anybody else, basically, right? So ideologically, they're the problem. But equally, though, if you look at where the ideology gets its fuel from, it's the corruption both in the United States and in this country when it comes to the fact that people your age are not going to have, most likely, a better life than people of my generation and the people before them.

It's the housing crisis in this country, the fact that young people can't pair up and get together and whatever. So it's the corrupt systems that prevent people from fulfilling on their potential that then means people are bitter and resentful and they're more likely to look at ideologies that are more extreme because they feel like they haven't got another choice so ideologically it's that but you've got to consider also the ideology is generally a response to the practical conditions on the ground communism and fascism these two awful ideologies that came out of the late 19th and early 20th century they were a response to the material circumstances of that time they were not just randomly

invented by theorists. They were a way of addressing the challenges of that time. So the fact that there is an ideology now that seeks to profit from people's resentment and bitterness and victimhood and to encourage them to pursue those things is a product of some of the material circumstances that are on the ground. And they're not the fault of the extreme progressives. They're the fault of both parties who have a tremendous amount of power over the structures of our society. That's why I spent so much time in the book of talking about wealth, inequality and the housing crisis. It's a cheery note to end on.

But the book is an immigrant's love letter to the West. Of course, if anybody's watching on YouTube, I hope somebody's watching on YouTube, the links will be available in the description, but also a simple Amazon search away. It's been fun. Constantine, thanks for coming on. Thanks for having me. Thank you.