Konstantin Kisin | Identity Politics, Cancel Culture, and Liberalism's Demise. Are We Under Siege?

[Music] I lead our education program at the CIS which is a great privilege and a great privilege to be with you all tonight and also to to have concertin here with us uh constantina I'm very mindful about your safety and safety of everybody um so with that in mind I I do want to respect your preferred pronouns and I understand that that you you do you do identify they them politically uh politically non-binary um what does that mean uh I I think it's very important to think for yourself on everything um and uh my experience is that whenever you buy into a political ideology wholesale you inevitably end up in positions where you're having to think stupid things because other people think them um and I I just I don't see that as a healthy way to to run your brain first and foremost now of course when your IDE ideas be begin to translate into Political decisions you you have a binary Choice quite frequently at an election although and understand in this country you have a non-binary system for voting to some extent so um my primary interest in trying is in trying to understand the world and get as close to the truth as I possibly can which of course all of us are inevitably unsuccessful in uh and therefore uh to buy a prepackaged set of ideas just seems to me a little bit naive I think left right up down they liberal conservative whatever they all have flaws in their thinking and uh I'm interested in finding the distinctions and trying to understand well you know I I think for example the inequality in our societies is a massive problem intergenerational inequality is a massive problem and to the extent that the left used to care about that I agree with the left uh there are also issues that I agree with you know conservatives and classical liberals on as well so mainly it's about insisting on on the ability to think for myself and so at the moment you you you Flagg the sort of Left Right binary and and the way that you're straddling that I suppose uh why why is it the left and right labels why do they not mean what they used to mean well they're both breaking down because uh what I used to think of as the left which I used to be on uh due to a combination of ignorance and cowardice mostly cowardice to be honest uh have allowed themselves to be direct Ed by uh the people who call themselves Progressive and my uh good friend in in the UK um Morris Glassman who's a member of the House of Lords he always says this you know if you go to the doctor and they say to you it's Progressive not good news usually um so the left has allowed itself to be derailed uh from its core purpose by the people who are and I I me I make absolutely no bones about saying this the the people who who we talk about when we mean the woke left these are these you know race Marxist or cultural Marxist these people are the enemy of Western Civilization there's no discussion there's no debate it's no these people want to destroy the foundations of Western Civilization that's what they want and so if you are the sensible left which is the majority of people on the left and you allow these people to be the tail that Wags your dog well then the whole meaning of these words starts to break down and by the way uh you give ammunition to people on the right who are going to say oh the left are all like this well if you don't speak up then that's all happen or if you do speak up as as I've found out and many other people have find out then you become rightwing so there we go see it's well trodden that the the flaws of the left when it particular when it comes to the aversion around Western Civilization but they're left un alone in some of those criticisms so just as the left might complain that you know big corporations for instance have destroyed Society or hollowed it out and so on it's also true is it not that the right have also got this Ting about complaining about Society increasingly it's the issues of I guess an elite of sorts as well that particularly around bureaucracy and so on that undermines the true Society itself but does so does the right have as much to blame in the current debate I I see it as a little bit of cause and effect I think that many of the policies that progressives have pursued have created a society you're fortunate in this country that you don't have this but you only need to travel around major American cities or come to London to see uh I mean it looks like a zombie apocalypse to be honest you know you go to La you go to New York you go to I mean Nashville anywhere and there's literally people lying face down on the ground with most of their clothes off and and that's because you know for all sorts of different reasons but primarily because of the policies that governments have pursued so as the level of Street crime and violent crime increases as people see disorder around them it's natural for them to get very frustrated about um what is happening and I and I I agree with you I think there is a section of the right particularly in the United States that is so fed up of the inability to vote your way out of this growing nightmare frankly you know that instead of helping the police to do a better job uh we have these slogans like def the police uh all of this stuff is is causing people to get frustrated and then they say well look democracy isn't working so maybe Vladimir Putin is brilliant you know here here in Australia there's there's been there's a there's a poll that's done annually which asks Australians about their attitudes towards Society system of government and so on and what that's typically shown us is that an increasing number of people especially young people it's around one and three who say that they're UNS satisfied with democracy around one in five say that they'd prefer an alternative to democracy uh and this these numbers of course much higher for for young people especially um and one of the main reasons that people say that are not satisfied with democracy is that they feel that the system no longer works for the majority but works for a minority are we all doing democracy wrong well it's shocking numbers isn't it that they're that low well it is I mean look the fact is that Western Elites and I use this phrase advisedly have had their heads up their asses for a very long time now uh and they are insistent on maintaining them on there no matter how many wakeup calls they get look I voted remain in the brexit referendum uh and frankly if you'd ask me on the morning after why half of my fellow citizens voted for brexit I would have had no idea right uh but what I took away from that is that I am the ignorant one and it's my job to educate myself right what the elites took from that is they they need to suppress that movement as quickly as possible this was the same with Donald Trump Donald Trump gets elected what do they do do they say oh my God I can't this guy is so obnoxious how badly how desperate must these people be to vote for Donald Trump no what they do is they go oh it's Russia collusions the Russian they said the same with brexit the Russians did brexit and I kept saying to these people if the Russians are have brexit it'll be over by now you know we would have taken a chunk of France with us so there is this um there is a tyranny of the mind that is happening among people who are comfortable and who are so attached to the Reigns of power this is why they keep talking oh you know this is a danger to our democracy that's why they say our because it's their democracy it's not democracy for anyone else because the moment anyone votes in a way they don't like they try and overturn it one way or another and this makes me sound like some great defender of orange man bad I'm not I'm just objective and objectively they spent the entire four years trying to undermine the outcome of the election lied about him endlessly they claimed and people should go and look at this and many people even in in our Circle still believe this the idea that he said for example that there are fine people on both sides the not this isn't true you can go and watch the video in which he condemns those people he says they should be condemned absolutely but what they did is they quoted him out of context and then they presented it and they did this over and over and over and over again why did they do it because they're not willing to accept that somebody might disagree with them and if they keep doing this we are going to get to a very dangerous place very quickly so in in a in a free Marketplace of ideas one would expect that we would be able to say here's here's video Trump says this thing here's another version of it and that free exchange should in theory bring the truth to the surface that's that's at least a textbook case yeah so much familiar with you know there's the famous bask not basketball baseball player in America yoi Bara who was known for his witticisms and he he said in theory there's no difference between theory and practice in practice there is and that's kind of I think that answers your question in practice um we you know we we have a a mainstream media which is dying it's dying for a reason and the reason is that they have discredited themselves uh over a long period of time by spreading things that late to turn out not to be true and driving these narratives there's a I wrote a a thread on Twitter that went viral on the subject that I later made as a video and it's a chapter in my book as well it was called why don't they believe us and the reason people are increasingly not believing the mainstream media is the arrogance with which they have purported these lies on on on the public of the Western countries um I think what is required is a little bit more humility and admitting wrong and I I always say this to someone who increasingly has uh interactions with people in the mainstream media giving interviews Etc no personal you know no CR no faith in the mainstream media survives first contact with the mainstream media you know they they and an example of this uh and I'm not bitter but an example of this is after my Oxford speech uh a journalist from the new Statesman came and interviewed me uh and he asked me how many views the the video of my speech had got and I said very difficult to to measure because you know it goes into people's telegram groups and WhatsApp groups and people post it in a way that you're not able to track so you can't really say and he wrote that I'd said um that the number of views on the speech is beyond [Laughter] measure so the mainstream media have have done a very bad job of maintaining their credibility oh I mean it is approaching beyond measure at the moment but that's that's a uh so look the main mainstream media you point out is dying um you you run a platform like several others that we broadly Define in a family of New Media and what strikes me as really powerful about New Media is it doesn't have the same opportunity to cancel if you like that mainstream media has doesn't have the same conventions it provides that free access to uh Ms to be able to access diverse opinions diverse perspectives and be able to in many cases uh share and disseminate freely you you in some respects it seems to me this is a a a set of platforms that protect against cancellation for those reasons and so many more people when we look at these numbers consume New Media then consume old media does that mean old media will just die itself out we'll see and by the way I I wouldn't want people to take away from our conversation that I uh want the mainstream media to die I really really don't I want them to be better uh because one of the problems with New Media is uh you increasingly see the fragmentation of our reality uh and so I often meet people who have uh not only alternative opinions but alternative facts um and we no longer can agree on what the facts are this is not a healthy place to be I'd much rather we we had uh a a sort of coherence about what we believe but I don't know that we're going to get there I think the mainstream media will take some time it's it's it's kind of bleeding out but it's still standing um and you know that's because the there's a lot of people who've grown up reading and listening and watching uh the mainstream media that will continue they'll continue to be influential and by the way they they I keep saying to this I am the turkey that would vote for Christmas I really would I never had the intention to create a media platform online it's a responsibility I've never saw and increasingly I'm kind of uh scared of personally um I'd quite like to interview comedians about their career and Sport Stars about you know their mental attitude and people who've been through traumatic events about resilience and all sorts of things of that nature uh I don't want to necessarily be raising things that keep getting ignored but if the mainstream media will refuse to talk about certain things well someone needs to say something and that's the only reason I've ever got into any of this so um for me that that's a sad state of I I always keep saying the tragedy of my career is I keep saying things everybody knows and everyone goes oh my God it's amazing you know yeah men are men and women are women wow you know a spoiler warning yeah exactly trigger warning is what we need for that one yeah well related to trigger warnings I suppose one of the first opportunities maybe maybe in this audience would have become familiar with your work was related to a set of trigger warnings I suppose or avoiding those uh back in 2018 when you were asked to complete what's sort of described as a behavioral agreement of some of some kind for a university comedy gig uh tell us about the the the requirements for that yes so I I was performing in a club in London some students saw me and they invited me to help them raise money for Unicef at the University and when I agreed they sent me a two-page behavioral agreement contract um which said that they have a zero zero tolerance policy on racism sexism classism agism ableism homophobia bobia transphobia xenophobia islamophobia anti-religion anti- atheism and it also said that all jokes must be respectful and kind um and uh it was interesting because it was the first time I really realized that I wasn't the only one that was concerned about the direction of travel of our society because um that story became the second big story on the BBC News website and I mean the second most read story on the BBC News website on the day that the then prime minister Theresa May was nearly removed from office by her own party so first story prime minister nearly removed and you're not shocked because in Australia you backstab your Prime Ministers every day but in England it's quite a big deal right and so the first story was prime minister nearly removed from office by her own party Second Story no name Medan turns down unpaid charity give from too big college and that's when I was like oh okay I'm not the only one that actually thinks this is a problem and of course I got thousands of emails and I kind of understood that many people feel like they're living their life having signed a contract like that um so yes uh that was an interesting moment um I think there is uh certainly in people always ask me you know have we reached Peak woke are we you know I and I think it really fundamentally depends where you are I think in the United States uh certainly when it comes to Comedy I mean comedians who are challenging the Orthodoxy are absolutely crushing it you know Rogan Bill Burr Shane Gillis uh lots of lots of lots of different people yeah Dave Chappelle of course um in the UK much more rigid and much more difficult I don't know what the situation is in Australia uh on the cultural stuff again it's very difficult to judge I do think you guys are at the moment in a better position and people sometimes disagree with me because what I'm they think what they hear when I say that is you don't have a problem that's not what I'm saying I'm saying you are sliding down the toilet you're just not as far down right however given that you see us making the mistakes you still have the opportunity to not repeat our mistakes and I really very much would encourage you not to I me missing off that behavioral agreement by the way was there were plenty of other phobias and isms that were Miss there and fat phobia was missing so uh be mindful of that one the bigots that uh the fundraiser uh here in Australia one of one of the issues that that I think really Taps it at our identity is the the question that comes around every year for our national day Australia Day um this is increasingly viewed as not not only not a day for celebration but a day of regret humiliation or even uh or even viewed as by many particularly on the left as being ultimately an invasion day and this this um this critic this this self-criticism that we see about the nation why why is it that in western civilization we have so much trouble with nationhood you've spent 60 years teaching your children to hate your own civilization why are you surprised that they hate your civilization sorry but that's what's happened it works that's it worked and absolutely and by the way it's not just hate you know it's hard to teach people to hate what's much easier is to lie to them about history so in the UK for example in England there's this we have the the Church of England I think has just approved the billion pounds worth of reparations uh because we talk endlessly about slavery and the narrative on slavery in in in seems to me to be you know there was no slavery and then the British Empire came along and invented slavery and then woke people came along and ended slavery when of course we all know what actually happened which is slavery is slaves were probably the first good that human beings ever traded never had anything to do with racism by the way uh just it was a fact of life that conquered peoples would be sub subjugated by others and used as labor and would be traded uh Native Americans kept slaves and so did everybody else throughout history the British Empire practiced slavery just like everybody else because of their Superior technological advantage they were able to move slaves across oceans in the way that others weren't um and then the British ended slavery not only within the borders of their own Realm uh but also spent a tremendous amount of blood and treasure to force the trans Saharan slave trade which was much worse lasted longer had a higher death rate the men were all castrated the women were taken as sex slaves um they forced that slave trade to end a tremendous diplomatic military uh and uh monetary cost um and so uh you know this idea that we must eternally apologize for the sins of the past seems to me absolutely ridiculous now does that mean we shouldn't recognize that those things were bad yes of course we should and we should acknowledge and learn from them but it seems to me very odd I again I made this point in the book I have a whole chapter on slavery in it which is you know imagine if you have to that you know 50 years from now we're all going to be vegan because they get their way right because eating animals is this terrible crime uh would we then say that the people who ended that practice were the most evil in history that wouldn't make any sense at all I think we would say well this is the first Empire in the history of the world world that ended this practice we now consider a moral good on them and by the way uh you know did did so for moral reasons I mean the abolitionists u in England were people who were motivated by uh a different morality that was developing which which said something about the the the value of the individual um so the idea that we would denigrate our history in this way to me seems absurd and every every civilization in history every great Empire in history is built on Conquest um this is how the world is this is human nature and to pretend otherwise I think is very unwise it seems at the moment Western Civilization is has never been safer richer than ever we should be it we should ultimately be ever more self-confident in ourselves yet we are ever more self-critical about ourselves is it just because we've had it too good is that what allows us to have that luxury well it seems that way some something you know something I've been thinking about a lot is people are always ve very suspicious and wary of families that are able to preserve wealth over many generations the Rothchilds The Rockefellers the whoevers and I think that's because it's very difficult you know the first generation break through and build something special the second manage it and the third waste it basically is how it tends to go so to be able to maintain um generation upon generation of people who truly value what they have even though grow they're growing up and increasing luxur is very very difficult and this is where education comes in and if we had people who were being educated about the history of their civilization and their society in an accurate way I think we'd be in a far better place but uh you know what has been happening on on Western College campuses and in Western schools for the last many decades is the reason we are where we are one of the one of the reasons why Western Civilization has been successful is obviously its capacity to self- criticize evolve and improve everything you've been talking about tonight doesn't really sound like self-criticism anymore right it's something more malign does this mean that we can't grow from this the experience the challenges that Western Civilization is currently facing well again let's translate all of this conceptual stuff into simple language if you talked about your spouse in the way that people talk about their country people would call you an abuser that's what they tell they'd say why are you talking about your wife in this way that's that's rude that's wrong that's immoral that's they would be suspicious of you but the way that people talk about their own country is perfectly acceptable to do so so self-criticism as I mentioned about freedom of expression is the Bedrock of our progress the ability to say no no we shouldn't be continuing to do this actually we should be you know thinking about how to do this better but uh it seems to me that we're in the grips of a you know as Christianity has pulled back we are now in the grips of a new religion that offers no Absolution of any kind whatsoever you cannot you cannot do anything to absolve yourself of your straight white male privilege there's no way of of you you must just feel feel forever guilty um and this isn't self-criticism this is self-denigration and it's designed for self-destruction and these people as I say again are the enemies to to some sort of fracturing elements that we see in society now Australia does Pride itself as being arguably the most successful Multicultural Nation here here here on Earth and we've sustained as and have been great recipients of a high level of immigration for many years um but recently the Prime Minister described the social license for our immigration system which is historically very high as as as fracturing uh now this is not uncommon that a lot of the western world are facing issues related to migration and we' got several questions that have come through and thanks for those who who have submitted those um that have asked how do we successfully maintain multiculturalism that and high levels of immigration that have enriched our Societies in today's high volumes and challenging times you can't you can't it's like saying look I love ice cream right but if I had ice cream for breakfast lunch and dinner every day and then you said to me how do you keep the weight off I'd say I'm fat right there are immigration how many of your immigrants are descendants of immigrants here right pretty much all of you right yeah some of you were involuntary [Laughter] um I'm a first gener generation immigrant to the West I I have I'm I think immigration is conducive to a healthy Society if you bring young people and not just young people but driven talented smart people uh who are willing to become part of your nation who are willing to subscribe to National values who are willing to say look I was born blah blah blah I'm British I'm Australian I'm American I'm here to be part of you and if those people who are coming in are carefully chosen because they're conducive to to the society to which they come if the numbers are manageable uh and you are able to integrate those people into your Society then you see what you've seen in Australia today which is you know all all my trials people come up to oh you know my mother's from Croatia oh I'm from here I'm from Hungary oh and these people all sound Australian to me right because they are but if you have levels of immigration that become too difficult to manage and particularly if you do what we are doing in the UK and what we have they're doing in America which is letting people come in illegally now I can't understand this because I've lived in Britain long enough to know that there's no great offense than jumping the queue uh and that is what these people are doing right um and and we don't know who they are we don't know what their values are we don't know how compatible they are with western civilization and the reason they are coming illegally is that we wouldn't let them in otherwise that's why they're coming illegally right so uh if you want to maintain a successful multiethnic Society you have to make sure that you you have immigration levels that are appropriate to the size of your country you welcome people in you digest they become part of your Society they have kids who grow up here they become Australian you can let more people in and you can manage your system in a democratic way one of the biggest problems with all of this of course is that um in the UK um you know the government was elected the current conservative government was elected in 2010 on the promise to reduce legal immigration to the tens of thousands it's now running over half a million significantly over half a million a year uh and the legal immigration is in the tens of thousands so uh my view is that look you could you could think that this country should have zero immigration and I could think that this country has open borders should have open borders at the end of the day the people need to be able to vote for what they want and then have that reflected in the actions of their government and there is no mandate for what is happening in Western Europe and America there's a few followers in the audience of British politics um so Andrew uh Andrew asks uh what what do we take from includ in the the British context some of the developments we've seen recently um obviously bit of a circus for the for the current government but in particular the election of someone like George Galloway what does this signal for the health of democracy is uh and I guess the future of politics George Galloway has been in Parliament for a long time in the UK is very charismatic speaker I've had him on my show um I thought his opposition to the war in Iraq was extremely important and and principled and um I I I don't necessarily think that Georg is somehow a terrible guy but his election on a purely sectarian ticket effectively demonstrates what people need to stop pretending isn't true which is that we live in a country where increasingly people are going to take on the identity politics that has been shoved down their throat for God knows how long and vote along ethnic and religious lines and that's that's what's happening uh Gabby also points out the the challenge faced here in Sydney and and in many parts of the world and that's that's the the plight of Jewish children in schools and and feeling uh deeply unsafe and in in Western societies as well she asks how do we combat the the kind of hate that is being seen sometimes for the first time in Western civilizations now you can't if you import people who hate Jews you're going to have people who hate Jews am I wrong [Applause] so if that's what you're doing then that's what will happen you can't fight it what people keep say oh the rise in anti there's no rise in anti-Semitism there's no rise in anti-Semitism you just found out that you had lots of anti-Semitic people in your Society who've been anti-semitic this entire time there's no rise so I don't understand what people are talking about when they say oh we're going to fight anti-Semitism the only way to fight anti-Semitism is to destroy identity politics and the progressive project and and the reason is very simple the the and this is something that my friend Eric Weinstein explained very well when we had him on on our show with Sam Harris uh the the the reason for leftwing anti-Semitism which is I think what we're probably talking about to some extent outside the the kind of more religious driven element of this is very simple once you say say that there are some groups that are under represented and there are some groups that are over represented and the reason the only possible explanation of why a group might be over represented or under represented is privilege and power then you immediately get to what Adolf would have called the Jewish question right because as it happens Jews for cultural and historical reasons and because of what they teach their children on average are much more likely to be over represented particularly in certain industries in the media and Banking and so on it's a fact right they are over represented in the same way that many middlemen minorities will tend to be over represented in success and money and so on in different countries Armenians were over represented in the Ottoman Empire and were persecuted as a result foreign Born Chinese are over represented all over Asia and are persecuted as a result East Asians are over were middleman minorities in Africa and were pursued by people prosecuted and persecuted by people people like EDM me because they're over represented once you create this ideology it will inevitably hone in on minorities that are successful and Jews are bearing the brunt of that if you want to stop anti-Semitism stop talking about anti-Semitism and start talking about identity politics and how the woke project is destroying Western Civilization from the inside so help us out we've talked about the woke project wokeism what is it that we actually mean specifically what we all I guess wokeism is the sort of thing we know when we see it yeah but how do we Define it well I was speaking to the lady over there if you don't mind me bringing you up the 92 years old from Hungary and she says oh it's like my um childhood uh and what she means by that is uh what we had in the in the Warsaw Pact which it would have been and the Soviet Union more specifically is Marxism and Marxism is the ideology that says there are oppressors and there are oppressed uh we just talked about it with you know over represented groups underrepresented groups um and uh the woke project is essentially a product of the realization that the class-based Marxism that we had in the Soviet Union we have the boura and the capitalist who are the oppressors and the the workers and The Peasants who are the oppressed and of course the solution to this is to flip the pyramid and put the Bourgeois and the and and the capitalist in the ground ideally um at the bottom and the the you create this uh what was the phrase Ty tyranny of the of the work tyranny of the proletarian that's right yeah dictatorship of the proletariat that's right thank you um dictatorship of the proletariat H and then they came to the Western Marxist realized that this was never going to work in the west because Western workers didn't want a revolution they just wanted better wages and more rights of work and so on right uh and so the the Marxist realized that the way to divide people that runs much deeper with most people is race ethnicity tribe sex and that's why they've spent the last 60 years attempting to uh to do things that I thought frankly would be impossible you know I mean the idea that men and women the relationship between men and women is best understood as some kind of power struggle is the most idiotic cronous idea that's ever been invented these two groups of people who have had to struggle and work together and pull together for the entirety human history just to be able to survive that these two groups are somehow engaged in some sort Battle of the Sexes it's Insanity right um but this is what they're teaching young people particularly young girls uh and when it comes to race you know people are tribal people are pre-wired for all these sorts of things people are pre pre-wired for tribalism and the beauty of the western project is we have been able to amarate some of the ugliness of that uh that approach to to society um as best with better than anyone else in history um but they they want to divide us along those lines uh and so to me wokeness is race Marxism some people call it cultural Marxism I think it's probably a more accurate term but less easy to understand it's why i' would say it's race Marxism is dividing people along racial and sexual lines uh in order to persuade uh some people that they are being oppressed instead of encouraging them to see themselves as part of a society in which they have an paralleled opportunity to thrive and and succeed and it seems to be that the the main kind of weapon here is language we take words that have a particular established meaning things like uh social justice things like safety even diversity inclusion the we're familiar with the way that some of that language is co-opted why choose language as the weapon and why is it does this explain you know why the Western project is particularly vulnerable to it well look it it's a very language is a very powerful weapon because uh once you call something a good name it's very difficult to oppose you know if you created an organization that was about discriminating against black people and called it puppies lives matter or something a lot of people would still agree with it right just because it has a good name um you know diversity essentially I don't know the the cultural context here but in many Western countries diversity just means no white people that's what it means but it's kind of hard to argue against because it's diversity and it's inclusion what does inclusion mean it means that anyone who disagrees is excluded that's right so it's a very powerful tool for concealing what you're doing I call it slight of mouth yeah it's it's very it's a very very good tool for persuading people and of course by the way um if you change the meanings of words and the word safety is this is the the kind of focal point of this you can change legislation without having to legislate if you say that you know if you accept safety is the absence of violence which is what we always used to understand it to mean then laws around violence are very clear or laws around safety are very clear but once you smuggle in the idea that you know safety is no one had my feelings then you're in a very different position and ultimately there's no there's no chance of a free Society because if we can't exchange ideas because safety is the is a barrier it's just protectionism right it's protectionism in a market of ideas in the same way that economic protectionism creates problems and this is what this is why I keep repeating this idea that these people are enemies because I the more I talk to them the more I realize they the my friend Michael malice who we had on the show some time ago he said Constantin you've got to understand these people are not using language to communicate they're using language to manipulate and once you get that it all suddenly makes sense why are they saying all these ridiculous things it's because they want to manipulate you they have no intention of engaging in some kind of Battle of ideas uh you know as I said Tom And I did a podcast earlier in which we had a pretty strong argument about Ukraine that was the Battle of ideas from two people who are interested in challenging each other and trying to communicate what they believe to be true uh I have found myself very often in TV studios talking to people who clearly have absolutely no idea uh of discussing anything and they that's why they use labels and uh smears as much as they do because they're not trying to win the argument they're trying to destroy you someone that many people in this room probably uh follow and may well be excited about is uh Douglas Murray is soon to to be here in Australia you're in for a treat well unless the campaign to cancel his appearance at the end Moore Theater is successful uh now for those who are not familiar that this this campaign is based on these grounds that Douglas Murray ferments anti-immigration islamophobia anti-black European civilizational moral panics and on this basis he should not be allowed to appear and give a talk in conversation uh here in Sydney where are my protesters what about me I do that as well In fairness that you you did talk in uh at Sydney University a few days ago and there were there were protest is there so they were there for Tony Abott In fairness they all had I'm jealous of him as well they all had onions delicious I hope yeah this this cancel culture they tried to break the down one of the doors the these are very sturdy I'm yeah yeah they they couldn't break it was in the Sydney uni Great Hall they had one of these massive wooden doors I felt like I was in Game of Thrones um but they couldn't break it down a soy diet we do that yes no one's been known to Ram down doors effectively and in a Siege on a soy diet uh I don't know what happened I did the joke first then he repeated it and got my laugh uh this this this can culture we've we're familiar with what this looks like particularly I I guess the the left's approach on this but in some respects cancel culture is not new Civ since the beginning of civilization societies have had some form of sanctioning of ideas and potentially even moderating ideas if you like isn't is it not the case then that a degree of cancelling or a a sanctioning system is entirely appropriate if it comes from members of a community as opposed to the state and maybe those of us that think of ourselves as being maybe small government oriented might come to that conclusion if that was the case would that not create that the right sanctions and safeguards for free free speech hate speech in these challenging areas but it's broken down in the current climate I think it really depends on what you mean by counceling and I completely agree with you that uh I'm not someone who's ever who's ever uttered the word you know cancel culture has never been worse 500 years ago Douglas and I would have been burnt at the stake right so and I'm not joking that's what would have happened so uh do I support burning people in the stake if it's done by the community rather than the government no um but uh and and we could go down ex you know down the list for you know uh obviously uh in in the US particularly and to less extent in in the UK we had the me too movement and I thought that there were elements of the MEO movement that were entirely understandable and frankly quite Justified I don't know anyone who disagrees with what happened to Harvey Weinstein for example right but on the other hand there were lots of other people you know who went on a day and things didn't quite go the way that someone wanted and suddenly they're an abuser right so I think it's a matter of degrees quite often and and it is you know I have no problem with people coming and protesting outside an event I have no problem with people coming in and asking pointed questions or challenging and I I in fact would have loved for them to come in uh but uh shouting people down uh trying to get people to lose jobs because some they said something you don't agree with uh that is to me not a way of conducting these conversations if you do not agree with Douglas Murray the best thing you can possibly do is make a better argument than Douglas Murray that's what you do and if you do that by the way in our society now you're going to be rewarded with a huge platform and lots of money and lots of attention problem is no one seems to be able to do that um and it tells you something about the strength of their argument so to me uh come along if you don't agree with me come along explain to me why I'm wrong and my wife does it all the time to societies that that have not done this very well uh in in Russia of course a few weeks ago uh many of us received the news that Alexi Nal um had had passed away possibly murdered um in in Russian prison what does what does that mean for the future of in your view that debate discourse in Russia and and its struggles with democracy and I don't remember the last time Russia struggled with democracy it's been a long time look I mean seriously Russia never had a democracy ever in in in 12 centuries in 1991 we had a brief window and even then there was not a single democratic transition of power Boris yelson handed power over to Vladimir Putin Vladimir Putin has been in power for 25 years I I I I don't understand why people in the west keep talking about democracy in Russia there is no democracy in Russia I'm not sure the Russian people would want democracy if it was offered to them maybe they would maybe they wouldn't that that wouldn't be my experience that wouldn't I don't think looking at history that's what you'd conclude and the sad death of Alex naly who's who you know you can agree or disagree with some things he said but he was a brave man and a principled man um I don't think it says anything very much about the future of Russia other than uh the fact that Vladimir Putin is now even more firmly in control of the country uh he obviously n represented the sort of liberal opposition but uh you know we all I think followed the fate of yanii pran um who who challenged uh Putin by having his troops march on Moscow uh he he decided to withdraw and and mirac mysteriously perished in an accident two days later um uh Igor girkin strelov he was one of the people who orchestrated the uprising in the in the east of Ukraine in 2014 he is now in prison for criticizing Vladimir Putin from a more nationalistic perspective saying Putin's too weak on Ukraine uh and so uh Vladimir Putin's Consolidated power and I imagine he's going to hold on to it until he he can't any longer Barry Weiss quite cleverly succinctly described the uh the current moment as being sense making institutions have gone mad and I think she would agree with basically everything you you've said tonight uh Alex from our audience asks how do we make institutions more trustworthy again well I can't CU I'm not institutions but what institutions can do is be more trustworthy and then people will trust them more it's it's it's pretty simple it sounds glib I'm not being glib but that's the answer right if the we talked about the media if the mainstream media were more trustworthy and didn't jump on every bandwagon and didn't lie and didn't misrepresent and didn't suppress information they didn't like uh you know during covid I mean look uh I still don't know where Co comes from do you we hosted a fantastic event about it a few years ago with Sher markson though right my point is there was a time when if you'd said that there is a there are some scientists this I mean this is a fact right you can agree or disagree about the reality some scientists believe that it came from a lab and Wuhan okay you would be censored on YouTube and you would have the potential to lose what in my case is now my living right now do you think that improved trust in the institutions no so what the institutions have to do stop doing stupid things like that and then there will be more trust in the institutions sorry I wish I had more but I don't uh here here at CIS um we've spoken a lot about the issues impacting young people especially and we view the the intergenerational inequality that that that we observing as being a critical function of our role in the public debate as well one of the key areas there is is the issue around housing and uh and the concern that many young people are locked out of Housing and yet there is this same Paradox that young people should then say if they're rational voters should say build more houses so they can be affordable but young people say don't build more houses no more development developers are evil um protect the environment lower emissions all all all of this don't don't clear land why why is this irrationality why this Paradox in in the way young people are approaching issues impacting their lives well that's easy young people are stupid I don't mean that this cohort is any more stupid than we were when we were young I just mean all young people are stupid including us when we were young so I don't expect them to to necessarily be entirely consistent but what I also think is important to say is that young people are right to be upset about that the lack of Housing and housing crisis um and I don't think it's them that's preventing the houses that being built frankly the people who are preventing houses from being built are older people who don't want houses to be built in their backyard and uh the corrupt construction uh and land planning situation where people who hold on to land have an incentive to do so because it drives up the price so uh it's basically a set of corrupt incentives within government combined with the fact that these governments increasingly rely on the silver vote older people uh who don't seem to be thinking about their grandchildren in a way that they absolutely should be uh what we are doing to our young people is outrages um and not only on housing I know you're in a better position than we are on this uh issue but J debt to GDP in the UK and in the US is running it over 100% this means we're indebting our grandchildren many of whom are not yet alive this is not how a responsible Society behaves it just isn't and um housing is just one manifestation of the way that the intergenerational bond is breaking down we have to be willing to do what parents and grandparents have done throughout the ages which is sacrifice for the next generation and we've got to give something up so that they have a better life not least because if you don't they're going to burn the whole thing down seven young people [Laughter] applauding one of the other issues I suppose that mobilizes young people in politics is uh the the challenge of carbon transition climate emergency however you like like to Define this challenge right uh but but again the solutions to this seem to be from innovating our way through to Smart Solutions becoming richer and more capable and more able of solving this problem but young people again seem to vote in a different direction seem to vote Glenn again sorry I I I look it's easy for me to make jokes about how stupid young people are because as I say they always are but but this we've got to stop pretending it's their fault who taught them this crap who taught them there's a climate apocalypse coming who was it it it wasn't 20-y old I promise you so the fact that they're all terrified is the reason is because they've been terrified by adults who need to step up and take some responsibility um so look the the solution to that issue is technology and Innovation as I said in my o speech you're not going to get poor people around the world to reduce their consumption levels and you're certainly not going to get rich people around the world to do that either so we got to innovate our way out of the problem as we've always done right and we should encourage young people who care about that issue to go into climate science and and and Science in general and learn things and they might realize that things are not as bad and the solution isn't throwing soup on paintings or shouting or protesting solution is actually doing things in the real world which there are many young people who are doing that um so look the answer to this is not to sneer at young people the answer to this is take responsibility understand what's happening in our education system uh and look as a sauris a comedian of course I'm going to make fun of St greter of climate change but at the end of the day we have to recognize that um you know the these issues are important to people for a reason we have to address the reasons both real and and mythical and made up uh and that's the solution to this problem just mocking people isn't going to solve it how dare [Laughter] you uh just a couple more questions for us before we we need to conclude but uh Brendan asks what lessons Australians can take from the rest of the world in in combating these issues uh vaccinate and I use this word advisedly vaccinate your children against this ideology when I was uh a young boy in the Soviet Union I probably would have gone to school at 6 or 7 so this was right towards the end of the Soviet Union uh my parents said to me two things first of all do not discuss anything we discuss in the house outside the house and second you're going to go to school they're going to keep teach you a bunch of crap here's why it's all wrong right and if you have any questions come and talk to us that's what you have to do with look that's what you have to do you are in that position now so if you have young children vaccinate them against this ideology uh and that's what that that's a big part of of the solution it starts with you individually and then uh ultimately whatever business institution organization you're in you have to realize this is a civilizational moment you're not going to sit this one out you're not going to sit this one out this is real right the crisis of meaning and the crisis of confidence in the west is real if we continue slipping down this path we will not survive not in the way that we think of our Civilization now look Greece still exists but it's not exactly the same as ancient Greece you know begging Germany for bailouts um Italy still exists but it's not exactly the Roman Empire this is the the the the logical conclusion of what we're doing so wake up if there's any influence you have and you probably have some influence whether it's in your local community whether it's in your some kind of organization whether it's on the board of your school if you have them whether it's in your business and start to actually change the world through small steps that's how it works people doing whatever they can because they realize the moment is here and the moment is here you're not going to S this one out this why you know like I there's literally no reason that I should be sitting here talking to any of you I'm not in any way different to you I was a comedian playing to 80 people in the rooms above a pub in London uh and then I was going home one day and I remember uh I got into an altercation with some guys who um who who told me to go back where I came from or something like that uh and then I came home and I had an email from a comedy promoter which said I'm sorry we've canceled your spot on on on the build tomorrow uh because we have too many straight white men and I went this is weird and so Francis and I my co-host on trigonometry went you know this this is going in the wrong direction let's do something and we started a podcast in a room above a comedy club with zero money zero connections uh zero uh zero social media zero followers zero Talent many people would say um and now we have a million subscribers if you look at our YouTube and podcast and I'm sitting here on the other side of the world talking to you that's how you do it so lar largely to that point we are just about out of time but uh James asks uh comments and then asks many people lack the courage uh to be able to stand up to absurdities excesses of ideologies what advice do you give them almost to do the same thing that you're doing what advice do you give them well not first of all you don't want everyone doing what I'm doing uh I don't want the competition um look everyone's different everyone's got a different role to play uh I people often say well should more people be like you no we've got enough contran like me uh you know genuinely right everybody the role you got to play in this is different for everybody and everyone's got to work it out for themselves um there is no one-size fits all you know what the right thing to do is and just do it you you you you you encounter situations in your life daily where you could do something that would take the conversation or the the business or whatever in a different direction and most of you probably don't because most of us don't right so that is your opportunity to do something and by the way you know I think Jordan is absolutely right about this I I don't do what I do because I have people say oh you're so brave I'm not brave I just see where we're going and I think it's bad and that's the only reason I'm doing what I'm doing uh the moment we I am the turkey that would vote for Christmas I do not want to be here I don't I genuinely don't um there's plenty of other things I could do uh I here because I genuinely think we're in a bad place place and we're heading in the wrong direction and if you agree with me you have a duty to do something that's [Applause] it you may not want to be here but we are very glad that you're here uh we are just about out of time uh everyone please thank Constantine kissen thank you very much you now for decades CIS has been a fiercely inde dependent voice working tirelessly to deliver evidence-based public policy especially in the critical area of Education to be notified of our future videos make sure you subscribe to our Channel and click the notification Bell CIS relies solely on the generosity of people like you to help us Advance our course check out the links on screen now to see how you can get [Music] involved [Music]

Channel: Centre for Independent Studies

Views: 198,273

Keywords: Threat, Civil Discourse, Pluralistic, Illiberalism, Dissent, Prosperity, Siege, Liberalism's Decline, Cancel Culture, Identity Politics, Western Civilisation, SOAS, climate emergency, Alexei Navalny, George Galloway, Nationhood, Douglas Murray, multiculturalism, anti-sematic hate, politically non-binary, mainstream media, Wokeness, TRIGGERnometry, Energy transition, greta thunberg, left, right, migration, language weponisation, safety, harm, classical liberalism, trump, orange man, russia, uk

Id: k6hTS7RIs1c

Length: 56min 58sec (3418 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 12 2024