Konstantin Kisin is a podcaster, a speaker and an author. With Trump's historic victory in the books, the implications of his policies and promises could send shockwaves worldwide. So what does this mean for the future of the West and Trump's impact on the global stage? Expect to learn whether Konstantin is actually right wing or not, if the Trump victory will inspire a broader movement across the globe, what happens if Trump is not able to deliver the big changes he promised, Konstantin’s take on the current state of the UK, what the future of legacy media will look like, whether the mass exodus of users from X is a big deal and much more... Sponsors: See discounts for all the products I use and recommend: https://chriswillx.com/deals Get $350 off the Pod 4 Ultra at https://eightsleep.com/modernwisdom (use code MODERNWISDOM) Get the best bloodwork analysis in America and bypass Function’s 400,000-person waitlist at https://functionhealth.com/modernwisdom Get a 20% discount on the best supplements from Momentous at https://livemomentous.com/modernwisdom Get a Free Sample Pack of all LMNT Flavours with any purchase at https://drinklmnt.com/modernwisdom Extra Stuff: Get my free reading list of 100 books to read before you die: https://chriswillx.com/books Try my productivity energy drink Neutonic: https://neutonic.com/modernwisdom Episodes You Might Enjoy: #577 - David Goggins - This Is How To Master Your Life: https://tinyurl.com/43hv6y59 #712 - Dr Jordan Peterson - How To Destroy Your Negative Beliefs: https://tinyurl.com/2rtz7avf #700 - Dr Andrew Huberman - The Secret Tools To Hack Your Brain: https://tinyurl.com/3ccn5vkp - Get In Touch: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/modernwisdompodcast Email: https://chriswillx.com/contact - Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Chapter 1: Is Konstantin Kisin actually right wing?
So are you right wing? No, I'm still not right wing. I think you're referring to an article in a video I did saying the title of which was fine, call me right wing. And it's basically just me saying I'm tired of like defending myself against this allegation. I'm still not right wing. But if it's really important for people to frame me in that way, that's fine. They can do it.
Why is right wing a disparaging marker? I think the political realm in which we operate is the framing is, I think deep down, if people are honest, it's like the caricature of the left is that they're wrong, but well-meaning. And of the right is that they're like factually more correct, but evil. Callous. Callous and evil and cruel and nasty. And so even if you're right, you're still wrong.
That's kind of the way people seem to- Morally. Morally wrong. Exactly. Exactly. And I think that's what I noticed, right? Because my journey into all of this world, as you know, was like, hey, guys, maybe free speech is quite important. Oh, right wing. I was like, what?
And then I just gradually discovered, you know, thinking that you should be allowed to speak freely makes you right wing, which when I was in my early 20s, you know, George Carlin and Bill Hicks, these were my heroes when I was growing up, these great comedians.
who were getting arrested like george carlin for routine like the seven words you can't say on tv or whatever whatever it was so um that flipped without me realizing that it happened it was a left-wing thing or maybe a universal thing um and then it became a right-wing thing then Thinking your country's not all bad became right wing. And we can go down the list of all of those things.
So I think that it's basically what a lot of people call you if what they want to do is discredit the things that you're saying because they don't actually have a counter argument to what it is that you're saying.
And we can't really be fully aware of somebody's intentions. So castigating, lambasting the moral foundation that it's based on and saying, oh, it's coming from a place of judgment or impoliteness or uncouthness or callousness or whatever is kind of easy slime to throw at someone maybe.
Yeah, and it makes people question people's motives. And a lot of people find people's motives more interesting than the results of the things that they're advocating. So if you go and, you know, try to create this beautiful utopian, which everyone's equal, and you end up killing 50 million people in the process, well, you know, that wasn't real communism.
You were well-intentioned, but you didn't quite live up to the ideals of this great philosophy. Whereas if you actually do things that work, but you have the wrong intentions or you're a bad person, then people don't seem as interested in that.
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Chapter 2: Why is being right wing seen as a negative?
Why is that a salient quote in the modern world?
Well, what his quote about that, Thomas Sowell's quote about that is that's the history of the modern West over the last 30 or 40 years. And I think it's universally true. I mean, we're sitting here in London, for example, where the mantra is diversity is our strength. And the more it's evident that that has flaws in it, the more we double down on the statement, right? So a lot of this is...
uh sloganeering versus reality and i think it's really been amplified by social media to a great extent because i think um things that are not possible in the real world are possible online online you're an avatar which can change its sex it can change its uh everything about it you can be effectively whoever you want to be on you can make statements that are never stress tested Correct.
They're tested only by whether they get likes or they don't get likes. And you see this on the left and the right. There are things both the far left and the far right will say that are absolutely not in any way related to the truth. But they are very appealing to people's feelings. And so they'll do that. Look, the reality is the truth is very unpopular.
And always has been because the truth is messy, unpleasant, complicated. The truth probably doesn't agree with you on a lot of things just necessarily because it's not going to fit exactly to the worldview that you have. So it's very unpleasant and it's much easier to engage in sloganeering for yourself as well as for society.
There's a H.L. Mencken quote, something about simple answers to complex problems are often wrong. That it would be nice if we could constrain down a lot of the issues that we're seeing to something that kind of wrangles the chaos into order.
But I don't know, the chasing for simplicity to me just a lot of the time seems to be retrofitting a new problem to an old solution that you've had for a long time. Everything is because of dot, dot, dot. And this again happens on both sides.
Yeah, and I think usually the easiest telltale sign of working out that someone's full of shit is if they have a single explanation for all the problems that they identify and they're not willing to recognize the trade-offs in these situations. So I think in answer to your question, why is this happening, even more so now.
I just think we live in a world where we're much more governed by emotion and feeling than we are by the heart. You know, I'm reading Churchill's diaries of World War II right now. And it's funny to the extent to which the stuff that he clearly takes for granted in describing things is now... would now be completely abhorrent to our sensibilities.
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Chapter 3: How does the political narrative shape perceptions of free speech?
Well, what's interesting to me was that, so we were in the US before the election, during the election and after the election. And on the day of the election, we flew from Austin in Texas to LA and all the people that we know in Austin were like, what are you doing? You're going to LA for the riots for when Trump wins, you know, there's going to be.
And when we got to LA and we were there on the night of the election and then we were there for a week after, literally like there was nothing. Nobody, there was no reaction of any kind. And I think that was because the scale of the victory was very, very important. It's like nobody can pretend that America didn't vote in this direction anymore. It wasn't Russia collusion.
It wasn't blah, blah, blah. It was like Americans looked at this and went on balance. We prefer this. I thought that was very important. As for whether that has a chance to spread, well, look, America is the place where we all download our memes, right? So I always think of the example of during the summer of BLM when we had protesters in this country in London.
in front of police officers saying hands up don't shoot in front of cops that don't carry guns it's good like that's not a real thing you've just downloaded the meme yeah and you're misapplying it here about something that really doesn't affect british people in anything like the same way And I think that possibility is there. I hope it's there.
And by the way, I'm not someone who thinks that the Trump presidency is nailed on to be a positive thing for the world. It's not guaranteed. It's an opportunity. And it really fundamentally depends on whether he's able to govern and deliver the things that he promised to the American people.
One of the fascinating things as well, and this is actually something Francis, my co-host on Trigonometry pointed out, is if you look at the... the kind of the lineup of the Trump campaign. The people at the very top of that are all Democrats, former Democrats. Trump, Elon, Vivek, Tulsi, RFK. They're all former Democrats. And so what you're looking at is not a super right-wing coalition.
Actually, it was really a broad movement that won people over on the promise of a number of things, improving the economy, cutting government waste, closing the border, dealing with illegal immigration, and sorting out the geopolitical situation. None of those things are particularly right-wing, actually.
And he stayed away on the campaign trail from a lot of the more controversial issues like abortion, for example. He was actually very centrist about that.
Now, if he can deliver on those things, if he can close the border and deal with illegal immigration, if America's economy is booming, and if Elon and Vivek take an axe to the government bureaucracy and it's still standing and able to function in the same way that X is still standing after he fired 80% of the people… I don't see how that doesn't inspire people around the world. I don't see it.
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Chapter 4: What are Hungary's family policies and their effects?
Given that you're downstream, hopefully, from the US, though, if that is...
But I really don't – until the political leadership changes, I don't see how it changes. Because even if you could tell me, well, look, Gen Z men are not woke. Great. What are they ruling? What are they deciding? Who gives a shit what they think? You know what I mean? Other than me and you. So the political power to change the things that are embedded in institutions – That's what this is about.
That's why Trump has a chance to reset it in the US. Then hopefully it's inspirational to the rest of us.
What's your assessment on the state of the UK at the moment?
Um, at the moment, I think it's fucked. I really do. Um, I, you know, I, I love this country. I really do. But at the moment I feel like, have you ever heard that Mickey Flanagan joke about going to Brighton? So Mickey Flanagan is a very famous, very successful British comedian.
Um, and I remember he did a show in Brighton and, um, he talked about, you know, coming, the contrast between London, the big city and Brighton, the seaside town that he comes in. He went, You know, you get on the train in London, you're really stressed and you just, you get on the train, it's full, it's packed, it's uncomfortable.
And then you just, you get off at the station and bright and you, you smell the sea air and you can feel the ambition just draining out of you. It's kind of how I feel about the UK. And I know that. And the reason I'd say that is that all the bright and talented people that I know are leaving. Anyone who can is. All the rich people are leaving.
3%.
Right. So we're losing the people who have created the jobs. who are creating the jobs and who are going to create the jobs. And one of the reasons is they look at the environment that we're operating in.
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Chapter 5: What makes Trump's political messaging effective?
Yeah. Do you think Trump would have got in if Elon hadn't bought X? Nobody knows. I suspect not, but maybe he would have done. I don't think anybody really knows. I think Elon's support and X was a big factor. Cool thought experiment. But I really hope that over time what happens is Elon continues to improve X and there are improvements that could be made.
And certainly finding a way, like I don't need to see the N word in every reply thread. Do you know what I mean? Do you see what I'm saying? Like that would be quite nice. And I'm sure there's ways of dealing with that. You know, Eric Weinstein, when we had him on, we had a kind of back and forth and I sort of accused him of not having solutions and I don't have solutions exactly, but I think.
The problem Jordan Peterson put his finger on a long time ago is that online anonymity causes a lot of issues. Online anonymity is also extremely valuable, but there's got to be some way of finding some kind of golden middle.
There are no solutions, only trade-offs. Right. Yeah. What was it that he once said? Anonymity online has driven the proximate price of being a prick down to zero.
Mm-hmm.
And so my point is, I'm not a snowflake who's triggered by some unpleasant word in the thing. I just recognize that if we're going to have a public square, the most retarded person ever shouting the most offensive word that he can think of the loudest is probably not conducive to a healthy discussion.
And also, is it an enjoyable environment to be in? You want to go onto social media, you know, everybody's seen this. It was Tristan Harris or the litany of limbic hijack techniques that we've seen from intermittent schedule rewards to designs being taken from gambling and casinos and stuff, all of that stuff. Even if that is all happening,
at least trying to restrict down to make it an enjoyable experience. If you're going to hack my fundamental psychology to get me addicted to this app, at least have the thing that I'm addicted to, the content that I'm addicted to be something that once I finish up, I go, ah. So I went to this Spotify event in LA a couple of weeks ago. They announced this new creative partner program thing.
And I went there and I got to sit down with Alex Nordstrom, who's president. And he told me, Roman Wasson-Muller as well, who's like the head of podcasting, told me the same thing. He said, we want the hour that people spend on Spotify every day, no matter what it is, but they're specifically talking about podcasting. We want that to be the best hour of their day that they spend on their screens.
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