Optimism for the Western Project

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

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Related Links

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

Transcript

James Patterson:

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

Helen Dale:

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

Konstantin Kisin:

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

Helen Dale:

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

Konstantin Kisin:

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

Helen Dale:

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

Konstantin Kisin:

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

Helen Dale:

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

Konstantin Kisin:

Very badly.

Helen Dale:

… and why do you think it needs more optimism?

Konstantin Kisin:

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

Helen Dale:

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

Konstantin Kisin:

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

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

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

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

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

Helen Dale:

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

Konstantin Kisin:

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

Helen Dale:

Yeah, it’s interesting you’ve gone with the gratitude line, and at some point, if not a book