Konstantin Kisin Quotes

I actually get invited on TV a lot nowadays, and I don't do as much of it as I used to. And part of the reason is that once you've [got] the heroin of a long term conversation, why would you drop down to methadone? This is so much more fulfilling and satisfying. We're sitting here for a good chunk of time, you're giving me the space to speak, you're not talking over me, you're not trying to make me look bad [...], and [in corporate media] you get three minutes to make one point. And look, there's a market out there for that [but] I enjoy this. I enjoy having a conversation [and] connecting with somebody, getting to know how they think and them getting to know how I think, disagreeing where there's disagreement but doing it in a constructive way as opposed to going for the click bait and all of that. That is a really fulfilling part of doing Triggernometry for me. We get to interview fascinating people [...] and we just sit and learn. [...] How many people get the opportunity to sit down with a great mind for an hour and just engage, and speak, and listen, and think about the world? To me, that is incredibly gratifying. And I don't think that if i was hosting something on TV [that] I'd get a chance to do that.

Many comedians I’ve spoken to agree that this kind of entitled, moralistic response is more commonplace than ever before. Perhaps it’s related to what psychologists have identified as a general escalation of narcissistic behaviour. Or maybe it’s an inevitable by-product of social media, through which offence-seeking has turned into a kind of amateur sport.

This chapter is a plea from the heart to journalists—please stop fucking with the media. It is not yours to co-opt or use to spread propaganda. You are merely stewards of the industry.

George Carlin, probably the world’s greatest-ever comedian, once said that the comedian’s job is to find the line and then cross it.

During the whole Ngozi Fulani affair, it was covered like it was a terrorist attack when you sort of think there's probably much bigger core issues affecting way more people.

Just as journalists have turned into activists, so too have comedians. Not all, but a large number. They have morphed into representatives of a political agenda and they’ll censor anyone who doesn’t help them further it. They don’t want to criticise what you do or what you say or engage in debate; that would be a waste of time. They simply want to punish you, silence you and achieve their political goals by any means necessary.

Perhaps most importantly of all, comedy is a by-product of the West and its virtues. Think about it: do you really think there’s much cutting-edge comedy going on in Afghanistan, China or Crimea? How about Venezuela, Libya or Kazakhstan? The answer is no. This is because comedy stems from freedom; it is representative of unfettered expression and open dialogue. To try and clip comedy’s wings is profoundly anti-Western—but then again, maybe that’s the whole point.

The radical left is the home of the unhappy—and how best to create more miserable people than to break down the roots that give us security, stability and fulfilment?

If your goal is to force people to accept your unsubstantiated views you have to change the meaning of words. The purpose of newspeak is to create wrongthink.

When you have some kid, who works for Twitter in the Philippines, censoring a Nobel Prize-winning scientist, speaking about his area of expertise, I think we've lost the plot.

The events of the last two weeks have shattered the illusion that wokeness is about protecting victims and standing up for persecuted minorities. This ideology is and has always been about the one thing many of us have told you it is about for years: power. And after the last two weeks, there can be no doubt about how these people will use any power they seize: they will seek to destroy, in any way they can, those who disagree.

Other than a handful of lunatics who advocate the idea of open borders, most of us understand that there is a sensible level of immigration which, when exceeded, becomes disruptive to existing communities. This, in turn, does everyone a disservice, including the immigrants themselves.

[About Triggernometry and mainstream media:] We don't have a budget to employ a bunch of people to do extensive research on things or to do fact checking for us. So we can't do certain things that the mainstream media can do, and should do. The problem is the mainstream media isn't doing it either. [...] There's a really important role for the mainstream media. I just wish they'd play that role. [...] New media has its own problems. It over rewards charisma. It over rewards passion. It massively under rewards any attempts to cling to truth. It encourages people to go off in the pursuit of the most exciting take, and truth isn't always exciting. The truth is we need a vibrant ecosystem in which all of these different pieces play their own different roles, which is why I'm in favour of maximum freedom because that's when you get everybody doing their thing. Over time people who want wholesome content if you like, when it comes to fact or information or whatever, can seek it out. Because people aren't stupid.

The big difference between those ‘alternative’ comedians and today’s activists is that the former actually pushed against the establishment. They challenged the formula and rewrote the rules, whereas modern-day wokeness is the establishment. It sets the rules and enforces the punishments. Every major comedy agent, TV commissioner and producer is looking for the next woke act, preferably one who ticks as many diversity boxes as possible. This isn’t a bottom-up revolution; it’s a totalitarian cult in which people with power tell everyone else what they can and can’t joke about.

One of the things people don't say enough about free speech is "Yes, it causes harm but the harm is worth it." And we don't make that argument because it's too honest and complicated and unpleasant.