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Discussion with Konstantin Kisin on issues in Heterodox land (Video) *UNEDITED* (Patreon)

Published:
2022-09-28 05:32:35
Imported:
2026-06
Tags:

Content

Well, this was an interesting one.Konstantin Kisin from Tiggernometry agreed to a debate/interview about the relative issues and problems in the heterodox sphere and the 'mainstream media'.We covered political partisanship, Joe Rogan's covid content, vaccine and covid coverage in the media, the impact of personal relationships, the heterodox spheres potential bias toward the right, Triggernometry's promotion of the Epoch Times, and so on.Will be interesting to hear people's feedback on this one. But I do think Konstantin deserves credit for his responsiveness and willingness to listen to replies/criticisms.Matt wasn't familiar with their content and didn't want to interrupt the flow so he ended up playing the role of the Third in this conversation. I did check in during if he wanted to ask anything but he told me nope and to carry on.

Anyway, let me know what you think.

Files

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Interview with Konstantin Kisin from Triggernometry. Matt decided to play the role of the Third.

Comments

Ymirsdreams

Really interesting conversation. One of the things many people who appear adjacent to the more extreme content creators do is say "I differ strongly from MrMissMrs on their stance on XYZ in respect to ABC". The unstated major premise being that issue 'XYZ' is a litmus test for whether or not criticisms of MrMissMrs either apply to them or that they have to take into account their views on 'ABC' in their interactions with them. It's a rhetorical trick that only needs to be played out in terms of qualities to see how fallacious it is: "Julie murdered her husband with a gun. I have never owned a gun. Therefore, saying that I am an accomplice just because I helped bury the body is silly."

André Alessi

"Tiggernometry" is absolutely something I'd listen to. 🐅

Alex Anderson

Thanks gents for having him on. I listen to Triggernometry and find the guys hilarious despite not agreeing with all their politics and endorsements. Looking forward to this

Andy First

I think if you characterized some of the people you call “right wing” or “far right” in this convo (such as Rogan or the Epoch Times) as either populist or anti-establishment, you might have an easier time connecting with people on that side of the spectrum as they’re more likely to identify with those labels. It also has the bonus side effect of explaining why someone like Rogan might endorse a politician like Bernie Sanders (the elites are conspiring to screw you over is a popular sentiment on both political sides and if you’re prone to that kind of messaging it might not matter which side is pushing it). Anyway, loved the convo and I hope you do more confrontational-style interviews in the future. The ones you’ve done so far (this, Robert Wright, Sam Harris) have been some of my favorites!

Sebastian

This guy seems similar to Sam Harris. 1. Strategic disclaimers 2. "I'M A CENTRIST! MY VIEWS ARE NUANCED AND COMPLEX!" 3. Mentions personal relationships with Joe, Brett, Heather, as deflection 4. Still re-litigating old media grievances 5. TOTALLY out of touch with experts on the ground in entire fields he criticizes (with Sam it's politics/academia, with this guy it's medicine) 6. Keeps citing mysterious anonymous sources in his life that confirm his particular viewpoint... 7. Palpable and borderline corny need to brand himself as contrarian (kinda goes with (2) but worth pointing out again). 8. Used his own ethnic background to suggest he's untouchable on a certain topic. Sam cites Ashkanazi Jewish heritage as though it makes him immune to endorsing white supremacist ideas. This guy did a similar thing with Russia/Ukraine, but didn't really elaborate... don't these guys hate identity politics?? 9. Dinner parties 10. "We need to be able to have these conversations." Pro civility-porn. Not alienating people you disagree with is of civilizational importance. Suggested cultural importance of the conversations being had on his podcast. 11. Fear mongers about censorship 12. "Being anti-immigration doesn't make you far-right." "Far right = Neo-Nazis and open fascists." 13. January 6th was the straw that broke the camel's back, not just, you know... Trump in and of himself 14. Audibly triggered by Chris when things get uncomfortable... hehe Hmmmm... I wonder if he, Joe and Sam are a member of the same... nah couldn't be. Sam doesn't fat-shame

Klas Bergholtz

This guy is the king of false eqvivelance. This was an exercise in willfull ignorance and pretending that far right politics is centrist

SHOUNAK SARKAR

Well well well! I found Kisin to be a smarmy, smug humourless prick who takes himself way too seriously. He contradicted himself multiple times within the span of a single sentence or paragraph. Plus also committed numerous logical fallacies. 1) Stated that he’s a classical liberal and that to him the fact that Fox News is propagandistic & not reliable is a given. But In the next breath, added that publications like Guardian are actually more inaccurate than Fox News. 2) With regards to Joe Rogan, said that based on Rogan’s current rhetoric he would classify him as centre-right but in the very next sentence stated that it would be wrong to label Rogan as a conservative. WTF??? Isn’t being centre right equivalent to being a moderate conservative? After all people like Charles Gimson, Andrew Neil, Tom Nichols, Charlie Sykes refer to themselves as being a conservative and on the centre-right side of politics. 3) Also came up with the usual Bernie Sanders & Cornel West defences for Rogan whilst ignoring the many far-right guests like Gavin Mcinnes, Molyneux, Alex Jones, Milo, Owen Benjamin, Sargon, Ted Nugent etc on his show. 4) Kisin equated vaccination for Covid-19 with obesity. Stated that forcing people to take vaccination for Covid-19 is as unethical as forcing people to take a vaccine for obesity!!! Well obesity is not contagious you fucking moron, so people not taking vaccines for obesity are not harming other people. 5) In one breath, suggested that he doesn’t approve of what Viktor Orban is doing and in the very next breath said that he doesn’t know anything about Hungarian politics. 6) He also made false equivalencies between the left’s reaction to the 2016 election and the right’s reaction to the 2020 election. Not a single Democrat campaigned in 2020 on the basis that the 2016 election was stolen and not a single popular progressive channel on YouTube said this either. I could do this whole day. This dude is just a more refined version of Tim Pool (but equally unlikable) and he got exceedingly defensive and agitated through the course of the interview. Credit to Chris for his measured and surgical pushback, which allowed just enough rope for Kisin to hang himself. He certainly was very vocal about attacking left wing people and media, but got weirdly defensive about Nigel Farage, Seb Gorka and the openly propagandistic Epoch Times etc. Also lol at Matt for sitting there and looking bored and tired through the entire interview 😂! Honestly, Kisin is hands down the worst and most insufferable podcast guest in DTG history. Just another arrogant, reactionary culture warrior asshole pretending to be tribeless.

collapsing

I mean the way he came across on Rogan was an obvious embrace of US libertarianism , anti- political correctness, and tbf fairly down on European / British mindset. However, as he , cleverly demanded examples for all your criticisms you struggled to make your points, despite fact the 'vibe' as Matt would say is clear. I've listened to some of their stuff and it's cringe- the way they misrepresented Harris in their promo clips, ringing endorsement of Epoch times on adverts and weird wish to get back to the 1970's British comedy. i have to say - i felt a lot of civility porn at work on your side- easy for him as he was in the hot seat and genuinely think these conversations need Matt involved who gives a different perspective above the culture war stuff but very perceptive on bullshit and not UK/ US tainted and one of reason the blend of show works well. Currently former Tories are calling this UK govt budget 'far right hijack' so yknow theres economic right wing thought not just trains running on time and uniforms. Again danger is people listening to this will have got wrong impression imho on what Triggernometry is . Brexit has been taken over by economic right , far or not, helped by Farages lies and check out how that's going . Johnson lied, Truss lied just ladt week and again just degrees different from what is expected from other side. i do agree left, far left. right etc has become meaningless so if you do keep going in these culture wars ( in same way as everything is stories, everything is people ...) everything is politics no matter how hard you try to avoid it.

Exai

So far as this can be said of anyone who looks up to Bret Weinstein, he's clearly not a total idiot (edit: I said this at around the 40 minute mark and retract the claim after finishing the ep), but as is common, appears blind to the blindness that's innate to his own massive industry. In the end, people like Konstantin are all about emotion and affect and personal relationships. This is fine in a deeply human sense (it's hard not to be!), but it ignores how his clique's ethics and aesthetics are one and the same. Wittgenstein pointed this out in general. Almost by definition, reactionary conspiracy mongering is seen as honest and brave truth-seeking, whereas mainstream media (or any public health office for instance) consists of decadent and manipulative professional liars. No difference between Fox and Guardian besides their preferred narratives. Do I have a narrative? Of course not! Am I a product of my audience or relationships? No, I just love truth and hate liars! How do I know I'm telling the truth? I know I'm not lying! How do I know they're lying? I know I'm telling the truth! There are two different standards here: truth-tellers are judged by the abstract personal impression of how honest they appear as human beings, even friends; journalists, doctors, scientists and such are judged as a totality and systemic failure by the fact that some of them potentially exhibit the same personal features and biases as the previous group. The former, even when talking total bullshit, is speaking the language of a deeper truth. The latter, even when providing their audience with facts, is doing so in the context of the Big Lie. The ultimate crime is to think of the heterodox sphere as any kind of collective with an ideological leaning or agenda: they are all individuals with genuine faces and voices and thoughts and feelings. Chris' failure to toe this line genuinely triggered Kisin at multiple points. A similarly terrible mistake is to imagine that anyone can be afforded the status of an individual without first having dinner parties with the podcasting class. Wouldn't it be more accurate to call this the homodox sphere? Helen Lewis made the point that there is something deeply American about how the supposed con-men of our media ecosystems are more or less the regular people who stare at a computer screen and have meetings, eight hours a day, for a proper middle class salary, whereas these intrepid truth-magnets fly private jets to celebrate their cancellations and silencings with some best compensated speaking gigs in the world. There is no dynamic that corrupts the latter, certainly not any human factors (Game B! Enlightened centrism! Meditation! and so on). There is nothing that could redeem the former. This is prosperity gospel: for honesty and bravery, just follow the the richest televangelist you can find.

Paul Sees

Is there an audio only version? My boss preferrs if I at least pretend to work while he's paying me...

Curtis Kofoed

Kisin is such a poorly informed sloppy thinker. I’m genuinely embarrassed by how bad the guy’s takes are.

Peter

When is Chris going to let Matt go home, surely his community service requirement has been satisfied by now… ;)

Chris (The Rewired Soul)

Man. I'm glad you pressed him, but I think he was using this strange strawman strategy to avoid what you were actually asking. You weren't asking him to defend the views of these other people. But he kept saying, "ask me about me and not other people". That's what you were doing. This guy isn't known for going around with his own views. He's known for running a podcast that HAS PEOPLE ON. And he defends a lot of people. You were asking him about HIS justifications and rationalizations for HIS behavior talking with, defending, and associating with these people. It was just oh so frustrating to watch him dodge this stuff because wtf else were you going to talk to him about? What else does he do aside from associate with these people.? It's difficult to explain, but it was like a genius strategy on his end, but we all could see what you were actually asking and how he chose to interpret it.

Nick Wiebe

Something interesting struck me about the topology of this conversation ;)

Kyle Wilson

I’ve never heard anyone repeatedly contradict themselves as egregiously as this clown did.

Nina Davies

Hi Chris - I seem to be the only one who thinks this was a good conversation! If I was interviewing Konstantine I would have talked to him about Ukraine. How was it for him to watch his hetrodox friends and associates put out their hot takes? Also, it is interesting that when he actually knows about something deeply and intimately he in rather in line with the main stream journalists. I think there is something lost in the way he thinks which has much to do with his cultural homelessness.

Curtis Kofoed

Kisin is a master at bad faith false equivalence. His conflation of 2016 election coverage and 2020 election theft stuff is really telling.

Rasterisk

An ignorant and/or disingenuous schmuck redefining the far right while defending his far-right advertisers and lecturing Chris that words have meaning 💀 “The Epoch Times is a far-right international multi-language newspaper and media company affiliated with the Falun Gong new religious movement.” —Wikipedia entry, sentence 1

privateer

Note to future pandemic planners: Carve out an exception for allowing comedians to perform. Their fragile egos need to be stroked regularly. Sure they might kill the people dumb enough to show up to their act. But they can do a lot more damage with their podcasts.

Heath Lancaster

Kisin: when have I not been critical of someone? Chris: Sebastian Gorka, Douglas Murry, Bret and Heather Weinstein. Kisin: that doesn’t count.

privateer

Chris deserves a lot of credit for this. He had the the receipts. And those receipts take a lot of time. I think when these people get called out, they know that people usually don’t have examples ready to go. It’s an easy dodge. He tried to get out of Chris’s examples but he was squirming.” It was odd how he had no problem, not knowing anything about his guests controversial beliefs. But he expected you to know every nuance of his stances. I agree with the other Sam Harris comparisons.

Haley

Oh man, my aversion to conflict was really triggered by this one; I couldn't stop internally squirming. I need to listen to more people strongly disagreeing to rid myself of that - conflict and disagreement are a part of life. And maybe get into more debates myself, hah!

Jason Etheridge

It was uncomfortable listening, as the best conversations tend to be! I don't personally agree with all of Konstantin's positions, but I do appreciate his adherence to the principle of "attack the ideas, not the person". That is, he can very good friends with Bret and Heather, but still disagree with them. Our culture generally seems to equate being on friendly terms with implicitly offering partisan support; this is terrible, as it essentially eliminates the ability to actually talk about real issues to find the common ground which usually exists. Neither side of any issue should really get what they want, with the compromise in the middle being the ideal choice (which sucks least to all concerned). While I understand why Chris was continuing to bring up the people he "platforms", it's also true that his show doesn't tend to go easy on their guests. The questions aren't necessarily softballs, though obviously they're not as hard on people who they tend to agree with. Overall, it really was a good discussion. If you guys talk to Konstantin again, it'd be worth focussing more on the positions he and Francis hold. And how about a DTG on Triggernometry itself? Do they count as gurus?

Jesse Hodges

I don’t understand how a conversation continues after someone claims that The Guardian and Fox News propagate equal quantity and equal magnitude of disinformation. This should be a conversation stopper. If someone says this to me, the conversation is over. There is no use continuing discussion. That’s not to say that The Guardian gets everything right or even that they should be relied upon. It’s to say that Fox News is many orders of magnitude worse, and it’s incredibly obvious to anyone with half a “centrist” brain.

Ryan Goss

I have nothing else constructive to add that hasn't been said, but goddamn was this frustrating to listen to. Chris, you have the patience of a saint.

Mike Nelson

All I can say is that Matt must be my spirit animal. I do believe he and I rolled our eyes at this fellow at the same rate.

Alex Bowers

Enlightened centrist 🤣🤣. Anyone who doesn’t recognize the Epoch Times’ content as warmed over John Birch Society bs is either willfully ignorant or disingenuous.

Conal dunn

I thought you did a great job Chris velvet glove iron fist style. You are right to acknowledge his gaminess I suppose simply because he probably hates that sort of charitable sentiment.

Astrolabium

I am in awe of Chris's patience - to sit through an hour+ of motte-and-bailey equivocation... The pain on Matt's face is real.

Tom McCool

I gave him 20 minutes. Good to eliminate one of the too many voices on offer.

Gil Garcia

I now understand why the heterodox call themselves centrists. They are meticulously incurious about the policy positions of groups like CPAC and Victor Orban's party. This allows them to be blind to the overlap between their own policy positions and the policy positions of those groups. The Epoch Times is distributed for free in my neighborhood. It's unashamedly Christian Nationalist, which I think is far-right. Unfortunately, few people who are sympathetic to the policy positions of Christian Nationalists would characterize Christian Nationalists as far-right.

Devin Poore

Trying to fact check Gorka's purported claims about his children that Kisin signal boosted here. Reminder that the claims were that Gorka's son was attacked in a "national newspaper headline" and called a "traitor" and his daughter was almost forced out of school for being accused of racism. All I could find was an acknowledgement of a retracted article about his son from The Forward, a Jewish publication I'd never heard of before with a circulation of ~28,000 as of 2013, an article from Gorka's own website about being called a Nazi at his daughter's graduation, and a controversy that emerged at Trinity College when she was a senior over some inflammatory comments - that had nothing to do with Julia Gorka - made by 2 professors at the college. Anyone else able to track down anything more substantive? In any case, I take issue with Kisin's line - and it's a sentiment oft touted in the IDW/enlightened centrist crowd - that we need to be willing to entertain the notion that the people with whom an average lefty (it always seems to be the lefties getting lectured in this fashion... hmmm... curious) may strongly disagree with have a genuine commitment to the country and they care about it deeply (again, a sentiment that is curiously absent when the focus is on some individual on the "woke" team), it's just that they have a different opinion on how to approach certain issues and the best way to move forward as a country. That's probably true enough most of the time when you're talking about the average citizen, but you still have to be willing to draw some lines in the sand. I'm sure that Marjorie Taylor Greene or Lauren Boebert or Charlie Kirk would be able to sit down and have a charming dinner with any given person and craft a sympathetic narrative about their grievances and political opinions - this is the very point that Chris admirably tried to get across to Sam Harris in their conversation (alas to no avail) - and yet the political opinions of all three of these highly influential conservatives, two of them sitting congressional representatives, include the notion that the United States should be a Christian theocracy. They have aired this view publicly. There's simply no charity to give to a view such as that for anyone who values secularism. There's no acknowledging that they simply have a different view, but that they still care about the country when their conception of what the country is differs in such a fundamental way. Civility porn shouldn't trump the harsh judgement of individuals who espouse ideas like that. Ironically, people like Sam have been curiously quiet about these kinds of developments within the GOP in spite of his professed commitment to criticizing Islam on the basis of its encouraging systems of theocracy. American congressional reps are getting applause at national conservative conventions for openly advocating Christian theocracy and yet it's wokeism that remains the most dangerous ideological pathogen in America. It must be called out over and over again and its adherents (whether rightly or wrongly categorized as "woke") chastised endlessly for forcing the right wing to become dangerous lunatics I guess. The asymmetry in critical analysis by these self appointed intellectuals and "enlightened centrists" continues to be infinitely frustrating.

Tim Tripp

So the Guardian is less accurate than Fox? It would be nice to hear some examples. I think Fox is pretty mainstream in American, sadly to say. Right wing media is huge. Free speech trumps the right to life? To me that is what it boils down to in a pandemic. I guess I am not an enlightened centrist, gladly so if Konstantin is an example form.

Tim Tripp

I do not recall the mainstream media saying the 2016 election being stolen. Unduly influenced yes. My sources were/are the Washington Post, the Toronto Globe and Mail, the Toronto Star and the CBC. I would call this a false equivalence. Would writing a story on Hunter Biden have not unduly influenced the 2020 election? Much like the magically timed release of more of Hilary's emails just before the 2016 election. It seems to me that the heart of the problem with many of the heterdox thinkers is that they are not good students of history. Many politicians claim to love their country and that they want the best for it, including fascists. I think the issue is in how they define country and who is considered a fellow countrymen for lack of a better word.

elcid

Only 13 minutes in and the false equivalency is let loose. I need a break already! I suspect this fellow is a comedian in the same way that Joe Rogan is a comedian… will listen to the rest later when I’ve had a couple of Ardbeg’s! And a couple for Matt!

Jenny

Just listening to this now, but did I understand correctly that he thinks the progressive left is dangerous because of the reaction it will provoke from the violent right? WTH kind of logic is that? It’s along the same lines as blaming a woman for getting raped because she wore a mini-skirt. Isn’t it the violent side of the equation that should draw your concern instead?

Jenny

OMG I don’t know how much of this I can take. A few things about the 2016 election: Clinton conceded. A left-wing mob did not storm the Capitol. The Muller report did show evidence of Russian disinformation tactics on social media and proved contacts between Trumps’s team and the Russians. PAUL MANAFORT WAS HIS CAMPAIGN MANAGER. On the other side, while there were questions about various shenanigans (Comey letter etc), there was no far-reaching and influential left-wing ecosystem pushing the idea of a stolen election (plus he said that this narrative was pushed for 4 years. What?). Clinton didn't even ask for a recount, anywhere, even in the really close states! (The only person who pretended to ask for a recount was Jill Stein but in retrospect that was just a fundraiser.) After that election Democrats were mostly focused on blaming each other, with the Clinton side blaming Sanders for not conceding and the Sanders side blaming the DNC for running Clinton in the first place. Meanwhile after the 2020 election the Trump team was filing multiple lawsuits in court (losing almost every single one), mounting ridiculous recounts that were looking for Chinese bamboo ballots and stealing data from voting machines, all sorts of insane stuff. They have created a narrative totally unmoored from reality, and yet the wife of a sitting Supreme Court justice said just a couple of days ago - under oath to a Congressional committee - that she thinks the election was stolen. This false equivalency nonsense is hurting my brain. It’s so frustrating that somebody who claims to be so centrist and fair minded has such huge blind spots to his own RW sympathies. It’s the old Overton Window thing, that RW positions become the “sensible middle” (reminding me of equally mind-bending convos I’ve had in the last week with people about how Italy’s new PM isn’t far right, she’s just saying "common sense" things). I'd like actual reasonable people, like our mighty GuruPod hosts, to speak specifically to this phenomenon of so called "reasonable" guys like this guest creating some false middle ground between the "left" agenda - which does not even exist in the way they imagine and basically amounts to a parade of moral panics - and what's going on on the right before our very eyes with armed and militarized conspiracy theorists.

F

god that was frustrating >__>

Louise

Chris you have an admirable level of patience, especially as Konstantin was clearly becoming visibly agitated. There is nothing unreasonable about asking him questions concerning the nature of the guests he chooses to platform and what they have previously said in the past (it's all relative). I was growing increasingly annoyed by his refusal to recognise that Triggernometry does have a very clear bias towards guests of a specific political persuasion.

Geoff Whiting

"The threat from the progressive left, particularly in the reaction it would trigger from the right, is a far bigger concern than some of the other stuff" kind of sounds like a problem with the right...

Alex Nelson

Really can't stand the false equivalence between 2020 election denying and Russia investigations in 2016/2017. Trump was refusing to concede and *was president at the time*-- how does that never seem to factor into these guys analysis. Cmon man.