Can Australia Endure the Woke Onslaught？ - Konstantin Kisin
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
170.30746
Summary
In this episode, I speak at events in Perth, Sydney, Melbourne, and Canberra, Australia, about the state of the country's identity politics. I talk about how identity politics are a symptom of a larger problem, which is apathy.
Transcript
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For the last two weeks, I've had the great pleasure of traveling around Australia and
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speaking at various events in Perth, Sydney, Melbourne, Newcastle, and Canberra. While a
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terrific honor for me, this is undoubtedly a bad sign for Australia. The tragedy of my career is
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that I say obvious things that everyone knows and am lavished with entirely unmerited praise and
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response. It pains me to point this out, but if Constance and Kissin has been invited to give a
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series of talks in your country, all is not well. This is the bad news for Australia.
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It appears to have been infected with the same mind virus as the rest of the Anglosphere.
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The symptoms are all too familiar. Identity politics fueled by the false teaching of history.
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Political polarization. Two-tier policing with anti-lockdown protests brutally suppressed,
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followed by the police standing by as crowds chant, gas the Jews, outside the Sydney Opera House
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due to fears of upsetting social cohesion. The number of children being treated for gender dysphoria
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at Victoria's Royal Children's Hospital's gender clinic has increased by over a thousand percent in less
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than a decade. Some journalists at the ABC, the country's national broadcaster, avoid revealing their
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nuanced political views to colleagues for fear of appearing insufficiently woke. Corporations jump on
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every progressive cause with enthusiasm. Activists want to cancel Australia Day. Instead of being a day of
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national unity, they want to turn it into one of shame and self-flagellation. It is all happening
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for the same reasons too. In the words of pioneer investor Peter Thiel, courage is now in shorter
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supply than genius. This is sadly also true in the land down under. While the center-left appeases its
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extremist fringe, many on the center-right hesitate to challenge the cultural vandalism they observe
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for fear of being described as culture warriors. And with good reason. While the symptoms of the mind
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virus are visible to outside observers like me and those in the media and politics, in truth, for the
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moment, the infection remains comparatively asymptomatic. This is the good news. As things stand, Australia's
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biggest challenge is not extremism, it is apathy born of comfort. Life here is good and the differences to the
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rest of the Anglosphere are remarkable. Unlike major American and increasingly British cities, the streets
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and parks here are not overrun with people suffering from the scourges of addiction, homelessness, and
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crime. Sydney and Melbourne ranked among the top 10 safest cities in the world in the Economist Intelligence
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Unit's Safe Cities Index 2021, and as the third and fourth most livable cities in the world according to
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the Economist Intelligence Unit's Global Livability Index 2023. With mining, drilling, and agriculture
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are responsible for over 70% of the country's exports, Australia has highly paid jobs for those
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outside of the laptop class. A mine truck driver can earn over $130,000 Australian dollars a year,
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that's nearly £70,000, while going down into the mine can bring as much as $250,000 Aussie dollars,
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£130,000. I know many lawyers, senior doctors, and other professionals in London who can only dream of
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such earnings. Indeed, a doctor friend doubled her salary the day she moved to Australia from the UK.
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And while many will tell you that political polarisation is the worst it's ever been,
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they'll often do so while sitting around a table with people of different political viewpoints.
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As a senior politician put it at one such gathering,
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I don't want the other party to be elected, but I know they eventually will be, and I want them to be
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the best possible government for Australia when they are. It's hard to put into words how much this is
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not the case in Britain and America. On cultural issues too, while apathy is how woke activists are
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able to continue hollowing out the country's institutions, when forced to step away from
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the Barbie and vote in the Aboriginal voice referendum last year, ordinary Australians made
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their feelings clear. Fronted by the courageous Jacinta Price, the No campaign overturned a one-sided
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onslaught from the country's media, corporate, and political elite, with 60% voting against embedding
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identity politics and the constitution. On immigration too, Australians engage in debates
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that many of us would give our right arms to have. While tens of thousands of people come to the UK
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on small boats illegally every year, and millions stream in through the porous southern border of
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the United States, Australia has comprehensively solved this problem. Far from being some sort of
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voodoo magic, which is what it feels like it would take to address this issue in our countries,
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all that was needed for the then Prime Minister Tony Abbott to stare down at resistance civil
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service and legal challenges to deliver Operation Sovereign Borders in 2013. While Abbott still attracts
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criticism and protest, as I discovered when I had the honour of joining him on stage at Sydney
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University event, the facts of the matter are simple. 74 people came to Australia illegally on boats in
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2023, down from 17,202 in 2012. It can be done. It just takes balls, and miraculously, some Aussie
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politicians still have them. In many ways, travelling to Australia from Britain feels like a journey 10 years
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into the past. In previous decades, that would have sounded like a hacked joke meant to paint Aussies as
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provincial and unsophisticated people. But today, it is both a compliment and a warning.
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Australians talk proudly of having the most successful multicultural country in the world,
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because they've yet to discover what both David Cameron and Angela Merkel were forced to confess
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many years ago. Multiculturalism doesn't work. Neither Cameron nor Merkel were hard-right culture
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warriors, but the reality of what they saw in their respective countries forced them to acknowledge the
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truth. Immigration, when carefully managed and highly selective, can offer tremendous benefits.
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But the higher the level of migration, and the more divergent the cultural and religious backgrounds
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from which people come, the more punitive the diminishing returns. When I came to the UK in the
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mid-90s, the British public were entirely unconcerned about immigration, with just 3% describing it as a
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major issue in the year that I came. Back in the early 90s, net migration was running at about
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54,000 people a year. This was followed almost immediately by the hugely popular election of
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Tony Blair, who abandoned all caution, with Britain welcoming more people during his premiership
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than had come between the Battle of Hastings in 1066 and 1950. David Cameron, who I mentioned earlier,
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his conservative successor and his innumerable replacements, failed to stem the tide. Despite the
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popular uprising that we call Brexit, the latest net migration figures up to June 2023 were 672,000
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people. The result? Sectarian clashes in major British cities, Parliament abandoning its own rules
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to appease Islamists, and rising ethnic tensions. Concerns about social cohesion, so widely shared by
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police chiefs and politicians across the Western world, have actually contributed to its decline.
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It seems to me that Australia is in danger of making many of the same mistakes. In the year
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ending 30 June 2023, legal migration contributed a net gain of 518,000 people to the country's
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population. This is a record level, and for a country of just 26 million people, this is a higher
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level of immigration per capita than even in the UK. The creation of a two-tier conversation about race
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is also firmly underway. An Aussie football player pleaded not guilty in a London court recently,
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and is fighting to have the charge of racially aggravated harassment of the officer thrown out
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after allegedly calling him a stupid white bastard. The officer is white, and Sam Kerr,
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the player in question, is not. She not only refused to apologise, but has in fact secured apologies
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from people like former Socorroo and prominent anti-racism advocate Craig Foster, who initially
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criticised her comments. In his pathetic and grovelling apology to Kerr, Foster showed all the signs
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of having been properly re-educated. Citing the Diversity Council of Australia's definition of
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racism, which references the perpetrator being in a position of race-based societal power,
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Foster said racism cannot be committed against a white person as they're not a member of a
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marginalised group. This is the great paradox of the woke takeover of any society. Why are you being
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a divisive culture warrior? They'll scream at you as they take the foundations of your society apart
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brick by brick. It is difficult to oppose robustly until the majority of people notice the problem,
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by which point it may be too late. Getting ordinary Australians to recognise the threat before the
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dangerous threshold is reached is the biggest challenge for the country's sensible elite.
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