By Andrea Widburg
British comedian Konstantin Kisin spent his childhood years in the former Soviet Union, a place that policed its citizens’ speech aggressively and painfully. Like many former residents of the Soviet bloc, when he finally made it to the West, Kisin didn’t embrace the leftists there. Instead, he became a conservative. Better even than that, he became a conservative comedian. In both those roles, he’s opposed to the “woke” worldview, which he considers to be limiting, despotic and, as to those things its acolytes claim to support—most notably, climate change—ineffectual.
In November, the Oxford Union asked Kisin to be one of the presenters at a debate. To those unfamiliar with it, the Oxford Union is a debating society formed in 1823 as “The Oxford Union Society.” It exists independently of the many colleges in Oxford.
Much of what happens in the Oxford Union is simply training the members to be collegiate debaters. However, what makes the Oxford Union famous is that it invites well-known people in specific fields to advocate for or against a specific proposition. After the guests speak, the members then vote on the proposition.
Some of the propositions and votes have become infamous. In 1933, the Oxford Union voted in favor of the proposition that “This House would under no circumstances fight for its King and country.” Ironically enough, starting six years later, the union’s members did just that, with many dying for King and country.
Free speech is core to the Oxford Union. Two hundred years ago, it was created to fight against speech restrictions that prevented students from discussing certain subjects on campus. Even when the restrictions ended, however, the Union continued on, and it has survived the age of woke rule in academia. Indeed, if you go to the website, it announces that it is currently “Celebrating 200 years of Free Speech,” with Peter Thiel appearing as the “inaugural Bicentenary guest speaker.”
Famously, or infamously, in 2001, the Oxford Union invited noted Holocaust denier David Irving to speak on the topic of censorship, but the outrage was so loud that the debate was canceled. However, Irving did appear in 2007 to debate freedom of speech. That event became a circus both inside and outside of the chamber.
What happened at the most recent Chamber debate seems to have passed off much more peacefully, although it was one of the best-attended events of the school term. The motion up for debate was “This House Believes Wokeness Has Gone Too Far.” One of the invited guests was Kisin, who obliterates both wokeness and the current Western approach to climate change (namely, returning the world to a pre-industrial level of darkness and death). It’s a little less than 9 minutes long and worth every minute:
Based solely on Kisin’s presentation, you won’t be surprised to learn that the motion passed.