Konstantin Kisin - debate analysis of THAT speech at the Oxford Union on Woke Culture

I have enjoyed listening to Kisin's argument a number of times, and your analysis is equally enjoyable. I'm not sure that your criticism relating to his failure to define "woke culture" is valid, as he was apparently the fourth? "non-student" speaker for the proposition. He started by admitting that he wasn't going to restate the arguments of his predecessors. Your comment is valid, but only if we presume that he wasn't supported by their foundational arguments.

well first of all it doesn't matter if woke culture is what he is describing as long as it is responsible for what he describes. What i mean is that if woke culture led to some people throwing soup at paintings, which is a fact as we have seen several times, then his point is valid. Since people that throw soup at paintings are doing it because they think they' re "woke", then his point is self proven. That point was well established by previous speakers from the other side, that people need to be "woke", instead of the previously established culture of people listening to scientists and institutions. By that definition people become judges and therefor throw soup on paintings. These are self proven arguments.
My take on why he didn't go on to present statistics or explain all these self proven arguments ect is time on the one hand, he simply didn't have the time to do it and secondly, he would bore his audience. He said that he wants to talk to a specific group of people. And that means that he takes for granted that these people are going to take his interesting story critically and fact check it later. If it's not interesting, then everyone will just ignore him. In my opinion as long as his arguments can be proved or are self proven, in the limited time he had, he made the right choice to focus on the delivering.

I think thread he was using to try to link to his conclusion was that he says woke culture teaches you to be an activist instead of taking personal responsibility for the worlds problems and striving in your university education to work on some of those problems you see.
Demand action from others and feel morally superior for yhat but not actually acting in any meaningful way yourself. I think thats what he was getting at no?

Some good points for debaters!

Very interesting, thank you!

Your perceived "failures" of this speech notwithstanding, the inherent truths and logic is not only hard to refute, but rather resonates to the very core of decent conscientious people, which i believe is still the overwhelming vast majority in the world.

One can see why debate is kryptonite to the woked.

It was a great speech

Are you missing the point that the audience in the Union are all Oxford Students - the UKs premier university - our "Brightest & Best" - see it as a focus for them to do something about it

FYI Stasis is a greek word. 8:59

The main issue with Kisin is that he likes to point fingers, like most people do. You are responsible for your actions, not of others. Is he working for that 20% of people in Russia who don't have toilets to get in-house toilers? No, so why point the finger at others? Just because you disagree with them on climate change?

Thank you for your analysis. I love Konstantin Kisin, but I thought his debate offering was more a stand-up comedy routine and less a well-constructed argument. In one routine I saw, he’s playing a Russian man of the street. At one point he denies that Russians like comedy, sort of. What he says is, “If you want comedy, read Dostoevsky.” As a second generation Russian American, I think that’s laugh out loud funny, because I know the truth: If you want comedy, read Gogol.

Ha ha such a manipulator you are 😂