Paulina Kozlowska

Hasan Piker hits a wall when he tries to tell a man born in the Soviet Union that Americans are just as controlled as people under communism. Konstantin Kisin shuts down the comparison and lays out the difference. When he’s done, even Piker admits he’s right. HASAN PIKER: “A lot of people think, well, as long as I can eat a Big Mac, you know, as long as I can watch TV, as long as I can consume porn [...] then, you know, things are probably fine.” “It’s a different mechanism of control that makes you think that you are actually an active participant in this.” Kisin isn’t buying it. KONSTANTIN KISIN: “The difference between those countries is not that they can’t eat a Big Mac.” “The difference is that if they criticize the government, in Russia today even, but of course in the Soviet Union previously, you’re going to get killed, right? In America, that’s not what happens, right? In America, you don’t get put in jail.” HASAN PIKER: “We don’t know yet.” That’s his whole defense: what MIGHT happen in America. So Kisin makes it personal. KONSTANTIN KISIN: “You in China or in the Soviet Union would be killed if you were critical of that regime.” HASAN PIKER: “I would definitely be jailed, for sure.” And there it is. Piker makes Kisin’s argument for him. KONSTANTIN KISIN: “So that’s the difference between these countries and America. It’s not a Big Mac, it’s freedom.” Only in a free country can you build a career telling people they aren’t free. CONTEXT: Communist regimes don’t just jail their critics. Under Stalin, the Soviet secret police executed 681,692 people in two years, by the regime’s own records. That’s more than 900 a day. Under Mao, the Great Leap Forward killed at least 45 million people in four years, per historian Frank Dikötter. Under Pol Pot, nearly a quarter of Cambodia’s population was dead within four years.