Russell Brand used to be a fashionable Left-wing comedian, actor and writer. So why, in recent years, did he become a YouTube conspiracy theorist? Ever since Dispatches and the Sunday Times aired the allegations against him – which he emphatically denies – prominent Left-wing voices have been pondering this question. And many of them seem to have arrived at the same hypothesis. Here, for example, is Naomi Klein, the bestselling author of No Logo.
“Of course Russell Brand’s followers deny the allegations,” she wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter. “He has groomed an audience to deny/disbelieve everything they see and hear… This knee-jerk denialism is precisely why people with plenty of skeletons in the closet love conspiracy culture: they have a built-in defence against accountability. It’s all a conspiracy, always.”
A similar idea was advanced by Rosie Holt, the political comedian. She wrote: “I guess the lesson is kids, if sexual misconduct rumours have been swimming about you for ages, set up a cult on YouTube to support you when the allegations become public.”
This hypothesis of theirs certainly sounds clever. In my view, there’s just one small problem with it.
It makes absolutely no sense.
If Brand’s aim was to protect his reputation, he surely wouldn’t have chosen to become a low-rent conspiracy theorist. Instead, it would have made far more sense to remain exactly what he was before: the darling of the celebrity Left, with influential friends in the media, politics, TV and Hollywood.
Interviewed on Monday, Dorothy Byrne, a former executive at Channel 4, said: “Historically there has been a culture in television of putting up with appalling behaviour by some men on the basis that they are so-called stars.” No doubt that’s true. But, by entering the murky world of online conspiracy theories, Brand effectively forfeited his stardom. This is because he was now promoting views that his former admirers in the media, politics and the arts deplored – whether on vaccines, Ukraine, “the globalist agenda”, or even, remarkably, shoes. (One of Brand’s videos, posted two weeks ago, is entitled: “Shoespiracy EXPOSED: The HIDDEN Truth of the Shoe Industry”.)
So, if not for complex ulterior motives, why did Brand start promoting conspiracy theories? I suspect the explanation is simple. He genuinely believes that they might be true.
And if that’s the case, the hypothesis about Brand’s motives is itself a conspiracy theory.
The SNP’s war on drinkers has failed
Does Britain have a drink problem? I wouldn’t want to seem judgmental. But I was somewhat taken aback to read that a 600-year-old church in St Ives, Cornwall, has just been fitted with two beer pumps. Why this was thought appropriate, I’m not sure. I’m no theologian, but I don’t recall Jesus turning water into a refreshing IPA.
Still, whether or not Britain as a whole has a drink problem, Scotland seemingly does. In 2022, it was confirmed last month, Scotland had its highest number of alcohol-related deaths since 2008. Elena Whitham, the SNP minister for drugs and alcohol policy, says this shows the minimum price of alcohol needs to be raised.
But she’s wrong. What it actually shows is that minimum alcohol pricing doesn’t work.
Well, of course it doesn’t. This should have been obvious to the SNP, long before it turned this futile policy into law. Put it like this. Who dies of alcohol-related illnesses? Alcoholics. And what are alcoholics? Addicts. And addicts are hardly going to be deterred by rising prices. To ensure they can afford to keep on drinking, they’ll just spend less money on other things. Such as food. And if they aren’t eating enough food, they’ll become even less healthy. And even more drunk.
Yet, over five years after minimum alcohol pricing came into force, the SNP still hasn’t realised this. Which should make it pretty clear that Scotland hasn’t got a drink problem. It’s got a government problem.
Woke publishing: a children’s guide
A new children’s history book controversially claims that Stonehenge was actually built by black people. I don’t know about you. But when I read about this book, I was outraged.
This is because I myself had been in the middle of writing a children’s history book claiming that Stonehenge was actually built by trans people.
As anyone who has entered a high-street book shop in the past couple of years will have concluded, the only surefire way to get a children’s book published nowadays is to make it reflect the type of radical progressive ideology favoured by the junior staff at children’s publishing houses. Hence the idea for my book. I felt certain that they’d love it.
But now that a rival author has given the credit for Stonehenge to Ancient Britain’s vast indigenous population of black people, my brilliant idea is scuppered. Stonehenge has been done. Having already been attributed to one minority community, it can’t very well be attributed to another.
All I can do now, I suppose, is to start writing a children’s history book about something else. Currently I’m weighing up whether to reveal that Henry VIII was genderqueer, Shakespeare was an asylum seeker, or Winston Churchill is to blame for climate change.
Way of the World is a twice-weekly satirical look at the headlines aiming to mock the absurdities of the modern world. It is published at 7am every Tuesday and Saturday
Russell Brand used to be a fashionable Left-wing comedian, actor and writer. So why, in recent years, did he become a YouTube conspiracy theorist? Ever since Dispatches and the Sunday Times aired the allegations against him – which he emphatically denies – prominent Left-wing voices have been pondering this question. And many of them seem to have arrived at the same hypothesis. Here, for example, is Naomi Klein, the bestselling author of No Logo.
“Of course Russell Brand’s followers deny the allegations,” she wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter. “He has groomed an audience to deny/disbelieve everything they see and hear… This knee-jerk denialism is precisely why people with plenty of skeletons in the closet love conspiracy culture: they have a built-in defence against accountability. It’s all a conspiracy, always.”
A similar idea was advanced by Rosie Holt, the political comedian. She wrote: “I guess the lesson is kids, if sexual misconduct rumours have been swimming about you for ages, set up a cult on YouTube to support you when the allegations become public.”
This hypothesis of theirs certainly sounds clever. In my view, there’s just one small problem with it.
It makes absolutely no sense.
If Brand’s aim was to protect his reputation, he surely wouldn’t have chosen to become a low-rent conspiracy theorist. Instead, it would have made far more sense to remain exactly what he was before: the darling of the celebrity Left, with influential friends in the media, politics, TV and Hollywood.
Interviewed on Monday, Dorothy Byrne, a former executive at Channel 4, said: “Historically there has been a culture in television of putting up with appalling behaviour by some men on the basis that they are so-called stars.” No doubt that’s true. But, by entering the murky world of online conspiracy theories, Brand effectively forfeited his stardom. This is because he was now promoting views that his former admirers in the media, politics and the arts deplored – whether on vaccines, Ukraine, “the globalist agenda”, or even, remarkably, shoes. (One of Brand’s videos, posted two weeks ago, is entitled: “Shoespiracy EXPOSED: The HIDDEN Truth of the Shoe Industry”.)
So, if not for complex ulterior motives, why did Brand start promoting conspiracy theories? I suspect the explanation is simple. He genuinely believes that they might be true.
And if that’s the case, the hypothesis about Brand’s motives is itself a conspiracy theory.
The SNP’s war on drinkers has failed
Does Britain have a drink problem? I wouldn’t want to seem judgmental. But I was somewhat taken aback to read that a 600-year-old church in St Ives, Cornwall, has just been fitted with two beer pumps. Why this was thought appropriate, I’m not sure. I’m no theologian, but I don’t recall Jesus turning water into a refreshing IPA.
Still, whether or not Britain as a whole has a drink problem, Scotland seemingly does. In 2022, it was confirmed last month, Scotland had its highest number of alcohol-related deaths since 2008. Elena Whitham, the SNP minister for drugs and alcohol policy, says this shows the minimum price of alcohol needs to be raised.
But she’s wrong. What it actually shows is that minimum alcohol pricing doesn’t work.
Well, of course it doesn’t. This should have been obvious to the SNP, long before it turned this futile policy into law. Put it like this. Who dies of alcohol-related illnesses? Alcoholics. And what are alcoholics? Addicts. And addicts are hardly going to be deterred by rising prices. To ensure they can afford to keep on drinking, they’ll just spend less money on other things. Such as food. And if they aren’t eating enough food, they’ll become even less healthy. And even more drunk.
Yet, over five years after minimum alcohol pricing came into force, the SNP still hasn’t realised this. Which should make it pretty clear that Scotland hasn’t got a drink problem. It’s got a government problem.
Woke publishing: a children’s guide
A new children’s history book controversially claims that Stonehenge was actually built by black people. I don’t know about you. But when I read about this book, I was outraged.
This is because I myself had been in the middle of writing a children’s history book claiming that Stonehenge was actually built by trans people.
As anyone who has entered a high-street book shop in the past couple of years will have concluded, the only surefire way to get a children’s book published nowadays is to make it reflect the type of radical progressive ideology favoured by the junior staff at children’s publishing houses. Hence the idea for my book. I felt certain that they’d love it.
But now that a rival author has given the credit for Stonehenge to Ancient Britain’s vast indigenous population of black people, my brilliant idea is scuppered. Stonehenge has been done. Having already been attributed to one minority community, it can’t very well be attributed to another.
All I can do now, I suppose, is to start writing a children’s history book about something else. Currently I’m weighing up whether to reveal that Henry VIII was genderqueer, Shakespeare was an asylum seeker, or Winston Churchill is to blame for climate change.
Way of the World is a twice-weekly satirical look at the headlines aiming to mock the absurdities of the modern world. It is published at 7am every Tuesday and Saturday