Rupert Murdoch succession drama and a Brand new army

• China confirmed a life sentence for Rahile Dawut, a Uyghur academic missing for six years. 
• The UK’s competition watchdog reversed itself to let Microsoft buy the video game giant Activision Blizzard for $69 billion.
• Indonesia’s TikTok star Lina Lutfiawati was sentenced to two years in prison for eating pork rinds on video.

Brand new army

In the strange tussle of political point-scoring spilling out around the Sunday Times rape and sexual assault allegations against Russell Brand, the former comedian has an unlikely band of defenders. Elon Musk was the first to dismiss the claims under Brand’s angry denial video and doubled down on Sunday, tweeting “I support Russell Brand.”

So what? Covid-incubated conspiracies – and with them a whole alternate universe where phoney leaders rail against a “secretive elite” – are coming home to roost. Standing with Musk is a motley crew of libertarians, light entertainers, white nationalists, hedge funders, conspiracy entrepreneurs and GB News presenters, including:

• proud misogynist Andrew Tate (430k viewers); 
• Daily Telegraph columnist Allison Pearson (300k readers);
• actor-turned-failed-politician Laurence Fox (404k followers); 
• Canadian oddball podcaster Jordan Peterson (7.5 million subscribers);
• ex-Fox News host Tucker Carlson (4.76 million followers);
• pioneering conspiracist Alex Jones (3.3 million readers);
• Mark Collet (founder of the white nationalist group Patriotic Alternative with 95k YouTube subscribers); and
• Michael Barrymore (1.7 million followers).

GB News (3.4 million monthly viewers) and its presenters Neil Oliver (353.9k followers) and Bev Turner (75k followers) also supported Brand, while the hedge fund run by the channel’s founder Paul Marshall, Marshall Wace, has a 0.36 per cent stake in the free-speech video streaming site Rumble, which is championing Brand and earned over $30 million in ad revenue in 2022.

The flag under which this platoon marches is distrust of Big Pharma and the mainstream media, framed as a fight for free speech. “The attempt to unperson Russell Brand is almost as disturbing as the sins of which he stands accused,” Allison Pearson wrote this week, describing YouTube’s suspension of his ad revenue as “chilling”. Rumble said it was “deeply inappropriate and dangerous” for Caroline Dinenage, chair of the House of Commons media committee, to ask if it would stop Brand earning revenue on its platform.

Conspiracy vs cancellation. Since the Covid pandemic, conspiracy researchers have noticed previously unaligned conspiracists joining up. “A combination of the culture wars and a post-Covid overarching super-conspiracy has enabled an alternative space that adheres to different rules,” says Professor Clare Birchall, co-author of Conspiracy Theories in Time of Covid-19. “A disingenuous free speech argument makes cancellation a badge of honour in conspiracist circles. Brand has moved from the mainstream, where being cancelled matters, into this space.”

Brand X. While the culture wars have forced some strange alliances – gender critical feminists and the Daily Mail, for instance – the Brandistas’ ideological inconsistency stretches credulity. Musk said this week that any employee not fighting for maximum freedom of speech should quit. This comes two weeks after he threatened to sue the Anti-Defamation League for defamation, blaming the non-profit for his company’s loss of billions of dollars in advertising revenue.

Fellow travellers. Other enemies that Brand’s allies see as more important than believing the women who accused him include the mainstream media, Volodymyr Zelensky for resisting Putin’s invasion, the Covid vaccine and Bill Gates for controlling our food.

The Great Reset. The unifying fear that Brandistas rely on is a looming authoritarian socialist world government run by powerful capitalists and politicians who supposedly used lockdown to enforce social control and worked with Big Pharma to force people to take vaccines that make them compliant. Some in the fitness and nutrition worlds have fallen hard for this theory, with – according to researchers at the University of Missouri – a number of yoga influencers being among the early promoters of QAnon. Dr Lee Watson, founder of Fierce Calm, a nonprofit providing free, trauma-informed yoga classes for marginalised and vulnerable groups, says “the yoga and wellness scene is no longer a safe space”.

The Wellness-Conspiracy Complex. Brand, Jones, Peterson et al peddle wellness supplements that promise to remove toxins, boost the brain and even “kill the whole SARS-corona family at point-blank range”. Brand charged £229 to enter his summer yoga festival, plus £995 for a tent. Alex Jones’s wellness company made $65 million in 2021. Their most devoted adherents call themselves purebloods.

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