Draft:Russell Brand

From RationalWiki
Jump to navigation Jump to search
Information icon.svg This is a draft that anyone is free to edit as they would a mainspace page.

Do not add categories to draft pages; use {{draft categories}} instead for a view.

Contributors should nominate draft articles for deletion only if they believe that the article is not applicable to RationalWiki's mission.

Articles involving living persons must conform to our guidelines on biographies of living people.

Rated #1 by Tarzan Impersonators magazine!
.@katyperry Katy, what the hell were you thinking when you married loser Russell Brand. There is a guy who has got nothing going, a waste!
Donald Trump[1]


Some dare call it
Conspiracy
Icon conspiracy.svg
What THEY don't want
you to know!
Sheeple wakers
Dolphins and Money
New Age
Icon new age.svg
Cosmic concepts
Spiritual selections

Russell Brand (1975–) is an English celebrity, crank, new age hack, conspiracy theorist and general bullshit peddler who has worked as a comedian, actor and radio host. Or, as he would refer to it; "THE MEDIA doesn't want YOU to hear about MY CHANNEL (GREAT AWAKENING???)" He currently runs a massive YouTube channel, which he primarily uses to efficiently and readily spread his cult beliefs.

To say that Russell Brand is an annoying and contemptable hack would be an understatement. Almost all of his videos boil down to vague conspiracy gesturing, clickbait, woo peddling, gestures to spiritualism, "Free thinking", and so on. He made most of his modern following after falsely claiming ivermectin treated COVID. (Which he still does to this day, by the way.)[2] He has also "questioned" COVID vaccines and spread doubt about their effectiveness.[3] He has also associated with known dickheads such as Vandana Shiva[4], Jordan Peterson[5], Joe Rogan[6], and even known repugnant asshole, Jimmy Dore.[7]

Following some sexual assault and abuse allegations published in 2023 after an investigation, YouTube suspended Russell from earning money off his videos.[8]

Basically, if you can think of any prominent online quack, moonbat, wingnut, crank, woo peddler, spiritualist or otherwise, Russell Brand is probably buddy-buddy with them. As a result, he is one of the greatest examples of crank magnetism currently available online. The near-6 million subscriber count speaks for itself.

Shitty content[edit]

It's difficult to tell what is more impressive, the fact that Russell Brand is so consistently wrong about everything, or that 6 million people actually enjoy his content. Crankery, conspiracy peddling, and fearmongering aside, Russell Brand's "content" is grating. Put nicely, they're a collection of Russell Brand's unstructured rants and ramblings, edited to have even a slight amount of cohesive understandability. To call them exhausting to listen to would be too charitable, it's objectively awful content. If he's trying to be a cult leader, he's doing it poorly.

Mindless clickbait[edit]

The level and extent of clickbait on his channel would make even the most seasoned Breitbart writer shed a tear. With such gems as "Covid Cover-Up: New BOMBSHELL Lab Leak Report!! #covid #wuhan #lableak", "So...Trump was RIGHT About Clinton & Russia Collusion!! #clinton #trump #russiagate", and "(PROOF) America Is In Decline #america #theend #superpower", Russell Brand goes from being a conspiratorial hack to an incredibly annoying conspiratorial hack. Surely, Brand, enlightened thinker he is, wouldn't dare insult the intelligence of his followers by mindlessly pandering to their paranoia and fear instead of opting to actually make a point, would he?

Parasocial behavior[edit]

Like every good "thought leader", Russell Brand has built a cult of personality around himself. To his followers, he's a guru, an enlightened thinker unafraid to speak truth to power, a truly brave man that seeks nothing but to wake the sheeple up. He constantly states that he "feels the energy" of his followers, and that they will win against the elites that seek to oppress them and keep them down. Don't forget the Great Reset folks. It'll happen eventually! Basically, he speaks like a cult leader. Who would have guessed?


Promotion of bullshit[edit]

Russell Brand has promoted a truly astounding amount of bullshit. GMO scaremongering[9],Russian conspiracy theories about Ukraine[10], Globalism scaremongering[11], just to list a few. His rhetoric is not too dissimilar from other conspiracy theorists, vaugely gesturing towards "The Elite", "The Media", "THEY", etc. Often, this opposition to "The Elite" is shallow at best. Russell Brand is a millionare, with connections to powerful people, and with a massive platform on a website that he refers to as part of "The Media." (It's almost as if these incredibly wealthy individuals grift and gesture to persecution when people rightfully call them out on their bullshit, but what's a little bit of logical reasoning when you have some vaguely antisemitic conspiracy theories to peddle to your lower class media followers?)

Political Views and Activities[edit]

Russell Brand has openly expressed leftist beliefs in the past, identifying with socialism[12] and later anarchism. He used to be involved in some small activism efforts on human rights issues.[13] He had a very famous moment on the panel show Question Time in 2014 where he clashed with Nigel Farage on immigration.[14] He has said before that he has never voted, and discourages others in the UK from doing so, believing it to be ineffective. In 2015 he appeared to have changed his mind, saying "You've got to vote Labour".[15]

Recent Association with the Right[edit]

More recently, he has associated with members of the right such as Elon Musk, Jordan Peterson, Ben Shapiro, Joe Rogan and Glenn Greenwald. This is notable, to say the least. Often, his association with them is in forms such as "discussion" or "debate" videos, where Russell Brand spends an hour "respectfully disagreeing" with his opposition, never providing any pushback to their claims and often openly agreeing with some of them. This has resulted in some people questioning whether he is still a leftist, with some suspecting him of being controlled opposition.

References[edit]