What Happened to Russell Brand?
When did the actor-revolutionary become a mouthpiece for vaccine denialism?
Hey.
Here’s a relatively political post about someone I admired a while ago, and the unfortunate opinions they’ve adopted as a public figure.
The next post will be literature analysis — I promise.
Thanks!
tylermart.substack.com
Throughout my life, there’s been a lineage of celebrity men who’ve become subjects of interest, and they usually follow the same pattern: relatively young, relatively charming, relatively intelligent, and a dot of mystery. The stronger these characteristics, the longer I spend interested in shaping a mental biography of them — it usually involves watching interviews, reading things they’ve written, reviewing their Wikipedia pages, and keeping up with any of their current news. In the past, the club has included Jim Morrison, Ernest Hemingway, Bob Dylan, Christopher Hitchens, and more recently, J.D. Salinger.
For a while in high school, I landed on Russell Brand. I don’t really remember why, but it was around the time I’d started to blossom politically. As many teenagers do, I began to adopt the radically progressive positions that one spends the rest of their life adjusting into more thoughtful and informed points of view. Coincidentally around this time, Russell Brand, too, had begun political advocacy in England, and made splashes in leftist political communities with his engaging and rhetorically effective interviews (see here, with Jeremy Paxman, which at the time of writing this, has 12.6 million views.) He was well-spoken, quick, creative, and dangerously charming, which he continued to be, even in non-political interviews with both daytime and late-night hosts. Most importantly, he was firm in his idea of an encroaching revolution brought on by the growing dissatisfaction with government and its apathy towards disenfranchised people. I was all ears.
I was fascinated with his wit and his determination toward helping people. He often uses his experience with addiction as a foundation for understanding the labor of merely existing in contemporary society — particularly the poor, who, to Russell, have experienced the heavy-handed failures of capitalism and democracy. (In the Paxman interview at 2:27, he rightly explains how being an addict can often be an unfortunate product of a “social and economic class that is underserved by the current political system.”)
I followed him over to his own YouTube channel, where every so often, another installment of The Trews was uploaded, which featured Russell musing on whatever suited his interest. Whatever the topic, he often approached it with trademark comedy, and a unique perspective on how it was related to our shared human experience — like Fox and Friend’s segment on adult coloring books, or the messaging of Nike’s World Cup commercial. To me, his insights were interesting; he saw through the farcical world of news media, politics, and economics, and made thought-provoking commentary on how corporations might slowly erode an understanding of our spiritual self while raking our consciousness for profit.
Senior year 2016, I bought his book Revolution (2014). It was an extension of Russell’s interviews, where he writes eccentrically about inequality. He frequently cites experts who unanimously agree on the catastrophe of capitalism and the necessity of grassroots organization, whose mission should be to dismantle systems of power and redistribute its wealth globally. It was the first “political” book I’d ever voluntarily picked up, and it satisfied a curiosity I had about him and the leftist sphere. The ideas were a palatable answer to a weariness we all felt entering the 2016 election — it was enough for me to decide that both candidates (Hillary Clinton, or Donald Trump) were unworthy of my vote, believing them both to be puppets to larger financial interests and not genuinely caring for the well-being of their voter population (an opinion I’ve since grown out of, and encourage everyone to research the dramatic difference between democrat and republican candidates.)
I’m not so much a “leftist” anymore (that is, further away from labels like “socialist” or “anarchist,” but nowhere near a conservative), but as a teenager, his book was my springboard into politics and revolutionary thought. Russell claims his ground on the political spectrum (though, I’m sure he’d denounce he fell anywhere on one) somewhere in the realm of “anarchy,” believing in a peaceful transition from large, federal governments to localized administrations whose laws fell to a vote of those within the community. Here, a small divergence began from Russell’s idea of political utopia and my own. In Revolution, he says:
“As we approach the book’s conclusion, the answer to the question ‘What would this Revolution look like?’ begins to emerge.
It is defined and achieved by a sustained, mass-supported attack on the hegemony of corporations and the regulations that allow them to dominate us. It is the radical decentralization of power, whether private or the state. It is the return of power to us, the people, at the level of community. It is the assertion of spirituality, of whatever form, to the heart of our social structures. [...] Economics is at the heart of our nation-state philosophy. The nation state may have served its purpose and may have to be dissolved, but that’s not a big deal: Ask the Bavarians or Persians or Mesopotamians. [...] State power to dissolve wherever possible to empower autonomous democratic communities” (249).
These are the principles he spends the book constructing. I agree that our legislature should look to help the disenfranchised and those trapped in cycles of poverty — anyone who adopts that attitude, at the very least, is on the right track. But what was lacking throughout Russell’s book was an understanding of why some of these occasionally oppressive systems exist in the first place. While, admittedly, “capitalism” and “democracy” (two very, very misunderstood systems) sometimes under-serve those who need it most, suggesting we scrap it, refuse electoralism, and resign ourselves to communes is, at minimum, near-sighted, and at maximum, a dangerous solution to encourage if our *true* mission is to help those in need.
That was in 2016. Now, in a “post-Trump” world, where is Russell? Has the last few years of political turbulence and a global pandemic changed any of his more radical, revolutionary positions? Well …
… no, they’ve gotten more insidious. He is, still, consistent with his feelings of authoritative distrust and the predation of the “state.” Most disappointingly, concerning Covid-19, he’s become a figure of conspiracy and anti-vaccination, and exists in a bubble of YouTube click-bait and skepticism.
In his video, “Vaccine Mandates: THIS Is What History WARNS Us,” (November 25th, 2021) Russell explores the nation-wide vaccine mandate imposed by the Austrian government, taking effect in February of this year (2022). He carefully covers only the voices of skepticism and non-compliance with the mandate. Then, at the end of the video, Russell says:
“And, please, those of you watching this — remember, I have not at any point endorsed or denied vaccines, I have no opinion on what you should do for your personal health, I neither see myself as a necessary advocate for a government policy, nor a person who has to necessarily decry it. My job, I feel, is to participate with you, a person that I respect, on the level of equals, communicating about our individual and collective lives.”
This declaration of neutrality was mentioned twice in the video, and several times in his other videos regarding the pandemic. However, a majority of the top comments are rife in vaccine skepticism. This comment summed up my thoughts exactly (but much more favorably):
Let’s be charitable. He didn’t really criticize the efficacy of the vaccine directly, and there are plenty of vaccinated people who support the right to bodily autonomy. Maybe Russell is just an advocate for feeling comfortable with the vaccine — you know, collecting research from trusted news sources, discarding bogus independent “truther” journalists, and drawing reasonable conclusions from daily Covid infections. As the intelligent person I took him for, surely he does these … right?
In his video “Joe Rogan and Ivermectin: Should Covid Be Politicized?” (September 8, 2021), he says, again, in his introduction:
“Obviously, I have no opinion on coronavirus and how to treat it, but I do have opinions on media, and how media behaves with regard to particular issues: what biases are in play, what prejudices at work, and what attitudes they reveal.”
Obviously, Russell is framing his analysis as objective and concerned with “facts.”
Weirdly though, Russell both takes the position of trusting science:
“So I suppose going forward with coronavirus with high-profile cases, with the treatment of it and prevention of it, an attitude of openness and kindness is necessary, of non-judgement, of prioritizing science … ”
and casting doubt on it in the same sentence:
“ … [and also] of recognizing that science is not free from biases, that science exists within certain economics constraints, within certain economic and financial imperatives [...]”
He comes even closer to skepticism in his video “Vaccine Passports - Are We Heading To A TWO TIER SOCIETY?” (July 28th, 2021) where after critiquing Britain’s “vaccine passports” as a “totalitarian invasion into your personal life,” he says:
“You can do your own research into the impact of coronavirus, and I would suggest you look beyond the mainstream media, into the impacts of vaccines and the … efficacy of vaccines and make your own decisions — I have no opinion.”
In order to maintain his “neutrality,” Russell, of course, neglects to mention why we should look beyond the mainstream media, and what value there is in searching for independent media covering the data of global vaccination efforts. What do independent sources have the mainstream media missed out on — and more importantly, what financial incentives does mainstream media have that independent media doesn’t?
His distrust of science — because of its supposed “financial incentive” — combined with his distrust of the media’s reporting of the vaccine’s efficacy is troubling, especially considering the size of his audience. In several videos of his, Russell seems to take the position of an ultimate skeptic, playing the role of a humanitarian populist: reaching for our greater sensibilities of empathy, liberty, freedom, safety, spirituality, and compassion. These concepts are present in his discussion of mandate protests, vaccine denialism, and authoritarian government shutdowns, but are absent in his conversations about real vaccine science, and the lives that have been saved because of our record-shattering speed of developing, manufacturing, and distributing a medicine of new, mRNA technology.
Er, they aren’t absent from those conversations — it’s that, on his channel, those conversations don’t exist, or are overshadowed by suspicion. Russell Brand has a clear bias and understands very well YouTube’s policy on medical misinformation.
Also, it feels important to add that his rhetoric seems counterintuitive for someone whose primary goal is to nurture his audience’s spirituality. Throughout his book and his videos, he speaks of a dissolution of spirituality and purpose, and points the finger at large institutions for marketizing a connection with our innately spiritual selves. The doomsday atmosphere of his videos creates a feeling of immediate cultural destruction, one he co-signs by insisting it’s the fault of a conspiracy between the world’s governments and big business — unmovable entities where the only solution is a molotov-slinging, working-class revolution. Consider the video “Doomsday Preppers - Do They Know Something We Dont?!” (January 2nd, 2022) where he starts by saying:
“Hear ye hear ye, the end of the world is upon us! Is that what you feel sometimes — that you need to escape reality? There’s a good reason for that, society is crumbling, it is fracturing, that’s what we are witnessing.”
I wonder if, to those regularly consuming his videos, there is a feeling of hopelessness, having been bombarded with the idea of immovable institutions who can neither do good nor be trusted. (Also consider the video title: “Society IS COLLAPSING: Prepare For OFF-GRID Living!”)
His commentary on the relationship between product and human fulfillment was eye-opening for me to understand as a teenager, having noticed the insincerity of television ads and billboards. Often to sell a product, companies will create a problem requiring a solution, tug on our greater, human desires for purpose and meaning, then offer a profitable solution. To Russell, creating false impressions that buying a particular product might yield some greater internal reward is dangerous and immoral, because with time, it disintegrates to reveal having not given us anything at all.
Russell has apparently adopted this capitalistic problem-solution algorithm. He has two channels: his main channel, consisting of bombastic headlines like “Is Democracy Just Enslavement With Benefits?!” (I laughed) and “Can We REALLY Trust Vaccine Fact-Checkers??!” and his second channel, Awakening With Russell, where he focuses on mental health, meditation, and searching for peace in a world of cataclysm. I won’t claim that Russell is creating turmoil on his main channel then redirecting his audience toward his “search-for-inner-peace” second, but it would be easy if we adopted his method of conspiratorial analysis.
It seems that the people in the comments section have clearly picked up on his anti-vax dog whistles, and often wonder how he manages to evade YouTube’s policy of vaccine misinformation. Here’s another, from “Can We REALLY Trust Vaccine Fact-Checkers?!”:
It’s disappointing to see someone I’d admired for their intelligence years ago become a character of misinformation. While there aren’t any videos of him explicitly criticizing the vaccine, it’s obvious in his negligent “reporting” and the attitudes of his audience that he’s playing a careful game of skepticism. Those who are victims to this genre of skepticism might recover from Covid (or not), but their ability to parse information from misinformation — reality from delusion — might take a little longer, and people like Russell Brand are responsible.
At this point, he's just another poser who's found a niche by which to bring attention to himself. One of the "aren't we special crowd" who are always looking for the shortcut - and to hell with the consequences to others. I suppose it pays the bills for the moment. Perhaps he'll snap out of it at some point, and then do a mea culpa with a book and a round on the talk show circuit.