I strongly recommend Ian Dunt and Dorian Lynskey's latest Origin Story podcast, which covers the rise and rise of Russell Brand:
Dorian and Ian reassess Brand’s extraordinary rise to fame in the 2000s in light of recent allegations of sexual misconduct and explore how British culture gave him a free pass.
In 2013 Brand swapped sex and fame for a new compulsion, reinventing himself as a flamboyant agitator to great acclaim. In the void between Occupy and Corbynism, his verbose mishmash of self-help and socialism briefly made him a lion of the left.
During the pandemic Brand embraced a darker shade of politics, promoting conspiracy theories about Covid-19, Ukraine and much more besides. After the allegations broke last year he went full crank, aligning himself with Robert F Kennedy Jr, Tucker Carlson and Alex Jones in the paranoid space.
As they say, this is a bizarre story of celebrity and conspiracy, addiction and attention, which says a great deal about where we are now.
I wish that Santa Clara County (in the U.S.) would take these kinds of allegations as seriously as the authorities in the U.K. when people in power are involved. My own kids are being sex trafficked by a well connected attorney. I told the District Attorney (Jeff Rosen) about the sexual abuse, thinking that he would do something to protect them. Because one of his political supporters in involved, he did NOTHING. Shortly thereafter, he filed charges AGAINST ME. I did not even commit a crime. The whole goal was to cover up the abuse by discrediting me.
ReplyDelete