Russell Brand on Revolution
- Thread starter Jean-Luc
- Start date
frogwoman
No amount of cajolery...
Wasn't dieudonne an antisemite from the beginning? Brand hasn't said to much about the jews. He's ummed and ahhed about icke rather than actually endorsing antisemitism. I don't think brand has mentioned Jews at all really let alone making it a part of his repertoire the way dieudonne did, then again I don't care enough to sit through one of his shows.
Nah, he was "on the left" (and still is, according to some idiots), campaigned on anti-racist platforms and so on. A lot more serious that Brand is, to be fair. Antisemitic turn started in the early 00s.
If someone agrees with points made by racists as opposed to attacking them for their racism does that make them a racist? It certainly places racism lower down the pecking order as long as the person they're endorsing is anti establishment. My enemies' enemy is someone to share a bed with.
elbows
Well-Known Member
Funny you should use the term zeitgeist, because my experience with people at work has been that there is a fair amount of crossover between people who like what Brand's been up to, and people that raved about those shit Zeitgeist films.
This is actually one reason I haven't written Brand off as totally useless. He has a number of important downsides with nobody should be afraid to dwell on, but that doesn't mean I think he has no potential use at all. I'll certainly be keeping an occasional eye on his progress, could go either way, he might evolve in a politically interesting way I suppose. In the meantime the best I can hope for is that those attracted to this 'exciting' yet superficial form of politics, may get less dangerous crap in their ears if they listen to Brand rather than Icke, Jones etc.
But I haven't got much time for those that insist that he or someone else like him might be the key to unlocking a better future. I think its far more likely that, should dramatic events eventually unfold, it will be as a result of some poor un-famous human being killed by the state in a manner that energises movements, than the likes of Brand writing books and mouthing off on the tellybox.
He murdered him with hologram Lizards (aw come on, you begged for it!)
BigTom
Well-Known Member
Doesn't make them racist, but what I said earlier about me and Blagsta disagreeing about conspiraloons during occupy, was that whilst they might not be racist (some definitely were, posting up the protocols and shit on the facebook group/pages.. others I really don't think were racist at all...) but, to be in that culture, you have to be able to tolerate racism and actually that lets it live and thrive and it'll start to get you at the edges so you'll actually believe that international bankers isn't code for jew, and how it's not jews it's zionists when actually the people they are listening to really aren't making that distinction.
So no, not racism, but pretty much if not as bad as.
I've posted up a few things earlier - he had him on his xfm radio show and US TV show in March 2013, he apparently gave some money to Icke's TV channel too (he's got an endorsement on the indiegogo page for it anyway), sure there's more but didn't bother digging further.
rekil
to menny cranks
He doesn't follow a lot of people on twitter, but the freak trinity of Keiser, Alex Jones and Icke is there.
BigTom
Well-Known Member
no idea - the bits I've listened to him he hasn't been anywhere near any of it so hopefully that's in the past, conspiraloonery offers a nice neat answer to someone asking why things are so fucked up, so he may have passed through that, got caught up a bit in Icke who I bet is really charismatic, snake oil salesman scummy type, and then one day realised what a load of utter fucking nonsense 90% of it is, how deep the racism runs and that Icke is a stopped clock, hence the 10% that turns out to be right (or rightish) and that there are other, more reasonable, explanations for those things.
Be good for him to actively disown it though, otherwise the doubt needs to be there imo.
edit: crossposted with copliker, that is bad
Be good for him to actively disown it though, otherwise the doubt needs to be there imo.
edit: crossposted with copliker, that is bad
Regardless of rather he's pally with Icke still, or whether Icke has criticised him, his politics and rhetoric are so clearly indebted to Icke's crap. It's really dire populism of the sort pushed by the right across Europe. I'm not going to going to go full antideutsche (lol) and say talking about finance in any context at all = structural antisemitism, and I don't think Brand is antisemtici or racist. I think Brand's "analysis" of what's wrong with things isn't too different from certain antisemites, though.
Gary Wilmot
Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
more like this pls
elbows
Well-Known Member
no idea - the bits I've listened to him he hasn't been anywhere near any of it so hopefully that's in the past, conspiraloonery offers a nice neat answer to someone asking why things are so fucked up, so he may have passed through that, got caught up a bit in Icke who I bet is really charismatic, snake oil salesman scummy type, and then one day realised what a load of utter fucking nonsense 90% of it is, how deep the racism runs and that Icke is a stopped clock, hence the 10% that turns out to be right (or rightish) and that there are other, more reasonable, explanations for those things.
Be good for him to actively disown it though, otherwise the doubt needs to be there imo.
edit: crossposted with copliker, that is bad
Thats a possibility. Another is that a chunk of what they say still really appeals to him, but that he is now savvy enough to know from past experience that the mainstream media have a real easy narrative they can pull on you if you go into conspiracy territory. Or they don't get on personally anymore but still share some crossover of ideas, or don't have vehicles to cross-promote each other that they are simply desperate to make use of right now.
In any case if I judge Brand purely on his youtube channel, he's already got far more useful substance then any of them, and is mostly able to pursue the idea of how shit and biased the media are, without going completely loonspud about what secrets they are hiding and the motives for their distortions.
elbows
Well-Known Member
I can come up with plenty if I reword the question. Celebrities can make considerable contributions to propaganda effort. Charlie Chaplin would be a good example. But certainly no matter how much some of his works made people think about a number of really important topics including the mechanised workplace and dangerous fascist dictators, his contribution would hardly be enough alone to prevent many people fighting and dying over these causes.
rekil
to menny cranks
The British Paul Robeson.
Anyway, I know a few folk on the left to have had excursions in Icke-ville, myself included, which can be a right of passage for many stabbing around in the dark for answers. His is just more public than most. It's forgivable but there has to be a denouncing of it to signify you're not still entertaining views shared with the NF, amongst others.
Fair point. I guess Orwell too. But being a celeb and projecting your views through art isn't the same as being a celeb and jumping on actual living and breathing bottom up social campaigns thinking that your presence can only be a force for good. As others have repeatedly pointed out, it becomes about the celeb and he won't be the one made homeless if his overtures changes the dynamics in the action.
The other thing to remember is that with the likes of heroes like Brand, if the establishment feel threatened enough they'll come to the table and deal. But the deal will be with Brand and his choice will be to accept or they'll ruin him. What would he choose? Will the women fighting for their homes be invited to the table? He needs to fuck off and get back to telling shit jokes and selling books about himself.
The Pale King
Well-Known Member
Unhappy is the land that needs a hero like Brand
kenny g
Sheeple Awake!
So the man is told he can't express himself based on a hypothetical. There are two rules with power - don't trust it and don't play with it. I have yet to see Brand becoming a UN ambassador or going for tea with the Queen (or Wilhelm for that matter) so at the moment I take him like any other person and he doesn't seem all bad. I worked with Brand back in the early 2000's and he was a decent enough fellow then - I haven't got much reason to change my belief despite all the attempts to throw shit at him. He won't get my vote, but then again he isn't asking for it, and I'm not offering it.
elbows
Well-Known Member
Oops, this interesting post causes me to go off on a personal derail...
During the post 9/11 nightmare Bush years I was very far from being sure how far to go down the dark holes. I went quite far, though it was some years before I joined u75, and a combination of factors made me immune to Icke and Jones in particular. I had vivid memories of Icke being delusional on Wogan, and he came off very badly to me on that documentary where Jon Ronson followed him around. Jones was either not on the scene or his politics were so obviously right-wing isolationist wibble to me that there was no appeal there. Youtube didn't exist and most of the conspiracy sites came off as faceless, with exceptions such as Rense whose content was too blatantly anti-semitic to spend long with.
If I had a conspiracy theorist of choice at the time it was Michael Ruppert. Combined with a diet of Orwell, Chomsky, Wilhelm Reich, Erich Fromm, Mark Steel, and then some Adam Curtis programs, I think I somehow managed to survive the period without breaking my politics and worldview. It probably helped that I'd read some of Robert Anton Wilsons non-fiction books (cosmic trigger stuff) some years before, so playing with somewhat iffy dot joining without becoming a deranged true believer was something I was at least vaguely familiar with.
Mungy
i haz boobz
so how many of you have watched a few editions of the trews? very often he says it's about getting involved in things local to you, in your community. he has said a few times that he doesn't want to be a leader, he isn't the messiah, that he doesn't have all the answers, or even any of the answers. there seems to be a lot of criticism about who he may or man not associate with, which i suppose is fair game in this thread as it is about rb. i'd rather we discussed what we can do to make things better than they are now, than to discuss rb and who his mates might be.
rb is making people think. he's made me think. he's made people i know think. he is interesting. his humour is a bit shite sometimes, but then i never particularly liked what little i had seen of his comedy. as i have said before, i really didn't want to like him, but i do. more so since the mini media storm with the sun.
rb is making people think. he's made me think. he's made people i know think. he is interesting. his humour is a bit shite sometimes, but then i never particularly liked what little i had seen of his comedy. as i have said before, i really didn't want to like him, but i do. more so since the mini media storm with the sun.
All the wormies coming out of the woodwork. 
Fairly early on there was a frank discussion between establishment figures and Mick Jagger about his rebelious image coupled with mass popularity. Seems they were happy upon learning his only interest was to make money. He's been knighted, hasn't he?
Fairly early on there was a frank discussion between establishment figures and Mick Jagger about his rebelious image coupled with mass popularity. Seems they were happy upon learning his only interest was to make money. He's been knighted, hasn't he?
BigTom
Well-Known Member
There has also been discussion further back in the thread about this. My opinion is that it is in the nature of celebrity for brand to be presented as a leader, and that he must know this to be true, so simply saying he doesn't want it isn't enough. It's also in the nature of celebrity that the organising that comes about as a result of it will be top down, great individual type stuff, rather than bottom up community type stuff. Brand could do it if he did everything he could to remove his celebrity from the stuff he does, but he doesn't do that. Maybe he thinks he can balance the two, I think he's wrong.
On a broader tip, I want to move away from celebrity culture & individualism and I think this kind of thing helps to reproduce celebrity culture and individualism. It doesn't matter really whether I agree or disagree with it, it's about the role it plays in society.
I have watched maybe half a dozen episodes of the trews and a few other things with brand, I might even be tempted to watch question time with him and farage just for the show. Brand hasn't been mentioned at work, nor in my other non-political friendship groups, but he's definitely out there, no doubt about that.
There's also no question that he has associated with icke, alex jones, max keiser and lawrence easeman, and these associations matter because who you associate with politically tells you something, sometimes a lot, about what a person's views are. Whether he still agrees with the views of icke is unknown, but easeman was very recent. It deserves, at the very least, comments and a raised eyebrow.
Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
there's only a few people denying he's out there, people like krtek a houby.
A lot of CTers are coming from the angle that international capital is bad, Newspapers lie to them, the CIA aren't to be trusted and will manufacture circumstances to suit their own ends.
The more mature view can see the whole CT package and dig deep and discover the politics behind the veneer. The problem we find ourselves in is we then start to denounce everyone following this mode of thought which repels those going through the inquisitive period away from those of us who are apparently enlightened. Shouting racist at every CTist hasn't proved successful towards swelling our ranks.
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