Who is This “They” of Whom You Speak, Russell Brand?
Photo by Raph_PH, CC BY 2.0
This weekend, a story broke about Russell Brand’s appalling behavior with women (sorry; there’s paywall; here’s a gift link to the NYT’s coverage). Four women have accused him of rape and sexual assault, including one who apparently began a relationship with Brand when she was 16 and he was 31 (the age of consent in the UK is 16).
Brand is a British comedian and actor. For American audiences, you probably know him best as a guy who married Katy Perry and provided the voice of Dr. Nefario in the Despicable Me franchise. He has, over the last few years, been, uh, re-branding himself as a free-thinking personality. That translates into English as someone who espouses some views — COVID “skepticism” and opposition to the war in Ukraine — that the Far Right likes, although his politics are mostly very left wing.
The response has mostly been revulsion. The Onion made probably the best joke about the situation. What was completely unsurprising was the people who lept to Brand’s defense. Elon Musk defended him. Andrew Tate, himself facing rape charges, threw his support to Brand. But a lot of Far-Right personalities also jumped to his defense, probably encapsulated in this tweet by Ian Miles Cheong.1
Who is this they?
And the question I’m beginning to ask more and more when I see this sort of thing is: who the hell is this “they” you’re talking about?
Let’s go through this, one by one:
- “They” did not come for Tucker Carlson. Fox News fired him because he pushed lies that cost them nearly a billion dollars in legal settlements, with more to come.
- “They” haven’t really come for Joe Rogan. He still has the most popular podcast in the nation, one he was paid $200 million for. Specific people, like me, have criticized him for pushing COVID misinformation. But I doubt he loses any sleep over that.
- “They” didn’t come for Jordan Peterson. Peterson was briefly booted off of Twitter and had a couple of videos demonetized for some pretty brutal anti-transgender comments. But he’s also a best-selling author and has massive social media followings despite having the insight and wisdom of an empty fortune cookie.
- “They” didn’t come for Assange and Snowden. Two Administrations — one Democrat, one Republican — have come after them for revealing US secret info to our enemies.
- “They” haven’t come for Elon Musk. He’s destroyed his own brand by slowly changing Twitter from one of the best places to get real-time information on current events into a cesspool of conspiracy theorists and far-right twerps.
- “They” aren’t coming for Russell Brand. Four women have accused him of sexual assault. Maybe they’re lying. Maybe they’re mistaken. Maybe they’re misremembering. But these are real women with real accusations, not chimeras created by “they”.
“They” of course usually refers to some elitist global cabal of liberal interest who secretly control the world and coordinate attacks on personalities who “challenge the narrative”. There’s no evidence of this supposed all-powerful cabal. And it’s never exactly clear who is in this cabal, which seems to an amorphous mass of media, academia, Democrats and whoever is criticizing the latest hero of the Right Wing.2 But it’s, you know, “they”, some mysterious force that comes after the always-victimized “we”. It’s the Right Wing’s version of “the man” my Left Wing friends used to complain about keeping them down.
But even if there were such a cabal, it seems to pretty incompetent. I mean, why waste time on an earwig like Russell Brand? His influence is extremely limited. If anything, this will probably drive more attention to him. Why isn’t it going after people with, you know, actual influence over world events? Why does it allow Fox News, OANN and Newsmax to flourish? Why did it allow Musk to take over Twitter? Why does it allow Right Wing politician to get elected? This is the most incompetent cabal since the Galactic Empire decided that putting a lid on the exhaust port wasn’t worth the hassle.
Most of the grifters pushing the line are well aware of this, of course. But there’s money to be made in scaring people over a vague, ill-defined, non-existent hobgoblin that could come for you at ANY MOMENT!3
Back here in reality, the Brand accusations are just that: several women claiming that Brand engaged in a pattern of violent non-consensual behavior and want him to be held accountable to some degree. We are only at the beginning of this story and there is doubtless more to come out — both in Brand’s favor and to his disfavor. That’s not the work of some shadowy conspiracy; that’s just how these things play out. And I’ve had just about enough of (alleged) rotten behavior being glossed over as the work of some non-existent “they”.
- Cheong is among a number of Right Wing Brand defenders who has previously made disturbing comments about age of consent laws.
- It’s not specifically Jews. Yet. But there is more than a whiff of antisemitism in a lot of this, especially given that the most recent “they” being demonized was the Anti-Defamation League.
- I also suspect Brand, who has told this story would be coming, has been feeding this stuff to those now promulgating it.
Brand appears to have led a scummy life as a liberal with plenty of mainstream media support. The support dried up at the same time as he started saying less liberal things and settled down. Now there are accusatory articles about his conduct from his earlier years. You’ve got to ask why no one ever wrote them years ago.
I don’t think there’s a “they” in the sense of conspiracy, but in the sense of congruency. There was a long-running campaign to get Tucker’s advertisers to break ties, and it was political. I don’t study Rogan, but he did seem to get a lot of hit pieces about a lot of things around the same time he became vocal against genetic men competing against women in MMA. Likewise, Musk went from being depicted as eccentric to dangerous as he started criticizing Democrats.
If nothing else, you should be able to acknowledge that confirmation bias steers us to accept stories critical of people we disagree with.Report
Not totally disagreeing with you, but I think there’s really two separate issues in play. One question is whether Brand did in fact commit some sort of sex crime(s) in which case the ‘they’ may be police and prosecutors doing their jobs by investigating him as a result of a report. Him becoming persona non grata among the glitterati and celebrity class probably does involve a lot of hypocrisy on their part, though I’m also not sure that counts as coming for him, so much as the fickleness of fame.Report
Right, agreed. I’d want to know what initiated the story. An old victim finding the courage to step forward? Good. An old victim or reporter with an old story who now has the motivation to step forward? That’s bad. In addition, given the fact that he isn’t the headline-grabber he used to be, I’m that much more skeptical about the story coming out now.Report
I too struggle with allegations long after the fact. Which doesn’t necessarily mean they’re untrue, just that the passage of time makes the actual truth a lot more difficult to decipher.Report
“The women said that they only felt ready to tell their stories after being approached by reporters, with some citing Brand’s newfound prominence as an online wellness influencer as a factor in their decision to speak.”
https://time.com/6315012/russell-brand-sexual-assault-allegations/Report
They, of course, are not referring to an elitist global cabal that secretly runs the world.
We know that the vast majority of those in the media are on the left. And naturally “they” tend to enthusiastically investigate those “they” deem to be on the wrong side of things. I’m sure many times because they are organically motivated and many other times because they are a receptive to following leads provided them by vested interests. Stories are planted all the time. It’s how the world works. Is it not amazing how whenever someone on the right gets some traction how the knives come out?
Conversely, “they” are less curious about transgressions that might threaten those on their side. One can only imagine the type of Pulitzer prize level journalism we would be seeing if the Biden’s were Republicans.
It’s not a conspiracy theory, it’s just how it is.Report
The list of lefty people who’ve been brought down by Me-Too type scandals is pretty long. Al Franken. Harvey Weinstein. Louis CK. Cuomo. Conyers.Lots of others.Report
Me Too was a special phenomenon where any and every toxic transgression from from evil monster (Weinstein) to weird & creepy (Louis CK) was brought to light – regardless of political affiliation. Because its epicenter was the entertainment industry, these creeps skewed left. Seems like it would have been the perfect environment (2017-18) for these allegations against Brand from 2006-13 to be brought to light.
Now these accusations may all be true, but it’s curious that they have surfaced only after he diverged from a few popular narratives. And of course, the allegations are enough to ruin his reputation and hurt him in the pocketbook. It doesn’t even matter if he is innocent or not.Report
Or you know, British libel laws are very strict. Or you know, it turns out being the woman who calls out a powerful, rich man is a tough thing to do. Do you think it was a cabal of leftists that kept women quiet about Danny Masterson for years?Report
I dunno. Is the Church of Scientology a cabal?Report
Whatever that group is ( and its no church) its not a bunch of progressive lefties.Report
Did I say they were? I was obviously answering the question of who the people were who worked to keep Masterson’s crimes quiet. It’s pretty well documented.
This subthread is predictably way off track.Report
They tend to get that way when people rely on others to see the “real meaning” of the words as opposed to making clear concrete statements.Report
More than the usual suspects who feel compelled to post every single nitpicking thought that comes to them?
Interesting.Report
The Me Too movement wouldn’t have gone the way it did if it weren’t for Trump though. There are a lot of politicians who might have tried to ride it out if they hadn’t assumed that Trump would be caught up in the same whirlwind. This was before anyone could find Ukraine on a map or knew to look for it but they’d already decided he deserved to be impeached.Report
Where did this meme come from that it’s hard to find Ukraine on a map? It’s almost the size of Texas.Report
First, I’m willing to extend the presumption of innocence until more facts are known.
However, the more accusers come forward, the harder it is to believe that they are all mistaken, or lying or some other explanation. But time will tell.
Second, sexual misconduct doesn’t really lend itself to any sort of partisan slant. Sex and power and greed and foul behavior are pretty much universal among all humans everywhere.
Third, and I’ve witnessed this on my own side of the aisle when a celebrity becomes known for voicing political views we find repellent, there is a temptation to suddenly view all their work as repugnant. I’ve come to feel strongly about separating the work from the creator. I may not like what Clint Eastwood says, but he is a tremendously gifted filmmaker.
But finally, I just don’t hold any tolerance for anti-vax viewpoints. I don’t think they are shielded under our general norm of tolerating eccentric or unpleasant views. Anti-vax promoters bear a direct responsibility for somewhere on the order of hundreds of thousands of needless deaths in America alone.
I believe firmly that people who promote this crackpottery, from Brand to RFK Jr. to Eric Clapton to Van Morrison to the QAnon lunatics, should be loudly condemned and driven from the public square as threats to our safety.Report
Wait, is Assange a bad guy again? I’m never quite sure.Report
Brand has been apparently playing footsie with anti-Semitism, so they might very well mean the Jews. They does mean the Jews even if people don’t come out and say it because Jews are seen as the ur-villains of the global conspiracy amongst nearly all conspiracy theorists. A lot of the Red-Brown alliance types also hate the Jews for being big advocates of what they see as squeashy woke liberalism and also because they hate Israel for whatever reason.Report
I was thinking recently that the thing that’s changed for me with MeToo is I’m less likely to give these guys the benefit of the doubt right off the bat. Because the pattern *always* seems to go: dude is accused by a woman or two of repulsive behavior, which he claims is all a libelous conspiracy against him- and then, within a month, whaddya know 27 other accusers have stepped forward! I mean, I have relatives who still think Bill Cosby did nothing wrong, but I’ve found if you assume the first accusation is true, you’re a lot less likely to be heartbroken down the road. And, yeah, I don’t care if it’s one of my heroes at this point. I’ll be crushed if Jonathan Richman gets accused, but also assume it’s true.Report
I’ve been kind of crushed by the revelations about Isaac Asimov, who was a childhood hero, but I don’t doubt them at all.Report
I posted this to Open Thread but Vox had a good article about privilege and celebrity:
https://www.vox.com/23883634/jann-wenner-rolling-stone-racist-drew-barrymore-ashton-kutcher-celebrity-mistakes
Like I wrote in the Open Thread, I don’t think there is a necessary solution to this problem even if we diversify the sources of celebrity and taste-makers because you will still have the status, privilege, and close social system involved. You basically need to totally destroy the vaguest concept of celebrity and have no famous person with a fanbase that they follow. That is not going to happen.Report