Comment on Russell Brand admits ‘extraordinary and distressing week’ and floats media conspiracy over sex assault allegations

drekly@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

• theinspectorst@kbin.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  There's a interesting suggestion by Matthew D'Ancona in TNE that Brand's actions of recent years in embracing far-right personalities, promoting a range of online conspiracy theories and building a weird cult of personality around himself are a direct response to the #MeToo movement emerging six years ago - knowing that eventually his own actions would come to light and so he needed to build a 'digital stockade' of useful idiots who would jump to his defence when the time came.

  Now THAT'S a conspiracy theory I can buy into...

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• Hyperreality@kbin.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  The guardian is reporting that he's on youtube complaining about being censored.

  The utter gall to complain about censorship while your videos reach millions and are reported on by multiple national newspapers.

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• ReCursing@kbin.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  He's gone right wing? I didn't know that. I've not listened to anything he said in... well... ever. I was vaguely aware of him shouting lefty stuff a few years back but never paid much attention

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  • theinspectorst@kbin.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    He jumped the horseshoe. The fringes of right-wing extremism and left-wing extremism often end up having rather a lot in common - it's easy for people who define themselves against the mainstream first (and only for something second) to find themselves agreeing a lot with people who are notionally at the other end of the spectrum.

    In Russell Brand's case, that meant embracing anti-vaxism, Covid denial, climate change denial, 5G conspiracies, etc. George Galloway did it by embracing Farage and trying to get selected as a candidate for the Brexit Party. Claire Fox went from a pro-IRA Revolutionary Communist Party activist and co-publisher of the Living Marxism magazine to a Brexit Party MEP. In the US, you see a lot of notionally right-wing US Republicans now starting to spout anti-capitalist narratives. At the fringes of politics, this sort of horseshoe-jumping happens all the time.

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    • SatansMaggotyCumFart@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      The horseshoe theory does not enjoy wide support within academic circles; peer-reviewed research by political scientists on the subject is scarce, and existing studies and comprehensive reviews have often contradicted its central premises, or found only limited support for the theory under certain conditions.

      Theories like this sound ok on the surface but as soon as you start digging into it, it falls apart.

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      • theinspectorst@kbin.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        I'm open to your alternative explanation of the observed pattern of horseshoe-jumping: e.g. Russell Brand, George Galloway, Claire Fox, Piers Corbyn, Glenn Greenwald, Naomi Wolf, Melenchon voters backing Le Pen in the 2022 2nd round - regardless of what theory explains the observed facts, there are a disturbing number of examples it.

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      • NuPNuA@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        Oh no, the academics disagree so what we observe with our eyes must be wrong.

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