In case you haven’t heard, there has been some explosive news from across the pond. In a coordinated expose  by the Sunday Times and other media outlets in Britain, comedian, actor and increasingly right wing YouTuber Russell Brand, whom you may know from movies like Forgetting Sarah Marshall and Get Them to the Greek has been accused of multiple instances of rape and assault between 2006 and 2013, including on a then 16 year old girl whom he referred to as the child. 

Now, I won’t detail all of the allegations which were investigated over the course of years here, but I encourage you to read them for yourself. All of this is deeply unsurprising. Having lived through the early aughts, myself I remember all too well the tenor of the times. Misogyny, casual assault, the hyper sexualization and dehumanization of young women, it was just part of day to day life. The degradation and humiliation of women were served up for the entertainment of others. Remember the popularity of celebrity upskirt shots? That’s just a tiny piece of what I’m talking about. 

And Russell Brand gleefully, loudly participated in this culture, even making his sexual predation a part of his persona to the tune of millions of dollars. This is horrible. This is all horrible. It is horrible that he was allowed to operate in the public sphere with seemingly very little recourse for decades. This is something we should all be able to agree on. It’s so simple. It’s so obvious. 

But of course, there are many who question the women’s accounts. Who wonder why it took so long for them to come forward. So I will I will remind you here that there are many, many reasons why survivors hesitate to speak out, especially when their attacker is a very powerful, very wealthy, very influential public figure. But there are those also who take their skepticism of these women’s accounts further because so in recent years, Russell Brand has rebranded sorry himself as a sort of YouTube guru spotlighting conspiracy theories about issues including COVID-19, and the war on Ukraine and he specializes in stirring up skepticism about the mainstream media. 

In a preemptive video that brand released in advance of the charges being made public he asked rhetorically, is there another agenda at play? After the story’s republish, who do you think came to his defense? That’s right, Tucker Carlson and Elon Musk who separately suggested that brand had been targeted because of his right wing beliefs in an effort to silence him. Carlson wrote criticize the drug companies question the war in Ukraine and you can be pretty sure this is going to happen. Musk tweeted I support Russell Brand that man is not evil. 

Well, I can imagine some of the women who’ve crossed his path might disagree. Oh, and did Andrew Tate chime in yeah of course he did. This is a theme as of late. High profile right wing man does bad things. High profile right wing man is called out on said bad things. High profile right wing man’s cohorts jumped to his defense claiming that he has been targeted because of his political stance.

But it’s it’s not out of the realm of possibility that brands outspoken conservatism and divisive views were what drew the level of attention that resulted in this investigation. But once again, the right is trying to deflect attention from the issue at hand, which is that Russell Brand is a predator. The right’s presumed presidential nominee has been indicted for frankly unbelievable crimes against both individuals and our country. But no, no, no, no, no, the real problem is Joe Biden’s age. They are willfully choosing not to see the forest for the trees. 

It is wild to me that a man who has admitted his predatory behavior, who has written about it in his books, performed it in plain sight, and it was now being called out is somehow becoming emblematic to certain figures on the right. Forget about brands, political views, the man is a nightmare and some of the most powerful men in the world are leaping to his defense. So it seems to me that the real issue here is that maybe, just maybe there might be a link between toxic beliefs and toxic behavior, and that brand supporters are looking for any excuse to pardon their own indefensible conduct. Just a thought