Russell Brand’s trial has begun in the UK, as the celebrity grifter/influencer begins defending himself against various sexual abuse allegations.
Obviously, I’m not going to comment on the specific allegations or on the legal proceedings. But I have been meaning to talk about Brand for a while, as he’s such an interesting case study.
The guy is a chameleon. A real-life actor who has adopted so many different personas or narratives at different times that it’s almost impossible to identify a real person anymore.
Russell Brand seems to have always been an act. But the act keeps changing.
Right now, it’s the act of the persecuted Christian warrior.
‘The prayer is working, thank you. We have total trust in our beloved Jesus,’ he published to his ‘X’ account the day his trial started. ‘By His grace we are healed together.’
I’ve been exposed to Brand’s career for over twenty years here in the UK, beginning with his early days as a TV personality. Watching his strange trajectory has been curious: from ‘raunchy’ British TV star and radio shock-jock to Hollywood film fixture and marriage to Katy Perry, to seemingly an earnest political commentator, to conspiracy theory adopter, to right-wing grifter, and now to self-proclaimed Christian guru.
It’s always been hard to work out which of his incarnations has been genuine in any way – or whether all of it has been performative.
What I can say with some confidence is that his recent so-called conversion to Christianity has clearly been a calculated performance.
Coincidentally, the same performance that various other online influencers all seemed to adopt at the same time: including people like ‘Tommy Robinson’, who all decided to publicly find Jesus in the last couple of years, as if they all got the memo at the same time.
It’s been the most insincere and opportunistic conversion possibly since the Emperor Constantine in the third century.
While there’s been that broader Christian hijacking/manipulation going on for social/political agendas (and which I’ve examined several times, including here), Brand’s own timing, with these various sexual assault cases breathing down his neck, suggested a more personal strategic move to acquire some kind of clean or more noble image.
It was also an attempt to endear himself further to the religious right and Conservatives, especially in America. He was already doing this anyway – most of his online activity in the last several years has been geared towards that.
It seems unlikely that he is genuinely right-wing or Conservative in his outlook. It’s probably another performance – but a profitable one. He saw which way the wind was blowing several years ago in terms of the cultural lurch towards the right, and so he went all in.
Most will remember that Brand had come from a progressive, liberal, left-leaning perspective and persona – assuming this was ever real either. The problem was that his career was drying up. He wasn’t getting the TV work in the UK anymore – maybe partly due to his problematic reputation. Hollywood stopped calling too.
And so he jumped into the online Alternative Media space – at a time when independent content creators, citizen journalists and bloggers were doing pretty good work. He essentially hijacked that space – as so many grifters did – and turned it into a successful income.
It was also a way to reinvent himself.
Again, he saw which way the wind was blowing – with alt media thriving and anti establishment sentiment at its height – and he got himself a piece of the pie.
For a time at least, he maintained a semblance of balance and non-partisanship. After the meteoric success of MAGA, however, and the widespread shift to right-wing politics across the West, he increasingly took up right-wing talking points and eventually attached himself firmly to that side of the spectrum.
The idea of Russell Brand as a Conservative commentator would’ve seemed ludicrous ten years earlier. But the chameleon had changed his colours again.
The conversion to Christianity was simply the next step in that trajectory.
But again, it’s also strategic: by adopting the religious persona and endearing himself to religious conservatives, he can paint the picture of a ‘Good Christian’ and a white Conservative male being persecuted by the establishment with these ‘false’ rape allegations.
A punishment for being a bold truth teller and supposed exposer of conspiracies and corruption.
He can more effectively play victim and martyr, in other words.
Brand has known these allegations were going to be a problem for long time. Had he remained a liberal or a progressive, he wouldn’t have had any support – and wouldn’t be able to play martyr, because the so-called Left wouldn’t defend an alleged rapist.
On the other side of the spectrum, however, he knew he could reframe everything, have sympathy and support and be part of the fast-forming hierarchy of high-profile commentators, cultural influencers and figureheads.
By this time, Brand has relinquished any semblance of being an honest operator or even a real person.
Witness him now palling it up with the likes of Rabbi Schmuley or Tommy Robinson (who he unironically described as ‘a legit journalist’). A quite remarkable descent into self-parody.
The problem for Brand is that no one buys his acts anymore. His unintentionally comical appearance on the Piers Morgan show a few months ago demonstrated how badly his Christian performance is going.
And if the Right has embraced him, it’s only because they’ll embrace anyone who plays the game and supports all the absurd theater.
Witness Brand’s performance at the Turning Point USA event, for example, right at the height of the Charlie Kirk related pantomime that seemed to be the major trigger for the fake (Judeo) Christian ‘revival’ programming.
It has become surreal.
Unsurprisingly, given the rape accusations Brand faces, he has been a vocal defender of fellow grifter and alleged sex offender Andrew Tate.
The Tate brothers and Russell Brand – two prolific online grifters who both seem to be facing the same problem right now, that problem being multiple charges of rape and sexual abuse – though in the Tate brothers’ case, this includes the added crime or human trafficking.
Both Tate and Brand claim, unsurprisingly, that they’re victims of Establishment forces trying to silence them.
It’s interesting that both Brand and the Tates occupy a similar online space – although Brand was generally much less overtly incendiary and more subtle. Whereas Tate has made his fortune (he describes himself as a ‘self-made millionaire’) openly profiteering off the manipulation and indoctrination of young men.
It’s easier to defend what Russell Brand does somewhat – the Tate brothers, on the other hand, seem beyond all defending, not even just to play Devil’s Advocate. Tate has been so open and boastful about his view of women – and his behaviour towards them – that it would be shocking for him to *not* be an offender. It’s practically his whole brand.
Meanwhile, Russell Brand’s entire TV persona (from the era where most of these accusations originate) was that of a boastful sexual deviant and general hedonist – who, again, openly celebrated his sexual exploits. That some of those sexual encounters might’ve, at the very least, gotten out of hand isn’t hard to believe. That Brand might’ve been predatory is also not difficult to imagine.
Again, I won’t talk about the specific cases or claims here: the earlier Channel 4 documentary laid most of that out.
Tate is another person I’ve been wanting to talk about for a while. But I’ll save that for some other time.
But it’s curious that, just as Brand adopted Christianity, Andrew Tate weirdly became a Muslim. Why? There’s no way Tate is actually a Muslim, actually practicing the religion. Like Brand’s overly choregraphed embrace of Jesus, this was obviously a performance.
Again, I’ll come back to Tate another time.
Interestingly, both Brand and Tate got famous partly from the reality TV show Big Brother, though at different times.
But after decades of continuous shape-shifting and reinvention, is this the end of the line for Russell Brand’s career?
Again, I make no comment about the allegations themselves. It’s certainly true that such allegations can be used strategically to take down high-profile individuals. But it’s also true that stories about Brand’s behaviour have been around for two decades.
It’s hard to predict how the trial itself will conclude. In a worse case scenario for him, he could end up in jail.
But will that simply enable the playing out of a bigger martyrdom act, to be milked for all it’s worth by the political/cultural allies he has thrown his lot in with?
The ‘anti establishment’ rebel and earnest Christian being imprisoned on false charges? A free speech martyr (like his new friend ‘Tommy Robinson’ with his antics)? That’s the likely spin. And that’s the narrative he himself seems to have been carefully trying to encourage.
On the other hand, if he gets out of this mess without punishment, his brand (excuse the pun) is probably unsalvageable.
All that’s left for him is more embarrassing antics and more performance, playing mega pastor at TPUSA events with Erika Kirk, and partying with the Rabbi Schmuleys of the world.
Isn’t it soul destroying for him? Does he really enjoy all that stuff? It’s pretty sad to observe.
I was never a fan of Russell Brand, but there was a time – maybe about twenty years ago – when I thought his quasi-intellectual I-swallowed-a-thesaurus act could be quite funny.
He also seemed like he might’ve had a good intellect and some interesting thoughts. To give him credit, he also did some good activism and advocacy in the areas of drug addiction and mental health.
But any discernible trace of sincerity or even of a real person has diminished in the subsequent years. What he’s become since then is a weird mixture of embarrassing and grotesque.
