Russell Brand Must Stop Having Opinions About Anything, Immediately

A brief history of the comedian-actor-activist's 'brand'

Taken in 2014, when Russell Brand was an activist of the progressive omnicause

Russell Brand is innocent until proven guilty according to a unanimous jury in a court of law, etcetera. In the court of public opinion, however, the jury will always be out and the discussion will be contentious.

Nevertheless, we must all consider the timeline of Russell Brand, or more accurately, the history of the Russell Brand brand, as objective evidence. Time only flows in one direction in our universe: this thing happened before that thing, which happened before that thing, and so on.

In 2014, the same year the above photo was taken at the Fire Brigade Union Rally, Brand published his magnum opus of celebrity advocacy, Revolution. Borrowing from the Ron Paul libertarians, he reversed the letters EVOL on the cover to emphasize the LOVE.

His politics were redistributionist. The comedian Russell Brand had rebranded himself as an Occupy Activist of the Adbusters Antiwar.com left. And he was already very open about his wild sex life.

That same year, Russell Brand also experienced his very first accusation of abuse and sexual assualt in a book published by Jordan Martin, as well as his very first police interview regarding allegations made against him by another woman. This happened three years before the #MeToo movement had its moment.

Between 2017, the year of #MeToo, and 2022, Russell Brand published three books about addiction recovery, including a recovery workbook as well as a book on mentoring other people in recovery. He never addressed the specific allegations made against him in Martin’s memoir kNot: Entanglement With A Celebrity.

Now in his forties, the brash young rock star had grown up, leaving behind the sex and drugs that had made him a tabloid favorite in the ‘00s. At the beginning of the current decade, the still-leftist firebrand Russell Brand had rebranded himself as a recovery guru, and he was already dodging stories of past misdeeds.

Public accusations against the Russell Brand brand redoubled with headlines in September 2023. Four women alleged Brand had sexually assaulted them from 2006 to 2013. Prosecutors were reportedly considering charges against Brand about four weeks later. After a year-long investigation, Met Police asked the Crown Prosecution Service to file charges in November 2024.

The day after Met Police asked for charges last November, a fifth woman came forward claiming that Brand assaulted her on an American film set in July 2010. Brand admitted a “faulty memory” of his time on the set, but denied the allegation in a civil lawsuit.

Since then, his accusers in the United Kingdom have also filed civil claims against Brand. Yesterday Brand was charged with rape and assault of four women between 1999 and 2005. More charges may follow for crimes Brand is alleged to have committed later.

So in 2023, Brand the recovery guru was being held liable for things he allegedly did during his extended rock and roll youth. It seemed as if the Russell Brand brand was on the ropes, ready for the knockout punch.

Only then, when his name was in the mud, did the mainstream press take notice of how his political brand had changed. Whether he was on the left or the right, Brand was always happy to chase headlines with his outspoken political takes until he was accused of sex crimes.

In 2023, his politics had changed, but they were still entirely on-brand for Russell Brand, and by that point he had already ducked allegations of sexual misconduct for almost a decade.

Mainstream media noticed Russell Brand’s latest rebranding when the accusations against him emerged in 2023. Time only flows in one direction in our universe

Brand was becoming “a reborn Christian and a ‘deep-state’, ‘plandemic’ conspiracist,” investigative reporter Zoë Beaty wrote at The Independent in September 2024. Political issues and programs aside, Brand had developed a “Jesus complex.”

To borrow a line from the late Magdalen Berns, the midlife religious awakening opened Brand’s mind until his brain fell out. Grandeur practically radiated in his messaging.

This weekend, the 49-year-old who was baptised himself in April, posted pictures on his Instagram account showing him baptising another man in a lake wearing nothing but a white pair of underpants. His caption read: ‘It might seem a bit soon to be baptising people, but the Apostles did it on day one, so here we are.’

Already accused, Brand was at the Republican National Convention wearing the MAGA hat. “This new identity, the radical shift from the left to the right, the crucial combination of theology and conspiracy, and the powerful ability to cast doubt on almost anything that comes his way, is extreme but not surprising,” Beaty concluded.

Emphasis has been added above because now that Russell Brand has been charged with crimes, his defenders cast doubt on the charges with claims that he has been targeted for his political views. That is false. Laughably false. He was accused before his views ever changed from left to right.

In the actual, real, not-imaginary world of things that genuinely happened in a material sense, Russell Brand’s politics were never interesting to anyone in power, let alone Old Media institutions, until after women had accused him of sex crimes. And those allegations were almost a decade old when news organizations finally took them seriously. Their investigative reporting into Russell Brand’s brand transformation began only after he had been accused of crimes.

What happens to his brand now is up to the British justice system, and properly so. His lawyers should be telling him right now to disappear and stop talking. The less he is seen and heard, the better. Not that he will listen, being Jesus in his own mind.

Per the comedic title of this post, it no longer matters what Russell Brand thinks. He could think that saving puppies from drowning is a good idea, for example, but he would not move the public opinion needle on saving puppies from drowning. He can only hurt any cause he endorses.

Right now, Russell Brand would make a terrible brand spokesman. No producer could get investors to sign on to a major motion picture with Russell Brand, anymore. It would be like Kraft Heinz bringing back Bill Cosby to advertise Jell-O: no consumer would care that Cosby was released from prison on a technicality. It would be brand suicide.

Which is not to say that Brand has no outlets to express himself. YouTube has stopped paying him, but the Russell Brand brand still exists on Rumble, and is therefore immune to corporate media cancelation.

As long as he remains a free man, Brand can peddle any nutritional supplements and VPN apps that still want him to front for their brands, if any. Brand still has a fanbase of millions at his fingertips. He is not being silenced. He is not a martyr.

Starting when he was 24, party boy, progressive radical actor/activist, and avowed feminist Russell Brand allegedly committed casting couch crimes against women, which is about as surprising as dirt in a field or water in the ocean.

Perhaps he will beat the charges and the lawsuits. Perhaps Russell Brand will lose everything and go to prison. Either way, for the time being, his opinions matter less than they ever did, his political opinions least of all.

Post-script, it is worth noting that the ‘brand’ of the Met Police has also suffered from allegations of poor training and botched responses to rape victims in recent years. A shocking number of London police officers have allegedly stalked and harassed and raped women, even been arrested for serial rape.

The Crown Prosecution Service was also accused of dropping too many rape cases in 2022, losing rape case data in 2023, and victim-blaming in 2024. No department or prosecutor’s office could possibly be more incentivized to acquit themselves by getting a high-profile rape case right. We shall see.

Also, Russell Brand first appeared on the Joe Rogan podcast in 2016, making his fourth and final appearance in February 2023. I have not taken the time to watch these episodes but they might make an interesting data-set for a future post if there is enough interest in this one. (This post will need to get 1,000 likes before I read his books.)

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