Russell Brand’s conspiracies and his defenders

Sam Hawley: Hi, I’m Sam Hawley, coming to you from Gadigal Land. This is ABC News Daily. Russell Brand built his name on the shock factor, using his sexual exploits as punchlines and making offensive jokes on live television and radio for years. It made him famous. Now, the comedian, presenter and actor has been accused of sexual assault and rape between 2006 and 2013, allegations he denies. Today, senior contributor at Forbes magazine, Dani Di Placido on the accusations against brand, his conspiracy theories and his massive social media fan base. And a warning, this episode contains allegations of sexual assault.

Russell Brand, social media video: Hello there. You awakening wonders. Now, this isn’t the usual type of video we make on this channel where we critique, attack and undermine the news in all its corruption. Because in this story, I am the news…

Sam Hawley: Dani, we’re hearing there from Russell Brand. This is a video he put out on social media before the allegations against him had even been aired.

Russell Brand, social media video: …but amidst this litany of astonishing, rather baroque attacks are some very serious allegations that I absolutely refute…

Sam Hawley: And I want to come back to that video and unpack that a bit more soon with you. But on the allegations against him, these were uncovered after a really lengthy investigation by Channel 4 and the Times in the UK. Just remind me what these allegations are. They’re pretty serious.

Dani Di Placido: So five women, I think, by my count. Have come forward to accuse Russell Brand of sexual assault, emotional abuse, controlling, very manipulative behaviour. One of the women alleges that she dated Brand when she was 16 years old. And she, in hindsight, feels like he groomed her. And one of the women has accused Brand of outright rape.

Sam Hawley: And these allegations relate to a period from the early 2000s to 2013. And that was really when Brand was at the height of his fame. And I mean, when you look back at it at that time, the things he was saying then, it was really extraordinary, wasn’t it? Some of the clips, when you look back on them now, it’s like, wow, the things he got away with saying.

Dani Di Placido: I think people forget how much ambient sexism was in the air before me, too. If you look back on old clips, not just of Russell Brand, they’re kind of all over the place. You see TV hosts acting creepy and inappropriate towards the female celebrities that they’re interviewing, especially in the UK. I don’t know how it was in Australia. It was all about comedians pushing boundaries and seeing how far they could go. Offending people was kind of the point. And I think Russell Brand fit very neatly into that era.

Sam Hawley: Sure did. He was on The Late Show with David Letterman in 2008.

Russell Brand, TV clip: I’m so well dressed. People think he must be gay. No, no, no. Look at his wonderful haircut. He must be gay. Look how sensitive and vulnerable he is. He must be gay. That’s right. That means women feel safer around me. They trust me. Then bang, pregnant, bang, pregnant, bang, pregnant.

Sam Hawley: Then there was that interview with the disgraced BBC presenter Jimmy Savile.

Russell Brand, TV clip: It’d be very nice to meet you one day, Mr. Jimmy. Savile. Just…

Jimmy Savile, TV clip: Well, if you’ve got a sister, you could meet me by bringing her along.

Sam Hawley: That was broadcast on the BBC in 2007, where they laugh as Russell Brand offers up a naked personal assistant to give Savile a massage.

Jimmy Savile, TV clip: You could send her along to do some research.

Russell Brand, TV clip: Would you like her to wear anything in particular to Jimmy?

Jimmy Savile, TV clip: I’d actually prefer her to wear nothing.

Russell Brand, TV clip: Right. So you want my assistant to meet you naked? Okay, well, that’s. That’s not going to be. That’s not going to be a problem…

Dani Di Placido: Certainly that discussion with Jimmy Savile is incredibly disturbing in hindsight, considering how much of a monster Savile was.

Sam Hawley: And he’s even had encounters with well known Australian journalists here like Fifi Box on Channel 7.

Fifi Box, TV clip: Oh, my God, He’s kissing me. Oh, wow. Okay.

Russell Brand, TV clip: Everything’s okay, isn’t it?

Fifi Box, TV clip: Yes, you’re very handsome.

Russell Brand, TV clip: You create a lot of heat…

Sam Hawley: It seems extraordinary, doesn’t it, that we really weren’t complaining more loudly back then about the things he was saying. You know, he had this really big, successful career, didn’t he, with big media companies like Channel 4 and the BBC?

Dani Di Placido: He did. He was all over the place. And I think I guess at the time that was seen as part of his appeal that he wasn’t afraid to be kind of bold and to push the envelope. I do think a lot of what he said was written off as a joke.

Sam Hawley: All right, Dani. So let’s return to this video that he posted before the allegations were actually aired. It’s actually this video being viewed almost 70 million times… 70 million.

Russell Brand, social media video: …metastasised into something criminal that I absolutely deny. Makes me question, is there another agenda at play, particularly when we’ve seen coordinated media attacks before?

Sam Hawley: In it, he really targets the mainstream media, doesn’t he?

Dani Di Placido: First of all, he just denied all of the allegations outright. He emphasises that he used to be very promiscuous. He claims that all of his sexual encounters were consensual.

Russell Brand, social media video: …now, during that time of promiscuity, the relationships I had were absolutely always consensual. I was always transparent about that, then almost too transparent.

Dani Di Placido: And admits that he was kind of pre-warned in a letter from what he refers to as the mainstream media. So he very kind of clearly frames these allegations in this video. As like he hints that he’s come close to some kind of forbidden truth and he’s being deliberately taken down. He framed the allegations. He said there seems to be another agenda at play. He compared himself to Joe Rogan and said there was coordinated media attacks against Rogan. He said there was a seems to be an effort to control his voice pointed at the camera and kind of, you know, telling his audience that they are trying to control your voice, kind of bringing them in with him.

Russell Brand, social media video: It feels to me like there’s a serious and concerted agenda to control these kind of spaces and these kind of voices. And I mean my voice, along with your voice.

Sam Hawley: Yeah. And he had some immediate support from really big names, almost agreeing with him that there was some sort of agenda to destroy his success. You know, Elon Musk, Andrew Tate, Donald Trump, Jr. They were all kind of backing him.

Dani Di Placido: Yeah. So I think the list of his supporters says a lot. You know, Andrew Tate, the guy who’s been charged with rape and human trafficking, he teaches his young followers to, you know, not to treat women well. You’ve got Elon Musk, who’s been accused of sexual misconduct. He’s taken a huge right wing tilt lately. There’s Tucker Carlson, a huge voice on Fox News for years. You’ve got Alex Jones, huge conspiracy theorist. All these kind of right wing figures are instantly kind of jumping on and kind of agreeing with Russell Brand’s definition that he was kind of taken down deliberately because he had come close to the supposed truth.

Sam Hawley: Yeah. Some sort of truth. Okay, so let’s have a look further then. Dani, at this response to these allegations from Russell Brand that the mainstream media is after him, and to understand that, we need to understand that he has a huge following on social media, doesn’t he?

Dani Di Placido: Yeah. I mean, Russell Brand has 6.6 million on YouTube alone. On Twitter, he’s got more than 11 million. He’s still got a TikTok channel. He’s got 2.3 on there. So, you know, he’s got, you know, millions of followers all spread around. YouTube seems to be his big one.

Sam Hawley: And he’s made a shift, hasn’t he, over maybe the past nine years from the mainstream media. So the BBC, which he actually had to resign from because of another controversy from Channel 4 – that sort of mainstream media – to YouTube to Instagram. And now he’s really a voice against mainstream media. Just explain what’s he up to there?

Dani Di Placido: Yeah, well, kind of, you know, I mean, he’s not on television really anymore. But I would make the argument, if you are a YouTuber with millions of followers, I don’t see why that’s not mainstream media. This is how people consume content nowadays. So the fact that he’s always so keen to to establish himself as outside of the mainstream, I just I don’t agree with that definition. The way he kind of postures against the mainstream is by he makes a lot of correct assessments about the state of the world and he kind of hijacks Marxist ideas, but he turns it into like a vague kind of anti-establishment posturing with no class analysis.

Russell Brand, social media clip: I am pro freedom. I am pro you making your own choices for your family and your diet.

Dani Di Placido: And he just kind of says, we should do something about this. We should do something about the inequalities of the world, of government control and overreach of the bad food we eat like things that everyone can agree with. And then he kind of vaguely hints at solutions, but doesn’t really give any and then spends most of his time amplifying kind of far right conspiracy theories, interviewing like big right wing figures. So he’s kind of doing this like half arsed leftism, but really it’s just repackaged, you know, YouTube conservatism.

Russell Brand, social media clip: Why don’t we give centralised authority to some lab grown meat, lab grown fruit, patented seeds, unelected, powerful entities that have been half regulated by other unelected entities that they also fund. This seems to me to be a further advance of globalism that’s plainly taking us in the wrong direction. That isn’t.

Dani Di Placido: Personally, I always kind of got the impression that Russell Brand believes in nothing, and then he kind of leans into what he thinks his audience wants to hear him say.

Sam Hawley: Police, Dani, are now investigating some allegations and more women have actually come forward with complaints his former employees, the BBC and Channel 4. They’ve been under pressure, too, haven’t they? They’ve had to take some action.

Dani Di Placido: That’s right. I saw that there has been an investigation within the BBC of how all this conduct was handled. I saw the TikTok Channel might be on the way to demonetisation, but I’m not 100 per cent sure if that will happen. So we’ll see. I don’t really know. I don’t know. I think Russell Brand can kind of hang on. Right, Especially because he’s not been banned from YouTube, right?

Sam Hawley: He’s not been banned from YouTube, but YouTube has cut him off financially and some of his live shows have been postponed. So it’s costing him in some way, isn’t it?

Dani Di Placido: Yeah, it’s costing him. I mean, I think he can afford it, but it doesn’t really matter if YouTube cuts him off financially. He’s he’s got more than 6 million subscribers on there. That’s a pretty broad reach. So really he just needs YouTube to communicate to his audience to ask them for money, to ask them to donate to him directly. He’s on Rumble, too, which is an alternative YouTube rival, which is much more relaxed when it comes to content moderation. Russell Brand, I believe, has about 1.6 million followers on Rumble. So he’s still he’s still going to be around, especially if YouTube doesn’t ban him, which I don’t. So far, they’ve said that his content is not harmful. Right. But if he’s there, he can still he can make money from his crowd. He can still be relevant.

Sam Hawley: So despite accusations of problematic behaviour and different controversies over many years, Russell Brand still has a strong fan base. Dani, what does this all say? About our culture. I think about his enduring popularity on these social media platforms. What does it tell us?

Dani Di Placido: It says a lot about how divided people are when it comes to the social norms changing. A lot of people have kind of rejected efforts to be more inclusive. The fact that, you know, people like Brand can frame themselves as a victim of a conspiracy and being silenced. That’s pretty dangerous. There’s a possibility that he will stay and continue to be an influencer in some form or another. I think it really comes down to whether YouTube bans him or not.

Sam Hawley: Dani de Placido is a senior contributor at Forbes magazine. If this episode has raised any issues for you, you can call 1800 RESPECT. This episode was produced by Bridget Fitzgerald, Nell Whitehead, Sam Dunn and Anna John, who also did the mix, are supervising producer is David Coady. Over the weekend, catch This Week with James Glenday, he’ll be looking at relations between India and Canada after the alleged assassination of a Sikh leader in British Columbia. I’m Sam Hawley. ABC News Daily will be back again on Monday. Thanks for listening.