I enjoyed George Monbiot's take down of Russell Brand (and Rogan and Greenwald) both in The Guardian and on Twitter. (I also learned for the first time that George has a full public disclosure of this income and assets - and it certainly appears he hasn't become rich through journalism and advocacy. It's quite refreshing to see this openness from someone like him and I wish there were more of it.)
I happened to watch Brand's smug, loudmouthed performance on Bill Maher's show on Youtube last week. I don't care for Maher, who suffers to a much milder degree from "a pox on both their houses" form of criticism, while actually complaining most about the Left, but his guests can make him worth watching. Brand is like Maher X 20, though. As Monbiot says:
I can’t help noticing that most of the people who say “left? right? It’s all meaningless, man” are those who have made a major shift from left to right. Denying that left and right exist any longer seems to be a form of self-justification.
Someone else on Twitter made this wry observation of Brand as guru, too:
Monbiot thinks that Brand is merely chasing money and been corrupted by the algorithm, so to speak:
I don’t believe for a moment that his transition is ideological. I think it’s cynical.
Here I think George is not giving enough credence to the psychological rule that if you pretend something long enough, you start to believe it. But that rule also tends to make me agree with him here:
I think Russell, like Glenn Greenwald(@ggreenwald),@joerogan and other such entrepreneurs, who do not seem to be not committed to the far right themes they now amplify, but appear to use them to ramp up their numbers, are more dangerous than the actual fascists.
I think that second "not" is an error, by the way; but I agree with the idea that someone who makes a lot of money by spouting fascist arguments while privately not believing or fully endorsing them (to a degree, surely we can put Carlson in that group now too?) may be more dangerous simply because of their successful reach and greedy motivation to never admit error.
Monbiot thinks that Brand is merely chasing money and been corrupted by the algorithm, so to speak:
ReplyDeleteIt is not money it is attention. (I wrote that before reading the line on your post!) The same thing happened to Dr. John Campbell. They are captured by their audience. Just like Fox they then continue to peddle ideas that they would not entertain but for the algorithm and comments guiding their content. It is a perverse reversal of how people should form their opinions.
I take your point that eventually they come to believe what they are saying. That certainly happens and highlights the problem today of people only focusing on their preferred political talking heads without realizing that they are being played.
I'm not confident that people like Carlson are more dangerous than his acolytes. The likes of Carlson will not take to the streets, will not engage in violence, but they will justify that violence of their followers because they need to keep them on side. However, the Nazi echelon weren't the ones doing the killing but undoubtedly were responsible for it. The difference though is that they appeared to fully embrace their ideology rather than hypocrites like Carlson and Hannity.
I have never understood Brand's popularity. He's a narcissist. If only he had maintained his original addictions.