{"id":23258,"date":"2023-03-10T16:47:30","date_gmt":"2023-03-10T16:47:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/?p=23258"},"modified":"2023-03-10T17:01:33","modified_gmt":"2023-03-10T17:01:33","slug":"off-brand-the-problem-with-ego-charisma-and-conspiracy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/2023\/03\/10\/off-brand-the-problem-with-ego-charisma-and-conspiracy\/","title":{"rendered":"Off Brand: the problem with ego, charisma and conspiracy"},"content":{"rendered":"

The following article, written by Mike Small, was first posted on bella caledonia<\/a>. Using \u00a0Russell Grant as an example, this article examines the the gallop to Right by many high profile men, particularly \u00a0online. \u00a0In the days of the Arab Spring, the Indignados in Spain and Greece, and the 2014 democratic revolution in Scotland \u00a0many commentators originally moved to \u00a0a more Left wing politics. Following a \u00a0Right wing counter-offensive, many of these figures have shifted to the Right, some adopting Red\/Brown politics, whilst other offer mealy-mouthed apologetics.<\/strong><\/p>\n

OFF BRAND: THE PROBLEM WITH EGO, CHARISMA AND CONSPIRACY<\/strong><\/p>\n

Welcome to the Twilight Zone, our new series looking at the wonderful world of conspiracy, the far-right world of populist paranoia. <\/i><\/div>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

For some time now the charismatic and hyper-articulate Russel Brand, who for a long time seemed to speak to and from the dispossessed and marginalised has been shifting ever rightwards. It\u2019s a phenomenon of paranoia that can be seen by high-profile men online for whom hidden forces are at play to undermine them. All these men talk of dark forces and conspiracy against them: Andrew Tait (the Matrix); Craig Murray (sex-negative feminism); Neil Oliver (the Silent War), Jordan Peterson (woke moralists), Douglas Murray (Cultural Marxism).<\/p>\n

The debate is on about the extent to which these people are grifters or ideologues flirting with the alt-right algorithm. But some of these people matter and what their success reveals matters too. Brand operates his YouTube channel, publishing daily videos to six million followers. If Tait and Peterson are at the intersection of toxic masculinity\/fragility and hyper-misogyny, Brand operates at the point where contaminated hippiedom meets anti-lockdown paranoia and the dubious libertarianism propagated by the far-right.<\/p>\n

I have some real problems with George Monbiot\u2019s takes on \u2013 particularly food and energy \u2013 but on Brand he is spot on, today arguing that \u201cconspiracism is fascism\u2019s fuel\u201d.<\/p>\n

Here he monitors Brand\u2019s descent (\u2018I once admired Russell Brand. But his grim trajectory shows us where politics is heading<\/a>\u2018):<\/p>\n

\u201cIn 2014, he was bursting with new ideas and creative ways of presenting them. Today, he wastes his talent on tired and discredited tales: endless iterations of the alleged evils of the\u00a0World Economic Forum founder, Klaus Schwab<\/a>,\u00a0the Great Reset<\/a>,\u00a0Bill Gates<\/a>,\u00a0Nancy Pelosi<\/a>, the former US chief medical adviser,\u00a0Anthony Fauci<\/a>,\u00a0Covid vaccines<\/a>, medical data, the\u00a0World Health Organization<\/a>, Pfizer, smart cities and \u201cthe globalist masterplan<\/a>. His videos appear to\u00a0promote \u201cnatural immunity\u201d<\/a>\u00a0ahead of vaccines, and for a while pushed\u00a0ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine<\/a>\u00a0as\u00a0treatments for Covid<\/a>\u00a0(they aren\u2019t<\/a>).\u201d<\/p>\n

Here he rails against the organic movement, which he claims is a gigantic scam \u2026<\/p>\n

As Monbiot explains: \u201cBrand is repeating claims first made by far-right conspiracists, who have piled into this issue, claiming that the nitrate crisis is a pretext to seize land from farmers, in whom, they claim, true Dutch identity is vested, and hand it to asylum seekers and other immigrants. It\u2019s a version of the \u201cgreat replacement\u201d conspiracy theory, itself a reworking of the Nazis\u2019 blood and soil tropes about protecting the \u201crooted\u201d and \u201cauthentic\u201d people \u2013 in whom \u201cracial purity\u201d and \u201ctrue\u201d German identity was vested \u2013 from \u201ccosmopolitan\u201d and \u201calien\u201d forces (ie Jews). Brand may not realise this, as the language has changed a little \u2013 \u201ccosmopolitans\u201d have become \u201cglobalists\u201d, \u201caliens\u201d have become \u201cimmigrants\u201d \u2013 but the themes have not.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some of this is funny and ridiculous and harmless \u2013 some of\u00a0the UFO chat<\/a>\u00a0is hilarious \u2013 as is the Bill Gates stuff: \u201cSome of his many rants about Bill Gates are illustrated with an image of the man wearing a multicoloured lapel badge, helpfully circled in red. This speaks to another widespread conspiracy theory: those who wear this badge are members of a secret organisation conspiring to control the world (so secret they stick it on their jackets).\u201d<\/p>\n

But we know from Nancy Pelosi\u2019s husband being attacked with a hammer, or the grotesque debacle of Alex Jones\u00a0trolling the victims<\/a>\u00a0of the Sandy Hook massacre \u2013 and the general atmosphere cultivated by hate-blogs and conspiracism that this isn\u2019t just \u2018funny and ridiculous\u2019.<\/p>\n

Nor can you suggest that the current surveillance state isn\u2019t rich and fertile ground for paranoia and the unprecedented conditions of war and virus adds to the mix with the background of political failure.<\/p>\n

Now, instead of these groups fading with Covid into the background, they are so virulent they just get transferred to other crises.<\/p>\n

There are other culprits at play other than just the narcissist grifters outlined above. The failure of western centrist political leaders to provide coherent radical alternatives to the populist right\u2019s simplism is one, as is the demise of the mainstream media in public trust and standing.<\/p>\n

Beneath much of the fear and paranoia is an idea that has come to take hold \u2013 that of the unity (or collapse) of any meaning between right and left, as portrayed here by Glenn Greenwald:<\/p>\n

This in itself is a central myth that needs challenged over and over in an attempt to re-instate rational discourse intro the public realm.<\/p>\n

10.3.23<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

____________<\/p>\n

also see:<\/p>\n

A very unlikely story: Qanon movement – Paul Demarty, Weekly Worker<\/a><\/p>\n

Fake news and conspiracy myths \u2013 Media Lens and Thomas Klikauer<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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The following article, written by Mike Small, was first posted on bella caledonia. Using \u00a0Russell Grant as an example, this article examines the the gallop to Right by many high profile men, particularly \u00a0online. \u00a0In the days of the Arab Spring, the Indignados in Spain and Greece, and the 2014 democratic revolution in Scotland \u00a0many…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1843,1861,1854,1862],"tags":[8984],"class_list":["post-23258","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-how-capitalists-organise","category-alienation-self-determination","category-the-left-crisis","category-ideology-and-religion","tag-author-mike-small"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/mastodon.scot\/@rcfscotland\/110000003615573400","error":""},"views":998,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23258","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23258"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23258\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23263,"href":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23258\/revisions\/23263"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23258"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23258"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23258"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}