Almost 16 years ago, I wrote a review of a memoir written by the English comedian and sometimes film star Russell Brand. The book was scandalous, libidinous and often very funny. Brand discussed his heroin addiction, his sex addiction and his crazed pursuit of fame.
The anecdotes he told were a universe apart from the usual celebrity fare: sordid and full of a piercing insight into the more abject states of the human condition, yet also laugh-inducing. I couldn’t tell if he was proud or ashamed of his past ventures, but they seemed to be recounted from a position of personal recovery – he had given up drink and drugs. Nonetheless, I ended the review by wondering “what will become of Russell Brand?”
The answer in the short term was getting leading parts in Hollywood films such as Forgetting Sarah Marshall and Get Him to the Greek. Around the same time, he married (and quickly divorced) the American pop singer Katy Perry, yet soon decided that fame was like “ashes in the mouth”.
He explored radical politics, more in an attention-seeking manner than with any coherent analysis, and for a while was courted by various progressive voices, even senior politicians, who sought some of his Pied Piper-like following. He flirted with anti-capitalism, before realising that a more profitable field was conspiracy theory, particularly with Covid denialism and anti-vaccine rants. He also began promoting pro-Russian theories on the Ukraine war.
Last year, his YouTube channel was getting about 14.5 million weekly views. He had become a non-presence in what he derided as the “mainstream media” but a major figure in the alternative media, where conspiratorial thinking is rife.
So, it was no surprise that when allegations of rape, sexual abuse, and coercion of a 16-year-old were made against Brand recently by the Sunday Times and Channel Four, his immediate response was to portray their investigations as a mainstream-media conspiracy. The day the accusations became public, Brand performed to a sold-out crowd in London, who gave him a standing ovation. He also received support from Elon Musk, Andrew Tate and Tucker Carlson.
Shortly before the Brand revelations became news in the UK, another performer was subject to adverse publicity. Irish singer Róisín Murphy wasn’t accused of rape or exerting coercive control over a teen. Instead, on her private Facebook account she expressed reservations about the wholesale prescription of puberty blockers to “mixed-up kids” and said that she didn’t want to be called a “Terf” [trans-exclusionary radical feminist]. The vilification was instant.
Social media went berserk in its condemnation of the former Moloko frontwoman, her record label was reported to have stopped its PR campaign for her new album, Hit Parade, and the Guardian declared that the “compromised” album came with an “ugly stain”. Under intense pressure, Murphy apologised, but that seemed only to provoke still greater ire.
Both events are familiar modern dramas, but the reactions are telling. Brand, who has his own fan base independent of mainstream support, is unrepentant and gains the backing of the world’s richest man. Murphy is profusely apologetic, the music industry seems to abandon her, and some observers believe that her career hangs in the balance.
A man is accused of abusing a youngster, a woman of expressing an opinion (out of concern for children), and yet it is the former who may be in the strongest position to ride out their respective controversies.
In a sense, both these stories are about the threat of public cancellation. But that’s where the similarities end. To view them through the prism of a social media response, where a clicked “like” is often mistaken for political activism, is to miss the fact that digital reaction doesn’t distinguish between an alleged serious crime and a legitimate viewpoint.
