“’I FLED BRAND,’” a Monday accusation in The Sun screams. “Russell Brand stalked me down street demanding sex after I met him in bar – I felt like I was being hunted, model claims.”
The media is having a prurient field day piling on to the controversial English comedian, actor, writer, and social commentator.
“Met cops probe sex assault claim against Russell Brand as woman comes forward to report 2003 Soho attack – as star’s ‘Bipolarisation’ tour is postponed,” the Daily Mail relates. “Four women accusing Russell Brand of sexual assault may be ‘just tip of the iceberg’,” the Express chimes in.
“YouTube suspends Russell Brand’s revenues from his channel,” The Guardian adds. “The BBC has also removed a handful of programmes featuring Brand from its iPlayer and Sounds streaming service, joining the likes of Channel 4 and Comedy Central in removing archive shows featuring the comedian.”
Now, no less than the government of the UK has joined the pile-on, with Parliament demanding TikTok and Rumble demonetize Brand.
This may be interesting celebrity gossip to some, but it makes fair the question, “What does this have to do with ‘gun rights’?” While the answer is “Nothing directly,” what’s happening to Brand, who is being proactively canceled, financially punished, and publicly judged despite vigorously denying the as-yet unproven charges, is pretty much the same thing that happens to gun owners accused of dangerous behaviors under “red flag laws.” Authorities then confiscate their firearms without formally charging them, much less convicting them, of a disqualifying crime.
As we’ve seen in earlier instances where the politically motivated “Believe women” default mantra has been shown to not live up to the mass presumptions of guilt, the damage that can be done to the innocent is real and can profoundly affect all of us. Think Tawana Brawley and the dangerous racial hatred fomented by her lies. Then, think what the Supreme Court would be like had the Democrats’ sneak attack accusing Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault worked.
In Brand’s case, it’s tough to feel much sympathy. That’s because, in addition to a past that includes addictions to hard drugs and promiscuous sex, the multimillionaire beneficiary of free market choices is on record attacking capitalism and advocating:
“A socialist egalitarian system based on the massive redistribution of wealth, [with] heavy taxation of corporations…I think the very concept of profit should be hugely reduced…I say profit is a filthy word, because wherever there is a profit there is also a deficit.”
The way “woke” corporations run by elites are lining up to sell the cultural Marxists rope, it’s tough not to think he may have a point, but history shows us all systems have their elites and it’s the lowly bourgeoisie that ends up in the gulags and the lime pits. Let’s not mistake private ownership with voluntary production and trade for economic fascism, which requires a “public/private partnership” with a corrupt armed enforcement apparatus imposing coercive controls to fraud.
That’s not the only cognitive dissonance Brand has promulgated. For all that talk about equity, he has used his disproportionately influential megaphone to disparage the most effective egalitarian power-sharing arrangement ever conceived: The right of the people to keep and bear arms.
It’s funny how people who can’t – or won’t – control themselves are so bent on controlling the rest of us. Maybe it’s a projection thing.
Not only has Brand called for global “gun control” (evidently ignorant of all the longstanding controls and treaties that don’t work and substituting “bananas” for Barack Obama’s “books and vegetables”), but who needs guns when you’re rich enough to employ a squad of private bodyguards/thugs?
“Katy Perry and Russell Brand’s Bodyguards Allegedly Assaulting Paparazzi in India,” AceShowBiz reported a few years back. Per the report, the then-couple’s personal goon squad left photographers stranded in a jungle safari tiger park by taking their car keys, smashing a camera, smashing one’s glasses, and beating them up, leaving one with a cut arm and another with “a bleeding wound on his head.”
Privileged, protected celebrities: Is it any wonder we love them so? That said, as easy as it would be not to give a damn about what happens to Russell Brand, to let the ludicrously tyrannical “Sentence first, verdict afterward” mob mentality become the social default impacts us all in a Martin Niemöller kind of way.
And in Brand’s case, the public furor being incited may be more about leftist policies he opposes, like Covid “denialism” now being painted as a “right-wing signaling trope.” He’s left the reservation. It’s too dangerous to let a previously favored mass influencer do that.
Just as Firearms Policy Coalition is standing up for the reprehensible Hunter Biden to defend a greater principle, we don’t have to give a damn about Russell Brand as a person. But we stand by silently while anyone is deemed guilty without due process at our peril.
About David Codrea:
David Codrea is the winner of multiple journalist awards for investigating/defending the RKBA and a long-time gun owner rights advocate who defiantly challenges the folly of citizen disarmament. He blogs at “The War on Guns: Notes from the Resistance,” is a regularly featured contributor to Firearms News, and posts on Twitter: @dcodrea and Facebook.
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