United Kingdom: Rape accusations take down Brand
Russell Brand often “publicly joked about his predatory behavior and sex life,” said Rosamund Urwin in The Sunday Times, but rumors that the British comedian turned conspiracy theorist had actually attacked women circulated more quietly among those he worked with. Now this newspaper’s yearslong investigation has identified four women who say that Brand raped or sexually assaulted them; we have given them pseudonyms. Alice was only 16 when Brand, then 31, dated her in 2006. Calling her “the child,” she said, he seemed turned on by her virginity, and he isolated her socially and roughly forced her to perform oral sex. Nadia, a businesswoman who met Brand in 2012, says he “raped her against a wall in his Los Angeles home” after she refused a threesome. Phoebe, who met Brand the next year, says when he assaulted her, his eyes turned“black, like the devil.” Brand was a self-declared sex addict, and some in the industry say his proclivity for violence was “an open secret.” Yet the industry response was largely “Boys will be boys.” Brand, 48, strongly denies any wrongdoing, saying all his relationships have been consensual.
The alleged attacks occurred during the peak of Brand’s fame, said Will Lloyd in The Times. A “lascivious lothario” on the London stand-up scene, he shot to stardom between 2006 and 2013. He became the gleefully uncensored host of the British TV series Big Brother’s Big Mouth, then won over Hollywood as a sex-crazed rocker in the 2008 film Forgetting Sarah Marshall, a role that led to more film work. Back in London, Brand recast himself as a political revolutionary, guest-editing the leftist New Statesman and publishing a manifesto calling for abolition of the nation-state. By 2014, he was named to a list of the world’s “most influential thinkers,” and left-wing British politicians were falling over themselves to get his endorsement.
Over the past few years, though, Brand abandoned his leftist stances, said Jim Waterson in The Guardian, and slithered into the anti-establishment world of conspiracy theories. While journalists were busy documenting allegations of sexual violence, he was building a 7 million–strong fan base through YouTube and podcasting, “based around right-wing talking points and Covid vaccine skepticism.” Broadcasting from the garage of his $4 million home in Henley-on-Thames, he railed against Bill Gates and “globalists.” In retrospect, the pivot from left-wing darling to alt-right guru looks awfully convenient, said Guy Kelly in The Telegraph. His new audience of angry young men is primed to dismiss any allegations as deep-state smears against a brave truth teller. “The more ‘they’ attack Brand, the more he can claim he’s being hushed.”
As British police began investigating the rape allegations this week, companies raced to cut ties with Brand, said Tom Cotterill in the Daily Mail. YouTube demonetized his channels; his agent and publisher dropped him; and his live tour was suspended. Yet while he’s likely to take a significant “financial hit,” the “army of millions of followers” he cultivated so carefully may still be willing to pay for direct subscriptions. Since the allegations broke, in fact, his follower numbers have gone not down, but up.