Was the Deep State "attack" on Russell Brand staged?

We are told “don’t shoot the messenger”, but at some point I started wondering if the messenger is as important as the message.  There continues to be a lot of debate about the futility, or usefulness, of questioning the qualifications of those high profile freedom fighters who came late to the party.  I find it hard to believe that by pure chance it turned out that almost all the highly visible Approved^TM dissidents speaking-up about vaccine harms in 2023 are the same people who actively supported vaccine roll-out in 2020 or 2021, or in the case of Russell Brand largely ignored the issue altogether.  At the same time, the people who did speak-up remain invisible even on social media (Professor Bhakdi, Dr Mike Yeadon and many others).

This is a suboptimal outcome as it implies that when the next “emergency” comes along, much of the commentary will again come from the same talking heads who were dead wrong about most things COVID, before flipping position well after the horse had bolted.  We seem destined to collectively make more terrible errors, with key facts and information buried until their disclosure is close to useless.

One of the more outlandish propositions has been the casting of Russell Brand as a freedom fighter raising the alarm over vaccine harms.  One of the main pieces of evidence used to confirm that Russell Brand is indeed a dangerous dissident is that he was “attacked” by the Deep State in September 2023¹.  The story was triggered by an outrageous letter written by Conservative MP Dame Caroline Dinenage to a number of social media organisations asking them to demonetise Russell Brand in response to a number of serious allegations over historic rape and sexual assault claims published in the U.K. media.  Russell Brand himself regularly refers to this incident and adds extra colour, by informing viewers that Caroline Dinenage’s second husband and former MP, Mark Lancaster, served as Deputy Commander 77 Brigade a British Army unit involved in monitoring COVID dissidents.

One of the reasons that this “attack” is important in establishing Russell Brand’s dissident image is that his actual track record of opposing COVID tyranny is almost non-existent.  A search for the word vaccine in Russell Brand’s twitter messages between Jan 2022 and June 2023 generates literally zero results.  Mass vaccination was one of the most important questions facing populations in recent history and almost all media commentators referred to vaccines and/or vaccination dozens of times over this period.

On the face of it, the failure to even mention, let alone raise concerns about, vaccines would preclude Russell Brand from being considered as someone who had a genuine concern about vaccine harms.

There are however several holes in this “attack”, the most significant hole is that neither YouTube, nor Rumble actually closed Russell Brand’s channels.  In any genuine Deep State “attack”, channels and specific videos are almost instantly removed by YouTube.

In fact, the opposite picture seems to emerge that as a result of the ”attack” Russell Brand’s YouTube and Rumble audience figures both went up significantly post September 2023.

It is true that coding indicates that Russell Brand’s YouTube channel was demonetised in September 2023, which means that the traffic payments estimated at about $ 5 to $ 7 per thousand views², were indeed turned off.  Crucially though Russell Brand’s channels stayed up and he was allowed to promote monetisation via locals.com using the YouTube platform.  On locals.com, his membership numbers went up from around 80 thousand in mid 2023 to the current level of around 125 thousand.  The standard paid membership plan is USD 60 per year.  If even a small fraction of the new locals.com members had a paid membership plan then Russell Brand would have achieved an increase in revenues despite the demonetisation of YouTube traffic.

It is also a fact that Russell Brand’s media activity became incredibly successful during the COVID debacle, this is also an almost sure-fire sign that he was very much “on message” and not seriously opposing the Agenda.  The dividends paid by the company that he owns together with his wife increased to an all time high of £ 2,100,000 in 2022.  The net impact from the demonetisation of YouTube versus the significant growth in Rumble traffic and locals.com membership will only show up in the 2023 accounts.

What did he say about vaccines

I can postulate that the failure to seriously mention vaccines at all in 2021 or the first half of 2022 was the result of a conscious decision to stay “on message”.  A decision that I suspect helped ensure that Russell Brand enjoyed wild commercial success, whilst people who were sounding the alarm had their social media accounts seriously censored, or closed.   

When I posted this observation on Twitter, I received a long Substack response from a slightly odd account listing a number of videos where Russell Brand does mention vaccines³.  I admit to not having watched the hours of “awakening” content and instead relied on a Twitter search.  Russell Brand did make a reasonably important vaccine related video in December 2020 called Scepticism or Trust, here Brand simply parroted claims made by CNN of 95% effectiveness with “no serious safety concerns”.  Quoting CNN doesn’t seem particularly alternative.  Most of the videos listed in the Substack article are from 2022 or even 2023 and they are of very limited value given that second dose vaccine roll-out was largely completed by December 2021.  To be fair, he did raise the issues of outsized Big Pharma profits and the lack of liability for Big Pharma. 

Why does it matter?

Inventing Russell Brand as a vaccine sceptic was an incredibly tall order even for an effective propaganda machine. Like most of the other high profile Approved^TM dissidents, Russel Brand started talking seriously about vaccine harms in 2022.

The propaganda pushers will expect that most people will ignore these facts and given sufficient exposure to the fiction that Russell Brand was sounding the alarm over vaccine harms, they will accept his classification as a dissident.  Somewhat depressingly, this plan seems to be working.

This may be why an enormous amount of social media energy is being spent on bringing us the most implausible dissidents like Russell Brand, Bret Weinstein and others.  A cursory look at what they actually did (or more importantly did not do) during 2020 and 2021 makes it clear that there is no serious basis on which to claim that they are dissidents.  A better bet would be to seek out and listen to the people who were actually right about COVID.

Overall, I would expect that Russell Brand is actually closely aligned with the globalist forces that he claims to be fighting, social media success during COVID is certainly a red flag, but many other factors point to a likely alignment with the globalists.  These would cover his affair with highly influential Jemima Goldsmith, success in Hollywood, Leftist political views and interest in New Age belief systems.  For an excellent piece of background research, I would recommend Alister Williams’ video⁴.

Overall, it appears that the Deep State “attack” was not serious and served to create Russell Brand’s dissident image, whilst actually enhancing his social media presence.  

Let me have your thoughts below and please don’t forget to circulate our material!

Alex

Alex Kriel is by training a physicist and was one of the first people to highlight the flawed nature of the Imperial COVID model⁵, he is a founder of the Thinking Coalition which comprises a group of citizens who are concerned about Government overreach (www.thinkingcoalition.com)

1. https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-66875128

2. https://blog.hootsuite.com/how-much-does-youtube-pay-per-view/

3. open.substack.com/pub/libertystack/p/puritan-truthers-controlled-opposition?r=3ep1bj&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web

4. Alister Williams - Russell Brand

5. https://twitter.com/ThinkingSlow1/status/1257578069797339137?s=20