Op-ed: Russell Brand doesn’t just deny sexual assault allegations, he uses cult-like patriarchal misdirection
In response to allegations of sexual assault, comedian Russell Brand issued an absolutely bonkers denial video last week. Not content with that, in response to YouTube suspending his advertising, he issued on Friday what can only be described as his most extreme call-to-action yet, the old, “I need your support now more than ever.”
As a survivor of sexual abuse who’s just written a book about my various brushes with cults, I find the performance reason enough to convict him of, at the very least, trivializing sexual assault.
Recorded in the style of the anti-establishment guru he’s shoehorned his way into being — a dead-eyed stare delivered direct-to-camera, plus excessive hand-gesturing — Brand refers to his past as a problem of promiscuity. It’s not the first time he’s used patriarchal norms to excuse his behavior and promote his agenda.
When convenient, Brand has worn his “Shagger of the Year” title (first awarded by The Sun in the U.K. in 2006) as a badge of honor. He told GQ UK in 2006 he could bed three women a day. By 2017, his past helped shore up his creds as a spiritual influencer. “Because I’ve experienced, forgive me, sort of a promiscuous lifestyle . . . that I thought might resolve the way I feel, I now know that they won’t,” he told BBC Newsnight at that time.
Over the years, I’ve had a (one-sided) love/hate relationship with Brand. I had no idea he’d been a drug-fueled comic when I saw him in the comedy “Forgetting Sarah Marshall,” where I enjoyed what I thought was his performance as an oblivious cad. He didn’t come back on my radar until his marriage to Katy Perry, when I learned both were sober. Then I forgot about him until he wrote a book updating the classic text of “Alcoholics Anonymous,” which — as someone who’s been continuously clean and sober for 27 years — I applauded for demanding more inclusive definitions of the problems faced by people in recovery.
Promiscuity and sexual assault are unrelated.
More recently, however, I’ve watched in growing dismay as he’s slid down the conspiracy theory rabbit hole, much like his recent guest/pal Tucker Carlson.
