Russell Brand’s friends on the (supposed) left

Those who’ve leapt to the defence of Russell Brand following theDispatches andSunday Times allegations have included the predictable far-right or misogynist grotesques: Elon Musk, Tucker Carlson, Jordan Peterson, Andrew Tate, Tommy Robinson, Alex Jones, Katie Hopkins … etc, etc.

But there have also been supposedly “left wing” figures whose immediate reaction has been either openly to defend Brand, or at least to cast doubt upon the evidence revealed by what appears to be a painstaking four-year-long investigation that notoriously risk-averse British libel lawyers obviously cleared for publication and broadcast.

The loudest cry from those (on both left and right) who don’t want to simply come out as supporting Brand has been “innocent until proven guilty!” (Yes, but we still have a right to make informed balance-of-probability judgements, without having to wait until a criminal case has been heard and guilt has been established “beyond reasonable doubt”).

That’s been the response of “anti-Zionist” campaigner Jackie Walker (whose tweets also manage to make the issue all about herself), the antisemitic pro-Putin ex-MP Chris Williamson and “left-wing” commentators Thomas Fazi and Jonathan Cook — who have also combined “innocent until proven guilty” with a strong dash of conspiratorialism, echoing the response of Tucker Carlson and Alex Jones.

The pro-Putin/pro-Assad Grayzone website has — predictably — gone for full-on conspiratorialism, with leading light Max Blumenthal tweeting: “If Russell Brand had just made the requisite celebrity pilgrimage to Zelenskyy and kept his mouth shut about the Covidians he would have dodged this bullet. Whatever the merits of the allegations might be, this much is obvious.”

Of course, no list of supporters of misogyny and conspiratorialism would be complete without George Galloway, who has used his Youtube Mother Of All Talkshows to suggest that Brand’s (pro-Putin) stance on Ukraine and opposition to “the lockdown” and “compulsory vaccinations” are really behind the allegations.

But perhaps the most vociferous (certainly most verbose) defender of Brand has been one John Wight, a failed Hollywood actor and male model, on record for his “absolute” anti-Zionism and support for a Putin victory in Ukraine.

In two articles on the Medium website, Mr Wight claims that “in the wake of Me Too, the presumption of innocence when it comes to sexual violence against women has been sacrificed on the altar of misandry”, complains that “the women concerned chose to air their accusations in the pages of the Murdoch press rather than to the police”, and concludes that “interestingly, and oh so pertinently, on the level of social mores and public morality surrounding sex, Brand’s current fate shares similarities with that which befell Oscar Wilde.”

Mr Wight is the boxing correspondent and regular contributor on a range of other subjects for the Morning Star. Other defenders of, and apologists for, Brand include several people who’ve written for, been quoted approvingly by, or supported by, the paper in recent years: Jackie Walker, Chris Williamson, George Galloway and Max Blumenthal to name only the most obvious.

So perhaps it’s no surprise that the paper felt it necessary (on 20 Sep) to publish a piece entitled “Russell Brand is not on the left and should not be defended by it”. Actually, it’s not a bad article except that it makes its argument hang on the fact that Brand is “not left-wing” — begging the obvious question: “and if he were left-wing?”

Ukraine

In a Morning Star article on 28 September the same John Wight used the (undoubtedly shocking and disgraceful) presence, during a visit by Zelenskyy to the Canadian parliament, of an elderly Ukrainian who’d fought in World War II under Nazi command, to denounce Ukraine’s resistance to the Russian invasion as “the continuation of Himmler’s project to ‘cleanse Ukraine’ of all but its mythologised pure Ukrainian stock”. This is pure Putin propaganda. And there is no reason whatsoever to think Zelenskyy was aware in advance of this man’s presence or of who he was.