I watched Russell Brand talking about Netflix’s Adolescence so you don’t have to!

Lettuce spray.

Oh Heavenly Father we besmirch you, and we most certainly mean father – as in the epitome of masculine vigour what you surely are – please look after your formerly lost sheep, Russell Brand, who, in returning to your fold, has acknowledged his belief in the one true Christian god as the sole source of personal morality – a risky prospect for a recent convert who is facing serious allegations of pre-existing historical misconduct. 

And we ask that you protect the sainted Andrew Tate as he suffers through his tribulations. After all , much like John the Baptist, he is simply a bit gobby and a provocateur what is misunderstood and falsely accused. 

And we thank you for your strong Christian male role models what you have sent to guide our strong manly children in their sexual awakenings. Such as catholic priests who – er, well, maybe not them. And perhaps not the Anglican ones either, by the look of things. What about Boy Scout leaders, that’s an overtly Christian organization? No, maybe not. 

Oh well, moving on, we ask that you spare us from the horrors of racial and cultural mixing and ensure the purity of the white race. And, please, Lord, teach Russell the skills of brevity; I really feel that his current oeuvre could be adequately expressed in just fourteen words.

For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory – Hymen.

---

OK, it’s been a while since I actually watched a Russell Brand video in its entirety, so when I saw he’d done one about the Netflix mini-series Adolescence, I thought, “why not? let’s give it a shot. It might be interesting to see how Russell’s output has changed since his conversion to Christianity and open embrace of MAGA”. And, oh boy, what a treat it was!

Notably, the video was released to YouTube on Monday, April the 7th, just three days after it was announced that the UK Crown Prosecution Service were charging Russell with rape, indecent assault and sexual assault for offenses that occurred between 1999 and 2005.

So, how has Russell’s content fared in the face of his current adversity and full on conversion?

Not good. Even as he slides further to the far right and expresses openly racist propaganda, he still struggles with the cognitive dissonance of trying to deny his own racism. And he appears to spend even less time in preparation of a coherent message or with assembling supporting materials that shore up his arguments. Perhaps the higher workload of daily, hours-long Rumble videos? Maybe a smaller staff as he cuts costs and employees abandon him? Maybe the stress of a criminal prosecution? Or a lazy response to an audience already primed to accept his snake oil? 

Neither does he put much work into the insipid faux-Christian  mumbo-jumbo that he just dumps into his monologue whenever his arguments start to run out of wind. But perhaps it’s his full-on conversion to Christianity that has made me realise just how biblical Russell’s work really is. I don’t mean that in the sense that he tackles big issues of spiritual significance, such as the nature of divinity and humanity’s relationship to a creator god. No, I mean that his output is just a loose collection of disparate ideas clumsily smooshed together in an attempt to create a cohesive narrative, but instead results in a clashing mish-mash of confusion, uncertainty, and fear.

If you listen to biblical scholars, you soon realise that the Old Testament was assembled from pre-existing sources drawn from several different traditions. If you’ve ever wondered why there are at least two creation myths featuring two very different versions of god right next to each other in Genesis – one dark, formless and ethereal, a breath moving  across the surface of a primordial ocean in the void of creation, the other a physical being able to walk through a garden talking with its creations – it’s because priests returning from the Babylonian exile introduced elements of Mesopotamian belief systems into the existing religion of the ancient Judahites. How do Cain and Abel, the first children of the first humans, two of the only four people alive at the time, find themselves in a world populated by sufficient people to build a city? Because the authors of the Bible took this old folk tale and clumsily tied it to the Adam and Eve story because they wanted to create an over-arching interconnected story rather than a series of isolated creation myths and etiologies. They just didn’t sweat the details and left in a bunch of continuity errors. In a world where biblical study was restricted to a small class of priestly scribes who were all in on it, defending oneself from literary criticism was not a huge concern.

And so it is with Russell; in his stream of consciousness ramblings, he draws upon a catalogue of myths and half-truths that he weaves into whatever conspiracy theory he is pedaling at the moment. Sometimes those myths are recruited to validate today’s conspiracy theory, and sometimes the conspiracy theory is used as evidence to support the canon of the myths. But, without proper respect for continuity, with no scripting or attention to detail, the result is a confusing mess of disjointed ideas that lack coherence and contradict themselves from one moment to the next. It is a Gish gallop of lies that becomes difficult to disentangle, confront or contest.

This is a feature of the conspiracy theorist. It is not unique to Russell Brand.

The first challenge in examining Russell’s message, then, is to condense it into a set of coherent statements; avoiding putting words in his mouth or misrepresenting him, but somehow accommodating the often contradictory strands he is pulling on. Here’s my attempt:

• Russell believes that the authoritarian UK prime minister is using the Netflix TV series Adolescence to undermine the masculinity of white people and characterising them as racist in order to control the narrative over violent crime which is caused by immigrants.
• The Adolescence show facilitates this by presenting knife crime as a result of white youths falling into incel culture rather than the product of uncontrolled mass migration of non-white people.
• Incel culture is a myth, constructed to weaken men by denegrating natural male instincts towards sex.
• There is, however, a decline in masculinity caused by the infantilisation of men, along with the absence of male role models and rites of passage, and a failure to follow God and the Bible’s guidance on manhood.

With that established, it is possible to analyse Russell’s arguments and refute them where necessary.

So let’s kick off with:

The UK Government is using Adolescence to exert control over society.

Russell states that his interest in creating his video is “cultural phenomena and the way cultural artefacts are used and exploited… how the British government and how the British media are using this cultural object [the Netflix TV series Adolescence] and how they benefit from it”. 

To do this, he will exclusively reference a single news report by the US cable news outlet NBC. And not just any news report, no, a bland five-minute segment from their weekly Sunday show designed to be passively inhaled on a lazy Sunday morning while preparing to mow the lawn or go golfing or attend worship in a former bowling alley converted to a mega church or whatever else American people do of a weekend. And what better way to inspect the UK political and media landscape than through a milquetoast Sunday news segment aired exclusively to a U.S. audience?

But the blandness of the source allows Russell to pour whatever flavours of sauce he wants on top of it with little fear of contradiction, and so he plays it in its entirety with no need to cherry-pick or edit. Well, nearly in its entirety, but we’ll come to that later.

Russell’s insistence that the British government and media collude to their mutual benefit plays on themes aligned with the so-called “Censorship Industrial Complex”, a conspiracy theory that was cooked up as part of the Twitter Files revelations following Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter.

Russell makes the connection explicit by claiming “central bodies of media no longer have default and inherit control… and the government has to become more adept in the ways that it uses media” – clear elements of the conspiracy theory.

Drawing on Noam Chomsky’s concept of Manufactured Consent, the Censorship Industrial Complex was coined by former PR man turned self-proclaimed journalist Michael Shellenberger, one of the hand-picked media entities that Musk chose to feature in the Twitter Files. And it goes a little something like this…

Before the advent of social media, monolithic Mass Media and Government formed a complex that worked to promote Government propaganda through a top-down media landscape. However, that system has been eroded over the last 20 years by social media, which enabled  peer-to-peer information sharing, and the rise of independent media. In order to compensate for the loss of that system, Government has attempted to manipulate and control social media, as evidenced by the Twitter Files.

Schellenberger tried to establish the Censorship Industrial Complex in the cultural group consciousness, aided and abetted by fellow Twitter File “journalist” Matt Taibbi and our very own Russell Brand, who hosted Taibbi and Schellenberger at the grand UK rollout of the idea. In practical terms, the theory serves as little more than an attempt to present new media types, such as Taibbi and Schellenberger, as inheritors of a now-defunct mass media machine, while flattering their billionaire sponsors, like Twitter’s Musk, as defenders of truth and free speech. Perhaps it is this self-serving irony that hindered this grand conspiracy theory from gaining much traction with the wider public; accusing establishment media of being tools of government, while they themselves serve as tools of the burgeoning oligarch ruling class (Musk, Andreesen, David Sacks, Peter Thiel et al). Well, not much traction outside of the head of Russell Brand, at least.

Russell is convinced that Adolescence hasn’t just been co-opted by the powers that be, but it was explicitly created for the purpose of population manipulation: “I figure this show was made for something else.” explains Russell,  “Before it was on Netflix, they’re working out how do we use it to tell a particular story”.

We’ll discuss what that particular story is later; that’s the “how”. For now, we’re interested in the “who”.

Russell is explicit: “Who benefits from that?” he asks, “The centralised power benefits from it!”

More precisely, it’s “authoritarian” British prime minister, Sir Keir Starmer. To emphasise this point, Russell twice plays a clip from the NBC news story where Starmer tells parliament that he watched Adolescence with his children and thought it would be good for it to be shown at schools: the clip is first played as the cold open to Russell’s video serving as the set up for his thesis. 

Funny thing is, Kier’s left a big open goal for anyone who wants to take a shot at here – one of the complaints in Adolescence is disinterested teachers playing videos to kids in the classroom rather than engaging with pupils on an interpersonal level. But Russell can’t take that shot because he hasn’t actually watched the bloody show! 

But that’s OK, according to Russell, because he claims he’s not actually critiquing the show. If he was to criticique the show he would absolutely watch it first! Honest gov’nor.

There is an extent that this is just an example of Russell’s declining standards and lack of preparation. It’s also a lie – we’ve already seen how he’s claimed the show was manufactured to tell a “particular story”, and we shall further see how he goes on to criticise and directly attack the fundamental themes and topics of the show.

It’s a shame for Russell that he can’t score that goal against Keir Starmer, though, because he is otherwise very derisory of the Prime Minister, as all rightwing polemicists are. It’s telling how devoid of integrity the UK right is; the defining characteristic of Keir’s premiership so far has been a ruthless implementation of mainstream conservative policies – eliminating benefits and pandering to corporate interests – only more effectively and with much less drama than the actual Conservative Party ever managed. Rather than embrace Starmer as one of their own, UK right-wing commentators are reduced to cheap mimicry of Kier’s funny voice while silently seething in jealousy over his effective neo-liberal policy execution.

Of course, Russell does the voice, but he doesn’t have much else to criticise a man who he claims is “a fascinating phenomena precisely because he is not fascinating and he is not phenomenal”. 

As ammunition to attack Starmer, the source video only provides the small, anodyne snippet that Brand has already played, so he’s forced to recruit external evidence of authoritarianism – Keir Starmer’s role as Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) during the UK riots of 2011.

In the past, Russell might have supported this claim by having supplementary source materials available—a video or written article to flash on the screen while he reads cherry-picked excerpts to support his arguments. But not now, no, he just wings it, relying on half-remembered events fermented in a right-wing fever swamp for the last 14 years.

But is it 14 years? Brand is convinced that the riots took place in 2007, not 2011. He repeatedly gives 2007 as the year of the riots, and I think Brand has made this mistake because he struggles to comprehend how the current leader of the Labour Party served as DPP during a Conservative Party government. Russell, therefore, projects the date of the riots back in time to a period when he was confident that Labour was in power. But whatever the reason for Brand’s misapprehension, it is emblematic of his general ignorance and lack of preparation.

Russell goes on to claim that Starmer was “maximally authoritarian when it came to the persecution and prosecution of young people that participated in riots”. That Kier “tried minors in adult courts …in order to keep the courts running” and also “issued extraordinarily draconian sentences” including for “kids that nicked bottles of water … given custodial sentences because it took place during a riot”.

Now, there’s a bit to untangle here, firstly during the riots that started in London and spread to seven other cities, and which saw the deaths of five people and property damage to the tune of over £200m, Keir Starmer saw rapid justice as an immediate deterrent to ongoing rioting. He stated that he believed that rioters would not make a mental calculation over an 18-month sentence versus a 12-month sentence, but would be deterred by the prospect of immediate arrest and prosecution. To that end, more than 3,000 people were arrested and over 1,600 prosecuted in just five days. To accommodate this volume and speed, courts operated on extended hours, including, for a brief period,  24 hours a day and over weekends. There was certainly no need to prosecute children through adult courts simply to keep the courts running. While a quick Google search fails to show any explicit reference to children standing trial in adult facilities, it would not surprise me at all if this did happen. What I am confident of, however, is that no children were prosecuted as adults.

Another thing I am certain of is that the person prosecuted for looting a case of water during the riots was not a child – they were a 23-year-old engineering student. But they did receive a custodial sentence that many felt was excessive considering the value of the looted items. There were also criticisms around the sentencing of young people, which saw a massive 8% increase in the number of young offenders in the UK prison system.

Thing is, as Director of Public Prosecutions, Keir Starmer had no say on sentencing – judges used their discretion within the previously set Home Office sentencing guidelines. And, as we’ve already seen, Starmer did not see heavy sentences as a deterrent anyway.

And these were short-term measures, as far as I can ascertain, courts only operated on extended hours for a period of one or two weeks. A practice that has not been repeated since. How “maximally authoritarian” is it to seize a draconian power and then relinquish it almost immediately?

Not only that, but justice delayed is Justice denied – for both victim and accused. Having a court case hanging over a person can have a significant impact on their life; a swift resolution means they can deal with the penalty and move on. There is an argument to be made that Keir Starmer’s policy of speedy prosecution acted in the interests of rioters by not only discouraging their harmful behaviour but also allowing those arrested to swiftly make amends with society and pick up the pieces of their lives.

Before we move away from the subject of the 2007/2011 riots, Russell displays a moment of self-awareness concerning his new audience. He believes they are liable to lack sympathy for the 2011 rioters due to the rioters being “mostly black.” Addressing his audience, Russell suggests, “You might be racist or crazy or something.” 

Yes, Russell, they are!

But so is Russell, if he actually undertook even the most rudimentary preparation in researching the riots, he would’ve figured out that they happened in 2011, he might also have realized that this was not a clear cut  “mostly black” issue. Less than half of the rioters brought before the courts, 39%, were black, while  41% were white, 12% mixed race, 6% Asian and 2% other. Compare this with the prior year’s statistics for  prosecutions of violent crimes – 45% black, 33% white – the rioters were actually whiter than might be expected, suggesting that white people were more prone to rioting compared to other forms of crime.

The racial make-up of rioters was found to have varied in different cities and districts depending on, and reflecting, the existing racial make-up of the area, while a study of the socio-economic status of rioters found that the majority lived in poor neighbourhoods; 41% of suspects living in one or other of the top 10% of most deprived places in the country. Considering that we also know that black and minority people in the UK are disproportionately affected by poverty, it is likely that disproportionate numbers of black people charged with rioting offences correlates to disproportionate numbers of black people in poverty. Certainly, poverty and social deprivation became a focus of investigations into the causes of the riots, even among the official government report on the riots which, incidentally, rejects claims they were “race riots”. 

And if it is true that black people may have been disproportionately represented in these numbers compared to the general population,  then so were men, with 89% of those prosecuted being male, which is hugely disproportionate to the population in general and higher even than typical numbers for violent crime, which were 85% male in the previous year.

27% of the people charged were juveniles (aged 10-17), while 26% were aged between 18 and 20, compared with the prior year’s numbers of 16% and 15%, respectively. Only 5% were over 40 compared to 15% the previous year.

So, it’s easy to see the 2011 riots as an issue of young men more than race, encompassing causes such as poverty and lack of opportunity. Yet, the first thing Russell remembers them for, the thing he’s got to flag up to his audience, is that the rioters were black.

With all this discussion of Keir Starmer and the 2007/2011 riots in England, surely the elephant in the room is the 2024 riots? If he was maximally authoritarian as DPP in his response to the  2011 riots, how much more authoritarian was he as Prime Minister during the 2024 riots? Certainly not authoritarian enough for Russell to mention, even though he does talk about the stabbing that incited the riots, which we’ll discuss later.

Russell also mentions in passing the 2024 Dublin riots, which he justifies as a protest about “migration and rejection of globalist melting pot ideology”. And then complains that the riots were characterised as racist! Really? A riot against migration and racial melting pots, racist? Who’d of thought such a thing!

However, given Kier Starmer’s failure to live up to his maximally authoritarian leanings in his response to the 2024 riots, Russell is compelled to invoke other contemporary controversies to explore Starmer’s malfeasance.

Maxie Allen and his partner, Rosalind Levine, claim that they were arrested and interrogated by police for 11 hours due to innocuous comments they made on a WhatsApp group chat about their local school. Russell characterises the pair, who have become something of a cause célèbre on the right, as a “white family that is chatting on the internet”. 

Thing is, we only have their side of the story – the police aren’t going to say anything more than the barest of facts, and the people who reported them to the police remain similarly silent. This is altogether typical of these types of situations – the publicity-hungry party controls the narrative while sensible heads stay silent. So we’ve only their word for why they were arrested – we don’t know what they said, and we don’t even know if it was because they said it on WhatsApp. 

However, Russell does claim that their messages are being characterised as “racist”. I was unaware of this aspect of the story, I have not heard these parents called racist in any mainstream reporting, which tended to focus on police overreach. Russell’s insight almost certainly reflect the discourse in the rightwing swamps that Russell now trawls for inspiration, where people claim victimhood when being called out for their racism and reject accusations of hate speech as attempts to smear good white folks. This does put a slightly different complexion, as it were, on this case.

As I said, we don’t know precisely what was said, but we can make some inferences based on the information currently available in the public sphere. Two important things to note: the couple admit that they were already banned from the school property after a complaint from the board of governors; secondly, giving them the benefit of the doubt that they were reported for comments on a private WhatsApp group, it means that someone in their social circle reported them to the police.

These people were not persecuted by Keir Starmer or discovered through some sinister surveillance program; they were reported by the School Board, largely made up of other parents, and their own WhatsApp “friends”. We can therefore be confident of one thing – Maxie Allen and his partner, Rosalind Levine are massive arseholes! 

And now Russell is letting us know that they are being accused of being racist? Given the claimed topic of conversation was school hiring practices, you just know these guys were objecting to the recruitment or promotion of a black teacher! What a pair of absolute bell ends!

And they were interviewed by the police for 11 hours? How racist do you have to be for the British police to speak to you about it for 11 hours? How much of an arsehole do you need to be that the police hold you for 11 hours just to piss you off?

So, Russell’s claims that Keir Starmer is an authoritarian seeking to characterise white people as racist to control the population hinge on:

1. A very brief period of accelerated prosecutions in response to a national crisis 14 (or 18)  years ago; immediately relinquished and never repeated.
2. A pair of racist arsehole bell-ends who were reported to the police by their own friends and broader community on account of their racism.

Moving on, then, the next topic is:

Netflix’s mini-series, Adolescence, blames knife crime on white people rather than black immigrants

One of the most startling aspects of watching Russell post-MAGA embrace is his expression of overtly racist talking points.

I’ve believed for a while now that Russell harbours some latent racism. For example, the fear of cultural mixing he expressed to Tucker Carlson in 2023, complete with lazy racial dog whistles of “Icelander” versus “Senegalese” in a clash of cultures, I felt, reflected a fundamental and deep-seated racial mindset.

Even his internalisation of the 2011 UK riots as being “mostly black”, as we’ve already discussed, reveals an ingrained antipathy towards non-whites. Russell is addressing his audience as if they are entirely American; they ought to have no preconceived ideas of the racial make-up of English rioters 14 years ago. You might expect a conservative audience to be unsympathetic towards rioters in general and support harsh legal penalties, so why not simply explain why it was wrong to be so strict on rioters? Why even bring race into it at all?

Because ingrained in Russell’s psyche, as revealed by his free association stream of consciousness, the 2011 riots were an issue for black people and not something that affects people like Russell, who is white. And to the extent that they didn’t matter to him, he got the year wrong, guessing 2007 instead of 2011 – revealing that he didn’t even pin this significant cultural event to his personal biographical timeline. 2007 Russell lived in London, would’ve been disrupted by the riots, his media star was in the ascendance. 2011 Russell was in LA, would’ve watched the riots aghast at what was happening in his home country, as his marriage with Katy Perry was falling apart.

So Russell’s promotion of openly racist ideas in his Adolescence video is less surprising but still shocking when, right out of the gate, Russell is offended by his own assertion that the show is being used to argue that “incels and Andrew Tate” are responsible for knife crime in the UK rather than “uncontrolled mass-migration”.

This assertion that “uncontrolled mass-migration” is a cause of knife crime simply reeks of far-right propaganda and misinformation. In Britain, knife crime has long been characterised as a blight on urban youth in impoverished inner city communities in thrall to gang culture. Concerns over knife crime and gang culture have approached moral panic levels in recent years, and there have been racial and racist elements to the national discussion akin to Russell’s attitudes to the 2011 UK riots.

When it comes to Adolescence, Russell is not the first to claim that the show is pandering to a woke agenda by casting the main protagonist as a white boy. Just a week after the show was released on Netflix, posts appeared on Facebook criticising the casting of a white youth, saying his character was based on a real-life incident in which a Black teenager stabbed a schoolgirl to death in London in 2023.

The posts included two pictures side-by-side, one of actor Owen Cooper, who plays the main character, and a photo of Hassan Sentamu, an 18-year-old who was jailed for murdering 15-year-old Elianne Andam in Croydon in 2023.

The authors of Adolescence claim to be inspired by a series of murders, characterised as knife crimes, committed by young men/boys against young women/girls. Indeed, the murder of Elianne Andam appears to be one of the inspiring events, along with the  2021 murder of Ava White in Liverpool and the 2023 murder of Brianna Ghey, a transgender girl. Note, in none of these cases was immigration reported as a factor. 

The writers specifically mention “male rage” as a primary concern in Adolescence, and their desire to make the issues relatable to a large part of the British population drove them to set the drama in a white working-class family in northern England. There has already been an ongoing public discussion over knife crime, focused on inner city youth and gang culture over the past decade. Adolescence is tackling a different set of issues, and the authors wanted to tell their story separate from the existing baggage.

At its core, Adolescence isn’t really about knife crime; it’s about a culture of violent misogyny that has been adopted by some youth in our society, and an investigation of possible underlying causes, including social media, social isolation, alienation, parenting, the education system, and bullying. True, a knife crime is the inciting incident of the story, but that merely serves to open the door to the topics it discusses.

The association of immigration with knife crime, however, is a new evolution and reflects far right messaging over the 2024 UK riots which were triggered by misinformation around the identity of the perpetrator of a stabbing attack that left three little girls dead, and hospitalised eight other children and their adult teacher, in Southport, near Liverpool.

False claims that a Muslim immigrant committed the stabbing spread online. They were amplified by far-right agitators, leading to five days of violence in cities across England that saw properties housing asylum seekers targeted and subjected to arson attacks with the asylum seekers still inside.

This pogrom was stopped, in part, by anti-racist demonstrators taking to the streets to confront and outnumber the rioters. It was a redeeming moment for British society after the week of horrifying violence, and one that I feel old Russell would’ve celebrated.

In the wake of the riots, police targeted the online agitators and trolls who had first invented the lie of the perpetrator’s identity and then used it to incite hatred and violence against immigrants. Police and court action against the instigators triggered a wave of indignation from the far right, whose concerns over “freedom of speech” typically start and stop at their freedom to spread hate speech.

Surprisingly, Russell didn’t jump on the freedom of speech bandwagon during his attempt to denounce Keir Starmer’s apparent authoritarianism. Although judging by the content of this video, he appears to be intentionally staying away from those riots and instead relying on dog whistles and insinuations to invoke these themes in his audience.

Neither is Russell the first to claim that Adolescence is used to obfuscate a link between the Southport stabbing and mass migration, even though Adolescence was written before the Southport knife attack took place. Russell Brand,  is, after all, little more than a self-actualizing Golem – human filth and excrement fashioned into a hollow automaton devoid of any original thought, only capable of following the instructions directly fed into it by its masters – or, in Russell’s case, the half baked conspiracy theories he consumes from the far right media sphere. As such, any coherent idea he manifests has its origins in the thoughts of others.

Ian Myles Chong, a Malaysian troll and true shit-stain of a human being, who has carved out a living ginning up the American far right, posted on X that the series is “about a British knife killer who stabbed a girl to death on a bus, and it’s based on real life cases such as the Southport murderer. So guess what, they race swapped the actual killer from a black man/migrant to a white boy and the story has it so he was radicalized online by the red pill movement. Just the absolute state of anti-white propaganda.”

These hate-filled ramblings from Russell and his cadre are testament to the far right’s reluctance to give up on the idea that the anti-immigrant riots of 2024 were righteous and that their pogrom against immigrants was justified. 

It’s a scary moment, it’s a sign of entrenchment, not a retreat from a shameful error. No contrition, no excuse that “things got out of hand”; rather, it is a doubling down on their violence. Those who were prosecuted will become heroes and martyrs to the cause.

It is a step on the path of a fascist project – a refusal to step back from and decry an act of mass civic violence, but instead justify it, celebrate it. It’s the Beer Hall Putsch or January 6th.

And the creation of an all-purpose, diabolical, omnivillain, blamed for all social ills and serving as a mobilizing force for the loyalists; another fascist milestone. In 1930s Germany it was immigrants from Eastern Europe, Jews fleeing Russian persecution; in Italy, Slovaks and later the black Ethiopians occupying territory the Italians laid claim to; in America, the descendants of the enslaved encroaching on the status of the former slave owners along with Eastern European Jewish immigrants and now Hispanic people, a synecdoche for migrants crossing the southern border. In Britain of the 21st century, besieged by its panic over illegal immigration and frantic calls to  “stop the boats”, even amongst mainstream politicians, Muslims and immigrants are the obvious choice for vilification in the fascist project,

And this is the project Russell is engaged in, when he complains that a popular TV show is poisoning the mind of the nation by portraying a murderer as a “white working class kid” rather than a “first generation immigrant from Rwanda”. When he falsely claims, without evidence, that the UK government is emphasising that character’s “whiteness and class”. 

By racialising the Adolescence story, Russell is doing precisely what he accuses the UK government of doing. 

By repeatedly invoking “them three little girls who were murdered”, Russell is using an emotive dog whistle to stir up his audience. He is actively participating in the same racist scapegoating and misinformation that the instigators of the riots did. It is a sickening attempt to appropriate a horrific tragedy for political ends.

By seeking to use this tragedy as a stick to beat UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, Russell dismisses the victims’ families who thanked the Prime Minister for a private meeting where he offered his condolences. 

By claiming ownership of this tragedy, Russell is seeking to remove the humanity of those he seeks to criticise. Consider Russell’s hollow sentiments as discussed here with those of Kier Starmer: 

“I want to say directly to the survivors, families and community of Southport – you are not alone. We stand with you in your grief.

“What happened in Southport was an atrocity, and as the judge has stated, this vile offender will likely never be released.

“After one of the most harrowing moments in our country’s history, we owe it to these innocent young girls and all those affected to deliver the change that they deserve.”

Russell describes the perpetrator of the attack as “a kid that was first generation [immigrant], I think he was Rwanda. I don’t know enough about the story, but what I know is he weren’t a white working-class kid! I do know that!”. 

The attacker was, in fact, British, having been born in Cardiff, Wales. He was born in Britain, grew up in Britain, attended school in Britain, and was raised in a Christian household in Britain.

During sentencing mitigation, the attacker’s lawyer explained that he had been a “normal child” until he reached 13—incidentally, the age of the child in Adolescence. But Russell only sees someone who is “not a white working-class kid”.

And Russell realises his racism immediately after providing that description, worries that his racist statements might become a “cultural artifact” that is used against him:  “ I’m not captivated by the subject of race” he claims, in spite of the words coming out of his mouth, “let me say again because this might become a cultural artifact that gets deployed [against me]. I believe we’re all part of one human family, and our job here is to love and serve one another, and the reason I know that is because it’s in the Bible.”

Simply stating “I’m not racist” after doing a bunch of racist stuff doesn’t negate all the racism you’ve done. You’re still racist, Russell, as it says in the Bible, “by their fruits ye shall know them.”

The parents of the attacker were first-generation immigrants, but then again, so were the Portuguese parents of one of the victims, nine-year-old Alice da Silva Aguiar. And, of course, Russell and his own children, having recently relocated his family to the USA. But Russell’s not a product of uncontrolled migration; that’s a term reserved for non-white people.

And Russell admits, “I don’t know enough about the story”, but that doesn’t stop him from espousing on it repeatedly. If you’re Russell Brand, ignorance on a subject is not a reason not to talk about a subject, even if it’s a subject where misinformation has caused violent rioting resulting in criminal actions against those spreading that misinformation. Even as misinformation on the subject has been the topic of vigorous debate within the public sphere and especially within the rightwing circles that Russell now circulates.

Perhaps this is willful ignorance – it allows Russell to defend making misleading statements and outright lies. But it’s also another symptom of his lack of preparation. Russell of a few years ago would’ve inserted additional sources to support, or at least illustrate, his argument, even if they were heavily cherry-picked and misrepresented.

But none of this changes the fact that Russell is spreading a divisive, racist lie. We know that immigrants to the UK are not responsible for knife crime in the UK by any metric. We know that the authors of Adolescence did not “race switch” the main character. And we know that turning a violent crime into a political football objectifies the victims and serves to stir up only raw emotion and hatred within Russell’s intended audience.

Incel Culture is a myth used to vilify traditional masculinity.

Russell is dismissive of the concept of incel culture, he laughs derisively after the news clip he’s watching claims that Adolecence’ main character falls into incel culture: “he’s not drawn into the world of incel culture, cuz incel means you’re not having any sex!”. Russell mocks the reporting, “this is an interesting world to investigate the world of not having any sex!”

A weird semantic argument that ignores the existence of a subculture that has given rise to several mass murderers. And in a five-minute segment on a Sunday morning news show on cable TV, they’re going to lean on buzzwords as shorthand for bigger ideas. Incel, in this case, serves as a stand in for the manosphere – a complex of misogynistic online subcultures targeting young men. Incel has greater name recognition than manosphere and it can be easily tied to a one-sentence definition due to being being a portmanteau of the words “involuntary” and “celibate”. It’s catchy, just like “The Trews”!

Russell claims that “male and masculine archetypes are vilified so excessively that people stop wondering what a man was and what a man is supposed to be” – presumably a dog whistle to his audience’s familiarity with the transphobic “what is woman” trope.

But he goes off on a little tangent about sex and consent, perhaps preoccupied by his own legal predicament:

“The world of sex got very, very complicated. What constitutes consent? We all know what those rules are. Anyone that’s ever had sex knows what it is to be in a sexual dynamic. And sexuality, like all animal power, has areas of nuance and complexity to it. But in this time where masculinity itself is put on trial and vilified, any male archetype or cultural figure that benefits from the ongoing flow of male archetypes – and there’s a few of those that you might want to list right now – will be vilified and attacked.”

Sorry, Russell, what’s been put on trial? Is there any specific male cultural figure that you want us to think is being vilified and attacked? 

Russell Brand is attempting to paint himself as a casualty of an assault on masculinity. Don’t suppose we should really be surprised; it’s not about “them three little girls” after all. The true victim here is Russell Brand, the male archetype. 

Obviously, the reference to “consent” is a denial of the accusations against Russell – that’s convincing. And claiming persecution and victimhood? Good move, juries love that in a perpetrator, as do judges when it comes to sentencing. 

Russell is also derisive at the mere mention of Andrew Tate. He repeatedly claims that Andrew Tate is being used as a kind of straw man in the attack on masculinity. The UK prime minister Brand claims, is blaming “Andrew Tate and his army of Incels” for knife crime, despite Andrew Tate not being mentioned by the prime minister in the news story that Russell is commenting on.

When the report does mention him, Russell rolls his eyes sarcastically and says, “cue Andrew Tate!”

He dismisses Tate’s malign influence, “knowing what I know about Andrew Tate;  he’s a provocateur, he says stuff. I mean, he just says stuff to get a reaction. He’s understood how social media operates and functions, he’s surviving in this [social media] environment.”

Russell mentions Andrew Tate eight times in his video – the news story mentions him only once, as, indeed, does the script of Adolescence with the throw-away line “it’s the  Andrew Tate shite”. Said in reply to a police officer whose son has just tried to explain the complexities of the youth experience in today’s online world, the comment serves as an indicator of the adults’ reductive, surface-level understanding; their ignorance of the nuance of the cultural and relationship minefield that young people today navigate.

And it’s ironic, of course, that Russell is claiming that Andrew Tate is being used as a strawman “everyone’s an incel! It’s, Andrew Tate’s fault! I think it might be a bit more complicated than that and one thing they don’t want you having access to is nuanced and complex information”.

It is more complicated than that, Russell, that’s precisely the message of Adolescence, and you might have access to more nuanced and complex information if you actually watched the show or even just an analysis of the show that was more than a five-minute Sunday morning news story.

I don’t really feel the need to dive into the Andrew Tate phenomenon. By this point, most people know he is a figure who has sought fame and notoriety by cultivating a persona of violent masculinity and disturbing misogyny: a figure from the world of mixed martial arts whose first attempts to break through to the mainstream saw him dropped from the Big Brother TV show after the producers found out he was subject to police investigation as a rapist; fleeing from the UK to Romania to avoid those accusations; prosecuted in Romania for sex trafficking women for his on demand porn webcam business;  targeting young men with his bleak masculinity to monetise his misogyny; becoming so ubiquitous and toxic in the culture that British school teachers had to be trained to spot his malevolent influence amongst school boys. Andrew Tate has undoubtedly become media shorthand for all aspects of the current wave of antisocial misogynistic culture among young men and boys, especially in the UK, and with good cause. It is hardly surprising that a five-minute Sunday morning cable news story would rely on this shorthand.

Unless you’re Russell Brand, of course, then Andrew Tate is just some edgy provocateur doing his best to hustle a living out of the internet. 

Is this is the same Russell Brand that was hailed as an anti-porn crusader in 2015?  Who fretted  “has porn ruined my chance of a happy marriage?” Who, in 2019, claimed that “porn hurts everyone involved: the people doing it; the people watching it”? Who was criticized for his pearl clutching analysis of female sexuality as expressed through Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion? 

Well, obviously that was before Russell’s conversion to Christianity so it’s hardly surprising his moral compass wasn’t fully formed – since his conversion, he now accepts that pornographers are merely trying to eke out a living on the interwebs.

In her new book Doppelganger, former Russell Brand collaborator, Naomi Klein complains that she is frequently mistaken for right wing conspiracy theorist Naomi Wolf. I wonder if anyone ever mistakes Russell Brand for, er, Russell Brand?

Russell contextualises Andrew Tate’s influence on young men as a mere progression from the celebrated pickup artists of the 2000’s:

“Not that long ago, books like The Game, written by Neil Strauss, about pickup culture were celebrated..,[The Game] was about communities of men that honed psychological skills in order to pick up women. 

“But the culture at that point didn’t have a problem with it. Now the culture is reframing picking up women which has always been pretty much a primary goal for young men…

“Is that disgusting? Is that a crime? Is that a problem? Not if it’s conducted respectfully, lovingly and consensually.”

There it is, that “C” word again, that’ll help convince the judge and jury of your innocence!

Russell is, of course, wrong when he implies that books about pickup culture “were celebrated” by society as a whole. There was criticism of The Game at the time of publication. The planned movie based on the book, which Russell claims to have been asked to star in, was abandoned before it reached production, undoubtedly because of its unsavoury content.

And he’s wrong to say, based on the TV series Adolescence, that “now culture is reframing picking up women” – the show is not about picking up women, it’s about male violence towards women! How easily Russell conflates the two in his false equivalency; it’s perhaps very telling of Russell Brand’s attitudes to women, relationships and sex.

And even if Russell was right, and attitudes to the objectification of women have changed in the last twenty years, why would that be surprising? Or sinister? Isn’t that what we want, a society that progresses to a more respectful attitude towards 50% of the population? Does Russell know there were periods when women weren’t allowed to vote, or own property, or that they required spousal permission for a credit card?

And at a time when female rights are under threat – rights to bodily autonomy, reproductive healthcare eroded in the United States, under threat in the UK. Voter ID legislation that makes it more difficult for women to vote, debate on “household voting” that would dilute female votes and surrender them to the male heads of households.

Russell complains about a supposed attack on male identity while there is a literal assault on female rights, and at a time when male anger is being turned against women for profit by the likes of Andrew Tate and Russell Brand.

It is telling that Russell Brand is so concerned about young men that he can’t even be bothered to watch the hit TV show on the subject that he is currently holding sway over. It’s telling that he can’t remember the year of the 2011 UK riots and misrepresents key facts and events from those riots. But when it comes to 20-year-old misogynistic pickup culture, Russell has got instant recall! Able to name without hesitation both the book and the author of the primary cultural artefact of that movement. One which Russell describes as men who “honed psychological skills in order to pick up women” – a movement that occurred at precisely the same timeframe that Russell is being accused of grooming school girls for sex.

The Actual Decline in Masculinity 

Masculinity is under assault; the chosen people have been weakened by political parties, social classes, unassimilable minorities, spoiled rentiers, and rationalist thinkers who lack the necessary sense of community. 

The crisis in masculinity is a lie made up to weaken men and boys by shaming their natural urges, according to Russell. Yet, at the same time, according to Russell, there is a crisis in masculinity as boys do not transition into men.

“Young men need role models: they need male role models. They need processes of initiation…. Throughout history you go to some tribe in the middle of nowhere, that ain’t been touched by culture, at the age of 13, 14 boys are taken away from their mother, often wounded in some superficial way or another to indicate that they’re no longer boys, but are, in fact, men.”

Russell provides more detail on the modern lack of male initiation:

“They don’t have their father take them out and say, “This is what I used to do, son, now you’re going to do it. This is your job, this is your role, this is the way we operate. Part of our function is we protect the community, and, in particular, protect and honour women.”

We’ll set aside the self-serving claim to protect and honour women and consider that Russell, more than most people, ought to be aware of the dangers of paternal initiation, given the horrific act of child abuse masquerading as a rite of passage inflicted upon him by his own father. As recounted in the opening chapter of Russell’s autobiography My Booky Wook, Russell loses his virginity in a group sex session with his father and three, likely sex trafficked, “prostitutes” in a Hong Kong hotel at age 16.

I have zero doubt that this incident has contributed to Russell’s subsequent sexual disfunction. Russell’s father was undoubtedly a malign influence on Russell’s sexual awakening. Russell salaciously describes other childhood events that have likely scarred him, witnessing his father having sex with a stranger during a camping holiday, paternal visits to his father’s flat where Russell would watch cartoons while his father had noisy sex with prostitutes in the adjoining room. Why do that? Why schedule your hookers to coincide with your parental visits? Like so many abusers, Russell was, himself, once the victim of abuse.

But then again, at least one of those initiation ceremonies that Russell pines for, by the Simbari people of Papua New Guinea, involves initiates performing fellatio on older men in the tribe, so maybe Russell sees sexual abuse as a rite of passage?

Russell’s belief that modern man is suffering from the rejection of tribal practices most likely stems from the book Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging by Sebastian Junger, the central thesis of which is that the tribal lifestyles of hunter-gatherers are more conducive to human wellbeing than those of industrialised society, where people are socially detached and isolated from each other. Russell has hosted Junger on his podcast and repeatedly discussed how much he enjoys this book. I believe that Junger’s work, and Tribe in particular, have influenced Russell’s quasi-anarchist political ideology, that society should be organised around small self-contained groups that suspiciously resemble hunter-gatherer family-based tribal groups. And now he is projecting from it to explain the current poor state of masculinity.

In one of his previous YouTube videos, Russell claims that Tribe is based on evolutionary psychology. This is a discipline that often verges on pseudoscience, making large claims based on thought experiments and extrapolations that appear sensible at first glance but are entirely underpinned by wild assumptions and a lack of evidence. It is the paleo-diet of the academic world – Jordan Peterson is a fan.

The truth is, we have no idea if contemporary tribal practices reflect those of our ancestral past – it is our arrogance and superiority complex that assumes tribal societies are primitive holdouts rather than evolved and optimised for the environments in which they exist. And we have no idea if the current practices are “natural” or, perhaps, a stressor response to having your society impinged upon by an external industrial civilisation, corralling you into ever smaller spaces. Or even if the description and categorisation of those practices are tainted by the prejudices of those who catalogue them.

Male initiation are not even universal in contemporary tribal societies. In his book Manhood in the Making, anthropologist David Gilmore presents the people of Tahiti and the Semai of Malaysia as two examples of tribal societies who do not require boys to “cross a manly threshold”. He observes a common feature of these societies – they live in an environment of surplus resources with little need for dangerous exertions to provide sustenance for the community. As such Gilmore speculates that male rites of initiation are not an inherent human characteristic but a social practice born in stress, developing in cultures where it is necessary to encourage and shame men into participating in high risk activities that are required to overcome scarcity of resources. 

Contrary to the hardships of other tribal societies, for the Tahitians, “The local lagoon supplies plentiful fishing without the need for arduous deep-sea expeditions… Arable land is also plentiful… Domesticated animals are plentiful as well, and there is no grinding poverty or economic struggle. The economy, rather than promoting competitiveness among men, fosters an unusual degree of cooperation, as families help each other out both in fishing and in harvesting the two major crops, vanilla and taro. Materialistic striving is not only rare among men but…is actually frowned upon as un-Tahitian.” Sounds like a veritable Garden of Eden! Turns out, if you give people access to adequate resources they stop being arseholes to one another and have no need to cultivate ritual child abuse as cultural tradition.

Much of Junger’s observations are based on his claimed similarity between tribal organisation and modern military organisation. He argues that “Acting in a tribal way simply means being willing to make a substantive sacrifice for your community”. But this is entirely antithetical to actual hunter-gatherer existence. Military units are specialised groups with a dedicated function distinct from the rest of society. However, a defining feature of tribal cultures is a common functionality and shared experience among all members of society, with no specialisation beyond distinctions for gender or age that often map to the roles of hunter and gatherer.

In fact, it is speculated that freeing up one or more specialised groups to be exempted from food production and instead fed from the surplus of the rest of society, is what first allowed societies to organise beyond the tribal level. A dedicated priestly, governing, or warrior class gives a tribe advantages over its neighbours, which it is then able to subsume: the tribe becomes a clan, the clan becomes a kingdom, and the kingdom becomes an empire.

And Junger’s romanticised concepts of military sacrifice and manly camaraderie don’t necessarily translate to the tribal experience of warfare either – I’ve read accounts of tribal combatants being entirely focussed on self preservation, not acting as coordinated units, not rallying to the assistance of fellows in need and not risking their own welfare to recover bodies of comrades who have fallen in battle. 

The romanticisation of tribal lifestyles fails to ask whether tribal practices are truly enviable. I’ve already mentioned the enforced fellatio as an example of a rite of passage. Some tribes practice rites of passage with fatality rates we would consider unacceptable. Many tribal groups practice infanticide to deal with unwanted pregnancies, and some practice senicide or geronticide to dispose of the old and infirm. Concepts of personal autonomy and Russell’s current buzzword, consent, fall well short of what most industrialised societies would consider morally acceptable.

Tribe is part of a modern canon that posits that contemporary civilisation is harmful to humans and that primitive societies hold the keys to understanding the human experience. Companies are said to undergo a transition when the number of employees exceeds 150, which aligns with Dunbar’s number, the theoretical limit on the number of intimate relationships that a human brain can maintain, based on primate studies. Sports teams almost universally contain 11 to 21 people – the same size as tribal hunting parties, we are told. 

The reversion to a primitive society informed Karl Marx’s philosophy, which was to be the ultimate end goal of communism. Sigmund Freud believed that modern neurosis shared a common root with tribal Totems and Taboos. The ancient Greeks harked back to a bucolic idyl, Arcadia, that they believed preceded their corrupt city-states.

A fear that civilisation is corrupting is perhaps as old as civilisation itself, the classical Romans continually fretted over their decline; simultaneously deriding and honouring their barbarian adversaries as noble savages, lean and tall and naked – and hung – against the Roman legionaries – short in stature and wrapped in armour – whose only advantage was unmanly technology and logistics. Even at the furthest extent of empire, a battle at the ends of the earth to prove Roman might, the Romans felt the need to invent an almost certainly fictional British chieftain who, before an almost certainly fictional battle, made an entirely fictional speech decrying the Romans because “first they create a wasteland and then declare it empire”.

Junger’s work is not the antidote to modern society; it is simply a symptom of civilisation. Male initiation isn’t the answer to materialism and social isolation – it is a product of competition for material resources. Junger does not provide any profound insight or answers. Only a fool would build their worldview on such a flimsy foundation. 

Which brings us back to Russell Brand! Who knows that without the formal transition to manhood, men remain trapped as boys:

“When you have a culture that vilifies masculinity and infantilises the population, wanting people to drink soda pop their whole bleeding life, and play on video games their whole bleeding life, they don’t know what it is to be a man.”

What makes this passage so deliciously amusing – aside from the complaint that society is infantilising men from a man whose public profile was built on adopting the persona of a turn-of-the-century cockney street urchin who spends his time thinking up cutsie, diminutive Mr Men names for his own penis – is the reference to soda pop in such proximity to Russell doing a paid promotion for, you guessed it, soda pop!

Barely one minute after he hawks kombucha, essentially fancy ginger beer soda pop masquerading as a health food, Russell is complaining that soda pop is infantilising men. And not just any kombucha, but THC-laced kombucha! For all those manly men who don’t want to smoke their cannabis, but prefer instead to slurp it down with their fizzy juice!

And then profit?

But to what end? Why are men being infantilised?

We’ve covered the who – Kier Starmer – and we’ve covered the how – vilifying men – but now Russell must address the why.

“The reason this story is fascinating is because it’s an attempt to assert morality, and it’s an attempt to make a moral position that can be utilised by the powerful. At the moment, the story they’re telling is a story that will benefit them. If you get to vilify peripheral and marginal voices, that’s great cuz then you choose which ones to vilify if they say, “Wait a minute, why were those three little girls getting murdered in Southport?  What does that tell us about the way our country is being run?”

Russell is claiming that Adolescence, the TV show, is created to provide a narrative that can be used to shame men and therefore silence those people wishing to raise questions about the Southport stabbing attack and its broader implications for government policy (i.e.  immigration).

It’s just more racist dog whistling that takes us back to the fascist desire to justify 2024’s anti-immigrant riots in England. This is absolutely the crux of Russell’s whole argument.

Incidentally, Russell’s comments around “peripheral and marginal voices” are a reference to one of the influences behind the Industrial Censorship Complex conspiracy theory, but that’s perhaps a story for another day.

But the truth is, it is Russell Brand and his far-right pals that are seeking to cultivate a culture of toxic masculinity in order to harvest the alienated to their cause. It is no mistake that creatures like Tate and Brand are embraced by the MAGA movement.

So, what answers does Russell provide for the crisis of masculinity? That’s simple – God. 

Russell has conveniently cut the last few seconds of the news story, which provides a simple three-point recommendation for parents: be aware that children may use coded language on social media that masks their true intent; parents should take an interest in their children’s online activity; and they should set a good example by limiting their own phone use. Why would Russell cut that out, huh? Maybe these wholesome suggestions don’t align with the toxic narrative that Russell is peddling.

And of course, he hasn’t watched Adolescence itself, so he can’t comment on any of the possible causes or interventions discussed there.

But that doesn’t stop him from providing his own solutions: “Individual sovereignty, individual freedom, are vital principles for human beings everywhere… because we are sacred because God dwells in us.”

God dwells in us – sounds a bit biblical! Any scriptural sources Russell? Er, no.

“If you don’t believe that God dwells in human beings, then I don’t know how you make arguments about the sanctity of individual lives and why there shouldn’t be elites and tyranny. I don’t know how you make those arguments.  You might be able to make them, but you’ll end up saying “just because” at some point”.

Russell is arguing that it is impossible to derive an objective justification for respecting others without a sincere belief in the Christian God. An excellent argument for a recent convert to Christianity who has been accused of serious moral failings that precede their conversion. I do hope, for Russell’s sake, that  public statements can’t be introduced into British criminal trials to reveal the psychology and impeach the character of the accused! Oh, wait… they can? Maybe time to start putting more thought into your public statements, Russell!

And what about how men should relate to women? Does God have an answer for that?

“Do you know of any books, or theologies, or philosophies that tell you how you should handle sex and sexuality? Um, yeah, the Bible!

“It tells you that sex is such a powerful force that it can only really be contained within a marriage: to ensure that women don’t end up bringing up children on their own; and that men don’t end up going around impregnating people, and using sexual power as a sort of domination over people.”

Again, we’ll set aside the accused groomer’s self-serving denial of using sex as a form of domination over people, but isn’t it usual for Christians making arguments from scripture to actually provide some biblical references and sources? Couldn’t Russell, with his new found enthusiasm for the Bible, spout off some specific examples to support his assertions? Doesn’t have to be chapter and verse, but, you know, give an indication of the specific parts of the Bible you’re drawing from. You can talk at length about pick-up artist books or Andrew Tate, surely it’s not too much of a stretch to expect a smidge of scriptural clarification?

In countering Russell I’m sure it would be easy to look up misogynistic passages in the Bible, violent punishments for adultery, victimisation of those born outside of marriage, female subservience to men and such like, but I prefer to think of these attitudes in the context of when the Old Testament of the Bible was written.

Of a time when Judah was a small, independent kingdom surrounded by crumbling empires, when the Judahite king harboured his own imperial ambitions towards his northern neighbour. Of a religious text written to justify those ambitions, providing a historical fiction that both kingdoms had once been united.  A text used to foster those imperial ambitions by promoting strong families and traditional manly values, aiming to produce more children who would go on to form a conquering army.

That King’s ambitions were thwarted, however. He died unexpectedly on the battlefield. Within a generation, his kingdom was overrun, subsumed into a larger empire, and the elites exiled to Babylon. And when those elites returned from exile, they rewrote the Bible again to cement their position as the powerful rulers of the kingdom serving under their new imperial masters.

The truth is, the Bible was conceived to provide a moral narrative that promotes the agenda of the ruling class and to manipulate the population into performing the will of the powerful elite. Just like the hypothesized Censorship Industrial Complex, the rulers colluded with the scribes to produce a cultural artifact that told a specific story from which they mutually benefited; as Russell might say, it is “an attempt to assert morality and it’s an attempt to make a moral position that can be utilized by the powerful”. And as it continues to be used today, by the likes of Russell Brand and all the other religious charlatans he now runs around with.

But, as King Josiah ultimately found out, using the Bible as a moral justification for your tawdry ambitions will only get you so far, and you can not escape God’s judgement, for, as it says in 2 Peter 2:3 “In their greed these teachers will exploit you with fabricated stories. Their condemnation has long been hanging over them, and their destruction has not been sleeping.”

Here endeth the lesson.