“[Russell] Brand is not a threat to the elites,” says The Independent, a magazine owned since 2010 by Alexander Lebedev, Russian oligarch and former KGB agent.

The irony in “Independent” was too fun to pass up there — almost as funny as Saudi businessman Sultan Muhammad Abuljadayel, who has close ties to the Saudi royal family, buying a 30% stake in it, too.  But this is beside the point.  Regarding Russell Brand, a “non-threat to the elites,” the article goes to on state,

Brand said the allegations “make me question is there another agenda at play?” He goes on to say, “I’m aware that you guys have been saying in the comments for a while ‘watch out Russell they’re coming for you’, ‘you’re getting too close to the truth’.”

Which begs the question — what truth? 

Just before the investigation was published on 16 September, Brand’s most recent videos were on the Covid vaccine, Big Pharma, the war in Ukraine, the JFK assassination, an interview with “Hitler was OK until he tried to globalise” Candace Owens, and one about Bill Gates doing something with fruit. 

Aside from the fact that he left out Brand’s exposés on BlackRock — the company that owns the top shares in 80% of the whole stock market, rewards “well behaved” top-level government employees with lucrative jobs, and is deeply embedded in the Biden administration — aside from this, I say, what we saw The Independent list so flippantly above is the biggest medical scandal in the history of the whole world, the decades-long poisoning and looting of sick Americans, possibly the biggest embezzlement scheme in the history of Western aid, a coup d’état that robbed Americans of democracy, an interview with the woman who turned millions of black men Republican, and an attempt by Bill Gates to monkey with our food supply.  In other words, these are subjects deeply affecting all of us, skewering corruption and conspiracy at almost all the upper levels of our society.

This brings us to ask the obvious question: aren’t these things historically left-wing issues?

The Independent, a magazine described by Media Bias Fact Check as “center-left,” argues otherwise.

Fortunately for multimillionaire Brand, numerous other multimillionaires — and at least one billionaire — have leapt to his defence. Elon Musk, Tucker Carlson, Andrew Tate, Jordan Peterson, Alex Jones, Ben Shapiro, Donald Trump Jr, Steven Crowder — the list seems to grow by the day. In fact, if Brand has many more ultra-wealthy people and oligarchs defending him there won’t be much of an establishment left to threaten. And one might think, with friends like those, who needs the deep state as an enemy? 

In other words, to “leftists” such as The Independent, your label doesn’t describe whom or what you’re fighting for; it’s whom you’re fighting alongside.  And it gets even more absurd from there.  In their eyes, the “establishment” is Elon Musk — who’s not only hated by the press, but lost his “richest man” spot fighting for free speech; Tucker Carlson, a man who was just fired from Fox News for not stepping in line with the narrative; Andrew Tate, an Instagram influencer it’s dangerous to praise in the breakroom; Dr. Peterson, whom the Canadian government is forcing to undergo “re-education”; Alex Jones, who was fined a billion dollars to ruin his anti-establishment radio show; Ben Shapiro, a Jewish beta-boy who “owns the liberals” by making snarky comments; and Donald Trump, Jr. and Steven Crowder — two completely random millionaire loudmouths.  Influential?  All yes — but almost all on the receiving end of a beating from the powerful.

What the Independent failed to mention is that none of these people is even remotely connected to the big money and the bureaucracy known as the Deep State.  They have no power to assassinate or jail their biggest rivals or even bury them (like Trump) in frivolous lawsuits.  Although wealthy, they lack the means (unlike BlackRock) to pull strings with 80% of the stock market.  Listed above are zero owners of colleges, zero oilmen, zero owners of mainstream media outlets, zero bigwigs at the FBI or CIA, no manufacturers of warplanes or mandatory drugs or any people supported by the government in general.  They’re part of no international banking cartels that rank us by ESG scores and threaten to blacklist us.  In other words, they have zero hands on the levers of actual power, and they openly criticize said levers, yet each and every one of them is considered a “right-winger.”

The Independent goes farther:

Brand can rail against the corporate media as much as he likes, but a very simple and provable truth is: he’s part of it. His show is on Rumble, a media platform backed by (you probably guessed) a huge Wall Street corporation — Cantor Fitzgerald — and has in the past few years been receiving investment from a group of prominent conservative venture capitalists, including JD Vance and the tech billionaire Peter Thiel. You know, the little guys. The underdogs who fight against the elites.

What the Independent is doing is equating success with establishment — as if the second you own a part of the world, you’re running it, and the only way to retain your credibility “fighting the man” is to fail: not only to abandon the use of any platform like Rumble or YouTube, both of which are owned by people with money (oh, no!), but also not to have any money to fight with.  To be really anti-establishment, in the Independent’s eyes, is to lose — exactly what everyone on the establishment would want you to believe.  It’s no wonder to me that the writer of this article is self-described as a comedian.  He’s also described (without any further explanation) as “a writer,” which in a written article seems a bit redundant.

But consider another view of things — a way not approved by the Saudis or the KGB or BlackRock or the MSM or the CIA.  We “conservatives” have Joe Rogan the free-thinking acid-eater.  We have Bill Maher the free-speecher fighting for us, even though he’s a Democrat.  We have Russell Brand the long-haired anti-establishment hippie.  We’re the ones trying to take our medical system back from the money-men and the poisoners.  We’re the only ones, at this point, standing against perpetual war and the military-industrial complex.  We’re the people who fight the tightly controlled narrative and the bankers.  We bring up uncomfortable truths and get called “radicals” and “conspiracy theorists.”  We get locked out of social media and barred from businesses and news outlets.  Conservatives, I can’t believe I’m saying this: welcome to the Left Wing.

But if Republicans are the leftists, what are the people who call themselves leftists?  If you consider what’s been said above, they fall in line and swallow whatever they’re told, as long it’s from the “right” source.  They’re less concerned with what’s being done to the public and more concerned with which color or gender it’s (allegedly) being done for.  They believe in the rule of a minority at the expense of the majority.  They believe that “representation” isn’t the power of the people, but the color or gender of the person in power.  Thus, they’re everything a ruling class ever dreamed of: a mob more likely to aim their attention, scrutiny, and hatred at the people living next to them than at the people standing on top of them.  They squabble like the Balkans.  They swallow and repeat lies like fascists.  They don’t mind living in a banana republic.  They’re unworthy of liberty, and the elites are happy to own them.

Jeremy Egerer is the author of Prejudices — a collection of troublesome essays on Substack.  Email him at letterssubscription@gmail.com to get a free copy of his essays or to see what he says next.

Image: Michael Theis via Flickr, CC BY-ND 2.0.