If you've been following the saga of actor turned political commentator Russell Brand, you'd know that the ex-celebrity is now under fire for alleged sexual assaults he committed during his celebrity days.
As I reported last week, the Brand scandal has all the earmarks of a media witch hunt, and that's without the direct evidence that the media went purposefully searching for anything they could use against Brand.
(READ: The Russell Brand Scandal Is a Media Witch Hunt and It's Easy to Prove)
As I wrote of the matter, the media had gone above and beyond to search for evidence of Brand's wrongdoing in the past, including interviewing Brand's extensive list of sexual partners, former co-workers, and other comedians and celebrities. There was even a FOIA request at one point.
A few women said they felt compelled to come forward after their chats with reporters, suggesting that these reporters urged them to come forward. As I wrote, none of this confirms Brand's guilt, nor does any of the timing of these accusations confirm his innocence. This is all for a court of law to decide, not the court of public opinion.
But in truth, this is all about the latter court. The media's destruction of Brand has already achieved what it needed to. As I pointed out in the previous article, what the media needed was the scalp of Brand and, on top of that, damage to the platform he calls home, Rumble.
Rumble is a video/streaming platform that contains a variety of people, but it's most famous for being the home of political commentators, mostly center-to-center-right-leaning. Rumble is valued for its free-speech approach to its content creators, standing out from platforms like YouTube, which censor creators in various ways for speech that defies or offends leftists and their sentimentalities.
You'll find many of your favorite pundits on Rumble, including yours truly.
As I predicted, while Brand has become a target thanks to his increase in popularity for exposing mainstream narratives and questioning things such as COVID-19, the vaccine, and the Ukraine war, platforms like Rumble were likely the bigger target, especially headed in the 2024 election.
Sure enough, the UK Parliament came for Rumble with a letter asking if they planned on demonetizing Brand like YouTube has based on the recent allegations. Rumble's response was nothing short of epic and possibly the second-greatest "get bent" letter from America to the British crown since the first one.
As awesome as it was, this response was likely what the collective left was hoping for because now it allowed them to go after Rumble's advertisers. As Bonchie reported on Saturday, the advertiser boycott against Rumble has begun:
A number of large companies have pulled their advertisements from the video platform Rumble, where Russell Brand broadcasts his weekly show, in the week since allegations of rape and sexual assault against the comedian came to light.
The News Movement reported on Friday that Burger King, Asos, the Barbican and HelloFresh, the recipe box delivery service, had removed their ads. Brand has 1.4m followers on the platform. YouTube suspended Brand’s ability to earn money on its platform on Tuesday but Rumble has rejected calls to do the same. On Friday, Brand said the moves to block him from receiving advertising revenue for his videos on social media platforms have occurred “in the context of the online safety bill”.
As Brand himself noted, this isn't just an attack on him. This is an attack on independent journalists and political commentators.
And in the end, that's what this is really about.
This is about independent voices being silenced by a collaboration between mainstream media and big tech. The narrative is everything and with people like Brand and platforms like Rumble exposing the truth and raising very good questions, the narrative is threatened.
Silencing creators, and silencing Rumble is a huge agenda item, especially with 2024 just around the corner. As people go searching for information in order to inform their vote, Rumble poses a massive threat. It has to go, or at the very least, its reputation has to be damaged enough that people will dismiss anything that comes out of it.
Rest assured, Brand's guilt or innocence isn't the point of this media onslaught. It's the ability to get information to you, and it's another example of the egregious corruption of our media and our political systems, not just here in America, but globally.
