Russell Brand on the Ukraine crisis

Post Reply New Topic

I was quite impressed by Russell Brand's eloquence in looking at the larger picture of the Ukranian invasion. Here in the U.S., other Western democracies, and of course Russia, we are always going to get perspectives that are designed to benefit the ruling class. We're never going to get the full context of how we arrived in this horrific place.

We are all just pawns in a geo political game. It's only when people in every corrupt government wake up to these realities and stop playing into the hands of our oppressors that we might have a chance of avoiding the catastrophe to come.

Brand announced a multitude of viewpoints at the beginning, but gave only two... George Friedman of Stratfor has another one: what the US needs to avoid at all costs is German engineering with Russian natural resources - that would create a new world power that could rival the US's and China's. A peaceful cooperation between Europe and Russia is not in US interest.

He is a good speaker.
But he is wrong.
There is a very simple binary.

Show Spoiler

Pepe good...pootin bad...

This is, unfortunately, exactly the sort of nonsense one would expect from Brand. I'm surprised to learn that some people are still paying attention to the man now that he's no longer culturally relevant - it's not like he was ever known for his intelligence, and I'm afraid he certainly hasn't demonstrated any here. He's a millionaire playboy with almost no understanding of anything.

No, no reasonable person would conclude that NATO's expansion is the "cause" of the war. Bennis, of course, is not a reasonable person; she's a famous antisemite and anti-war whackjob. But Brand doesn't do what a journalist would do and highlight that, he just presents her views without substantial critique. He even provides his own commentary which doesn't stack up, such as claiming that it is hard to think of purely humanitarian military interventions in recent years. It's easy to think of military interventions for humanitarian reasons in recent years, from the coalition against ISIS to the French intervention in the Central African Republic's civil war. While you could argue the War in Afghanistan was motivated by retribution, the subsequent twenty-year occupation had no strategic benefits and was purely humanitarian. He then contradicts himself by criticising the West for not intervening in Yemen.

He's then much more critical of Freedland's piece. Again he tries to claim that "Western nations continually redraw national boundaries", but he doesn't provide any examples. He criticises American, British, and French colonialism, but Britain and France have shrunk the size of their territory dramatically since 1945, and Britain now only holds one territory without the consent of the local people (the British Indian Ocean Territory). When was the last time either of them gained a new territory through conquest? When was the last time America did?

Brand then accuses Freedland of drumming up support for "our governments' military actions", but our governments are not taking military actions. And he goes on about this at length. It shows a complete lack of understanding of the situation that makes his opinions totally useless. It's just completely deranged, post-truth nonsense.

Brand is of course entitled to his opinions, and to voice them. But here, he doesn't make any insightful points, he just regurgitates a load of buzzwords like he's swallowed a sociology textbook, and when he does say something meaningful, it's nearly always false or irrelevant. Unfortunately, he's yet another stupid rich white man with worthless opinions who feels the need to share them nonetheless. The world needs less lecturing from upper-class anti-intellectual grifters, of which Brand is a prime example.

It's the 21st century.

I believe there are elements of Hitler in Putin; I agree with you on that.

Putin doesn't care about the people he has ruled over since 1999. All he cares about is a Russian nationalist agenda which is destroying Ukraine, and definitely not doing justice to his own people at the same time. And he is potentially provoking something worse, should he cross the Ukrainian border in a land which is not Russia.

All this because he wants Ukrainians to be Russians.

I’m glad my occasional attempts at being witty are noticed

I do believe we have to see the humor in most situations—many of which don’t seem humorous at first glance.

The ability to laugh at one’s self is most valuable.

Taking one’s self too seriously is something that really rankles me, and feels unpleasant to me.