Russell Brand went from Hollywood heart-throb to YouTube conspiracy theorist
From a shed in the garden of his £3.3million Victorian gothic seven-bedroomed home near Henley-on-Thames, which he shares with pregnant wife Laura Gallacher and their two daughters, Russell Brand has been quietly amassing an army of fans attracted by right-wing conspiracy theories.
In the years since the height of his Noughties success - appearing in Hollywood films Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Get Him to the Greek and Arthur - Brand has pivoted from celebrated stand-up comedian, radio host and actor to, on the surface, an online wellness influencer. But one who has seemingly built a following by rejecting scientific reasoning and embracing the kind of conspiracy theories that have exploded in popularity in certain parts of the internet since the first Covid lockdown in 2020.
Russell Brand has an army of fans attracted by right-wing conspiracy theories (PA)Talking loudly into the camera, smiling often, asking questions with wide-eyed innocence and using his trademark gesticulating hands to drive home his points helped funnel millions of views to his channel - especially combined with the type of topics he selected, which seemed to appeal widely to a right-wing American audience.
UFOs, US chief medical adviser Anthony Fauci, Bill Gates and the so-called Deep State were regularly discussed, while guests included former Fox News host Tucker Carlson and US conservative talking head Candace Owens. His videos started being given clickbait titles like ‘No wonder we’re f**ked’, ‘Hang on, Covid came from WHAT?’, ‘I Can’t Believe This Just Happened’, and ‘THE GREAT RESET IS REAL!’ and he referred to his subscribers as his “awakening wonders”.
While Brand rejected the label of conspiracy theorist (“We’re not interested in conspiracy theories, we want to know about conspiracy facts”), the topics he talked about frequently aligned with those favoured by American culture war extremists.
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When Brand published his own denial video last Friday evening - 24 hours before Channel 4 ’s Dispatches special aired - he was quick to seize upon the breadcrumb trail of talking points he’d previously laid out. Referring to an apparent “coordinated attack” by the “mainstream media” that “makes me question whether there’s another agenda at play”, he told viewers that his fans had already warned him “they’re coming for you” because “you’re getting too close to the truth”. As a result, his comments section on the video - which has racked up more than 1.3m views already - is full of fans telling him to “stay strong” and imploring him to continue “telling the truth”.
Having previously hosted chat shows including Big Brother ’s Little Brother and Brand X, filming YouTube videos has allowed Brand to play to his strengths: speaking quickly, effusively and using florid language to communicate directly to his 6.61 million subscribers in a way that seemed accessible and, occasionally, right-on.
His first online venture came in 2014 when Brand launched the web series The Trews (“true news”), which pledged to give subscribers “the true news so you don’t have to invest any money in buying newspapers that charge you for the privilege of keeping your consciousness imprisoned in a tiny box of ignorance and lies”. Then-Labour leader Ed Miliband was one of his notable guests in the run-up to the 2015 general election, in which Brand had encouraged fans not to vote before performing a U-turn and endorsing Miliband.
In 2017 Brand began hosting his Under the Skin podcast, inviting guests including fellow comic Frankie Boyle and former US Vice President Al Gore to talk about topics from the rise of Marxism to freedom and tyranny. As time went on his videos became more like bite-sized self-help guides - a lesson on how he overcame anxiety, how to get over an ex-girlfriend and an explainer on how yoga changed his life.
But in 2020 came a huge shift in the topics he started speaking about, and as his views became more extreme - he claimed the antiparasitic drug Ivermectin was an effective treatment for coronavirus before the video was taken down from Facebook, YouTube and TikTok - so the hit rate on his monetised videos climbed.
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