This @NewStatesman article is entitled "We Have Lost Russell Brand." The "we" appears to be "the left" (I never knew NS was the avatar and membership-arbiter of "the left").
What's fascinating are the views now identified as hallmarks of the "far-right"
In order to argue that Brand is no longer on the left but the right (despite what it acknowledges is his ongoing admiration for Bernie and Corbyn), look at the views that are now identified - in the first paragraph - as ones that mark you as being on the "far-right". Just look:
For as long as I can remember, those views - contempt for corporate media and Big Pharma, anger over mistreatment of "heroes" Assange and Snowden - were deeply associated with the Western left.
They're views I always held and still did. Now these are right-wing views? Evidently.
It is indeed true that all those views - hatred of corporate media, distrust of globalized ("multi-national) corporate giants, holding the US Security State in contempt and its adversaries as heroes - are now right-wing markers.
Much has indeed changed. But Brand and I haven't.
Similarly, distrust of the motives of the US/NATO proxy war in Ukraine is also a far-right signifier. Here we have yet another inversion: the liberal-left reverses western security agencies, globalized corporations and their wars as benevolent. Only the "far right" distrusts them
Thus does this article end on what should be a bizarre, nonsensical note but instead has now become standard: Brand is not a leftist but instead has fallen in with the likes of Joe Rogan, Tucker and myself and our hatred for Western wars, the US Security State, and corporatism.
(And by the way: for all your poser-left types now slyly trying to distance yourself from the Biden/Pelosi/EU proxy war in Ukraine and even imply you were opposed all along: that won't work. When it mattered, only a few took those bullets and you, as usual, were unwilling).
I should note: the article's last paragraph stumbles into a truth it - and mainstream discourse generally - desperately avoids. The more relevant dichotomy than left/right or Dem/GOP is pro/anti-establishment. Failure to understand this makes one's political analysis worthless:
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Yale's "Fascism expert" Jason Stanely -- Yale's "Jacob Urowsky Professor of Philosophy" (does anyone now who that is?) -- explains why he's fleeing the US in fear withYale's Timothy Snyder and his wife Marci Shore -- to Canada, which he calls "the Ukraine of of North America."
He says Canada is Ukraine beacaue it's a bastion of freedom and nobility threatened an by authoritarian neighbor.
The absolute narcissism and melodrama of these people: there are those whose civil liberties are threatened. Celebrated, rich Yale professors are not among them.
Extra gross that Snyder is very wealthy by heralding himself the world's leading warrior against fascism. His book implores others not to "anticipatorily obey" Trump.
2 months into Trump's term, he flees the US as if he's an underground #Resistance leader in occupied France.
If Joe Biden had announced that any private universities that allow criticism of him or Dems shall immediately lose all federal funding -- while keeping the funding if they allow criticisms of Trump -- would that have been constitutional since no school has the right to funding?
How about if Biden cut off all federal funding to universities that deny the validity of the trans identity or the existence of multiple genders -- on the ground that such teaching incites violence against trans people and is hate speech?
Would that have been constitutional?
The only tactic needed to induce support for censorship is train people to believe the views they hate are violence.
Anti-trans activists are inciting violence and calling for genocide, etc.
Opponents of Israel's war on Gaza are calling for genocide and must be censored, etc. etc.
During the Dem primary campaign, one of RFK Jr.'s core issues was free speech and opposing censorship. Then he became known for wanting to combat chronic disease.
So what does he use his first month for? Threatening universities which allow protests against Israel on campus:
Note: you're free to protest the US on campus. You can protest any country or group: just not Israel.
And of course this censorship - like all censorship - is justified the name of stopping hate speech and keeping one group "safe": as if they're being relentlessly attacked.
Every government in the world -- including the most repressive and tyrannical -- "protects free speech" for the views they like.
It's the views they most hate that are targeted. And the most sacred issue for many in the Trump Admin is Israel: that is what's therefore shielded.
There's nothing stopping Germany or the EU from funding war in Ukraine until the end of eternity if they wish, or sending their citizens to Ukraine to fight Russia.
But the German Greens -- the worst of the worst -- are emblematic of European liberals: all posturing, no action.
British pundits prance around as if they're Churchill, and Macron walks around like he's a tough guy, and German Greens and other vague Berlin liberals posture as if they're the paragon of compassion: all while they rely on the US to finance wars, fight and protect them.
Zelensky begged and begged Westerners to get off line and stop tweeting with their blue-yellow emojis and instead go to Ukraine to help them fight the Russian Army, knowing he couldn't win without non-Ukrainians volunteering to fight. Very, very few did.
For a long-time, harsh critiques of US foreign policy and interventionism were found on the populist right. Listen to Pat Buchanan (who worked for Nixon and Reagan) as well as Ron Paul on US policy toward Israel. Very, very few Dems now speak this way:
In February 2021 -- more than a year before Russian troops entered Ukraine en masse -- the inspiring democrat, President Zelensky, banned 3 popular opposition TV networks by accusing them of spreading Russian disinformation.
It'd be as if Biden banned Fox or Trump banned CNN:🇺🇦
In 2014 -- after Victoria Nuland, @ChrisMurphyCT, John McCain etc. used NED to fund protests in Kiev to remove the democratically elected leader and replace him with an unelected pro-US puppet -- Kiev began bombing ethnic Russian civilians in Donbas:
@ChrisMurphyCT It's bizarre to watch history re-written in real time to serve war propaganda: how Azov Battalion was described as neo-Nazi by western elites, only to be turned into heroic warriors the minute we armed them.