OPINION
I never thought Russell Brand would offer a good lesson about regime containment, but here we are.
This week it was breathlessly announced by the usual suspects that British actor and comedian Russell Brand was accused of rape by a former girlfriend who had been seeing him (if you know what I mean) for upwards of six months.
Leave aside that, no matter what happens now, Brand will forever live under the shadow of a rape claim, which is a classic intelligence move. Instead, I want to focus on the reaction to the accusations because they highlighted how the communist regime shapes the narrative to draw attention away from truly dangerous (to itself) elements of society.
As many of you discovered during Covid-19, people whom you would have written off as loons suddenly found a second wind online gathering up dissident talking points and repackaging them to create an audience. Russell Brand was one of these folks. A relatively well-known comedian turned courageous “truth-teller” broadcasted on YouTube in front of millions.
When a chorus of his orbiters reacted to the accusations, they framed it as ‘you only get flak when you’re over the target’ to describe what was happening to Brand.
Again, to be clear, the regime (any regime) will target dissidents that pose a legitimate threat. But the most important thing to understand about power is that it is never afraid of the truth. Power is only afraid of a more effective lie. Brand can tell as much truth as he likes, but unless he offers what Italian political theorist Gaetano Mosca called a “political formula”, he is dust in the wind.
Very simply, Mosca said a political formula is an ideological ‘top line’ that justifies sovereignty (BS, BS, BS, BS, therefore we rule). It is a belief or set of beliefs that makes the ruled accept their rulers. Since the former tend to outnumber the latter, a political formula is, if not absolutely essential, an excellent way to cut down on security costs.
“Ruling classes,” Mosca wrote, “do not justify their power exclusively by de facto possession of it but try to find a moral and legal basis for it, representing it as the logical and necessary consequence of doctrines and beliefs that are generally recognised and accepted.”
As Mosca and Vilfredo Pareto (the inventor of the Pareto distribution) both acknowledged, elites truly believe in the formulas they create and these are not, Mosca insisted, “mere quackeries invented to trick the masses into obedience”. Political formulas answer a real need among people to know that they are governed not because of mere force, but based on a moral principle. This is hugely important for social stability.
The thing about power is you can’t make it disappear. Someone always has it. The only question that matters, as German jurist Carl Schmitt pointed out, is whether power is held by your friends or by your enemies. Only power can defeat power, and in the modern era, power comes from the ability to shape public opinion. This means power belongs to those who own the media.
Brand is a comedian, which makes him part of the media and a perfect tool for shaping the narrative. By claiming that Brand (I mean, come on, his name is “brand”) is being persecuted for his truth-telling, the media trick is to create a box to convince you that someone like Brand is what a “truth-teller” looks like. This is called containment.
Containment is a political trick, but it is also a tactic in advertising. It works a bit like this. When you see an ad for a car with a beautiful woman draped over the hood, the assumption you make is that the ad is trying to use sex to sell the car. But that’s getting it backwards. While you are debating whether the car is worth your pennies, you already assumed that the woman is beautiful.
Do you see? Even if the type of female was chosen based on scientific, data-heavy studies, someone in Madison Avenue still had to choose which woman to place on the front of that car. By agreeing to call her “beautiful,” you are unconsciously adopting the personal sexual preferences of some suit in Manhattan. I know, the implications of advertising give me the shivers too.
Political containment works by isolating an example of an archetype (like beauty or “truth-teller”), placing that archetype over a controlled (and therefore impotent) example, like Brand, and presenting the whole package to the public. Anyone who resonates with that archetype can then pour their energy into that example, rather than examples that truly threaten the regime.
Brand is the definition of politically impotent. He is a comedian. A comedian’s job is to poke fun at power in ways no one else can. This has been the role of the jester for thousands of years. The jester is afforded certain privileges in return for being used as a pressure release valve by the regime.
The accusations against Brand strongly suggest that the regime is aware of people or groups out there who do have an alternate political formula which is superior and attractive to the public. Brand’s ‘truth-telling’ did not force the regime to use rape accusations to shut him up. Brand is being called a rapist so that he can be called a ‘truth-teller’. This is how the machine works.
Since Brand is what a truth-teller looks like, therefore anyone outside that frame is not a truth-teller. Do you see? Brand becomes the default assumption. The same strategy of narrative containment was used against Donald Trump when they called him a rebel leader – ‘this is what a rebel leader looks like’. The strategy can be very effective.
The great Canadian academic (no, not Jordan Peterson…) Marshall McLuhan had a fantastic aphorism for understanding containment in the media: “The medium is the message.” Most people misunderstand this aphorism, so it’s worth briefly explaining.
Before the invention of modern media, people got their information through town criers, visiting merchants or family members. How trustworthy you were as a person affected the veracity of your information. Court cases were often decided by the testimony of a highly trusted individual.
Local newspapers retained shards of this aura. If you knew the journalist or their family, the article would have more purchase in your brain. A writer’s social “cachet” was a valuable asset in the acceptance of the news they were delivering.
But when mass media arrived, suddenly the journalists presenting the news were unknown to 99.99% of viewers. How did mass media get people to trust them?
They achieved trust through relentless propaganda to undermine people’s trust in local networks, like your uncle or the old man down at the shipyard. TV also focused on interviewing people who displayed symbols of regime authority, such as a lab coat, a suit or a funny hat. Does your uncle have a lab coat? Then why should you listen to his scepticism about the Covid-19 vaccine?
McLuhan’s point that the “medium is the message” isn’t so much that truth can only come from the TV, not your uncle. The trick is to convince you that the TV is the only one that can access authority and therefore has a monopoly on the truth. It’s a lie, but it’s effective.
“This is what X looks like” is a powerful political strategy because it is tautological. Brand is being targeted as a truth-teller. How do we know Brand is telling the truth? Because he is being targeted.
This is the same mental loop that convinced you Ashley Bloomfield knew what he was doing during COVID-19. Play it back in your head: Bloomfield was on TV telling the truth about viruses and vaccines. How did we know Bloomfield was telling the truth? Because he was on TV. Does this sound a lot like the Russell Brand situation? The medium is the message.
It is wickedly difficult to defend yourself from these tricks. We are bombarded with containment propaganda all day. You can’t escape this toxic sludge if you want to live among other people in a modern society, unfortunately. My only advice is to limit your exposure.
The good news hidden in the subtext of the Brand story is that the regime is afraid of some people out there who now offer a more effective lie as a political formula. So, whatever you’re doing, keep it up!
