The Right Only Believes In Sexual Assaults That Happen In Their Own Imaginations
The Right Only Believes In Sexual Assaults That Happen In Their Own Imaginations
The Russell Brand-stanning has made this clear.
On Friday, the day before the accusations against him came to light, Russell Brand put out a video claiming that “the media” was going to publish false accusations of rape against him, in order to “silence” him for saying stupid ass shit about vaccines and what have you.
Clearly, this was the move. Because before even reading the accusations, both Elon Musk and Andrew Tate responded with supportive messages. Thousands of other blue-checked weirdos on What Used To Be Twitter assured him that they were also very concerned about the deep state’s attempt to take him down. After the accusations came out, he got even more support from Musk, support from Tucker Carlson, from Alex Jones, from anti-vax “scientist” Dr. Simon Goddek, from alt-right Trumpist who has never left Malaysia Ian Miles Cheong and from so many, many other deeply objectionable people. Oh, and no reason whatsoever, surely, Dilbert Guy Scott Adams felt that this was a good time to assure us all that he is not suicidal. You know, because of how “the cabal” is always suiciding people to silence them, if false rape accusations won’t work.
The real move though was his veer towards the conspiratorial Right to begin with. Because truly, the best thing you can do for your career if you are a famous rapist with some shit that’s about to come out is to start blabbing about vaccines and praising Russia. That way, at least those people will have your back.
You see, accusing a conservative of rape doesn’t silence them, it makes them a hero to their people. In fact, I find it personally offensive that they think we are so stupid as to think that this would make them abandon him when they have absolutely no history of doing that when someone they like is accused of sexual assault. No one thinks they are good people, no one thinks they care about other human beings and certainly no one thinks they actually care about sexual assault — except for when said sexual assaults are things they personally imagined their political and cultural enemies are doing.
I mean, let’s think about this for a moment, shall we? Who is it here that has, in fact, regularly accused their political and cultural enemies of sexual assault, and more often than not … without a single complaining witness? Not us!
Many on the Right believed, and still do, that the fact that John Podesta, the chairman of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign, was talking about pizza a lot was bulletproof evidence that he and his brother were running a full-on Satanic pedophile ring out of the basement of a pizza parlor that did not have a basement. I frequently chalk this up to these people living in areas largely untouched by the Italian diaspora and thus find what, for us, is an entirely normal amount to talk about food, to be deeply suspicious. But even if one concedes that … they made a thing up and then decided to believe it with literally zero proof.
That wasn’t the end of it, either. The QAnon Right plowed right on through, accusing literally everyone they did not care for of not only molesting children for Satan, but doing so in order to procure “adrenochrome” from them with which to get high and also maybe live forever. They said kids were in Wayfair cabinets and living in tunnels and being forced to be Tom Hanks’ brainwashed sex slaves — a thing they knew for absolute certain, because he wore red shoes one time. Our love of symbolism, they insist, will be our downfall! And since anything we do can symbolize anything they want it to symbolize, as far as they are concerned, it’s absolutely true.
You could say “Oh, but that’s just QAnon, they’re kind of their own thing and not every conservative believes in that.” But you know what the supposedly non-QAnon-y Republicans did after seeing how easy it was to get people to believe that people were going around raping children with zero proof and zero complaining victims?
They started with the “groomer” shit. They started accusing LGBTQ+ people, trans people in particular, of being “groomers” and pedophiles. They started making laws that they never would have been able to get away with a few years ago, simply by claiming that they just wanted to protect children from “pedophile groomers.”
You will note that at no time, when they have been pulling this shit, has the “No one should be tried in the court of public opinion!” or “They’re innocent until proven guilty!” crowd shown up. This is because it doesn’t actually matter to them whether it is true or not. Even they know it doesn’t matter if it’s true, it only matters if it hurts the right people.
The Right assumes we think like they do. They take things like sex trafficking, sexual abuse, rape, and child molestation so unseriously as anything other than a cudgel with which to harm their enemies that they can’t imagine we don’t feel the same way.
They want to believe that we are deeply threatened by what Russell Brand says because he’s just really onto something, because what he is saying is so incredibly important and true and therefore very dangerous to the deep state. That’s a lot more exciting and appealing than him just being some guy who says dumb things about vaccines and who probably got a whole lot of people sick because of it.
It’s a sad way to live.
I finally got around to reading up on the allegations against Brand. And Jesus fucking Christ.
Apparently his line is that everything was consensual. And apparently there are a number of people who are willing to take his word over that of five, count 'em five, accusers. I don't know if there's any number of accusers, or any other evidence, that could ever convince anyone like that.
This is very disappointing. I remember reading a thoughtful but still excoriating essay Brand wrote for (I think) The Guardian when Margaret Thatcher died. The man is clearly smart and, on that issue at least, on the right side. I find it utterly bizarre he's so desperate for approval that he would turn to people I'm sure he would normally disdain.
I used to wonder what he was doing married to Katy Perry, who doesn't exactly seem like his intellectual equal. (Although for all I know, she might be.) Now that's starting to look like the most normal thing, relationship-wise, he's ever done.
Somehow David avocado Wolfe has shown up to defend brand too. I had almost forgotten about him and his horrible memes that I had to keep reminding older liberal friends on Facebook to STOP FUCKING SHARING