I’m a so-so fan of Russell Brand, the British bad-boy actor and comedian who has morphed from a perfect avatar of the global media machine and its libertine values to … something else.

Brand got sober, dumped his former hedonistic, rock ’n’ rolla persona, is now married with kids, and is a YouTube personality of significant note. His podcast is an eclectic mix of old-school liberalism, idealistic libertarian experimentation, connect-the-dots anti-corporatism, and occasional red-pill-based conservatism by another name.

Watching Brand, you get the impression he’s an unfinished ideological product, a man essentially without a home. As such, half the things he says run the spectrum between incoherence and drivel. But the other half is pretty darned good.

The other half is dangerous.

This wasn’t conservative by any means, but it was a brutal takedown of MSNBC host John Heilemann:

And this wasn’t, either, but it was a significant moment:

You are not allowed to go on commercial television and accuse Big Pharma, an industry that is the single-largest bankroller through advertising of the megalithic media corporations who control the airwaves in this country, of profiting off a pandemic.

It doesn’t matter whether Brand is correct. We’re not allowed to even have the discussion.

But how do you shut Russell Brand up? Ban him from MSNBC or HBO or CBS all you want; he doesn’t care.

Because Russell Brand has a YouTube channel with 6.6 million subscribers, and every video clip he pops out generates hundreds of thousands of views. He isn’t Tucker Carlson — though his conversation with Carlson last month generated some 2.5 million views — but he’s certainly up there.

Brand isn’t controllable. He’s unplugged from the matrix. And while his commentary is often a dog’s breakfast of varying philosophies, he’s free to pursue truth where he finds it. And he does just that, however wayward he might be as he progresses.

A few years ago, you’d look at somebody like Brand and say he was nuts. After COVID and the 2020 election and the other various sketchy and outright malevolent crisis points the machine has dragged us through of late, nobody can say that anymore. The people who Brand rips into have long since exhausted the benefit of the doubt.

As such, Brand is simply another option among the independent voices quickly rising above the corporate gatekeepers who gave us such luminaries of so-called truth as Dan Rather, Lester Holt, and Brian Williams. He’s one of a panoply of them. Jordan Peterson. Joe Rogan. Carlson. Megyn Kelly. Dave Rubin. Bari Weiss. Matt Taibbi.

Most of them aren’t conservative. Not really. The bulk of them are better described as old-school liberals who were marginalized by the rise of what I’ll call Obamunism within the Democrat Party. That happened about 15 years ago, when the hard Left seized control of the institutions the liberals used to dominate, and liberalism as it was formerly known simply died.

There are very few liberals left, and the ones who do still exist — the ones who have refused to assimilate into the Borg hive the Obamunists have built and who still cling to a hopeful civilization based on a “living Constitution” — are being hunted out of the Democrat Party.

And what happened to Brand, who can’t be destroyed the way, say, Matt Lauer or Don Lemon were, is an awfully instructive lesson for what you’re allowed to say about the political/corporate/cultural machine the elite have built and the Obamunists have shaped. As the Daily Caller writes:

Allegations of rape, sexual assault, and emotional abuse have made been against Russell Brand Saturday as reported by The Sunday Times, The Times and Channel 4 Dispatches, per The Guardian.

Five women, four of whom remain anonymous, participated in the Dispatches documentary which aired Saturday night. The women alleged that they were sexually assaulted by the former actor between 2006 and 2013 while he was at the height of his career. During those years, Brand starred in various Hollywood films like “Forgetting Sarah Marshall,” “Despicable Me,” and “Rock of Ages.”

One woman claimed Brand raped her against a wall in his Los Angeles residence, which is allegedly supported by her medical records, according to The Times. Another women [sic] accused the former actor of assaulting her when she was only 16 years old while he was in his 30s. The third woman alleged that she was also sexually assaulted by him while they worked together. The fourth woman claimed Brand had been abusive towards her while they were in a relationship.

No sooner did the allegations surface than YouTube then announced it was demonetizing his account. Per Newsweek:

“We have suspended monetization on Russell Brand’s channel for violating our creator responsibility policy,” YouTube wrote in a statement. “If a creator’s off-platform behavior harms our users, employees or ecosystem, we take action to protect the community.”

YouTube confirmed it suspended Brand’s channel from the YouTube Partner Program “following serious allegations against the creator. This action means the channel is no longer able to monetize on YouTube.”

The precedent this sets — and, let’s remember, these are not allegations made in a criminal setting, where consequences can be incurred by the accusers in the event that they’re proven false; they’re accusations made on a TV show aimed at discrediting and impoverishing their target — is not a good one. Accuse anyone of misbehavior, sexual or otherwise, and we now know that you don’t have to prove it before YouTube destroys his or her livelihood.

Which means there is a sword of Damocles hanging over the head of anyone willing to speak out against the machine.

How many people would risk having that sword fall?

Brand’s reaction may or may not be an indication that he understands just how bad this all is:

Is this stuff true? Well, that perhaps isn’t the real question. The woman who claims he raped her against a wall the second time they had sex allegedly went back to the well with him multiple times; that doesn’t particularly sound like something a rape victim would do.

But nobody — not even Brand — is attempting to claim that he led an honorable lifestyle during the period these reports cover. Interestingly, the media machine never held any particular opprobrium for his conduct at the time, just as it still glorifies, say, Roman Polanski. (READ MORE from Scott McKay: Susanna Gibson Is the Poster Child for Today’s Democrats)

Or Joe Biden.

Because let’s not forget that Tara Reade, who had been a Senate staffer for Biden, included very lurid details about the sexual assault she says Biden inflicted upon her in 1993. She’s been on a number of shows talking about the incident. Here was one:

Is she credible? Not according to Wikipedia, and not according to the same megalithic corporate media entities now bandying about the sordid accusations made against Russell Brand.

Tara Reade now lives in Moscow. She claims that she’s no longer safe in the United States because she came forth with her allegations. And those same machine media operators who are cranking up the cancelation of Russell Brand will never entertain anything Tara Reade says.

Reade is a liar for describing a Joe Biden the country sees on video on a pretty constant basis, but the anonymous women alleging sexual assault and other boorish behavior against Brand, who swears he’s never had sex in his life that wasn’t consensual, are all telling the truth. (READ MORE from Scott McKay: Downright Disgust With Dirty Joe)

Say the people who took Christine Blasey Ford and E. Jean Carroll — neither of whom could supply key details about their supposed rapes at the hands of Brett Kavanaugh and Donald Trump, respectively — as though their words were gospel.

Well, sorry, guys. Your credibility is long gone. And everyone who paid attention to Brand could see this coming. The gag officially has whiskers on it.

So I’ll just have to fall back on something nobody seems to hold to anymore. I’m going to say that Russell Brand is presumed innocent until proven guilty. And since the media mob is a little low on proof, not to mention good faith, I’ll just assume none of that is forthcoming.