The Revolution-Now Thread (Russell B. & others).

[brainpanhandler]

If anyone needs more proof, see also this paltry pettifogging piffle in Salon.

I read that yesterday and hesitated to bring it here. I thought it was well written myself and made some points worth thinking about at least. At a minimum I have to give consideration to the internal process of hero creation. It doesn't happen very often, so when it does it's worth attending to.

[MacCruiskeen]

brainpanhandler, here's one of those "top-rated by popularity" comments under Lustig's vacuous HuffPo screed. What "SecularAdvocate" says applies just as well to the Salon piffle, and to practically every salaried pundit's morning-after scribblings about the Russell Brand/Paxman interview. It's only one of many good comments I could have quoted. I've bolded a couple of the most salient lines, but please read the whole thing:

HUFFPOST SUPER USER
SecularAdvocate
Media Watcher

106 Fans

01:09 on 27/10/2013
Well, you [Robin Lustig] took him [Russell Brand] seriously. And his ranting has enabled you to find an audience, so that you can tell them you don't really have much to say.

All the terribly serious political punditry that has come on the coat-tails of Brand's rant concentrates on his idea that voting's a waste of time. But that's not the essence of his message. The essence of his message is that WE SHOULD ALL BE REALLY ANGRY THAT EVERYTHING IS SO WRONG. And in this respect, he is perfectly correct. And he's also perfectly correct to point out that to date, voting hasn't brought us to a condition where the people's common consensus is represented in the behaviour of our governments.

Russell is the innocent child pointing and laughing and proclaiming "the king is in the altogether!" and all you hand-wringing weasels who are so used to appraising the cut and quality of the king's new clothes can come up with in response is to criticise him for having no designs for the king's complete new wardrobe.

Russell Brand has articulated the frustration and anger of those who see themselves as powerless to combat the cancer of greed that infects us.

He has no solutions to it, but neither do you. So you pretend no truth has escaped from the innocent's mouth, and that we should resume the conceit of appreciating the cunning work of the king's crooked tailors.

And this moment that Brand has created, you waste.

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/social/ ... 55932.html

See, SecularAdvocate`s job doesn't depend on him not understanding the obvious, and therefore he understands the obvious -- and describes it very well and succinctly. [I could quibble about the word 'rant', but why bother.] As do dozens if not hundreds of other perfectly-ordinary commenters. As do an enormous majority of those millions of people who watched the interview. As will a gigantic majority of the many more millions who will watch it and watch it again & again.

The Salon & HuffPo hacks, by contrast, are contractually obliged to distinguish themselves by churning out opinions and pretending (above all to themselves) that those opinions are their very own and therefore something really special & clever & insightful. No wonder they sound so stupid, and so vain, and so petty. And so resentful. They're not just in the huff, they're in a panic. Because even they are beginning to sense that it's all coming down.

They need not worry. After the coming insurrection, no one will starve or be homeless. Not even them.

[American Dream]

This just appeared at Counterpunch:

http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/10/28/ ... ry-change/

Beyond Russell Brand’s Revolutionary Change
by ELLIOT SPERBER

Russell Brand’s recent calls for revolutionary change (in his BBC interview and in his article in the New Statesman) have raised a considerable degree of discussion and controversy. Predictably enough, those on the right have reacted by generally dismissing the message. Not only do they characterize its substance as unrealistic, they question the capacity of the messenger; that this is an ad hominem is neither discussed nor, apparently, comprehended.

Although largely agreeing with the message, those on the left tend to either uncritically root for the messenger, or fall into arguments over leaders and structure and organization, not to mention what the parameters of an international revolutionary subject would encompass. This is not to say that these general tendencies of the left and right are rigid or not fluid. Plenty on the radical left are criticizing Brand. Among other things, his objectification of “beautiful women” is – as Musa Okwonga, among others, have pointed out – patently sexist. (That the name New Statesman is patently sexist as well is, as far as I know, not under discussion.) In the end, however, Brand’s character flaws have little to do with the validity of his arguments.

Though they may mitigate his persuasive “power” – and point to weaknesses in his thinking – they in no way diminish the need for the elimination of, among other injustices, global pollution, poverty, inequality, and the other systemically produced conditions Brand argues should be eliminated. His character flaws, however, are relevant to the extent that they cast light on the claims of proponents of “leaderless” social movements. For in invoking Brand’s flaws, some proponents of leaderlessness – like Natasha Lennard (who, ironically, has over 7,000 Twitter “followers”) – undermine their own positions. Writing in Salon, Lennard asks that “we temper our celebrations of [Brand] according to his very pronounced flaws.”

Yet the argument against celebrating and raising people to the status of leaders has little, if anything, to do with a person’s “pronounced flaws.” Even flawless people should not be leaders. According to the anti-leader argument not even gods, those flawless beings, should be leaders. “No gods, no masters”, right?Among the more problematic aspects of the Political Leader Question is the fact that the term “leader” is particularly ambiguous. Does it mean ‘one who gives commands’ (i.e., a dictator)? Or is it limited to the sense of “spokesperson” (which means dictater in a more benign, but still problematic, sense)? Or does it simply mean one who “leads by example”? Or one who influences by charm and guile? Or does it mean “organizer”? For their part, pro-leader people don’t seem to see how one could even have a political movement without leaders.

Meanwhile, anti-leader people seem incapable of recognizing the clandestine leaders influencing strategies, priorities, agendas, etc., within their own ranks. Neither side seems to discuss what Jean Baudrillard, in his essay The Masses: The Implosion of the Social in the Media, described as “the modern enigma of politics”: the 16th century thinker Etienne de la Boetie’s insight that political leaders derive their power less from taking it from those they rule over than by the subjected population’s own renunciation of their own power.

In other words, the Leader Question is the Power Question (not to mention the ideology question, the hegemony question, the autonomy/heteronomy question, and the coercive versus non-coercive power question, inter alia). Leaders and followers not only simultaneously reproduce one another in a mutually reinforcing dynamic, this dynamic arises whenever a person has influence over another. And Russell Brand, with his eloquence and celebrity visibility, has no small measure of influence over millions. That is, at least for the time being, he is already a type of leader.

To be continued…


Elliot Sperber is a writer, attorney, and contributor to hygiecracy.blogspot.com He lives in New York City, and can be reached at elliot.sperber@gmail.com

[MacCruiskeen]

Plenty on the radical [sic] left are criticizing Brand. Among other things, his objectification of “beautiful women” is – as Musa Okwonga, among others, have pointed out – patently sexist.

This is such cant, such dismal driveling piffle. He no more "objectifies" "beautiful women" by noticing that they are beautiful and even saying it, than he "objectifies" tall men by noticing their tallness and even calling them tall, or "objectifies" likable people by noticing their likableness and calling them likable, or "objectifies" greedy bosses by noticing their greed and even calling them greedy.

RB, like everyone else, is a subject. Everyone else whom RB, or anyone else, encounters, is of course also a subject, but only to him- or herself. To RB and to everyone else (whatever their gender), all of these self-subjects are objects -- necessarily. This is a trivial truth determined by the nature of (normal) human consciousness itself: it can only manifest itself in one soul in one place at one time. What can possibly bridge that gap? Sympathy. Empathy. Friendship. Love. Desire.

But we're close to the heart of it now, close to the heart of all this carping and sniping and grumbling. What all of these gollums on the "radical" [sic] "left" [sic] cannot stand about Russell Brand is his beauty, and his ability to perceive and evoke and take delight in beauty elsewhere, including in other human beings. And I am not just talking about looks.

The gollums have this much in common with their pseudo-antagonists on the right: they have found Russell Brand guilty of being alive. I wonder what his sentence will be. It'll have to fit the crime.


Giordano Bruno: guilty of the same crime as Brand.

[Wombaticus Rex]

It bothers me that this is all being framed as "Russell Brand Calling For a Revolution."

If I predict the sun will come up tomorrow, is that advocacy? I don't think so....

[MacCruiskeen]

It bothers me that this is all being framed as "Russell Brand Calling For a Revolution."

Yes. These are the kind of pathetic rhetorical manoeuvres they're now reduced to. "That Russell Brand, he thinks he's god's gift to women, but that's not enough for him, no no, now he wants to be Lenin, no no, now he thinks he's God, well he's not the boss of me, he's just some prancing overpaid undereducated junky ponce with ideas above his station. Plus he's a sexist."

Behold Intellect at work, on the right and on the "left". It is desperate stuff.

[MacCruiskeen]

Does anyone know how to get in touch with Michael Parenti? If so, please PM me. I would love, really love, to see and hear an hour-long discussion between him and Brand. In fact they would probably talk happily all night. And it would almost certainly be extremely funny too.



Because Parenti, like Brand and like Bill Hicks, does not confuse intellect with living death.

[brainpanhandler]

brainpanhandler, here's one of those "top-rated by popularity" comments under Lustig's vacuous HuffPo screed. What "SecularAdvocate" says applies just as well to the Salon piffle, and to practically every salaried pundit's morning-after scribblings about the Russell Brand/Paxman interview. It's only one of many good comments I could have quoted. I've bolded a couple of the most salient lines, but please read the whole thing:

HUFFPOST SUPER USER
SecularAdvocate
Media Watcher

106 Fans

01:09 on 27/10/2013
Well, you [Robin Lustig] took him [Russell Brand] seriously. And his ranting has enabled you to find an audience, so that you can tell them you don't really have much to say.

All the terribly serious political punditry that has come on the coat-tails of Brand's rant concentrates on his idea that voting's a waste of time. But that's not the essence of his message. The essence of his message is that WE SHOULD ALL BE REALLY ANGRY THAT EVERYTHING IS SO WRONG. And in this respect, he is perfectly correct. And he's also perfectly correct to point out that to date, voting hasn't brought us to a condition where the people's common consensus is represented in the behaviour of our governments.

Russell is the innocent child pointing and laughing and proclaiming "the king is in the altogether!" and all you hand-wringing weasels who are so used to appraising the cut and quality of the king's new clothes can come up with in response is to criticise him for having no designs for the king's complete new wardrobe.

Russell Brand has articulated the frustration and anger of those who see themselves as powerless to combat the cancer of greed that infects us.

He has no solutions to it, but neither do you. So you pretend no truth has escaped from the innocent's mouth, and that we should resume the conceit of appreciating the cunning work of the king's crooked tailors.

And this moment that Brand has created, you waste.

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/social/ ... 55932.html

See, SecularAdvocate`s job doesn't depend on him not understanding the obvious, and therefore he understands the obvious -- and describes it very well and succinctly. [I could quibble about the word 'rant', but why bother.] As do dozens if not hundreds of other perfectly-ordinary commenters. As do an enormous majority of those millions of people who watched the interview. As will a gigantic majority of the many more millions who will watch it and watch it again & again.

The Salon & HuffPo hacks, by contrast, are contractually obliged to distinguish themselves by churning out opinions and pretending (above all to themselves) that those opinions are their very own and therefore something really special & clever & insightful. No wonder they sound so stupid, and so vain, and so petty. And so resentful. They're not just in the huff, they're in a panic. Because even they are beginning to sense that it's all coming down.

They need not worry. After the coming insurrection, no one will starve or be homeless. Not even them.

I only read a bit of Lustig's boring little screed and then skimmed the rest. Utter BS. I thought the Salon piece by Lennard at least had the virtue of getting me to think a bit. While writing without the incentive of being paid to do so has advantages I'm not likely to allow the paid/unpaid demarcation to filter what I read. I'll let the words as committed speak for themselves.

I don't know enough about Brand to have an opinion on his alleged misogyny, casual or not, (we're all soaking in it) and your points about subject/object this-is-the-human-condition are well taken.

I think there may well be some merit to the idea that what traditional leftist pundits are likely to be truly disturbed by with Brand is his optimism. They said goodbye to that a long time ago and don't like to be reminded of it. Just speculation. Cynics will want to tear down such fresh enthusiasm... pick at him, find every little flaw. I detest that there can be no innocence in this world that goes unpunished. How dare you think such optimistic thoughts and Welcome to the meat grinder.

Nonetheless, not all Brand criticism is/will be created equally. Either exalting or tearing down a public figure that speaks truth to power are two sides of the same problem of locating our personal power outside ourselves. We aren't all poets and deep thinkers and great souls (nor one of the beautiful people) and we need guiding lights/inspiration. But the best part of that is to create/rekindle a little fire in the hearth of everyone's hearts and remind us that we are the problem also and so we are the solution.

[American Dream]

If there is a "Curmudgeon of the Year" contest, Douglas Valentine is surely at least a contender:

http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/10/25/ ... y-culture/

You Say You Want a Revolution, Well, You Know...
Brand X and the Absurdity of Celebrity Culture

by DOUGLAS VALENTINE

Russell Brand is a celebrity, one of those pretty faces you see on ragged magazines at the check-out counter and think: “Who gives a flying f what he’s screwing this week?”

At one point he was screwing Katy Perry, a teeny-bopper who makes recruitment music videos for the US Army. They were married in a traditional Hindu ceremony, near a tiger sanctuary in India – which is just so cool! Except they divorced a year later, right after Brand, the cad, twittered an unflattering photo of Perry for all their fans to see.

Brand meditates, but prefers transcendental medication. According to Wikipedia, he “has incorporated his notorious drug use, alcoholism, and promiscuity into his comedic material.” And he certainly has a talent for casting himself as a rebel (there’s a poster of him floating around the internet depicting him as Che Guevara) and for shameless self-promotion: something of a serial flasher, he’s been arrested numerous times, often, ironically, for throwing punches at paparazzo.

On Facebook he is adored by millions of millennial girls for his “gorgeous beard” and for being a vegetarian, which equals a reverence for all sentient beings. And yet, simply because he’s a celebrity, he must constantly defend himself from charges of being “trivial,” which really hurts when you’re a sensitive guy like Brand.

And he is sensitive, and has convictions, as well as arrests. Brand has publicly condemned Israel’s assault on Gaza, and the “cruel and massive loss of life of the citizens of Gaza.” He has taken other principled stands as well.

But he drenched himself in glitz, and acted like a fool, to get to the point where people would look at him and listen to what he says. And that is the irony of Brand’s karma-challenged life: he suffers for the fame and fortune he brought upon himself.

Don’t you get it, Russ? You can’t speak authoritatively against corporate and economic oppression if you’re a wealthy glamour-boy, featured regularly in GQ and Esquire.

This is the trap all our modern heroes fall into. The first (paraphrased) words Dan Ellsberg spoke to me were: “You can’t understand me because you’re not a celebrity. Being a celebrity changes everything.”

Danny was absolutely right. Being a celebrity does change everything. Ask Zimmerman, who stopped pretending to be a champion of the poor, once he became rich.

Celebrity changes everything, yes, but not like being an unwed mother changes everything. Being a celebrity makes you publicly absurd. It makes you another Brand X on a shelf overflowing with commodities packaged and sold by money-grubbing corporations.

It’s like a prominent libertarian using the oxymoron “billionaire philanthropist” to describe Glenn Greenwald’s sugar daddy Pierre Omidyar, and then calling on libertarians everywhere to implore their Congressional representatives (like Rand Paul?) to pave the way for ex-pat Greenwald’s safe-return from self-imposed exile. Forget the 11 million undocumented aliens in the country (which libertarians are doing their best to deport), trying to stay here for a chance to work and exist in noble anonymity; you must expend your time and energy on one celeb who, single-handedly, is going to make “us” understand “what kind of country we’re turning into.”

Give me a break. Celebrity-making in the hands of venture capitalists and social-service wrecking libertarians renders Greenwald absurd – like he made himself absurd for taking Omidyar’s blood money; like celebrity-seeking made devout Maherist-Lenoist Jeremy Scahill absurd; like it makes every other denizen of late-night comedy shows, hosted by millionaire racists, in a word, absurd.

In this spirit, Russell Brand has reached new heights of absurdity by predicting a coming revolution. The poster of him looking like Che has done more damage to his brain than all the dope he pumped into his veins; but his adoring fans believe his rubbish and, for 24 hours, happily imagine themselves as revolutionaries.

They do, after all, identify with him, and his brand of consumer absurdity. And in modern America, money and an adoring fan base are what matter.

From down here in the trenches, I wonder what Russell’s brand of revolution looks like? A civil war, perhaps, in America, with well-armed Tea Partiers surrendering by the score? Or will it be a worldwide uprising of the lower classes against their corporate oppressors? (Didn’t someone already suggest that?) Will Brand’s revolution involve people killing and being killed, or simply pretending they have the courage of their convictions, assuming they have any convictions (or critical thoughts) at all?

In any case, the powers-that-be are thanking Russell Brand X for reducing the on-going struggle for freedom and justice, once again, to the absurd.

Douglas Valentine is the author of five books, including The Phoenix Program. See http://www.douglasvalentine.com or write to him at dougvalentine77@gmail.com

[Wombaticus Rex]

If there is a "Curmudgeon of the Year" contest, Douglas Valentine is surely at least a contender:

....

Don’t you get it, Russ? You can’t speak authoritatively against corporate and economic oppression if you’re a wealthy glamour-boy, featured regularly in GQ and Esquire.

Actually, I thought that riff was way better the first time...you know, when Russell Brand said that himself, at eloquent length.

[MacCruiskeen]

At one point he was screwing Katy Perry, a teeny-bopper

What was that you just quoted from Elliot Sperber, also in Counterpunch, about "sexism" and "objectification"? About Russell Brand being a bad bad man because he "objectifies" "beautiful women"?

Does Counterpunch even notice what it publishes any more? Do these people have even the remotest idea any more what they are for or against, or why they bother writing at all? Apparently not. How could they? They are all just employees of the dead-intellect Machine, seething with resentment and churning out their sterile but stinky product.

Gollums abound, on the right and on the pseudo-left. What they all hate is beauty. These hacks are all deeply ill.

An essential and basic characteristic of the emotional plague reaction is that action and the motive of the action never coincide. The real motive is concealed and a sham motive is given as the reason for the action. In the reaction of the natural and healthy individual, motive, action, and goal form an organic unity. Nothing is concealed. This unity is immediately evident.

[American Dream]

I think Russell Brand has a lot of potential to catalyze good things. Indeed, he has already begun.

I also think there are limitations to celebrity culture and that those who resonate with his ideas must make them their own.

And it furthers all of us to analyze, strategize, respectfully discuss and debate, etc..

[Wombaticus Rex]

AD, do you agree it is a counterfactual strawman to paint Brand as a leader, self-appointed or otherwise, of the "coming revolution" he spoke of?

[American Dream]

AD, do you agree it is a counterfactual strawman to paint Brand as a leader, self-appointed or otherwise, of the "coming revolution" he spoke of?

As I think was mentioned previously, it all depends on what you mean by "leader"- and leadership to me, is not per se bad...

[MacCruiskeen]

I also think there are limitations to celebrity culture

Well, do I really have to say, explicitly: "So do I"? If so: So do I.

But this has nothing whatsoever to do with "celebrity culture", AD. Thats a cliché, a language-corpse. It is itself mere media-babble, a thoughtstopper. It belongs in the dustbin.

If Brand were not a "celebrity" (sic) he would not have been on TV and we would not be discussing him. So he is blamed for being on TV, and for being beautiful & alive & funny & popular & healthy & unaddicted & sexy & sensitive & hyperarticulate, and (in short) for being at the top of his game (his life). He is blamed for being lovable and for being loved, in his particular case by millions. He is blamed for being alive and kicking.

Do you see where this is going? It has nothing at all to do with "celebrity culture" (sic). Nothing whatsoever. We could be talking about anyone else.

They have him in a textbook Batesonian Double Bind. He cannot be allowed to escape. He constitutes the danger of a good example. Russell Brand has achieved a life in freedom. So he cannot be allowed to get away with it.

This is how it works: the right, the "liberals" and the Gollum Left pretend that Russell Brand (or anyone) would somehow be more credible if he were still stuck hopelessly in a Peckham squat, stealing petty cash and zoned out on smack on a sheetless mattress. Because that's where they want him to be. That's where they need their subjects, their objects, to be: safely lableable, safely labelled, boxed up, silent and invisible. (See Project Willow's post in this thread.)

And would the hacks listen to him then? Even if Russell Brand were not "Russell Brand"? Would they listen to him if he were a nobody? Would they then report on his words with "respect"? Would they "analyse" and "discuss" those words?

Like hell they would. Like hell. They would ignore and despise him and block up their ears. They would at best objectify him as a regrettable nameless statistic -- as a hopeless denizen of "the underclass" (sic). That would at least give them something else to write about, to hack about, in their dead but saleable language.

They want him to be dead, either literally or metaphorically.

It is all so repulsive.

Those hacks are ill. No wonder Brand is a vegetarian.


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