RUSSELL BRAND- UK Parliament Asks RUMBLE To ‘BAN’ Comedian, Site Claims
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00:00 Sexual assault allegations made last week against him, the CEO of the platform, Chris
00:04 Pavlovsky, pushed back on the UK Parliament's request to suspend Brand from receiving advertising
00:10 revenue on its platform, posting on X, quote, "We regard it as deeply inappropriate and
00:16 dangerous that the UK Parliament would attempt to control who is allowed to speak on our
00:20 platform or to earn a living from doing so.
00:23 We emphatically reject the UK Parliament's demands."
00:26 Pavlovsky expressed that while it deplores any sexual harassment of any kind, it believes
00:31 that both the victims and accused deserve full investigation.
00:35 It's clear Rumba will not be following in YouTube's footsteps to demonetize Russell,
00:40 and it's unclear if TikTok will follow suit.
00:42 But as journalist Glenn Greenwald pointed out, Caroline Dynadge, UK's chair of the
00:46 Culture, Media and Sports Committee, wrote, "TikTok's director of government relation
00:50 in Europe assembled a letter with the same ask.
00:53 Despite not having been charged with, let alone convicted of any crimes."
00:57 I mean, Bree, that's crazy.
00:59 Yeah.
01:00 For the government to really start sending letters to social media companies saying,
01:04 "Well, wait a minute here.
01:05 Is this guy monetized on your platform?"
01:07 Talk about government overreach.
01:08 Yeah.
01:09 Yesterday, I was talking, we were talking to Max Blumenthal about what would happen
01:12 if the government hypothetically were involved.
01:15 And at that time, we didn't know what the source of some of this stuff was.
01:19 And I agree that hypothetically that would be an incredible overreach.
01:22 Now we have evidence that the government of the UK is reaching out specifically asking
01:28 for its citizens to be demonetized because not that they've been proven in a court of
01:33 law that anything happened, not that they said or did anything on the site that violates
01:38 the terms of service, but because of a number of allegations that have arisen from some
01:42 years ago, some of which were not a secret, some of which Russell Brand had talked about
01:47 or alluded to in his book as he talked about his journey from being someone who was an
01:51 addict who had been struggling with misogyny and with other kinds of vices to where he
01:55 is today in a more kind of spiritual place.
01:58 So I mean, it is a kind of a tell because when the story first broke, there were those
02:03 that I would argue perhaps rushed to Russell Brand's defense perhaps too quickly.
02:08 I personally would take the approach of saying, "Well, I don't know one way or the other what
02:13 happened, so let's just maintain a status quo."
02:16 But in defense of him, they were arguing that he's being targeted because of the nature
02:20 of the commentary that he puts out on Rumble and on YouTube, and that the powers that be
02:25 want to silence him the same way that sexual assault or rape allegations were used against
02:30 Julian Assange.
02:32 There was a leftist congressional candidate out of Massachusetts this happened to.
02:37 There was a New York City mayoral candidate that this happened to.
02:44 But are they wrong?
02:45 I mean, when you have Christian Dainage, the chair of Culture, Media and Sports, sending
02:49 messages to privately owned companies that are not managed by the government, that aren't
02:53 owned by the government, that aren't sanctioned by the government to inquire whether or not
02:57 this guy is monetized merely based on allegations, I think it feeds into this idea that maybe
03:03 they're going after him because of his political position.
03:06 That was exactly my point.
03:07 Whereas initially, I think there were a lot of folks that pushed back against that and
03:10 said, "You have no evidence of that.
03:11 You have no proof of that."
03:12 They're literally making the case for Russell Brand's defenders with behavior as obvious
03:18 as sending a letter from a government requesting demonetization.
03:22 I don't know what Russell Brand did or didn't do.
03:25 I'm not trying to debate that.
03:27 But I do think people have a right to defend themselves.
03:31 And I think we've gone too far, not only in the United States, but I think in most of
03:35 the Western civilized world, an allegation is made against you, you're guilty.
03:41 You lose your job.
03:42 You lose your family.
03:43 All of your friends walk away.
03:45 And what happens when sometimes those allegations are disproven?
03:48 I mean, let's think about Johnny Depp, for example.
03:50 I know one of his lawyers personally.
03:52 And the financial implications of what Depp went through, he's still trying to recover
03:56 from that.
03:57 So it doesn't matter if you prove your innocence in a court of law, you're still going to feel
04:02 the ramifications financially.
04:04 And these folks just don't care.
04:05 And I think that people should be able to file suit against individuals who make allegations
04:11 that are proven to be false.
04:12 You should be able to defend your name, Brie.
04:15 Some of the more difficult cases I think are the ones that happen, that play out entirely
04:19 outside of the courtroom.
04:21 Because there is no sense ever of either validation or conviction.
04:27 There's no sense absent any kind of formal censorship by serving a jail sentence or having
04:34 to pay a defamation lawsuit or whatever it is, that anyone's been punished.
04:39 And when there's not really a question of past wrongdoing, I think with this Russell
04:43 Brand situation, it's less that there's disbelief that he behaved badly in the past, because
04:47 he's been very open about how he behaved badly in the past.
04:50 The question is absent any kind of formal punishment, and outside of any sort of religious
04:57 tradition or anything else culturally that would hold him accountable.
05:00 I do think the ratcheting up and the punitive push from governments and social media companies
05:06 to do damage against him is because we're kind of twisting in the wind, wondering, well,
05:10 if they don't do this, is there any accountability whatsoever?
05:14 And it shouldn't come from employers or tech companies or governments.
05:18 We need to figure out as a society how we want to think about people without offloading
05:22 that responsibility to the state.
05:25 Accountability comes with an investigation.
05:28 It comes with speaking with or to other parties who may have been around or who may have been
05:34 made immediately aware of these alleged acts from Russell against these women.
05:41 Then you go to potential punishment, if you will, and what that looks like.
05:44 But they have usurped the entire process.
05:46 The idea of justice just does not exist, obviously, in the United Kingdom.
05:51 And I would go on to argue that many of our viewers would probably say it doesn't really
05:55 exist in the United States, either.
05:56 If you're accused of something, you're just guilty.
05:58 It doesn't matter if you can prove your defense or defend yourself.
06:02 If we don't like you, we don't like what you're saying.
06:04 You're not mainstream, if you will.
06:06 You're not sanctioned by the mainstream.
06:08 Then yeah, you get too far, then we'll find something against you, too, and we'll punish
06:12 you.
06:13 Yeah, I mean, I do think that the Me Too movement took a turn.
06:17 And ironically, Joe Biden, I think, was the death of it.
06:23 At the start of his 2020 presidential race, there were, I believe, eight allegations of
06:28 inappropriate sexual conduct that women raised.
06:31 His own now vice president, Kamala Harris, said at the time that she believed women.
06:36 But we saw as soon as it became clear that he was going to be the Democratic nominee
06:41 and the Tara Reid allegations came out, how little faith Democrats actually put in the
06:47 notion of believing women.
06:49 Now, I do think there's a problem with believe women.
06:53 The initial impulse, I believe, came from a good place, that we've had so many decades
06:57 and centuries of the presumption being against the woman when they raise claims of rape or
07:03 sexual assault, that there was an effort to provide some pushback, some counterbalance
07:08 to that and have some kind of system where there's a rebuttable presumption in favor
07:15 of the woman, let's say, and the cultural mindset of a rebuttable presumption against
07:19 her.
07:20 But without an investigation, believe women means an accusation is a conviction.
07:28 And we hop over any opportunity for the state to investigate if it really is a criminal
07:34 matter or for there to be any kind of reporting that investigates what's happened.
07:40 And it puts a responsibility on individuals who are just acquaintances or in the mix or
07:44 on social media or whatever to weigh in as though any of us have the tools or the ability
07:50 to ever know what's really gone on there, outside of journalists.
07:53 I mean, we're journalists.
07:54 I mean, look, I don't, as a guy, I'm going to be careful with the believe the woman thing,
08:00 because I know what the repercussions can be for that.
08:03 But I do think if an allegation is made against someone, that person should have an opportunity
08:07 to defend themselves and a presumption of innocence should remain.
08:11 I said the same thing about President Trump politically.
08:13 When people say, well, he's made the comments, so we have it on tape, or we believe he's
08:18 did all of these things he's accused of for whatever reason.
08:22 And my thing is, maybe you do believe that, but the presumption of innocence is really
08:25 a cornerstone of our democracy.
08:28 It really is.
08:29 I mean, I think about Socrates and the conversations with Socrates and Credo, and Credo kept trying
08:33 to convince Socrates to flee.
08:35 We can get you out of here.
08:36 We can get you on a private island to escape this unfair, unwarranted sentence.
08:41 And he's just said, no.
08:42 I have to respect the laws of this place.
08:45 And I would say to people who are just so quick to say, yep, they're guilty for whatever
08:49 the reason may be, give people an opportunity to defend themselves, because the presumption
08:54 of innocence is critically important to what I think distinguishes us from a civilized
09:00 society versus one where the government can choose any individual they want to make an
09:04 example out of and say, because you did this thing wrong, you should be sentenced to some
09:09 type of punishment.
09:10 So I guess I feel a little differently about that.
09:12 I think that in a criminal legal context, obviously I agree with you, but I don't think
09:16 that members of the public have to suspend their feelings about things we know to be
09:22 true.
09:23 I don't think there's a dispute that Russell Brand had a relationship with a 16 year old.
09:26 It was legal in the UK, so this is not a criminal issue.
09:29 But I think Megyn Kelly or others who just fundamentally, because they have young children
09:33 of that age or they remember being a young girl generally, just find it to be distasteful,
09:41 no longer want to consume his content, no longer want to support him financially.
09:45 I think those are decisions that people are allowed to make.
09:48 For me, the problem is trying to take one's own personal beliefs and assessments and impose
09:53 them broadly on a person by getting broader public buy-in by saying, well, you have to
10:00 do what I have to do because Twitter's on my side, because YouTube's on my side, because
10:04 the UK parliament is on my side, and they're going to force you to behave toward Russell
10:08 Brand the same way I'm choosing to behave by literally demonetizing it.
10:12 But isn't that the fallacious argument that we hear all the time, this appeal to emotion,
10:16 right?
10:17 We just suspend your logic, literally suspend those things.
10:20 Don't think about, does A, B, and C add up?
10:23 Does one plus one equals two?
10:24 But Michael, there is stuff here that's-
10:26 How do you feel about this and just react with how you feel merely, and I think the
10:30 end result of that will always be a disaster.
10:32 We see this in our own country.
10:34 All I'm saying is that I think it's perfectly legitimate.
10:37 There's stuff here that Russell Brand, and this is what I was trying to get across to
10:39 Max Blumenthal yesterday.
10:41 There's stuff that is not conjecture, that he's admitted to, that's enough to make a
10:45 lot of people not want to hang out with him anymore or watch his content anymore.
10:48 A lot of that stuff was already out there, and people didn't care about it because he
10:52 has actually spoken pretty honestly about a lot of the distasteful things in his past.
10:58 And frankly, I think that we on the left believe in a sort of redistributive justice model,
11:03 rehabilitation, not a tarring people forever-
11:05 Where is the rehabilitation for Trump?
11:06 For the rest of it.
11:07 If that's the case for people on the left, I don't know how true that is, Bre.
11:10 Rehabilitation requires real penance and introspective and absolution.
11:12 And who gets to decide that?
11:14 Well, I don't know who gets to decide it, but I don't see any evidence that Donald Trump
11:17 has ever said, "I'm sorry, I regret my past behavior."
11:20 Russell Brand has, to his credit.
11:21 Russell Brand has really engaged meaningfully in some spiritual work to talk about how he's
11:26 not proud of the man that he used to be.
11:28 So I took a big issue with the request being, sorry, the allegations being anonymous.
11:32 I think that's a huge part of why this feels so unsavory, that he doesn't have an opportunity
11:37 to confront his accusers, to vet the evidence.
11:39 And as I said, I think yesterday on the show, when you are a famous person, the reputational
11:44 damage matters so much more than you've been an anonymous person.
11:48 That's what I was saying, financially.
11:49 I mean, it's insane, the impact of this.
11:50 And people just—I mean, it's difficult to really quantify what this will do.
11:54 And even if you do somehow get over this, people will still always have in the back
11:58 of their minds, "Did he really do it?
12:00 Should we really work with him?
12:01 Should we really bring him on set around other women?"
12:04 Remember what they said about him a couple years ago?
12:06 We don't think about the next decade or so, because people are only thinking about now.
12:10 But this is the reality that people on the political left have created.
12:13 They fostered this really disgusting environment that is destructive to people's lives.
12:20 And now it's eating their own.
12:21 Russell Brand isn't a conservative.
12:23 He's not on my side of the ideological perspective, in my opinion.
12:27 And yet they're seeing the chickens come home to roost, and they have to deal with that,
12:30 in my opinion.
12:31 Yeah.
12:32 I mean, I guess I don't—given how frequently this has been weaponized by liberals and centrists,
12:38 I see this as an establishment weapon as opposed to a left weapon.
12:42 The Massachusetts congressional candidate Alex Morse that I mentioned before, he was
12:47 a left candidate that was targeted by liberals.
12:50 Shahid Buttar was a left challenger to Nancy Pelosi, who was hit with similar allegations.
12:55 Julian Assange—I'm seeing this come from—it's a tool that's being used to maintain a status
13:01 quo.
13:02 And we see someone like Joe Biden, who is the status quo, the tool is no longer deployed.
13:06 And so I do think that anybody who is challenging the establishment needs to worry about getting
13:11 these kind of accusations first and foremost.
13:14 And I do think lessons are being learned here about the limits of some good-faith efforts
13:19 to protect the interests of women that historically have not been protected by our criminal justice
13:23 system.
13:24 But I'm not convinced, and I'm not sure if our viewers are convinced, that people
13:29 on the left have learned a lesson.
13:30 I mean, I was just in the Midwestern state two weekends ago, and I spoke with everyday
13:34 Americans, and we were talking about some of the persecution, as one woman described
13:38 it, of Donald Trump and of other conservative-leaning individuals and Americans and teachers.
13:43 And you have the FBI, you know, coming to people's homes at 9 o'clock at night,
13:48 moms who don't necessarily like some of the gender ideology that's being taught
13:52 in certain schools.
13:53 This was her argument, not necessarily mine.
13:55 And so I'm not sure that people on the left with power and influence have learned a lesson.
14:00 And I don't think they're going to learn a lesson, which is what Trump's point is.
14:04 I don't think a lesson will be learned until those forces are used against them.
14:07 Sure, Michael.
14:08 I think that we're having a semantic difference about what we consider to be the left.
14:12 I have been loudly articulating a desire to defund the FBI.
14:17 It is leftists who have been disproportionately the focus of FBI attacks, murders since the
14:22 civil rights era, since socialists and communists that fought for our labor rights in the '30s
14:28 and '40s were attacked since the Red Square in Hollywood and all those kinds of things.
14:31 So I do think that I might agree with you if we change the word liberal to left.
14:35 I think this is mostly a semantic debate.
14:37 But stick around.
14:38 We'll have more Rising for you right after this.
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