Originally Posted to Wordpress April 5 2022
[note, this took a while to write, partly because I’m busy at the moment. Consequently, events have moved on considerably and I have attempted to keep my discussion within the realm of facts available at the time Russell’s video was released on YouTube (c. March 27th). As I publish this post, news continues to break about possible war crimes by Russian troops in areas around Kyiv – including Bucha – and Russell just posted a video on Stand with Ukraine titled “Oh, So it’s Just Bullsh*t”. ]
The causes of war in Ukraine are complex right? And are motivated by a desire to control resources and the profits of western corporations, right? But can we really trust the motives of religious extremists who are boostin’ for Putin?
Welcome! You 5.2 million awakening souls. All of us together, traveling on an utterly insignificant little blue-green planet, orbiting a small unregarded yellow sun, far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy. A Galaxy where you can still get tickets to Russell’s utterly insignificant tour! Ideal for those who want to experience the thrill of being in thrall to a charismatic cult leader but want the peace of mind that comes from knowing Russell has too short an attention span to form an actual cult.
Russell YouTubed about the war in Ukraine again. Actually, he’s done a few more of them, but I’m going to focus on the one released on or about the 27th of March 2022, titled “They Don’t Want You Looking Into This”, where Russell tries to join the dots between the war in Ukraine, natural resources and the western military-industrial complex. Rich pickings!
But first Russell wants you to know that he cares deeply about the people of Ukraine and he thinks Putin is a bad man! He’s very careful to say this and does so in a rather somber and composed style, for Russell. I think he has been shaken by some of the recent criticisms he’s received, and remember, most of that was before he started holding forth on the war in Ukraine.
He wants us to know that he isn’t reporting on the horrible suffering of the people of Ukraine because it is being covered by the mainstream TV news channels, “presumably”. Why “presumably”? Because Russell says he doesn’t watch mainstream news, “it’s bad for you”. In the same breath as saying he doesn’t need to cover Ukrainian suffering because it’s covered by TV news, he tells us not to watch TV news!
Now, we’ll leave aside all the issues that arise from Russell Brand not watching TV news while he provides his unswithering criticisms of TV news. But surely Russell has inadvertently made the case for exactly why he should cover this particular topic. He repeatedly maligns mainstream news to the extent that would make it reasonable for his audience to be skeptical of any mainstream reporting (assuming they watch TV news at all). Is it not, then, beholden on Russell to identify to his audience important truths when TV news reports on them? Otherwise, they would remain ignorant to these facts, at best, and downright hostile to them at worst.
Russell’s careless and callous disregard for the suffering of Ukrainian civilians is laid bare in his statement, even as he tried to provide cover and present himself as a man of compassion. His words are hollow, his actions speak louder. On my last large post I introduced the concept of Stochasticism, whereby a person does not directly call for an act but instead contributes to an environment where it becomes inevitable that the act will occur. Russell has played this game with his “anti-vax” shenanigans, and he now plays the same game with his Putin apologia. In the past three weeks, we have had:
- The West has no moral authority to criticize Russia because of Iraq/Palastine/Yemen
- The West has no moral authority to assist Ukraine because of Hunter’s laptop.
- The West has no moral authority to sanction oligarchs because of the existence of Swiss banks.
Russell has not provided any detailed discussion around the violence being committed against the populace of Ukraine or the internal crackdown on dissent and free media in Russia. These are subjects that Russell revels in when he imagines them happening in the west. How many videos about Trudeau cracking down on trucker protests? How many complaints about censorship of social media? How many rants about a compliant media in cahoots with a corrupt government?
Russell is about to introduce another couple of reasons why the West has no moral authority to support Ukraine or condemn Russia – natural resource wealth and the arms industry. But to do so, he needs us to understand that this is a very complex and nuanced situation. You might have thought the proximate causes for war were relatively simple, but that will not do! You might have thought that Vladimir Putin felt threatened by the extent of western influence in Ukraine and was seeking to establish a buffer between Russia and Europe. You might’ve thought he was motivated by Russian chauvinism or maybe just securing his own longevity by stymying democracy in a country that is both culturally and geographically adjacent to Russia. You might have thought that Putin was the fulcrum of this entire situation – the one point through which all other forces flowed. The person who started this war on a whim and the one person who could personally end it by their own fiat. But apparently not. This situation is complex!
And Russell will demonstrate this complexity by referring to an article posted on the new media website, Common Dreams, written by Greg Coleridge. Greg is a director of Move to Amend – a pressure group that seeks to overturn Citizen’s United by amending the US Constitution to declare that money is not speech and corporations are not people. I’m warming to Greg.
Greg is also a 30+ year member of America Freinds Service Committee a Quaker grassroots organization. For those of you that don’t know, the Quakers are an offshoot religion of Christianity with a consistent history of pacifism and taking a critical stance against both war and merchants of war. They derive their pacifism from a firmly held belief that war and conflict are against God’s wishes.
Yes, that’s right, the being that is powerful enough to create the universe does not wish for there to be conflict in his creation but is somehow disinclined or unable to halt it himself.
I am personally offended by people who derive their objections to suffering from religious obligation rather than basic human empathy. Religion has existed for the extent of human civilization and has been present on the battlefield of every major war and conflict. Christianity is especially blood-soaked, having been birthed in blood at the battle of the Milvian Bridge to become the established religion of the Roman Empire. Crusades, pogroms, sectarian massacres, colonial conquests, imperial wars, genocides, slavery, racial hatred, homophobic, and transphobic bigotry. Christianity has been present in and justified them all.
If spiritual people like Greg Coleridge and Russell Brand are serious about their pacifism, they might be better placed to focus their ire on their own kind. Why aren’t they explicitly calling out the religious warmongers? To borrow an aphorism from the Christians, “Doctor, heal thy self”.
Patriarch Kiril, the head of the Russian Eastern Orthodox Church, has used religion to justify the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Why isn’t Brand excoriating this character with the same vigour as he does CNN’s Brian Stelter (who he presumably never watches)?
All bar one of the US representatives and Senators that Brand and Coleridge would have you believe can not be trusted because of the profit motive identify as religious. 88% of them as Christian. Why are their profit motives suspect but their religious ones above reproach?
Some religious people manage this task. Former Archbishop of Canterbury (the most senior clergy in the Anglican Church), Dr Rowan Williams, has suggested that the World Council of Churches (WCC) should expel the Russian Orthodox Church over its failure to condemn the war in Ukraine. He has criticized Patriarch Kiril on his failure to meet basic Christian standards. Dr Williams is an individual with a deep personal respect for Russia – in 2010, he was awarded the Order of Friendship by the Russian government for promoting Russian culture. Far from being a barrier to criticizing Russian aggression toward Ukraine, he channels both his love of Russian culture and his Christian beliefs to provide focused criticism within his domain (religion and spirituality).
Russell? Meh. Russell’s moral arithmetic is simple – Hillary and democrats say Russia bad, therefore Russia good! If Russia do bad thing it because Hillary and Democrats do bad thing! Russell feel the Bern!
What practical action can the like of Brand and Coleridge offer? Coleridge, at least, is working to amend the constitution in a way that would limit the ability of the arms industry to pour money into politics. But Brand? Nothing.
Ultimately they both proffer a fantasy world as a solution to the problems in the real world. Coleridge wants a world according to God’s wishes, but not one god is actually willing to wish into existence. Until it arrives, we are supposed to turn the other cheek to those who commit violence. I suppose we wait for them to tire themselves out? Or, we live under their boot and claim moral victory? Coleridge would have the world suffer the yoke of tyranny because of god’s impotence.
Brand thinks that he, messiah-like, will personally usher in a pie-in-the-sky universal Great Awakening that will sweep the world rendering everyone pure of thought and deed, ending man’s inhumanity towards man. And in the meantime? Kill them all; God will recognize his own.
There is no practical solution and that is kind of the point. Mock spiritual concern provides a fig leaf for a lack of genuine human concern. It gives the feeling of moral superiority while ignoring, or even endorsing, humanity’s most heinous acts.
On a more practical level, Coleridge argues that Ukraine is rich in resources. His opening paragraphs sound like a primary/elementary school kid’s project report on Ukraine: “Ukraine has many exports, chief of which is corn, or maize as the native Americans called it”. He mentions oil and gas, even though they have depleted their oil fields over the last century, and Ukraine is a net importer of oil. And coal? Whatever. Gallium and titanium also! He states that “Immense resources translate to immense wealth—and power.”
Yet a quick google search of GDP shows that Ukraine ranks 112th of 190 countries, sitting between Jamaica and Eswatini. Not exactly one of the 1%!
Coleridge concludes that controlling this “immense wealth” is behind Russia’s invasion. And the west’s firm response. But this is a non-sequitur – it is war that disrupts resource supply chains and markets. The longer a war progresses, the longer the disruption. The stronger the resistance, the greater the damage to supply chain infrastructure. These resources are traded as commodities on the open market, and capitalist “globalist” corporations are agnostic to who produces them. Do we think Monsanto gives a blind f*ck about whether it’s Russia or Ukraine buying their GMO, round-up resistant seeds? Do you think Nabisco gives a rat’s ass where it gets its wheat from?
Ukraine IS a bread basket, and the war is disrupting grain exports. We will see the impact on global food prices. We already see the effect at the gas/petrol pump and domestic fuel bills of only limited sanctions on Russian oil and gas (not Ukrainian). not something that would bother an elite like Russell Brand, but a genuine threat to ordinary people living from paycheck to paycheck, and the politicians counting on their votes. A swift war and a Ukrainian capitulation would relieve these burdens. Standing up to Russia comes at a cost.
Coleridge’s second argument, essentially, is about the military-industrial complex and its pernicious grasp on the US Congress. This fails to acknowledge the volume of military resources Russia is pouring into Ukraine. Do we believe that Putin and his robber baron oligarchs do not get a cut of Russian military spending? Are his profit motives not worth exploring? It’s not as if he is the one person who authored this war and is the only person who could end it in a word.
I suppose the argument behind the involvement of the western arms trade is that they would prolong the war to preserve profits. This is a lazy argument and begs the question, why this conflict and not all the earlier ones? We barely raised an eyebrow over Chechnya in 1994 and 1999, let alone pour in military aid. Despite the arms industry’s vise-like grip on western politicians, both the UK parliament and US congress voted against intervention in Syria in 2013, leaving Russia unopposed in its bloody support of Bashar Al Assad. And in 2014, when Russia seized Crimea and sponsored insurrections in Eastern Ukraine, US President Barack Obama offered only non-lethal aid. Maybe the greedy and avaricious arms industry was uncharacteristically content with the income from the US wars in the Middle East, even as the US military budget in 2014 was at its lowest level since 2005.
This strawman focus on the western military-industrial complex seeks only to give succor to the actual aggressors in this conflict. It goes beyond the attempts to draw some kind of moral equivalence (like references to Yemen or Palestine), because it doesn’t even consider the possibility of a Russian parallel. This is, apparently, a uniquely western problem.
This approach is especially grotesque considering that, when Russell released his video, the world was trying to make sense of Russian warplanes bombing a Mariupol theater with over 1,000 civilians sheltering in the basement. A video released as the news was breaking that there were only 150 known survivors, with Russian shelling prevented rescue crews from attending the scene. These were Russian weapons and Russian munitions. Not the products of the western military-industrial complex.
People like Brand and Coleridge want to bang the same old drum they were already banging. And they are perfectly content to use the death and suffering of Ukrainian civilians as props for their agendas. It doesn’t matter to them what the topic is; it’s just fodder to them. They use this war for their ends. They are the propagandists.
And the endpoint of Russell’s approach? As usual, the complete and utter capitulation to Putin’s agenda.
Weird that?
So, what do you think? Is Russell a soulless husk, hiding behind his mock spirituality in the same way he hides behind his mockney accent? Do you think that the former Archbishop of Canterbury looks like an owl? Can religious apologists ever claim the moral high ground? Do you think that Dr. Williams stays up all night hunting voles and other small mammals? Are you fed up with Russell’s nonsensical spewings? Do you believe the ex-A B of C coughs up pellets containing the tiny bones of his prey at the breakfast table?
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