The grift of Russell Brand

He started out as the host of a reality show and has soared to internet fame on YouTube and Rumble where he makes bank off of conspiracy theories.

Wired explains it: the grift of Russell Brand is strong.

Now he's claiming that the mainstream is coming after him because of his "fame." In reality, he's being accused of grooming a 16-year-old, and others are accusing him of rape and sexual assault.

Brand is denying the allegations, and developing his own conspiracy about it, claiming he was merely promiscuous.

“[It] makes me question, is there another agenda at play?” he said.

Those jumping to his defense include Andrew Tate, which Wired called "the misogynist influencer who is awaiting trial for rape and human trafficking in Romania." The other is disgraced former Fox host Tucker Carlson, relegated to streaming videos at a fraction of the audience he once scored. Alex Jones also came to his defense.

"His YouTube channel now has 6.6 million subscribers, his X account more than 11 million followers. But his anti-establishment message has morphed, from a broader, almost coherent response to the politics of fiscal austerity that shaped the UK after the 2008 financial crisis to a series of cultish, conspiracy-driven narratives that draw in COVID denialism, Russian disinformation, and the far-right-inspired 'Great Reset' theory, united by the meta-conspiracy that the mainstream—the 'elites'—have darker agendas based on control," said the report.

Brand's increase in fame has turned from liberal types to COVID-19 conspiracy theorists. It's one of the main reasons that his YouTube channel lost its monetization status. Rumble happily welcomed him on their platform, where he has over 1 million subscribers and is scoring an undisclosed amount in partnership with the site.

"A 2022 paper by researchers at Cornell showed that 'Alt-Lite, Alt-Right, and Manosphere' content creators on YouTube were increasingly diversifying their off-platform revenue streams, apparently to reduce the risk of demonetization," said Wired. "Tate, whose extreme misogyny finally got him banned from most mainstream platforms in 2022, funnels followers from his remaining channels into his paid-for 'Hustler’s University.'"

“With Twitter’s new monetization policy, there’s a whole host of extreme and difficult or problematic characters that seem to be now, once again, raising money from so-called mainstream platforms,” Joe Mulhall, director of research at the anti-racism campaign group Hope Not Hate, told the site.

Elon Musk, who posted his own message of support to Brand after the BBC report aired, is debating whether or not to demand payment for the website as a whole. He said the hope is to finally curb the bots. That has been the reason for most of the actions he has taken. Each of them has failed and the social media site has slowly lost its value and advertisers. It leaves a void for people like Brand, who want to find new ways to promote their content and increase profits.

Brand has already been dropped from one TV gig after the allegations.

Read the full report at WIRED.com.