‘It Feels True!’ Russell Brand Embraces Maui Conspiracy Theories Even He Knows Are Not True

Russell Brand, like many before him, has gone the route of comedian to full-blown internet conspiracy theorist since launching his own YouTube show. This week, in-between episodes praising Joe Rogan for accusing the Bidens of corruption and fawning over Tucker Carlson’s Jan. 6th revisionism, Brand decided to tackle the conspiracy theories emerging on the far-right regarding the devastating fires in Maui.

“One of the conspiracy theories is, of course, that these fires were started deliberately to benefit rich elites like BlackRock,” Brand declared during his video titled, “Something Doesn’t Seem Right.”

Not skipping a beat, he went right ahead and linked the tragedy in Hawaii to halfway around the world in Ukraine:

Now, look at the Ukraine war. Ukraine have already done a deal with BlackRock to rebuild their nation using BlackRock investment. If you apply that mentality to this situation, if BlackRock end up benefiting from the fires in Hawaii, then the conspiracy theory is almost a redundant detail.

Did they start it? Didn’t they start? Is it inevitable that the suffering of ordinary people leads to the benefit of rich elites and massive organizations like BlackRock and billionaires across the globe?

And why is Bill Gates buying all this agricultural land when he’s not a farmer and he’s not using it in the way that these breaks were set up to be used? Doesn’t it all feel like a kind of macro conspiracy.

Brand, while embracing conspiracy theorists as being on to something, then offered a sound explanation for why conspiracy theorists are able to gain large followings (Brand has 6.57 million YouTube subscribers). He notes that global problems and complex issues make it so “that sometimes you just want to simplify it.”

“They started this fire! They started it with a laser from space!” he added, explaining that people often latch onto simple explanations for complex or incredibly tragic events for comfort. The Hawaii conspiracy theories paralleled comments by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) from 2018 that linked lasers from space and the Rothschild family, who often feature in anti-Semitic tropes, to California wildfires.

Brand, despite clearly rebutting some of the wild theories, then argued the actual facts behind an event do not actually matter. “And whatever is true or not. It not only feels true! In terms of its result, it is kind of true!” he continued, adding:

There is a conspiracy to keep you poor and to benefit rich elites, but it’s just, it’s everywhere. It’s almost like water to a fish. It’s no conspiracy. It’s just the environment you live in. You live in corruption. Every time there’s a disaster or a fire, you bet is going to benefit elites. Do you bet the poorest people are going to suffer more? Every time there’s a pandemic, you bet they’re going to control you more and rich interests are going to benefit from it.

We might not find a smoking gun or a beaming laser, but you can be sure that BlackRock and the world’s most powerful individuals will benefit down the line from this disaster.

Guardian columnist George Monbiot wrote a piece in March summing up Brand’s evolution into conspiratorial thinking. In the column titled, “I once admired Russell Brand. But his grim trajectory shows us where politics is heading,” Monbiot recalled how he once praised Brand for energizing young people to care about politics and civics.

“Today, I can scarcely believe it’s the same man. I’ve watched 50 of his recent videos, with growing incredulity. He appears to have switched from challenging injustice to conjuring phantoms. If, as I suspect it might, politics takes a very dark turn in the next few years, it will be partly as a result of people like Brand,” Monbiot concluded. Brand’s latest screed, which resulted in an onslaught of online criticism, only further serves to underscore Monbiot’s argument.

Watch the full clip above.