Seems odd for the author to refer to Brand as being "alt-right" when his preferred conspiracy theories are of the classic far-left variety. If you move in leftist circles you will meet people with these sort of views quite commonly.
I've always seen Russell Brand -like many street preachers- as something similar to the raw verbal intelligence we see now in LLMs: capable of bringing a stream of words with interesting derivatives, easily interpretable as agreeable and intelligent, and then hallucinating a little. Yet in the depths of those regurgitated concepts that are a mix of things you've already seen, you search for glimmers of any abstract idea that you haven't thought before. Something that tickles your brain. And you find none.
Michael Parenti's "Conspiracy and Class Power" is still a classic for anyone looking for a succinct overview, from the left, of how conspiracy operates as one many tools in the power elite's chest: https://youtu.be/t21UZxRYYA4 The "conservative celebration vs. liberal complaint vs. radical analysis" framework in particular is one that just bears out over and over again.
The recent revelations that Chomsky (always an assiduous conspiracy denier) was chumming with Epstein was a pretty major moment of schadenfreude for those of us on the left inclined to conspiratorial analysis.
In 2023 the classic understanding of what is right and what is left have changed. The left now seems to define itself as whatever the governing elite societal conventional wisdom seems to be of the moment (as long as the classically understood to be leftist political party is in power) and they see the right is whatever runs contrary to that agenda. Much of the worldviews that are now being branded as right, alt-right, or “right adjacent” is nowhere near the historical understanding of right leaning political views, but because they now run counter to CW, the proper 2023 insult is to brand those things as “right”.
Leftist circles aren't promoting Bjørn Lomborg. They view climate change as a result of unrestrained capitalism. Great Reset conspiracy theories are also mostly right wing. Being "anti-woke" is also a right wing dog whistle.
There's overlap in these with left wing antivax sentiment and there's left wing criticism of liberal identity politics, but they don't use the same language and usually differ in their analysis in important ways.
The fact that at 35,000 feet the left and right can both be antivax and against identity politics doesn't really mean they're the same thing though, and Brand is now talking just like someone on the alt-right. Although the way that they're superficially similar may indicate how Brand can slip from the far left to the far right so easily and just chase after his audience.
(And the fact that I prefer to talk about identity politics and not talk about "wokeism" is why I'm solidly left-wing).
So take "Great Reset" plus "Anti-Woke" plus Bjørn Lomborg climate change skepticism and that adds up to alt-right to me. He may be on the populist side of the right wing and still be performatively anticapitalist, but its probably just a matter of time until he continues to slide over to the right. They also note in the article that his audience rejects his leftist view of 10 years ago:
> While some have been fans of his comedy for years, no one I spoke to—on or off the record—said they agreed with the broadly leftist views he voiced 10 years ago.
The memetic gene splicing here between the right and left is kind of worrying, though, since a populist fascist nationalist movement that combined with left-wing social safety nets for the in-group would be very successful in the current environment (similar to 1933).
Horseshoe theory is an evidence-free smear of anything outside the Overton window.
The Overton window has been creeping to the right for the last half century, so traditionally leftist views like freedom of speech, a right to privacy, and being anti-war are now outside the window. Anyone who still holds those values is effectively far right, say the horseshoe-calling centrists.
Both horseshoe and the Overton window seems to rely on the assumption that all opinions on all subjects on the political spectrum stay stationary in relationship to each other, but that is total BS.
50 years ago you could have opinions on two different subject on the left, but in 2023 one of those opinions could have flipped but the other stayed the same.
Both the horseshoe and Overton window do not really account for these topical flips of opinion which renders both inadequate for explaining the ebb and flow of politics.
It was a good article. I remember hearing Brand's views years ago and generally thinking they were good (left wing worker supporting talking about the disenfranchised) even though I don't like his public/ acting persona or ability. It sounds like he's just chasing an audience now, maybe that's all it ever was and this is where he ends up once fully optimised.
He's also a bit of narcissist, and I mean that in a clinical sense not as an insult. I mean look at some of his stand-up specials, they central theme in them are basically talking about himself. True is self deprecating at times, but the focus is still on himself. I even heard in an interview he was pondering starting a religion but was talked out of it by people close to him (thankfully). Being seen as mesiah would really kick narcissism into high gear. But he found another route to attention through conspiracy theories. Shame because he does have a way with words.
