Conspiracy theorist accuses conspiracy theorist of being a conspiracy theorist

The article The Russel Brand Conspiracy by Tony McKenna (CounterPunch) writes the following about the allegations against Russell Brand,

“The allegations made against him by the Panorama program seem highly credible. They range from sexual harassment to rape. One victim alleged that Brand raped her against a wall of his house. This allegation pertains to 2012. The evidence to support the allegation consists of a text message she sent him telling him following the assault just how frightened she’d been, that ‘no means no’ to which he responded by saying he was ‘very sorry’. In addition, the rape crisis center she went to the next day logged her visit.”

I can’t help but agree that what I’ve heard of the allegations seems to be credible. It doesn’t seem too surprising because Brand has a reputation for sex addiction and “getting around”. That gut feeling, though, is tantamount to how we used to prosecute witches. My gut feeling may just be based on wild allegations that I’ve already internalized without verification from elsewhere.

I was never quite able to square this reputation with what Brand says when I’ve watched his show—which I haven’t done in quite a while, I admit—or when I’ve seen him in interviews. He’s coherent, well-spoken, and almost overwhelmingly empathetic in his worldview.

At any rate, this article is in no way a litigation of Russell Brand’s case, one way or another. The rest of this article should in no way be considered to be a judgment or opinion on the details of Brand’s specific case.

It’s more of a musing—perhaps, a prosecution—of the current authorial style of lurid hinting and manipulation of circumstantial evidence for … what? Internet points? I suppose it differs from person to person, but trial-by-media is increasingly the go-to method for punishing the wicked. Perhaps Twitter should introduce an A[1] to be meted out by a public majority.

What is evidence?

I am not a lawyer, but a lot—if not all—of the evidence the author listed above does seem to be circumstantial. I am well-aware of how difficult it is to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that sexual harassment or rape has taken place, but that doesn’t mean that we should lower our standards of evidence,.

Or does it? I think a lot of people think that it does—especially when it means that you can nail people that you find distasteful. This has been happening more and more lately—the weaponizing of stigma. It’s honestly very hard to know what to believe—but after the last decade of bullshit stories, I, for one, have become much more careful in believing what I hear from so-called reliable and mainstream sources. Their agenda is not my agenda—and their agenda colors everything they communicate.

The Panorama program is a TV show, with a to-me unknown repute. I can’t say what weight I should give to their any evidence they present. Let’s assume it’s all true, and is as the author laid out. Brand’s responding that he’s “very sorry” is not necessarily an admission of guilt, He may just have been sorry that he’d so wildly misinterpreted the situation.

Even the rape-crisis-center visit is circumstantial, no? What did she do there? Did she report a rape? Did she seek counseling? Did she ask whether they thought she’d been raped? The center’s not just there to record rapes, but to counsel women who’ve been traumatized and to help them process their trauma, whatever may have caused it. This process doesn’t always end in corroboration, does it? It is the journalist’s job to discover these things before just filling a segment or article with circumstantial evidence, then rounding up.

If the center thinks that a person’s story doesn’t amount to rape, wouldn’t it help the person work through what amounted to a combination of horrible circumstance, bad decisions, and others taking advantage[2] and help them avoid them in the future? What is counseling for, if not that?

Or is a center like this just considered a rubber-stamp machine to validate the rape claims of every single person who walks through the door? Doesn’t it do more damage to an already traumatized person to round their experience up to rape, turning them into a victim, a survivor, where they might have been able to leave the experience behind them instead? Who would such a policy serve?

I can’t imagine that’s the case, so I have to assume that a visit to a rape crisis center implies only that the woman was far more traumatized the day after a “date” than she should have been, but cannot conclude that a rape has occurred.

Perhaps with enough circumstantial evidence, it becomes damning evidence, but, again, I am not a lawyer. I’d hope it doesn’t work like that. One piece of evidence that, taken alone, amounts to nothing, can be combined with other pieces of similar evidence and, instead of adding several nothings and getting nothing, you get … something. You get proof…somehow.

Everyone else is a conspiracy theorist

The author continues,

“The accusation is a persuasive one, the victim’s account is supported by objective and documented evidence. But for the conspiracy theorist, such persuasive evidence does not speak to the likelihood of Brand’s guilt, instead it speaks to the power of the conspiracy set in motion against him.”

To counter that, for the conspiracy theorist intent on prosecution, circumstantial evidence becomes “credible” and “persuasive”, which gets rounded up to “damning” and “incriminating”, and should end in a prison sentence. Anything else is a gross miscarriage of justice that serves as evidence of the patriarchy’s chokehold on the system.

I don’t claim to know anything about Brand’s specific case. I don’t really care. There are other, far more serious, things to think about, to be perfectly honest.

It was just interesting to start skimming an article about how conspiracy theorists can’t be convinced by any evidence, in which the author is seemingly convinced by … any evidence, no matter how circumstantial. The author is clearly putting Brand on trial here. Look at the photo he included of Brand, where he’s half-lying on a bed, gazing with what seems to be lasciviously into the camera. I’m sure that wasn’t the first picture the author found. He searched for it—because he was on a mission.

With that kind of rigor, you can expect that the evidence lines up nicely. I’m just trying to figure out why more people don’t question things when the evidence lines up so nicely? You don’t even have to doubt the evidence you’ve seen—but maybe you could wonder whether you’re seeing only part of the picture? Is it possible you’ve not seen exonerating evidence?

Maybe sit this one out?

And that, in a nutshell, is what actual trials are for.

Even when a case does go to trial, you still sometimes have people being railroaded into a conviction, with suppressed evidence galore. In this case, Brand’s history of sex addiction should have nothing to do with the case at hand, but would almost definitely be used to prime a jury anyway. It might even be salient. As I said, I am not a lawyer, and know what I know of law in the U.S. from TV shows and books, if I’m honest.

Still, the general rule seems to be, if the accused is your friend, you’ll stand by them; if the accuser is your friend, you’ll stand by them. That’s what friends do. Friends nod and agree that everyone at your office a bitch but you. Friends nod and agree that “she was asking for it.” It’s not always pretty—it can be quite ugly, in fact—but that’s what friends are for. For better or worse, they lend a sympathetic ear.

As for the rest of us, we have no obligation to lean in any direction but where the evidence points us. What’s the advantage to you of publicly voicing an opinion on something not even the lawyers know enough about to decide?

Still, if you feel we’ve gotten enough of the picture to have an opinion, go for it. Have an opinion. But don’t set the bar too low. You don’t need to look like an idiot when it turns out you didn’t wait for enough evidence to turn up. You probably don’t want to write an entire article about it until you’re a bit more certain. Or maybe you do! Maybe you can make a bunch of money casting aspersions. That’s good old capitalism for you.

People gonna think what they wanna think

Having enough evidence or not having evidence is sometimes not sufficient to guarantee justice is served. Even if it does go to court, there are so many cases where the evidence didn’t hold up, but the accused is still considered to have done whatever they’d been accused of.

Even just considering cases involving famous people: Michael Jackson is just assumed to have been a child-diddler, even though he was exonerated on all 14 counts (Wikipedia). OJ Simpson is still considered by many to have been a murderer, even though he was exonerated on both counts (Wikipedia). Kevin Spacey still can’t get a job and he’s the frequent butt of rape jokes on SNL, but he was found not guilty on 12 counts against him (Wikipedia). Matt Gaetz, too, is the frequent butt of jokes about raping minors, but charges have never even been brought against him (Wikipedia).

You may have your opinions about whether these people purchased influence or cheated at trial. That’s fine. But you’re being a conspiracy theorist. You believe that there was a conspiracy to hijack the courts of the U.S. to render injustice.

If you think “corruption” every time you don’t get the conviction you want, and think the courts are great when they decide “your way”, then you have no faith in the justice system. You should own that and consider its implications.

There are further implications if you prefer evidence-free trials-by-social-media to a sometimes-broken, but official criminal-justice system.

As for non-famous people, check out the Innocence Project for a list of people who are on death row after having been railroaded through sentencing and often spent decades in prison for crimes they didn’t commit—and which the police and prosecution knew they hadn’t committed, but they needed a warm body—just waiting for the state to murder them.

But a kook believes me!

“In a well-researched and vigorous piece, the Guardian journalist George Monbiot scrutinizes these kinds of claims.”

Look, I liked Monbiot’s book Heat, but in the thirteen intervening years since I’ve read it, I’ve found him to be increasingly unreadable. He’s unhinged and makes wild accusations, kind of like Russell Brand, to be honest. I consider neither one of them to be reliable sources because they see demons everywhere.

I only noticed at the end that Tony McKenna (the author whose article I’ve cited) wrote a 13-page piece about Russell Brand—and he can’t even spell his name correctly. How seriously should I even take this kind of tripe?

I wish these people could see the irony of them accusing someone of being a conspiracy theorist, all the while writing long screeds about other conspiracy theorists’ inability to admit to the allegations against them, while citing other conspiracy theorists, and while not even spellchecking the name of the target of their derision.

Ah, but one never thinks of oneself as a conspiracy theorist, nor of one’s sources. Hell, I’m probably guilty of this sometimes—or maybe even all the time! How would I know?! Hell, I might even be doing it right now. 🤷‍♀️🤷‍♀️