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By Anna Rahmanan
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Russell Brand's conviction for rape and sexual assault in London on Thursday should force his admirers on the American right to confront a question they may prefer to avoid: how did a comedian once celebrated by Britain's radical left become a Christian conservative hero whose alleged crimes were taken as evidence of his persecution?
Brand, 51, was found guilty of raping one woman and sexually assaulting three others. He was acquitted of three further charges. The verdict followed a four-week trial in which prosecutors described a man who used his growing celebrity to exploit women.
Brand has spent much of his public life shedding identities with the ease of a man changing costumes, each new incarnation presented as a revelation of his true self. His peculiar genius, if that is the word for it, has been to make reinvention look like conviction. In America, this gift acquired a darker significance: his transformation into a conservative dissident allowed even the allegations against him to become part of his appeal.
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The Politics of Being Russell Brand
Britain had once indulged Brand's political theatrics. America would eventually offer him something more valuable: a constituency prepared to see his personal disgrace as political persecution.
In 2015, Brand was sufficiently admired by the British left that then-Labour leader Ed Miliband visited his home to solicit his endorsement. Brand subsequently championed Jeremy Corbyn, whose socialist politics seemed congenial to the comedian's denunciations of capitalism.
His political seriousness was frequently questioned, but his ability to attract an audience was harder to dispute, making him an awkward figure for politicians who doubted his judgment but coveted his influence.
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By September 2023, when British journalists published allegations of sexual misconduct, Brand had cultivated a different constituency: Americans suspicious of pharmaceutical companies, mainstream journalism and government authority.
The allegations threatened his reputation in Britain. Among influential figures on the American right, though, they acquired another meaning.
Tucker Carlson suggested that Brand was being targeted for challenging powerful interests. In January 2024, Carlson introduced an interview with Brand by declaring: "Governments colluded to shut down and destroy Russell Brand."
The extraordinary feature of this defense was its circularity: Brand's criticism of powerful institutions supposedly explained the allegations against him and the allegations, in turn, appeared to validate his criticism.
A potentially damaging scandal had become an additional credential. How…American.
The Gospel of Reinvention
Elon Musk also defended Brand, saying he supported him and rejecting attempts to cancel him. Meanwhile, British promoters postponed performances, and Brand's talent agency and publisher distanced themselves.
The American embrace was concentrated in conservative and anti-establishment media, rather than Hollywood generally. Its appeal was ideological: Brand had become useful as a witness against institutions his admirers already distrusted.
Then came religion. In April 2024, Brand was baptized in the River Thames, embracing Christianity and speaking of spiritual renewal.
His conversion may have been entirely sincere, but we shan't comment on that. We will point out, though, that religious belief tends to offer forgiveness without requiring believers to deny wrongdoing. Brand's new identity therefore supplied another compelling narrative of persecution and redemption, one capable of absorbing even the gravest accusations without having to ever really address them. The theological possibilities were considerable but the evidentiary requirements, it seems, rather less so.
There was, of course, every reason to presume Brand innocent until proven guilty. There was considerably less reason to treat the accusations as proof of his innocence. Now that a jury has reached its verdict, his American defenders face a rather less theological question: was their faith in Brand ever susceptible to evidence?
Brand's political journey has taken him from the British left to the American right, from revolution to supposed redemption, with remarkably little apparent difficulty in finding believers along the way, a tidbit that says more about us as a society than him as someone navigating it. The question now is whether his latest admirers can distinguish the sincerity of a message from the credibility of its messenger.
They may yet decide that the verdict merely confirms the persecution they suspected all along. If so, Brand will have achieved perhaps his most remarkable reinvention: turning a criminal conviction into another reason to believe him.
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