Allegations of sexual impropriety and abuse by comedian and podcaster Russell Brand by the British media prompted YouTube to demonetize the star’s popular channel on September 20.
The Grayzone can now reveal that YouTube’s financial censorship of Brand is the result of an effort waged by a former British government minister who was responsible for London’s crackdown on dissent during the Covid-19 pandemic. Her husband has also participated in that campaign of state repression as deputy commander of 77th Brigade, the British Army’s psychological warfare division.
YouTube justified its demonetization of Brand on the grounds that he violated its “creator responsibility policy.” This marks the first time a content creator has been financially punished by the company for reasons other than the videos published on the site. A spokesperson has claimed, “if a creator’s off-platform behaviour harms our users, employees or ecosystem, we take action.”
The allegations against Brand date from betwee 2006 and ’13, and have yet to be proven in court. There is no indication the charges are being investigated by law enforcement in Britain or the US, where the offenses allegedly occurred. Brand has vehemently denied accusations of abuse and rape.
Brand’s videos analyzing political developments and topics such as the Covid-19 pandemic, corporate media propaganda and the Ukraine proxy war have earned him an audience of millions, making him one of the world’s most influential alternative media personalities. For this, he appears to have been marked as a threat to the narratives spun out by Washington and London.
New developments suggest YouTube’s censorship of Brand was driven by direct British government decree. On September 19, the social media companies TikTok and Rumble received a pair of almost identical letters dispatched from Caroline Dinenage, the head of the UK parliament’s Culture, Media and Sport Committee. Dinenage informed the companies she was “concerned that [Brand] may be able to profit from his content” published on both platforms.
The British government is now asking TikTok if @rustyrockets is able to monetize his content on that platform.
This was never about Russell Brand.
This was a political pretext so governments across the world can coordinate with social media companies to acquire total control… pic.twitter.com/emcy0AE3j7
— Viva Frei (@thevivafrei) September 20, 2023
She then suggested they impose financial penalties: “We would be grateful if you could confirm whether Mr Brand is able to monetise his […] posts, including his videos relating to the serious accusations against him, and what the platform is doing to ensure that creators are not able to use the platform to undermine the welfare of victims of inappropriate and potentially illegal behaviour.”
The Committee’s letter to Rumble contained a direct demand for demonetization: “we would like to know whether Rumble intends to join YouTube in suspending Mr Brand’s ability to earn money on the platform.”
In a withering response to Dinenage’s letter, Rumble CEO Chris Pavlovski asserted that while noting his company “obviously deplores sexual assault, rape, and all serious crimes, and believes that both alleged victims and the accused are entitled to a full and serious investigation.”
Pavlovski went on to slam YouTube’s demonetization of Brand, declaring that Rumble “stands for very different values,” and “emphatically reject[s] the UK parliament’s demands.”
The CEO continued, “We regard it as deeply inappropriate and dangerous that the UK Parliament would attempt to control who is allowed to speak on our platform or to earn a living from doing so. Singling out an individual and demanding his ban is even more disturbing given the absence of any connection between the allegations and his content on Rumble.”
Rumble’s response to the UK Parliament’s letter to our CEO @chrispavlovski pic.twitter.com/iSCpHIHoU4
— Rumble – 🏴☠️ $RUM (@rumblevideo) September 20, 2023
UK info-warrior power couple takes aim at inconvenient online truths
Caroline Dinenage served as the UK government’s Digital and Culture minister from February 2020 to September 2021, making her de facto chief of the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS).
In this capacity, she was personally responsible for overseeing construction of the repressive, World Economic Forum-endorsed Online Safety Bill, which has been criticized by rights groups for threatening the rights to free expression, and privacy. For her leading role in crafting the speech-muzzling bill, Dinenage was honored by Princess Royal with the title of Dame Commander of the British Empire.
Moreover, during this period, the DCMS was home to the shadowy, intelligence official-run Counter-Disinformation Unit (CDU), which policed “COVID-19 disinformation narratives” online.
Investigations by the civil liberties organization Big Brother Watch have revealed that instead of suppressing content that posed risks to public health, the CDU was preoccupied with censoring and deplatforming reasonable online criticisms of the British government’s Covid-19 response, including opposition to lockdowns and vaccine passports.
According to an official fact sheet, the CDU’s focus turned to the Ukraine proxy war in 2022, and particularly to targeting content suggesting “the Bucha massacre and the bombing of the maternity hospital in Mariupol, Ukraine, were both hoaxes.”
Dinenage’s husband is Mark Lancaster, a fellow information warrior dedicated to advancing the propaganda goals of the British government. Lancaster reportedly left his wife and four-month-old daughter in 2013 when he began dating Dinenage, who was herself married at the time to a British Naval officer.
A former Conservative MP and Armed Forces minister, Lancaster helped lead London’s blitz on pandemic dissent as deputy commander of the British Army’s 77th Brigade between June 2018 and July 2022.
Delighted to be reappointed as Minister of State for the Armed Forces, a real honour to continue to work with our outstanding servicemen and women and civil servants in Defence.
— Mark Lancaster (@MarkLancasterMK) January 9, 2018
Specialized in “behaviour and attitudinal change,” the 77th Brigade maintains a vast militia of real, fake, and automated social media accounts to disseminate and amplify pro-state messaging, and discredit domestic and foreign enemies.
During the pandemic, the 77th Brigade targeted people within Britain and across the West with advanced psychological manipulation strategies honed on battlefields against enemy militaries. The online profile of a 77th Brigade veteran notes they were deployed straight from a tour of the Middle East – where they “successfully implemented behavioral change strategies against ISIS” – to “countering dis- and misinformation during the Covid-19 crisis.”
However, in January, an ex-Brigade whistleblower revealed how the Ministry of Defence and RRU routinely circumvented British law to advance the government’s crusade against pandemic dissent:
“To skirt the legal difficulties of a military unit monitoring domestic dissent, the view was that unless a profile explicitly stated their real name and nationality, they could be a foreign agent and were fair game. But it is quite obvious that our activities resulted in the monitoring of the UK population…These posts did not contain information that was untrue or coordinated [emphasis added].”
As The Grayzone revealed in June 2023, British journalist Paul Mason had attempted to submit a “formal complaint” about The Grayzone to DCMS, believing it would trigger a government investigation into this outlet’s “funding and activities,” and ultimately its deplatforming. Mason’s handler, a British intelligence agent named Andy Pryce, boasted in leaked emails of his personal role in YouTube’s banning of “Russian stuff” in Britain. The CDU has been confirmed as the government body responsible for these censorship demands.
Now, this shadowy, intelligence-linked entity appears to be the spearhead of the campaign to silence Russell Brand.
Reprinted with permission from The Grayzone.
Support The Grayzone here.
