Not Without Incident: Questioning Big Brother's Platitudes

This week Zelensky visited Washington with his usual list of demands and petulant behavior, and the US government has promised that in the event of a shutdown, Ukraine will still receive funding. So much has occurred over the past few weeks related to the Ukraine war that I will likely be publishing a longer post articulating my thoughts on it soon.

This week I will look at the allegations made against Russell Brand, who has been accused of sexual assault and rape. Based on these accusations, Dame Caroline Dineage of the UK parliament is leading a crusade against media companies to have Brand stripped of his ability to profit from his political commentary. Although Rumble remains defiant, the attempt to unperson Brand based on allegations is disturbing and a complete betrayal of democratic values like due process and presumption of innocence, and the crucifixion of Brand is also being used as a precedent in the war on independent media, led by the illiberal liberal globalist class against figures like Joe Rogan, and finally I will briefly analyze the meaning of US Trade Representative Katherine Tai’s remarks in a sit down discussion at CSIS on proposed reforms to the WTO, and Tai claims that the US seeks to “write a new story on trade.”, and they may be writing a new story, but evidently it is a remake, not an original story.

Is Russell Brand a Rapist?

Due process is a foundational principle of democracy. In the Magna Carta, the royal charter of rights first agreed to by John, King of England in 1215 and then reissued and tweaked from 1216 after John’s death, due process is a fundamental right outlined in article 39. It states that “No free man shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his rights or possessions, or outlawed or exiled, or deprived of his standing in any other way, nor will we proceed with force against him, or send others to do so, except by the lawful judgement of his equals or by the law of the land.”[i] In the US Constitution, the due process clause is guaranteed in both the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments. The presumption of innocence and right to a fair trial are essential to an objective justice system in a liberal democracy.

However, after #MeToo, presumption of guilt is the how the court of public opinion operates. As we see with the case of political commentator and comedian Russell Brand and the allegations of rape and sexual abuse made against him, that is enough to destroy someone’s career and reputation. YouTube may be a private company, but their decision to demonetize Brand’s content, as well as letters to media outlets like Rumble, from UK government official, Caroline Dineage, who serves as the chair of the Commons culture, media and sport committee, is incredibly disturbing and show that with corporations like Google running the world and our information space, our right to a fair hearing and presumption of innocence do not matter.[ii] We can be unpersoned in the blink of an eye.

The allegations made against Brand in the BBC Dispatches documentary may be true, however, they may be false. It is our obligation as citizens of democracies to presume him innocent until his guilt is proven in a fair trial. That has not happened. Evidently it does not need to for him to be convicted in the court of public opinion. Many of those who declare that he is obviously guilty are deranged and hell bent on taking revenge on a political voice who was once considered leftist. Brand did, after all, support Jeremy Corbyn when he was running for Prime Minister. Brand is oddly considered a right-wing voice now. His affiliation with people like Ben Shapiro and his expression of vaccine skepticism apparently prove this.

There has been a plethora of articles published on Brand’s penchant for conspiracism and his support from now reviled figures like Andrew Tate and Elon Musk. For example, Vanessa Thorpe writes in an article for The Guardian, titled “Will accusations dent Russell Brand’s popularity with conspiracy theory fans?” that although Brand says on his show that he is “asking the questions” and “staying free”, “the arrival on the cultural and current affairs landscape of popular internet pundits such as him and Tate, and in America, Joe Rogan and Ben Shapiro, has become a serious challenge to public faith in careful journalism and in the more experienced, educated voices of comment.”[iii] This is ludicrous. The notion that it is Rogan, Shapiro, or Tate that has caused lack of trust in what she calls “careful journalism” is laughable. Were the WMD hoax, Russiagate, the coverup of Covid-19’s origins “careful journalism”. The more educated voices she refers to are the exact voices that have sowed distrust in the media, not people like Rogan. Thorpe goes on to write “The mainstream media, claim acolytes of Brand and Rogan, has had its own way for too long and merely parrots fraudulent tenets to guard a comfortable elite.”, and that commentators like Brand call out vested interests corrupting legacy media while the “the money that likely flows to him every time he ignites a big reaction by saying something controversial.”[iv] is hardly mentioned. Do shows like Rogan’s and Brand’s have people on their payroll who worked for the US security state and arms companies, like CNN and MSNBC do?

This is relevant to the accusations made against Brand, as well as the Salem’s witch trial that he is being subjected to. The corporate news and thinktanks have it out for independent media, and that outlets like The Guardian are rushing to proclaim that anyone who would dare argue that the treatment of Brand and Rumble is related to the illiberal liberal class’s war against dissenters is a conspiracist is proof of the conspiracy, not evidence against it. Whether Brand is guilty or innocent, his case is being used as a pretext for the erasure of due process and the crusade to unperson anyone who deviates from the permanent regime’s narrative. The behavior of the UK government in its demands that media platforms demonetize Brand’s content is thuggish and despotic. The West is exposing itself to be exactly what it claims to be fighting against in countries like China and Russia.

On Brand’s guilt, I will withhold my judgement until he has been proven guilty. That so many people are unwilling to do the same is disgusting and contemptible.

New Story, Same Plot

A couple of weeks ago I explored the meaning and impact of US Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo’s visit to China. I concluded that although she claimed to seek a thaw in US-China relations, the approach of the US towards China is still a piece of its overall grand strategy of economic imperialism. The move to block China from obtaining advanced chips is a key example.

This week, US Chief Trade Representative Katherine Tai sat down for a discussion with the Director General of the World Trade Organization (WTO) Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala and the Senior Vice President of CSIS Daniel Runde on why free trade is essential for the developing world.[v] There are two main points that I will make regarding Tai’s proposed reforms to the WTO in relation to China’s economic practices and how Runde, a self-declared “free trade partisan”, in an obvious reference to China, says in his introductory remarks that Washington policymakers have been extremely critical of “the WTO’s perceived overreach, onerous obligations on the U.S., a dysfunctional dispute-settlement system, and enabling distortions from non-market practices by some countries.” He does not realize that he is also making a reference to the US when he says, “some countries”.

The US executive branch, at the behest of the permanent regime, actively excludes adversaries and ‘rogue states’ from the global trading system and continues to dictate that the US dollar is the world’s reserve currency. China may be manipulating its currency and coercing Taiwan, but perhaps they learned from watching the US spend decades doing the same on a much larger scale. The US routinely violates the WTO, even with the absence of Trump they have shown little interest in true compromise or reforms.

The backdrop of the CSIS trade discussion was how the developing world needs an open global trading system, but Tai is evidently more interested in blaming China for America’s woes and for why it has had to become protectionist. Ultimately, it was not Trump or people like Peter Navarro who “steamrolled the WTO”, it was the US ruling class over decades since the end of the Second World War, which is often marked as the creation of a liberal rules-based order, but it marks the creation of Pax Americana.[vi]

In her opening statements, Tai notes a few priorities for the US for reforming the WTO. Her first point is that transparency between members must be improved, as “this is critical for fair competition and a level playing field for working people everywhere.”[vii] What is transparent is that the US executive branch can impose tariffs at the will of the president, as so much power over US trade policy has been ceded by Congress over the past few decades that the president has imperial authority over trade. This is why a policy area where Trump made the most dramatic changes was trade. He had the authority to unilaterally withdraw from the TPP and impose tariffs on China, Canada, and any country of his choosing.

Tai’s second priority is the most absurd and contradictory. She proposes a renegotiation of new rules for “new challenges that we face.”[viii] In articulating this priority, Tai is clearly referencing China’s behavior and norm busting. She notes that rules can help stop non-market policies “like industrial targeting or discriminatory interventionist activities of state-owned enterprises. This is how certain members are continuing to skew the playing field strategically and systematically.”[ix] By certain members, Tai means China and countries that have shown interest in alternatives to the global trading system underpinned by the US dollar, like the BRICs. However, the US enacts industrial targeting through its tariffs and export controls on China, as well as its move to block China from accessing more advanced semiconductor chips. Though, to people like Tai and even Runde, the US is not acting nefariously, China is. The US is simply reacting in kind to China’s mercantilist trade practices. They are fighting mercantilism with mercantilism, though when the US does it is not mercantilist, it is protecting workers and domestic industry.

What’s confusing is that during Trump’s reign, the US was mercantilist and irrationally protectionist, while under Biden the exact same approach is just China hawks being China hawks. Trump was the bull in a China shop (pun intended), and the Biden administration, instead of picking up the pieces and rebuilding, became bulls and continued stomping all over the shards that were once the global trading system.

Tai said that the US is seeking to write “a new story on trade.”, and they may be writing a new story, but the plot and characters are the same. Contrary to what the US ruling class thinks, they are not the heroes, nor is China, Russia, or the many countries that are excluded from full member status at the WTO. This leads to my final point, which is that the purpose of this CSIS discussion was supposed to be how the WTO needs to reform to work better for developing nations, yet there was no talk of US economic imperialism, not even in euphemistic terms/ America’s primary export is still bombs and drones. There’s no money to be made in reforms or rebuilding, as noted by some US allies, it appears that a stagnant and dysfunctional WTO is beneficial for the US. If it worked as it’s supposed to on paper, the US would spend years litigating and defending its own mercantilist trade practices.

A more active US role in the global trading system will only become more difficult as a significant development over the past ten years is the growing consensus among Americans that free trade is harmful, not helpful. Whether this is true or not, the perception that offshoring of labor and deindustrialization has ravaged the US and, it’s once booming manufacturing sector, is enough to make policy actions like stopping the US trade war with China political suicide. The US ruling class has only itself to blame, as it is their greed that led to hollowing out the middle and working classes of the US and the sidelining of millions in the rapidly transforming economy,

Joseph Schumpeter coined the concept of “creative destruction”, which refers to a transformative innovation being so revolutionary that the economy that preceded it is destroyed and rebuilt, like in the case of the telephone or to an even greater degree, the internet.[x] The next era of creative destruction, which will potentially manifest in the rise of artificial intelligence, will have devastating consequences for not just the middle and working classes but the upper middle classes in the US and across the West. With an executive branch intent on retaining military and technological supremacy over China and its other adversaries, the US is progressing like a dying star, set to implode. This is the real story of US trade and its overall foreign policy. The illiberal liberal class is creatively destructive, writing a new story, though with the same plot and character arc.

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[i] Davis, G. R. C. “Internet History Sourcebooks Project.” Fordham.edu, 2019. https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/source/magnacarta.asp.

[ii] Whittock, Jesse. “Rumble Hits out at UK Government’s ‘Disturbing Letter’ as Video Site Defends Letting Russell Brand Monetize Content.” Deadline, September 21, 2023. https://deadline.com/2023/09/russell-brand-allegations-rumble-defends-against-disturbing-letter-on-income-1235552235/.

[iii] Thorpe, Vanessa. “Will Accusations Dent Russell Brand’s Popularity with Conspiracy Theory Fans?” The Observer, September 16, 2023, sec. Culture. https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2023/sep/16/accusations-russell-brand-tv-documentary-comic.

[iv] Thorpe. “Will Accusations Dent Russell Brand’s Popularity with Conspiracy Theory Fans?”

[v] Runde, Daniel F., Katherine Tai, and Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala. “Why the Developing World and All of Us Need Trade and the WTO.” Www.csis.org, September 22, 2023. https://www.csis.org/analysis/why-developing-world-and-all-us-need-trade-and-wto.

[vi] Bade, Gavin. “Biden Officials Try to Revive a Key World Trade Referee after Trump Steamrolled It.” POLITICO, September 22, 2023. https://www.politico.com/news/2023/09/22/tai-targets-china-climate-in-call-to-reform-wto-00117491.

[vii] Runde, Tai and Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala. “Why the Developing World and All of Us Need Trade and the WTO.”

[viii] Runde, Tai and Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala. “Why the Developing World and All of Us Need Trade and the WTO.”

[ix] Runde, Tai and Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala. “Why the Developing World and All of Us Need Trade and the WTO.”

[x] Schumpeter, Joseph. Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1942.

References

Bade, Gavin. “Biden Officials Try to Revive a Key World Trade Referee after Trump Steamrolled It.” POLITICO, September 22, 2023. https://www.politico.com/news/2023/09/22/tai-targets-china-climate-in-call-to-reform-wto-00117491.

Davis, G. R. C. “Internet History Sourcebooks Project.” Fordham.edu, 2019. https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/source/magnacarta.asp.

Runde, Daniel F., Katherine Tai, and Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala. “Why the Developing World and All of Us Need Trade and the WTO.” Www.csis.org, September 22, 2023. https://www.csis.org/analysis/why-developing-world-and-all-us-need-trade-and-wto.

Schumpeter, Joseph. Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1942.

Thorpe, Vanessa. “Will Accusations Dent Russell Brand’s Popularity with Conspiracy Theory Fans?” The Observer, September 16, 2023, sec. Culture. https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2023/sep/16/accusations-russell-brand-tv-documentary-comic.

Whittock, Jesse. “Rumble Hits out at UK Government’s ‘Disturbing Letter’ as Video Site Defends Letting Russell Brand Monetize Content.” Deadline, September 21, 2023. https://deadline.com/2023/09/russell-brand-allegations-rumble-defends-against-disturbing-letter-on-income-1235552235/.