Daily Stormer The Most Censored Publication in History
Well.
This was predictable.
A number of large companies have pulled their advertisements from the video platform Rumble, where Russell Brand broadcasts his weekly show, in the week since allegations of rape and sexual assault against the comedian came to light.
The News Movement reported on Friday that Burger King, Asos, the Barbican and HelloFresh, the recipe box delivery service, had removed their ads. Brand has 1.4m followers on the platform. YouTube suspended Brand’s ability to earn money on its platform on Tuesday but Rumble has rejected calls to do the same. On Friday, Brand said the moves to block him from receiving advertising revenue for his videos on social media platforms have occurred “in the context of the online safety bill”.
I haven’t looked into it yet, but this “online safety bill” looks very, very bad
On Thursday, Rumble accused a parliamentary committee of “deeply inappropriate” behaviour after Caroline Dinenage, the Conservative chair of the culture, media and sport committee, wrote a letter to the company’s chief executive, Chris Pavlovski, to express concern that Brand “may be able to profit from his content on the platform”.
In a public statement posted on X, Rumble called the letter “disturbing” and said parliament’s demands were “deeply inappropriate and dangerous”. The platform added that it was devoted to an internet “where no one arbitrarily dictates which ideas can or cannot be heard, or which citizens may or may not be entitled to a platform”.
Rumble added: “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
Last weekend, Brand was accused of rape, sexual assault and emotional abuse between 2006 and 2013 after a joint investigation by the Sunday Times, the Times and Channel 4 Dispatches. He denies the allegations.
On Friday, Brand made his first public comments since the allegations were made public in a new video he posted online. In the three-minute video posted on YouTube, Rumble and X, he described them as “extraordinary and distressing” and accused the government of seeking to censor him.
Burger King told the News Movement it had paused all advertising while investigations into the allegations were ongoing. Asos said it had manually removed its ads from Rumble. Barbican said it had asked its media agency to exclude the site from where its ads appear.
The Times estimates that Brand earns £27,000 a month from his Rumble channel and £1m a year from YouTube before ads were suspended. His literary agent, tour promoter and book publisher have also dropped him.
So, just to be clear:
- Russell Brand was accused of raping his own girlfriends 10-20 years ago.
- (No pause)
- Police announce an investigation.
- The UK parliament (and the Prime Minister’s spokesman!!) start issuing all these statements.
- The UK government demanded that all tech companies stop his funding.
- The media demanded that advertisers boycott the companies that won’t stop his funding.
This all happened in a period of hours, rather than weeks.
You remember with Weinstein, it was like, they release this article, they start doing interviews with the women, there is all this media coverage for weeks on end drumming up public outrage, he eventually resigns, then after months, the cops start saying they’re looking into something to charge him with. Eventually, he’s charged.
With Russell Brand, it is just bing-bang-boom – you’re out.
This idea of cutting someone’s money because he was accused of something totally unrelated to his work in a media article is totally new. I thought I had seen every possible weird form of censorship, but this is new. It’s almost like someone sat down and said “okay, let’s drum up some new weird storyline for censorship.”
The fact that they immediately go to deplatform him over this rape hoax proves that the rape hoax is political, doesn’t it? I mean – right?
How is Google able to determine that Russell Brand committed felonies? Where is the court? I don’t think the court would be fair, but YouTube is saying “this violates our off-platform behavior rules.” It’s against off-platform behavior rules (which is itself an insane concept) to be accused of something by anonymous people?
He’s back on Rumble tomorrow. I assume he’ll do the whole show about this issue.
It’s likely that this is how they’re going to go for the Rumble app on the iPhone app store – “you didn’t ban that guy that got accused of doing something decades ago – this is totally unacceptable behavior for a trust-building environment.”
