Russell Brand on the Woolwich Murder

[Saffron]

http://darkernet.in/russell-brand-and-the-woolwich-murder/

Some very interesting insights.

[Saffron]

Hmmm, link not working...?

Here's the long form:

The best comment we came across on the killing of a soldier, Lee Rigby, at Woolwich last week was not from any politician, nor ideologue, nor media commentator, nor religious leader, but from a blog by Russell Brand. Below, without unnecessary comment or links, we reproduce this ?essay? as it stands. It deserves to be publicised widely, for Brand ? like whistleblower Bradley Manning ? reminds us all of our humanity. It is the antithesis of those who preach hate, whether religious hate, or from other kinds of fundamentalists, or from racists.

Woolwich

The news cycle moves so quickly now that often we learn of an event through other people?s reaction to it. So it was when I arrived in Los Angeles to find my twitter feed contorted with posts of fear and confusion.

I caught up with the sad malice in Woolwich and felt compelled to tweet in casual defense of the Muslim community who were being haphazardly condemned by a few people on my time line. Perhaps a bit glibly (but what isn?t glib in 140 characters) I put ?That bloke is a nut. A nut who happens to be Muslim. Blaming Muslims for this is like blaming Hitler?s moustache for the Holocaust?.

As an analogy it is imperfect but I was frightened by how negative and incendiary the mood felt and I rushed. I?m not proposing we sit around trying to summons up cute analogies when Lee Rigby has lost his life in horrific circumstances I simply feel that it is important that our reaction is measured. Something about the arbitrary brutality, the humdrum high-street setting, the cool rhetoric of the blood stained murderer evoke a powerful and inherently irrational response. When I first heard the word ?beheading? I felt the atavistic grumble that we all feel. This is inhumane, taboo, not a result of passion but of malice, ritualistic. ?If this is happening to guiltless men on our streets it could happen to me? I thought.

Then I watched the mobile phone clip. In spite of his dispassionate intoning the subject is not rational, of course he?s not rational, he?s just murdered a stranger in the street, he says, because of a book.

In my view that man is severely mentally ill and has found a convenient conduit for his insanity, in this case the Quran. In the case of another mentally ill and desperate man, Mark Chapman, it was A Catcher In The Rye. This was the nominated text for his rationalisation of the murder of John Lennon. I?ve read that book and I?ve read some of the Quran and nothing in either of them has compelled me to do violence. Perhaps this is because I lack the other necessary ingredients for extreme anti social behaviour; mental illness and isolation; either economic, social or both.

After my Hitler tweet I got involved in a bit of back and forth with a few people who said stuff like ?the murderer said himself he did it for Islam?. Although I wouldn?t dismiss what he?s saying entirely I think he forfeited the right to have his views received unthinkingly when he murdered a stranger in the street. Someone else regarding my tweet said ?Hitler?s moustache didn?t invent an ideology that sanctions murder?. That is thankfully true but Islam when practiced by normal people is not an advocacy for violence. ?People all over the world are killing in the name of Islam? someone added. This is the most tricky bit to understand. What I think is that all over our country, all over our planet there are huge numbers of people who feel alienated and sometimes victimised by the privileged and the powerful, whether that?s rich people, powerful corporations or occupying nations. They feel that their interests are not being represented and, in many cases, know that their friends and families are being murdered by foreign soldiers. I suppose people like that may look to their indigenous theology for validation and to sanctify their, to some degree understandable, feelings of rage.

Comparable, I suppose to the way that homophobes feel a prejudicial pang in their tummies then look to the bible to see if there?s anything in there to justify it. There is, a piddling little bit in Leviticus. The main narrative thrust of The Bible though, like most spiritual texts, including the Quran is; be nice to each other because we?re all the same.

When some football fans smash up shops and beat each other up that isn?t because of football or football clubs. It?s because loads of white, working class men have been culturally neglected and their powerful tribal instincts end up getting sloshed about in riotous lager carnivals. I love football, I love West Ham, I?ve never been involved in football violence because I don?t feel that it?s my only access to social power. Also I?m not that hard and I?m worried I?d get my head kicked in down the New Den.

What the English Defence League and other angry, confused people are doing and advocating now, violence against mosques, Muslims, proliferation of hateful rhetoric is exactly what that poor, sick, murderous man, blood soaked on a peaceful street, was hoping for in his desperate, muddled mind.

The extremists on both sides have a shared agenda; cause division, distrust, anger and violence. Both sides have the same intention. We cannot allow them to distort our perception.

The establishment too is relatively happy when different groups of desperate people point the finger at each other because it prevents blame being correctly directed at them. Whenever we are looking for the solution to a problem we must identify who has power. By power I mean influence and money. The answer is not for us to move further from one another, crouched in opposing fortresses constructed from vindictive words. We need now to move closer to one another, to understand one another. If we can take anything heartening from this dreadful attack it is of course the actions of the three women, it?s always women, that boldly guarded Lee Rigby?s body as he lay needlessly murdered. These women looked beyond the fear and chaos and desperation and attuned instead to a higher code. One of virtue, integrity and strength.

To truly demonstrate defiance in the face of this sad violence, we must be loving and compassionate to one another. Let?s look beyond our superficial and fleeting differences. The murderers want angry patriots to desecrate mosques and perpetuate violence. How futile their actions seem if we instead leave flowers at each other?s places of worship. Let?s reach out in the spirit of love and humanity and connect to one another, perhaps we will then see what is really behind this conflict, this division, this hatred and make that our focus.

Russell Brand

May 25th, 2013

Posted from the darker net via Android.

[uncleglen]

It's a lot simpler than that- and perhaps if RB hadn't had so much thinking time on his hands he may just realise that it all boils down to sheer weight of numbers and territory. Self serving air-heads like him can afford to pontificate.

[Saffron]

Can you elaborate on what you mean by "it all boils down to sheer weight of numbers and territory"?

[????]

Rooobish, the new self-serving Brand re-brand strikes again. I'm the 'people's intellectual' is just him peacocking with big words, in reality, like his piece on Thatcher, it's self-serving 'metropolitan on message' rubbish driven by his enormous ego. Can't people really see that? ..a bit depressing that he keeps getting this sort of crap all over social media and people, even clever ones, seem to think it's insightful.

[StraferJack]

You got a link to a better piece?

[????]

Where do I start, Good piece in Standard tonight I'll see if I can find, the Huffington Post piece posted by Woodrot, any grown up analysis, er, anywhere...if your Benchmark is the Guardian Online - emotive stating the bleedin' obvious - then I accept this is genius, mine's not.

[nashoi]

Utter cobblers.

ETA I meant the OP not the previous post.

[StraferJack]

This one from the huff ?

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/mobileweb/2013/05/27/sageman-interview_n_3342206.html

[????]

http://www.standard.co.uk/comment/comment/peyvand-khorsandi-both-left-and-right-underestimate-political-islam-8635708.htm

Just in today's Standard, please spare us Brand's emotive unintellectual rubbish.

http://www.standard.co.uk/comment/comment/peyvand-khorsandi-both-left-and-right-underestimate-political-islam-8635708.html

[StraferJack]

I kind of have up when I got to

"We were quick to denounce the appearance of the BNP?s Nick Griffin on Question Time in 2009 but where were the objectors to rising media starlet Anjem Choudary?"

You have to be wilfully deaf and blind to be unaware of the left complaining about choudary. Who is the "we" in his sentence? Where were the objectors? Everywhere. And the left have been banging on about him for years

http://m.guardian.co.uk/media/2013/may/24/bbc-channel-4-anjem-choudary

http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/mehdi-hasan/2010/01/choudary-muslim-islamic

http://m.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2010/jan/04/anjum-choudary-wootton-bassett

[StraferJack]

Those 3 links aren't meant to be definitive or anything. Just first three i picked up on phone. I'm not trying to be argumentative but was surprised when I saw that ES article presented as good

[uncleglen]

When there are too many people occupying too little space then something has to give. These various factions are falling over themselves to belong to a group and along with a group there comes a need for territory. They belong to a group (cult or whatever) which has identifiable traits that they can relate to and which fulfills their desires. Young people are vulnerable to persuasion especially in pursuit of an ideal. Most of the rest of us just went on protest marches against war.

[????]

StraferJack Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> Those 3 links aren't meant to be definitive or

> anything. Just first three i picked up on phone.

> I'm not trying to be argumentative but was

> surprised when I saw that ES article presented as

> good

....or better than Brand,s rubbish just a quick reference from today. You really think his is insightful? Really? Really!

[StraferJack]

I haven't said anything about his article on woolwich

Insightful? Not in this case (to my mind). Prone to gilding a verbal lily? For sure

But articulating an opinion held by many in a way most of us can't? Sure

But he isn't really doing any more than that and isn't some leftie standing up for choudary either so I don't quite get the hate (much as some don't get the love)

But in a world full of stultifying prose, yeah I like his peacocking

[nashoi]

SJ the following by Brand is just offensively ill informed

"In my view that man is severely mentally ill and has found a convenient conduit for his insanity, in this case the Quran. In the case of another mentally ill and desperate man, Mark Chapman, it was A Catcher In The Rye. This was the nominated text for his rationalisation of the murder of John Lennon. I?ve read that book and I?ve read some of the Quran and nothing in either of them has compelled me to do violence. Perhaps this is because I lack the other necessary ingredients for extreme anti social behaviour; mental illness and isolation; either economic, social or both."

The article you linked to contained the following line

The forensic psychiatrist says he can't be sure what "triggered the attack" on Drummer Lee Rigby but argues that it has "almost nothing to do with mental illness".

Why would anyone listen to Russell Brand ffs.

[StraferJack]

Is psychiatry a nailed down science now? I thought it was still largely a doing best we can field?

Wasn't breivik found sane?

There may well be good political and legal reasons to so declare but no way am I buying breivik as "sane"

[????]

And the 9/11 hijackers?

Anyway, the point is that since last week the oh look at my wonderful left/liberal credentials brigade have been wetting themselves that millions of plebs will be burning mosques and sticking pigs heads everywhere so bend over themselves to say that Islam is a loved filled religion and is nothing to do with this....in contrast to their normal stance on bigoted, fairy story, often unpleasant tosh that it is and shares with Christianity and other similar unscientific rubbish. Meanwhile, a few 1000 idiots from the EDL prove what twats they are and that,s about it. Sod rational thought and analysis eh? Just as long as I am right on.....as I said before, a glass raised and lowered to Hitchens.

[StraferJack]

So if more liberal lefties denounced Islam, all this other stuff would be better?

Sounds cool

[????]

Go on...I dare you.

[Saffron]

???? Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> StraferJack Wrote:

> --------------------------------------------------

> -----

> > Those 3 links aren't meant to be definitive or

> > anything. Just first three i picked up on

> phone.

> > I'm not trying to be argumentative but was

> > surprised when I saw that ES article presented

> as

> > good

>

>

> ....or better than Brand,s rubbish just a quick

> reference from today. You really think his is

> insightful? Really? Really!

Well, it's all relative. For me, insightful compared to the bollocks I've seen/heard elsewhere. For others, obviously, Brand IS the load of bollocks. But I like that it gets people talking about the issue. It's interesting to read different points of view. (Forumites for sure have some interesting insights... but again, it's all relative, no? ;-) )

[Jeremy]

Not insightful, no. But eloquent, and not an unreasonable opinion to hold.

Was the guy mentally ill? Either that, or seriously suggestible.

Is Islam really a religion of love, peace, and tolerance? Clearly it often isn't... but then which religions are?

[Saffron]

But is violent extremist behaviour driven by religion, or is it a disorder in itself which finds expression in religion?

[El Pibe]

depends entirely on a sliding scale per case basis, but in short it's both.

[Jeremy]

You can't say that religion is not at least partly to blame for much of the violence in this world. That's where I think RB got it wrong.

The unflinching belief in a highly ambiguous ancient text is pretty dangerous ground to start with. Extremist subgroups are an inevitable by-product.