Is politics the only area of human knowledge in which it is deemed clever to sneer at people who raise astute questions, but don’t have instant answers? In most other areas of science, people are applauded for raising questions that resonate with lived experience, even if they cannot provide confident answers to them. The relentless stream of condescension directed towards Russell Brand, including Hadley Freeman’s latest contribution (Don’t put all your faith in Russell Brand’s revolution, 25 October), give the impression that if one is not a native speaker of the opaque language of insider politics, one is almost certainly a clownish impostor.
In my current British Academy-funded study of how people first experience talking about politics, I have interviewed many people who have told me that they are frightened to open their mouths in the political realm lest they be dismissed as naive, ignorant or emotional. Asking radical questions is no less a contribution to democratic debate than devising sophisticated policies – and it is more of a contribution than is made by those who regurgitate stale and unreflective caricatures.
Stephen Coleman
Professor of political communication, University of Leeds
• Russell Brand is a flawed individual, something which he admits regularly, and I do not agree with him when he proclaims that people should not vote. However, the views he promotes should not be denigrated and disregarded out of hand, as so many of your commentators have done in recent days. John Lydon, who has had the misfortune to experience directly the sufferings of the British underclass, proclaimed that Brand preaches revolution from “a mansion” (Never mind Russell Brand, use your vote!, 15 October). So too did Christopher Hill and Eric Hobsbawm – on whom, it has been revealed recently (Report, 24 October), MI5 once spied – and EP Thompson. Hill was the master of Balliol College, Oxford; Hobsbawm was a product of the bourgeoisie who held a professorship at a major college of the University of London; and Thompson pursued a career as an independent historian and political activist because of his inherited wealth (and, it should be added, the income provided by his wife, Dorothy) after he parted company with the University of Warwick in the early 1970s.
I raise these points not to argue that these historians had no sympathy and understanding of the plight of those less fortunate than themselves, but instead to suggest that the middle-class left, from whom the Guardian draws much of its readership, seeks to engage with Brand in a less hostile fashion. Neither Brand’s morals nor arguments are perfect, but he is able to set an agenda and engage an otherwise apathetic sector of the population in politics. Out of your commentators, Owen Jones is one of the few who is able and willing to engage sympathetically yet critically with Brand, and I commend him for doing so.
Dr Tim Reinke-Williams
Senior lecturer in history, University of Northampton
• Could I just clarify to Hadley Freeman that people are not “a bit fed up” with politicians, they are extremely sick of the horrors. Russell Brand is certainly amplifying the cause of people who have every right to be, such as the Newham mothers. Perhaps we can look forward to her analysis of what she might consider more coherent manifestos by political parties even though (SPOILER!) they will be works of complete deception. At least Brand has begun to show that will be the case.
Phil Revels
West Bridgford, Nottinghamshire
• Well done, Hadley Freeman, for puncturing so eloquently the pompous, overinflated, overhyped balloon of Russell Brand’s ego. For too long, commentators who should know better have acquiesced with or even lauded his naive faux-intellectual views. The Evan Davis interview on Newsnight exposed Brand’s extreme reluctance (or inability) to engage with facts, as well as his conspiracy-theory cherry-picking mentality. What remained was little more than bluster. May the rollercoaster now be derailed before it departs totally from reality.
Mike Venis
Faversham, Kent
• Having worried for some considerable time about the Guardian’s apparent fascination with Russell Brand – his column some years ago plus his almost daily advertising image recently – imagine my relief on reading Hadley Freeman’s splendid column. Seemingly gentle in tone, her demolition was nevertheless almost total. Maybe she should now write about Nigel Farage or, come to that, David Cameron?
Christopher Bell
Chorleywood, Hertfordshire
• Should we not be open to the possibility that Russell Brand might be an MI5 stooge masquerading as an anarchist to discredit the movement?
Dr Michael Paraskos
London
• Could Maureen Lipman (Queen for a day, 25 October) please talk some sense into Russell Brand?
Shona Murphy
Oxford
• Russell Brand’s Newsnight interview was like watching a spoilt brat, shouting, groping and incapable of listening to any voice but his own. I thought how glad I am that my own children have manners. Many of the views he espouses aren’t different to mine.
I’ve been a Labour councillor for 28-plus years and have dedicated a huge amount of my life to supporting vulnerable people and helping to make the community I live in a better place. I do it as a democrat through a political party.
This is the kind of thing many politicians do in abundance, but you don’t get to hear of it in the press because they rarely report good news.
I live in a country where democracy is not valued. Where the rightwing media is constantly negative and promotes a blame culture. Since we get most of our views from the media, it’s no wonder people are disillusioned on their daily diet of woe.
So much time is now devoted to motormouths like Nigel Farage and Russell Brand, who can convert the apathy generated by the press into a messianic cause with narcissistic self-promotion and get a massive pat on the back for it. What a sad society we have become.
Sometimes I switch off the daily gloom for a month. Life definitely becomes a more serene experience then. If we heard more of the the good stuff that politicians do we might not be so “switched off” – and pigs may fly!
Linda Kirby
London
• I read Hadley Freeman’s article and found myself disagreeing with her opinion. Firstly, who is asking us to believe in “his” revolution? I like to watch Russell Brand’s Youtube programme The Trews not because I believe in him as a revolutionary leader but because I find the points he makes and the subjects he covers are interesting and not ones widely covered in the mainstream media. I do not find he has “long ago exceeded the outer limits of his knowledge” but rather would consider he is on a voyage of discovery. He also makes me laugh, which Hadley’s article sadly didn’t. I am a nurse, and while I vaguely remember watching the Woody Allen film Hadley refers to, I also struggle to remember when I last had a pay rise – which, along with increased pension contributions, increased professional body membership fees and the rising cost of living, has left me also struggling to feed and clothe my children, and keep our home warm. Therefore I appreciate Russell Brand’s appearance on the anti-austerity demonstration and find his views more of use in understanding both my current situation as well the global one than I do Hadley’s blithe comment that the revolution is not going to happen. If there is no revolution in the way power structures are presently organised – benefiting a few at the expense of the many – then (spoiler alert) the world’s climate, for one thing, will not survive.
I am left wondering why so many column inches were spent on such a negative view of Russell Brand.
Anthony Foster
Wirksworth, Derbyshire
• I found Hadley Freeman’s comment on Russell Brand offensive and derisory, and it left me thinking: “You don’t get it!”
So what if he uses a chauffeur to drive him to see a group of women who are threatened with homelessness by immoral landlords. He used his position to try to support them, and to stop them and their children being removed forcibly from their homes. He sees very clearly how the “system” is set up to support those “who have” at the expense of those who “have not”.
The reference to Brand comparing himself to Jesus is hardly worth mentioning – he is a comedian! Opening his life to the world, his troubles and challenges, Russell makes connections with people, understands and listens to people and empathises with their struggles. He makes connections with young people who feel excluded and isolated when being “talked at” by mainstream politicians and corporate representatives. He can see clearly where the roots of struggles lie and shouts loudly about them. Thank goodness somebody does. I have been waiting for him for 61 years!
This will make many people who enjoy the comforts of the world’s inequalities uncomfortable and want to mock and deride Russell Brand, belittle him and try to make him look a fool. This is a well-worn tactic used by the establishment media to undermine anyone who criticises the established order.
Maddy Conway
Cheddar
