No one, including Russell Brand, should have their life ruined on the basis of accusation alone

Until such a time as Russell Brand has been judged guilty in the normal way, he should not be treated as a criminal, writes Brendan O’Neill.

This campaign against Russell Brand – it has overplayed its hand, hasn’t it?

What started as a perfectly reasonable media investigation of Brand’s alleged behaviour has morphed with startling speed into something more vindictive and illiberal.

In mere days we’ve gone from media outlets reporting the claims of women who say they were sexually assaulted by Brand to Silicon Valley, British MPs and virtual mobs treating Brand as guilty.

Demonetise him, they cry. Cancel him. Expel him from public life.

What ever happened to due process? Call me old-fashioned – some of you no doubt will call me worse – but I believe people are innocent until proven guilty. That no one’s life should be destroyed on the basis of accusation alone.

“Is the accuser always holy now?” John Proctor famously asks in Arthur Miller’s The Crucible.

Chillingly, our society’s response to that question seems to be yes. Brand has been accused, and thus he’s guilty, and thus he should be robbed of his reputation and income. Case closed.

You don’t have to be a Brand fan – I’m not – to find this rush to judgment and punishment deeply troubling.

It feels risky to express these worries. A conformist view on the Brand affair has taken hold with eye-swivelling speed.

In polite society you’re allowed to think one thing and one thing only: He did it. String him up.

Deviate from this narrative and you’ll be branded a rape apologist. Another typical bloke standing up for a typical bloke.

Yet things are happening that should make us very uncomfortable. Consider YouTube’s decision to prevent Brand from earning money from adverts on his popular channel.

The bosses of YouTube slammed Brand’s “off-platform behaviour”. They essentially decreed that his behaviour – alleged, remember – makes him unworthy of an online income.

Do we really want multibillion-dollar corporations pre-empting the justice system and treating people as guilty?

You might not like Brand but you should be very wary indeed about letting unaccountable billionaires behave as judge, jury and executioner on matters of public interest.

Or consider the British MPs who wrote to the social media sites TikTok, X (the platform formerly known as Twitter), Facebook and Rumble to request that they likewise demonetise Brand’s videos.

Dame Caroline Dinenage was one of them. She’s chairwoman of the British House of Commons Culture, Media and Sport Committee. When will you be “suspending Mr Brand’s ability to earn money”, she asked these platforms. Again, you don’t have to be a Brand fanboy, one of those vax-sceptics who hangs on his every weird word, to find such political intervention utterly unacceptable.

Members of the political class are not gods. They’re not even judges. They have no business presuming that an individual is guilty of an offence and pressuring corporations to reprimand him.

I don’t want to live in a world where politicians assume the right to persecute the accused. That way tyranny lies.

Or consider the argument being made by some feminists that “trial by media” is fine in this case because the women making accusations against Brand probably wouldn’t fare well in the sexist justice system.

British writer Julie Bindel, for example, rages against the people who are “spouting righteous indignation” about how wrong it is to subject Brand to “trial by media”. It is only because women have “such little faith” in the courts that they tell their stories of alleged abuse to the press, she says.

OK – but surely that’s an argument for improving the justice system, not for green-lighting trial by media?

Some feminists seem not to realise how essential a fair trial is to civilisation itself. It’s the thing that protects people from the whims and power of the state.

Challenging the media trial of Brand is not about standing up for Brand – it’s about standing up for the democratic principle that no one may be unpersoned without first being tried in a free, fair and transparent manner.

Earlier generations fought tooth and nail for legal protection from the vengeful desires of the state and the mob. Are we now going to ditch such protections just so we can see an irritant such as Brand strung up? It’s unfashionable to have principles, I know. But they’re important. Especially the principles of political freedom and transparent justice – both of which seem to me to be under threat in the Brand hysteria.

Tribalism is dominating the discussion about Brand.

His followers, many of whom share his conspiratorial view of the post-Covid moment, think he’s being stitched up by a globalist cabal.

His haters presume his guilt and insist he be exiled from public life.

Both sides are rushing to judgment. The former has rushed to judge Brand’s accusers as liars who are part of some vast anti-Russell conspiracy. The latter has rushed to damn Brand as a cut-and-dried criminal, The End.

Into this heated, tribalistic affair, we urgently need to inject some reason.

Brand has questions to answer, there’s no doubt about that. But liberty and justice must remain sacrosanct. Until such a time as he has been judged guilty in the normal way, Brand should not be treated as a criminal.