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Dec. 6, 2025 - On Brand
29:27
AAA: Ask Al Anything [PREVIEW]

Here it is! Apologies for the audio being different, it's my own fault: I made the mistake of talking about how great my mic is (while using a new camera), without realising the camera had taken over all my audio settings. Classic. Anyway I hope you enjoy, and thank you patrons for the great questions and DMs!Want the full episode? Head to https://patreon.com/OnBrand

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Time Text
This is propaganda live.
I only suggest how she leaves him now to vote.
What a fantastic and special show it is.
Russell Brandt is a famous rapist.
This is just remembering.
You can just go hold on.
But they said that.
They said that.
The came with Christian preempting that charges would appear from deep history.
Oh, it's a one white party.
What?
What are you talking about?
I'm a migrant right now in the United States.
In fact, I would call myself an exile, a political exile.
Lying, probably true.
Inevitably, I lie sometimes.
I feel that Christ may have had a better vision.
I'm the main problem.
I'm the main problem.
Let's go full screen on Russell.
Welcome to the Triple A, the AAA, it's not baseball or a high-end video game.
No, it's Ask Avil, anything.
For you beloved patrons, I thought it'd be interesting to see if you've got any questions for me and questions you have, which is fun.
And hopefully, I've got a new camera here as well.
And hopefully, you can see me in shining higher definition here of some description.
So, I don't know.
Test run anyway.
We'll see how it goes.
I've been fiddling with the settings a little bit, so hopefully, it looks decent.
Anyway, we're going to jump off with a couple of kind of Russell-oriented questions because I'll put a little preview of this out on the main feed for people to get a little taste.
And I thought, you know, keep it relevant.
And we'll get into some more personal stuff a little bit later.
So, we're going to jump off with a question from Natalie's Hot Tea, The Elixir of Life.
And I must use the full name in that instance.
Oh, I think we've got Popo.
Is it Popo or Ambulance?
There's something.
I tell you what, like, I live in a small town.
Nothing ever happens here.
So when you hear sirens, ah, it's an ambulance.
Oh, that's upset.
Well, I hope whoever it is is fine.
Anyway, nothing ever happens here.
So when you hear sirens, it's like, ooh.
Okay, Natalie's hot tea, The Elixir of Life.
What do you think is the future of Russell Brand and his brand of Grifter in general?
We've been dealing with an epidemic of this kind of asshole media figure over the last decade, and I wonder how this pops is going to leave its mark on our collective Western, quote-unquote, culture.
Yeah, I mean, the future of Russell Brand specifically, hopefully, prison?
That'd be good.
I would like prison if that's an option.
However, what I will say is, even in the event of him going to prison, you know, he's managed to kind of make the narrative so much of a conspiracy against him.
You know, oh, it's the MI5 and government and the CIA, all of them trying to take me down and the media.
It's all a big whole thing that even if he does go to prison, I reckon he'd be able to keep up the kind of martyr status and still be able to get a good grift going when he gets out.
Which, you know, I mean, unfortunately, I would say the charges for, you know, the things he's on trial for, which would be rape, sexual assault, etc.
Like the actual sentencing is pretty, in my opinion, lenient in this country.
So, I think, you know, five years, ten years, I don't think he'd be gone away for long anyway.
And I think he would manage to turn it to his benefit.
Though he'd probably have a miserable time while he was there.
But failing that, I mean, say he doesn't end up in prison.
The future of this brand of Grifter in general, the future looks pretty bright for them, unfortunately.
You know, we're reaching that point of, I think, as a society, we're collectively realizing that, oh, it doesn't matter what I say to these people because they believe the thing anyway.
Like, my show is never, like, I will be shocked if my show changes anyone's mind.
You know, if someone comes into this with an open heart, you know, and from Russell's kind of sphere of things and is actually like, yeah, you know what?
He is a shit.
You know, then I'll be genuinely surprised.
Because we are all kind of siphoned off and separated off into different media bubbles.
And that one in particular, the one of right-wing conspiracy theory stuff, is so incredibly toxic and isolating in its nature that people can't get out, you know.
And people become incredibly radicalized, even when they don't think they're particularly radical.
And you get a situation of kind of programming not too dissimilar to what happened a century ago in Germany, right?
And so you kind of look at the thing of like, well, you know, how do you kind of depropagandize and kind of, you know, get people back to some kind of neutral base of like at least appreciating facts.
And how do you do that en masse?
I'm like, I've no fucking idea.
We had to kill half of them last time, you know, and that whole thing was bad.
And so when you then kind of think about all the people that are doing it, I'm like, oh, yeah, no, they've got a while to go.
They, you know, things are still ramping up.
Things are still ramping up politically and in every other aspect.
And I think we've got a while to go of that.
And I think, you know, line is going to keep going up until something's got to give eventually.
But, you know, in the grand scheme of things, you know, end of World War II is 1945.
We're currently in like 1932, something like that.
You know, we've got some time.
And so these kind of asshole media figures in general, they're going to keep ramping it up.
Not to say they don't have a few spanners in the works, though.
Obviously, you know, a bunch of them are starting to kind of eat each other over divisions over Trump because a couple of them have realized, hey, this guy's not going to be around that much longer.
I need to pivot, you know, to be able to kind of separate myself from the pack.
And, you know, because not only is he not going to be around much longer, but also he's doing a bad job.
And it's increasingly difficult to defend him from the perspective that he's going to do everything we want him to because he's not doing everything we want him to.
So, you know, There are hurdles and pitfalls in the way for these people, but you know, most of them are pretty adept at pivoting about the place to be able to maneuver in this space, you know.
And a good chunk of the time, I mean, you see it enough with Alex Jones, you know, they don't even need to get it right on the first try.
You know, they can pivot in that direction and be like, whoop, that's not working, and then just go in the opposite way.
And nobody seems to really hold them accountable or give a shit about hypocrisy or any of that side of things.
So, yeah, how it's going to leave its mark on our collective culture.
It's not good.
What I will say is happening in the UK at the moment is kind of interesting politically, because the Conservatives, after 14 years of destroying the country, kind of imploded.
And now the Labour Party are in a position where, like, basically they've shot themselves in the foot so many times.
And it's been fascinating to watch a government just be like, because they'll shoot themselves in the foot with like a handgun and then they're just like, you know what, it's not enough.
And they'll graduate to like a fucking AK-47, then a shotgun.
And at this point, I'm just looking at news about the Labour government in general.
I'm like, oh, you're aiming an RPG at your own feet, is what's happening here repeatedly.
And so they've kind of destroyed any hope of them coming in the next election.
And there is a Sened election happening in Wales, right?
The Sened is Welsh Parliament.
And we don't have as much power as even Scottish Parliament have because not as many things have been devolved to us.
It's complicated, but not really.
Just classic more discrimination against the Welsh.
But, you know, this election's coming up.
And traditionally, Wales have always been like Labour majority since forever.
You know, and that's based in kind of the roots of Welsh socialism being a big part of the Labour Party that was.
And that being, you know, what created the NHS, essentially.
It was Welsh socialism.
It was based off of miners essentially grouping together and looking after each other and then doing that on a broader scale.
But anyway, what's happening there politically is neither the Tories nor Labour are polling at all in Wales anymore in any significant metric, which is remarkable.
And so the two parties you have left are Plaid Cymru, who I support and have voted for, who are, you know, leftist and very pro-Welsh independents.
And then you've got reform, which is Nigel Farage's party.
And so, in terms of the mark on our culture, at the moment, everyone is being driven further to extremes.
We are seeing almost in real time the death of centrism for now, anyway, because it's just nobody's happy with it.
Everyone's pissed off.
I had a family gathering a little while back, and I've got a couple of right-wing family members, as do we all.
And what was really interesting was despite coming from total fucking opposite directions politically, we could all unify around the fact that we fucking hated Keir Starmer.
That was something we all agreed on.
You know, and I think that's telling.
So, I guess, I don't know.
Best we can hope for as people are driven to extremes is that the extreme left will somehow win out, you know, I guess, because ultimately that will be better for everyone in terms of policy and everything else.
And that's what happened.
There was a by-election in Kalfili, you know, for the Senev, and reform lost to Blind Cymru in that instance, which is a good indicator.
Certainly positive, at least.
But yeah, and I think what's going to happen in the UK in the next election in general is we're going to see a coalition government of some form.
And it's whether it's going to be reform on the Tories or Greens and maybe Labour, maybe Lib Dem.
I don't know.
No, the Lib Dems are fucking you.
They just, they like photo opportunities.
That's all they really seem to stand for.
But of course, America doesn't have that, is the thing.
Like, you guys are somehow more entrenched than we are in terms of political parties.
Here's the thing: like in France and Germany and places like that that are more democratic than the UK, because they don't have a first-person post system like we do, it's not surprising to see coalition governments like throughout Europe.
But, you know, to see a coalition government in the UK, something has to have gone truly fucking disastrously wrong, which it has.
But you guys don't even have that because there's such a monopoly on both sides and so much money and so much is entrenched.
It's unbelievable.
And so you have this problem in the US of like, you don't have leftist alternatives.
You don't have these because the DNC won't let them run.
You know, you're going to get fucking, I don't know, someone else who decides that paling around with the Cheneys is a good idea, you know, on the left.
And then the right are going to be like, nope, we want literal Hitler this time.
We're going to revive him and we're going to make him president.
We're going to change the constitution so that it can actually be someone born in Germany, you know, in the 1800s.
That's, and that's who we want.
Yeah, it's not a positive outlook.
I'm not going to lie to you.
But, you know, that's not to say that all hope is lost.
Like I said, the main thing is leftism.
Leftism has to be able to come together and go further left.
The further they go right, we should just be openly advocating fucking straight up communism at this point.
But like, you know what?
Screw it.
Universal basic income for everyone.
Yep.
What are you going to do?
You know, you want to friggin, you know, put all of the put all of the migrants in prison.
Well, then, you know, we're going to, I don't know.
Yeah, just give everyone money is what we're going to do.
And, you know, in the US, healthcare.
Healthcare might be a start.
It's difficult for me to kind of measure in terms of metrics because obviously, you know, the UK is semi-socialist in its nature.
And it's easy for me to forget, like, oh, yeah, there's so many basic shit that you guys just don't even have that.
Like, Christ, that's radical to you people.
To your country, anyway.
In any case, yeah, that's where we stand.
We just need to unify the left.
And Zora and Mamdani winning in New York is a good indicator as well of like potential for that.
But yeah, the problem that the US has is that entrenchment and the amount of control that the DNC has over how that's going to go.
Whereas at least over here, we do have the alternative parties.
So there's perhaps an easier road of it comparatively.
Though it's still going to suck in many ways and still require a lot of fighting.
Okay.
So I chatted for a long time on that one.
But there we go.
That's my thoughts.
Hopefully prison for Russell.
That's still where I stand.
Okay.
Next, a question from Mag28.
I'm sorry if this is obvious, but I only started listening recently.
How much of Russell's bullshit do you think he actually believes?
Like, what is his actual belief versus scam/slash not going to jail?
Like the crunchy wellness versus Christian Republican shit, I mean.
Yeah.
So in terms of stuff that Russell believes, you know, I kind of, if it's any kind of story of the week, I have to take whatever he's saying with at least a grain of salt because he usually doesn't know what he's talking about until he reads it on the auto queue for a start.
And he's just kind of making it up as he goes.
In terms of the Christianity, I think that's sincere.
I think that's genuine.
That he does he does believe in that.
And I think there's a fair body of evidence to show that that is genuine and has been going on for a lot longer than he would have anyone believe.
And yeah, I think he believes a bunch of the anti-vax shit as well.
Like a bunch of the wellness stuff.
And it's easy for him because he's, again, he's among the 0.01% wealthiest people on the planet.
And so he doesn't have to, you know, he doesn't have to eat the same food that we do.
You know, he doesn't have to drink the same water that we do.
And he doesn't.
You know, and so he can believe that everything is poison and merrily skirt that, despite the rest of us, you know, having all of these things and being fine.
For the most part.
And with the vaccine stuff, I mean, that's, you know, it's going to affect his kids more than it is him because obviously he's vaccinated up to the gills for the most part.
You know, because his mum seems to not be as much of a dipshit as he is.
As for what else he believes, yeah, I mean, you know, tiny theocratic ethnostates, he's a big fan of that.
You know, he's he will tolerate the existence of queer people as long as we're nowhere near him.
He just wants his, you know, theocratic Christian white people place.
And, you know, all the African Americans can go over there and right.
In this kind of bizarre utopia of his, where all these tiny communities are self-governing and there's no war between them at all.
You're like, okay, okay.
But in terms of like the conspiracy theory stuff, I don't know.
I think he likes to avoid specifics because they tend to challenge his worldview.
Because here's the thing: like, In many ways, he can be a dipshit, but in many other ways, he's not stupid.
You know, he's not a moron.
He's incredibly ignorant of many things.
But he's not a moron.
And so, when something comes along that seems a bit off to him, he'll be like, ah, okay, interesting.
And he will kind of zoom out to be like, okay, at the very least, this is representative of this other problem about how pharma is doing this and, you know, and these systems of control.
And we need a revolution, you know, and blah, And the other thing I'll say about that is that Russell, he's infamously lazy to an incredible degree.
And I sympathize.
I like to take the path of least resistance where possible, a lot of the time.
I understand it and I sympathize with the impulse.
The problem seems to be where, like, his values are also, you know, in the direction of the path of least resistance as well.
You know, I'm like, that's those things should not merge, which is why he's, you know, he's now eating meat again.
You know, he was smoking a cigarette on InfoWars.
I'm like, okay, what's going on here?
Because he used to, you know, he used to be a vegan and all this other stuff.
And he's just thrown that by the wayside.
You know.
And so for him, it would be, you know, what he believes will be a case of what are the things that I can say and do that will make people like me and trust me and are also the easiest to pull off.
You know, what can I do to lean in that direction?
And that's always where he will go because he's a phenomenal trend hound, you know, and he's also incredibly insecure and repeatedly Googles himself.
So, you know.
Yeah.
And in terms of the crunchy wellness stuff, yeah, a lot of that has fallen by the wayside.
You know, like he's not leading meditations anymore.
You know, he was a year ago.
He's not anymore.
You know, well, a year and a half ago.
You know, he's completely gotten rid of that entirely because, you know, it's too much juice.
You know, too much juice.
No.
The juice isn't worth the squeeze.
Yeah.
With his audience anymore, whereas it used to be.
Which leads me on to the next question, actually, which is from Ian from Iceland.
Have you felt like Russell has lost any of his audience/slash supporters in recent years, or do you think he has gained in popularity?
Now then, it's an interesting question because I think there's been a bit of a transplanting of his audience.
Some of the old school have left, not all of them, but some of them have.
They're kind of the crunchy wellness ones who kind of knew him from when he was doing videos about how to get through a tough relationship crisis or whatever, back when he was more in his guru phase.
You know, most of those people have kind of gone now, which again is why he will have stopped doing the meditations and all of this stuff and why he's happy to abandon veganism and everything.
It no longer serves his interest to do so.
And it serves the new audience better to not be doing meditations because some Christians really take issue with the concept of it as though it's some kind of blasphemy.
And same with veganism as well.
Particularly in America, the right-wing Christians will all be steak-eating and Bible-thumping individuals.
And so, you know, he's fitting in with them who are now his audience in Florida.
So he has lost a bunch, but he's also gained a bunch.
I mean, because like the allegations was kind of a big turning point of a lot of people abandoning him, you know, from his old audience.
But at the same time, the week following, in the weeks, sorry, following the allegations coming out against him back in September of 2023, his subscriber rate went up by like 800% or something.
So people were flocking to him on the basis of his preemptive response and everything like that as well.
And the presentation from people like Tucker Carlson be like, oh, he's being attacked because he's a truth teller.
I'm like, okay, Type.
You know, so ultimately, probably a net gain.
What has been interesting is Russell.
Russell took a break a few weeks ago.
He was off for a couple of weeks.
And he made like big dramatic statements about like, hey, I need to go away and reassess what I can bring to this space, and if I should really be doing this at all and things like that.
And I was like, ooh, is Russell going to quit?
That would be interesting.
He didn't quit, no, at all.
He came back and doubled down, went on InfoWars, right?
But what I had noticed is obviously Russell has a personal deal with Rumble.
His contract is with Rumble.
That's how he gets paid.
And he has other revenue streams, obviously, but that's kind of the main one.
And what I had noticed around the same time as his break happening was that his actual kind of viewership numbers on Rumble have not been great.
They used to sit at like 400,000, half a million, something like that.
And like for a while now, they've been hovering around like 200,000 max on a good day.
And the rest of the time, half that.
And he's got, I don't know, 2.3, 4 million people on Rumble now, subscribing to him.
And so I'm like, that's low numbers in terms of subscribers versus people actually paying attention to your content.
And then you look at the likes of Stephen Crowder.
And obviously, you can't trust the numbers on Rumble, particularly for actual Rumble creators.
But Stephen Crowder has fewer subscribers and yet is pulling in supposedly, you know, 700,000 views on his Rumble and everything.
I'm like, hmm, okay.
And I kind of, I had wondered whether like perhaps popularity was waning and there were problems behind the scenes in terms of people actually giving a shit about what he has to say, which is possible because on the surface, you do kind of look at it and you have to be like, well, what does he actually bring to this space?
You know, He's got a useful story and a useful narrative to, you know, if he's going to appear on other people's shows, you know, in many ways, you know, being the martyr, and then you've got the, you know, redemption story and Christian's fucking lava redemption story, right?
But in terms of his own show, you watch it and it's just like, okay, you're just regurgitating the same bullshit, you know, from the news.
And you don't know that much.
You don't have that interesting a perspective.
You vaguely waffle about revolution every now and then.
You know what?
What do you have to offer, you know, to society on this?
You know, what do you bring to this space, you know, other than just more open shirts, I guess.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So, you know, it's difficult to tell because whether he's gained popularity or not.
Because in some ways, like some numbers have gone up, but others seem to have gone down and others seem deeply suspicious.
At the very least, he is certainly a much more popular figure within that sphere than he was a couple of years ago.
He seems to be much more accepted now than he was when I first started covering him.
I'm not sure that's a good thing for him, but we'll see.
Okay.
This one was a bit out of left field.
It's from Griff24.
Or Gruff24.
Sorry, I immediately went to the Welsh pronunciation of that.
It could be Gruff24, but I'm going to say Griff because I know people call Griff in this country.
What do you make of Netflix acquiring Warner Brothers?
The right wing are freaking out about it for some reason.
Yeah.
All right.
I'm going to finish now because I'm hungry and I want to eat something.
All right.
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