Comedian Russell Brand was recently invited by The New Statesman to edit an issue of the magazine. Brand chose the topic of revolution.
In the magazine, Brand confesses to never having voted. This is not an act of apathy on his part, but conscious resistance to an existing paradigm:
I don’t vote because to me it seems like a tacit act of compliance; I know, I know my grandparents fought in two world wars (and one World Cup) so that I’d have the right to vote. Well, they were conned. As far as I’m concerned there is nothing to vote for. I feel it is a far more potent political act to completely renounce the current paradigm than to participate in even the most trivial and tokenistic manner, by obediently X-ing a little box.
Total revolution of consciousness and our entire social, political and economic system is what interests me, but that’s not on the ballot.
On BBC Newsnight, Jeremy Paxman took Brand to task and basically asked, why should we listen to what you have to say about politics when you’ve never voted? The resulting back-and-forth is astonishing. At one point Paxman calls Brand a “trivial man”; Brand, for his part, varies wildly between comedy and deadly seriousness. It all builds to a climax in which Brand stands up for his right to speak to power, even if he is just an actor:
If we can engage that feeling and change things, why wouldn’t we? Why is that naive? Why is that not my right because I’m an ‘actor’? I’ve taken the right. I don’t need the right from you. I don’t need the right from anybody. I’m taking it.
For the record, not voting is stupid. I hold with David Foster Wallace on this: not voting is actually just a passive form of voting; when you don’t vote all you do is increase the power of someone else’s vote. That complaint aside, Brand, whatever his personal failings, is revealing himself to be a smart, serious, and politically savvy person whose comedic persona hides an acid satirical eye. He first revealed this, to my knowledge, in a biting remembrance of Margaret Thatcher on the occasion of her death, and he’s clearly continuing it now.
He’s someone to watch. His intelligence and cultural influence means he’s not at all trivial.
