With the ink still drying on the Online Safety Bill, the chair of the Culture, Sport and Media Committee, Dame Caroline Dinenage MP, has written to Rumble (and a similar letter to TikTok):
This is, it is fair to say, one organ of the state presuming guilt and demanding summary punishment through demonetisation. At what point do considerations set in of whether Brand can receive a fair trial in the courts, should he be charged, when legacy media and, apparently, the government have already declared him guilty? I am no legal expert, but is it impossible for a potential future lawyer to make this argument on his behalf, enhancing the risk that the (alleged) victim(s) will not receive justice?
Rumble has told Dinenage to stuff her letter up her arse (metaphorically):
Twitter has reacted with derision at government overreach. Still, I fear that this indicates that the government will be heading for serial confrontations with Rumble, on whose content and creators The Guardian has already rolled out a hit piece.
Who, though, is Dame Caroline Dinenage? Before her current role, she was the Minister of State for Digital and Culture in the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport from February 2020 until September 2021. She was an architect of the Online Safety Bill, including its notorious ‘legal but harmful’ provisions, which had to be removed by Michelle Donelan last November to ensure passage through the lower and upper Houses. One wonders if Dinenage mistakenly thinks the provisions remain in place.
Probably not a big deal, but given her praise of YouTube in her letter, it is worth mentioning this morsel from the UK Parliament’s Register of Interests (courtesy of David Atherton of The European Conservative, who dug this out and posted it on Twitter):
More worthy of consideration, certainly, is the identity of her husband, Baron Mark Lancaster MP. Lancaster was Deputy Commander of the 77th Brigade from June 2018 to July 2020. The actions during the pandemic of the 77th, long written off as a conspiracy theory online, were revealed in Big Brother Watch’s fine report earlier this year: ‘Ministry of Truth; The secretive government units spying on your speech’.
It is evident that Dinenage is up to her armpits in the ‘war on misinformation’. This is grist to the mill of those whom she targets. Those people, that is, whose ‘conspiracy theories’ about the pandemic daily look increasingly like ‘conspiracy facts’ (lab leaks, lockdown harms, vaccine effectiveness, vaccine safety, etc.); those who question the mono-narrative of legacy media.
Risking a hostage to fortune at the time, I had only made one comment online on the Russell Brand affair before today, after his outing himself, but prior to the Channel 4 documentary and story in The Times:
”I’ve never had much time for Brand; I don’t find him remotely funny, rather irritating, in fact. I’ve watched a few of his interviews with people I’m interested in, where he usually turns off the babble and listens.
Nevertheless, many others do like him; he’s got over 11 million followers on Twitter, well over 6 million on YouTube, and well over a million on Rumble. He spends his time challenging the mono-narrative. This paints a target on his back.
Lo and behold, arch-establishment defender of the progressive elites, Channel 4, and arch-establishment defender of the technocratic centre, the ToL, are apparently going to launch a full-scale assault on him later today.
Now, it’s entirely possible he is guilty of sexual offences; Twitter tells me that such allegations may have swirled around him for years, so we have to wait and see what they have. However, I am slightly puzzled as to why, if there is clear evidence, he has not been arrested and questioned and/or prosecuted for them in the past.
Something seems very off when Channel 4 go to the length of making a 90-minute programme about him to air their allegations. Why have they not gone straight to the police/CPS? Maybe they will, or the police will take an interest after making what I anticipate will be a full-on hatchet job and personality attack to undermine his message and poison public sentiment towards him.
Meanwhile, Epstein’s clients walk around, untroubled by any significant legacy media investigations. Strange, that.”
I stand by those words today. I despair at all those blind loyalists who think there is nothing to see here and that this is all a fabrication by the state and corporate media. These are serious allegations, which may be appropriately evidenced, and to in any way demean his alleged victims is despicable. He is a narcissist and serial ‘Shagger of the Year’, but I don’t know if he is guilty, nor do you.
Nevertheless, I have never seen such a ferocious feeding frenzy by legacy media. They don’t help themselves by their lack of objectivity or failure to display any presumption of innocence. Brand has already been tried and convicted by them (the relationship between trial by media and trial by law has been at the centre of debate for days, and I won’t bore you by rehearsing it here). Part of this onslaught has been the accusation that Brand knew this was coming and has been developing an anti-establishment cult to protect himself. If ever there was a conspiracy theory, then this is one, and it is being created by legacy media journalists.
The actions of YouTube in demonetising him, and now an organ of the state seeking his demonetisation elsewhere, don’t help the case that this is all nothing other than regular journalism either. If ever you wanted to do something that would fuel those who believe that this is all a deep-state operation to crush online dissent, then Dame Caroline Dinenage has done it here.
Oh OK done it by going to your publication page.
How do I subscribe to you?