There’s something that, as a feminist, I envy about Right-wing men; they have one another’s backs. Nowhere is this clearer than the bro-fest currently rallying around Russell Brand, who has been charged with rape and sexual assault for offences which took place between 1999-2005. He is due to appear in court next month.

Once a scruffy lothario with a drug habit and now a messiah for the chronically online, Brand is the latest to receive the chest-thumping, back-slapping loyalty of his red-pilled disciples. He responded to the allegations with a video admitting to a sinful past of sex and drug addictions, while drawing a line at non-consensual activity. “I am not a rapist,” he stated with vehemence, while smiling at his loving family off camera.

As with Andrew Tate, Brand’s fanboys insist he’s a martyr of the establishment. The manosphere podcasters, the Trumpian cheerleaders and the faux philosophers with ring lights have all dutifully circled the wagons. Conservative commentator Charlie Kirk called the case a “political prosecution”, noting — accurately but irrelevantly — that the allegations surfaced only after Brand became a vocal critic of Government and Covid narratives. When challenged, Kirk offered a gem of childlike earnestness: “I know him.”

Meanwhile, influencer Kaizen D. Asiedu, offered his own analysis to his 300,000 followers: “There’s a pattern… Men who challenge Western governments keep getting accused of rape — 20 years later.” He concluded: “Masculinity is under attack.”

In a sense, they’re right. A string of high-profile men have recently found themselves facing court. But to frame this as a political purge of dissident voices is to ignore a darker, more mundane truth: sexual violence is all too common, and so is silence around it. The allegations against Brand date from before his conversion to Christianity and departure from the Guardianista set. Whether or not they are found to have substance, it is a fact that women have been questioning his behaviour for a long time.

Five years after he was rightly lambasted for his grotesque 2008 prank call to actor Andrew Sachs, he insisted the backlash wasn’t about his behaviour. Rather, Brand blamed “a pre-existing agenda in privately-owned media to destabilise, attack and diminish the BBC”. Fast-forward to today, and the scapegoat has changed: now it’s the liberal media establishment supposedly out to get him. Same playbook, different villain.

The uncomfortable truth underscoring these arguments is this: everyone reading this has met a rapist. A 2014 study in Violence and Gender found that 31% of male students said they’d force a woman to have sex if they knew they’d get away with it. Swap in the word “rape” and that number drops to 13%, proving not a higher moral standard, just a better grasp of optics. This isn’t a statistical blip. Study after study repeats the same pattern: about a third of men say they’d coerce sex if they thought they could get away with it. Around 10-15% admit to having done it. That’s not a fringe group; that’s a stable proportion of your workplace, your gym, your group chat.

In short, there are more dangerous men than we care to acknowledge and no political tribe can claim to be free of them. Though notably, when Left-leaning actor Kevin Spacey was accused of sexual assault, and later cleared, there wasn’t a campaign to suggest that he was being persecuted for his beliefs. Similarly, there has been no attempt to claim that liberal writer Neil Gaiman, who stands accused of sexual assault, is a victim of the establishment.

Those on the counter-cultural fringes of online politics who’ve come out batting for Brand have made a very simple error; they’ve made the lazy assumption that men they agree with must be good guys. But morality is not a matter of being Left or Right, on the mainstream or the counterculture. Brand and Tate are spiritual kin: two grifters claiming persecution while monetising male resentment and preaching from their digital pulpits. Both found God (different brands, same marketing strategy), both claim to be silenced, and both are loudly defended by men desperate to believe it.

The case against Brand isn’t a conspiracy. Whether he is found to be guilty or innocent is for the courts to decide. But the knee-jerk instinct to suggest his accusers are part of a shadowy plot shows that, for the Online Right as well as the progressive Left, tribalism trumps due process.

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Josephine Bartosch is assistant editor at The Critic and co-author of the forthcoming book Pornocracy.

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