Last September, British comedian turned YouTube host Russell Brand stunned the liberal blogosphere with his podcast titled “Trump was RIGHT About Clinton & Russia Collusion!!”
“Russell Brand, an actor typically known for his more liberal political opinions, is starting to lean heavily into right-wing conspiracies on his YouTube channel, leaving fans flummoxed and upset,” bellowed a disenchanted writer at left-leaning media site, The Wrap.
He’s done it again.
In a podcast which aired during the World Economic Forum’s gathering in Davos, Switzerland, last week, Brand took aim at the organization’s CEO Klaus Schwab and the leaders of big pharma. In often hilarious fashion, he called out these masters of the universe for their disingenuousness.
The video below features a discussion between Schwab and Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla.
“You’re able to watch an agenda being established at a WEF conference in realtime,” Brand told his viewers.
“This is a demonstration of how power operates, at least non-official power. It’s not concealed.” Referring to his previous interview with Edgar Snowden, Brand said, “‘The worst conspiracies are … things that you can see. You’re being spied on, everything’s run economically, regulation is set from centralized organizations.’ You can watch it happen, they’re (Schwab and Bourla) having a conversation on the bloody telly.”
But “they don’t call it conspiracy, they call it cooperation.”
Brand elaborates on how lucrative the Covid vaccine has been for Pfizer. It was a literal cash cow for the company in 2021 and continues to be. Pfizer reported total 2021 revenue was $81 billion vs. less than $42 billion the previous year. The vaccine contributed $36.8 billion to revenue in 2021 and is forecast to add $50 billion in 2022. The company reported 2021 net profit of $22 billion, which more than doubled 2020’s net income of just over $9 billion.
And he asks, “Is that too much profit to make during a period of international crisis? … And if an international crisis is really good for the most powerful interests in the world, do you worry about international crises starting to be regarded as a positive thing?”
Brand cites a February op-ed written by Nick Dearden, the director of Global Justice Now, a London-based social justice organization, titled, “Putting big pharma in charge of global vaccine rollout was a big mistake.” The piece was published by The Guardian.
With all of the lip service the left pays to equity, there was nothing equitable about the rollout of the Covid vaccines, Dearden argued. “Covid-19 has been a PR coup” for big pharma.
“The global vaccine rollout has created levels of inequality so great that many call it a ‘vaccine apartheid’,” Dearden wrote. “Pharmaceutical corporations like Pfizer have led this rollout, setting the terms by which they sell vaccines and deciding who to prioritise. Ultimately, their approach affects who does, and does not, receive vaccines.
According to Dearden: “The company claims that its vaccine costs just under £5 per dose to produce. Others have suggested it could be much cheaper. … The UK government paid £18 a shot for its first order, £22 for its most recent purchase.
“It has been claimed that the company initially tried to pitch their medicine to the US government for an eye-popping $100 a dose. Tom Frieden, a former director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, accused the firm of ‘war profiteering.'”
“Pfizer has sold the vast majority of its doses to the richest countries in the world – a strategy sure to keep its profits high. If you look at its global distribution, Pfizer sells a tiny proportion of its vaccines to low-income countries. By last October, Pfizer had sold a measly 1.3% of its supply to Covax, the international body set up to try to ensure fairer access to vaccines.”
After reading portions of Dearden’s piece, Brand asks, regardless of how one feels about the vaccines and the lockdowns, “shouldn’t they [the vaccines] have been made readily available in poorer countries, or does it only matter that richer countries have access to that medicine?”
And then Brand drops the bomb. He declares that “science follows the money.” It’s all about the Benjamins baby, as Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota so eloquently tweeted a while back.
Brand explained, “There’s a problem there, particularly when these ideas are couched in neoliberalist politics. They’re all about fairness and sharing and kindness and whenever there’s any cynicism and doubt, you’re a conspiracy theorist, you’re a Nazi, you’re against progress, follow the science. We’ve just heard, the problem with following the science is that the science follows the money. That’s the issue. Science is a subset of commerce.
“Truly objective science, as is being suggested here, independent networks focused on scientific endeavor, of course we want that. You’d have to be a bloody idiot to sort of deny the effectiveness of bloody geniuses in laboratories looking at cells and examining the behavior of viruses and medicines.
“But science within extreme commercial and financial imperatives we just accept as normal because none of us appreciate the water that we swim in. … But it’s a problem if you present it as medically effective, socially responsible, personally necessary,” he concludes. “There are many, many questions that are left unanswered and not questioned that are going to be asked by Klaus Schwab at the bloody Davos WEF puff piece factory that’s primary intention, it seems to me, is to create a globalist technocracy, limit your individual power, your community collective, even your national power.”
Brand’s analysis is surprisingly shrewd and truly unexpected from the comedian whom many of us remember from the 2011 remake of the film “Arthur,” a comedy about a wealthy, pampered, irresponsible, alcoholic, but eternally lovable playboy.
He nailed it when he said Schwab wants a global system that limits personal freedom and national power. That comment alone is sure to make liberal heads explode.
What does it say when a somewhat “out there” movie star makes more sense than the vast majority of the establishment media?
Brand’s honesty is refreshing and it would be nice to hear something resembling the truth from members of the liberal elite. But for them, maintaining their hold on political power trumps the truth.
And it really is just as simple as that.
A previous version of this article was published on The Western Journal.
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