Laurie Penny and I on Brand and brocialism posted by Richard Seymour

Of course, I am very pleased by this collaboration.  Laurie Penny begins:

It’s a good job I wasn’t in the office last week, or the week before, when comedian, celebrity-shagger and saviour of the people Russell Brand was sashaying around. Not that there’s anything wrong with a good sashay. The revolution - as Brand’s guest edit of this magazine was modestly titled - could do with a little more flash and glitter. It’s just that had I been in the office I would probably have spent a portion of my working hours giggling nervously, or hiding in the loos writing confused journal entries. My feelings about Russell Brand, you see. They are so complex.

Brand is precisely the sort of swaggering manarchist I usually fancy. His rousing rhetoric, his narcissism, his history of drug abuse and his habit of speaking to and about women as vapid, ‘beautiful’ afterthoughts in a future utopian scenario remind me of every lovely, troubled student demagogue whose casual sexism I ever ignored because I liked their hair. I was proud to be featured in the ‘Revolution’ issue that this magazine put out, proud to be part of the team that produced it. But the discussions that have gone on since about leaders, about iconoclasm and about sexism on the left need to be answered.