Just read Brand's 4500 word manifesto for revolution in the New Statesman.
I don't often read the New Statesman so I am not used to reading the puerile, phoney philosophy of pseuds.
"Perhaps this is why there is currently no genuinely popular left-wing movement to counter Ukip, the EDL and the Tea Party; for an ideology that is defined by inclusiveness, socialism has become in practice quite exclusive. Plus a bit too serious, too much up its own fundament and not enough fun."
This is really what the left are worried about. They know that populism is a phenomenon of the right and of papers like the Daily Mail and will never be the province of the pseud and progressive. The reason is that people want something serious, not someting fun and up its fundament like Brand.
"When Ali G, who had joined protesters attempting to prevent a forest being felled to make way for a road, shouted across the barricade, “You may take our trees, but you’ll never take our freedom,” I identified more with Baron Cohen’s amoral trickster than the stern activist who aggressively admonished him: “This is serious, you cunt.”"
This is where Brand's shortcomings become evident. He isn't serious, he is a clown, and populist parties and papers appeal to the people because they aren't clowns and address serious issues that concern people.
"The right has all the advantages, just as the devil has all the best tunes. Conservatism appeals to our selfishness and fear, our desire and self-interest; they neatly nurture and then harvest the inherent and incubating individualism."
The right has the advantages because it is closer to human nature and accepts the way people are rather than trying to change them into an idealised view of humanity that is fundamentally unreal and up its fundament.
"The reality is we have a spherical ecosystem, suspended in, as far as we know, infinite space upon which there are billions of carbon-based life forms, of which we presume ourselves to be the most important, and a limited amount of resources."
The only systems we can afford to employ are those that rationally serve the planet first, then all humanity.
....
"We are mammals on a planet, who now face a struggle for survival if our species is to avoid expiry."
There is the old elitist lie of the billionaires, plutocrats and puppet politicians who want to curb human population by using the lie and scare that each human being's "carbon footprint" is harming "the planet". Brand, the naive poseur, follows in the steps of the elite's carbon footprint lie.
He wants a revolution based on spiritual values. Maybe this type of thing
"If like the Celtic people we revered the rivers we would prioritise this sacred knowledge and curtail the attempts of any that sought to pollute the rivers. If like the Nordic people we believed the souls of our ancestors lived in the trees, this connection would make mass deforestation anathema. If like the native people of America we believed God was in the soil what would our intuitive response be to the implementation of fracking?"
But we have moved on, we no longer believe that "the soul of our ancestors lived in trees".
The left are desperate to put this clown upfront and they take him seriously and give him space in the New Statesman and on Newsnight in the hope that he can convince the naive. It shows how out of touch and irrelevant they are. They hope he can lead a populist movement of the left to counter the real and growing populist movements of the right.
But just like their phoney scare and scam of "catastrophic climate change", they are heading towards catastrophic doom because the people don't believe the climate scam and they don't believe that the Left are serious.
Human beings are not heading towards extinction, but the Left's discredited philosophy and phoney funny men's ideas are redundant and heading for extinction.