What life is like down the conspiracy rabbit hole. Brent Lee

What life is like down the conspiracy rabbit hole. Brent Lee

Read time: 5 minutes

Brent Lee spent 15 years “down the rabbit hole”. He was a conspiracy theorist who believed the world was controlled by shadowy forces, that there was a “one world government” plotting to create an obedient, somnambulist blob of “enslaved” people. Lee was a “truther” and he had to wake everyone up.

In 2018 he managed to pull himself out of the conspiracy community and now helps other people get out too. In the last week, he has been watching closely as many alt-right, anti-establishment influencers and new-wave conspiracy theorists leap to the defence of Russell Brand, the comedian turned conspiracy theorist, as he is embroiled in sex assault allegations. He denies any wrongdoing.

Lee, 44, said: “You see different groups all coming together over the same thing, because in their world, if they’re coming for one of us they’re coming for all of us. They see this as a fight, a war against. They need to take down the establishment. This is saving humanity.”

Brent Lee managed to pull himself out of the conspiracy community

Brent Lee managed to pull himself out of the conspiracy community

This wider network of self-proclaimed “outsiders”defends, and amplifies, itself. Bound by their belief in libertarianism and free speech, it is an online mash-up of the neo-right, neo-left, spiritual gurus, old-school conspiracy theorists and the manosphere. They appear on one another’s podcasts and online chat shows and defend one another when one of them becomes a “victim” of a public “assassination”.

Lee continued: “The conspiracy influencers, like Russell Brand, would say: ‘I’m a truth teller, I’m just anti-establishment and telling you what’s really going on’. They believe they’re activists. But they’re just spreading conspiracy theories.”

In the past few days, an online army has been fighting Brand’s – and their own – ideological battle. Andrew Tate, the controversial influencer who is awaiting trial in Romania charged with rape and human trafficking, tweeted: “Welcome to the club.” Tommy Robinson, the far-right activist, blamed “the Matrix”, as did the conspiracy theorist Alex Jones. Laurence Fox, Elon Musk and Nigel Farage blamed nameless, powerful forces, as did the pundit Katie Hopkins.

Jacob Davey, who researches disinformation at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue in London, said that social networks had merged distinct groups into something more amorphous. “Ultimately these figures gain a sense of identity by seeing themselves as outsiders and challengers to the status quo, which seems more powerful than traditional left-right divides,” he said. “That means we often have strange bedfellows.”

It is certainly a web. The alt-media pundit Patrick Bet-David (7.37 million total followers on a variety of platforms) interviewed Andrew Tate (9.5 million); offered the conspiracy theorist Tucker Carlson (10.4 million) a show on his “network”; interviewed Alex Jones (350,000); and then went on Brand’s podcast. Brand (19.3 million) supported Carlson when he was fired from Fox and went on Joe Rogan’s podcast (27.4 million), who in turn interviewed Alex Jones, who interviewed Elon Musk (157 million), who then came out in support of Brand.

Alex Jones during his trial in Connecticut last year

Alex Jones during his trial in Connecticut last year

TYLER SIZEMORE/HEARST CONNECTICUT MEDIA/REUTERS

“Disenfranchisement seems to be the key to their unity,” said Joe Ondrak, head of UK investigations at Logically, a misinformation-tracking company. Their ideology, he said, was also based in the conspiracy narrative “the Great Reset”.

This theory was based on a white paper published by the World Economic Forum after the pandemic, said Ondrak, and “seen by them as a way that the ‘deep state’ was trying to control people in order to achieve the New World Order. It’s the big apocalypse that’s coming. The outcome of this would be the end of human freedoms as we know it, worse than we can ever imagine.”

Brand has produced more than 20 online videos about the Great Reset, beginning around 2021, with many racking up between one and three million views. He also started posting videos about whether the US planned the Russian coup, Covid lockdowns being exercises in social control, US “biolabs” in Ukraine, and interviews with figures including Robert F Kennedy Jr, who peddles conspiracy theories about his father’s assassination.

In July, he held his Community festival in Hay-on-Wye, Powys, an annual three-day event costing £250 a ticket. Followers who earnestly referred to him as “the messiah” and “the oracle” gathered to participate in guided meditations and intimacy sessions, and listen to talks intended to help them “stay awake” to how the media, government, pharmaceutical and food industries want to control them. Among retired white collar workers, yoga instructors and middle-class families, were loyal followers of Brand’s Rumble account.

The night before the sex claims were published, Brand decided to deny the allegations against him with a video on social media, rather than through his lawyers.

“I’m aware that you guys have been saying in the comments for a while, ‘watch out Russell, they’re coming for you, you’re getting too close to the truth, Russell Brand did not kill himself’,” he said. “It’s been clear to me, or at least it feels to me, like there’s a serious and concerted agenda to control these kind of spaces, and these kind of voices, and I mean my voice along with your voice.”

On the bookshelf behind him was The Fourth Turning, a manifesto which argues that the US is nearing a crisis, a looming apocalypse, plunging the nation into disaster. It is a favourite of Steve Bannon, Donald Trump’s former political strategist.

Brent Lee said that Brand’s term for his followers – “my awakening wonders” – is a “conspiracy dog whistle”. “He is saying we’re the ones that are truly awake, and he is the man out there fighting for us, spreading the truth.”

Being “awake”, he said, had its roots in Q-Anon, the conspiracy theory that believes it must fight against Satan-worshipping paedophiles in government, business and the media. Lee said: “To them, ‘waking up’ is about seeing that everything is controlled.” Brand’s reference to not killing himself is a shorthand used by conspiracy influencers to suggest they are under threat and their death might be covered up. Tate often says the same thing.

Lee himself moved away from conspiracy theories after the Brexit referendum and Trump’s election made him realise that people had power, that votes were real and “this one world government, new world order, doesn’t exist”. His journey out, however, has been “difficult” and “isolating”, repairing relationships as well as deeply researching all of the topics he had previously misinterpreted. Today he has a podcast helping to pull other people out of the rabbit hole, called Some Dare Call It Conspiracy.

“Conspiracy theorists want to save people, we must remember that,” he said. “And when things become heated, as they are now, it feels like you’re making headway, that you might actually get the message out, wake the world up to the control being asserted by the powers. Conspiracism is defined by their unity so they have to protect each other. It is a leaderless cult.”