Russell Brand misses the point, but on the minute of silence he is on to something

Anarchist sewer mouth Russell Brand has hit out against today’s minute of silence in remembrance of those who perished in the dreadful Tunisian beach massacre last week. In a video on his YouTube channel, he describes it as an “empty gesture,” and “bullshit.” I think he is missing the point, but he might be on to something.


Let me be clear, I will observe the silence, if for no other reason than I’ve got a minute to spare for quiet reflection. I have no good reason not to.

Brand has encouraged people not to. He believes it is a waste of time when we are bombing these countries and selling arms, and this is what’s causing the problem in the first place. I might be losing it, Russell, but I didn’t think we’d bombed Tunisia. But let’s not get bogged down in the detail eh?

His point is that David Cameron, in the name of propaganda, draws connections with the attacks in Kuwait, Tunisia and France on that same bloody day, but not between our own actions in various countries.

He also believes that by describing these attacks as ‘Islamic,’ we are failing to acknowledge that the heroic medics and hotel workers who provided a human shield were also Muslim. Bonkers! IF a tough line isn’t taken, it’s probably those Muslims who we’ll have betrayed the most.

It is dangerous to simply argue that this Extremism isn’t ‘Islamic.’ True, for most Muslims, it is an appallingly twisted version of their religion which they don’t recognise, but it is not remotely sensible to dismiss as irrelevant, the religious theology of Islamic State. If we do, we won’t understand it effectively enough to fight it.

Russell Brand’s arguments are clearly grounded in ideological nonsense that has little factual basis, and a foolish denial of the origins of the threat we face. Yet there are sensible arguments against the silence, or rather, against its imposition by David Cameron.
As a sensible columnist challengingly asked earlier this week, would we still be having a minute’s silence if one of those tourists had been killed each day in June, as opposed to all in one dreadful attack? It is doubtful.

Furthermore, would we be having the silence if it were 20 tourists, 10, 5, or even just the one? Where exactly is the arbitrary point at which it no longer should command a minute of our time?

Supposing a far smaller proportion of those killed were British, what then? Why is the poor chap beheaded in France on the same day not included in this gesture? Why didn’t we have a minute for the Charleston victims, or those killed in the Paris atrocities?
I am instinctively uncomfortable with politicians, however sincere, making a value judgement for me on which tragedies I am obliged to show respect.

It is clearly an attempt to ensure my solidarity with a cause to which the tragedy has now become associated with. You wouldn’t find the government telling us to be silent in remembrance of the next boatload of feckless migrants to drown in the sea.
I also dislike being told how I am supposed to show that respect. You can be sure that churches will have prayed, schools would have reflected and tried to explain why this kind of thing happens to their pupils, and individuals will have taken to their hearts the plight of those whose lives are forever changed. People will have done their acts of remembrance as they saw fit, before the Nanny State told them what to do.
For me, this is not how I would like to remember. Piping down for a minute will do nothing to advance my understanding of the cause of what happened.

It won’t increase the extent to which I claim the tragedy as my own, as I’ll still be left with the selfish thought “Thank God it wasn’t some-one I loved.”

It won’t increase my sympathy or sadness. I’ve heard the stories, I’ve seen the devastated relatives and the bodies coming back. I already know it’s an awful injustice. My emotional response is already formed. The silence feels fake and forced.

I’m being asked to participate in some strange act of collective grief in a nation that has become far too sentimental and overly emotional. It’s not helpful.

Statistics and numbers are nothing to the individuals mourning some-one they loved. For every family, this is a loss that is shattering and devastating beyond belief. How on earth, then, can it give them the slightest comfort to know that people, whether willing or not, will participate through compulsion in this act of solidarity which only came in to being precisely because of the statistics and numbers I’ve just said are of such little relevance to the extent of the blow to those individuals?

To put it another way (and I apologise for the crudeness), how comforting is it to Joe Blog’s family to know that Joe Blog’s death is being remembered only because Jack Blogs died as well, round about the same time?

Russell Brand’s political objections to a small gesture of respect are misguided. It is the warped logic of using numbers, geography and time scales to place this tragedy higher up in the national consciousness by politicians that is the real issue.

It is the idea that enforced remembrance has some virtue over leaving those who are willing to get on with it in their own time and their own way that is wrong.

It’s the reason why, since I’m not averse to paying my respects, I’ll be observing the silence, but doing so with gritted teeth and a feeling of awkwardness and profound insincerity.