Continuing this weekend’s trend of celebrities taking to the Guardian in a passionately worded, eloquent op-ed to explain what’s up, Russell Brand has written an incredibly profound essay on his controversial performance at the GQ awards on September 3 where he was chided heavily for making a reference to Hugo Boss‘ sordid past as designer and supplier for the National Socialist Party Nazi uniforms during the 1930’s.
Brand’s infamous comment of, “The Nazis did have flaws, but, you know, they did look fucking fantastic, let’s face it, while they were killing people on the basis of their religion and sexuality,” caused an uproar and allegedly had Brand kicked out of the event prematurely. To fight back at the criticism he recieved from his slip of the tongue that obviously went horribly wrong, Russell Brand sprinkles his Guardian op-ed with blatant jabs at the gaudiness of the GQ event, saying, “In case you don’t know, these parties aren’t like real parties. It’s fabricated fun, imposed from the outside. A vision of what squares imagine cool people might do set on a spaceship. Or in Moloko.”
Brand described the moment he made the joke as, “I could see the room dividing as I spoke. I could hear the laughter of some and louder still silence of others,” and said that after he spoke the event turned sour: “It had the vibe of a wedding dinner where the best man’s speech had revealed the groom’s infidelity. With Hitler.”
Brand signed off by preaching about the relationship between corporations and sponsors, and the harrowing effects that these partnerships have on the coddling of free speech, of nepotism and corruption: “If you can’t criticise Hugo Boss at the GQ awards because they own the event, do you think it is significant that energy companies donate to the Tory party? Will that affect government policy?”
Read Brand’s impeccably composed op-ed in its entirety here.
