In his quest for a global revolution, political activist Russell Brand is eyeing crypto currency and crowd funding as a way of negating and avoiding the capitalist system. Such combination can set the stage for a new era, believes RT’s Max Keiser.
Russel Brand has long
been promoting organized civil disobedience to bring about a
political revolution and fair distribution of wealth unfeasible
under capitalism. With his calls sometimes bordering on anarchy,
Brand has emerged as a leftist political figure seeking social
justice and decentralization of state control over the
individual.
“I think what is important is to organize and to disobey. To
be really, really disobedient. Revolution is required. It is not
a revolution of radical ideas, but simply the implementation of
the ideas that they say we already have,” Brand was telling
his supporters as he campaigned for resistance.
Now Brand has taken one of these revolutionary ideas, the
cryptocurrency, and teamed up with StartJoin crowdfunding
platform to help people break away from conventional monetary and
financial systems.
“Essentially what we need is alternative systems and models,
and alternative currency is an integral part of that,” Brand
told Max Kaiser, the co-guru behind the financial side of the
StartCOIN project and the host of RT’s Kaiser Report.
“I’m very interested in setting up social enterprises, such
as our cafe that we’ve started, replicating that model more and
more,” Brand explained. “Small businesses, practical,
functional things where people can come together in an
entrepreneurial spirit, creatively, and work together – hopefully
ultimately using an alternative currency and completely negating
and avoiding the system.”
“The more I deal with bureaucracy, the more I deal with
consumerism, the more I think that there is really very little it
can offer us,” he added.
Brand’s latest project is aimed at promoting digital literacy, to
further boost online activism. By raising £150,000 for at least
1,000 laptops he is planning to give away for free,
Brand wants to make the voices of even the most marginalized
individuals in the community heard.
And now let’s get the digital literacy project funded! http://t.co/KrHUVcsXvF #digitalliteracy#hackney#youthworkshttps://t.co/Db4JyyeuP5
— StartJOIN (@StartJOIN) April
15, 2015
StartJOIN platform calls itself a “new style of crowd funding
technology” that utilizes social media and crowd technology
to create a launch pad for projects to flourish. The platform
rewards active community members with crypto-coins that can be on
backing other projects, exchanged or cashed out.
“This is quantitative easing for the people, you can spend it
on the projects that you are endorsing and behind,” Max
Keiser stated, adding that one could of course cash these coins
out as well. “This is a currency that could be a currency of
the revolution.”
The emergence of
decentralized crypto currencies such as Bitcoin now challenging
central banks has redefined the “economics and
money”of the 21
century, said Keiser.
“Bitcoin, StarCOIN and StartJOIN, combined with Russel
Brand’s political revolution can now set the stage for a new
era,” Kaiser proudly proclaimed.
In one of his previous projects, Brand asked backers to help make
StartCOIN a “true currency of the people, for the
people” and after the goal was reached – distributed
hundreds of self-branded scratch cards with
thousands of free StartCOINs.
#Startcoin
Scratch-cards. Thank you @StartJOIN We Love
Startcoin……. pic.twitter.com/buT884vEjT
— Europe Crypto Group (@alexcrypto) April
2, 2015
“Part of the beauty
of StarCoin is that we have approximately $2-3 million to give
away in the next 2-3 months,” Kaiser says.
“We’re giving millions of dollars away to people using
scratch cards and using it online to fund these projects that are
funding the basis of a political revolution that is Russel
Brand’s revolution. So this is a new economy, a new
currency.”