The heroes he talks about are familiar from many a teenager's bedroom wall: Gandhi and Guevara, Malcolm X and Jesus. Brand gives an account of each, pointedly drawing attention not only to their virtues but also their feet of clay. Later, he shows us Gandhi being used to sell computers and Che advertising Mercedes-Benz. But this was a man who believed in communism, about which Brand is unfashionably enthusiastic. Discrediting it because the Russians used it wrongly, he says, is like blaming Steve Jobs because Brand uses his iPad mainly for porn.
His point is, in a world where $40bn could eradicate poverty, and $21tn is held by the rich in offshore accounts, we need another Malcolm X, and a radical change in our values.
in a set that elsewhere takes aim at the hidden ideologies of the media (how dare it be called "the news" and not "some news"?) and the futility of putting people on pedestals ... Brand ridicules a portrait of Jesus wearing a crucifix necklace ("spoiler alert!") or looks at Fox News' hostility to immigrants through a cosmic lens: "Keep still on the rock floating through infinite space!"
