Russell Brand has been more and more active expressing his views in recent years, and Prospect magazine has apparently taken notice.
The British magazine originally ranked Brand among the 50 most influential world thinkers, later enlisting its readers to help narrow down the list to 10.
They answered the call, ranking Brand fourth among world thinkers, just ahead of Nobel Prize-winning New York Times columnist Paul Krugman.
Brand also finished ahead of high-profile Indian author Arundhati Roy, Israeli-American psychologist Daniel Kaheman, German philosopher Jurgen Habermas, British philosopher John Gray and American surgeon Atul Gawande.
Noting Brand’s inclusion on the list, Prospect magazine called him the “spiritual leader of Britain’s disaffected anti-capitalist youth.”
“In October he published ‘Revolution,’ a manifesto for the radical redistribution of wealth and power. Dismissed by his opponents as a clownish opportunist, he is nevertheless the most charismatic figure on Britain’s populist left,” the magazine wrote.
Over in America, Brand has been up to some mischief over the last few months, having attempted to break into Fox News headquarters in New York last October before getting kicked out by security. Since then, he’s continued his anti-Fox campaign; most recently, he compared the network to the terrorists who carried out the Charlie Hebdo attack.