Killer pilot Andeas Lubitz’s mental illness was caused by living in a capitalist society, Russell Brand has claimed.

In his latest video, the activist comedian says that 50 percent of people will suffer from a mental illness at some point in their lifetimes, asking: “Why is it happening all the time? Why are we living in the times of a mental illness plague?”

The reason, he says, is Fox News.

“The reason Fox News can’t be honest about what causes mental illness is that Fox News IS what causes mental illness.

“Fox News are the propaganda machine of capitalism – a system that separates us from one another and tells us the way to solve our individual problems is through purchasing, through buying things, through identifying primarily through our roles as consumers, not as active citizens or participants in society, members in communities that should care about others, but people who shouldn’t be condemning those who are weaker, vilifying people that act in any way that’s unusual.

“We know in the core of our being that that isn’t right, so it creates a friction and a tension. We know that what [Fox News] is saying isn’t true.”

Brand then goes on to link the Germanwings crash with Adolf Hitler and the rise of Islamic State:

“The reality is [Lubitz] lived in a system that causes individuals to malfunction, because we have a lack of cohesion, a lack of connection and a lack of truth.

“If you want incidents like this, and like the montage at the beginning suggested, less mad individuals whether it’s Adolf Hitler, Isis, or the fella crashing the plane, if you want less problems of this nature, I believe the solution is not to look at madness, darkness and evil as an outside issue, but as an internal issue.”

He concludes by saying that Fox News and “the big corporations” want this system to continue:

“We can never have that conversation properly because FOX News and big corporations benefit from things being the way they are.”