The problem I see with brutalist webdesign is that it focuses on the result instead of the process. Applying brutalism principles on the process (the upfront design and the actual code) would let beauty emerge by itself indeed, in a much more honest way.
The process is what is focused on the result: if you carefully avoid putting useless cruft in your pages, you get clean pages.
It isn't a trivial principle because it has to be applied to a great variety of design choices with a great variety of technical means to meet a great variety of purposes.
