An open letter unwittingly supporting hate speech has been signed by over a hundred music industry artists including Jarvis Cocker’s Pulp, Paul Weller, Massive Attack, Fontaines DC and Bicep. The anti-Israel rapper activist Lowkey is another.
That’s not how they see it, of course. But like a pratfall of clowns who stumble upon a gun, they have picked up the highfalutin language used by defenders of democracy and freedom of expression and while directing it at what they see as an establishment conspiracy to silence politically engaged artists, they have shot themselves in the foot.
With the moral clarity of Voltaire – that chap who would defend to the death the right of others to express opinions he opposed - the letter argues that agreeing or disagreeing with the views of Belfast rap trio Kneecap is not the point. What matters is that political and music industry leaders have a duty to defend artists’ “creative expression” rather than “seek to silence views which oppose their own.”
Be more like Voltaire is the letter’s message, though it doesn’t use his name. So what is the creative expression that has mobilised the defence of some of pop and rock's greatest artists? Well there are two, though they sound more like slogans to me. One is “Kill your MP” the other is “Up Hamas. Up Hezbollah”.
Each was belted out through a mic to hundreds of ecstatic fans at gigs in 2024 and 2023 respectively. The police are investigating. Politicians are piling on. Kneecap and its supporters say it’s all because they spoke their mind at the recent Coachella festival where they performed in front of projected signs that read Free Palestine and F*ck Israel. Establishment forces are attempting to silence these views, says the pro-Kneecap camp. Yet it is not these views that are being investigated. What is being investigated is the call to murder politicians and the illegal support of Hamas.
The trio's name and the IRA garb that they wear on stage suggests that they primarily identify with the armed and unarmed struggle to unite Ireland. Their cry of "Up Hamas” has deliberate echos with the “Up IRA/Ra” slogan often heard during the troubles.
Yet would Kneecap so identify with the IRA if the tactics used by the terrorists resulted in many women and girls being found dead, partially naked, with hands tied, legs spread and signs of mutilation and abuse in the genital areas? Would the garb they wear be quite so chic?
One such woman was Gal Abdush, a mother of two who as Hamas closed in on her on October 7, 2023 sent a WhatsApp message to her family that read “You don’t understand”.
If she could she might now send versions of it to Kneecap and their supporters: You don’t understand the horror of what they did to me. And if you do you’re complicit in it.
"Let us be unequivocal,” says Kneecap. “We do not, and have never, supported Hamas or Hezbollah” which as the video shows is demonstrably a lie.
They have also accused their critics of weaponising the videos taken at their gigs. But that’s not weaponing. That is reporting. Weaponising is what independent investigators found Hamas did when they “weaponised sexual violence against women and girls in a pattern of rape, mutilation and extreme brutality” (New York Times, March 2024). That’s weaponising. Weaponing is then saying “Up Hamas” into a mic to hundreds if not thousands of your fans.
But not to Pulp, Paul Weller, Massive Attack and the rest. For them it is “creative expression”. So would they also have no objection to the slew of virulently anti-Muslim and antisemitic white supremacist NSBM (National Socialism Black Metal) and RAC (Rock Against Communism) music that pounds out at festivals in Europe and on streaming platforms, because that too is “creative expression”?
The problem is wider than Kneecap. It is the culture of self-righteous ignorance that dominates the anti-Israel position.
Where, is the artists’ letter supporting the “creative expression” of Israeli musician Dudu Tassa whose performances with Radiohead's Jonny Greenwood have been cancelled due to threats of violence received by the venues? Where indeed.
