Glastonbury’s Kneecap censorship has backfired
unherd.com
The BBC refused to provide a live stream of Kneecap’s performance at Glastonbury yesterday, after a member of the Irish hip hop trio was charged with a terror offence for allegedly waving a Hezbollah flag at a concert last year. It was therefore unfortunate that the preceding act, Bob Vylan, decided to lead chants of [...]Read More...

The BBC refused to provide a live stream of Kneecap’s performance at Glastonbury yesterday, after a member of the Irish hip hop trio was charged with a terror offence for allegedly waving a Hezbollah flag at a concert last year. It was therefore unfortunate that the preceding act, Bob Vylan, decided to lead chants of “death to the IDF” to crowds saturated with Palestinians flags. Even more embarrassingly for the BBC, the screen behind the two members of Bob Vylan bore the caption: “Free Palestine. The United Nations have called it a genocide. The BBC calls it a ‘conflict’.” Kneecap themselves conducted chants of “fuck Keir Starmer” as a clapback to the Prime Minister saying that their appearance on the Glastonbury stage would not be “appropriate”.

Archived version: https://archive.is/20250629072242/https://unherd.com/newsroom/glastonburys-kneecap-censorship-has-backfired/

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  • reallykindasorta@slrpnk.net
    29·
    3 days ago

    The band’s solution when criticised for this has been to retreat into an outwardly apolitical humanitarianism that just wants Gazan civilians to stop being massacred by the IDF.

    So now it’s ‘ outwardly apolitical’ to be vocally against the genocide? Shit take

    • LainTrain@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      2·
      3 days ago

      I think what it means is that it’s expressing the concern for civilians without expressing support for a particular side or claiming that one side is more/less correct or deserves to exist.

      It doesn’t mean they don’t have a side or don’t think that one side is clearly in the wrong and there are pretty obvious geopolitical reasons for why these things are happening. It’s just a good strategy optics-wise to make broad humanitarian appeals instead of voicing something more specific, it’s a good way to make the opposition look bad.

    • Womble@lemmy.worldEnglish
      11·
      2 days ago

      Compared to

      It’s easy when you’re an obscure band to bellow “kill your local MP” or bray “up Hamas, up Hezbollah”.

      Yeah, pretty much. Very few people would argue against stopping killing Gazan civilians (even if they are not willing to back the measures that would result in that, like applying real presure to Israel), that makes it a fairly apolictial thing to say. Advocating killing MPs or supporting Iranian proxies is certainly a lot more contencious.