This week, two news events were in the media - one, the bombing of a cafe by the IDF which killed 30 odd Palestinians including children, and two, Bobby Vylan's chant to the crowd which rhymed 'death to the IDF' resulted in the BBC apologising for live streaming it, their US visas being revoked (hhaha America - so you don't champion freedom of speech after all?) and their upcoming Manchester gig being cancelled and a police investigation.
Cue outrage - as if a punk rap's decrying of an army who are - and let's make this clear - not defending itself, but outright committing genocide whilst the world watches and no one does anything. Yes, it's a holocaust. Yes, I can make that comparision because it's true - the indiscriminate, machine like murder of a people by the IDF is no different to the deaath camps in Nazi Germany and we'd have no problem saying 'death to the death camps' now would we?
You have to understand that Glastonbury is a huge event in the British calender, so there's no wonder there's a headline, but the outrage is disproportionate to what happened and in fact is absolutely hypocritical and the bandwidth given to this subject means we are turned away from cafes being bombed in Gaza and Israeli soldiers admitting they are shooting to kill civilians looking for aid in Gaza. But hey, turn away from that and let's police the words of a musician.
Why isn't the media looking at the horror of what Palestinians are suffering day by day - slaughter and massacre and war crimes? Why isn't the attention on that?
But by all means, let's talk about it.
For all the idiots out there saying that politics shouldn't be at a music festival, that's precisely where protest and anger and rallys take place. If the arts can't speak to grief, war, class divides, capitalism, then the machine we once raged against has won. And to be suprised that a booking like Bobby Vylan vocally decried the dismantling of an violent, genocidal army beggars belief. I've never heard of them but listening now, their lyrics suggest that Vylan was always going to challenge what was going on:
Violent (it makes me someone I don't wanna be)
So violent (driving some place I don't want to be)
Please, please, no violence (yeah, it's what they've always given me)
Someone's always telling me
"Just calm down and let it be"
When no one is listening to our protests, how exactly do you expect us to react? It's one thing to criticise the violence of lyrics like 'death to the IDF', and quite another to have the power to enact change and yet do nothing about it because stopping genocide doesn't serve your interests.
Violent language asks us to pay attention. It begs us to be uncomfortable. It wants us to listen.
The first time I was called nigga
I was about seven or eight years old
I was playing across the street
And one of the older kids called me it
I went home for bathtime a little later
And asked my mum what it meant
My white mum
She told me it was a bad word
We didn't appear out of thin air
We live here
We didn't appear out of thin air, mate
We fucking live here, you cunt
The shock and outrage against Bobby Vylan's call to dismantle an army that shoots old woman and children and indiscriminately bombs hospitals and schools asks us to rethink what we are thinking. Are we seriously going to get more upset about protest than we are about what is actually happening? Why isn't there as much fuss in the BBC about the slaughter of an entire people? About the largest cohort of child deaths and amputees from any war?
Bobby Vylan's words were no suprise. There's no pacifism here, no call for sitting down praying shit's going to change. Pretty words do not change the world. The desire to supress Vylan's voice clearly says a lot about our governments and world powers. Don't be violent, they say. Don't speak out. Because we don't want you to stand up and listen. We don't want you to look deeper. Because what if you all did? And maybe the people committing world atrocities, perpetuating systems of class, race and gender, and taking pot shots at children should face the firing squad - not literally, of course. 'Death to the IDF' wasn't ever literal. It was about dismantling a war machine - and that's something that should be talked about in the media. And if it it was literal - the IDF's criminal actions might even deserve some retaliation.
I could do this all day long
Sing a song, a pretty little song
Blah blah, rah rah rah
That's alright, but I'd rather fight
And watch you bleed
It's interesting to see the Karens and keyboard trolls saying that 'they've never heard of them' as if that's the greatest insult they could dish out, or somehow they are anti-semitic (an argument that has actually been settled a long time ago, because it's not anti Jewish to be anti zionist), or that he should have 'learnt his lesson' now he's been 'cancelled'. It's the same rehashed bullshit that's been happening since October 7th, where we're still outraged about another music festival, suprised about the violence, and forgetting the broader context which gave rise to it. Ah, they're all IDF bots, surely - because the vast majority of voices are really saying - what the actual fuck - why are we outraged about this and not the bodies being bulldozed into mass graves?
To see media say it's a 'fully anti semitic rant' is trying to focus out attention on Vylan as a harbinger of violence, as if that's enough - go look at his performance and this is not what he said at all. Sometimes violent language is what's needed, he protests, because violence is the only thing people understand.
Other news sites say he was 'fully humiliated' but I doubt very much that's the case from a man who isn't afraid to speak up against injustice. He's utterly unrepentant and should be. It's been a witchhunt designed to supress his voice and shut him down, but I think ultimately it's had the opposite effect. Surely we are questioning (yet again) freedom of speech, and exactly why his voice is being shut down. 'Unsavoury' you'res saying? I'll show you what's unsavoury - if you can just point your cameras to Gaza where people are lured with the promise of food aid only to be bombed, where people are separating their children in the hope to have at least once survive, where children are dying from malnutrition.
It's not the people of Israel he wants to die, it's the bloody genocidal army, you flogs. It's the death of politicians who support the genocide in Britain. And the fact we're chanting with him is scary enough to the establishment that they have to create outrage and shut it down. Oh British state, you keep banning shit like this and it's going to get harder and harder to govern. Want support? Stop your support of war crimes.
I doubt very much we've heard the last from Vylan - and we've certainly heard of him now - or any other musician who feels so distraught about the inhumanity of genocide they vocalise on stage.
May they sing fucking loud about why our governments aren't doing more to stop the killing.
With Love,
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