Glastonbury and the limits of free speech

With pop stars increasingly posing as radicals, should the state step in?

One of the most persistent irritants of our time must surely be the pretensions of middle-class hipsters to radicalism. Whenever a troupe of trust-fund firebrands descend upon a historical landmark with cans of soup, or glue themselves to the tarmac of a major thoroughfare, we can be certain that when they open their mouths they’ll sound like members of the Bullingdon Club.

Glastonbury is surely the zenith of this phenomenon. For just £373.50 a ticket, you can slum it in tents for a weekend, take recreational drugs, and pretend to be one of the plebs. The genuine working class can’t afford it, and so their absence preserves the illusion. Best of all, mindless pop groups will merrily amplify your political opinions from the stage, while the crowd applauds these luxury beliefs. You needn’t worry about hearing a dissenting opinion; the groupthink has been well maintained.

Much has been made of the faux-radicalism of bands such as Kneecap, cheering on the very Islamofascists who would deem their lifestyles to be haram. This Northern Irish rap band has made a fortune by fetishising the Troubles, and has lately been lauded by the Guardianistas for waving the flag of Hezbollah and leading such imaginative chants as ‘Fuck Israel’ and ‘Up Hamas’. The police gave them a PR boost by pressing charges after concert footage emerged of the band shouting ‘The only good Tory is a dead Tory. Kill your local MP’. And just like that, these peddlers of middle-class boilerplate can claim to be anti-establishment.

But it was Kneecap’s warm-up act at Glastonbury - rap duo Bob Vylan - who have dominated the headlines this week. By this point, there will be few who haven’t seen the infamous footage, broadcast on the BBC and widely shared online. ‘Death, death to the IDF’ chanted the band’s frontman Bobby Vylan, a cry that was repeated by many in the crowd. And for those who had believed Vylan’s subsequent claim on Instagram that he was simply calling for the dismantling of the Israeli army as an institution, other footage has since circulated in which the band made clear that ‘every Israeli soldier should die’.

The Bob Vylan duo have since had their visas revoked for a future tour of the US, a decision that has led to many who are seemingly happy with censorship when it suits their agenda suddenly to complain about violations against ‘free speech’. Others have called for Glastonbury to be cancelled altogether, for the sacking of the Director General of the BBC for allowing the performance to be broadcast, and even for criminal charges to be brought against the band. All of which has clarified for me that the principle of free speech is still widely misunderstood and selectively applied.

Let’s begin with the question of visas…

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