A counterculture the powerful can't cancel
Performances at Glastonbury an alarming development for the political establishment.
It is school holidays here in New Zealand and yesterday I spent the afternoon watching the original Star Wars movie with my kids. One of the more memorable scenes involves imperial villain Darth Vader’s battle to the death with Jedi good guy Obi Wan Kenobi. Before lowering his lightsaber, making himself vulnerable - a bemusing act of theatre as a young idealistic Luke Skywalker looks on - Kenobi says to Vader: “If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.”
Of course, Skywalker goes on to defeat the evil empire.
It got me thinking. In an inverted galaxy far, far away, where Vylans are the good guys, a similar act of intense theatre took place, this time in front of a crowd of idealistic young people at Glastonbury, many waving something more threatening to imperial ghouls than a lightsaber – Palestinian, Lebanese and various indigenous flags in solidarity with those dying at the hands of Western imperialism.
By repeatedly shouting “Death, death to the IDF” at this year’s iconic music festival in the UK this week, Bob Vylan vocalist ‘Bobby Vylan’ knew he was lowering his guard, making the punk rap duo a vulnerable target for Zionists and their friends, people in dark corners of power able to kill opportunities and cut short careers.
His brazen act was amplified by the fact the BBC livestreamed it, ironically after deciding to censor Irish rap group Kneecap, knowing the trio would use the Glastonbury stage to chant pro-Palestine slogans and highlight the Gaza slaughter, a genocide that the BBC has spent the last 20 months attempting to dress up as a legitimate defensive war.
Not surprisingly, the BBC conflated the performers’ anti-Zionism and hatred of the genocidal IDF with antisemitism.
Going after a journalist, an academic, politician, school teacher, doctor or public servant and smearing them as antisemitic has been a tried and tested method of shutting down dissenters and having them cancelled. Although many have fought back, others have been left wary of expressing what they really feel or think.
Take movie score composer Hans Zimmer, for example, who posted a pro-Palestine thread on his Instagram referencing Glastonbury, which he then deleted. Or German politician Dr Petra Erler, who warned this week that ordinary Germans were afraid to express their political opinions openly in public.
Such wariness is a sign we are living in increasingly totalitarian societies. Those putting their heads above the parapet facing losing reputations and livelihoods.
Except when it comes to musicians whose honesty and flagrant disregard for the powerful gives them such weight that they begin to create their own gravitational pull on society, attracting fans and developing a potential to move the masses.
I suspect Bobby Vylan knew, as did our other screen hero Obi Wan, that attempts to strike him down would ultimately rebound and that he would rise again a much more powerful force.
Moves to go after bands like Bob Vylan are now helping to grow a Western counterculture, lifting artists’ profiles and making them a focal point for popular dissent.
In Kneecap’s case, their Instagram following has shot up a couple of hundred thousand within months to reach 1 million. After their set at California’s Coachella festival in April, where they called out the Gaza genocide and US enabling of it, the group lost their US work visas after being dropped by their sponsor and booking agency, Independent Artist Group (IAG).
They were also dropped from two shows in Germany, while British Prime Minister Keir Starmer urged the Glastonbury organisers to drop them too, citing the case of band member Liam Óg Ó hAnnaidh, charged with a terror offence after waving a Hezbollah flag at a London gig last November.
The Eavis family organisers did not cave to pressure, meaning Ó hAnnaidh was able to lead a politically-charged crowd with the chant “fuck Keir Starmer” during their set.
Band member JJ Ó Dochartaigh wore a Palestine Action T-shirt, underneath a red boiler suit associated with the direct-action protest group, which is now being designated a terrorist organisation by the British government.
UK police are now investigating both Kneecap and Bob Vylan after their Glastonbury performances. They may be charged with public order offences.
The groups are not manufactured, run by soulless corporates in the music industry. They represent the best of Black British and Irish working-class culture and are as authentic as they come. They won’t easily be bought or intimidated.
Bob Vylan have since been cancelled by several festivals in Europe, been dropped by their agent and have had their US visas revoked. After being cancelled by the Radar Festival in Manchester however, other bands decided to boycott it in solidarity, leaving the event a shambles this weekend.
It underlines the fact their sentiments are shared by many of their peers. Australian punk band Amyl and the Sniffers and several other performers challenged the génocidaires at Glastonbury too.
Condemnation from hated politicians like Starmer, as well as mainstream media outlets widely shunned and derided by young people, may make promoters nervous and cancel performances by Kneecap and Bob Vylan in the short term. But it will also draw in new followers, creating more of a market for their music. Bob Vylans’ Humble As The Sun reentered the UK charts within a week. For every event cancelled, a new bigger one will appear further up the line.
The groups’ increasing popularity cannot be divorced from the campus protests that started in the US, to the direct action of protestors sabotaging arms manufacturers’ equipment and the collapse of trust in media and the political establishment.
The bands are tapping into a deep well of social discontent. There is a palpable sense of disdain for neoliberalism among youth, for the sham of Western values and the neo-colonial arrangements these mask, represented by the current Zionist barbarism in Gaza.
They are part of a countercultural movement intent of calling out what is and what ought to be, in the tradition of those who’ve used their art to critique society.
The BBC said Bob Vylan were one of seven Glastonbury acts deemed "high risk" in advance of the festival and that a number of staff were stepping back from their duties as an investigation took place over an "an error of judgement" in not pulling the stream.
If someone intentionally chose to broadcast Bob Vylan and kept their livestream running as a personal act of civil disobedience, they are to be applauded. They too may be part of a growing current of counterculture in a society permeated by propaganda and the pathologies of late capitalism and imperial decline.
Counterculture cannot be cancelled. While assimilating it, as became the fate of similar trends in the ‘60s and ‘70s, may also prove an impossible task.
Great sub. However the counter-culture in my view is not only a youth culture. Some of my comrades have been countering the system for decades. We are joining hands - joining across age groups and races, genders, and cultures as we rage against the genocide.
Hope lies in the glimmer on the horizon. A change is coming. The people are uniting against the crimes of Empire, of settler colonialism, of the exploitation of workers, and the damage to the planet.
Freedom - the freedom to speak out is a right we have the right to take from those who would take it from us.
I taught secondary school kids art and resistance and how to change bad things for better ones. They were consistently surprised and pleased with their ability to get positive results when they planned a little and stuck together. I have become more 'radicalised' with each passing year. Harold Wilson wanting to give a put down to Tony Benn once said , "he is the only man I know who immatures with age" I hope to emulate Tony Benn in my own small way. I have hope in the future, the kids I taught in South Auckland are sharp and have good moral compasses, like rest of us they just need their eyes opening to rotteness. I really only need to help them avoid some of the pitfalls that I fell into.