Ed Sheeran, Macklemore and the tyranny of the Israel-haters

So that’s it: you’re not even allowed two hours off from Israel-hate. You can’t even have one measly night away from the swirling Israelophobia of the keffiyeh left. You can’t even go to a goddamn Ed Sheeran concert without being lectured about what a barbarous state Israel is. It’s not enough that our streets have fallen to zombie armies of Gazaholics and that our social-media feeds froth with anti-Israel invective. Now even Ed bloody Sheeran, our most milquetoast crooner, must come with a side order of Jew State bashing.

For me, that’s the most unsettling thing about the Macklemore scandal: the revelation that there is no respite, anywhere, from the cult of Palestinianism and its vain, heckling acolytes. People are alarmed that Macklemore has been ditched as the opening act on Sheeran’s US tour, after he barked ‘Free Palestine’ and wanged on about Israel’s ‘genocide’ to 90,000 Sheeran fans at the MetLife Stadium in New Jersey. I’m more alarmed that even mass-appeal pop gigs have now been conquered by the Gaza mania of our insufferable cultural elites. Is nowhere safe from their marauding moralism?

It’s an unsavoury affair. Macklemore, a white American rapper, the Eminem of people who went to Oberlin and drink matcha tea, was given the heave-ho this week. Some of the big stadiums Sheeran is playing over the next few weeks said they didn’t fancy hosting mass anti-Israel rallies. They saw Macklemore give his preachy speech at MetLife in front of images of the destruction in Gaza and thought: ‘Nah, we don’t want that.’ Shorter version: shut up and sing ‘Thrift Shop’. Sheeran was given an ultimatum: part ways with the rapping Gaza twat or you won’t be allowed to play.

So Sheeran said bye to Macklemore. And then his problems really began. His other support acts walked out in solidarity with Macklemore, including Finneas, songwriting sibling of Billie Eilish, and Aaron Rowe, an Irish crooner. Worse, Ed’s backing band walked, too. It will just be Sheeran and his guitar at this rate, which, to be fair, he’s done before. Some think the whole tour will fall apart, which would be a fitting if grim tribute to the joy-sucking dogmatism of Israelophobia. Music burnt at the altar of ideology. How very Hamas.

There’s nothing good here. Including the shunting of Macklemore. It should always stick in our craw when an advertised act is ditched because of something he said. Even if what he said – apartheid, genocide, child murder – was dumb, defamatory bullshit. The venues and promoters should have done their homework, where they’d have discovered that Macklemore has not once seen a woke bandwagon he hasn’t wanted to leap on. He’s rapped about the wonders of same-sex marriage and the evils of ‘white privilege’, so naturally he was drawn like a vulture to a rotting carcass to the most cloying, conformist crusade of our time: Hating Israel. Him bleating ‘Free Palestine’ at people who just wanted to hear ‘Thinking Out Loud’ was entirely predictable.

What’s more, his removal is the greatest gift the Gaza bores could have asked for. Finally, they have their martyr, their shahid, a man who dared to speak up about Evil Israel and was punished by billionaires for doing so. Macklemore says his ‘silencing’ is proof of how ‘dangerous’ it has become to oppose Israel. Please. Israelophobia is the bread and butter of bourgeois opinion. Every literary soiree and leafy campus throbs with loathing for the world’s only Jewish state. That’s what’s most infuriating about the Macklemore thing: it has allowed the keffiyeh classes to launder their drab high-status beliefs as something punk.

Now let’s talk about the staggering vanity of Macklemore. Isn’t there something creepy, even a little authoritarian, about turning a middle-of-the-road pop gig into a neo-Nuremberg rally against the Jewish State? Israelophobes really are the new vegans: they have a Tourette’s-like urge to blab their puffed-up virtue to every poor soul they meet. Macklemore’s speech at MetLife was cringe beyond belief. It wasn’t only thin on truth, but also heavy on black preacher cosplay. He aimed for MLK but sounded more Napoleon Dynamite. I’d be fuming if I got dressed up for a night of harmless pop only to find myself being harangued by a nerd about the murderous lunacy of the Jewish nation. If I’d wanted that I’d have gone to a Sally Rooney book launch.

The whole affair speaks to the cultish core of Palestinianism. It really has become a neo-religion, seeking to conquer every nook and cranny of public life. You can’t walk the high street without hearing hoarse loons scream for intifada, or even do your weekly shop without being told ‘Don’t buy that, it’s from Israel’ by some deathly pallored obsessive in a keffyeh. It’s relentless. The Sheeran fans at MetLife – Jewish and Gentile alike – were well within their rights to be enraged that the ghouls of Israelophobia were crashing a gig they’d paid $200 to attend.

Here’s the truth: Gaza mania is a movement not for liberation but for conquest. It is the key means through which our ‘betters’ throw their moral weight around and expect the rest of us to look on with wide eyes and drooling mouths. And if you don’t, you’ll be branded a genocide denier, a Zio-cuck, even as ‘complicit’ in the crime of the century. Like all cults, the Gaza cult splits us into the enlightened and the damned. That’s because this is not a movement to ‘Free Palestine’ but rather to enforce a ruthless moral distinction here at home between the righteous influencer classes and the Zio-compromised mob. That a great many of the ‘Zio-compromised’ are Jews, and that painting Jews as moral wrong-uns is incredibly dangerous, matters not one jot to the soulless clout-chasers.

Just look at what’s happening to Sheeran. He’s being damned all over X as a genocide apologist. He’s an ‘absolute coward’ for not speaking out, they say. His ‘complicit tour’ must now be cancelled, says the BDS movement. See how swiftly this supposed fight for Macklemore’s free speech became a crusade of compelled speech against Ed Sheeran? It’s Sheeran who risks being cancelled. And all because he failed to meekly, compliantly bow down to the truthless commandments of the Gaza cult. They will destroy you and call it ‘justice’. They are insane.

Brendan O’Neill is spiked’s chief political writer and host of the spiked podcast, The Brendan O’Neill Show. Subscribe to the podcast here. His latest book – After the Pogrom: 7 October, Israel and the Crisis of Civilisation – is available to order on Amazon UK and Amazon US now. And find Brendan on Instagram: @burntoakboy.