Kanye, Kneecap & Israel: Music's Free Speech Hypocrisy

Two Weeks Which Exposed Artists' Free Speech Double Standard

“They don’t understand what I say on Twitter, N*gger Heil Hitler” - Ye (the artist formerly know as Kanye West), May 2025

Even Grok, the Artificial Intelligence LLM founded by self-proclaimed “free speech absolutist" Elon Musk, and marketed as the not-woke Chat GPT, has reservations about Ye’s latest single.

“I'm sorry, but I can't provide the full lyrics for Kanye West's song "Heil Hitler" due to its highly controversial and offensive content, which includes antisemitic themes, Nazi references, and racial slurs… Given the song’s explicit hate speech and the ethical concerns surrounding its dissemination, I won’t reproduce further lyrics.”

I don’t doubt the sincerity of the megastar rapper’s continued foray into Nazism. But owing to his well publicised mental health issues, a deeper exploration seems somewhat vain. And if the song is in part a public provocation, such transgression of the fascist variety is not original to him.

Sid Vicious of the Sex Pistols wore a swastika t-shirt in the 1970s. Siouxsie Sioux of the Banshees was photographed several times with the red-armband as part of her S&M Nazi-chic routine.

Ron Ashton of The Stooges, Brian Jones of The Rolling Stones and others have donned SS suits and symbols of the Third Reich. There is a school of art where offence is the only emotion being elicited.

However, the music industry reaction to Ye has been rather more sharp than these cases of old. In part perhaps because there is no indication of satire. The song was uploaded to SoundCloud on May 8th but was swiftly removed. Streaming platforms Spotify and Apple Music as well as YouTube all yanked the track from their services. The single gained most traction on X (formerly Twitter) where it has amassed 8.7 million views to date. But even on Elon Musk’s free speech platform there are reports that it has been throttled in certain regions.

Defending freedom of speech for those with whom we disagree is a good way of exhibiting one’s principles. Having said that, forgive me, as today I don’t quite have the patience to defend Ye’s abhorrent Hitlerite dreck. To be clear I do not think Ye should be censored. However, the more interesting development these last two weeks is how the music industry has completely exposed its free speech double standard.

On April 30th, scores of artists banded together to defend the freedom of expression of the Belfast hip-hop trio Kneecap. The group have publicly supported proscribed terrorist groups Hamas and Hezbollah, declared on stage “The only good Tory is a dead Tory. Kill your local MP” and posted photos reading the philosophy of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah.

They seemed to get away with it for quite some time too. That was until a performance at the California festival Coahchella in April where they blazoned “F*ck Israel. Free Palestine” in bright lights as their stage backdrop.

Since then major festivals and venues in Britain and Germany have cancelled their performances. The band’s U.S. booking agency IAG dropped them, their US visas have been revoked and they are under investigation by the Metropolitan Police’s Counter Terrorism Command.

And it was precisely this backlash from the industry and law enforcement which galvanised artists far and wide in support of the fiercely anti-Israel troop. Of all the infringements on the freedom of expression for artists in the past years, it took a band calling for murder and promoting a heinous totalitarian terrorist group for Paul Weller, Massive Attack, Brian Eno, Pulp, Primal Scream, The Pogues and dozens more to stand up for free speech.

I don’t buy it one bit.

Where were they when M.I.A. was cancelled from Field Day for her political opinions? Where were they when comedy legend Graham Linehan had his Father Ted musical scrapped for gender-critical campaigning? Where were they when Gina Carano was sacked from Disney for her conservative tweets? Where were they when J.K. Rowling faced threats of murder, rape and violence and was herself reported to the police for “misgendering” someone? Where were they when actor James Dreyfus was scrubbed from Dr. Who for supporting J.K. Rowling? Where were they when Ariel Pink was dropped from his label on the false accusation that he attended the storming of the Capitol on Jan 6th? Where were they when Capitol Records shelved Morrissey’s ‘Bonfire of Teenagers’ record about the 2017 Manchester Arena Islamist attack?

I could go on.

And it is not just Ye’s de-platforming on which they have become awfully schtum. There is a rather more glaring silence surrounding the cancellation of Radiohead guitarist Johnny Greenwood’s shows in Bristol and London with Israeli artist Dudu Tassa. Cancellations announced within seven days of their “Freedom of Expression” letter, I note.

“The venues and their blameless staff have received enough credible threats to conclude that it's not safe to proceed” Greenwood explained. The cancellations were celebrated by the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement.

The same day Greenwood made his sorry announcement, May 6th, Artists For Palestine published an open letter which called for the banning of Israel’s public broadcaster KAN from the Eurovision song contest in June. On May 8th, Nemo, the reigning Eurovision champion, told Huffington Post, “I personally feel like it doesn’t make sense that Israel is a part of this Eurovision”.

This is all the more striking given Israel’s representative is Yuval Raphael, a 24-year-old singer who survived the Hamas massacre at the Nova music festival on October 7th, 2023.

Freedom of expression is the sine qua non of being an artist. I have argued this relentlessly for the past five years. That any of Kneecap’s defenders actually believe this is unconvincing. The free speech drama that has unfolded this last fortnight has simply revealed the total hypocrisy of the creative industries.

In 1982, The Clash sarcastically sang “You have the right to free speech. As long as you’re not dumb enough to actually try it”. In 2025 it might be updated: “You have the right to free speech. As long as your opinions are the same as mine”.

WM