Macklemore AXED From Ed Sheeran Tour For Palestine Support

Ever since the start of Israel's brutal assault on Gaza, we here on Novar Alive have reported on many musical artists showing solidarity with the Palestinian cause. Artists such as Nikap and Bob Villain have faced controversy with their pro Palestinian sentiments. But it's rare to see more mainstream acts use their platform to show support. That was until last week when rapper McLemore gave this speech while supporting Ed Sheeran on his US tour. >> I've been trying to figure out a way to say this all day. One of the reasons why I wanted to come on this tour was because I wanted to stand up here on stages and stadiums across America and say two words that are very near and dear to my heart. Free Palestine. I said free Palestine. I want those words to be loud and clear so the people from Gaza all the way to the occupied West Bank know that we have not forgotten them. And this next song was inspired by the bravery of Columbia University students who led an encampment movement that mobilized the entire world, open up hearts, myself included. So, thank you to those students that risked their diplomas, that risked their tuition, that risked their scholarships, that stood up and said no. CUAD students, Students for Justice and Palestine and Jewish Voices for Peace. Thank you guys to all of my Jewish brothers and sisters. Criticism of Israel, criticism of apartheid, being against genocide in no way is a criticism of you. My message is for peace, love for all human beings to be treated with dignity, respect, and equality. So I say free Palestine. I say free Lebanon. I say free Cuba. I say free Congo. Free Sudan. Free all people in America living in fear over this terrorist organization ICE. That speech was given just before Matt Lammore performed a song Hint, a reference to Hindra, the 5-year-old Palestinian girl killed by the IDF after they shot the car that she was in over 300 times. This however attracted the eye of Israel supporters who immediately pulled the anti-semitism alarm. Many fans took to social media to accuse him as such and demand Ed Sharon to disavow McLemore. The musical artist Pink weighed in too and posted a real to her Instagram story criticizing McLemore from the page stop anti-semitism which accused McLemore of spreading quote anti-Israel propaganda. Pink then clarified her position in an Instagram post of her own saying this. Last weekend, he stood in front of a stadium full of music loving families with violent images from a war on the screens, dedicated a song to the movement of his choice, and then took the mic to tell all of the Jews in the stadium that it wasn't about them. You didn't get to decide that for us. Okay, so we're just doing like dual loyalty trope in reverse, are we now? Just actually you we are we are one and the same with Israel. Your criticism of that is criticism for us. And he was very clear that, you know, he can only he can direct who his criticism is actually at there. Second of all, people playing in front of war footage isn't a new thing. I know that you've ever seen a performance of War Pigs or Bob recently, but many people have indeed used war footage as part of their musical acts or as music videos. Turns out music sometimes quite political unfortunately. Now, it wasn't just criticism that McLemore was subjected to. The Israeli American Council, a powerful pro-Zionist lobby group, even started a petition to have McLemore removed from the tour on the grounds that he had quote used a global concert platform to advance a one-sided political agenda. The naysayers got their wish over the weekend as it was announced that McLemore had indeed been dropped from Ed Sheeran's tour, with many speculating that Sheran himself had asked for McLemore to be removed. It turned out, however, that it was the promoter that had been behind the decision to remove Matt Llemore after venue operators had threatened to pull the plug on the entire tour dates. This is from Rolling Stone. In a statement shared on Instagram, Matt Llemore claimed he was dropped from the tour after Robert Craft, the billionaire owner of the New England Patriots in Gillette Stadium, mounted a pressure campaign against Sheran. Craft in his own statement confirmed he made the decision to bar Matt Llemore from performing at Gillette, saying it was based on his recent actions, material shared from the stage during Ed Sheeran shows in New Jersey and a broader history of anti-semitic rhetoric and imagery that we believe has been deeply offensive and hurtful to the Jewish community. Robert Croft has never been a politically neutral actor. He's donated money to politicians of both parties and has had a longtime friendship with the US President Donald Trump. He's been a longtime supporter of Israel, too, having previously donated $20 million to a fund opposing BDS. That donation was announced at the ceremony in which he was awarded Israel's Genesis Prize, presented with the award in 2019 by none other than Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who stated that quote, "Israel does not have a more loyal friend than Robert Croft." The news that Matt Lemoy had been dropped was immediately met with public outrage. Artists offering their support included the affforementioned kneecap, but also Pink Panther, Paloma, Faith, Garbage, and Saul Williams amongst many others. The outrage as to platforming even reached Congress with the former chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, Premier Gaipal, saying this. It's so incredibly disappointing that McLemore, my constituent, was removed from Ed Sheeran's tour because of his comments in support of the Palestinian people. We should all be outraged that powerful people are more upset at what an artist says than the displacement, starvation, and killing of innocent Palestinian children and families. Thank you, Matt Llemore, for speaking up. This is a moment for us to come together, find our moral conscience as a nation, and end this genocide. There has been, as we've gone live, a statement made by Ed Sheeran, which I will read out at least a part of at the moment. It's very long. This is the main portion of it. There is a reason I do not use my professional platform for politics. My audience includes young people, often children of all backgrounds. Those who come to my shows do not expect a political forum. I respect McLemore's strength of purpose to stand up and shout for what he believes. However, there is room for multiple approaches to the same end peace. I choose to use my fame and platform to be a place of safety and sanctuary to maintain diplomacy and keep conversations open, not closed. If we only focus on shouting the loudest, nothing will ever change. There are different approaches to being an advocate for change. I am not complicit, the statement said. I have my own personal views on this devastating conflict. Just because I choose not to speak publicly, it doesn't mean I don't have them and doesn't mean I don't care. I mean, the whole point of the statement being made by McLemore is to try and engage in conversation, engage in dialogue, right? By wanting to, you know, potentially not have those things beyond stage that is actually shutting away that conversation. And it's real kind of cowardice from Ed Sheeran. Like, you're the big name on this tour. You're a bigger international name than Robert Croft, right? You're probably bigger international name than Benjamin to be honest. But like you can use your platform to call out promoters who are canceling tour dates because at the end of the day, right, no venue should be forced to have someone play at their venue if they don't want to, right? This is a a business transaction like any other which is based on mutual agreement, right? I don't think that venue should be forced to, you know, host Screwdriver or Jim Davidson or whatever, right? I don't think that's anything should be the case. but you have a platform to be able to advocate for the independence of the acts who you invite onto your tour with you and instead you've just tried to play both sides. I will remark that he didn't do with Ukraine like Ukraine very open and supportive and same thing is happening ethnationalist uh invasions and murdering and killing in terms of the incursions from Russia into the Donbass just like with Israel into the West Bank and Gaza yet again that's a settled issue in the west right you have you have to support Ukraine but in Palestine it's treated as divisive and there seems to be no justification as to why now on the subject of people cancelling it was interesting however how the anti cancel culture brigade over at Fox News greeted the news and I'm sure you can guess how it went. >> I I believe like five of the seven venues are owned by Jewish uh operators or business people and they don't want to have anything to do with the anti-semitism of course coming from this anti-semite Mcleammore. And I will point out they're the heroes in all of this. Not the promoter, not Ed Sheeran, who's an absolute coward who chose to do absolutely nothing despite the fact that McLemore was using the venues that he put him on to spread this anti-semitic garbage. And so kudos to Robert Craft and others who the ter family as well who have stepped up and said no to Mcmore. >> Got it. I think that's a good thing. >> Yes, it's a good thing that he has been cancelled for wrong thing. It's really weird how they can hold these two thoughts simultaneously in their head. The cancel culture is terrible, but we can also, you know, just openly embrace this idea that actually there's dual loyalty and it's not just that there's Jewish people that own these stadia. It's actually really important that we make sure everybody knows that the Jews own these things and they're the ones coming down here. Like that is breaching into hugely anti-semitic territory to imply that somehow the ethnicity of the people who own these stadia is entirely kind of projecting those political viewpoints, right? to link the ethnicity of the people doing it to these decisions is only going to make anti-semitism worse when again these are political decisions for political reasons and ideological reasons that has nothing to do with anyone's ethnicity. Aaron, what did you make of this this story? This >> there was the sheer response which was I'm not doing anything. I'm not saying anything but we all try and affect change in our own way. Well, that sounds to me like you're doing nothing. Which by the way is fine. You can say I'm doing nothing. I don't care. You can say that. It's a free country. >> I mean like at least like you can be apolitical and say it's not my job to be political. People who are into politics can do that. I'm stepping away. >> The zeitgeist for for creative artists in the US is you have to kind of be an activist, right? >> But he's saying I'm an activist. We want change. There's different ways of making change. Which true that is true. Diversity of tactics. But I'm not doing anything and I'm not saying anything but there's different ways of creating change. Okay. So what are you going to do? And he says specifically, I want my concerts to be a place of safety. It's such a dangerous thing to say, a place of safety. I don't want people to be challenged. I don't want people to have to reflect on their views. I don't want people to um or be it even just temporarily to leave themselves behind. That's that's that's not what you do when you you you go and see art or you go and listen to music. You you're there to be part of a crowd. You be you're there to be part of something bigger, not safety. It sounds so anodine and sterile. I feel like I'm in a sort of white padded cube listening to that statement. Of course, it was not written by him, I'm sure. Um, the dual the dual um the dual loyalty thing is really interesting and I I think it's just so ridiculous now that it's just important to actually drives me around the bend. It drives me around the bend. >> It's crazy. And it's it's both sides of the Atlantic. Although I have to say this is just utterly absurd. Um, we saw the chief rabbi do it in this country as well uh quite recently. It just needs to be called out. You You can't have it both ways. Um and then in terms of the sort of broader sweep here, Fred Sheeran, it just seems so This to me is the almost more interesting question, right? So like you say, he can just argue, I'm not here to be political. I'm not an activist. I just want people to have fun at my concerts or the safety thing really add up to me. But the way he's done it just seems so politically counterproductive given this is a very polarizing issue in American politics. I do get that, right? Um but to not even pretend to defend free speech, it's kind of crazy, isn't it? I mean, this is literally this is the first amendment of the US Constitution. This is what America is built on is is the right to free speech. This is how it's arguably corrected its original sins of things like slavery and asymmetries around civil rights. So if you don't believe in free speech, I struggle to believe how you uphold the idea of America at its best, right? And I don't believe all that crap. >> Being a musical artist, free expression, like like musical art, any art is fundamentally about expression, right? And I said before, I don't think any anyone should be forced to, you know, like be engaged in a business transaction anybody they don't want to do so, right? But like go find a different tour date. Go just say cool you don't want people performing here I will go I will take my business elsewhere I will publicize right that you don't want to be involved with this on the grounds that you dislike what somebody says and we will take it elsewhere we'll perform a better gig at a different place we'll we'll rearrange it and the tickets will be valid or indeed say something use your platform to call that out and say look you're ruining fans enjoyment because you're getting politically involved in my musical expression my artistic expression right there are so many different ways that he could have gone to try and get a better outcome for the tour and the people who bought the tickets for the tour knowing that MLmore would be there and knowing he's already released a song that's pro Palestine, right? Like if you already had problems with Mlemore because of him doing a pro Palestine song, you should have made that clear before you booked all of these tour dates where you knew he was going to support. And by the way, the people shouting the loudest about this are the far right is the anti-semitic fascist far right. They're saying, see, going back to our point about dual loyalty, see, they say they're Americans, but the minute somebody's criticizing other Jews in Israel, look what they do. Five out of the seven stadiums, look what they do. That's what Nick Fences is going to say. And I find it really extraordinary that these purportedly pro-American Jewish organizations, which seem to be just pro- Israel, >> I find it extraordinary that hasn't landed with them. They don't understand what they're doing. >> They don't understand how they are building they are building anti-semitism in America. They're building it brick by brick. There was a really really great article by Ezra Klein where I was talking about this like if you teach people that you know like the hatred of Israel means you're anti-Semitic they won't they won't stop hating Israel they'll just become anti-semitic >> that's it's it's so so unbelievably dangerous so so so dangerous and again it actually drives me round the bend well I think one point I will lastly make is that this is a problem with having oligarchy in your country where billionaires who own every part of your infrastructure your stadium whatever it is right they're not community venues anymore. They become the play things of the people who own Craft, who own the New England Patriots, who own the stadiums, whatever it is, right? And they get to decide what does and doesn't happen. It's not a community decision about who you want to have playing music in your area. It the those decisions get totally kind of subsumed by the capital class when you don't have these things in public hands, you don't have in community hands. And you know, if your community doesn't want somebody to play music around you, then perfectly reasonable. Why is it one person's decision? >> Yeah, so true. I mean, back in the day, if that was a publicly owned venue or a local authoritarian owned venue, you know, the mayor or the governor or the senator might be the person that makes the decision. >> Um, hey, you might not like the decision. At least somebody voted for them. >> Yes. It's a rep, it's a representation of popular opinion, popular decision-m rather than the the kind of unilateral policy of one incredibly cranky billionaire.