Welcome to CrowdSource, your weekly guided tour of the latest intellectual disputes, ideological disagreements and national debates that piqued our interest (or inflamed our passions). This week: the bloody crossroads where art and politics meet.
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It’s Alright Ma (I’m Only Chanting)
Last week, the UK launched a criminal probe into the hip hop group Bob Vylan, for chanting “Death! Death to the IDF!” during a recent performance at the Glastonbury music festival. The US revoked travel visas for the group, for the same reason.
Is Bob Vylan guilty? If so, of what?
“Free Speech Absolutism Is the Only Logical Position in a Modern Democracy,” argues ’s
. “It’s almost always fine for people to say things that other people don’t agree with. … [T]he fact that we keep having to argue this suggests the fact is neither ingrained nor obvious.”Bob Vylan Must Be Charged with Incitement to kill IDF soldiers, argues theologian
.“Death To.” After reviewing the tape,
also thinks it was incitement.The Right to Be Vile. “By all means, let’s condemn Bob Vylan’s grim excuse for a musical act, but we must uphold their right to be vile,” writes Fraser Myers of the British magazine Spiked.
The Rebirth of Counterculture. In Bob Vylan,
sees “the emergence of actual, meaningful rebellion in western counterculture for the first time arguably since the Vietnam War.”The Genocide is the Real Issue. “The arts should not be criminalized,” writes
in Ireland’s The Journal. “Art is pageantry — governments, however, are power. Israeli ministers have not shrouded their intention; ‘Those are animals, they have no right to exist … they need to be exterminated’; ‘Drop a nuclear bomb on Gaza’ … their words have real consequences.”Legal Experts Weigh In: is there a legal basis for prosecuting Bob Vylan?
Outlaw Blues
Several other artists have recently run up against censorship, silencing or exile.
Prison. On July 1, an Algerian court upheld a 5 year prison sentence for Algerian novelist Boualem Sansal, charged under Algeria’s anti-terrorism laws and convicted of “undermining national unity.”
Jailed and On the Lam. Spanish rapper Pablo Hasél is still in jail after being charged in 2021 for releasing a song that caused “injuries to the monarchy.”
Another Spanish rapper, Valtònyc, charged with a similar crime, escaped to Belgium.
Terrorism Laws Are Threatening Freedom of Expression in Spain, argued the human rights NGO Freedom House in 2018.
Charges Dropped. The Irish rap group Kneecap, also under police scrutiny after a politically-charged Glastonbury performance, has seen other earlier charges of incitement dropped. (A band member said “Kill your local MP” during a live show.)
Shows Canceled. In May, Israeli musician Dudu Tassa and Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood canceled two UK shows because the venues “had received enough credible threats to conclude that it was not safe to proceed with the gigs.”
Your Neighbor is Your Friend, the duo’s album, features Arab musicians, but BDS and other pro-Palestine voices have condemned the group for playing shows in Israel.
Greenwood and Tassa write: “The [BDS boycott] campaign which has successfully stopped the concerts insist that ‘this is not censorship’ and ‘this isn’t about silencing music or attacking individual artists’ … Forcing musicians not to perform and denying people who want to hear them an opportunity to do so is self-evidently a method of censorship and silencing.”
Does Protest Music Work?
Can art have a political impact? Some relevant musings:
The Purpose of Transgression. What novelist
wrote about books for Wisdom of Crowds applies to music as well:
Literature, especially transgressive literature, does poke fun at, maybe even destabilizes, the social order. It calls attention to the social order as play-acting. And that’s a good thing.
“Doomed From the Start.” The famous Marxist philosopher Theodor Adorno believed that pop music could never truly be politically subversive:
“Why Dictators Fear Artists.” An old essay by Wisdom of Crowds executive editor
: “our taste for the beautiful is not simply visceral, but rational.”“No exile, no book.” Wisdom of Crowds contributor
’s recent reflections about artists and intellectuals who thrived in political exile: “from a distance, they can see a vision of unity and purpose where those on the ground only see a blooming, buzzing confusion …”“Provocateurs and Insurgents.” Some historical perspective from
’s Music: A Subversive History:
The real history of music is not respectable. Far from it. Neither is it boring. Breakthroughs almost always come from provocateurs and insurgents, and they don’t just change the songs we sing, but often shake up the foundations of society. When something genuinely new and different arrives on the music scene, those in positions of authority fear it and work to repress it. We all know this because it has happened in our own lifetimes.
From the Crowd
Shadi’s New Book! The Case for American Power by
comes out on November 11. It’s not too early to pre-order!Politicians Are Not Calculating Machines. PhD student
disagrees with ’s characterization of US-UK relations during World War II:
I usually agree with Damir on most things, but his description of political leaders as calculation machines just trying to get leverage or most human interaction being based on violence or the threat of it is demonstrably false. Of course myth making happens, but the idea that Roosevelt and Truman were just trying to “kneecap” the UK is as much a caricature as the transatlantic romance.
Also, on a more historical note that is in a time period I study, why did the British devote so much resources and suffer such high losses from disease to end the slave trade? And don’t give me Capitalism and Slavery crap because the numbers don’t add up — there was clearly no win economically.
See you next week!
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It was a perfect touch to include Theodor Adorno offering his blockheaded views on popular music and then hear his own derivative and sterile "serious" music in the coda.
If you find it difficult to defend the free speech rights of someone you detest, I find it helps to frame it this way: “I hate this fucker and what he stands for and we shouldn’t make him a martyr by trying to silence him.”