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Macklemore x Ed Sheeran concert: politics cannot be ignored
Ed Sheeran (everyone's favorite dreamy male singer) is holding a big tour across North and South America. Macklemore (everyone's favorite white rapper) got kicked out after (in an earlier concert) saying "Free Palestine", playing a song with pro-Palestine lyrics, and this:
Ed Sheeran has defended himself, saying it was not his decision - indeed, one Robert Kraft graciously confirmed he coordinated venues to boycott Macklemore - though Sheeran also remarked he tries to avoid politics in general:
So far, four other performers have dropped in solidarity with Macklemore.
Interestingly, Gillette stadium which banned Macklemore is hosting Kanye West, yes, the guy who was praising Hitler a year ago (albeit later admitting mental illness).
What do you think?
First, let me address the elephant in the room: the music industry is a corrupt dumpsterfire, basically a cartel. This is what cartels do. Besides dropping his pro-Palestine friend, Sheeran must also accept Ticketmaster price-gouging attendees, limited tour dates (I overheard somewhere there used to be far more concerts), and other nonsense. He probably could just find more accomodating venues if every one wasn't owned by Live Nation.
Lots of people are discussing how politics can't be avoided, and they're right. This is an excellent case study of how the endgame of "politics" convolutes everything and makes everyone miserable. Everyone loses here: Macklemore for taking a mild pro-Palestine stance gets kicked out of venues and attacked by Palestine opposers, Sheeran for taking a pro-peace neutral stance gets his tour lineup wrecked and attacked by Palestine supporters. There is nothing these performers can do, even be completely silent, that won't get them attacked by some group.
But the other side of "every side gets you attacked" is that no side is truly best. With no obvious winning strategy, you can be truer to yourself. And as Macklemore says:
Less tyrannical cartels, more people able to say what they want and go home to their families (with careers, money, opportunity, safety, and audiences)...I can defend these by linking them to other axioms, but ultimately they just seem right to me. I think celebrities should express their politics (including neutrality), for authenticity, and moreso because they can: it widens the Overton Window as they avoid life-ruining consequences. Even Kanye and his edgy schizo-manifestations, which I (unsuprisingly) strongly disagree with, but don't hate and even sort of appreciate for some odd reason. Yes my thinking is flawed, but look, his "cancellation" gave him the Streisand effect and today he performs where even Macklemore cannot, so what is flawless?
(Also, holy shit, can news sites link to their actual sources instead of writing articles whose sole content is paraphrasing them? Credit to variety.com of all outlets, the one article I found that did, albeit in the middle.)
I’m personally opposed for several reasons.
First of all, once partisan politics invades a space, it becomes the primary point of that space. That’s what happened to Hollywood and music. You are almost required to have the “right” opinions on various topics to gain access to an audience. Not a liberal or even not outspoken enough about your liberalism — you are cut off from a lot of mainstream culture making. That means that you cannot be neutral or even ignore the topics. The same tends to happen even in amateur culture spaces. Once the topic of politics is discussed, the forum will become mostly political and will develop a strong political orthodoxy even if dissent is tolerated. Even here, the main topic of conversation is political discussion, and we have a pretty strong consensus of political conservatism. Not that other ideas are not discussed or there aren’t people who disagree on that consensus, but they’re generally heretics.
Second, it tends to destroy the art in question. It means that instead of creating an authentic, true to life story or song. It must serve the purpose of the person’s political ideology. An atheistic socialist writing a character who is not like them cannot help but make them in some way loathe some. Yesteryear was about a conservative Christian rancher who ends up completely off grid, but every conservative and every Christian in that story (except for a gay friendly pastor mentioned at the end) was a hypocritical, mean, loathe some character, they never really seemed to believe in God as areal living faith, and the same is true of “the manosphere “ and a conservative presidential campaign. The upshot is that the liberal and feminist author just couldn’t create believable Christian or conservative characters.
Third, it tends to turn those art forms and venues into partisan places. It’s no longer a place for everyone, instead the project tends to welcome orthodox people and shun heretics. If you’re a conservative Jew forced to listen to every musician scream about the Palestinian Genocide, you obviously are not feeling all that welcome. Nor are Christians or conservatives forced to listen as those same people scream about liberal causes like abortion. This leads to self-segregation where people tend to curate their music and other art to types of art that’s at least not hostile to them. This reduces places where all people can share a bit of culture. I can still attend most sporting events without feeling like the venue and the players are hostile to me as a fairly conservative Christian. I don’t see that as much in art and music.
This is a good point.
But from someone who's maybe generally seen as neutral (at least tolerant): even neutrality and "non-political" is a political position. If you make a space non-political, you alienate the political members and kick out those who can't restrain themselves, just like how if they make a space political they alienate you and kick you out if you can't fake adhere to them. Your position is (subjectively) more reasonable because it allows silence, but I still feel for the people who get kicked or voluntarily leave for being political; from firsthand experience many of them are very kind and talented (such that to me, their politics is a personality flaw, nobody's perfect), so it would be nice to accommodate them somehow.
Case in point here, except I hesitate to call Macklemore talented, but the consequence to enforcing neutrality isn't that he complies, instead he doesn't play at all. Maybe even if they asked him to tone his rhetoric and gave him a second chance, judging by his later remarks. And if you want examples of very political musicians who are widely regarded as good, look at Jazz, Punk, and Rock icons.
I think the real problem is centralization. In this case, because every big venue is basically in one monopoly, Ed Sheeran (who claims he'd keep Macklemore if it was his decision) can't change venues or threaten to. In the case of Hollywood (and academia and, honestly, most institutions) the problem is that there’s one status quo. The more neutral solution that would allow more members wouldn't be to make an institution's status quo non-political, but to create multiple institutions with different cultures, so (almost) everyone has some group that accepts them.
How do we prevent these groups from merging or the most outspoken politics from dominating them all? I don't know, although I think tone policing like here helps a lot. Also people with the security to expressing (while not imposing) unorthodox views, may normalize and spread this ability, for even the presently orthodox to prevent it from becoming narrower and/or corrupted. Regardless, it's the same problem as preventing a neutral organization from becoming partisan, but almost strictly easier, because we get multiple tries.
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Yeah.
There's a saying that "EVERYTHING is Political" and I vehemently disagree with it. There are many things one can do and enjoy without there being any political valence to it whatsoever.
But the problem is... You can add politics to anything. so "Anything CAN BE Political" is a statement I do agree with.
And so the asshole types who say "Everything is Political!" are using that, functionally, as an excuse to inject politics into everything, then using the existence of politics in the space to retroactively prove their original statement.
And my point is "no, you're not uncovering a feature of the scene that everyone was studiously ignoring, you are intentionally adding this feature that everyone was very happy was absent, then getting up in arms that people don't like you changing the ground rules without so much as a discussion." Gatekeeping such persons out is critical but also difficult because the motivation for them to smuggle in the politics is substantial and you only have to let one or two in for things to derail.
I think it’s a feature of our ideas about legitimacy. Since our idea of legitimate government is democracy and consent of the governed, the people who want to govern must “launder” their ideas into the culture, and thus it becomes imperative to capture any institution that imparts ideas to the public (which is, to be blunt, all of culture). Then you can firehose out your agenda in every way the cathedral can get a message out, and eventually, unless you are an extreme contrarian or opt out of most of mainstream society, you’re very likely to get caught up in the zeitgeist of the media culture you saturate in.
I consider it late-stage democracy. Democracy cannot function unless the public goes along with good ideas. Which means that you can’t just let the public form their own organic culture or community which is likely to have the wrong sorts of ideas. Instead the elites have to make the culture over to their tastes and if you can’t take over the institution, it must be discredited or destroyed.
That's pretty insightful, especially the need to launder politics through culture in order to manufacture consent. Hadn't thought of it in those terms.
Related to the "You may not be interested in politics, but politics is interested in you" point.
Any culture that's not under control of the political edifice is, potentially, a method for alternative systems and resistance to organize and arise. The state would see this as an intolerable possible threat to sovereignty. On top of that any popular cultural edifice can be turned into a propaganda organ, can't expect them to ignore that.
I've arranged my immediate affairs so that I have as few as possible intersections with political authority. Quite literally, I chose the location of my house in large part because it has the fewest political bodies with jurisdiction over its physical location (i.e. it is outside of the nearest city's limits in unincorporated territory, has no HOA, and has extremely permissive zoning).
And yet, AND YET I know that I can't afford to ignore politics because the political-minded will constantly seek to bring me and my property under their ambit, and it is NOT enough to just retreat, run, and try to stay outside their grasp, it requires active, intelligent resistance and even then its not guaranteed b/c the state has infinite patience.
I agree with that, but I’m more thinking about cultural organs as well. Things like religion, particularly organized religion, the family, education, clubs, etc. are potentially points of resistance. I see this as a weak point of the Benedict option. Unless you’re living in a commune owned by a church and have no cell phones and filtered internet, the chances of keeping your community intact and fairly pure are small. Zoning laws, school testing requirements, nondiscrimination laws, and so on will conspire to force you to conform, and entryism will be tried.
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Jeff Maurer expresses more or less my thoughts on this whole thing more eloquently than I could ever hope to:
He notes that Macklemore claiming not to be antisemitic is nonsense when he specifically name-checked CUAD and Students for Justice in Palestine, two organisations who openly support Hamas (among other things, the former group defended a member who stated "Zionists don't deserve to live", while the latter has praised the Hamas "martyrs").
Here's one of those times having a good memory comes in handy. I have a clear recollection of that time Macklemore was accused of dressing up as a Jewish Caricature. Twelve years ago.
You look at it and tell me. Is this guy dancing around the dog whistle without making it blatant, or are certain Jews just oversensitive to possible slights, threats, and insults?
Probably a little bit of both, I dunno. Seems like a scissor "clearly he just opposes genocide and colonialism" vs. "clearly he is okay with Jews dying and doesn't want Israel to exist."
I mean, Macklemore explicitly doesn't want Israel to exist. Per the lyrics of the song he performed immediately after that speech, he thinks history has been repeating for the last seventy-five years i.e. since the date of Israel's founding. Hard to square that with the belief that Israel has a right to exist as a nation.
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How far does the association go?
Hamas is obviously antisemitic. Some of their defenders doubtless fall in that category. But I have to believe it’s possible to defend a group without endorsing all its positions, let alone its motivations.
Consider a single-issue antifeminist. He holds no opinions about Jews but wishes that sharia law applied to women everywhere. As such, he approves of Hamas’ actions. Is he an antisemite?
Consider a Westerner conservative influencer. He says things like “Islam is right about women” in an attempt to put progressives between a rock and a hard place. Is he an antisemite?
Or consider a Western zoomer. He repeats edgy proposals he hears from people like the first two. He’s not sure if he’s being ironic, post-ironic, or serious…but is he antisemitic?
I don’t think you can draw a line from Hamas to CUAD to Macklemore and keep the ideology intact.
I understand this is a callback to an older post of mine, but I'm really not seeing the connection between the two sentences. Why would facetiously asserting that "Islam is right about women" imply that one is antisemitic? Even sincerely asserting "Islam is right about women" (something no Western conservative influencer has ever done) doesn't imply antisemitism: "Islam is right about women, but wrong about Jews" is a perfectly coherent stance to take, even if it's not one anyone actually adopts.
I don't think Macklemore believes 100% of the same things that Hamas believes. (There's no question that he doesn't share their attitudes to homosexuality, for instance.) But I think the fact that he went out of his way to name-check a fairly minor group like CUAD is strong evidence that he endorses most if not all of their ideology: namely, that Israel is an illegitimate settler-colonial apartheid state, the validity of violent "resistance" against Israeli "occupation", and the belief that all Israeli citizens (and the entire Jewish diaspora, by extension) are complicit in Israel's "occupation", thereby rendering all of them legitimate targets. The belief that every Jew is a legitimate target for violent assault (in other words, the belief that it's okay to murder Jews) is about as pithy a definition of antisemitism as I can think of.
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One reason why we can associate Hamas with antisemitism in the first place is that such people are vanishingly rare. It's like asking if someone who only likes the Nazis for their cool salute is an antisemite. Theoretically they might not be, but I wouldn't bet on it.
He's not a supporter of Hamas, so the question of why he supports Hamas doesn't come up.
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This would seem to be evidence for anti-zionism, anti-zionism ≠ antisemitism.
Even if I accept your claim that "Zionist" was not being used as a codeword for "Jew", this rather clearly demonstrates that Macklemore is lying when he presents himself as a hippy-dippy peace-and-love dude who is simply innocently horrified by "genocide" and "apartheid". He explicitly supports (by name) groups that support violent resistance against Israel i.e. he is a crypto-Hamas supporter.
This "code word" stuff, er, codes as progressives. Very "dog whistle."
As @The_Nybbler notes below me, the essence of a "dog whistle" is that it's a turn of phrase that sounds innocuous to most people, but which has a special secret meaning to those in the know. Like the verbal equivalent of a secret handshake.
"Zionist" is the opposite. While its literal meaning is simply "one who supports the existence of a Jewish nation-state in the middle east, regardless of their religious beliefs or ethnic background" – in practice, nine times out of ten when people use it, they simply mean "one of those people with a surname like Coen or Katz". (I dare say that many of the people using it as a term of abuse would literally not know the former meaning.) Everyone understands this, especially all of the people with surnames like Coen or Katz: "Zionist" simply offers merely the thinnest veneer of plausible deniability. When people hang up posters around Athens saying "Zionists out", every Jew (regardless of their opinion of Israel, and the right of it to exist or lack thereof) understands that they're not welcome. When Palestine Action splatters red paint on Jewish-owned businesses around London under the pretext of intimidating "Zionists" – I mean, come on, you don't really think they asked the owners what they thought about the war in Gaza, and only targeted those with the "wrong" opinions, do you? When two Irish women approached an Israeli man in a restaurant, spat on him and yelled at him that "Zionists" aren't welcome in Ireland – likewise.
Yes, a Zionist is just someone who supports the existence of a Jewish nation-state in the middle east, regardless of their religious beliefs or ethnic background. Just like "urban youth" refers to white college students who live in New York City.
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Dog whistles are meant to be un-noticed by those not their targets. The term "anti-Zionist" is merely the thinnest veil of plausible deniability in most cases.
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Why does opposition to genocide require a "hippy-dippy peace-and-love" attitude?
The Nazis weren't stopped by hippies waving signs but by the Red Army tearing through East Prussia committing enough war crimes to make Hamas look like humanitarian organization.
If you think that Israel is committing a genocide then it logically follows that violent resistance is justified, assuming you aren't a full on pacifist.
It doesn't. But I think that's how Macklemore is trying to present himself: as an ordinary well-meaning guy who believes in equality and civil rights, who's appalled by the footage he sees coming out of Gaza and thinks something should be done to stop it. As controversial as his speech was, he never explicitly dedicated his set to "the brave Mujahedeen fighters of Hamas", or called upon the audience to stone the Jew wherever he lies: he's smart enough to know that doing so would make him look like a nutcase. Instead, he does the savvier (and more dishonest) thing of presenting himself like an ordinary well-meaning dude, while explicitly endorsing groups who've been much more open in their extremism then he has, and banking on most people listening not knowing the specifics of what those groups believe. This seems like the constant two-step with the "moderate" pro-Palestinians in the West (and the "moderate" left more broadly). They generally claim that they want to bring about a two-state solution via peaceful means like BDI or other kinds of economic sanctions – and yet you notice that they never offer any criticism of Hamas or the other violent pro-Palestinian groups whose ideology and methods they claim to decry, they amplify their propaganda at every turn, and seem exuberant when they achieve tactical wins (however brief and temporary).
Indeed, I'd respect Mackle- a great deal More if he actually came out and said "there's a genocide going on right now that's just as bad as the Holocaust, so we have to stop it the same way we stopped the Holocaust – by waging total war on the people committing it". The fact that he felt the need to equivocate, hedge and delegate his opinions suggests to me that either a) he doesn't consider stopping the genocide worth torpedoing his career over or b) he doesn't believe it's a genocide either. The only thing more contemptible than a Jew-hater is a Jew-hater who can't even commit to the bit.
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I think any other direction has darker implications: to reverse your claim (which, to be fair, is factually accurate to my knowledge), those that would commit mass ethnic cleansing of Jews in the 1940s were stopped by making their cities look like Dresden. Why wouldn't "Never Again" mean turning cities (Rafah) to such in 2026 for the same reason? "Which river? Which sea?". I don't agree with it, but I can at least understand the position.
Ultimately, the cycle of violence is only broken when one side loses or admits defeat — the West Germans were to some extent lucky the Western Allies were more magnanimous than many other historical examples — or when "hippy-dippy peace-and-love attitudes" prevail. In most cases I can imagine, I'd prefer the latter.
Richard Hanania made a similar argument years ago: the conflict will only end permanently when most Palestinians understand that militarily defeating Israel is impossible.
Militarily defeating Israel isn't impossible, though. You can argue the ought, but Israel is bleeding public support pretty much everywhere, and it is entirely possible it ends up as a pariah state. It has an exceptional military, relative to its immediate neighbors, but that military was exceptional under the old paradigm, the old paradigm is going away, and its performance under the new paradigm has not been stellar. It is entirely possible that we will live to see the end of the nation of israel.
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With the crucial difference that Rafah was demolished, whereas the antizionists are still a decade or so away from possessing the power to demolish Tel Aviv. I'm not inventing a new standard, just taking the existing one and applying it consistently.
The "hippy-dippy peace-and-love attitudes" only came out after Germany was defeated. If the Wehrmacht had been greeted by a bunch of protesters waving peace signs instead of millions of heavily armed Red Army soldiers then the war would have gone very differently.
I'll grant that there is a range of actions that are more extreme than total pacifism and less extreme than Dresden but basically anyone who isn't a total pacifist is going to say that armed resistance to an ongoing genocide is justified.
Sure, but they demonstrably did a quite a bit to Be'eri.
And Dresden was largely carried out by American forces: no American cities were even modestly impacted by enemy violence during WWII. The total number of civilian casualties in the 48 states during the war is countable on a single hand. Even London with the Blitz wasn't hit anywhere near as hard as Dresden or other German cities. Does "the Germans were a decade away from possessing the power to demolish Washington" (roughly true) mean that FDR was the baddie there? I personally don't think so, but YMMV.
ETA: On looking, there were six civilians killed in the 48 states during the war, who died from a Japanese balloon fire bomb. Not quite one hand.
So did the IDF tank that responded to the ongoing hostage situation by opening fire on the hostages
The antizionists who will be destroying Israel aren't Palestinians but Americans and Europeans. I wasn't saying that Palestinians were going to somehow amass the power to obliterate Tel Aviv in a decade but that the political changes in developed Western countries caused by Israel's campaign in Gaza and the subsequent mess the Middle East has devolved into will ultimately lead to Israel's destruction.
At any rate, the original example I gave was of the Red Army in East Prussia where none of these differences apply. The point is that even a bloodthirsty, vengeful horde led by a brutal tyrant committing the worst atrocities imaginable can still be viewed as the lesser evil when they're up against a genocidaire. "Armed resistance" is far, far short of what Stalin's troops did to the German civilians who fell into their clutches.
Was Stalin "the baddie" in WW2? I personally don't think "the baddie" is a meaningful term; in the vast majority of wars you don't have a choice between the "good guy" and the "bad guy", you have a choice between the "bad guy" and the "worse guy". Stalin and FDR were bad guys (obviously FDR less than Stalin) and Hitler was the worse guy. If Israel is guilty of genocide then it follows that armed resistance is justified; that doesn't make Hamas the "good guy", it makes them the "bad" to Israel's "worse".
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By this reasoning, claiming that you want to kill Jews who drink the blood of Christian babies at Passover is only evidence that you dislike Jews who drink the blood of Christian babies at Passover.
Not all Jews are zionist. There are many non-Jew zionists.
Yes, any Jew or non-Jew drinking the blood of Christian or pagan babies at Passover or outside passover should be put to death, after a trial.
The set of those I would put to death is larger but still inclusive of your set.
I'm not sure I really want to know the answer, but is "blood drinking" by itself a crime? I'd assume it depends on how you source the blood in question ("ethically sourced from local abortion clinics", ugh, still no).
Last I checked, the Catholics would testify that they drink literal blood regularly, but we've mostly settled the Protestant-Catholic animus over such things in the US.
Oh, sheesh. Blood Libel
If it's at all unclear, I don't think it's happening. If it were, it'd be worth prosecuting (like sexual abuse going on in the basement of a basement-less pizza parlor), but the idea that it is without additional evidence is laughable.
The rest of the comment was possibly-irresponsible musing on the legality of imbibing such things and specific charges therefore, but not meant to be taken seriously.
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I'd inferred that they were also killing the children not merely 'obtaining' baby blood through some means but I could be wrong.
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Not all Jews drink Christian blood either. In fact, a lot fewer Jews do so than are Zionists. Yet Jews would still perceive that as an attack on them.
I’m sure there has, at some point, been a Jewish serial killer who drank the blood of Christian children. If you further clarified that you were referring to that guy, I think at least half of Jewish men would find the reaction of other Jews hilarious.
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Feeling threatened by a call to try child killers when you aren't one is in-group bias doing you a disservice. Same with Zionism: it's a political ideology, held by plenty of non-Jews and rejected by plenty of Jews. Opposing Iran's theocracy isn't an attack on Muslims.
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Do we really need to relitigate Weak Men Are Superweapons over the exact same example as the post?
The superweapon only splashes on you if you stay in the tent with the people it's aimed at.
That's why nobody lets Nazis into big tent politics. Scott's point holds for categories you can't leave, and Jewishness is one. Zionism isn't. It's a chosen political position, and anti-Zionist Jews are welcomed in anti-Zionist spaces, not targeted.
The fix isn't to defend Zionists in self-protection. It's to keep the Jewish/Zionist boundary sharp. Blurring it is exactly what Zionists want, since it lets political criticism get filed as bigotry. Antisemites blur it from the other side too, which is one more reason not to help them.
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Anyone talking about Israel or Palestine specifically, but I'd also argue any politics at all, should be pulled offstage and fired immediately. You're an elevated performing monkey. You have no more meaningful insight about politics than any random yahoo off the street - less, in fact, I'd wager. Shut up and clap your cymbals together, monkey. That's what we pay you for.
What do you think politics is, it not performance art?
Politics is not entertainment, and entertainment is not politics. People conflating the two is why so much entertainment is shit nowadays.
Politics is totally entertainment. That’s why we have President Trump.
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I don't think the fundamental issues change, but the OP's downplaying the scope of Macklemore's statements (youtube), which are significantly more wide-ranging. Among other things, these include a celebration of the recent Columbia University encampment project, a call for a free Cuba (I assume he means free from American attempts to isolate the country?), criticism of ICE (the American immigration enforcement agency), and a declaration that he'd joined the tour partly to support Palestine.
[Edit: I'm concerned that the youtube clip above may have been edited misleadingly to imply that Macklemore had declared that he'd jointed the tour partly to support Palestine. I've removed this part from my comment.][Second Edit: After reviewing a transcript of the singer's full remarks, I'm satisfied that what I'd written was accurate, so I've reverted my comment to its original version.]
For reference, his full remarks
He also wore a costume mocking orthodox Jews, then issued a non-apology, but that was in 2014 long before he was accepted into this tour.
This speech is more wide-reaching, but I wouldn’t call it anti-Semitic, because he explicitly says he is not criticizing Jews or Israelis but the genocide itself (implicitly its undertakers, who don’t include every Jew or Israeli citizen).
Are these actually the full relevant portion of his remarks?
For example, immediately preceding this quoted speech, he said:
This introduces the follow-up exclamation, "I said, Free Palestine."
He may have indicated that making this point was a major reason he was on the tour to begin with, i.e., that he was on the tour partly because he "wanted to stand up here on stages and stadiums across America" to speak out about Palestine - but I cannot say this with confidence given that the video I'm referencing gives-off some suggestions of having been misleadingly edited.
Sorry, I got the text from “Macklemore’s Full Remarks on Israel and Gaza as Rapper Faces Backlash”, and it does have the part you mentioned, but incorrectly formatted like the wall of slop the actual remarks are buried under.
I don’t think it really changes the meaning though. Macklemore is clearly pro-Palestine. For more context, recently after he was kicked, he also pledged $1 million to “six organizations working directly to support the Palestinian people” (source).
Maybe he would’ve made pro-Palestine remarks on tour, but the organizers could’ve asked him not to while keeping his spot. Then at worst we’d have a slightly better controversy, where the rule is written.
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"I'm explicitly not criticizing X group, just the bad ones" is... not generally a great defense, even though it may be very common.
Is it a defense seen typically on the left? ACAB, etc.
I remember it being taken apart in the classic Radicalizing the Romanceless post:
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Yes. It's the argument they're making when they deny that the dogged insistence on using the term "toxic masculinity" in specific and their steadfast refusal to even entertain alternative terminology isn't an attempt to marry the concept of masculinity to being inherently toxic, but that they are only criticising the toxic aspects of masculinity.
You know, like how if you turned on the car radio and it started playing One Direction, and my response was "ugh, I hate shitty pop music" you'd naturally assume that I ordinarily love pop music and I'm only singling out specific bands in particular, and definitely not talking about the genre as a whole.
'Not all men', wasn't from the left and was the response to some of the 'toxic masculinity' nonsense.
I don't recall the parsing of toxic vs non-toxic aspects of masculinity.
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I don't think your example works? I like pop music, but I hate shitty pop music. I guess if I only ever say 'shitty' and 'pop music' together that would be strange, not sure that's the case with masculinity and the left though depends who you are referring to.
It works fine. The normal English reading of that line is that "shitty" refers to the category of "pop music", rather than creating a subclass.
I've heard this language pattern being called "a cat coupling". Or in more academic terms, a modifier being plausibly both a restrictive and a non-restrictive one.
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No, it's ambiguous and how you'd interpret it would depend on the speaker and context. It could be said by someone who absolutely loves pop music. A true opera lover might well hate shitty opera more than anyone.
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For reference, one of this organisation's internal documents characterised the October 7th attacks as an "historic win for the Palestinian resistance".
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"(He also called for several other peoples to be free, all around the world, including in Cuba and Sudan.)"
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2026/09/macklemore-ed-sheeran-tour-antisemitism-israel-jewish-fracture.html
The fact that this article describes him as saying "Cuba and Sudan" makes me wonder if maybe he didn't mean it the way you think he meant it.
While I'm glad "Free Cuba" is a statement that both Macklemore and Marco Rubio can agree upon, I suspect they mean it in very different ways, and probably don't actually agree on anything there.
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Seems to me to be an understatement. And one that the whole thesis of the post relies on. He's an extremist, even if not so on the modern online left.
Lets just posit a world where people are informed and on truth serum. We pose the question, as something like, "What percentage of Israeli strikes in Gaza actually targeted a combatant, terrorist, weapons cache, military supply depot, intelligence operation, or related facility?" Basically everyone would answer 99%-100%.
But then there is the more consequential question. "What if Israel just fired missiles indiscriminately into Gaza at random targets, what is the chance they would hit a combatant, terrorist, weapons cache, military supply depot, intelligence operation, or related facility?" The informed, truthful, people, would say something like 80-99%.
If you want to side with the weaker side in a military conflict because that is your philosophy, then just say that. But it is, to me, disgusting and evil when people reward the use of human shields and false flags and piracy and the like with sympathy. The crybully tactics of modern Islam need to be punished like they would have been by the Brits and French of the 19th century. And, quite frankly, given the current set of belligerents, the Brits and French should have been mounting up to do it themselves years ago under a sane system.
First: I’m not sure this passes the sniff test. Think about your nearest urban center. Then think about how it would look if 80% of spaces in it contained at least one valid target. A weapons cache in every mailbox. Each store clerk a combatant. Multiply this over the ~100 km2 controlled by Hamas. Would it look like the pictures?
Second: I don’t think this is actually the sticking point for most people. The question of acceptable casualties is deontological, not utilitarian.
See, that 1% makes a big difference. Americans have the privilege of being choosy about our involvement. Support for Palestine is almost entirely predicted on whether one thinks the collateral damage is avoidable.
There isn't much single family housing in Gaza. I'd expect almost every apartment building to have a cache or combatant in it, yes.
This is pretty much true IMO. People vastly underestimate the popularity of Hamas and terrorism amongst Palestinians. Plus, how is this store being stocked? By Hamas handouts from what they get from NGOs. There is no domestic production of good in Gaza so the only way you can run a store is if you are cozy with Hamas, you probably let them store weapons in the larder from time to time and fund their operations with your sales as well through kickbacks and bribes, otherwise they cut you and find a new store owner that plays ball.
I was, charitably to myself, excluding the already destroyed/abandoned parts, and I guess the camps where people are frisked before going in.
I dont think it is, but this also isn't about being picky about involvement, if America and Europe went to true neutral status Israel would be significantly worse off WRT to America, and slightly better off WRT Europe, but Gaza would just die on their own without Israel having to do anything. You have to be actively pro-Gaza to get to this point!
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Why do you think it wouldn't? There are around 500K males of military age so that's one every 200 square meters. 200 square meters is around 14 meters on a side, which means that if they were evenly distributed, a target would have to be considered something within 7 meters of a missile strike (on the side of the square) or 10 (on the corner) in order for the place to be nothing but targets. And that ignores the weapons caches, facilities, etc.
Of course this is just an estimate. If they were distributed as far apart as possible they would have to be in a hexagonal pattern, not squares.
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"the only reason people could disagree with me is that they're dumb or lying" is a fantastic way to never have to reconsider any of your opinions or listen to the arguments others are making.
What is your disagreement with my factual assertions regarding the armament status of the hospitals and schools of Gaza?
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Ironically Hamas learned their "crybully tactics" from the Zionists who liked to, for example, hide weapons caches inside synagogues.
If the Brits and the French had applied your reasoning consistently Israel wouldn't exist in the first place. They'd have been wiped out after kidnapping and murdering British soldiers instead of being rewarded with international recognition and protection from the consequences of their actions.
Cool. Too late now.
No it isn't. How long do you think Israel would survive a European trade embargo combined with an American blockade?
Much longer than Gaza would. And fairly irrelevant to the point I am making.
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You don't ask for much, do you? Of course, plenty of people would think that it's you that is not informed, and that your information about the war (well, a lot of people don't even think it's a "war") is incorrect, and if only you were informed and unbiased! I'm generally in agreement with you, but even I think your numbers are too high, accounting for potential error.
Not that the facts themselves care about what people think, of course.
It's precisely because a lot of the opposition "to the war" is based on hatred of Jews, that being informed is something that you can measure without just saying "everyone thinks their own side is informed". The Jewish side thinks that Israeli strikes mostly hit military targets and thinks that's good. The Hamas side thinks that Israeli strikes mostly hit military targets and that that's bad, but sometimes tries to insinuate otherwise (without saying it outright).
From my experience, the people I know opposed to the IDF think that Israeli strikes are mostly hitting civilians. They don't even think there's a "war" going on at all any more, merely Israel occupying Gaza and occasionally bombing things. Again, let me stress that these people don't understand that Hamas is still fighting, or how they incorporate civilians/infrastructure/PR into their entire strategy. Earlier on, these were the same sorts who had no idea how urban warfare usually went, and assumed that civilian casualties could be easily avoided if one wanted to (and therefore, any civilian casualties were clearly malice, and a few instances that were malicious enough on the surface were pointed to as evidence that all were like that). Again, that's the people I know and talk to -- I know there's plenty of other opinions out there, but I rarely come into contact with them personally.
Hi there, ignorant peon here! Could you explain how "Hamas is still fighting" when there's a ceasefire and there have been precisely zero (0) reported instances of Hamas attacking the Israelis since said ceasefire began?
Stop lying:
Another:
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I didn't think the problem is that people don't know this. I think they refuse to grapple with it because they have a moral stance that being strong is evil.
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But Israel/Palestine is mostly just a proxy for
which is what modern feminists do, so you can generalize your statement to
and we'll note that it's not the 19th century any more. In fact, it's been over 100 years since it was the 19th century.
This is a problem with women, and women will have to hand over the wheel back to men on this one.
You, as a man, cannot force this to happen; you have no more military or organizational power in this matter than modern Britain or France do under US hegemony.
Dude, this is one of the most unhinged things I’ve seen you say. I’m not even sure I parsed it correctly.
The Clancy case isn’t an ideological touchstone, and it’s certainly not analogous to urban warfare. I have no idea how or why women “handing back the wheel” would fix the Middle East, if that’s even what you have in mind.
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This is true only insofar as the thing being fought over is irrelevant or impossible.
I don't think it's likely to make much of a change to US-Israel relations, but it's not impossible. People imposing politics on putatively neutral experiences have achieved wins before.
So I'm not sure it's irrational or pointless.
It’s not pointless, but here (as is often the case) no opinion yields the objectively best outcome, as evidenced by both Macklemore and Sheeran suffering different consequences. Which is good, because it means celebrities can moreso express their personal opinion without threatening their brand, but because their brand is threatened anyways (even if they remain silent).
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Clearly, ‘Macklemore’ needs to cross the Mike Tyson threshold, where any story about him is believable, regardless of how crazy, and no one would give a shit. Seriously, the mild mannered anti Zionist not antisemite in an industry controlled by the Jews… what did he think would happen?
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While I have mixed feelings about cancelling someone on the basis of their political opinions, I'd just like to point out that Macklemore's claimed stance of "criticism of Israel is not the same as antisemitism", even if true in principle, is not true of him in particular. No one who used to perform dressed like this gets to play the "I'm an anti-Zionist, not an anti-Semite" card.
The virgin Mackelmore vs. the Chad Cruise.
I watched that movie for the first time recently, and I was wondering if Cruise was awarded some proxy J-word privileges during production. After all, the film was directed by Ben Stiller and co-written by Stiller and Etan Coen.
It's cause he was satirizing a particular Jew. A Jew widely known for being incredibly unpleasant and disliked but too powerful to take down. I'm sure many in the industry enjoyed it, including Jews. Who he also assaulted (though, running it through a couple of AI, surprisingly few). He certainly assaulted their movies.
Who was the particular target? Gemini thinks his mannerisms were Weinstein and Scott Rudin while his look was Stuart Cornfeld (a Tropic Thunder producer, who presumably at least signed off on the parody).
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Up until this comment, I thought the jew-caricature outfit was from this current event, and was blown away that this was even a discussion. But apparently his happy merchant getup is from an anonymous show in 2014, and apparently he did claim at the time that he hadn't recognized the implication and apologized?
This event is quite the rollercoaster.
Yes, the happy merchant getup was from many years ago. I don't believe he ever gave an actual apology, more of an "I'm sorry if any offense was caused" thing, and I don't find his explanation remotely credible. Yeah, you didn't want people to recognise you, so you just so happened to dress up as an antisemitic caricature. The wig and fake beard wouldn't have sufficed on their own: you just had to have a big drooping hook-nose too. Sure dude.
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Two of the worst industry plants together huh. Are we expecting a false flag this time? It would be the perfect opportunity.
Macklemore is honestly one of the more independent rap success stories I can think of. He's corny but I wouldn't call him a plant
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Normally I'm all for private hosts having full control of who is and isn't allowed in them like this, but most venues to my knowledge are heavily government subsidized and paid for so it seems to me they should have to follow the first amendment. Free markets are typically quite good at protecting speech and providing different options, so it's not normally an issue! Just go to a different venue to perform.
Except like most buildings, the free market doesn't exist for venues. Zoning rules restrict the ability to build competition over censorship and outright subsidies mean even when you can you're starting at a massive financial disadvantage. Markets don't, and can't, function properly when the government is literally choosing winners and losers.
Privately controlled but government protected venues is essentially then a loophole to get around constitutional rights, and it should not be allowed.
It seems to me that the reasonable middle ground is that you can’t ban artists for outside of stadium, unrelated speech or conduct. Michael Jackson? Don’t host sleepovers in the stadium. ‘Macklemore’? Don’t talk about Israeli aggression during concerts. Etc, etc. These venues are after all privately owned, even if it’s not a truly free market.
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I don’t think we have ever agreed before but I posted the same thing below. Kraft though did privately fund the stadium or atleast mostly.
I don’t think the SC has ever had a great test case on free speech in stadiums. Macklemore was apparently banned from other venues too. I would love to see a test case here if he sues.
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By the way Robert Kraft built a literal surveillance operation inside the Patriots' stadium that tracks criticism of Jews and Israel on social media and sends the intelligence to university campus administrations. It's just so unbelievably brazen. How much longer is everyone going to shout "antisemitism" for acknowledging what is going on here?
Stadium surveillance isn't unique to Kraft or anti-semitism/Zionism: The Shocking Secrets of Madison Square Garden’s Surveillance Machine (archive).
Kraft's surveillance operation has nothing to do with stadium security, they are monitoring social media for criticism of Israel and sending intelligence to College Campuses and who knows what else. That is actually entirely unique. This is not stadium security, this is activism for a foreign country.
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Indeed, the former Sheeran fans (just look at Reddit's opinion) are trying to prevent this. You speak as if widening the the Overton Window is good, but lots of people disagree.
Reddit used to be interesting, now even Redditors agree it's boring. Can they see that narrowing its Overton Window almost directly caused that? (Overzealous mods and corporatization are themselves narrowing the window, and ordinary Redditors at least didn't push back)
Have they ever done a mass unbanning? I haven’t tried to see if I could create an account and quit using it. I thought the Reddit IPO would get management to figure out how to boost usage.
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I have long thought that stadiums and arenas are essentially government and free speech rights need to apply there. Krafts venue is the only venue that was 100% paid for with private money. So in this case I think he gets to tell Macklemore he can’t come.
Most stadium deals are something like the government spends 1 gazillion dollars building it and then leases it to the local sports team for $1 a year. To me this is government funded and hence government and speech can’t be restricted.
Now most cases where they’ve banned someone from a stadium it’s because a fan said some asshole thing to a player. And the banning have been mostly for being obnoxious versus any kind of actual purpose of free speech. But stadium deals are also obnoxious to taxpayers so I am down with limiting teams rights in their stadiums since they took taxpayer money.
I don’t believe anyone is a free speech absolutists. I hope my interests and Jewish interests align more so they limit the speech of my adversaries.
Source
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I would argue that the attached image is slightly more than mildly pro Palestine stance. Wage the culture war, die by the culture war. He could have gone the whole tour without mentioning Palestine on stage. It is possible. But his narcissism took precedence.
One thing that celebrities should learn is just to keep their fucking mouths shut. Which the celebrities of pre social era managed to do. He is a servant whom I pay to sing to me. I don't care what he thinks about two countries that are just a speck on the map.
For cartels - this is government job. They should break monopolies, monopsonies and vertical integration.
Politically neutral outfit for a rapper.
Yeah, having known about this before hand and not seeing it in the OP felt pretty sus.
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Is this the takeaway? Considering the fact that literally every act including Sheeran's own band has backed Macklemore and pulled out of the tour, I think Sheeran who just kept his mouth shut is the big loser to Macklemore who I think is a net winner here, from gaining favorable publicity and successfully pushing his political position.
Yes, others being weak doesn't make Sheeran wrong.
I don't think Sheeran was wrong, I just think this is the opposite of a case of "wage the culture war, die by the culture war". If anyone "died" here it was Sheeran who chose not to wage culture war and if anyone didn't die it was Macklemore who did. In terms of optics and public opinion Sheeran looks really bad here. If the other were weak for following Macklemore then the average person is at least as weak and will see Sheeran + evil billionaires against every artist on his own tour. As for Macklemore this might be the most relevant he's ever been since his debut.
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Disclaimer: I do not know any of the guys (presumably they are guys?) involved.
Perhaps you are right and this is all about him making a scene for the attention and press coverage.
But in the age of DJT, it is easy to forget that sometimes, famous (?) people can be motivated by something besides greed and ego. It happens.
Famous people have reach, and sometimes they decide to use that reach to transmit a message unrelated to the thing which they are famous for. It is a whole thing. My understanding is that plenty of musicians protested the Vietnam war, and this was genuinely a sign of being authentic.
Put it another way: would you also express disgust at him professing his beliefs on stage if it was about his religion, or a cause which you supported? "Can you believe the nerve of that guy, going on stage and asking for a minute of silence for the victims of 9/11? I don't give a fuck about Bush vs Osama, he should just shut the fuck up and entertain me."
I am sure the AI musicians of the future will be more to your liking -- the perfectly bland entertainment machines whose silver-grey surfaces can reflect any message equally well once the advertisement contract is signed or the focus group reports are in.
Unfortunately usually they are motivated by stupid.
As you can see in my other post I have explicitly addressed Vietnam. American rockers have the right to bitch about unfair drafting policies of the USG. If he was on 9/11 memorial concert it is ok, if it was 9/11 and he was having a concert also. If it was 23rd of june and he calls for 9/11 minute of silence in Bucharest - yes it is cringe.
My point is that Macklemore's opinion on Israel/Palestine is totally worthless. Like the opinion of Adriana Chechik on OpenAI's solution to Navier Stokes (Adi - if you are reading this, please take no offense, but you are famous for other types of fluid mechanics). He can't add anything to the conversation, he won't change anyone's opinion, so yes - free Palestine is exactly as masturbatory as the people that put posters - Missing for the Hamas hostages in NYC.
He is not that interesting so I could care what is his opinion or belief on anything.
Edit: Not saying that a celebrity has no right/is inappropriate to have or express opinions, but that if you want to help Palestine - create a Food for Palestine tour and donate some of the proceeds to it. Then you can talk as much as you want on stage, because the people going are there for both music and politics. There are also trolls which should be exempt - but proper trolls are rare among a list celebrities.
Bono, personally, has very much been walking his talk on starving children in Africa. Most lefty celebs, not so much.
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I think we've seen all we need to see here. Time to wrap up the investigation.
If Macklemore had donned black minstrel paint like he donned this Jew nose, he would have lost a lot more than the Sheeran gig. He would have been drummed out of the industry entirely. Half the country would spit when they heard his name.
The idea that Jews are getting special treatment is just dumb. Sure, compared to normal white people they are higher on the totem pole. But in America they are not the "chosen people". Blacks are.
I'm reminded of Scott's witches analogy. If Jews really controlled the world, you'd be afraid to say anything negative about them. But in the real world, people are constantly saying bad stuff about Jews. Its basically omnipresent in academia and Hollywood. If anything, Macklemore will be more popular after this stunt.
For the record, I am totally fine with Macklemore's jew nose. I'm also fine with minstrel paint. And I also recognize that Jews are responsible for a lot of the social justice stuff in the first place and deserve to be hoisted on their own petard. But also I just, like, don't care. I don't care about Israel. I don't care about Palestine. And I don't care that a talentless rapper lost his job for giving a sermon instead of doing his dancing monkey act. I care about my country and my people, not whatever this is.
For clarity: the antisemitic costume he wore (and that's unambiguously what it is) is from a gig in 2014.
Wow and he was able to work these 12 years through the height of cancel culture.
Can you imagine if he'd gone in blackface? His career would have been finished before he got home that evening.
Well… Reece Shearsmith had a recurring blackface part on the BBC's League of Gentlemen comedy series in the 2000s and still got a cushy guest turn on Good Omens in pre-Gaiman-cancellation days when it was still Tumblr's favorite hyper-cozy comfort food without anyone raising much of an eyebrow. Likewise Matt Lucas of Little Britain (2003-2008) getting a recurring role on Doctor Who in 2016 in the season with the first black lesbian companion and the Doctor triumphantly punching a racist. Granted these are both British actors and I'm struggling to think of an American actor who got away with something similar in that time frame, but the relevant online fandoms were well-stocked with woke Americans so I'm not sure it should make that much of a difference.
I personally find it hard to imagine that many teenage American fans of Doctor Who or Good Omens would have even heard of either Little Britain or The League of Gentlemen, never mind watched any of the episodes featuring blackface.
So? Surely most Ed Sheeran fans wouldn't have stumbled onto the fairly obscure Happy Merchant performance by chance, either. The only way it was ever going to lead to his cancellation was a social media brouhaha brought on by someone stumbling upon it and signal-boosting it, and that could happen just as easily for a problematic skeleton in a character actor's closet. It's noteworthy that it didn't.
In both cases, the fact that it didn't happen seems to be down to it just not being all that likely that a sufficiently vindictive SJW is going become aware of the obscure scandal-in-waiting and push it on social media until it gets sufficient momentum to make a real difference to the public perception of the celebrity. Hence I don't think the target of the racial caricature was the issue.
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These consequences aren't being delivered because he "waged culture war", celebrities wage culture war all the time. Every single day. The problem is he took a stance against Israel in a Jewish-dominated industry. Robert Kraft taking the credit for "coordinating" the boycott doesn't change what is actually going on here. The consequences are Culture War even more so than the initial statement because they will have a cooling effect on all celebrities everywhere.
Not that I care about Macklemore's opinion on anything, but I do care that these culture-producing industries are themselves waging culture war to enforce a pro-Israel consensus. These artists rely on tours to make money, if they want to make money they can't criticize Israel. That's the message, not that they can't wage Culture War. That's a bigger deal than Macklemore's statement.
I don't often agree with secure signals. But the entertainment industry is one of the few places where 'it's the jews' is a reasonable first order hypothesis much of the time.
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Ah, it's not because he waged the culture war. It's because he waged the culture war against an enemy that had resources.
Or to put it more pithily, it's not because he waged the culture war, it's because he lost.
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Yeah, that makes him more than pro-Palestine, and his excuse makes it worse ("A fake witches nose, wig, and beard = random costume,"). Although apparently it's from 2014 (long before the tour initially approved him). It's still annoying that zero articles I've read mention it, even the Washington Times.
Yet
If everything is politics, and everything becomes politics, it will creep into their performance. Do you want celebrities to only wear boring outfits and sing boring songs? Even a love song may get in trouble with puritans, who are unpopular today, but that seems to cycle. Rather than every celebrity conforming to mediocrity, I would prefer different brands of offense, even if sometimes it leads to that.
Not all. Punk and rock bands were very political in the "counter-culture" sense, and it made them authentic and energetic. Live Aid can be considered political, but is widely regarded as one of the best concerts of all time, with estimated 40% of the population watching.
There is subtle difference between UK band playing God Save the Queen, Black musicians releasing Straight from Compton, Germans singing winds of change and people that are neither Israeli nor Palestinian shouting free Palestine.
There is nothing in common between Macklemore and Palestinians aside from being the same species.
Second - counter culture wasn't really counter. Most of the people didn't want continuous involvement in Vietnam, very few people wanted communism to survive, only really hardcore racists and people with common sense wanted the apartheid to continue (both tiny minorities). They were pissing off The Man, but were not pissing off fellow normies. The issues that the normies cared about and were willing to show at least some resistance took a lot more time to be won. Right now some issues are toxic. Best to stay away from them.
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Begging the question doesn't really prove anything, "everything is political" is their postulate, not some sort of widely agreed neutral principal.
I think Jews have a word for using consequences of own conduct as a defense. The prototypical example is quite similar, and usually is not accepted.
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I want this so much. Celebrities' opinions are worth less than the median person's, their life is so different than that of the average person that any insight they have is alien and irrelevant to me.
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