I have to admit I haven’t shed many tears over Kanye West Wireless canceling the race. Had the festival continued, it would have been a somber affair. We’d have had weeks of painful speeches leading up to the festival itself in July, followed by three days where all the country’s worst antisemites suddenly discovered a lifelong link to Yeezy’s collected works. There would have been the inevitable row over police costs. Protests from the Jewish community. Maybe even the joy of a Tucker Carlson or Nick Fuentes intervention.
It’s a shame the Wireless festival isn’t happening at all now, but Melvin Benn, the somewhat hapless organizer, really only has himself to blame. Kanye was a stupid booking in the first place and most of the arguments Benn made in favor of hosting him were pretty weak.
After years of threatening and intense anti-Semitism, releasing a song called “Heil Hitler,” threatening to go “Death Con 3” on Jews, using the Super Bowl to advertise swastika merchandise, West’s apology letter (“To those I’ve hurt”) to Wall Street Journal on January 26. did not exactly represent compelling evidence of genuine and sustained rehabilitation.
Nor is all this distant ancient history. Just last year, Kanye wrote and rehearsed a song called “Gas Chambers.” These actions had real-life consequences: Kanye’s platform and influence is huge and feeds directly into the recent rise of anti-Semitism online.
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He also, it should be noted, previously apologized in 2023, only to revert to his Hitler hoax. And he didn’t seem too remorseful at his latest comeback concert in Los Angeles, during which he boasted about his ability to fill stadiums despite everything that’s happened.
Kanye offered to meet with the Jewish community during his visit to the UK (personally I would have forced him to do a full three hours at a Saturday morning synagogue service as penance), but he has yet to give an in-person interview explaining why he’s sorry or what he actually thinks is wrong with anti-Semitism. Can he? It will be hard to trust him until he does.
Yes, Kanye is clearly ill and it has affected his manic behavior over the last three years. I sincerely hope, for his sake and ours, that he has found the help he needs and is on the road to recovery. However, this does not mean that everything is simply forgotten and forgiven. Kanye’s illness may be at or near the root cause of his vile bigotry, but mentally ill people can also be a serious threat to society. We do not allow them to freely hurt others just because we feel sympathy for their illness.
For all these reasons and more, the British Jewish community was rightly upset that, at a time of alarmingly high anti-Semitic threats from Bondi Beach to Heaton Park to Golders Green, the very prominent Hitler fan Kanye West was invited to headline a north London festival.
This was the context of the Home Secretary’s decision to revoke Kanye’s visa to travel to the UK, citing that his visit was “not conducive to the public good” and a threat to social cohesion and public safety. In this she had the full support of the prime minister, who called the booking “deeply disturbing”.
Their decision was facilitated by widespread public support. A YouGov poll published on the day Shabana Mahmood revoked Kanye’s visa showed that 57 per cent of people believed he should not be allowed to enter the UK to perform, and just 18 per cent believed he should.
Needless to say, the vast majority of the British Jewish community was relieved and delighted by the decision.
I wasn’t though. I appreciate that Starmer and Mahmood are deeply concerned about the rise of anti-Semitism and want to do their best to reassure a Jewish community that is extremely worried. It was an understandable call under the circumstances. But for me at least, the whole affair left a sour taste. There is, after all, one compelling reason why Kanye shouldn’t have been banned: artistic freedom. In a free country and liberal democracy, the bar for a government to actively revoke a musician’s travel visa must be astronomically high.
Free speech should matter to everyone, but in my view it is of particular importance to the Jews of Britain. It is not a tolerant ideal, on the contrary, it is the foundation of a civilized, liberal and enlightened society. The kind of society that doesn’t give in to low bigotry and brutal intolerance and has the ability to accommodate uncomfortable differences.
These are the characteristics that have made Britain a relative haven for Jews like my family in the long, peaceful centuries we have been here since we were invited back to these shores by Oliver Cromwell in 1656. They are characteristics we must protect. We might be pleased that the government banned Kanye West today, but living in a country where the government, however well-intentioned, goes around banning things at least partly in response to pressure from identity-based interest groups does not bode well for Britain, or its Jewish community.
After applying this ban to Kanye, the government has already opened the door for this debate to resurface every time a controversial artist is invited to this country. Watch this space for the next time an Israeli artist is booked to play in Britain.
Most of my Jewish friends disagree with me. They see this debate through the more Schmittian framework in which the culture wars are fought: in this world there are friends and enemies, and only by marching one’s friends and prevailing over one’s enemies can one buy peace and protection.
They may be right. My view is that this approach brings short-term relief, but it also erodes the foundations of our freedoms and ultimately makes this country a less predictable and less tolerant place. As painful as it was, after he was invited, we should have let Kanye play.
(Further reading: Kanye West has always been a poet of self-pity)
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