Do you think a chant like ‘Death, Death to the IDF’ is meaningfully different to, say, ‘Hell, Hell for the EDL’?
Would you say the latter is unacceptably anti-English?
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The fact that most media report on ‘Tommy Robinson’ instead of under his real name, Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, shows the outright vile double standards at play here.
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I don’t understand your point. I’m taking “Death to the IDF” literally, meaning calling for the death of IDF soldiers, the majority of whom are conscripts, and a significant proportion teenagers. It has nothing to do with them being Israeli, I would feel the same way about calling for the death of Russian conscripts.
If they didn’t intend the song to be taken literally, and I’m pretty sure they didn’t, then don’t sing it. Use your platform to express what you actually want to see happen.
I find this reply patronising. I’m pretty sure we’re all aware of the history around the term anti-Zionist. Given that history, I think there are better ways of expressing your opinion than using the term “fucking Zionists”
I’ve listened to the set, he said “We’ve done it all, from working in bars to working for fucking Zionists” - that’s pretty much exactly what I said he said. I understand the context he said it in, but still don’t think he should use that term. I accept most here won’t agree with me, and that’s fair enough, language is complex.
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It’s not meant to be literally about death to individual soldiers, it’s calling for the end of the institution
I feel like this has been explained already though
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Several times now.
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But again, it’s so incredibly obvious why the media and various outriders have seized upon the use of those words that it makes the chant in the first place either a calculated publicity stunt or simply quite a silly thing to do.
The argument in defence kinda boils down to “the meaning of a word is irrelevant if it rhymes in a chant” and to think the media operate that way, or will apply that kind of nuance is at the very least incredibly naive.
I don’t think any of us in this thread even really substantively disagree on the topic of Israel, Gaza, the IDF, etc etc. But when people are saying “tinfoil hat time, why is this happening” and the answer to that question is, i would argue, very obvious, it just seems like a pointless exercise to litigate the why’s and wherefores.
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I’m actually with you that it was easily something the media could manipulate and so I also wonder about the efficacy of it
I just don’t get why folks on this website, in these threads, engaging directly with the community are so keen to be wrongheaded about it
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He’s literally talking about a guy who ‘was always banging on about Israel’ and tried to get Kneecap taken off the lineup. What term would you prefer he use to refer to him??
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There may well have been a clarification since the weekend that I’ve missed where they say it was about the institution, but tbh I took it at the time as meaning literal death to the soldiers. Didn’t have a problem with it. Like, nobody is more aware than those soldiers what they are part of.
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and also by the band themselves in a statement that has both been posted here and is very easily accessible online.
Also not sure about the focus on the fact that much of the IDF are “teenage conscripts” when they are currently being investigated by their own national media for killing over 400 unarmed Palestinian people, including women and children, who were queuing for aid. Aid that was required, btw, because the IDF have been using starvation as method of warfare against the Palestinian people which is a war crime. And that’s not even getting into the other horrific shit they’ve been involved in and continue to be involved in
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This bit of the statement they put out the other day - which unsurprisingly hasn’t been shared much by the media, so unless you’re looking for it you’d probably struggle to get that clarification on their intent.
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It’s like when people say ‘Hollywood is dying’, they don’t mean everyone in the industry is about to drop dead
Or like ‘death to dating apps’ doesn’t mean we should kill everyone who works at Tinder
Idk, even if your initial reaction was to be taken aback, a moment’s thought and consideration might help? Thinking about the context of the statement might help? Reading what the artist themself said about their intentions might help?
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Fuck zionists, fuck the IDF, fuck war criminals, fuck heartless bastards slaughtering innocent children. I was there chanting with him and would do again. If you think there’s something controversial about that while they’re committing a genocide you need your head checked imo.
The establishment doesn’t give a shit about the chant, per se. They’re scared of a charismatic man standing on stage and saying stuff like, organise and strategise, be ready for violent protest to stand up for what you believe in when necessary, the establishment is lying to you. They want to discredit him as an antisemite, they don’t want people to watch the man standing up on stage holding his daughter and think, ‘this guy doesn’t seem so scary, maybe he has a point’, because those are literally the messages that terrify the establishment the most.
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Reading around the topic? When you can simply type “Look At This Antisemite” and get a thousand clicks?
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I think you do understand though.
Which is it? I think this is at the root of everyone’s incredulity.
I’m not trying to attack you – I don’t doubt for a second that you’re sincere in your belief that you don’t want anyone to die.
But civilians are being killed in their thousands; and yes, ultimately compassion for murderers is a laudable ideal, but it’s a bit of a slippery one when a genocide is ongoing.
Teen conscripts can actually choose to go to prison for a few months instead of signing up to kill hungry kids. I wouldn’t want to go to a military prison either, and like you, I feel scared and sad for Israeli teens who end up involved in this spectacle of horror because they’ve been indoctrinated by the apparatus of an ethnostate. But the civilians getting shot in Gaza don’t have the option of opting out. They just get shot.
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Absolutely. He also said ‘the only language they speak is violence’ which is utterly true of the IDF as an institution. And the general public needs to be reminded of it. You can’t meet a death machine with words. This is the best, most thought-provoking thing a musician has done with their platform recently, I reckon.
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Only just realised that’s meant to say group. Ever since I read it I thought a “gro up of people” is some new term I hadn’t heard before.
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During the Kill the Bill protests I saw plenty of people making out that chant was about murdering police officers. like, lol.
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