Photo by Yoi Mok/ Alamy
I must admit I haven’t shed too many tears over the cancellation of the Kanye West Wireless jamboree. If the festival had gone ahead, it would have been a grim affair. We would have had weeks of anguished discourse leading up to the festival itself in July, followed by three days of all the country’s worst anti-Semites suddenly discovering a lifelong affinity for the collected works of Yeezy. There would have been inevitable rows about policing costs. Protests by the Jewish community. Perhaps even the joy of a Tucker Carlson or Nick Fuentes intervention.
It is a shame that Wireless festival now isn’t happening at all, but Melvin Benn, the somewhat hapless organiser, really only has himself to blame. Kanye was a foolish booking in the first place and most of the arguments Benn advanced in favour of hosting him were pretty flimsy.
After years of menacing and intense anti-Semitism, releasing a song called “Heil Hitler”, threatening to go “Death Con 3” on the Jews, using the Super Bowl to advertise swastika merchandise, West’s one apology letter (“To those I’ve hurt”) to the Wall Street Journal on 26 January didn’t exactly represent convincing evidence of a sincere and lasting rehabilitation.
Nor is all of this remotely 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 enormous and fed directly into the recent surge in online anti-Semitism.
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He has also, it should be noted, apologised before in 2023, only to get back on his Hitler grind. And he didn’t exactly sound very contrite at his recent Los Angeles comeback gig, during which he bragged about his ability to fill stadiums despite all that’s happened.
Kanye did offer to meet with the Jewish community during his visit to the UK (personally I’d have made him do the full three hours at a Saturday morning synagogue service as penance), but he has yet to give an in-person interview explaining why he is sorry or what he actually thinks is bad about anti-Semitism. Can he? It will be difficult to trust him until he does.
Yes, Kanye is clearly unwell and that affected his manic behaviour over the past three years. I sincerely hope, for his sake and ours, that he has found the help he needs and is on the path to recovery. Yet this doesn’t mean all is simply forgotten and forgiven. Kanye’s illness may well be at or close to the root cause of his vile bigotry, but mentally unwell people can also be a serious menace to society. We don’t 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 terrifyingly high anti-Semitic menace from Bondi Beach to Heaton Park to Golders Green, very prominent recent Hitler fan Kanye West was invited to headline a north London festival.
This was the context for the Home Secretary’s decision to revoke Kanye’s visa to travel to the United Kingdom, 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 backing of the Prime Minister, who called the booking “deeply concerning”.
Their decision was eased by widespread public support. A YouGov poll released on the day that Shabana Mahmood revoked Kanye’s visa showed that 57 per cent of people believed he shouldn’t be allowed to enter the UK to perform and just 18 per cent believed he did.
Needless to say, the overwhelming majority of the British Jewish community was relieved and pleased by the decision.
I wasn’t though. I appreciate the fact that Starmer and Mahmood are deeply concerned about rising antisemitism and want to do their best to calm an unsurprisingly anxious Jewish community. It was an understandable call in the circumstances. But for me at least, the whole affair left a sour aftertaste. There is ultimately 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 withdraw a musician’s travel visa should be astronomically high.
Free speech should matter to all, but it is in my view of particular importance to Britain’s Jews. It is not an indulgent ideal, rather it is the foundation of a civilised and liberal and enlightened society. The kind of society that does not give into low bigotries and brute intolerance and has the ability to accommodate uncomfortable differences.
These are the characteristics that have made Britain a relative haven for Jewish people like my family in the long, peaceful centuries we have abided here since being invited back to these shores by Oliver Cromwell in 1656. They are characteristics we should protect. It may satisfy us for the government to ban 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 for its Jewish community.
Having applied this ban to Kanye, the government has of course now opened the door to replaying this debate 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 conducted: in this world there are friends and enemies and only by marshalling one’s friends and prevailing over one’s enemies can one buy peace and protection.
They might be right. My own view is that this approach brings short-term relief, but also corrodes the foundations of our freedoms and ultimately makes this country a less predictable and less tolerant place. As painful as it would have been, once 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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