The punk rap duo Bob Vylan appeared to celebrate the assassination of Charlie Kirk during a performance in Amsterdam on Saturday.
The English group, who were accused of inciting “a pogrom” at the concert, dedicated one of their songs to “an absolute piece of shit of a human being”, referring to the conservative activist killed last week.
Bobby Vylan, the act’s frontman, said on stage: “The pronouns was/were. Because if you talk shit, you will get banged. Rest in peace, Charlie Kirk, you piece of shit.”
Bob Vylan performing at the Amsterdam concert
He also asked the crowd at the sold-out performance in the Dutch capital’s Paradiso venue if there were any “snipers in the room”.
The rapper, whose real name is Pascal Robinson-Foster, performed alongside the band’s drummer Wade Laurence George — also known as Bobbie Vylan — and repeated chants of “death, death, to the IDF [Israel Defence Forces]”.
According to the De Telegraaf newspaper, the duo went on to shout, while cheered by 1,500 fans: “F*** the fascists, f*** the Zionists. Go find them in the streets.”
Police are still investigating Bob Vylan’s Glastonbury festival performance, when the BBC broadcast the rapper chanting “death, death, to the IDF”, which was condemned by Sir Keir Starmer.
The Glastonbury performance
YUI MOK/PA
Bob Vylan’s words are particularly inflammatory in Amsterdam after Maccabi Tel Aviv football supporters were attacked and hunted down on the city’s streets in November last year.
Chanan Hertzberger, the chairman of the Dutch Central Jewish Council, said: “Singer Bob Vylan’s call from the stage, ‘go find them on the streets’, at Paradiso, is nothing more than a call for another pogrom in Amsterdam, like the one we saw on the night of November 7-8 last year.”
The council, which represents Jewish organisations in the Netherlands, has called on prosecutors to intervene before other performances by Bob Vylan in the country next week.
“Vylan’s call makes society unsafe for the Jewish community, regardless of the razor-thin dividing line between Jewish and Zionist,” Hertzberger added.
A message on a column opposite the Paradiso venue
HOLLANDSE HOOGTE/SHUTTERSTOCK
Officials from the Dutch public prosecution service did not attend the performance, as would be normal at a demonstration, and there have been complaints that concertgoers briefly blocked a tram in central Amsterdam, shouting: “Death, death to the IDF.”
“Anyone who was there is free to file a report,” a spokesman for the prosecution service said. “Then we’ll have to assess whether this is punishable in any way.”
More than 30 reports had been filed with the Amsterdam police by 10am.
Femke Halsema, the city’s mayor, said that artistic freedom should never mean that “Amsterdammers feel threatened or that there is a call to hatred or violence”. She wrote: “I await the public prosecution service’s investigation into the criminality of the statements.”
Bob Vylan has not commented on the backlash.
MPs across the political spectrum have condemned the comments. Geert Wilders, the leader of the hard-right Freedom party, accused Bob Vylan of a “call to violence and a new Jew hunt”, posting on X: “Insane that this deranged lunatic is allowed to perform in the Netherlands.”
Rob Jetten, the leader of the liberal Democrats 66 party, condemned Bob Vylan’s comments about Kirk. “You haven’t understood anything about freedom of speech and how you can disagree with each other,” he said.
Joost Eerdmans, the leader of the conservative JA21 party, said: “This is inciting violence and glorifying it. This is simply punishable.”
Bob Vylan were due to perform in Nijmegen on Monday. Hubert Bruls, the city’s mayor, said he saw “no reason to do anything now”.
Paradiso defended hosting the duo on free speech grounds when in July the venue was vandalised with the slogan “terror mosque” sprayed on its entrance after Bob Vylan’s performance was announced.
On Sunday, the venue said it shared “the outrage and concern surrounding the genocidal violence taking place in Gaza”, adding: “Bob Vylan’s raising his voice against this is legitimate and necessary.”
A Tuesday performance in the city of Tilburg has been cancelled after the venue Poppodium 013 said that the duo had gone too far.
“Statements last night early cross a line for us. We strongly reject the trivialisation of political murder and the call to “go look for people in the streets”, the venue said in a statement. “We believe these new statements go too far. For us, they no longer fall within the boundaries of what we can offer a platform for.”