Kneecap and Bob Vylan at Glastonbury 2025: Why you should care about the troubling censorship of political protest
You might not care for their music, you might not even care for what they’ve said or done, but you should care about the systemic silencing of Kneecap.
The story began last November when Mo Chara of the Irish hip-hop trio emerged at a concert apparently displaying a Hezbollah flag. On June 18th, he appeared in court to face terror charges as a result of the incident.
Since then, their Glastonbury performance has been shrouded in controversy. DJ and producer Toddla T recently broke the news of a secret letter that was sent to Glastonbury Festival, lobbying for the band to be barred from performing. Even Keir Starmer called for a ban, commenting that it was “not appropriate” for them to perform.
To some extent, the lobbyists got their wish. Unlike the vast majority of sets broadcast over the course of the weekend on BBC iPlayer, Kneecap’s performance on the West Holts stage at 16:00 was reduced to an edited highlights video, released later in the evening. Last-minute news of this decision prompted the band to hit out at the BBC, labelling them “the propaganda wing of the regime”.
The incident feels like a paradigm of the wider issues surrounding the Kneecap case. “Art is political,” they have claimed as they “vehemently” defend themselves and dismiss the charges of terrorism brought against Chara. Fellow performers such as Grian Chatten of Fontaines DC have also come forward in their defence, calling the controversy a “witch hunt”.
Meanwhile, the band have always maintained, “We just want to stop people being murdered.” Their aim is to promote activism in the hope that people can pressure their governments into acting in a manner that puts a stop to an unfolding humanitarian crisis that has so far resulted in the estimated deaths of 80,000 people, according to an independent survey by the Human Rights Data Analysis Group.
Sadly, amid the Kneecap debate, that figure has rarely been cited, with the deaths becoming a sideshow to a pig circus about just how political a band can become before we deplatform them. Kneecap, however, have not only been deplatformed but also branded as potential terrorists. In the process, the state and media have shifted the focus away from the political content of their message towards a more binary sentiment of what upstanding citizens should and shouldn’t say.
In the embittered battle of good citizens vs dangerous (naive) extremists, the individual motives are what come into question and subsume the wider collective call to action, with Lisa Nandy commenting that the band, “Thrive on the oxygen of publicity.” Interestingly, this doesn’t call into question what they are saying, but casts doubt on why they are saying it. That publicity, however, largely seems to originate from sources beyond the band. Moreover, it is difficult to question the sincerity of an artist who refuses to be meekly silenced despite facing terror charges, financial ruin, and visa restrictions.
Even if the group were guilty of overstepping the mark, as the state claims, it distinctly feels like this misstep is being weaponised to dismiss the wider and much more important societal critique that they have espoused as being just as flawed as they are. If the band were given an open billing, then they would no doubt have further amplified that cutting critique, but this was taken away from them, showcasing how, as a society, we are often all for political protest and free-speech so long as it can be co-opted — so long as it cowers under the might of the state’s strongarming if it steps too far out of line.
Now, that seems to be playing out first-hand at Glastonbury as the festival and the BBC look to defang the most potent political moments on offer all weekend by refusing anything other than an edited highlights package. In the wake of the news of Kneecap being deemed too subversive to broadcast live, Bob Vylan decided to utilise their set, which immediately preceded the Irish band’s, to stand in solidarity.
In a startling moment, the punk group yelled “death to the IDF”. This has since led the police to announce that they are launching an official probe into Bob Vylan and Emily Eavis made a statement on behalf of Glastonbury, commenting that the group had “crossed the line”. Yesterday also saw the IDF kill 81 Palestinians. So far, 44% of all Palestinian victims have been women and children. These horrific actions have received rather less attention than the words of young musicians trying to make a positive change in a manner that seemingly is just a little too angry and loud to be deemed “appropriate”.
The late cultural theorist Mark Fisher would have termed this a classic example of the ‘shrinking of the unthinkable’. Back in Glasotnbury’s heyday, there were far more extreme versions of protest on display than merely three young lads and a pair of punks making use of a microphone with the keen eyes of the public watching on. We weren’t so fast to attempt to bully defiance into submission back then. That doesn’t seem to be the case presently.
What happened at Glastonbury?
The supposedly neutral, sensible and grown-up powers that be have now swiftly taken the opportunity to suppress radical culture under what Stramer has termed ‘appropriateness’. Such a flimsy standpoint should not result in censorship. That troublingly creates a climate where a centrist notion of ‘decency’ and ‘order’ smothers dissent in a far more sinister fashion than either of those terms implies, creating a reality where it seems we’re more likely to trudge on towards an apocalypse than enact any actual change to the status quo.
The message to Kneecap seems to be, ‘Yes, of course, you’re allowed to speak, but not when it might matter, and certainly not if it is out of turn’. Meanwhile, the BBC’s message to the public seems to have transitioned from the official tagline of “We bring it to you,” to ‘We bring it to you if it has been deemed ‘appropriate’ by those in charge’, questioning the validity of the so-called free press.
Now, Bob Vylan have also been deplatformed and intimidated with legal threats. That’s censorship of art. And that’s troubling. Especially, when the art is raising awareness of untold human casualties. In any functioning and fair democracy, people – a problematic Irish hip-hop band or otherwise – need to be given the freedom to make a political point, and there was once no finer place to do that than Glastonbury.
The way events have unfurled, it it could be thought that Glastonbury is in the pocket of the BBC, who are in the pocket of the government, who are in the pocket of arms dealers, and the totalitarian conclusion of this capitalist precession is that the subversive words of young artists are more condemnable and actionable than the murder of 17,000 children that they are speaking out against. Regardless of your politics on the situation, take a look around at your own family, and ask yourself what you think should be of greater concern and attention, the words of Bob Vylan and Kneecap or the actions of unfurling war crimes?
So, you might not care for their music, you might not even care for what they’ve said or done, but you should care about that.
