Glastonbury was not an anomaly. At any big music festival today, you will encounter tons of musicians and fans speaking out about Israel's campaign of genocide against the Palestinian people. "Free Palestine" chants are all over the place. At any large gathering like that, you can see that this is not a controversial issue for the vast majority of plugged-in people. It's something that people want to talk about it. But various forces, both inside and outside the music industry, have aligned against some of those artists, attempting to make an example of them -- Kneecap's Mo Chara getting his with a terrorism charge, Bob Vylan having their US visas revoked. Now, Bristol elders Massive Attack are launching a new alliance for artists facing "intimidations" and "organized censorship" for talking about what's happening in Gaza.
Massive Attack announced this new alliance on Instagram on Thursday. The group has been vocal about the issue for a long time. In 2023, they got together with Young Fathers and Fontaines D.C. to release the benefit EP Ceasefire, raising money for Doctors Without Borders' relief efforts in Gaza. Massive Attack were among the many artists who signed a statement of support for Kneecap after authorities attempted to clamp down on them after their Coachella set. Last month, Massive Attack threatened legal action against an Israeli influencer who accused them of "incitement." On their Instagram yesterday, the Bristol act posted a statement that was reshared by Brian Eno. According to The Guardian, Kneecap and Fontaines D.C. are also supporting Massive Attack's alliance. Here's Massive Attack's statment:
The scenes in Gaza have moved beyond description. We write as artists who’ve chosen to use our public platforms to speak out against the genocide occurring there and the role of the UK government in facilitating it.
Because of our expressions of conscience, we’ve been subject to various intimidations from within our industry (live & recorded) & legally via organized bodies such as UK Lawyers For Israel; whose range of activities has now finally been exposed in a new documentary film projected last night by the Led By Donkeys collective.
We’re aware of the scale of aggressive, vexatious campaigns operated by UKLFI and of multiple individual incidences of intimidation within the music industry itself, designed solely to censor and silence artists from speaking their hearts and minds.
Having withstood these campaigns of attempted censorship, we won’t stand by and allow other artists -- particularly those at earlier stages of their careers or in other positions of professional vulnerability -- to be threatened into silence or career cancellation.
In this spirit, we encourage artists who’ve been placed in this position, or those who now wish to use their platforms to talk about Palestine, but are concerted about industrial or legal repercussions to contact us.
[Email address that you can find in the Instagram slide, which I'd rather not have scraped from this blog post by any nefarious forces]
We want to work together to share experiences and creative, factual resources, & vitally, to stand in strength & solidarity to collectively demand:
Immediate, unfettered access to Gaza for recognised international aid agencies without military threat.
The end of the atrocious targeting of medical & aid workers.
An end of UK arms sales/licenses to Israel.
An immediate & permanent ceasefire.
A free Palestine.
If you've felt anxious about speaking out before but feel it's too late, it isn't.
It's never too late to join this movement.
Everyone is welcome.
In a follow-up post today, Massive Attack write:
Powerful supporters of Israel’s genocide in Gaza know they’ve lost public opinion, so they organise to censor the artists using their platforms to speak out against crimes against humanity & genocide. Most unforgivably, their strategy to achieve that silence is the conflation of any criticism of the actions of the Israeli government with the scourge of antisemitism. That is an egregious, offensive and fundamentally false conflation -- especially in a global environment of the rise of the far-right, & authentic antisemitism. If you’re an artist who wants to speak out, or has been intimidated from speaking out, we’ve got you: [there's that email address again]
This week Doctors Without Borders -- probably the world's most revered conflict medical charity -- publicly described a genocide and the UK government complicity in it. Even that wasn't enough to move established artists who are "insured" by wealth, fame, lawyers and PR teams to demand an end to the horror; yet younger or earlier career stage artists are using their voices in the full knowledge that their artistic careers could be over before they've begun. That cannot stand.
This collective action is really about offering some kind of solidarity to those artists who are living day after day in a screen-time genocide, but are worried about using their platforms to express their horror at that, because of the level of censorship within their industry or from external legal bodies terrifying them & their management teams with aggressive legal actions. The intention is obvious: to silence them.
