The controversy over the band Kneecap is a blatant example of double standards when it comes to free speech and Palestine, explains Des Freedman

The Irish hip-hop band Kneecap are facing calls to be prosecuted, prevented from performing and, according to Tory leader Kemi Badenoch, ‘banned full stop’. 

The reason given is because of comments allegedly made by one band member on stage in October 2023 to ‘kill your local MP’. The real reason, however, is because of Kneecap’s very public and passionate opposition to genocide in Gaza.

When the alleged comments first came to light, the band immediately apologised and said that the comments were taken out of context. This was not enough to stop a debate in parliament in which Dan Jarvis, Labour’s security minister, said that ‘incitement to violence is never acceptable.’

Yet there was no such outrage when Top Gear’s Jeremy Clarkson called, on live television in 2011, for striking public-sector workers to be ‘executed’. Prime Minister David Cameron said that, ‘it was a silly thing to say … I’m sure he didn’t mean it’. The media regulator, Ofcom, dismissed complaints and concluded that, while the comments may have been offensive, they were ‘not at all likely to encourage members of the public … to act on them in any way’.

When Tory donor Frank Hester argued that the Black MP Diane Abbott ‘made him want to hate all black women’ and that she ‘should be shot’, Kemi Badenoch dismissed the fuss as ‘trivia’ and insisted that the party should not even return his £10m donation.

When the Mail on Sunday ran an article only ten days after the murder of Labour MP Jo Cox in 2016 with the headline ‘Labour MUST kill vampire Jezza’ (referring to then Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn), there were no parliamentary debates condemning the author Dan Hodges or demands for the newspaper to drop him. (The headline in the online version was then changed to ‘Labour MUST dump vampire Jezza’).

When the Sun columnist Katie Hopkins wrote an article in 2015 in which she described migrants as ‘cockroaches’, an article that the UN high commissioner for refugees said could be seen as breaching laws on curbing incitement to hatred, I do not remember the prime minister demanding her sacking. In fact, the Guardian columnist Hadley Freeman simply advised people to forget about her: ‘ignore her and she withers away’.

There are many more examples of this kind of double standards over ‘free speech’ but no such generosity has been applied to Kneecap. Not a single voice in parliament spoke up in favour of the right to use free expression to condemn Israel’s assault on Gaza in a session which parliament’s official record, Hansard, called ‘Irish Republican Alleged Incitement’.

The relentless targeting of Kneecap is a moral panic that has emerged specifically because of the group’s opposition to Israel’s actions in Gaza. Dozens of MPs queued up to speak in the House of Commons to condemn three young musicians when no such systematic condemnation has been aimed by government or opposition figures at the Israeli politicians and generals facilitating the assault on Gaza.

It seems that it is OK to criticise controversial or offensive speech, but not so permissible to speak out against actual violence and the actual role of the UK in supplying weapons to Israeli forces and facilitating a genocide.

This is about punishing people for speaking out in relation to Palestine and, as Kneecap’s manager has said, ‘solely about deplatforming artists’. This will lead to a chilling of speech: a brake on the free expression that government ministers claim is so important for democratic life, yet is apparently ‘incitement’ coming from the mouths of pro-Palestine musicians.

Many will see this as a manufactured controversy that is designed to curb debate and dissent in relation to Palestine and to distract from the UK government’s role in the destruction of Gaza. Of course, MPs should not be threatened with violence but neither should pro-Palestine solidarity be silenced and punished.

A statement from dozens of musicians, including Paul Weller, Pulp, Primal Scream, Fontaines D.C. and Massive Attack, rightly accuses politicians of ‘strategically concocting moral outrage over the stage utterings of a young punk band’ at the same time as they ignore a genocide in Gaza.

It concludes: ‘Solidarity with all artists with the moral courage to speak out against Israeli war crimes, and the ongoing persecution and slaughter of the Palestinian people.’

Meanwhile, in what is testimony both to Kneecap’s popularity and the level of pro-Palestine sentiment, the ‘number of people listening to Kneecap has soared in the past week and the band have entered the charts for the first time in several countries.’

As is so often the case, media and political elites are increasingly out of step with the millions of ordinary people who can sniff out hypocrisy and opportunism.