Bob Vylan frontman Bobby Vylan is “not regretful” of his “death, death to the IDF” chant at Glastonbury and said he would “do it again tomorrow, twice on Sundays”.
The outspoken punk duo sparked controversy when they led chants of “death, death to the IDF”, referring to the Israel Defense Forces, at the festival in June. The chant was condemned by Glastonbury and the UK prime minister, Keir Starmer, who described it as “appalling hate speech”.
Bob Vylan was dropped by its agency UTA, and the US state department revoked the member’s visas, forcing them to cancel a North American tour.
Speaking on The Louis Theroux Podcast in his first interview since Glastonbury, Vylan, whose real name is Pascal Robinson-Foster, was asked if he would do it all again.
He replied: “Oh yeah. Like what if I was to go on Glastonbury again tomorrow, yes I would do it again. I’m not regretful of it. I’d do it again tomorrow, twice on Sundays.
He said the backlash the band had faced was “minimal compared to what people in Palestine are going through”.
“I don’t want to overstate the importance of the chant,” he added. “That’s not what I’m trying to do, but if I have their support, they’re the people that I’m doing it for, they’re the people that I’m being vocal for, then what is there to regret? Oh, because I’ve upset some rightwing politician or some rightwing media?”
Vylan’s conversation with Theroux was recorded on 1 October. At the start of the episode, the presenter states that it took place before the Manchester synagogue attacks on 2 October, in which two people were killed and three others injured, and before the ceasefire in Gaza came into effect on 10 October.
The musician said he was taken aback by the uproar sparked by the chant, and claimed members of BBC staff at Glastonbury told him on the day that the set was “fantastic”.
The corporation’s executive complaints unit (ECU) has since found the BBC’s broadcast of the performance breached editorial standards in relation to harm and offence.
Vylan told Theroux there was no sign of a controversy in the moment: “It wasn’t like we came off stage, and everybody was like [gasps]. It’s just normal. We come off stage. It’s normal. Nobody thought anything. Nobody. Even staff at the BBC were like ‘That was fantastic! We loved that!’”
Vylan also hit back at Damon Albarn from Blur, who called the chant “one of the most spectacular misfires I’ve seen in my life” and described Vylan as “goose-stepping in tennis gear”.
Albarn’s reaction was “disappointing” and “lacked self-awareness”, Vylan said.
“I just want to say that categorising it as a ‘spectacular misfire’ implies that somehow the politics of the band or our stance on Palestinian liberation is not thought out,” he said.
“I take great issue with the phrase ‘goose-stepping’ being used because it’s only used around Nazi Germany,” he added. “That’s it. And for him to use that language, I think is disgusting. I think his response was disgusting.”
Asked what he meant by the chant “Death to the IDF,” Vylan said the chant itself was “unimportant”.
“What is important is the conditions that exist to allow that chant to even take place on that stage. And I mean, the conditions that exist in Palestine. Where the Palestinian people are being killed at an alarming rate. Who cares about the chant?” he said.
“Death to the IDF” rhymes, he added: “‘End, End the IDF’ does not rhyme, wouldn’t have caught on, would it? … We are there to entertain. We are there to play music. I am a lyricist. ‘Death, Death to IDF’ rhymes. Perfect chant.”
Vylan also rejected claims from the Community Security Trust (CST), a monitoring and Jewish community safety organisation, that their set contributed to a spike in antisemitic incidents reported two days later.
“I don’t think I have created an unsafe atmosphere for the Jewish community. If there were large numbers of people going out and going like ‘Bob Vylan made me do this’. I might go, oof, I’ve had a negative impact here,” he said.
When Vylan said he thought the band had been criticised more heavily than others for speaking about the conflict, Theroux mentioned the Irish band Kneecap, who have also faced backlash for their approach to pro-Palestine messaging.
“That’s an interesting one,” Vylan said, “because as with everything race comes to play a part in that we are an easier villain, no pun intended, than they are because we are already the enemy.”
Press Association contributed to this report.
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: theguardian.com
