Glastonbury's day of shame

I can (and probably will) bore on at length about Glastonbury. There is much that can be said. The main story, so far as the media is concerned, is the thinly-veiled antisemitic rant from Bob Vylan (aka Pascal Robinson-Foster). We all know what he said. We all know what he meant. It was one of those "When they tell you who they really are, believe them" moments.

The slogan "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free" is a genocidal chant. It means Israel will be purged of Jews. The slogan "Free Palestine" means dissolve Israel. It's all ahistorical, genocidal, racist bile. But because antisemitism is the socially acceptable racism, the modern left let rip. Wrap it up in a social justice flag and it's consequence-free racism with no penalty.

We could also say much about the backdrop banner which proclaimed “This country was built on the backs of immigrants”. We know that isn’t true in the way Bob Vylan means it. You cannot point to a single landmark of significance in this country that blacks had any hand in creating. It should be noted that Britain was 94.65% white even by 1990. Britain was demographically stable until the arrival of Windrush migrants.

We could then say a lot about the anti-white messaging of their lyrics. "I heard you want your country back, shut the fuck up" is hardly counter-culture or edgy when that's been the exact message from the establishment for the last thirty years. Far from being edgy punk, this is wholly conforming, regime-approved, manufactured slop designed to commodify black entitlement.

There is then a discussion to be had on why the mainstream right is more offended by the antisemitism than the anti-white messaging. But I don’t think there’s anything especially new here. Delving a little deeper into the music of Bob Vylan, it couldn't be any more left-conforming if he'd commissioned Led By Donkeys to write the lyrics. It’s similar to the Guardianista sneering at “gammon”. It is wholly unsophisticated.

In my view, a genuinely edgy black rap artist would turn their fire on welfarism and the liberal patronage of Black people, fetishising them, and using them to advance their socialist agendas. But that would require a level of awareness and insight these individuals simply do not have. On that score, I don’t think Bob Vylan is controversial. It’s actually achingly dull and conventional.

It’s noteworthy, though, that the audience here was predominantly white. The Glastonbury demographic absolutely laps this stuff up. It’s almost as though this music is intended for this demographic exclusively. It seems probable than any self-respecting black kid wouldn’t be seen dead at a Bob Vylan concert. That said, ethnic minorities are seldom seen at English cultural events because they have no affinity for, or interest in, English culture. Integration is a myth. They came as economic migrants and shall remain as such.

There is then the hate-speech aspect to deal with. The right is playing heavily on this angle, noting that Bob Vylan is free to chant “death to the IDF, and Kneecap is free to incite riots and call for the killing of MPs while a young mother rots in jail over a tweet. There’s a lot to unpack there, but all of a sudden, the right wants to cancel and censor artists. The culture war rages on. Ultimately, the public just wants to see some sort of consistency. If we’re having Orwellian hate-speech laws, they must be enforced impartially.

The dimension that interests me, though, was seen over on another stage at Glastonbury. No, not Rod Stewart. Australian singer, Amy Taylor, was blethering about colonisation of aboriginals.

As Maral Salmassi puts it:

“Taylor’s Glastonbury rant is a prime example of how pathologically borderline self-flagellation has become the dominant aesthetic of white Western performers. Among all the budget Goebbels and Hitlers currently infesting the festival scene—Bob Vylan, Kneecap, and the rest—this may be the most cringeworthy yet. Watching a half-naked rock & roll bimbo deliver a rant about a cause she barely understands—on behalf of a culture where she’d be raped or stoned to death within seconds for dressing like that—isn’t activism. It’s not even solidarity. It’s spiritual cosplay in fishnets…. Large swaths of the Western cultural class are now addicted to guilt and divorced from reality. They’ll embrace any ideology—no matter how violent, regressive, or genocidal—if it allows them to cosplay as morally pure rebels”.

This, to me, gets to the heart of it. This is a movement built entirely on self-loathing and the fetishisation of indigenous peoples. Everyone is entitled to the lands of their ancestors. Except, of course, white people and Jews. It all pivots on the colonisation narrative even to the point delegitimising the existence of their own countries. The modern left is a Western suicide cult. (See also abortion and assisted dying). The reason they hate Israel is because they want to survive, in defiance of the left's desire for self-nullification. The left worships death - which is why they get on so well with Islam.

This, I think, could be a watershed moment in the culture war. This really was a moment of unmasking. The left lacks the sophistication and discipline to maintain the facade of respectability. We can now see them for what they really are. A hate mob.

This does not bode well for Glastonbury either. When an event like Glastonbury becomes overtly political, to the extent of platforming terrorist sympathisers, it's in its final years. At its best, it was an escapist holiday for people who like contemporary music. Now it's becoming the music equivalent of the Hay-on-Wye literature festival that people attend just to be seen to be there, rather than to actually enjoy it. The left have taken a British institution and gutted it from within to serve their own purposes.

It always had something of a hippy bent to it, but it was something you could tune out, but now it's an aggressively political and toxic activist battleground, and they won't stop until they've sucked every last moment of joy out of it. What we're witnessing now is a cultural phenomenon long past its sell by date. It's like Top Gear in its final seasons. It was still delivering for its hardcore fans, but everyone sensed the end was coming, and there was little marrow left to be sucked from the bones.

I think, though, I now understand why Glastonbury is famed for rampant consumption of psychotropic narcotics. It’s the only way to cope with the spirit crushing tedium.