Imagine this: Bob Narley takes to the stage – his name a play on the peerless reggae legend Bob Marley, known for timeless anthems about love and unity.
Only Bob Narley isn’t Black or Jamaican. He’s a white guy you’ve never heard of. Nevertheless, you turn on your TV – your publicly funded national broadcaster – and catch his set at Glastonbury, where he’s performing his allegedly edgy, punk-infused music.
Narley grabs the mic, bouncing around the stage in a frenzy, and at the top of his voice leads a chant calling for the death of the Jamaica Defence Force.
And for the sake of argument – especially for the painfully stupid—let’s imagine the JDF is currently engaged in a deadly, devastating war following a deadly, devastating terror attack on its citizens. Let’s imagine there are now undeniable questions over its conduct.
Now back to Bob Narley. Imagine the mostly white, middle-class audience – who’ve each spent £400 on a ticket and a further £250 on a cocktail of drugs likely trafficked into the country by vulnerable minors – cheering and chanting in unison: “Death, death to the JDF.”
Imagine their wavy blond locks swaying in support as Narley venomously rages about a Rastafarian manager he once worked with, invoking tropes about his unscrupulous character, topped off with derogatory comments about his hair.
Imagine it?
No, me neither – because there isn’t a festival stage in the world where that would be met with support.
What you would get is the wellington-boot-wearing hipsters of the inner cities and the gap-year countryside students furiously penning ChatGPT-assisted complaint letters to the festival organisers demanding a refund:
“Dear Emily Eavis
I, for one, was horrified by the calls for ethnic cleansing and the cultural appropriation. Misappropriating the identity of the late, great Bob Marley is a breach of human rights on a scale unseen at Glastonbury before.
Yours sincerely,
Rex from Walthamstow.”
Emily Eavis would have received thousands of such letters before the first unwashed graphic designer hit the medical tent at the Shangri-La area of the festival.
News of the incident would have swept the site. There’d be hunger strikes at dawn.
Unfortunately for Jews – or increasingly, I think, fortunately – we don’t have the luxury of support from “Globalise the Intifada” Griselda and “Resistance by Any Means” Rupert.
They don’t take to social media, outraged that an artist called Bob Vylan – named after the very Jewish Bob Dylan – called for the death of an entire group of people, including thousands of conscripted teenagers compelled to carry out national service.
Something has shifted in the UK. Jews have felt it slowly building for some time. But our concerns voiced are often dismissed, met with accusations that we are all nefarious liars with allegiances elsewhere – an ethnic minority uniquely distrusted to identify the racism we experience.
But it’s here.
While Bob Vylan was being applauded for his bigotry, broadcast into thousands of homes by the national broadcaster, my children and I walked past a man in North London, covered head to toe in Nazi symbols, megaphone in hand.
Something has shifted in the UK. Jews have felt it slowly building for some time. Now it’s here
He marched down the high road with the purposeful stride of an SS officer casually off to “slew some Jews”, while three police officers on the other side of the road looked confused when he was pointed out to them.
Back on social media, my left-leaning, “not-a-racist-bone-in-their-body” timeline was sharing memes describing the granddaughter of a Holocaust survivor as a baby killer – because she didn’t much like the shouty, hate-filled man on the telly. The audacity of her.
And here’s the thing. I have questions when I see the sheer range of those expressing such opinions. I can understand, perhaps, how any people who have fewer brain cells than GCSEs might have missed the history lesson on the age-old antisemitic blood libel. Maybe they don’t have much to lose professionally or personally.
But the professionals?
The ones with company names in their bios and LinkedIn profiles, who presumably need jobs at companies with discrimination policies in place just to pay the rent?
The ones who must talk to clients and engage with real people from other races, religions, and genders?
The ones who’ve undoubtedly, at some point, uttered the words ‘diversity and inclusion’ in a meeting about why it matters to them?
I can’t be the only one watching in utter disbelief as these people don the personality of that racist uncle who’s “just saying what we’re all thinking” – except now, they’re doing it in public.
Hatred of Jews is so mainstream now that there’s barely even a moment of hesitation. No consideration that their hate might carry social or professional consequences. In fact, quite the opposite.
And maybe this is exactly what happens when you do very little to challenge two years of antisemitic placards and slogans on our streets.
Glorification of terrorism.
Maybe this is what happens when you invite a band who – sure, made a documentary about the Irish language – but also happen to be named after a torture technique used by the IRA.
A band who waved the flag of an organisation that helped Bashar al-Assad kill hundreds of thousands of Syrian civilians. A band who shouted support for the terror group that burnt Jewish families in their beds, raped and slaughtered hundreds of young people at a music festival. A band who called for MPs to be murdered—when two actually have been murdered by extremists in the last few years.
Maybe – just maybe – this is what happens when those people don’t even feel the slightest bit uncomfortable.
