People act like musicians standing up for what they believe in is anything new. #FreePalestine [Slyngstad]
Slyngstad | Bluesky
::: spoiler Transcript A three-panel political comic by Slyngstad highlighting the long history of political activism in music. In the foreground of all three panels, two audience members are seen talking in profile.
Panel 1:
On Stage: A modern musician holding a microphone calls out, “FREE PALESTINE!”
Foreground: One audience member complains, “UGH, WHEN DID MUSICIANS START TO BE SO POLITICAL?”
Panel 2:
On Stage: Freddie Mercury performing at the 1985 Live Aid benefit concert, with the “Live Aid” global logo in the background.
Foreground: The second audience member replies, “START?”
Panel 3:
On Stage: Folk singer Woody Guthrie playing an acoustic guitar with his iconic slogan written across it: “THIS MACHINE KILLS FASCISTS”.
Foreground: The second audience member continues, “MAYBE YOU JUST WEREN’T LISTENING.” :::
214 replies
You'd have to be some kind of American Idiot to miss the messages.
The Message must have been lost on these people Born in the USA it's a shame that The Revolution Will not be Televised because it might make it more obvious, but That's Just the Way it is.
It ain't me I ain't no fortunate son...
We won't be fooled again
Maybe they've just never listened to Gorilla Radio, or Taken the Power Back. Nevermind the Bollox, though. They're probably being being dishonest. I Want it That Way. Wait...no that's not right...
DAE SONG TITLES LOLOL
When you're a Bull on Parade, you don't care to look for them.
Yeah. Welcome to Paradise, right? Taking the Longview, only a Basketcase would be down with this Dookie.
Buncha Nimrods.
Well, I certainly don't want to be one of those.
Rage Against the Machine but not like in a political way or anything, just like, noises and anger and centrism
Songs from Paul Ryan's workout playlist
He's singing along,
"Some of those that work forces, are the same that wear crosses"
You can imagine his thoughts on "chosen whites"
You won't believe the amount of right wingers who believe RATM are right wing. I assume because they sound angry?
"Fuck you I won't do what you tell me" is kind of universal, but you'd think "Some of those who work forces are the same who burn crosses" would have been a hint towards which side they lean towards.
Cognitive dissonance is a hell of a drug.
You overestimate the rightoid mindset. "Police support the KKK? Well surely the KKK are respectable company."
what you've described is AI generated music
Nah, that's rage BY and probably FOR the machine
I'm pretty sure "The Machine" they're raging against is like an annoying office printer or copy machine or something.
/s
I wonder if RATM might have a claim as the most political band of all time. The only song of theirs I can think of that isn't political is Born of a Broken Man. Even the songs they covered were political.
It's the entire reason they exist. They are a protest band. It's their genre.
You need to listen to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Kennedys_discography
This is not even a strawman. I seen people on reddit argue "art is supposed to just be fun, not push any ideologies."
Ironic, the idea that art should just be for fun is its own ideology
I think what often gets missed is that art should be engaging. And that engagement - even negative engagement - can be fun.
But also, politics is very engaging and often very fun (especially when you're winning).
So, what I'm seeing isn't "Art shouldn't be political" but "Art shouldn't make me feel like I'm losing."
It's also "art shouldn't leave me stuck thinking"
Idk about that.
People who didn't want to think about it wouldn't be so obsessed with catastrophizing it.
Yeah, ask Leni Riefenstahl about it! She knows everything about unpolitical art.
Jesus, somebody slept through art class for literally all of school. Several somebodies, apparently.
Right before they blow a gasket because they were forced, against their wills, to play as a Lady Jedi.
Those people are embarrassing. They're probably the same people that say like "Dracula is just a story about a guy who bites people shut up about all this politics and feminism".
Education is difficult and, in the US are least, under funded.
It's a conservative identifier for me. I haven't seen an example that was't complaining about progressive political stances in some medium.
Oh so you saw one of the hundreds of thousands of bots?
Laughs in System of a Down
Prison song, BYOB (bring your own bombs), BOOM, Deer Dance, PLUCK, Holy Mountains, Protect the Land … a few of which were used to directly raise funds to support victims of an Armenian genocide ..
System of a Down was instrumental in forming my political views.
Me too. 10 years old telling people about the prison system and how fucked it is.
i was listening to BOOM this morning and i was....they're talking about now...this is happening now too! "The bottom line is money, nobody gives a fuck!"
Also RFK still has a tapeworm brainworm telling him what to do. Needs to pull it out of his ass.
Brueh. Laughs in literally any band in history.
Umm like EVERY 60s song. What do they think fortunate son is about?!!! Fucking dense boomers.
Born in the USA...
That is the best example of a "patriot" song.
According to the demented fool, Fortunate son is about him, he is the: Millionaires son, born with silver spoon in hand, waiving the flag while the band is playing "Hail to the chief".
…
I respect when someone stands by their mistakes.
Rise Against is also fitting too
It's a shame a band that wrote a perfect conservative anthem with Prayer for the Refugee would go on to become crazy leftists.
Yes but that had already been spelled correctly elsewhere in this thread
Same level of media literacy that missed the satire of the Starship Troopers movie.
Watching the US Government unironically propose Starship Troopers-inspired uniforms for the Space Force had me in stitches.
When did they become a bunch of woke libtards? /s
True but I don't think they are able to string that many words together at a time
Reminds me of that Green Charlotte song, Lifestyles of the American Idiot.
Is this some other ratm I'm not aware of?
Tom Morello/Tim McIlrath side project?
Only thing I hate is their music is still relevant even to today. World's only worse and worse. Love the music, hate nothing has changed.
Michael Jackson is arguably the most famous musician ever, or at least VERY close and a lot of his music is explicitly political, “they don’t really care about us” comes to mind, I think “man in the mirror” also qualifies, I know other stuff he’s done definitely does too I’m just not a big MJ head, I know the guy is problematic but it’s obtuse to claim musicians are just getting political now when arguably the biggest musician of all time was very political in his own right decades ago.
Agreed about They don't really care about us, but Man in the Mirror is more personal. Black or White has a certain political slant, and Earth Song has a very direct message.
Let's look at some other musicians who might have a claim to "most famous ever": Elvis was not really political - if anything he was pro-establishment.
Mozart and Beethoven however were very political. Beethoven scratched out the dedication to Napoleon in the Eroica when Napoleon made himself an emperor. Previously Beethoven had been a major supporter of Napoleon because he was pushing enlightenment ideals. Mozart was less directly political, but The Marriage of Figaro was very subversive at the time (which I know from the movie Amadeus, but apparently that checks out).
The Beatles didn't start out political, but they became more so over time.
Well he wasn't in the epstein files and he was an odd one. But as far as I know, no proof of the kid diddling has happened.
Nobody has ever made the claim that “musicians” are just now getting political. That’s just the comic artist to make the comic.
It’s literally the definition of a strawman argument.
Americans were literally outraged that rage against the machine gas become political. Or we're not gonna take it by twisted sisters might not be the right wing anthem they thought it was.
Dee Snider has even made a point of being staunchly and publicly anti-Trump.
"Americans" weren't surprised by that, a handful of right-wing dipshits were. Stop ascribing a monolithic opinion to a third of a billion people. It's tiresome.
"Dipshits" is certainly the more accurate grouping. If I took 1 million people from any random place in the world I can always dredge up a few dipshits.
A third of a billion people is a hell of a rounding up.
Um, no it isn't? US pop is ~350m.
you know what I miss that we used to do a lot of?
punching the fuck out of racist sexist piece of shit nazis.
that should make a comeback.
We're trying here: A friend of mine got unconsentually kissed and by a guy with a... reputation, to say the least, who's been trying to get into her pants for a while. So my roommate/her boyfriend and I of course got pissed off and were like "so when do we smack the little shit?" (FAR from his first time)
However, victims themselves aren't aware of what happened to them. She's already starting to forget as a trauma response and very easily got gaslit by him later that it wasn't that big/deep - til her boyfriend/my roommate reminded her that yes it fucking is.
The situation is kinda on hold, and there's of course a lot of details that make it more complicated and such, but nothing's been done because the state of the victims here are so used to such shit that when it boils over, it seems like less of a big deal than it is.
I'm in Europe, but haven't always been and can very certainly say that where I come from, the bitch would be smacked around by the victim itself and likely socially isolated for a while, no need for help - instead of no social consequence, victim unaware of what happened to them despite having a trauma response they subjectively typically have and unsmacked
Shit's out of whack and more often than not (about this specifically, but in general as well) feel like I'm the crazy one for seeing almost rape and saying "that bad" TT
Seconded.
Oh I’ll happily do it. I grew up in a hockey family. My brothers all learned how to fight early and I learned through uhh… my own experiences with bullies. I hit one kid so hard, he told me how he was disoriented as fuck and we ended up becoming friends.
That cracks me up dude. "nice punch! We should be friends!" is a great simple story. Thanks for sharing it with us.
I really don’t like to embellish or promote violence. It was just funny the way it worked out. I was still new to the neighborhood, so the kids that lived there were essentially hazing me on the bus. The kid kept pushing me against the window, while bracing himself on the back of our seat and the one in front of us. All I remember is blacking out, punching him in the face as hard as possible, and then him trying to get me in a headlock but failing because he was so disoriented. It was wild. He tried to goad me into fighting again afterwards, but I did my best to defuse things and told him I didn’t want to fight.
Later that day, he came over to my house, admitted that I fucked him up good, we had a laugh, and then it was all good from then on.
not even an hour in before I could recomment
art is political
🤘rock on political musicians, 🤘rock on
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/This_Land_Is_Your_Land
https://genius.com/Bruce-springsteen-born-in-the-usa-lyrics
This is one that flag-humping jingoistic fascists always think is for them, because they haven't paid attention to the words.
I fucking LOVE Woody Guthrie. Start with his political songs, such as This Land is Your Land and Tear the Fascists Down, then pick up the Wilco/Billy Bragg album Mermaid Avenue for modern recordings of previously unrecorded Guthrie songs.
And let's not forget he protested Trump long before it was cool.
Robin Hood and Little John walkin' through the forest...
Don’t have this issue as much with punk and hardcore music :P
Unfortunately, punk music does have nazi fans, hence the song Nazi Punks Fuck Off
I knew some dudes who were big into punk and hardcore in the early ‘00s. They seemed decent at first, so I hung out with them for about a month before I figured out they were racist neo nazi shitstains. I dropped that group of friends so fucking fast.
I am aware sadly. Good thing I said “as much” because the issue still exists, just not as much.
Very true, apologies, I totally missed that
No worries. I could have used better English but I got lazy :P
Nah, you’re good lol Sometimes my brain skips right over words. Anyway
Nazi punks fuck off!
Fuck yeah!
Okay I need some help. Is there a place I can figure out precisely the boundaries of hardcore music because I've been told a few times I should do a hardcore band.
I do blues, folk, jazz, and church music. Hardcore sounds fun but I should know what it is before I try
There aren't really any boundaries.
You have: American hardcore Powerviolence Crust Euro hardcore
And about 100 other subgenres, that have their own styles. It's mostly just energy speed and pissed off.
For example bands like Brain Tourniquet, storm of sedition, fentanyl, candy apple, tower 7, kinetic orbital strike, kohti tuhoa, extortion, Woodstock '99, Doped Up, and my current obsession 偏執症者 (Paranoid) all fall under the Hardcore label but all sound distinct from each other.
Edited to add links to band pages
I'm no expert (more of a metalhead) but I don't know any of these. When talking about hardcore I'm thinking more about Sick of it All, Hatebreed, Terror, Walls of Jericho, 25 Ta Life and the like.
I know some of them, but they're not super likely to show up on hardcore discussion threads.
Yours would. Although 25 ta life would just be Rick riding a horse memes.
Terror is always good. Incendiary, Backtrack, Have Heart, Trap Them, Nails, Left Behind, Trapped Under Ice. But yeah, hardcore has been around long enough there's lots of different flavors and offshoots.
I apologize if my last post seemed dismissive, I'm a lifelong hardcore fan. Like old enough to buy Minor Threat out of step when it came out.
I edited my first post to add links for context for the bands I named, if I had the time I would add hundreds more, cheers!
No offense, I fully understand there are a lot of subgenres. I dont want to dismiss the bands you like, I was just surprised to not see what seem (to me) to be the more popular names. But that may be just be my own bubble, and should definitely not be considered an absolute reference or an attempt at gatekeeping what's "good" hardcore. Anyway, thanks for the links!
I totally get that, and I was definitely not trying to gatekeep. I apologize if I came off that way, cheers and love what you love and keep rocking!
I consider that NYHC style stuff meathead macho hxc, and not fully representative of hardcore as a whole.
Like punk there is a spectrum of sounds, scenes, and subgenres.
So I'm spending next week building musical instruments (long story) and I think you just gave me a good work Playlist
I heard “We Didn’t Start the Fire” today and thought “Well, that was a fucking lie.” It was a very popular song with people who just totally disregarded the sentiment entirely.
I was just thinking about how that seems to be a theme. Art has a message. People don't pick it up.
Like, if you'll pardon a genre change, the protagonists of final fantasy 7 are literal eco terrorists who blow up an allegory for an oil plant. How many of those fans love the game and didn't give a single thought to environmentalism? Barret would disapprove
When I was a kid I caught it but thought “Things aren’t as bad as in the game, but if they ever are I would also go to the same lengths!” Within a few years though, it became apparent that things were pretty bad.
See, it's easy. The lyrics that name foreign entities? Those are bad people. The domestic entities and events their country was involved in? Naturally-occurring events that simply happened. Just history.
Toot toot. Patta pum patta pum.
I wasn't there either but it's still the first one that comes to mind.
Elvis broke segregation laws.
The Beatles refused to play if the audiences were segregated.
Billie Holiday started offending parts of her audience by singing "Strange Fruit" in 1939.
Bad example as you're not allowed to like him anymore because of who he was as a person. Allegedly.
"They didn't listen they did not know how, perhaps they'll listen now."
How now, brown cow?
Vincent ❤️
Here’s an example of a band being political for the likes, but not living it: Rise Against. I used to have more respect for them, but they’ve been painfully fucking silent on Palestine and the US oligarchy, AI, etc.
I saw someone say this about another band I like.
Do we require every band we like to make a song about every injustice in this world? Or can we celebrate that they stood up against some of them?
They have a platform to speak up with, and a politically charged brand that they chose to carry. Now when some of the biggest threats to the world arise, they’re nowhere to be found. It must be nice to be able to just checkout and put blinders on while their fans are all getting fucked by high cost of living, climate change, data centers, and surveillance hell.
You demand perfection that you yourself do not have.
Why would I ever even claim perfection? I expect nothing. Like I said it’s my observation. I’m not writing some petition or calling them out. I’ve already well moved on.
You have not said that in the previous comments in the thread that I am talking to you in.
And you are upset they are quiet on the issues you deem most important. You do just come across as bitter and personally upset and wanting those you look up to to match your positions. I will actually move on. You can say whatever but it doesnt make it true.
LOL jesus christ. This is exactly why most people come to hate leftists.
Get some fucking perspective on reality, dude, because your position is completely fucking ridiculous. I just regret that there's no way to know who you are so I can literally laugh directly into your face.
Feel however you want. As my profile states, I don’t give a shit about debates.
Of course not. People who can't defend their positions usually avoid debates.
When the tanks show up at your door, they wont debate you either :) Hope you can find meaning in your life.
Ehhh, I think Rise Against gets a pass in this situation. They just haven't been quite as active lately. They released a new album which has songs generically about rebelling against flails arms but they were so so so active during the bush era and during Trump's first term.
Besides, I think the song Nod is a "nod" to the Palestine genocide but I agree it's a little disappointing that there is not more. I just think that saying they're not "living it" isn't really fair when they are known as political legends.
Thanks for understanding where I’m coming from. Like I don’t hate them or anything. Quite the opposite. Life is hard and we all get older. I don’t blame them for wanting to enjoy life.
Rise Against is fucking solid.
They also didn't issue a statement or write a song specifically for, say, the genocide in Sudan, but that one doesn't seem to fucking matter for some reason.
No one expects them to write a track about literally every injustice. They’d need like 500 albums worth of material. It’s just me as one single fan that means zero, expressing my observation. I’ve seen them live multiple times, I’ve listened to all of their work. It’s just funny to me that somehow Macklemore has spoken out more recently, than a band that basically built their entire image on being political.
For everyone who saw this comment and started having doubts I looked it up on Wikipedia, and they haven't been completely silent.
Also I don't think this is being silent against US oligarchy:
I don’t follow their personal socials (don’t have social accounts anywhere anymore), so thanks for finding these.
Who’s the guy on the right?
Edit: the guy with the acoustic guitar in the last panel I mean.
Woody Guthrie
Thanks. I’d never even heard of him.
Fun fact about him:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Man_Trump
He was pretty ahead of the curve.
It's so funny to see people who hated the Trumps for their shit policies back in the 1950s get rediscovered by people in the 2020s, despite the Trumps never changing the whole time.
You would have liked to think someone like Harris or Biden or Clinton could have picked up on a Woody Gutherie song and leveraged it as a critique of someone's shitty, racist housing policies. Of course, it would have helped if someone like Harris or Biden or Clinton hadn't been promoting the same exact policies.
Damn! What a twist! Love it when subplots tie into the main narrative like this.
And you have to listen to his son, Arlo Guthrie. Alice's restaurant is an anti draft classic.
Bob Dylan
Queen played in apartheid south africa, chumbawumba referenced in a song called Slag Aid
Someone else who knows Chumbawamba music beyond Tubthumping!?
Hooray! Friends!
Who thinks this? Even The Beatles were political.
Not that I've ever changed a political position because of a musician; I'd rather they not do so, as I don't go to concerts for politics, but musicians don't follow my preferences for some reason.
I'd also rather that they'd not "fade" the end of their song, but they won't listen to me.
Not looking to start a debate. But genuinely what would you have them make songs about, if not something they believe in?
Edit: I guess you could listen to only acoustic tracks.
Love songs?
👀
Such a great album too
It's like in schools. People either don't remember or pay attention at all to what the teachers says or what the lessons are. Or if they do remember the lessons, they never apply it.
I know a lot of people who have danced along to "Beds are burning" and have no idea what the song is about, even though it's not exactly subtle.
I blame the 90s. I guess because of the sudden end of the cold war everything was more or less euphoric and apolitical for a while and people got used to it.
Yes very apolitical decade 🤤
Compared to the like 200 years before it and two decades since
It was basically the single most apolitical point in history. It was a MASSIVE calm before the storm.
That's not to say it didn't have its politics but geeze
Gen X just sucked at rebelling against their parents
I think the point was that politics calmed down to the point the majority could ignore all of politics except Clinton's sex life.
I would give it more to the 80s, as most pop music was overtly Ra-Ra America and good vibes. The political Big Bads were the Soviets and Apartheid South Africa, and then LiveAid was a fund raiser for Ethiopia. Everything was external-facing.
Pop music is often / always shallow. But, the 1980s to me feel / felt like the lowest common denominator kind of music. Not only were the lyrics of the songs vapid, but the musicality was sucked out of them too, with the rise of drum machines and synthesizers.
There was good music in the 1980s, but you had to look for it. And, back then, that meant knowing someone with good musical tastes, or spending time in a record store. The stuff that you'd just encounter in pop culture was just... dire.
Meanwhile, the stuff that wasn't part of the mainstream white culture in the 1980s was very political. Take the emergence of rap. Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five had a big hit with "The Message" which was nothing but social commentary, and then came the rise of Public Enemy.
That's a very US-centric view
Yeah. Not going to argue with that, but US media also flooded most of the world in the 80s.
That's a great take for anyone who wasn't alive in the 90s. Anyone who was there however knows it's bunk.
Its a liberal myth that the end of the Soviet Union somehow brought in an era of peace.
I wasn't talking about peace. I was talking about euphoria and apoliticalness in culture
Having lived them, I can tell you the '90s were nowhere near apolitical. Hell, half the examples here are '90s bands.
Of course there still was political music. But it was the rise or high point of the apolitical bland commercial pop culture. I am thinking of Britney Spears and the countless boy bands
Having lived through the 80s and 90s as an adult, I can confirm that none of it was apolitical or euphoric.
some are only political, because it gets them more audience/customers, otherwise they dont really care, or some of them are the opposite politics of thier audience. aka, taylor swift.
Or the Dixie Chicks.
Or my favourite band, Die Ärzte - they realised that being subtle wasn't good enough, so they had to directly tell a good portion of their audience that they didn't want Neo-Nazi fans, which they did in an awesome song called "Schrei nach Liebe", which starts with "Du bist wirklich saudumm" - "You're really fucking stupid", and has the lyrics "Deine Gewalt ist nur ein stummer Schrei nach Liebe" - "your violence is just a mute cry for love" and "Weil du Schiss vorm Schmusen hast, bist du ein Faschist" - "Because you're scared of cuddling, you became a Fascist".
Rich Men North of Richmond went straight to the top of the charts, right up until Oliver Anthony talked shit about Trump. Then his promoters dropped him like a bad habit. AI Art really took off in the wake of that moment, too. Really suspicious. Almost as though it the folks producing the music had some kind of class conflict with the folks promoting it.
That's not limited to musicians.
No one who's ever heard music before asks this in good faith. It's a physical impossibility.
People think lots of things started while they were alive. They remember something from their past and assume it was a first without bothering to research it. Golden Age of Information - go figure.
Arlo Guthrie patiently smiling down from ~~ the hereafter~~ his house, gently shaking his head, furious as fuck.
Arlo's still around, man
Oh shit! I totally thought he kicked it years ago!
If something happens to him within the next month I'm blaming you.
Fair
I'm just kidding, superstition belongs inthe bronze age.
But what if I hire a bunch of Etsy witches to curse him?
How much do they cost and what services do they offer?
They say that people came there to listen to his music not his politics, I'm thinking, so if he had just strummed a guitar while he said it, they would have been all for it?
Who in the hell down votes this?
Personally I didn't but I can definitely see how people get fed up hearing about it.
Like this one?
the ones that pretend to, like swift and shareen
The problem I see is that Ed is pretty direct about keeping things apolitical.
If Mackelmore had his own "Free Palestine" tour, or if he was opening for someone like RATM, it would be a different story.
Is there an appropriate time to stand against genocide? I feel like that's an "always" kind of thing.
Maybe Ed is more chill, like: "Have a little genocide, as a treat."
Not everything has to be a political platform.
The timing of your messaging is important, and killing a tour where you're not the main draw is probably doing more harm to your cause than good.
In all honesty, it feels like virtue signaling to regain relevancy.
If someone wants to kill 10 people, and another person wants to kill 0 people, what is the apolitical number of people to be killed?
Obviously five.
I'm not sure what point you're trying to make.
Not wanting to focus on politics doesn't say anything about your political beliefs.
That's political 💁♀️
Not wanting to focus on politics is political?
Yes, it is a deliberate political choice.
"apolitical" is a shorthand for "in favor of status quo"
No, it's not. Politics doesn't have to be shoved into literally every facet of life.
Politics affects every facet of life. It's there whether anyone wants it to be or not.
And? That doesn't mean it needs to be the focus at every conceivable moment.
And? That's not what's happening. You can't just say that every time someone speaks up. You don't get to tell victims how to behave while they're being victimized, and you don't get to tell their advocates to be quiet. You have no right to a world where the oppressed don't bother you.
If you got nothin you can just say so. There's no need to make it a personal attack.
Not what I said. You don't have to think about politics every waking second, but you can't never think about politics.
I'm really not sure why you're assuming I was talking about never thinking about politics.
My point was that this tour wasn't about spreading a message, unlike the concerts in the comic. Like I said, my opinion on this would be completely different if it was a "Free Palestine" tour.
But, if the person you're opening for has expressed a desire to not focus on politics, it's kind of a dick move to kill the tour by focusing on politics. And honestly, it's likely pushed more people away from the cause than it converted.
Because that's the usual definition of "apolitical".
In the first place, protesting genocide should not be about politics. Trying to silence people for that under the guise of being "apolitical" is the kind of support for status quo I'm talking about.
You mean, it made more people self aware about their own acceptance of genocide.
Apolitical should literally mean:
I don’t care what you say during your set, it’s your time.
How is that relevant? Not everything has to be a political platform.
I personally don't go to concerts to hear political messaging. I go to enjoy a performance.
If the purpose of the tour was spreading a message, my opinion on this would be different.
Genocide isn't political.
It is in the US, unfortunately.
No, people keep pretending it's a political thing as a strategy to stymie people who aren't okay with genocide. And here you are, playing the sucker for them.
You may have saw the middle example and thought hey there is a band that broke the South Africa Boycott over Apartheid and played there anyway.
That's my point, though. The purpose of the live aid concert was to spread a message. I straight up said my opinion would be different if this would have been a "Free Palestine" tour.
But protesting the Israeli genocide wasn't the purpose of this tour. It wasn't even Mackelmore's tour. He did something he knew would put the tour, that he was a guest on, in jeopardy. Even if Ed pushed back against Kraft, it would have almost certainly ended the tour due to the legal dispute.
And honestly, do you think any of this has actually convinced people who weren't already in support of Palestine to change their minds? If anything, it's pushed Ed's fans further away from it.
Sort of the joke about this tour. Ed surrounded himself with a bunch of Irish musicians notorious for their support of Palestine and their outspoken politics. And then the people who were always highly political on tour did the things they always fucking did on tour and Ed said "Oh my goodness, I had no idea! We need to fire all of you."
It was the career equivalent of strapping yourself with TNT, then being surprised when it explodes.
It's worse than that. He was perfectly fine with it until he got some push back from the billionaire owner of one of the venues. He the immediately caved and started kicking people off the tour.
And then his entire tour fell out from under him.
The comments speak for themselves.