( Middle East Monitor ) – Anyone with the most modest modicum of common sense and critical insight will be well aware – Kneecap, more specifically the mass hysteria that has erupted over a band member holding a Hezbollah flag on stage at a gig in Kentish Town at the O2 Forum on the 21st November 2024 and the current terrorism charges faced by Liam Óg Ó hAnnaidh – are not the story.
And yet, if we didn’t live in such truly dystopian times, then perhaps we could dismiss this as clickbait nonsense, see it for what it is, as manufactured outrage, establishment pearl clutching, in the safe assumption that the court will see through the nonsense and dismiss the case out of hand.
But we mustn’t ignore it, because this most recent display of moral panic is a litmus test and a fracturing point that will determine just how much we are collectively willing to give up, to concede, and ultimately be prepared to accept, all in the purported aim of keeping us ‘safe’ from the (checks notes) ‘terror’ associated with the flag flying antics by members of an anti-establishment rap group from West Belfast.
And, in case it still isn’t clear, this isn’t about a flag either.
Since the events of October 7th 2023, grassroots solidarity work for Palestine has grown exponentially, being met with a violent and repressive response from the vast majority of ‘Western’ governments, including the UK, ranging from efforts to contain and limit public protest, to outright attempts to silence, delegitimise and criminalise those engaged in solidarity work.
Whilst allegations of political policing, criminalisation of public dissent, and the shrinking of space in which to engage in protest have long been levied against successive UK governments, the present climate of surveillance, suppression and criminalisation of expressions of solidarity with Palestine has reached fever pitch.
Whilst at least 55,000 Palestinian civilians have been killed, over 200,000 injured, 1.9 million violently displaced, the infrastructure in the Gaza Strip being reduced to rubble, and the entire population being subjected to the most grotesque form of manufactured starvation – the UK government has continued to provide military aid and assistance to the Israeli state, from arms sales, to flying reconnaissance flights, whilst simultaneously supporting its ally through running political cover almost unchecked.
But yeah, let’s talk about flags and Kneecap.
Alongside direct attacks on groups and individuals, a particularly nefarious ‘narrative delegitimation’ has become normalised by UK politicians, accordingly adopted by police chiefs and amplified by a complicit UK media, referring to Palestine solidarity gatherings in derogatory terms, and by stigmatising solidarity protests as ‘hate marches’ and as a threat to jewish communities,
The accusations and allegations of antisemitism are particularly powerful in fostering a sense of moral panic around this form of solidarity work. This in turn helps to create the climate that enables the use of more restrictive ‘formal’ means to manage public protest, including the Public Order Act, the UK’s Prevent strategy, and other ‘counterterrorism’ measures. Unquestionably, this has a disproportionate effect on minorities and racialised communities in the UK, those who have long been the target of existing strategies and are also the communities widely represented in the current solidarity protests with Palestine.
TRT World: “Kneecap Supports Palestine at Coachella”
Kneecap's viral pro-Palestine Coachella performance intimidates pro-Israelis
The cumulative impact of these multilayered suppressive techniques is an attempt to suppress and silence and the fomenting of an atmosphere of fear that ultimately leads to a ‘chill effect’. State-driven attempts at silencing are mirrored by more ‘informal’ or everyday tactics used to police and ultimately silence pro-Palestine speech. In workplaces, schools, universities, and cultural institutions, a discourse around ‘safety concerns’ has incrementally crept in when it comes to attempts to manage, contain and ultimately suppress public expressions of Palestine solidarity. The resultant ‘self-policing’ and self-censorship leads many individuals left to weigh up their solidarity with Palestine against fear of workplace ostracisation or, worse still, disciplinary action leading to potential loss of employment.
In our own profession, many who occupy spaces of privilege in the liberal echelons of the academic community, including (somewhat ironically) those who made careers theorising around imperialism, postcolonialism and decoloniality, self-censorship and losing the ‘critical’ voice at the most critical of times, provides the most nauseating example of this form of narrative control and self-censorship.
Palestine, as the decades-long trope goes, once again becomes a ‘controversial’ issue, one that is deemed ‘not acceptable’ for conversation around the workplace coffee table.
All of which begs us to ask the fundamental question, what is it that Palestine solidarity activism truly threatens, and which provokes such a violent and coordinated state-led response? The answer lies in the fact that this brutal crackdown stems from a baseline principle, namely that the cause of Palestine is determinedly anti-colonial, anti-racist, anti-imperialist, and anti-capitalist.
“Protest,” Digital, ChatGPT, 2025
Palestine solidarity work shakes the very social fabric that undergirds the modus operandi for ‘Western’ governments, from across Europe to America, those who have for decades (if not centuries) laid down the infrastructure of racial capitalism: mass colonisation, dispossession, incarceration, violence and exploitation of humans and the natural environment. As Adam Hanieh notes, the importance of Palestine solidarity work lies in its intersection with a multiplicity of struggles, centring around the forms and manifestations of capitalism everywhere: anti-colonial, anti-racist and the fight for the future of our planet.
The intensity and comprehensiveness of the process of repression and criminalisation of Palestine solidarity activism in the UK (and elsewhere) is part of a broader systemic oppression linked to the maintenance of global racial capitalism. The overwhelming support provided by the Western governments for Israeli genocidal violence can only be explained when read as reflective of the need to protect and maintain their material interests, those that necessitate the unequivocal support of the Israeli settler colony, no matter what the genocidal cost may be, and the associated crushing of any of us who pose a challenge to it.
And so, despite the allure that comes with celebrity ‘gotcha’ moments and the associated mass media hysteria, this is not about Kneecap, a point the band themselves have consistently made clear. Nor is it only about Palestine; it is about determining who has the right to speak and act, and more importantly on what.
It is about the UK government reaffirming its commitment to remaining aligned to global capitalist production, funnelled through unequivocal support for the Israeli settler colonial project in Palestine, and by silencing through criminalisation, stigmatisation and suppression any of us who step out of line.
Should we remain silent and subservient in the face of such draconian attempts at smearing and attempted censoring, the ramifications are colossal.
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