Arrests over speech are the real danger, not Glastonbury lefties

Spectator

10 hours ago

It is with some measure of irritation, I must confess, that I am drawn away from this balmy weekend to discuss the idiotic antics of a so-called musical act by the name of 'Bob Vylan'. At Glastonbury yesterday, the frontman of the English 'punk duo' led the crowd in a chant. First it was just 'Free, free Palestine'; but then it became 'Death, death to the IDF'. They also aired the implicitly genocidal pro-Palestine slogan: 'From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.' The whole ghoulish spectacle was broadcast live on the BBC (which has subsequently apologised).
It is precisely our hypersensitivity to distasteful speech that led to Lucy Connolly's arrest and that sees some 30 Brits arrested every day for online messages
In my view, there can be no doubt that this was a grotesque and deeply anti-Semitic display. In calling for the destruction of the Israeli army, as Brendan O'Neill noted here earlier, both singer and crowd were not just calling for the deaths of the IDF's predominantly Jewish soldiers, but in effect the entire Jewish state. 'The true nature of the bourgeois cult of Palestinianism', O'Neill thunders righteously, 'with its virulent hostility not only to Israel but to the West itself, was clear for all to see.' Why these millennial morons joined the chant is a question best left to their own consciences.
The BBC has been criticised heavily for airing the set – it won't appear on catchup. Glastonbury has said it is 'appalled'. The festival and other venues will want to seriously consider not booking Bob Vylan ever again.
Many have drawn the comparison with the case of Lucy Connolly, jailed for 31 months for a tweet deemed to be inciting violence, and called for Bob Vylan likewise to have the book thrown at them. The front page of the Mail on Sunday screams for their arrest. Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch has said that their words constituted 'incitement'.
I can well see why many people, especially British Jews, are furious about these vile chants. And having written here extensively about Connolly's cruel and political treatment, I know that there is ongoing outrage about speech policing and perceptions of two-tier justice.
Nevertheless, believing that the criminal law ought to get involved in this is, in my view, wrongheaded.
One must remember that it is precisely our hypersensitivity to distasteful speech that led to Lucy Connolly's arrest in the first place and that sees some 30 Brits arrested every day for online messages. Anyone who believes in free speech should reject the censorious, knee-jerk response to hearing something objectionable which says that the law should get involved. Ultimately, this approach only erodes all our freedoms, giving weight to the authoritarian-cum-therapeutic mindset that speech is equivalent to violence.
Properly understood, incitement means not just nasty comments, but speech likely to lead to imminent lawless violence. As John Stuart Mill had it, saying 'death to corn dealers' is incitement if it is shouted to an angry mob outside the corn dealer's house – said in another context, it is merely a distasteful opinion. Bob Vylan's chant was reprehensible, but who exactly is being incited here, and to what? Did Glasto's middle-class crusties proceed to put down the natural wine, pack up their tents and carry out a pogrom? It's certainly not as if Hamas, a death cult burning with a violent, genocidal hatred of Jews, is just waiting to hear from a band of mouth-breathing leftie gimps in a field in Somerset to tell them how to feel about the IDF. Sometimes, nasty words are just nasty words.
Not prosecuting Bob Vylan, one should note, would deny them the opportunity to pose as anti-establishment martyrs. And going after them would also be a massive waste of police time.
While many in Britain care deeply about Israel and the chant was indeed shocking, there was another reason to despise this crass and artless alleged musical act. 'Heard you want your country back', ran one of their unparalleled displays of lyrical genius, 'ha! – shut the f*** up'. To ram the point home, the back of the stage bore the unflushable Blairite lie that 'This country was built on the backs of immigrants.' Here was nasty underbelly of the cuddly 'diversity is our strength' crowd on full display: a naked contempt for the patriotic British conservatives unhappy with rampant demographic change, and a willingness to gleefully gloat about it.
Like the 'death to the IDF' chant, this was also an outpouring of far-left bile which right-thinking people should robustly reject. But however objectionable, such sentiments shouldn't be a matter for the police. It is far better to have them out in the open where they can be confronted.