I'm a DJ who wears a Star of David and gets abuse. Kanye wore a swastika and got Wireless

Let me be clear about something before I say anything else. This is not about Israel. This is not about politics. This is not about the war. This is about a man who wrote a song called Heil Hitler, sold T-shirts with swastikas on them and publicly declared himself a Nazi. And it is about the fact that man was handed the biggest stage in London.

I want you to hold that next to this.

I am a Jewish DJ. I perform regularly across the UK. I wear a Star of David around my neck, as I always have done, because I am proud of who I am. I have been sworn at mid-set by people who spotted it. I have had people attempt to force me to say things on camera while I was working. I have filed multiple hate crime reports with the police. Not once. Multiple times. For wearing a necklace.

That is the world I am living in. That is the world thousands of Jewish people across this country are living in right now. Antisemitism in the UK is rising at a terrifying rate, and it is not abstract. It is on the street, in the venues, in the comments sections, in the everyday moments where you make a quiet calculation about how visible to be.

And into that world, Wireless Festival drops this booking.

I was a teenager when I first fell in love with Kanye’s music. His first album The College Dropout shaped me. I went on to become a musician and a DJ, and his influence is all over the artist I became. I remember standing outside BBC Radio 1 with my friend Ariel, both of us Jewish kids, completely starstruck, somehow getting a video of him saying, “Big up Howard and Ariel.” It meant everything to us. That is who he was to me.

Over the next decade I built a career in music I am genuinely proud of. I played Reading Festival, Bestival, and Isle of Wight. I became a resident at House of Vans. I DJ’d the Childish Gambino album launch. I shared stages and rooms with Anderson Paak and Schoolboy Q, artists I had grown up listening to. Music gave me everything. And I showed up to every single one of those nights wearing my Star of David.

Which is exactly why what Kanye became felt like a specific kind of devastation. Not just as a fan. As a Jewish person working in the same industry. Outside of music I work as a marketing manager for BNJC, Brighton’s Jewish Hub. I have sat with Holocaust survivors through that work. I have worked with families who lost people on 7 October.

These are my people. My community. And watching someone I once admired use his platform to spread the kind of hatred that has defined their suffering made it deeply, personally painful. That does not leave you.

But here is what I keep coming back to.

I get targeted for wearing a necklace. He gets a three-night headline slot. I have to file police reports just to do my job. He gets celebrated in front of 150,000 people. I am not saying this because I want those things. I am saying it because in what world does that make any sense?

That is not a coincidence. That is not an accident. That is a reflection of exactly how Jewish suffering is treated in this country. As negotiable. As a secondary concern. As something that can be weighed up against ticket sales and cultural cachet and quietly set aside.

I loved his music. I still feel that loss. But what he did was unforgivable. And what this festival did in response tells you everything you need to know about where Jewish people stand in this country right now.

Since writing this, the government has done the right thing. The Home Office has blocked Kanye West from entering the UK, his presence deemed “not conducive to the public good”. It is the right call, and I am glad they made it.

But go and look at the comments section under the Wireless announcement. Read what people are saying. Jewish people are being blamed for the cancellation. The anger that should be directed at an artist who wrote a song called Heil Hitler is instead being directed at us. For speaking up.

For existing.

That is the bit that never gets talked about. Every time our community pushes back, every time we draw a line, we pay a price for it. Antisemitism does not go away. It just finds a new target and a new justification.

The cancellation is not the point. He should never have been booked. And the fact that we had to fight this hard to make that happen tells you everything.

I am glad he has been banned. But I am not naive enough to think it makes us safer. If anything, today feels more dangerous than yesterday.

I wear my Star of David every single day. I will not stop. But what does this say to every young Jewish kid in this country who just wants to go to a festival, pick up a guitar, or get behind the decks?