Macklemore is a strange choice to elevate as a martyr for social justice

Following his…fashion faux pas? Macklemore ‘apologised,’ like a disgruntled ex boyfriend, saying the look had been randomly assembled as a disguise and that he regretted the offence it caused.

I understand, who among us hasn’t stumbled into an awful caricature costume when we want to go incognito in Temple Fortune for a challah? Dressing up as a grotesque Jewish stereotype can now safely be filed under an unfortunate misunderstanding. Nothing to see here. Move along.

Since then, Macklemore has become a martyr in the online world of activism and social justice: as a brave, outspoken advocate for, let me just check my notes – “peace”. His chosen method for achieving peace is to take to a stage in front of tens of thousands of people and shout “Free Palestine” at an audience who came to see Ed Sheeran. But more than that – performing his 2024 song “Hind’s Hall”, which includes lyrics such as “Who gets the right to defend and who gets the right of resistance
Has always been about dollars and the color of your pigment, but
White supremacy is finally on blast
Screamin’, “Free Palestine” ’til they’re home at last” and then immediately segueing into a verse about the “lie” of claiming that anti-Zionism is antisemitism because – stop me if you’ve heard this one before – there happen to be Jewish people who are pro-Palestinian activists.

Describing Zionism, the belief that Jewish people have the same right to collective self-determination as other people, as “white supremacy” is itself a form of racial prejudice. It paints an ancient and ethnically diverse people, including Mizrahi, Sephardi, Ethiopian and other non-white Jews, as a single class of white oppressors. It erases Jewish history, dispossession and connection to the land while treating Jewish national identity as uniquely illegitimate. Israel’s government, its conduct in Gaza and the occupation can all be criticised without reducing Jewish peoplehood to a racist conspiracy.

But returning to Ed Sheeran: he is perhaps the one artist whom almost everyone in the music industry and beyond describes as saint-like in his kindness and generosity, monk-like in his humility and about as free from ego as the Dalai Lama himself.

But not anymore. Oh no.

Sheeran has quite sensibly explained that he does not use his concerts to make geopolitical statements about one of the most traumatic and divisive conflicts of our time. Parents and children come to watch him strum a guitar, press a loop pedal and sing about loving someone until they are old and grey. They may not want young children subjected to images of war, slogans associated with violence or a one-sided political lecture before Shape of You and Thinking Out Loud.

And can we spare a thought for the parents who do want this, because we have all seen them. Supposedly responsible adults who think a stadium concert, attended by children under 10 and perhaps experiencing their first live show, is the correct forum in which to expose them to imagery of war and violence.

So here we are once again, aghast at the shortage of sensible adults in the room. People online, not fringe lunatics, but people with job titles and tax responsibilities, who would have you believe that a ginger singer from Suffolk is complicit in genocide because he has decided to play his music and allow fans from every background to attend his shows and feel safe.

Except Sheeran did not, by his account, even make the final decision to remove Macklemore. He said the promoter and venues made that call after some stadiums threatened to cancel the concerts if Macklemore remained on the bill. He says he spent a week trying to build bridges. None of that has stopped people treating him as though he personally dragged Macklemore offstage by the microphone cable.

Oh no, the lesson for Mackle-Jew face – was more of a classic in the genre of “fuck around and find out”. Turns out stadium owners are well within their rights not to host you if you have a history of jew hate and make a habit of making some of their customers uncomfortable.

I would argue that booking Macklemore in the first place was questionable, given the 2014 costume and sorry-I-slipped-and-fell-onto-a-Nazi-style-costume-by- mistake apology. But as everyone and their granny is now doing online, I should declare that, a thousand lifetimes ago, I too knew Ed and I am willing to forgive him that misjudgment, despite the fact we all know he would not have been booked by one of the most successful artists of our time had the miss step targeted any other group.

Anyone who knows him knows that he has long offered support slots to lesser-known artists, giving them access to audiences and opportunities most musicians could only dream of. You might imagine they would be grateful. But no, instead some have realised that there may be even more publicity available by walking away from an extraordinarily generous opportunity and casting themselves as heroic dissenters.

It is performative activism at its most self-serving: achieving little for Palestinians while doing wonders for name recognition, social-media clout and Spotify streams.

Before anyone asks: yes, Macklemore pledged the proceeds from Hind’s Hall to UNRWA. But that is hardly an uncomplicated badge of moral virtue. While UNRWA provides vital assistance to Palestinian civilians, its credibility has been damaged by the dismissal of nine employees who a UN investigation concluded may have participated in 7 October and an ongoing American investigation into alleged Hamas links involving more than 100 current or former staff.

Donating to UNRWA may well support humanitarian relief, but it is not the same thing as supporting coexistence, reconciliation or peace between Israelis and Palestinians.

Have Macklemore or any of the departing acts supported the Parents Circle–Families Forum, whose Israeli and Palestinian members have all lost loved ones to the conflict but work together for reconciliation? Have they backed the Alliance for Middle East Peace (ALLMEP): The largest network of Palestinian and Israeli peace-builders, connecting over 100 non-governmental organisations dedicated to cooperative reconciliation? What about Standing Together, a Jewish-Arab movement campaigning for peace, equality and social justice? Or Combatants for Peace, founded by former Israeli soldiers and Palestinian fighters who rejected violence and chose dialogue instead?

Why have none of these so-called pop star peace patrons ever flown both flags from their stage, why have they done nothing at all that strengthens the voices of people trying to build a future in which Palestinians and Israelis live alongside one another? 

Or is “peace” now just another word for shouting one slogan, at one side, in front of an audience that did not come to hear it?

And then comes the inevitable charge: that Ed is a hypocrite because he says he does not want politics at his concerts but has supported Labour or threw a concert for Ukraine.

Oh, do stop.

You are telling me that a millennial pop star once lent his support to one of Britain’s two main political parties – the party broadly regarded as the more progressive and left-wing of the two. Blow me down with a feather. I can’t Adam and Eve it.

Supporting a political party in an election is not the same as turning a family concert into a compulsory seminar on an intractable war. Nor does choosing not to impose your politics on a stadium full of paying fans make you complicit in anything.

As for his concert for Ukraine, it was attached to a concrete appeal and anyone buying a ticket or watching knew that. Macklemore was screeching at an audience who did not.