The Blindboy Podcast - The boundaries between Protest and Art

Episode Date: May 7, 2025

The boundaries between Protest and Art  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hi, it's Morgan from Off the Shelf and I'm here to tell you how my Google Pixel 9 helps me read more. Google actually gifted me this phone and now I use it non-stop. The other day, I was trying to remember the name of this book someone recommended and instead of spiraling into a 40 minute social media scroll, I just asked Gemini on my Pixel. What's that romantic book with a competition and a ghost helping her through the trials. It's like having that one friend who always knows what you're talking about. Learn more about the Google Pixel 9 at store.google.com. Confess it to the petrol dentist, you westward castrules.

Welcome to the Blind Boy Podcast. I'm currently bare chest and bare chest and in my underpants because it's roasting in my office. The air conditioner still isn't fixed. It's absolutely fucking boiling and seagulls are roasting on my roof. I feel like I'm recording from the cabin of an 18th century coffin ship on the way to America, the heat of the Atlantic, the baking sun and seagulls roasting on the ship. If this is your first podcast consider going back to an earlier episode. To familiarize yourself with the lore of this podcast I'm doing an impromptu podcast this week because lots

of people have been asking me to speak about the band Necap who have been all over the news and are currently under investigation from the UK counter-terrorism unit which is fucking ridiculous. It is outrageous. So I signed a statement. I signed a statement basically saying that this was outrageous. Myself and other artists, Nicap asked me to sign it, but myself and fucking Christy Moore, Fontaine's DC, Kodjak, Lancombe, Mary Wallopers, The Pogues, massive attack, Paul Weller, people with their heads screwed on, artists who have their heads screwed on, signed this statement not just in defense of NECAP but in defense of art and democracy

because this is political censorship and intimidation, political intimidation. This is actual cancel culture. This is actual cancel culture. This is a government doing cancel culture on artists. So I signed that statement and it was in the news. So lords ye were asking me, can I speak about it? So I will. I'm going to speak about it this week. Necap are, they're a rap group.

They're artists, they're performers. They perform characters. Politics, political statements are part of their art, part of their artistic expression. They're anti-colonial, they're carrying on the Irish anti-colonial tradition in art. That's what they're doing. But they also use humour and siddiness and fun and crack and irony and exaggeration and their work. It exists in this shimmering spectrum between irony and sincerity and truth and hyperbole and it's for an incredibly literate audience. An audience who grew up with timelines, scrolling timelines,

that are silly and violent and serious and disgusting and frightening and silly again. An audience that have the digital literacy to decide what to take seriously and what to see as a joke and everything in between. So, Nick had played at Coachella, Coachella over in America, California, I think, Palm Springs desert. Coachella is a big deal. It is internationally, globally

huge. It's the coolest, biggest festival that any act could perform at. When Coachella is happening, all of the eyes of the world are pointed at Coachella. The audience in Coachella, it's mostly young white Americans. That is the vast majority of the audience there is young white American kids. So Nicap from Belfast, they did their gig at Coachella. That's a huge moment, not many Irish acts get to perform at Coachella. Nicap do their gig and then they have a screen behind them and then on screen they display the text Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinian people

it's being enabled by the US government who arm and fund Israel despite their war crimes. Fuck Israel, free Palestine. Niqab presented that as art during an artistic, during a fucking performance, as art. What made it particularly poignant and effective and impactful was they presented those words in the English language clearly as large giant text on a screen. It was a visual message. They gave us the news headline that you felt you should be seeing but you've never seen it. Thousands of people in the fucking thousands of people in the audience, white American kids, have got cameras and now they're videotaping these words on screen.

Israel is committing genocide. It's enabled by the US government who've armed and fund Israel despite their war crimes. The audience start to cheer. So now not only is it artistic performance, now it becomes a meme. It becomes a meme online. Niqab are from Belfast. They're from West Belfast. online. Nicap are from Belfast or from West Belfast. They grew up with huge big political murals in their communities, walls in the sides of houses, painted with very clear and direct political messages, anti-colonial messages that you won't see printed in the newspaper, that you won't see in the media. Nicap grew up around these murals. And when they put those words on the screen at Qu'o'chellettes, like they brought the tradition, the Irish tradition of the fucking

Belfast murals to Qu'o'chellettes to the world stage in solidarity with the people of Palestine, and there was global fucking outrage. There was outrage that this had happened. Now first off, nothing Niqab said isn't true. The International Criminal Court, the highest court of international justice in November 2024, issued arrest warrants for the leader of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, accusing him of war crimes. That's the International Criminal Court saying that. The International Court of Justice. In 2023, file the case accusing Israel of committing genocide against Palestine.

The International Court of Justice. In April 2024, the United Nations Human Rights Council called for Israel to be held accountable for possible war crimes. The UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry in March 2025 reported that Israel is committing genocidal acts and that it's also using sexual violence against detainees. Very recently, February 2025, Michael Fakry, who's the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food, he's accusing Israel of using starvation as a weapon of war. Intentionally depriving people of food is a war crime and that this amounts to genocide. December 24th Amnesty International conclude that Israel

is committing genocide against Palestinians. So all I'm doing there, I'm citing my arguments there with, cause who the fuck am I at the end of the day only someone with a bag in their head. I'm citing my arguments there. I'm backing my arguments up with the institutional pillars of Western democracy and human rights. I'm citing the people, the human rights lawyers, the experts whose job is to identify war crimes and genocide and to say stop. I'm citing those people. So, Nicap's statement at Coachella also aligns with the position of the highest international criminal courts. It's not controversial.

Now, the vast majority of corporate media that we've been looking at over the past two years, that would lead you to believe that those statements are in fact controversial, because there's a very clear bias towards Israel in the vast majority of corporate media that I'm seeing. And it couldn't be any more obvious right now because, like Russia, Russia's doing horrendous things, the Ukraine bombing apartment blocks, killing civilians, targeting a civilian population. But when Russia does this, the headlines are

very clear. Very, very clear that Russia have deliberately targeted and murdered innocent civilians for the purposes of terror. It's really clear in the reporting. It's not clear at all when Israel does it. The language is obfuscated in some way. Civilians in Gaza die. Civilians in Ukraine are killed by Russia who are trying to kill them. And also Russia are ostracised by the international community with sanctions and Israel receive the support of Western governments

and Western media. So because we're swimming in that sea of skewed narratives I can understand why some people would think that it's controversial, controversial to say that Israel are committing genocide. No, you'd be agreeing with the position of the top international human rights liars and international courts of justice. There's nothing absurd or offensive or wrong or incorrect about the statements that NECAP posted as art at Coachella. Nothing at all.

And that's the fucking problem. That right there was the problem. You had Sharon Osborne. Sharon Osborne calling for Necap to have their visas revoked from America, which I did a podcast on this years ago about the history of heavy metal, but Sharon Osborne's husband is Ozzy Osborne from Black Sabbath. Black Sabbath's early music is rooted in an anti-war message. They went from, Black Sabbath grew up in Birmingham, like they grew up after World War II, surrounded by unexploded Nazi bombs. They played in rubble

as kids, and alarms would go off when someone would find a bomb that hasn't exploded, and Black Sabbath's sound they invented heavy metal became focused on the dangers and evil of war and warmongers. And black Sabbaths, like they were just a lot of lads from Birmingham. No one ever thought they were going to be big or invent a genre like heavy metal. No one thought that. When they went to America, their fans were made up of anti-Vietnam war protesters, anti-Vietnam war protesters and veterans, American veterans of the Vietnam War who were traumatized and had their limbs blown off.

Early Black Sabbath was art as protest against the violence and insanity of war. So fucking hell it was just very annoying to have Sharon Osborne, not only Ozzy's wife but she was Black Sabbath's manager, to have fucking her calling for kneecap to get their visas revoked. For fucking what? For telling the truth at Coachella. Because that was really, really dangerous. Young American kids, all of a sudden,

are screaming this cathartic scream of, someone finally said it. Niqab made it okay to say free Palestine. Niqab made it okay in America amongst young white kids at Coachella. Niqab made it okay, normal and cool to say a genocide is happening and it's enabled by the US government and it happened in a rogue way in a medium that can't really be controlled and Nicap

have been doing this very interesting thing where... so protest... Protest is now becoming kinda unsafe. Like today in Ireland, in Ireland, today the cabinet are gonna approve new legislation that makes it illegal to wear face coverings at protests. Now that's a tricky one cause sometimes sometimes people wear face coverings at protests. Now that's a tricky one because sometimes people wear face coverings at protests to agitate, to turn those protests into riots. Bad actors can use face coverings

at protests to throw petrol bombs. But then other people might want to cover their faces at a protest because it's becoming dangerous to protest, especially if you're on the left. If your protest is challenging systems of power, then you're being watched. If you want to protest housing, you want to protest vulture funds, you want to go to a Palestine protest, you want to protest the use of Shannon Airport by the US military. If you do that, there's police there, there's guards there, and they watch and they take notes and they take videos of who the left-wing protesters are. Also, like the guards are going to start rolling out. Well, they are, they're rolling out facial recognition technology cameras that are powered by AI.

Do we not have a right to privacy with our facial data? I mean I wear a fucking bag on my head, you know what I mean? But pretty soon within the next five years we're going to be walking our cities and all of the cameras on the streets are going to have artificial intelligence facial recognition in them. The camera that's pointing at you, it's not just recording you, it knows who you are. That's why they're banning masks at protests. It's for fucking surveillance. In America, people are being arrested at Palestine protests. People who go to a protest in support of Palestine. In 2024, there was like 3,000 students were arrested across the US. Students who were protesting for, I don't like this genocide,

I don't like seeing toddlers being murdered by bombs. 3,000 protesters were arrested in the US and also they faced academic consequences at their universities. They were suspended, people were expelled. If you're not from the US, especially if you're from a Middle Eastern country and you are protesting on behalf of the people of Gaza in the US, you might get deported. It's happening, people were deported.

Two weeks ago the Irish government, the Irish government said to young students, Irish students, who go to America on J1 visas, which is like a two month or something work visa that a lot of Irish, like 18 or 19 year olds get to go and work in America for the summer. The Irish government warned these kids and said don't go to it, don't get involved in any protests in America because you might get fucking deported and not allowed back into America ever. In Britain, the fucking British army is supporting the genocide in Gaza, offering direct support, reconnaissance flights, spy planes, sharing information with the IDF, right? Britain sells weapons to Israel, so Britain is fully complicit in the genocide that's

happening in Gaza. In August 2024 there was an arms factory in Kent and some protesters were like we don't want this arms factory giving bombs to Israel to kill kids. So some protesters protested at the arms factory. They were arrested under they were arrested under the Serious Crime Act 2015. So these protestors were arrested because they protested at an arms factory and they were they were legally accused of being members of an organized crime group. Just stop oil protesters like this is this year. Just stop oil protesters who are protesting against the destruction of our fucking planet,

the biodiversity collapse that we're seeing right now. People who went, we're going to fucking protest here and we're going to do it properly. We're going to be difficult. We're going to sit in the middle of roads. We're going to disrupt people's days. It's a fucking protest. Protest is inconvenient. That's the point.

We're genuinely facing climate collapse, so some people are protesting to try and stop this. They were jailed for three fucking years. The two women who, they didn't even damage the fucking Van Gogh painting. As a spectacle, as a stunt, as a piece of performance art I would argue, they threw tomato soup on the Van Gogh paintings, on the Sunflower paintings. Didn't damage them. They merely inconvenienced the protective frame that's on the paintings.

This was a symbolic act. Those women got two years in jail for throwing soup on a painting? No, they got two years in jail for throwing soup on a painting? No, they got two years in jail. They got two years in jail to tell you and me, don't protest. No, no, no, protest is gone. Now that's done. Protest is dangerous. I know you have a right to protest,

that this is enshrined in your rights as a citizen of a democratic country. This is actually a cornerstone of democracy, is the right to protest. I know you have that right, but we'll figure out a way to call you a terrorist, or we'll figure out a way to call you a member of an organised crime group and we'll put you in jail. That's a clear message that's being sent out. Post George Floyd, post Black Lives Matter. It's a message that you

Protests no work if we're not gonna arrest you we're gonna watch you you might not get a job in five years Yeah, cuz you see we've got these facial recognition cameras that scan the crowd and they've got artificial intelligence and scan the crowd and they've got artificial intelligence. And that protest that you went to because you didn't want to see toddlers getting blown up in Gaza. That protest, we're trying to pass legislation to make that anti-Semitic, right? Which means in five or six years time, you could go for a job. You could go for a job and the photograph that you submit in five years time

when you're going for a job, the photograph that you submit, you might come up on a list of people who are anti-Semitic because the artificial intelligence facial recognition cameras took your photograph at that protest five years ago. So stay at home, just stay at home, don't protest. That's the covert messaging. That is the covert messaging that we're getting in Western society over the past two or three years through the various state apparatuses. Whenever I'm trying to understand shit like this, shit to do with power, power and structures of power, I always go at it through the lens of a fellow called Al Thooser. Al Thooser was a Marxist philosopher and his theory was about, like, how do you get most people to

go, no, I'm not going to that, I'm not going to that protest. It feels kind of unsafe. I'm just going to not do that. I'm going to not go to the Palestine protest. I'm just going to leave it off. a person gets to that place Because you see thing is 10 years ago 10 years ago if I'd have said to you 10 years ago, which is 2015 Don't go to that protest. They're watching you don't go to that protest You don't know what the consequences would be you might not get a job in in 10 years You don't know if I said that to you 10 years not get a job in 10 years, you don't know. If I said that to you 10 years ago, you'd go,

shut the fuck up, you lunatic. I have a right to protest and I'm going to that protest and I will protest peacefully. That's what you'd have said 10 years ago. Like we had the water protests in Ireland, the huge widespread protests to stop the privatization of water in Ireland that unified a lot of people across the spectrum.

It was a beautiful expression of democracy. They were unified, assertive, popular, peaceful but disruptive protests. Disruptive because the protesters would go to the middle of Dublin and traffic would stop and trains would stop and they would actually, they'd shut things down and the whole country went, yeah, how dare you try to privatise our water. Water is a human right, we want it kept free and it worked, the protests worked. Now, I don't think that could happen again. I don't think that many Irish people could unify like that. It would be split in some way.

There'd be conspiracy theories in there. You'd become paranoid about the protest. One group would be this, one group would be that. Somehow it would become about immigrants. You'd be scared the police are gonna be there. You'd be scared that it's gonna be a riot. We're like that now because the window has shifted the window of acceptability has shifted in 20

2018 I think it was housing protesters in Dublin occupied a vacant property in Frederick Street in Dublin They occupied this property to protest the housing crisis the protest protest vulture funds, to protest inequality. What happened? Something previously unthinkable. The guards, the Irish police showed up, right? They stepped back, the Irish police stepped back and then thugs who weren't guards, just thugs with masks, with balaclavas, came out of an unmarked van and physically assaulted the protesters and there were photographs and it was all over the media so something new happened there. The Irish

police who were supposed to protect everybody to uphold democracy they stepped back and did nothing while masked thugs broke the law and assaulted people while the guards stood back and watched and it was all on camera and this sent a strong fucking message to everybody uh oh protesting is dangerous now they're not playing by the rules anymore weird shit's happening and this just creeps into the discourse of the media and all of a sudden you get yourself in a situation now where you're like Oh protests sounds a bit scary bad things might happen. It doesn't feel like your democratic right anymore You don't feel proud to be no I'm gonna peacefully protest as is my right isn't this democracy wonderful? That's gone now. There's a paranoia. That's that's deliberate. That is very deliberate. That's called the

manufacturing consent. I consent to the idea that protesting is dangerous and has consequences. Even though it's supposed to be my democratic right, I consent to the anxiety and paranoia that it's actually dangerous and the state is not my friend. That's manufactured through the state apparatus, which is the repressive state apparatus. That's the police, military, courts and law, right? That's the repressive state apparatus. And then that's disseminated by the ideological state apparatus, which is schools, the media is a big one and politicians and it's a way that capitalism alongside so-called democracy right you see they

can't just say protest is illegal if you go out on the streets tomorrow and protest it's banned and you're going to be arrested. They can't do that, you see, because that's not democracy, that's fascism. So instead you get this slower cooperation between the repressive state apparatus and the ideological state apparatus, the media in particular. You get this slower messaging, which then creates obedience, obedience with the dominant ideology. So it's working, it's really working. It's working because protest feels dangerous now. And the point that I'm making is this is what I find so interesting about kneecap and. Necap have used art to create a new space which is a form of protest but doesn't look like a form of protest. So the young people who go to Necap's gigs

they're not just going there to have crack and listen to tunes and dance around. They're going to a space where they can protest but it feels safe to do so because it doesn't look like protest, it doesn't look like resistance, it's protest wearing a balaclava and it's not called protest importantly, it's called a music gig, even though it works as protest and it's very ambiguous and there's humor involved and there's irony involved, there's fun involved, there's cityness involved, there's this entire spectrum of celebration and dance and then all of a sudden boom there you go Israel is committing genocide and it's it's being enabled by the US free Palestine and then back to crack again and that's scaring the absolute fuck out of the system

because that's really hard to control and really hard to define. And when NECAP did that at Coachella, Western governments scrambled very quickly to try and shut them down. To try and shut them down and now they're being censored. So someone found footage of them at a gig, apparently saying up Hamas and up Hezbollah. Counter-terrorism police in England went looking at that. Each of them had a gig apparently saying up Hamas and up Hezbollah. Counter-terrorism police in England went looking at that.

Niqab had to quickly release a statement saying we don't support Hamas or Hezbollah. So Hamas are what's known as a prescribed organisation. So if, if Nicap had literally said, no we stand by our words there, we, we, we support Hamas, they could have actually gone to jail there for 14 years. That's the law in the UK for expressing support for a prescribed organisation. And what I'd argue there is that when you're at a fucking Nicap gig, first of all, they're playing characters. When kneecaps say, up the ra, up a mass, up hesbele, it needs to be viewed with context and intent.

Nobody in that audience, in the kneecap audience, is going to hear that and think they literally mean that. They're playing with slogans through characters, like a type of collage, like a type of collage in the context of a performance at the gig. The intended recipients, the people at the gig, they understand the context and intent. They understand that they're in an artistic space now

where there's a fluidity of meaning, a meta-modern fluidity of meaning, a meta-modern fluidity of meaning, a bit like when you scroll your Instagram feed. And I'm able to say that because, like, Nicap, in interviews, in interviews, in like two or three interviews, they were asked who were your biggest influence and Nicap said the rubber bandits. But you know, when I was in my fucking twenties, I was in a musical act called the rubber bandits and we had a song called Up the Ra. So before I get on to this, actually, let me do my little ocarina pause. I'm going to play, I don't have my ocarina, I'm going to blow into a plastic bottle and you're going to hear an advert for something. Come on.

Very shabby bottle this week. Hi, it's Morgan from Off the Shelf and I'm here to tell you how my Google Pixel 9 helps me read more. Google actually gifted me this phone, and now I use it nonstop. The other day, I was trying to remember the name of this book someone recommended, and instead of spiraling into a 40-minute social media scroll, I just asked Gemini on my Pixel. What's that romantic book with a competition and a ghost helping her through the trials? The book you're likely thinking of is Phantasma by Kaylee Smith.

Here's a breakdown of why it fits your description. It's like having that one friend who always knows what you're talking about. Learn more about the Google Pixel 9 at store.google.com. Very disappointing, I apologise. Can't get a decent tune out of it. Look, fuck it, you get the point. I've a tickly chest from a chest infection and I'm trying to stop myself coughing. That blowing didn't help. Support for the podcast comes from you, the listener, via the Patreon page, patreon.com forward slash the Blind Web Podcast.

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30% of that money. They'll be greedy bastards. Gigs. My tour of Scotland and England is just around the corner. It's a month away. Bristol, Cornwall, Sheffield, Manchester, Edinburgh, Glasgow, York, London, East Sussex, Norwich. And coming to these places to do live podcasts, they're going to be very relaxed and entertaining affairs. I'm already lining up some

cracking guests. So come along to those. Come out you crackingans. After that then, I'm in Derry in September and I'm in Vicar Street in September. So back to Kneecap, which this episode is about art and protest and the line between the two. And as I mentioned, I used to be in a musical group called the Rubber Bandits and we had a song called Up the Ra and we were on stage with our plastic balaclavas and our DJ, DJ Willie O'Deejie would literally dress up like he's in the IRA and wave around an Irish flag at an AK-47 and we used to bring out dancers called the I Can't Believe It's Not the IRA and they would be dressed up as the IRA with balaclavas on and they'd play

drums and have guns and we'd all shout up the rye. Sometimes we had gay strippers in thongs with balaclavas on and they'd bend over and you could see their balls or we'd have women in bikinis with balaclavas on and we'd all be shouting up the rar with this song Up the Rar from 2006 or 2005 and the song itself was just this ridiculous misinterpretation of Irish history and then listing out loads of celebrities and saying that they're in the IRA and basically getting an entire audience to shout up the ra while people on stage have guns and are dressed like the fucking IRA which was a hundred percent inspired by public enemy who used to have

the security of the first world they call it up on stage They used to have dancers that were like the Black Panthers and the Nation of Islam. They'd play with that revolutionary iconography. And we got killed for it. We used to do that in fucking London. We'd get kicked out of venues. Used to do it at festivals. And when I'd get challenged on it by journalists, I'd always say, up the ra doesn't mean up the ra in this context. I'd tell them when I was in Limerick, I'd see graffiti on bus stops of someone draw a picture of Bob Marley and a speech bubble coming out of his mouth saying up the ra or Tupac could be involved. So you'd take these loaded slogans and just

collage them, put them beside something else, take them wildly out of context, take the imagery of physical force republicanism and juxtapose it with other things and just see what happens in the space as artistic performance. Like in art theory there's a name for this, it's called the Carnivalesque. It was a lens that a fella called Mikhail Bakhtin, I think he was a philosopher or an art critic. Well, back then, he looked at folk traditions throughout Europe, especially in medieval times, where you'd have carnivals. And during carnivals, the ordinary people would dress up, would wear masks. They'd openly mock the ruling class.

It was a more, like like a subversive performance where established authority, hierarchies and norms are temporarily inverted during the carnival, are mocked using humor, vulgarity, parody. Like, kneecap wearing balaclavas and singing about the fucking Raya on stage being from West Belfast, it takes power away from political oppression by turning it into a rebellious farce. And we don't need this explained to us because we understand these rules. The carnivalesque is part of culture.

And I know this because I did my masters degree on this back in 2015. There's a documentary that was on RTE called The Rubber Bandits Guide to 1916, which is an hour long, utterly ridiculous, but rigorous history documentary about the 1916 rising and up the rath that music video, is in this documentary. But I submitted that documentary as my master's thesis in art college and defended it at master's level as an example of the carnivalesque. And kneecap are doing the same shit and this is why, this is why it's disingenuous to call the fucking anti-terror police on art But when we used to be singing up the rye in

Belfast in like 2012 2013 Dressed as the IRA with guns and balaclavas and tricolors The kneecap lads were there in the audience with all their mates as little kids as teenagers Looking up going that's fucking cool. So there's there's a little bit of that DNA in what they're doing and that's not me sucking my own dick. Kneecap have said explicitly in interviews that their biggest influence was the rubber bandits and I'm very proud of that because the rubber bandits didn't. I wasn't able to earn a living in the rubber bandits it didn't bring any success. And I was quite miserable, because I'd be working my whole life and nothing would come of it.

And also, as a middle-aged man I now cringe at a lot of the material because some of the songs are just dumb as fuck and were misogynistic or transphobic and just crude for the sake of being crude without being clever or having a message underneath. But it is lovely to have Up The Ra, which I would have considered to be a really silly, stupid song at the time that I didn't think anybody would like. Like, it stayed on my computer for about a year longer because I'm like, this is too ridiculous, this is too silly, this is stupid, Don't put this out. People will laugh at you. It's nice to see little bits of that DNA

nearly 20 years later in Nicap's career. And they're doing fucking brilliantly. They're global. But the thing is, if they say fucking up a mass, up a Hezbollah at a gig in character in the middle of their performance, in that space, juxtaposed with songs about doing drugs and a DJ called DJ Pro V in a tricolor balaclava.

You cannot take that literally. Like that alone, there's a man called DJ Pro V, which is a play on provisional IRA. There's a fella called DJ Pro V with a tricolour balaclava. That's a cartoon. That's an exaggeration. That's a performance. That's the world of growing up in West Belfast, finding its way out through the playfulness of creativity. So if someone in that space, just like if it was a play. If someone in that space says up a mass up Hezbollah kill your local MP the audience fully understands the context and the intent. No one's walking

away thinking better go kill my local MP now. No one's thinking that because that's not the context and intent. So it's highly disingenuous to take those words as literal and then try and investigate them with fucking anti-terror laws. And this business anyway of who decides who's a fucking terrorist and who's not. Like Hamas are a prescribed organisation but the things that Israel do, the things that the IDF do, amount to terror. It's terrorism. They're attacking civilian populations. Terrorism is when a civilian population is attacked for the purposes of intimidation.

And that's... They're doing it every single fucking day. Like, Jesus Christ, like the news moves so quickly, but... The Hezbollah pagers, Israel planted bombs on 200 pagers that lads from Hezbollah used in Lebanon and then those Hezbollah fighters went about their days in their homes, in the cities, they just went about their days unbeknownst to themselves and Israel turned them all into suicide bombers. Innocent people died. Innocent people died

while they were just out enjoying their life because a fella from Hezbollah happened to be beside them. That's not a human shield. Israel turned that person into a suicide bomb in a public place. 200 IEDs went off in Lebanon. All at once. One of the largest terrorist attacks the world has ever fucking seen, but it's not called a terrorist attack.

Are Israel a prescribed organization? The IDF are their prescribed organization? No, you can go to jail if you protest against them. Fucking HTS. Like, the news moves so quickly, but I think like six months ago there, remember Syria? The Syrian civil war just ends suddenly. Assad is gone from power,

and this new crowd, HTS, just move in like heroes, and now they rule Syria. Just happened. They were terrorists a few years back. A few years back they were a prescribed organization. The leader of HTS, who currently, the guy who led the coup to overthrow Assad,

he was one of the world's most wanted jihadists. They were part of ISIS. Just like two years ago, three years ago. The overthrow of Assad in Syria, most likely, I reckon it was CIA and Mossad. It was a foreign intelligence controlled coup, but they just, they re- they used the media to reinvent this leader of HDS who a year ago was a terrorist. They reinvented him. They made him look like Che Guevara. He wears a green olive drab shirt and he has the beard and he doesn't look Islamic anymore and they made him look like Che Guevara.

Just revolutionary enough, but not Islamist. So that's someone who was a terrorist about a year ago, prescribed, but is now not. So like two years ago on this podcast, if I'd have said, up HDS, then I'd be supporting a prescribed organization and I could go to jail. But now I can say up HDS because they're not terrorists anymore. The Mahideen, they were lads in Afghanistan in the 80s and the mujahideen who were led by a fella called Bin Laden or Osama Bin Laden, they weren't terrorists at all, not in the 1980s because the Americans were working with Bin Laden in the 1980s. They were giving him loads of guns and weapons and training because in Afghanistan in the 1980s it was controlled by Russia, by the Soviet Union.

So the CIA worked with Osama bin Laden and the Mujahideen to fight the Russians in the 1980s and they were reported as heroes, freedom fighters. American media was fawning over the Mujahideen in the 1980s in Afghanistan. And then they became the Taliban. And then they became the Taliban. And Bin Laden became a terrorist. The biggest terrorist in the world. Even though ten years previously he was an ally.

And then the Taliban were terrorists for years. And then America handed Afghanistan back, and when they handed Afghanistan back, they stopped calling the Taliban terrorists. This shit is all about words. It's all about words. The British Army in the north of Ireland, in Belfast, where Niqabapper from. In the 1970s the British Army had the military reaction force which were a covert, this is all evidence based now this is all out in the open, they were a covert plainclothes members of the British Army who just used to shoot civilians, shoot random civilians to stalk sectarian conflict, create chaos and justify the presence of the British military.

The British military did terrorism in the north of Ireland. In the 1980s and early 1990s there was the Force Research Unit which replaced the military reaction force. Margaret Thatcher set them up. Again covert military, plainclothes, used to smuggle guns in from South Africa, used to work with the naval, um, loyalist paramilitaries, massacring, shooting dead innocent Catholic civilians. British military terrorism. Look up the Ballymurphy massacre. The Ballymurphy massacre in 1971. British military just shooting Catholics for the crack. They used one man's skull as an

ashtray. It's the British army. Bloody Sunday Derry 1972 Catholics marching for their civil rights. Peaceful protest inspired by Martin Luther King marching for their civil rights. 26 people shot were British soldiers. 14 dead shot in the street for marching for their civil rights. That's terrorism. I consider that to be terrorism. I consider the British Army to be terrorists because they've done terrorism. Want to talk about killing MPs? Bobby Sands, Bobby Sands was an MP. He was also an IRA member. He was in jail. He was in jail in 1981 and he was a member of the IRA. He was a member of the British Parliament. He was elected and he didn't want to wear, he didn't think that IRA prisoners should have to wear prison uniforms because that would make IRA prisoners criminals. They wanted to be viewed as prisoners of war during a war. So he went on hunger

strike and Margaret Thatcher just let him die. She killed Bobby Sands. She killed an MP. And I'd argued that fucking...for Keir Starmer to want to use the anti-terror police to investigate NECAP for their performance at a gig. It violates their rights under the Good Friday Agreement. I'd argue that. Under the Good Friday Agreement, NECAP are entitled to cultural identity and freedom of expression. There's clauses in there that protect, like the murals, the murals that are in Belfast that protect

these things so that they can express political beliefs through art. And solidarity with Palestine is part of Irish cultural identity. We didn't just pick Palestine for the fucking laugh, there's literal shared history through colonisation. The Kilmichael ambush, 1921, where the IRA ambushed a lot of auxiliaries down in West Cork. My grandad was involved in this, he was in the IRA and my two grand uncles. But this is 1920, let's say 1920, they ambushed these auxies as they're known. There was OGSies and they were Black and Thans. These were paramilitary forces of the British Army. They were called police, but they were...Winston Churchill sent them to Ireland to terrorise the civilian population. Collective punishment on the civilian population, that was the job of the Black and Thans and

the OGSies. The Ogsies were the officer class. They were posh. So anyway, during the Kilmichael ambush, the IRA fire upon these Ogsies and kill 17 of them. So 17 very posh coffins were sent back to England and it was a very instrumental ambush in getting independence for the free state, the 26 counties. But these Ogsies were led by a fella called Sir Hugh Tudor. And when the Irish War of Independence ended in 1922, Sir Hugh Tudor, he literally just got all the Ogsies and all the blackened hands that were in Ireland and they moved to Palestine. They went to Palestine, which was controlled by Britain at the time.

It was called mandatory Palestine. And the Zionism project had begun where European Jewish people were to colonise Palestine. And this was enabled by the British, but the literal people that were used to do it were Blackened Hands and Oggsies that had been in West Cork and Kerry and Limerick, and they brought their collective punishment that they practiced on the Irish, they brought that and introduced it to the civilians of Palestine. And that little shared history there, that shared history of the literal same, the same men, the same people who were shooting Irish civilians

in the back, those same men got to do it in Palestine. That starts a long tradition, a long tradition of solidarity which continues all the way along to the 70s and 80s and Palestinian flags become a very common sight in Ireland. So Palestinian solidarity is part of Irish culture and Irish tradition and Irish history going back a hundred years. And that solidarity should be protected under the Good Friday Agreement as artistic expression and not have Keir Starmer using the fucking anti-terror police on a gig and of course what it's all about. This is about A, sending a message to loads of...

because I bet you there's a ton of fucking artists who didn't sign that kneecap, who didn't sign the kneecap letter because they were frightened, frightened of repercussions, I guarantee you, frightened that they'd get investigated by anti-terror police if they show solidarity with Palestine at their gigs. So it sends a clear message, don't do this. Gigs are gigs. Festivals are festivals. This is not a place for protest. And if you make it a place for protest and if you make it a place for protest then we might call you terrorists that's what this is

kneecap are the sacrificial lambs because they're having tons of gigs cancelled big gigs getting pulled all over England and we'll have to wait and see what happens with Glastonbury and if they do get pulled from Glastonbury I would hope that a lot of acts would pull out in solidarity. But in a society where protest is becoming dangerous and risky, festivals and gigs are now becoming a new artistic space whereby it's liminal. It's not protest, it's art, but it's doing the job of protest. And the government are after fucking...the British government have copped this now and

they're trying to make an example of kneecap They're trying to...they're trying to...I doubt anything's even gonna come of this. I highly doubt That the anti-terror police will successfully Investigate and prosecute kneecap, but I don't think that matters. I don't think it matters at all What matters is the message that they're doing it because that sends out the message to other acts. Don't even try it. And also what it does, it stops everybody talking about genocide. It stops everybody talking about the message that NECA put out at Coachella. That there's a genocide that's not controversial because all the international criminal

courts agree there's a genocide it's been enabled by western powers and we should talk about this and now when everyone gets to focus on NECAP and how bold they're being and all of this controversy and pulled gigs it's a big colourful distraction where you think you're talking about Gaza, but you're not. Your attention is a resource. Your critical thinking skills are also a resource. Your mental energy is a resource. And these are all limited resources. We only have so much attention, so much capacity for critical thinking, and so much time in the day to do it. And the ideological state apparatus, the media, want you to spend all those resources, all of those precious valuable resources of critical thinking and attention.

They want you to spend all of that thinking about kneecap, thinking about kneecap. And you think you're thinking about Gaza? You're not. There's a dog in the classroom. There's a dog in the classroom and he's wearing a school jumper. What do we do about the dog? Oh my God, he's running around. We get him outside.

Keep him here. No, don't get him outside. There's a dog in the classroom and he's wearing a school jumper. Oh my god. This is amazing. Did you learn anything at school today? No. Why?

There was a dog in the classroom and someone put a school jumper on him. The ideological state apparatus of the media are using kneecap as a dog in the classroom with a school jumper on. They're doing it during genocide class. This podcast was a bit of a rant. It was a bit of a phone call. I don't know if you can tell from my voice, I had a conch of a chest infection for the past couple of days and I'm very happy I was able to put a podcast out this week because it was getting ropey and a bit of a fever as well. But I'm doing okay now, but the podcast was husky. It was

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