The boundaries between Protest and Art

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Confess it to the petrol dentist, you westward kestrels.

Welcome to the Blind Buy 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 kneecap.

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, Necap asked me to sign it, but myself and

Fucking Christy Moore, Fantains DC, Kawjak Lankum, Mary Wallopers, the Pogs,

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 kneecap, but in defense of art and democracy, because

this is

political censorship and intimidation, political intimidation.

This is...

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 loads of ye were asking me,

can I speak about it?

So I will.

I'm going to speak about it this week.

Kneecap 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 humor and silliness 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 Nikap 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 Nekap from Belfast that did their gig at Coachella.

That's That's a huge moment.

Not many Irish acts get to perform at Coachella.

Nekap 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.

Nekap 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 give 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 arm 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.

Kneecap are from Belfast.

They're from West Belfast.

They grew up with huge big political murals in their communities, walls and 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.

Kneekap grew up around these murals.

And when they put those words on the screen at Coachella, it's like they brought the tradition, the Irish tradition at the fucking Belfast murals the Coachella 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 Nekap said isn't true

the international criminal court the highest court of international justice in November 2024 issued arrest warrants for the 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 filed a 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 Fackri, 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 24, Amnesty International concludes that Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians.

So, all I'm doing there,

I'm citing my arguments there with.

Because 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 Niekap'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 to 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 ostracized 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 lawyers and international courts of justice.

There's nothing absurd or offensive or wrong or incorrect about the statements that Nekap 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 Nekap 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.

But 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.

Arly 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 Ozzie's wife, but she was Black Sabbath's manager, to have fucking her calling for Nekap 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.

NECAP made it okay to say free Palestine.

NECAP made it okay in America amongst young white kids at Coachella.

NECAP 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 NECAP have been doing this very interesting thing where

so protest.

protest is is now becoming kind of 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 because sometimes

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 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, but 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, 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 the Serious Crime Act 2015.

So, these protesters were arrested because they protested in an arms factory and 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 gonna fucking protest here and we're gonna be, we're gonna do it properly.

We're gonna be difficult.

We're gonna sit in the middle of roads.

We're gonna 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 try and stop this.

They were jailed for three fucking years.

The two women who 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 the protective frame that's on the paintings.

This was a a symbolic act.

Those women 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, 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 organized 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 protest, nah.

If we're not going to arrest you, we're going to watch you.

You might not get a job in five years.

Yeah, because you see...

We've got these facial recognition cameras that scan the crowd and they've got artificial intelligence.

And that 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 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 fella called Al Touser.

Al-Tuzer 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, the 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 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 privatize 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 be it would become about immigrants you'd be scared the police are going to be there you'd be scared it's going to be a riot We're like that now because the window has shifted, the window of acceptability has shifted.

In 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, to 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 shits 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 protest sounds a bit scary bad things might happen It doesn't feel like you're democratic right anymore.

You don't feel proud to be, no, I'm going to peacefully peacefully protest, as is my right.

Isn't this democracy wonderful?

That's gone now.

There's a paranoia.

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 apparatuses, 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 NECAP and how NECAP have gone globally fucking huge right now.

Kneecap

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 kneecaps 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 badaclava 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 silliness 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 NICAP 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.

NICAP had to quickly release a statement saying, we don't support Hamas or Hezbollah.

Which...

So Hamas, Hamas are what's known as a prescribed organization.

So

if if NECAP had literally said, no, we stand by our words there,

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 proscribed organization.

And what I'd argue there is that when you're at a fucking kneecap gig, first of all, they're plain characters.

When kneecaps say, up the ra, up Hamas, up Hezbollah, it needs to be viewed with context and intent.

Nobody in that audience, in the kneecap audience, is gonna 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 metamodern fluidity of meaning a bit like

when you scroll your Instagram feed and I'm able to say that because

like kneecap

in interviews in interviews in in like two or three interviews they were asked who were your biggest influence and kneecap said the rubber bandits But you know, when I was in my fucking 20s, I was in a musical act called The Rubber Bandits.

And we had a song called Up the Ra.

So before I get onto this, actually, let me do my little ocarina pause.

I'm gonna play, um, I don't have my ocarina, I'm gonna blow into a plastic bottle, and you're gonna hear an advert for something.

Come on,

pretty shabby battle this week.

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Very disappointing, I apologize.

Can't get a decent tone out of it.

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I have a tickly chest from a chest infection.

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That blowing didn't help.

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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...

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 Willior DJ, 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 ra.

Sometimes we had gay strippers in tongs 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 ra with this song up the ra from 2006 or 2005 and the song itself was just this ridiculous

a 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 100% 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 tell them when I 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 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 fellow called Michael Bactane, I think he was a philosopher or an art critic, but Bactain

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

a subversive performance where established authority, hierarchies, and norms are temporarily inverted during the carnival or mocked using humor, vulgarity, parody, like kneecap wearing bana clavas and singing about the fucking ra on stage being from West Belfast.

it takes power away from political oppression by turning it into like 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 master's degree on this back in 2015.

There's a documentary that was on RTE called The Rubber Bandit's Guide to 1916, which is an hour-long, utterly ridiculous but rigorous history documentary about the 1916 rising.

And Up the Ra, the 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 Ra in Belfast in like 2012, 2013, dressed as the IRA with guns and palaclavas and tricolours, 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 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 haul off 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 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 kneecap's career and they're doing fucking brilliantly they're global but the thing is

if they say fucking up a mass up 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 fellow called dj pro v with a tricolor 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 op a mass, op hezbola, 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 and 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 organization 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 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 they a 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 Syria 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.

It 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

used the media to reinvent this leader of HTS,

who a year ago was a terrorist.

They reinvented him.

They made him look like Shay 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 Shei 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 HTS,

then I'd be supporting a prescribed organization and I could go to jail.

But now I can say up HTS because they're not terrorists anymore.

The Mujahideen, they were lads in Afghanistan in the 80s.

And the Mujahideen,

who were led by a fellow called Bin Laden, 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 10 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 NECAP are 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, plain clothes, used to smuggle guns in from South Africa, used to work with enable

loyalist paramilitaries massacring, shooting dead innocent Catholic civilians.

British military terrorism.

Look up the Bally Murphy massacre.

The Ballymurphy Massacre 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 by 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 kneecap for their performance at a gig,

it violates their rights under the Good Friday Agreement.

I'd argue that.

Because under the Good Friday Agreement, kneecap are entitled to cultural identity and freedom of expression.

There's clauses in there that protect.

like the murals the murals that are in 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 colonization.

The Kill Michael ambush, 1921,

where the IRA ambushed a lot of auxiliaries down in West Cork.

My granddad 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 Ogsys as they're known.

There was Ogsies and there were Black and Tans.

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 of the civilian population, that was the job of the Black and Tans and the Ogsies.

The Ogsies were the officer class.

They were posh.

So, anyway, during the Kilmichael ambush, the IRA fire upon these Augsys and killed 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 Augsys were led by a fellow called Sir Hugh Chudor.

And when

the Irish War of Independence ended in 1922

Sir Hugh Tudor he literally just got all the Augsys and all the black and tans 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 Zionism project had begun where European Jewish people were to colonize Palestine and this was enabled by the British but the literal people that were used to do it were black and tans hands and oxies 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 go 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 100 years.

And that solidarity should be protected under the Good Friday Agreement as artistic expression and not have kirst armor 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 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, 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 going to come of this i i highly doubt

that the anti-terror police will successfully investigate and prosecute kneecap but i 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 NECAP put out at Coachella.

That there's a genocide.

That's not controversial because all the international criminal courts 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 kneecap and how bald they're being, and all of this controversy and pulled gigs, it's a big shiny colorful 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 skull 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 cunt 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.

I had a bit of a fever as well.

But I'm doing okay now.

But the podcast was husky.

It was a husky podcast.

I'll catch you next week.

Talk bless.

Wink at a swan.

Rubber cat.

Genufleck to a worm.

Coach, the energy out there felt different.

What changed for the team today?

It was the new game day scratchers from the California Lottery.

Players, everything.

Those games sent the team's energy through the roof.

Are you saying it was the off-field play that made the difference on the field?

Hey, a little play makes your day, and today it made the game.

That's all for now.

Coach, one more question.

Play the new Los Angeles Chargers, San Francisco 49ers, and Los Angeles Rams Scratchers from the California Lottery.

A little play can make your day.

Please play responsibly.

Must be 18 years or older to purchase, play, or claim.

Carol, you're in remission.

I think what gets me most about this whole journey that I've been through is just how many jigsaw pieces come together to help someone like me.

I've met people who have just packaged the drugs.

Just this white box saying World Courier on it.

But I want to be better saying thank you to every single person that works on these things because they've saved my life.

Every single one of them.

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