Kneecap on Palestine, protest and provocation: ‘We just want to stop people being murdered'

Irish Examiner

2 days ago

In April, the Irish-language rap trio Kneecap performed two sets at Coachella, the California music festival attended by 250,000 people. As is commonplace at the group's shows, Kneecap displayed a message stating: 'Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinian people,' and the words 'Fuck Israel. Free Palestine'.
Mo Chara, one of the group's members, told the audience: 'The Palestinians have nowhere to go. It's their fucking home and they're bombing them from the skies. If you're not calling it a genocide, what the fuck are you calling it?'
Within a week, Kneecap's US booking agent had dropped them, Fox News had likened the statements to 'Nazi Germany', a handful of summer shows had been cancelled, and two videos from 2023 and 2024 had resurfaced of the group on stage saying: 'The only good Tory is a dead Tory,' and 'Up Hezbollah, up Hamas'.
The former statement attracted criticism from the families of murdered MPs Jo Cox and David Amess, leading the band to apologise – 'we never intended to cause you hurt' – and to reject 'any suggestion that we would seek to incite violence against any MP or individual'. While saying 'we do not, and have never, supported Hamas or Hezbollah', they also described the recirculation of the videos as a 'smear campaign' against them, with the footage 'deliberately taken out of all context'.
British counter-terrorism police announced they were investigating the band over alleged pro-terrorist sentiment expressed in the video, and later charged Mo Chara with terror offences for allegedly brandishing the flag of Hezbollah – which in the UK is a proscribed terrorist organisation – after someone from the crowd handed it to him during a November 2024 London show. In response, artists including Massive Attack, Paul Weller and Primal Scream signed a letter advocating for free speech and alleging that Kneecap were victims of a 'campaign of intimidation'.
Two months after Coachella, and as they prepare for a Glastonbury festival appearance that has been criticised by among others, the prime minister, Keir Starmer, and the leader of the Commons, Lucy Powell, the band say they are unfazed by the uproar.
A festivalgoer wearing a tricolour balaclava during the Glastonbury Festival. Picture: Yui Mok/PA Wire
'Maybe visas get revoked, you're not allowed in America again, it's not ideal – but Jesus Christ, there's people being bombed from the fucking skies, and people being starved to death,' says Mo Chara, AKA Liam Óg Ó hAnnaidh. 'We're in the process [of applying for new visas], hopefully it works. But if it doesn't, I can go about my day without having to worry about my next meal or my family being bombed. Visa revoked, I can get over.'
Do the band regret what's depicted in either of the widely circulated videos? 'It's a joke. I'm a character. Shit is thrown on stage all the time. If I'm supposed to know every fucking thing that's thrown on stage' – in this case a Hezbollah flag – 'I'd be in Mensa, Jesus Christ,' says Ó hAnnaidh.
'I don't know every proscribed organisation – I've got enough shit to worry about up there. I'm thinking about my next lyric, my next joke, the next drop of a beat.'
And the 'dead Tory' comments?
'Why should I regret it? It was a joke – we're playing characters, it's satirical, it's a fucking joke. And that's not the point,' he says. 'The point is, that [video] wasn't an issue until we said 'Free Palestine' at Coachella. That stuff happened 18 months ago, and nobody batted an eyelid. Everybody agreed it was a fucking joke, even people that may have been in the room that didn't agree – it's a laugh, we're all having a bit of craic. The point is, and the context is, it all [resurfaced] because of Coachella. That's what we should be questioning, not whether I regret things.'
Kneecap's opponents, he says, 'went and combed through eight years of a career … they're really scraping the bottom of the barrel'. He says that they then 'took those videos out of context. If you believe that what a satirical band who play characters on stage do is more outrageous than the murdering of innocent Palestinians, then you need to give your head a fucking wobble.'
Kneecap.
To suggest that parts of Kneecap's performance are satire and others aren't is a tricky and potentially confusing line to walk. But Ó hAnnaidh argues the band don't risk undermining their activism by blurring these lines.
'It's not our job to tell people what's a joke and what's not. Our job is: we make music as a band. We are going to have political messaging in our songs – it's not for us to dissect it for other people. Take what you want from it, but we're not going to change in that way.'
Kneecap have granted only one interview prior to their Glastonbury performance, and over the course of an hour-long video call – Ó hAnnaidh, and DJ Próvai, AKA JJ Ó Dochartaigh, speaking from Lurgan, and Móglaí Bap, AKA Naoise Ó Cairealláin, from his home in Belfast – all stay staunchly on message. The controversy surrounding them, they reiterate, is not the story – Gaza is.
'We're a distraction, to take away [attention] from what's happening in Palestine, especially for our generation of people who are always on our phones,' says Ó Cairealláin.
'It's all being livestreamed – you can never say you didn't know what's happening in Palestine, and that's why they want to bog us down and go through old videos. Over 100 people were killed in the last four days – that's the real story.'
He alleges that the US and the UK 'are complicit in this genocide' on the grounds that each country has sent military supplies to Israel, and that Israel's supporters are targeting the band because they want to move the news 'away from the arms support'.
Supporters of Kneecap's Liam Og O Hannaidh outside Westminster Magistrates' Court in London. Picture: Jonathan Brady/PA Wire
Kneecap say that resistance is in their blood. Ó hAnnaidh and Ó Cairealláin are from west Belfast, while Ó Dochartaigh is from Derry; rapping in Irish is a way, they say, to reclaim a sense of Irish identity that the British attempted to stamp out. While they satirically self-identify as 'Republican hoods' and 'Fenian cunts' in their cartoonish, lewd music, their message is less republican than it is anticolonial and anti-sectarian.
Kneecap advocate for peace between unionists and republicans – 'the people on the 'other side' aren't our enemy … we're all working-class', Ó hAnnaidh told The Face last year – and train their fury towards the 800 years of British rule in Ireland.
Because of this, as well as their frequent references to drugs, the group have been criticised by unionist and republican advocates alike, as well as by Kemi Badenoch last year, who, when serving as UK business secretary, tried to block Kneecap from receiving a government-funded Music Export Growth Scheme grant because they 'oppose the United Kingdom'.
Kneecap won a subsequent discrimination lawsuit against the British government, and donated the grant money to Protestant and Catholic youth organisations in Northern Ireland. This week, the band released The Recap, a furious, gloating diss track aimed at Badenoch, in which they describe the grant money as reparations.
It was around the time Kneecap sued the government that they caught the attention of Hasan Piker, a streamer and political commentator who the New York Times recently termed 'a Joe Rogan of the left' due to his enormous platform and influence (he is one of the most viewed streamers on Twitch). He describes Kneecap to me as 'uncompromising and unyielding in their commitment to anti-imperialism'.
After it was announced that Kneecap's second Coachella set wouldn't be livestreamed, he offered to stream the show on his Twitch channel, which has more than 2.9m followers. 'I'm always impressed when I see anyone in the western world share this kind of sentiment,' he says. 'At no point did I feel like they were fearful or anything like that … their advocacy is about putting humanity first.'
Kneecap's rise has been steady since they debuted in 2017, and was bolstered by last year's release of a self-titled Bafta-winning comedy film about their origins, starring Michael Fassbender and the group themselves. Politics aside, the music itself is a riot: bawdy and whip-smart, animated by ferocious beats, deftly slipping between trenchant political commentary and dazed odes to the joys of substance use.
But it's their anticolonial stance that has secured them legions of fans in places such as Aotearoa (New Zealand) and Australia, where they played to 10,000 fans at a free gig in Melbourne earlier this year. That stance is also why the band advocate so fiercely for Palestine, which they say they have been doing since they began making music.
A mural supporting Kneecap on the wall of the Shamrock Sports and Social Club in Ardoyne, Belfast. Picture: Liam McBurney/PA Wire
'Eight-hundred years of colonialism, it obviously does things to people up to the point where I don't think the Irish people are willing to stand on the sidelines any more. The Irish people aren't willing to let something like a genocide pass by without comment,' says Ó hAnnaidh, and in general, Irish artists – Kneecap, as well as peers such as Lankum, Fontaines DC and Sprints – have been more vocal about the Palestinian cause than British or American acts.
'If we lose a few quid, we lose a bit of clout in a certain space, we don't care – we know we're doing the right thing, we know we're on the right side of history.'
Israel has been carrying out a full-scale military campaign on occupied Gaza for almost two years, an onslaught triggered by Hamas's 7 October 2023 attack on southern Israel, in which about 1,200 people were killed. The UN has found Israel's military actions to be consistent with genocide, while Amnesty International and others have claimed Israel has shown an 'intent to destroy' the Palestinian people.
At least 56,000 Palestinians are now missing or dead, with studies at Yale and other universities suggesting the official tolls are being underestimated. (In July 2024, the Lancet medical journal estimated the true death toll at that point could be more than 186,000.) But away from Kneecap and other outspoken artists, across the creative industries as a whole relatively few have spoken about Gaza in such stark terms.
'The genocide in Palestine is a big reason we're getting such big crowds at our gigs, because we are willing to put that message out there,' says Ó hAnnaidh.
A billboard from Kneecap, opposite Lambeth North tube station in London. Picture: PA/PA Wire
'Mainstream media has been trying to suppress that idea about the struggle in Palestine. People are looking at us as, I don't know, a beacon of hope in some way – that this message will not be suppressed. The music is one thing, but the message is a big part of why we're getting across.'
As working-class, early-career musicians, Kneecap have a lot more to lose by speaking out than more prominent artists, but Ó Cairealláin says this is beside the point.
'You can get kind of bogged down talking about the people who aren't talking enough or doing enough, but for us, it's about talking about Palestine instead of pointing fingers,' he says. 'There's no doubt that there's a lot of bands out there who could do a lot more, but hopefully just spreading awareness and being vocal and being unafraid will encourage them.'
Ó Dochartaigh adds: 'We just want to stop people being murdered. There's people starving to death, people being bombed every day. That's the stuff we need to talk about, not fucking artists.'
There's no doubt that Kneecap's fearlessness when it comes to speaking about Palestine is a key part of their appeal for many: during a headline set at London's Wide Awake festival last month, days after Ó hAnnaidh was charged for support of a terror organisation, an estimated 22,000 people chanted along with their calls of 'free, free Palestine'.
DJ Provai from Kneecap performs onstage during Coachella. Picture: Valerie Macon/AFP via Getty Images
And thousands showed up to their Coachella sets – which the band allege is why so many pro-Israel groups were quick to push back on them, despite the fact that they had been displaying pro-Palestine messages for such a long time.
'We knew exactly that this was going to happen, maybe not to the extreme [level] that it has, but we knew that the Israeli lobbyists and the American government weren't going to stand by idly while we spoke to thousands of young Americans who agree with us,' says Ó hAnnaidh.
'They don't want us coming to the American festivals, because they don't want videos of young Americans chanting 'free Palestine' [even though] that is the actual belief in America. They just want to suppress it.'
The support for the message, says Ó Dochartaigh is 'all genders, all religions, all colours, all creeds. Everybody knows what's happening is wrong. You can't even try to deny it now – Israel's government is just acting with impunity and getting away with it. Us speaking out is a small detail – it's the world's governments that need to do something about it.'
Last week, Ó hAnnaidh made an appearance at Westminster magistrates court, during which he was unconditionally bailed with a hearing set for 20 August. Kneecap's defence team, which includes criminal defence lawyer Gareth Peirce, who represented the Birmingham Six and the Guildford Four, has argued that the charge against Ó hAnnaidh was made after the six-month period in which such a terrorism offence would fall under the court's jurisdiction.
Kneecap's Liam Og O Hannaidh (centre) with bandmates JJ O'Dochartaigh (DJ Provai, second right) and Naoise O Caireallain (Moglai Bap, right) leaving Westminster Magistrates' Court in London.
Hundreds of protesters – including Paul Weller – gathered at the entrance to the court, holding aloft Palestine flags and signs that said 'Free Mo Chara'; a van, emblazoned with the slogan 'More Blacks, More Dogs, More Irish, Mo Chara,' circled the block periodically.
Rob and Kathleen, an older couple from Hayling Island, had shown up to 'defend free speech, to support people who protest about genocide in Gaza,' said Rob. 'We're also here to support young people,' Kathleen added. 'Old people have made a real mess of this world, and we are very sorry, and hopefully young people can get us out of this mess.'
When asked by the BBC on Wednesday about Kneecap's appearance at Glastonbury, festival organiser Emily Eavis said 'we remain a platform for many, many artists … everyone is welcome here'. But there is still considerable opposition to their Saturday afternoon set.
Earlier this week, Starmer said it wasn't 'appropriate' for the band to perform at the festival, while Badenoch said the BBC 'should not be rewarding extremism' by televising the band's set. (A BBC spokesperson told the Guardian that 'whilst the BBC doesn't ban artists, our plans will ensure that our programming will meet our editorial guidelines'.)
And, earlier in the month, a leak exposed a letter sent to the organisers of Glastonbury in which a number of music industry heavyweights ask the festival to 'question the wisdom of continuing to have [Kneecap] on the lineup'. The letter was signed by top agents from major live music agencies.​ That the letter wasn't published publicly is a form of vindication for the trio, says Ó Cairealláin.
'The fact that the letter was leaked changes things,' adds Ó hAnnaidh. 'And I hope that these people regret it. I think they're already starting to.'
Kneecap play Glastonbury's West Holts stage at 4pm on Saturday.
The Guardian