Charging Kneecap with terrorism offences brings out the inner republican in us

Irish Daily Mirror

25-05-2025

My inner republican rose up when I heard British police charged one of Kneecap with terrorism offences. The Brits: never not at it, I thought to myself. Yet another way to silence Irish voices and stifle Irish culture.
My mind went back to Thatcherism and Nicky Kelly and even Bobby Sands. I finally reeled myself in when I got to the Penal Laws and 800 years of oppression.
I'm not even a fan of Kneecap. I think they're sad panto nationalists, glorifying terrorism in tricolour balaclavas, from the safe position of not being directly affected by it. They do one thing on stage and say another off it, so to me, their authenticity is in question. They're the Wolfe Tones in tracksuits, as the punk poet Jinx Lennon said.
But my defensive reaction to Kneecap's Liam Og O hAnnaidh being charged with terrorism offences for waving a Hezbollah flag was probably natural for someone who grew up in a republican house in the fraught 1980s and 1990s.
I'm also a strong supporter of free speech and expression, even when I find that speech or expression deeply wrong - which I definitely do, in O hAnnaidh's case.
Police said he's accused of displaying the flag 'in such a way or such circumstances to arouse reasonable suspicion he is a supporter of a proscribed organisation."
Charging a young fella with serious terrorist offences in a situation like this is excessive heavy-handedness. Granted, there's a certain revolutionary cachet to it, for the rapper. But the reality is, he won't get into the USA if he has a terrorism conviction. That would be the end of Kneecap's American ambitions.
However, that's their law, as anyone thinking of doing something like this in front of a crowd of thousands in Britain should know. Their courts will decide next month.
Anyway, the whole case is an overall part of the culture battle around the Israel Gaza war that I find excruciating. It all seems petty palavar compared to the nightmarish realities of what's happening there on the ground.
The tinfoil-hat theory that Israel rigged the Eurovision voting is more such nonsense. Some can't fathom how Israel came first in the public vote, so it must be a conspiracy. This is despite the fact the EBU says the voting system is one of the most advanced in the world, independently checked and verified by a huge team of people.
RTE has requested a breakdown in voting numbers from the EBU and TD Paul Murphy urged the national broadcaster to review the votes. Why would Israel bother, and to what end? The more obvious explanation is voters liked Yuval Raphael's entry. She's a survivor of the October 7 attacks, who sounded like Celine Dion singing a Bond theme.
The aim ultimately is to ban Israel from the contest over its military action in Gaza.
It all seems so silly, but dark events this week put a new complexion on the cultural conversation around it. First of all, the world watched in horror as thousands in Gaza were brought to the brink of death by Israel's refusal to lift its 11-week blockade.
Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu said he only bowed to pressure to ease it as allies 'could not tolerate images of mass famine.'
Then on Wednesday night, two staff members of the Israeli embassy in Washington DC were shot and killed while leaving an event at a Jewish museum.
The victims, Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim, were a couple in their 20s due to be married. They were leaving an event in the Capital Jewish Museum when the suspect opened fire. He yelled: 'Free, free Palestine' when arrested.
We're at a dangerous point in the world. The reality is we're all going to have to tread carefully when it comes to discussing this most contentious issue of our time.
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