logo
At Glastonbury, Left-Wing Politics Are Shocking Again

At Glastonbury, Left-Wing Politics Are Shocking Again

New York Times7 hours ago

The notion that conservatism is 'the new punk rock' has been a common trope of the Donald Trump era, repeated by alt-right college kids, thirsty politicians and headline writers. Progressives, the argument went, had become the uptight enforcers of taboos, while right-wingers were impudent insurgents pushing the bounds of permissible expression. As people on the left increasingly valorized safety and sensitivity, members of the new right reveled in transgression and cast themselves as the champions of free speech.
This idea was always disingenuous; when they gain authority, American conservatives almost inevitably use the force of the state to censor ideas they don't like. But it took hold because it contained a grain of truth.
Left-wing culture, especially online, could be censorious, leaving many who interacted with it afraid of saying the wrong thing and resentful of its smothering pieties. The right, by contrast, offered the license to spout off without inhibition. That is almost certainly part of what drew so many alienated men into Trump's orbit. In 2018, the rapper formerly known as Kanye West said that wearing a MAGA hat symbolized 'overcoming fear and doing what you felt, no matter what anyone said.' This year, his id fully liberated, he put out a track titled 'Heil Hitler.'
Increasingly, however, it's the left that is rediscovering the cultural power of shock, largely because of horror over the massacres in Gaza and the minefield of taboos around discussing them. Consider the international uproar over the performance of the punk rap duo Bob Vylan at Britain's Glastonbury music festival this weekend. The act's singer led a teeming crowd — some waving Palestinian flags — in chants of 'Death, death to the I.D.F.,' the Israel Defense Forces. Keir Starmer, the British prime minister, criticized Bob Vylan for 'appalling hate speech,' and demanded answers from the BBC for why it aired the set. The police are reviewing footage of the show to see whether any criminal laws were broken. Bob Vylan was set to tour the United States this year, but the State Department has revoked its members' visas.
The band was not the only one at Glastonbury to cause a scandal. Even before the festival started, Starmer criticized it for featuring the Irish rap group Kneecap on the lineup. In April, Kneecap led crowds at Coachella in chants of 'Free, free Palestine' and displayed messages accusing Israel of genocide, prompting the sponsor of their U.S. visas to drop them. Footage later emerged of one member of the band, Mo Chara, displaying a Hezbollah flag, leading to a terrorism charge. (He's said the flag was thrown onstage and he didn't know what it represented.) The police are also investigating Kneecap's appearance at Glastonbury for possible public order offenses.
Both these bands intended to be inflammatory, and they succeeded. 'What happened at Glastonbury over the weekend is part of a coordinated, ideological insurgency against the Jewish people,' Ayaan Hirsi Ali wrote in The Free Press. 'The level of depravity displayed at #Glastonbury2025 was astonishing, one that should prompt serious self-reflection and soul searching among British society,' wrote Jonathan Greenblatt, chief executive of the Anti-Defamation League. It's hard to remember the last time musicians managed to cause such outrage.
Want all of The Times? Subscribe.

Orange background

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Comments

No comments yet...

Related Articles

Midjourney's video generator is behind the competition — here's why I love it anyway
Midjourney's video generator is behind the competition — here's why I love it anyway

Yahoo

time20 minutes ago

  • Yahoo

Midjourney's video generator is behind the competition — here's why I love it anyway

When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. While the AI image market is now pretty crowded, Midjourney was one of the first to do it, turning words into images years ago. But since then, the company has fallen behind, being outpaced by a variety of competitors. This was most evident in the development of AI video generation. The technology has blown up in recent months, seeing huge improvements from companies like Google and OpenAI. While Midjourney has been quiet on this front for a long time, it finally launched its first video generator. However, while others push boundaries, competing to offer the most advanced package, Midjourney's first attempt at a video generator was surprisingly limited. There is no ability to prompt for the video, only to add images — either your own or ones you've made with Midjourney. While audio isn't common in video generators yet, it's missing from Midjourney's tool However, despite these limitations, in my time using Midjourney's video generator so far, it has quickly become one of my favorites. Midjourney has always stood out in the world of AI generation for one good reason. Where the likes of ChatGPT and Gemini are designed to create lifelike images and videos, Midjourney is hyper-focused on creativity. Before you even use it, you need to rank hundreds of images, giving the model an idea of your style preferences. These preferences can be turned on or off, but with the personalization on, image and video results are clearly pushed to styles that fit me. While you can't directly prompt for a video, the process is isn't much more complicated. After creating an image on Midjourney, you'll have the option to 'animate' the image. This can be done automatically, allowing the AI to choose what happens in the video, either with low or high motion. Or you can manually choose what happens. This turns Midjourney into a similar version of an AI video generator as the big competitors… just with a few extra steps to get there. You can also upload your own images, turning those into videos. Despite some big concerns around copyright right now, Midjourney has also put a strong emphasis on avoiding deepfakes. It won't edit images of real people and is surprisingly unwilling to create something that might resemble celebrity figures. The video generation from Midjourney is clearly designed for the same group as the image generator. It's built for people wanting to make creative projects or design things that are clearly separate from real life. Scroll through Midjourney's explore page and you'll be greeted by moving comic book strips, anime fights and stylised car chases. Midjourney also seems to have put a lot of work into its prompt understanding. Previously, the model would struggle to create good results without incredibly specific details. Now, it works in a similar way to the likes of ChatGPT, able to create images and videos from short descriptions. From the short time I've used it so far, I've got high hopes for Midjourney's video generator. They have warned that prices could change as they test the model so now is a great time to give it a go. OpenAI court filings just revealed new details on AI device with Jony Ive Google Gemini just got a great video feature ChatGPT can't match — here's how to use it I've been using this one ChatGPT prompt for years — and it works in absolutely any situation

Trump global aid cuts risk 14 million deaths in five years, report says
Trump global aid cuts risk 14 million deaths in five years, report says

Yahoo

time21 minutes ago

  • Yahoo

Trump global aid cuts risk 14 million deaths in five years, report says

Donald Trump's move to cut most of the US funding towards foreign humanitarian aid could cause more than 14 million additional deaths by 2030, according to research published in The Lancet medical journal on Monday. A third of those at risk of premature deaths are children, the research finds. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in March that President Trump's administration had cancelled over 80% of all programmes at the US Agency for International Development, or USAID. "For many low- and middle-income countries, the resulting shock would be comparable in scale to a global pandemic or a major armed conflict," Davide Rasella, who co-authored the Lancet report, said in a statement. The funding cuts "risk abruptly halting - and even reversing - two decades of progress in health among vulnerable populations," added Rasella, a researcher at the Barcelona Institute for Global Health. The report comes as dozens of world leaders are meeting in the Spanish city of Seville this week for a United Nations-led aid conference, the biggest one in a decade. Looking back over data from 133 nations, the team of researchers estimated that USAID funding had prevented 91 million deaths in developing countries between 2001 and 2021. They also used modelling to project how funding being slashed by 83% – the figure announced by the US government earlier this year – could affect death rates. The cuts could lead to more than 14 million avoidable deaths by 2030, the projections found. That number included over 4.5 million children under the age of five – or around 700,000 child deaths a year. The Trump administration, previously led by billionaire Elon Musk's cost-cutting initiative, aimed to shrink the federal workforce. It has also accused USAID of supporting liberal projects. The US, by far the world's largest humanitarian aid provider, has operated in more than 60 countries, largely through contractors. According to Rubio, there were still approximately 1,000 remaining programmes that would be administered "more effectively" under the US State Department and in consultation with Congress. Still, the situation on the ground has not been improving, according to UN workers. Last month, a UN official told the BBC that hundreds of thousands of people were "slowly starving" in Kenyan refugee camps after US funding cuts reduced food rations to their lowest ever levels. At a hospital in Kakuma, in northwestern Kenya, the BBC witnessed a baby who could barely move and was showing signs of malnutrition, including having parts of her skin wrinkled and peeling.

Meghan Markle Reveals Her ‘Weekend Plans' from a Garden in New Peachy Photo
Meghan Markle Reveals Her ‘Weekend Plans' from a Garden in New Peachy Photo

Yahoo

time21 minutes ago

  • Yahoo

Meghan Markle Reveals Her ‘Weekend Plans' from a Garden in New Peachy Photo

Meghan Markle revealed her weekend plans via her As ever lifestyle brand's latest Instagram post on June 28 'Weekend plans: pick, snack, repeat 🍑,' read the caption The Duchess of Sussex can be seen in the photo picking fruit in a seasonal outfit, which included a monogrammed sun hatMeghan Markle is giving fans a glimpse at her latest summertime plans! The Duchess of Sussex, 43, shared an in-the-garden snap on the Instagram account for her As ever lifestyle brand on Saturday, June 28. In the photo, Meghan can be seen picking fruit off a tree while dressed casually. 'Weekend plans: pick, snack, repeat 🍑,' As ever captioned the photo of Meghan in her seasonal outfit, which included a sun hat that featured an 'M' monogram. In the image, Meghan is apparently wearing the same cream-colored outfit she wore in another Instagram snap from Saturday, posted to her main personal account. The look consisted of a cream linen button-down shirt, white shorts, a wide-brimmed sun hat, tan sandals and gold bracelets. View this post on Instagram A post shared by @aseverofficial Never miss a story — sign up for to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer​​, from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories. In her other photo from the summer day, Meghan is walking on a beach in the seasonal attire — soundtracked by Will Smith (a.k.a. the Fresh Prince) and DJ Jazzy Jeff's 1991 hit "Summertime." "That weekend feeling ☀️🎶," Meghan captioned the photo. The Duchess of Sussex has been active on social media this year so far, posting snaps and clips of family trips to Disneyland, a Father's Day celebration for Prince Harry and birthday memories of their children. Meghan and Harry, 40, share son Prince Archie, 6, and daughter Princess Lilibet, 4. Earlier this month, Meghan posted a heartfelt montage in tribute to Harry for Father's Day, which included clips of both children and one scene of Archie learning how to ride a bicycle. The clip was soundtracked by an acoustic version of "Have It All" by Jason Mraz. "The best," she captioned the footage. "Happy Father's Day to our favorite guy 💕." Meghan — who settled in her home state of California with Harry and their kids after stepping back from their royal roles in the U.K. in 2020 — told PEOPLE in March that life has both changed and stayed the same in recent years. 'When your children get to a certain age — when you're not just playing in the sandbox with them but almost playing in your own sandbox again — it's super joyful,' Meghan said of her children growing up. 'As a woman, a mom and a wife, to be able to find yourself again — in a way that was always present but that you maybe couldn't put as much attention on as you now can when your kids are a little bit older — is a wonderful feeling.' she added. Read the original article on People

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into a world of global content with local flavor? Download Daily8 app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store