KNEECAP performed at the Glastonbury Festival in front of tens of thousands of fans chanting “Free Palestine” over the weekend.
The group’s Liam Óg Ó hAnnaidh appeared on stage wearing his trademark Palestinian keffiyeh in front of the capacity crowd, including many people waving Palestinian flags.
However, the issue of political colours in festival crowds has caused controversy.
Over the years there has also been some conflict regarding flags: festival-goers either love them or hate them.
For some it’s a way to make a statement and convey a message to the crowd.
But for critics, they are nothing more than a fashionable way to get noticed.
A number of years ago, Glastonbury organisers actually consulted fans on whether they should implement a ban on flags at the festival after noticing people complaining about them.
Writing in The Irish Sun today, EMMA MOONEY and NICOLA BARDON argue both sides of the coin.
FOR – NICOLA BARDON
A FEW weeks ago I was at Macklemore’s gig in St Anne’s Park in Dublin.
The crowd was awash with colour — Irish flags, Palestinian flags, Bohs jerseys in support of those in Gaza, and many, like myself, wearing the keffiyeh.
I knew I was supporting the right musician and was among the right crowd there and then.
You see in this day and age, it is easy to sit on the fence and say nothing.
That way, you can sit back and see what the outcome is and then claim that’s what you believed all along.
Or despite having millions of followers online, live in fear of what will happen if, God forbid, you say the slaughter of babies is not OK.
But I will not stand for that silence anymore.
According to Al-Jazeera, 62,614 Palestinians have died at the hands of the IDF since October 2023.
That is 11.5 times the population of my hometown.
That is more than the entire population of the county of Carlow. Or Longford. Or Leitrim.
My colleague will use words like ‘virtue signalling’ a phrase used by the far-right or basically anyone who doesn’t understand something and just thinks people who care about other people are ‘woke.’
But let me tell you, when you are watching videos from Gaza every day, babies dying without food, entire families being bombed, kids clamouring to get out of burning buildings, five-year-old Hind Rajab and her family blasted to death in a car that was shot at 335 times by the IDF, we need to do something.
We can show the world where we stand
Nicola Bardon
But we feel powerless. We feel guilty for going to gigs and having a good time when someone across the world, the same age as us, probably has not eaten in days.
So what can we do? We can show the world where we stand. We can show each other where we stand.
If that means looking across St Anne’s Park or Stradbally or Malahide Castle and seeing a pin, a flag, a jersey or hearing a chant of ‘Free, Free Palestine’ to know you are in the right company, then I will wear my keffiyeh every time.
AGAINST – EMMA MOONEY
APPARENTLY a Palestinian flag is the latest must-have trend for some festivalgoers.
Where once it was socks and a bucket hat, it’s now draping yourself in a keffiyeh and hoisting the striped cloth with all the pride of US marines on Iwo Jima.
They were everywhere at Wicklow’s Beyond the Pale.
A Palestine flag makes you look up-to-date and, dare I say it, woke. It suggests that you are “on the right side of history”.
But it’s hard for me to see this as little more than accessorised activism – in other words, virtue signalling.
Is the flag less about Palestine and more about you?
Never was this more obvious than when one camp got their flag up only for one festivalgoer to cry, “it looks lovely”, followed by the inevitable selfies.
Whatever side of this atrocious war you find yourself standing on, such examples of lazy activism is in my view offensive.
Is the flag less about Palestine and more about you?
Emma Mooney
A devastating fight that’s claimed thousands of innocent lives is not an excuse to play dress up.
For me, it’s not protest, it’s performance.
I notice how such people never carry these flags while doing the weekly shop.
It seems it’s more often at highly photographed, ultra-crowded spaces they are donned.
In my opinion, you can’t say ‘free Palestine’ without saying ‘f*** Hamas’.
And it doesn’t change some of their behaviour – raving to techno on ketamine isn’t a form of protest simply because you’ve made a cape out of a Palestinian flag.
Instead, it trivialises a devastating situation and reduces it to festival attire.
But to find such behaviour distasteful is to go against “right think”.
As Peep Show tells us: “If there isn’t room here for people who stand against everything you believe in, what sort of hippy free-for-all is this?”
Real activism doesn’t require you to be at the centre of it – make donations, sign petitions, go to protests, do anything and everything you can to bring about a ceasefire, but for the love of God, take down the flag.
