Glastonbury has long styled itself as the spiritual heartland of British counterculture: a muddy utopia where peace signs, protest chants, and vegan falafel coexist under tie-dyed banners proclaiming love and liberation.
Last weekend, punk-rap duo Bob Vylan (Bobby and Bobbie) exposed the sharp edge of that utopian fantasy.
The chant – ‘Death, death to the IDF!’ – delivered to an electrified crowd at the West Holts Stage, tore through the festival’s aura of inclusive radicalism and plunged it into a darker debate: When does protest become hate speech, and who decides?
The Fallout
Festival organisers swiftly condemned the chant as crossing ‘a line’ while the BBC pulled the set from its online platforms, attaching warnings about ‘very strong and discriminatory language’ during the live stream. Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy demanded explanations for how such language was broadcast at all, while Sir Keir Starmer called it ‘appalling hate speech’.
Police launched an investigation into the comments. Jewish organisations expressed deep concern over what they saw as a direct threat to Israelis and, by extension, to Jewish communities worldwide.
Under UK law, hate speech is criminalised if it is found to incite violence or hatred against a protected group. Whether this chant meets that threshold remains under review, but the invocation of death – even directed at a military force rather than an ethnic group – carries moral and legal risks.
Protest or Provocation?
Bobby Vylan defended the chant as a call for ‘a change in foreign policy’, reiterating that it was not an incitement to hatred but a confrontation of a military institution responsible for Palestinian suffering. This line of argument falls within a lineage of artistic provocation, from The Clash’s attacks on Thatcherism to Stormzy calling out Boris Johnson at the same festival in 2019.
Yet something is different here. The phrase ‘Death to the IDF’ is not a generic anti-war statement. It targets a specific military force, which for many Israelis is synonymous with national survival. For others, it is the instrument of systemic oppression.
Glastonbury’s Radical Tradition Tested
Glastonbury has never been immune to controversy. In the 1980s, The Smiths’ anti-monarchy anthems drew tabloid ire. In 2017, Jeremy Corbyn’s onstage appearance sparked culture war backlash. Stormzy’s 2019 set confronted systemic racism in Britain, cementing the festival’s status as a platform for protest art.
But Bob Vylan’s chant veers into territory more explicitly charged with ethnic and geopolitical implications. Unlike calls for social justice or environmental protection – issues that unify a predominantly progressive audience – chants invoking death against an institution entwined with Jewish identity land differently, even when framed as anti-military rather than antisemitic.
The Silence and Solidarity of Artists
Other performers largely remained silent, wary of being embroiled in controversy during their biggest career moments. However, a handful of grassroots artists voiced solidarity online, emphasising the need to confront state violence while rejecting antisemitism. This split response reveals the tightrope artists walk between moral conviction, professional risk, and public vilification.
A Global Resonance
The timing of Bob Vylan’s chant, amid escalating conflict in Gaza and the West Bank, heightens its resonance – and its risk. As images of devastation circulate daily, the emotional charge of such statements intensifies. The chant becomes not only a political slogan but a provocation within a transnational discourse of solidarity, suffering, and vengeance.
The Limits of Free Speech at Festivals
For Glastonbury, the episode tests its identity as a sanctuary of radical expression. Its brand of protest has often been curated: save the bees, block fossil fuels, stop deportations – these are crowd-pleasers. But expressions that veer into the terrain of ethnic or national vilification, however politically justified in the eyes of performers or their fans, become unpalatable for organisers seeking to protect an inclusive reputation.
Here lies the paradox: a festival that prides itself on radicalism finds itself enforcing the boundaries of acceptable protest, a tension now playing out across Western cultural institutions.
Who Gets to Villainise Whom?
The speed and scale of Bob Vylan’s condemnation reveal a deeper societal anxiety about free speech, activism, and antisemitism in an era of resurgent nationalism and identity politics. The chant’s moral offensiveness is debated, but the institutional reaction was swift and nearly unanimous.
Bob Vylan is not the first artist to be villainised for Middle Eastern solidarity – nor will they be the last. Their experience exposes an uncomfortable reality: there are costs to provocation, and those costs are unevenly distributed. An indie band calling for death to a military force can be deplatformed; an arms-producing state calling for military intervention is normalised.
What Now for Glastonbury?
As the dust settles, Glastonbury’s legacy as a platform for radical speech is under scrutiny. Does it remain a place where artists can challenge, unsettle, and offend? Or will its stage become a curated amphitheatre where only certain forms of dissent are sanctioned?
In the end, if Glastonbury no longer tolerates the rawest forms of protest, has its radical spirit finally been tamed?
