‘Too little, too late’ – Bono and U2 have finally come out in support of Gaza, but reaction in some quarters has been hostile

by Banania2020

38 comments

  1. Get to absolute fuck. Getting in before the starvation starts wiping them out fully to try and clean the slate. Fuck off U2.

    It’s truly astounding how they designed their own downfall.

  3. Once a pox, always a pox.

    The radio silence from them has really damaged their reputation.

    They build the band brand on music and good cause. This is a huge stain on them.

  4. Go and shite the lot of ye. Pathetic efforts as usual from one of our biggest embarrassments.

  8. Sure Bono couldn’t keep Tony Blair’s dick out of his mouth while he was incinerating Iraqi kids in Bush’s War on “Terror”.

    I think Captain Moonlight put it best in his timeless lyric, “Bono is a cunt, Bono is a prick”.

  10. Maybe if you weren’t all such fanatics about the topic, it would allow people to speak up in support.

  11. U2 made a career from being at the forefront of tech, always wanting to push the boundaries of what a band can do not just audibly, but visually. But they’ve had nothing to say while the world was watching its first televised genocide. Bono has spent his entire career pontificating about world issues but goes silent on this one. Even his statement last week, which was 10 pages or something, continuously references Oct 7th. Even when he’s trying to appease his fanbase, he’s subtly insinuating the *right to defend* trope. Fuck off you money hungry charlatan.

  12. What’s going on this week? As well as ‘concerned’ statements from the UK, Australia and Germany, we’re getting headlines like ‘Madonna and U2 speak out on Gaza’.

    I presume it’s to get ahead of the mass starvation deaths but were they all alerted by the Davos newsletter or something?

    You just know that Bono is going to headline a fundraiser for the survivors of Palestine next year. Radiohead will be supporting.

  13. People who hate Bono and U2 will hate them anyway.

    If he had said this a year ago, the same people would be asking about who cares what he or celebrities thinks about international affairs (see the done to death Ja Rule line). These are the same types who have been asking for decades why Bono has been commenting about international affairs in general.

    But when he does it now, he’s doing it too late. Ultimately in the eyes of some, he’s always going to be wrong.

    Also, the only criticism I’ve seen on IG, and similarly according to this article, are from Irish people. Which itself is telling enough.

    Edit: the ups and downs of voting here is odd today.

  15. Outrage as wealthy men, who have always been full of shit, fail to deliver world peace.

  16. Was he against genocide last year when he accepted an award from Joe Biden and didn’t speak up, or has he only discovered a spine at the exact moment there are no longer personal or professional repercussions to condemning it?

  19. Bono is a Zionist.

    That’s all you need to understand.

    This is just being done for the optics.

  20. There’s some fella in a PR office watching some kind of dial or meter with his hand over a big red button, when the dial tilts towards Palastine as the safer side to support from a PR perspective in U2’s biggest markets then the fella hits the red button and Bono is taken out of storage to spout some righteous indignation. 

  21. Bono is particularly awful. He has always been a bootlicker while somehow managing to position himself as a radical humanitarian.

    He avoids paying tax in ireland, but has the balls to tell speak as if he’s a representative of ireland.

    If you listened to Sunday Bloody Sunday, you’d think Irish civilians shot innocent British soldiers in Derry.

    Always anti-republican. Always pro-colonialism.

  22. The hubris that they have a valid opinion. Why would anyone care what U2 think?
    Like me posting online about elections in Sweden.

  23. Bongo can jog the fuk on…. A man that has the ear of politicians across the globe stays mute until now, when immeasurable damage is done through murder and starvation to the people of Gaza….Tens of thousands dead and innocent young girls bodies intentionally damaged through starvation…..Who now, like countless of our own woman of this island after enduring An Gorta Mór, will have trouble bearing children…..This is if they survive at all, as those genocidal lunatics aren’t finished…. Absolutely FUK Bongo…

  24. What do Def Leppard have to say on the matter? Depeche Mode? Bon Jovi? We need to stop giving a shit about what aging celebrities have to say on the subject of politics. “Beyoncé has come out in support of Kamala Harris”, right, fuck load of good that did. There’s only one celeb I want to hear from on global politics

    https://i.redd.it/x9llwuc1rqif1.gif

  25. It is infuriating when these people wait to jump on the bandwagon and they ALL should have joined it sooner… BUT it’s still way better to speak out than say nothing.
    This avalanche of voices makes a difference. But hammering them for not speaking out sooner makes some people slower to come out.
    Welcome aboard (fucking finally) but welcome aboard.

  26. The witch hunt is in full swing. Bravo.

    I’ll save my anger for people who spoke up against Israel the day after October 7th, before they had a chance to gather up the bodies. Before a shot had been fired in retaliation.

    I am sick of this issue consuming Ireland so much that a band not saying anything at all becomes a focus of hateful rage and sanctimony. It isn’t “pro-genocide” to keep your powder dry and consider the most effective thing to help the situation, like how to get a ceasefire, a peace process going. Fuck this hornets’ nest of performative outrage.

    There is no proportion here. Not in Israel’s appalling prosecution of the war, and certainly not in the rabid pro-Palestinian movement outside the region.

  27. Anyone with a platform that’s only saying something about this genocide now after nearly 2 years of it being livestreamed is doing it solely for optics. When the inevitable happens, they’ll all turn around and act like they were always against it.

    Fuck these people. All a bunch of spineless, genocide-enabling cowards. Musicians have historically been a large part of rebellion against the injustices in this world regardless of the backlash they might face – If its got to the point that a fucking genocide isnt motivating you to speak up when it counts, then you don’t fucking deserve that platform anymore.

  29. Anyone else old enough to remember U2’s bombastic reaction to the war in Bosnia and, specifically, the siege of Sarajevo in the mid-1990s? It was front and centre of their entire act. Their Zoo TV live show had sattelite link ups every night to people in the city. The Miss Sarajevo single – and the “don’t let them kill us” banner – were genuinely moving. The Pop Mart concert in Sarajevo was one of the most hyped events in their history.

    Sarajevo was a siege in which about five thousand civilians died. Over 60,000 civilians have been killed in Gaza in the current conflict and they’ve said fuck all. Why? Because Serbia is not a major record buying market and there was no pro-Serb lobby in the US which would have given them any flack. They could take a stand without paying any price. In fact, they kind of exploited the war in Bosnia to make money.

    Contrast that to their near radio silence against the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and the Middle East. They don’t take a stance where they might pay a price. I saw them live (free ticket) in the 2000s and their show instead revolved around AIDS in Africa and the imprisonment in Myanmar of Aung San Suu Kyi. Because the American Christian right were onboard with fightining AIDS in Africa and probably didn’t even know Myanmar exists. There is and was no pro-Myanmar lobby that might have stirred up backlash against them.

    The fact that Bono’s “moral” stances are informed largely by commercial interests and not pissing off powerful interests is transparently obvious. Look at Northern Ireland. When the peace process there came along, he backed it. He did a concert in Belfast where (copying Bob Marley at Smile Jamaica) he brought John Hume and David Trimble and made them raise hands together. He did a single called Please, which had the leaders of the four main parties on the cover. Anyone half paying attention would have thought Bono was a lifelong advocate of peace through negotiation. In fact, the very opposite. His stance had been the exact opposite during the 1980s and early 1990s, when his position on Northern Ireland was virtually identical to that of Margaret Thatcher. In the 1980s and early 1990s, his position was absolutely not in favour of talking to Sinn Fein. As far as he was concerned the RUC and British Army represented peace, law and order – and the IRA were dirty, terror-lovin’ terrorists on a nihilistic crime spree who had to be wiped out. His later change of stance was just more opportunism from one of the most shameless charlatans out there.

  30. This is exactly what happened with the Nazis, politicians and public figures who previously admired and supported them came out opposing them when they saw what way the inevitable tide was going.

    They didnt give a toss about the horrors committed, they only cared that they were not going to get in trouble over it.

  32. Attitudes like this will lead to more people staying silent. As long as Palestinians are alive it’s not too late. It would have been better to come out earlier but coming out now should not be ridiculed

  34. I’m curious why anyone would care what U2 thinks about a given issue. Does U2 even exist now?

  37. Same old Bono, once a fucking Cunt always a fucking Cunt.

  38. Would it really surprise anyone if Bobo was involved with that Epstein shite? They probably have a load of dirt on him to keep him quiet.

Comments are closed.