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The Wireless Festival<\/a> fiasco has been embarrassing, baffling \u2014 and entirely predictable. It\u2019s been a nasty look under the rock of the mercenary entertainment industry, at the cowardice of Sir Keir Starmer\u2019s government, and our inability to differentiate between corporate apology and restorative justice. Let\u2019s unpack the whole sordid affair.<\/p>\n Last week, Ye, the American rapper formerly known as Kanye West<\/a>, was announced as the headliner<\/a> for a three-day music festival in Finsbury Park<\/a>. Tickets were already on sale before the blindingly obvious backlash blew up in the organisers\u2019 faces.<\/p>\n The slightest risk assessment might have raised concerns about letting an artist with a florid history of antisemitism perform in north London<\/p>\n Wireless Festival was due to be held at Finsbury Park in London<\/p>\n PA Archive<\/p>\n West is obviously still popular enough to sell out three nights in a park. He could probably sell out 365 nights; there is no accounting for people\u2019s willingness to overlook violent rhetoric when they\u2019re not the target. But this is not the case of an artist who misspoke once or twice, or whose lyrics look a bit rude if you squint. <\/p>\n In the 10 years since West\u2019s Saint Pablo tour was cancelled when he began ranting on stage (West later spent time in hospital), he has espoused awful, racist, misogynistic and antisemitic things. Once hailed as a musical genius and passionate activist, Ye spent a decade being as vile and hateful as possible. <\/p>\n Risk assessment not found <\/p>\n He cosied up to Donald Trump during his first term and deeply wounded his black American fans by claiming slavery was a \u201cchoice\u201d. Two years after the murder of George Floyd, he was strutting around Paris Fashion Week 2022 in a top proclaiming \u201cWhite Lives Matter\u201d. <\/p>\n He threatened to \u201cgo defcon three\u201d on \u201cJewish people\u201d and proudly announced \u201cI am a Nazi\u201d on Infowars, the far-Right podcast. He was banned from X for posting swastikas. <\/p>\n Ye supported Donald Trump and his MAGA campaign<\/p>\n AFP\/Getty Images<\/p>\n In 2023, he briefly apologised for his behaviour \u2014 but by 2025, West was releasing a song called Heil Hitler (the lyrics of which are unprintable) and selling T-shirts emblazoned with swastikas. Oh, and posting \u201cI BEAT WOMEN\u201d while fending off lawsuits alleging he sexually assaulted an employee and a model.<\/p>\n If I were drafting a risk assessment for a north London music festival dedicated to uplifting black artists, all the above might give me more than a moment of pause. Can you really ensure the safety of London\u2019s Jewish community, particularly the very visibly religious Orthodox community in Stamford Hill \u2014 literally right next to Finsbury Park? What about black attendees? The women?<\/p>\n Apparently, none of this was flagged when Wireless booked West. Nobody thought to reach out to local Jewish community groups beforehand. Everyone was all too ready to make a quick buck. After all, West had taken out a full-page paid advert in the Wall Street Journal<\/a> in January (just before his new album, Bully, dropped), explaining his behaviour was the result of untreated bipolar disorder and an undiagnosed traumatic brain injury. \u201cI am not a Nazi or an antisemite,\u201d he wrote. \u201cI love Jewish people.\u201d Perhaps he\u2019ll put that on a T-shirt one day.<\/p>\n Not the place for rehabilitation<\/p>\n People pointed the finger at Haringey council, but all that local authorities can do in an attempt to plug the gaping holes in their budgets is rent out community resources such as our parks to private event organisers. They had zero say on West\u2019s travel plans. Likewise, Sir Sadiq Khan has little power as the Mayor to intervene in this obvious disaster-in-the-making, beyond noting that West\u2019s comments \u201care simply not reflective of London\u2019s values\u201d. <\/p>\n Instead, it was up to the Government to finally pull its finger out and bar West from coming to the UK. But Starmer didn\u2019t exactly go to the mattresses for British Jews. One might have expected him to have displayed the same energy he had for condemning Bob Vylan and Kneecap<\/a> over last summer’s festival season. Their calls to Free Palestine had the Government tattling to the police with haste. But his officials went ahead and approved the ETA for an artist who put out a jingle about Adolf Hitler less than a year ago. Does Starmer care about antisemitism, the scary full-fat Holocaust denial stuff West engaged in? Or is it only when Israel gets offended that he is quick to act?<\/p>\n![\"Wireless](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/f76d44cd80860981b7ca9cfbdd1b0e39Y29udGVudHNlYXJjaGFwaSwxNzc1NjU1NTUz-2.67832618.jpg\")
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