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The Wireless Festival in the UK has come under huge pressure over the booking of Kanye \u2018Ye\u2019 West, and the backlash is intensifying.<\/p>\n
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The controversial American rapper was announced last week as the three-night headliner of this year\u2019s festival in London\u2019s Finsbury Park in July \u2013 despite the musician\u2019s past anti-Semitic remarks<\/a>.<\/p>\n The booking has prompted widespread criticism<\/a>, including from Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who said it is \u201cdeeply concerning that Kanye West has been booked to perform at Wireless despite his previous anti-Semitic remarks and celebration of Nazism\u201d.<\/p>\n His comments were echoed by various groups and politicians<\/a>, who expressed further concern and indignation at the booking of West for the festival.<\/p>\n London mayor Sadiq Khan criticised the booking, stating: \u201cWe are clear that the past comments and actions of this artist are offensive and wrong, and are simply not reflective of London\u2019s values\u201d.<\/p>\n A series of festival sponsors have cut their ties with Wireless as a result, including main sponsor Pepsi and drinks giant Diageo.<\/p>\n Sajid Javid, the former Home Secretary and current chair of the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust, praised their action.<\/p>\n Now both PayPal and Rockstar Energy have distanced themselves from Wireless \u2013 with PayPal no longer allowing its branding to be used on promotional material for the festival and Rockstar Energy reportedly pulling out.<\/p>\n As the pressure mounts for the festival to take action, Melvin Benn, the managing director of Festival Republic, which co-promotes Wireless alongside Live Nation, has issued a statement defending the headliner.<\/p>\n \u201cI am a deeply committed anti-fascist and have been all my adult life,\u201d said Benn. \u201cI lived on a kibbutz for many months in the 1970s that was attacked on October 7th, am pro Jew and the Jewish state, while being equally committed to a Palestinian state.\u201d<\/p>\n He continued: \u201cHaving had a person in my life for the last 15 years who suffers from mental illness, I have witnessed many episodes of despicable behaviour that I have had to forgive and move on from. If I wasn\u2019t before, I have become a person of forgiveness and hope in all aspects of my life, including work.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhat Ye has said in the past about Jews and Hitler is as abhorrent to me as it is to the Jewish community, the Prime Minister and others that have commented and \u2013 taking him at his word \u2013 to Ye now also.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYe\u2019s music is played on commercial radio stations in this country. It is available via live streams and downloads in this country without comment or vitriol from anyone and he has a legal right to come into the country and to perform in this country. He is intended to come in and perform. We are not giving him a platform to extol opinion of whatever nature, only to perform the songs that are currently played on the radio stations in our country and the streaming platforms in our country and listened to and enjoyed by millions.\u201d<\/p>\n He concluded: \u201cForgiveness and giving people a second chance are becoming a lost virtue in this ever-increasing divisive world and I would ask people to reflect on their instant comments of disgust at the likelihood of him performing (as was mine) and offer some forgiveness and hope to him as I have decided to do.\u201d<\/p>\n West\u2019s anti-Semitic remarks began in 2022, when he made a series of offensive comments on social media which ended up getting him booted off both X and Instagram. The musician was dropped by his talent agency<\/a> and fashion brands like Adidas and Balenciaga also distanced themselves from West<\/a>.<\/p>\n West went on to post a picture of KKK robes<\/a>, rescind his previous apology to the Jewish community<\/a>, declare himself \u201ca Nazi\u201d<\/a> and assert that he has\u201cdominion over his wife\u201d<\/a>.<\/p>\n In February 2025, West started selling swastika t-shirts<\/a>, and in May, he released a song titled \u2018Heil Hitler\u2019<\/a>, which praised the Nazi leader. This led him to be stripped of a visa to enter Australia<\/a> and faced with immediate arrest in Brazil<\/a>.<\/p>\n West has since apologised for his actions and took out a full-page ad in the Wall Street Journal<\/a> earlier this year in order to apologise for his past antisemitic comments<\/a>, reflecting on a “four-month-long manic episode of psychotic, paranoid and impulsive behaviour” and saying that he \u201clost touch with reality.\u201d<\/p>\n Still, many questioned the timing of his apology, considering the recent release of his new album \u2018Bully\u2019, and his past comments have led to various countries banning his performances. The most recent is France, as the mayor of the southern city of Marseille, France’s second-biggest city, stated he does not want West anywhere near his city<\/a>.<\/p>\n It remains to be seen whether West will be able to enter the UK, as his right to do so is reportedly under government review.<\/p>\n UK Ministers have the power to ban foreign nationals from entering the country if their presence is not considered \u201cconducive to the public good\u201d.<\/p>\n Kanye West\u2019s last UK performance was his Glastonbury headline set in 2015.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Wireless Festival in the UK has come under huge pressure over the booking of Kanye \u2018Ye\u2019 West,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7968,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[93,3719,1381,94,674,5,6],"class_list":{"0":"post-7967","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uk","8":"tag-antisemitism","9":"tag-controversy","10":"tag-kanye-west","11":"tag-keir-starmer","12":"tag-music","13":"tag-uk","14":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@UnitedKingdom\/116362256188531245","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7967","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7967"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7967\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7968"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7967"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7967"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7967"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}