in light of the Manchester synagogue terror attack,<\/a> Jewish leaders and MPs have called for Bob Vylan’s upcoming Manchester Academy gig to be cancelled.<\/p>\nIt comes after the band also had their US visas revoked and were pulled from their Saturday headline slot at Radar festival in Manchester in summer.<\/p>\n
In a statement, the Jewish Representative Council of Greater Manchester said: “We are deeply concerned by Manchester Academy\u2019s decision to host Bob Vylan, an artist who has repeatedly engaged in rhetoric that crosses the line from legitimate political discourse into antisemitism and incitement.<\/p>\n
![\"Bobby](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/2_Glastonbury-Festival-2025-Day-Four.jpg\")
Bobby Vylan of Bob Vylan performs at Glastonbury festival 2025(Image: Redferns)<\/p>\n
“We are even more alarmed given the Director General of the BBC accepted that he was responsible for an \u201cantisemitic broadcast\u201d by covering their Glastonbury performance that directly led to an increase in hate crime against the Jewish community. Subsequently, the band have mocked the murder of Charlie Kirk, performed Nazi salutes on stage and spoken about finding \u201cZionists in the streets\u201d.<\/p>\n
“These statements and actions do not provoke debate but carry a real danger by promoting hatred. There is a vital distinction between legitimate criticism of the Israeli government and speech that veers into antisemitism. Freedom of expression is a central component of our democracy that must be protected but it cannot be right to platform an artist who has consistently been condemned as hateful and racist.<\/p>\n
“We call on the Manchester Academy to cancel the performance and commit to clear policies to ensure that it will not legitimise prejudice under the guise of freedom of speech.\u201d<\/p>\n
A number of MPs have expressed their support for the statement including Elise Blundell, Kirith Entwhistle, James Frith, Navendu Mishra, Tom Morrison, Jo Platt, Connor Rand, Graham Stringer. Christian Wakeford and Paul Waugh.<\/p>\n
Following Bob Vylan’s Glastonbury performance, the ECU received four complaints about the performance relating to incitement to violence, terrorism or ethnic cleansing, hate speech and expressions of antisemitism.<\/p>\n
Its ruling, which was published in September, was largely made based on the group\u2019s frontman leading the crowds in chants of ‘death, death to the IDF’ as well as reciting the slogans, ‘From the river to the sea’ and ‘Free, free Palestine’.<\/p>\n
The ruling also referenced when the same group member described the boss of a record company ‘in the most abusive terms’ and referring to ‘f****** Zionists’ as it breached the guidelines of harm and offence that describe using ‘unduly intimidating, humiliating, intrusive, aggressive or derogatory remarks aimed at real people’.<\/p>\n
The ruling, however, cleared the corporation of breaching its guidelines relating to material that is likely to encourage or incite crime.<\/p>\n
Manchester Academy has been approached for a comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The punk band is set to perform at the Manchester Academy next monthBob Vylan(Image: Redferns) Jewish leaders and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":478945,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8813],"tags":[748,393,4884,2465,696,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-478944","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-manchester","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-england","10":"tag-great-britain","11":"tag-manchester","12":"tag-manchester-music","13":"tag-uk","14":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115329325454619636","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/478944","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=478944"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/478944\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/478945"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=478944"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=478944"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=478944"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Bob](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/1_Glastonbury-Festival-2025-Day-Four.jpg\")
Bob Vylan(Image: Redferns)<\/p>\n