{"id":22438,"date":"2025-06-28T18:12:10","date_gmt":"2025-06-28T18:12:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/22438\/"},"modified":"2025-06-28T18:12:10","modified_gmt":"2025-06-28T18:12:10","slug":"kneecap-leads-f-keir-starmer-chant-at-glastonbury","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/22438\/","title":{"rendered":"Kneecap Leads ‘F– Keir Starmer’ Chant at Glastonbury"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tKneecap<\/a> played the biggest set of their career thus far at Glastonbury<\/a> Festival on Saturday, with the West Holts stage hitting capacity nearly an hour before the Irish rap trio\u2019s set. After the BBC opted not to air the show live due to their growing controversy in the U.K., Kneecap did not hesitate to get political, leading the crowd in several chants of \u201cfuck Keir Starmer\u201d and \u201cfree Palestine.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cMo Chara was in the courts, the Westminster courts this month,\u201d said member M\u00f3gla\u00ed Bap of his bandmate, who is currently facing terror charges in the U.K. for allegedly supporting Hamas and Hezbollah, which are both considered terror organizations by the U.K. government.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt\u2019s not the first time there was a miscarriage of justice for an Irish person in the British justice system,\u201d Bap added, inciting overwhelming cheers from the audience.<\/p>\n

\n\tBBC confirmed earlier on Saturday that Kneecap\u2019s set would not be livestreamed but would be made available on demand. <\/p>\n

\n\tThough Kneecap did not address the BBC\u2019s decision specifically during their set, looking out at all the Palestinian flags in the audience, Chara said: \u201cThe BBC editor is going to have some fucking job.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThough no stranger to provoking strong reactions with political messaging, especially when it comes to advocating for the reunification of Ireland and a free Palestine, Kneecap has recently found itself in legal trouble in the U.K. After the group\u2019s Coachella performance \u2014 in which they displayed messages including \u201cIsrael is committing genocide against the Palestinian people\u201d and \u201cit is being enabled by the U.S.\u201d \u2014 brought global attention, the U.K. counter-terrorism police opened an investigation into them.<\/p>\n

\n\tSpeaking about the group\u2019s Coachella appearance, Chara added: \u201cEveryone in that fucking tent agreed with me. The Israel and U.S. media don\u2019t want to believe that young Americans agree with us.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tA video from November allegedly showing member Mo Chara holding up the Hezbollah flag and chanting \u201cup Hamas, up Hezbollah\u201d resulted in him being charged under the country\u2019s Terrorism Act. In response, the band said that they \u201cdo not, and have never supported, Hamas or Hezbollah\u201d and claimed that the footage was \u201ctaken out of context\u201d as part of a \u201csmear campaign.\u201d Chara appeared in court in London on June 18, and was granted unconditional bail until his next hearing on Aug. 20, meaning that the group could still play at Glastonbury. However, U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer told The Sun that he doesn\u2019t \u201cthink that\u2019s appropriate.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI think we need to come down really clearly on this,\u201d Starmer said. \u201cThis is about the threats that shouldn\u2019t be made, I won\u2019t say too much because there\u2019s a court case on, but I don\u2019t think that\u2019s appropriate.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\tOn Instagram, Kneecap responded: \u201cYou know what\u2019s \u2018not appropriate\u2019 Keir?! Arming a fucking genocide.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\tStarmer isn\u2019t the only politician who has called for Kneecap to be pulled from the Glasto lineup. Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch posted on X that the BBC, which livestreams sets from the festival, should not show their performance.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cAs a publicly funded platform, the BBC should not be rewarding extremism,\u201d she wrote. A BBC spokesperson later responded (via BBC News<\/a>): \u201cWhilst the BBC doesn\u2019t ban artists, our plans will ensure that our programming will meet our editorial guidelines. Decisions about our output will be made in the lead-up to the festival.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tDespite the political controversy, Kneecap has received support from some big names in the U.K. music industry like Massive Attack and Johnny Marr. In a post on his socials about calls for Kneecap not to play Glastonbury, the former Smiths guitarist said the festival \u201chas always had a political aspect.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cOppression fears artistic expression,\u201d he wrote. \u201cI respect all musicians who use their platform to speak out against injustice, who promote compassion and equality and give voice to the voiceless.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Kneecap played the biggest set of their career thus far at Glastonbury Festival on Saturday, with the West…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":22439,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[171,2103,20574,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-22438","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-glastonbury","10":"tag-kneecap","11":"tag-united-states","12":"tag-unitedstates","13":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114762347186257377","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22438","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22438"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22438\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22439"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22438"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22438"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22438"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}