One could safely claim that Western pop music has always been political—from protest songs during the Vietnam years to anti-Bush anthems during the Iraq War. What has changed isn’t the presence of politics. It’s the quality, moral maturity, and epistemic integrity of the political discourse.
Since childhood, music and art have been an integral part of my life. I’ve followed countless brilliant artists and attended more festivals and concerts than I can count. And yet, I’ve never before seen the music scene as shallow, scripted, and conformist as it is today, especially as manifested in the viral footage from this year’s Glastonbury Festival.
What was once political music as moral protest has now devolved into a nihilistic performance of groupthink. “Activism” in the arts has become a hollow ritual—enforced by peer pressure, amplified by algorithms, and policed by cancel culture. It no longer demands critical thought, integrity, or anti-conformism—it only permits performative outrage and culturally approved slogans. It thrives not on depth or dissent but on political, historical, and cultural illiteracy—fueled by squirrel-brained attention spans conditioned by TikTok and Instagram.
What was once political music as a moral protest has now devolved into a nihilistic performance of groupthink.
At the risk of sounding like Grandpa Simpson yelling at a cloud: Back in the day, artists provoked thought. In the 1960s, 1970s, and into the 1980s, musicians such as Neil Young, Frank Zappa, Bob Marley, or The Police, utilized their platforms to challenge authority with nuance, poetry, and often painful introspection. See for example Neil Young’s “Ohio”, Ten Years After’s “I Want to Change the World”, or The Mothers of Invention’s “Trouble Every Day”. Especially artists like Zappa didn’t just criticize the system—they dissected it. They didn’t chant with the mob—they mocked it.
Today’s artists are the mob. And they mistake conformity for courage.
Modern “activist” performers don’t question power and the origin of violence—they invert it. How? By giving a pass to actual authoritarian, terrorist, or terror-exporting regimes—simply because these regimes are perceived as part of the “Global South,” “non-Western,” or “colonized”. A totalitarian religious regime that forces women into black shrouds, jails musicians, and executes gays becomes the misunderstood victim—while a liberal democracy becomes the fascist threat. The other side of the same inverted logic is to target, predictably and algorithmically safe, Israel, the West, whiteness, men, and capitalism. The language is flat, hysterical, and stupid: “From the river to the sea”; “Death to the IDF”; and “Kill your MP”. This isn’t activism. It’s not even solidarity. It’s moral cosplay—an emotional soap opera of self-congratulation, requiring no thought and even less courage.
This cultural rot isn’t limited to Glastonbury—it’s institutionalized. In Germany, parts of the Kulturförderung system (state-sponsored promotion of the arts) have become ideologically captured, with public funding quietly tied to having the “correct” stance on Israel. Under the leftist-liberal-green coalition (2021-2025), open antisemitism in the arts was not only tolerated—it was subsidized. The most glaring example was Documenta 15, a taxpayer-financed international exhibition that became a global scandal for featuring antisemitic imagery and Holocaust trivialization—among other exhibits, a painting by an “art collective” from Indonesia prominently depicted a figure with a pig’s face, curls at the temples and a hat with the inscription “Mossad”—all legitimized under the banner of “postcolonial resistance”.
Under the leftist-liberal-green coalition in Germany (2021-2025), open antisemitism in the arts was not only tolerated— it was subsidized.
At the heart of this moral collapse stood the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media (BKM), whose task is of national importance in Germany’s cultural and media policy. It is responsible for broad areas of culture and media and was until recently led by Andreas Görgen, who passively-aggressively undermined the IHRA definition of antisemitism and covertly advanced anti-Israel activism under the cloak of cultural diplomacy. Thankfully, that era of institutional gaslighting is now beginning to end. One of the first decisive actions of the new CDU Cultural Minister, Wolfgang Weimer, was to clean house at the BKM and remove Görgen—a long-overdue correction.
But the real damage goes beyond budgets and bureaucrats. Today’s artists aren’t just following the money—they’re internalizing a self-destructive ideology. The collapse of meaning has become aesthetic. The artist is no longer expected to think—only to repeat. The bar has dropped from visionary to algorithmic parrot.
This collapse of common sense isn’t accidental—it’s engineered. The erosion of what previous generations understood as “obvious moral truths”—like the belief that calling for the eradication of Jews is wrong—didn’t occur through complexity or confusion. It was cultivated.
It began with the manipulation of language.
When “resistance” is used to whitewash jihadism, when “anti-Zionism” becomes a euphemism for antisemitism, and when “colonialism” is used to erase not only the origins of the Jewish people in the territory of what today is Israel, and their historically continuous presence in the land (“go back to Poland”; “Jesus was Palestinian”), but to belittle Jewish identity, language stops reflecting reality and begins to invert it. Especially the “colonialist” accusation is disingenuous, as it never refers to any of Israel’s Arabic neighbors, who in fact had a long history of colonialism proper. Jews didn’t come as foreign invaders, nor did they arrive as an extension of an imperial core (which is a definitional criterion of colonialism). On the contrary, they returned to the very land from which they had been ethnically cleansed and displaced over centuries by Romans, Byzantines, Arab caliphates, Crusaders, Mamluks, Ottomans, and the British Mandate.
Once language is corrupted, thought follows. Once thought is corrupted, violence becomes justifiable.
By reframing the world through rigid binaries—oppressor vs. oppressed, colonizer vs. colonized—Western cultural elites created a worldview in which Jews, especially those with a nation-state, could be re-coded as villains.
In these circles the Holocaust became a “European trauma instrumentalized by Zionists” (Gilbert Achcar in The Arabs and the Holocaust, 2010). Israel became a “white settler colonialist” project (Noura Erakat, Justice for Some: Law and the Question of Palestine, 2019). Jewish identity becomes “white privilege.”
By equating the “oppressed” with the “good guys”—so shallow is the theoretical framework of most Israel-haters today—Jewish vulnerability disappears, and antisemitism starts to look like resistance. While Zionism may have created a sovereign state, it did not erase Jewish vulnerability. It gave Jews a means to defend themselves, not immunity from violent hatred. What is remarkable in the context of the arts, is that no bigger music agency, no label, no promoter, no festival organizer in the West officially condemned the Hamas al-Qassam Brigades’ terrorist attacks on the Nova festival on Oct 7, 2023, where 378 mostly young people, dancing and celebrating, were slaughtered. Nothing as much as a statement came from “the arts”.
And this is where the moral collapse of the music scene begins to take root. Victimhood by design has become currency, and Jews, now rebranded as “privileged”, even or especially when they are killed, have become expendable. As David Baddiel says: “Jews don’t count”.
Victimhood by design has become currency, and Jews, now rebranded as “privileged,” even or especially when they are killed, have become expendable.
A crowd of thousands chanting “Death to the IDF” at Glastonbury doesn’t emerge from nowhere. It’s the result of moral training—a conditioning of reflexes that teaches people that Israelis are somehow less human.
This didn’t start with Gen Z influencers. Even many from the older generation of musicians—those who once styled themselves as rebels and thinkers—have long since donned the anti-Zionist straitjacket.
Artists like David Byrne, Jarvis Cocker, Annie Lennox, Brian Eno, and Roger Waters have aligned themselves, to varying degrees, with petitions, campaigns, and public statements that demonize Israel in ways eerily reminiscent of early 20th-century antisemitic tropes—casting Jews as hyper-powerful, morally corrupt, and illegitimately present, much as in the conspiratorial fantasies of the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion”.
Even Eric Clapton, already known for his anti-black racism, has proven how shallow the surface-level “rebellion” of many artists is.
Brian Eno, again, has repeatedly championed BDS and denounced Zionism—yet continues to collaborate with institutions in countries like Russia and China, where actual dissent earns Siberian prison time or sanctions (see Pussy Riot, Ai Weiwei, and many others).
Ironically, even these icons of so-called resistance have joined the mob. Pussy Riot, long celebrated for standing up to Putin, now echo pro-Palestinian slogans without a hint of critique for Hamas, the Islamization of African and Middle Eastern minorities, or the systemic abuse of women under Islamist rule. Ai Weiwei, master of surveillance critique, now recites anti-Israel rhetoric with the moral naivety of a teenager discovering Che Guevara—rarely, if ever, acknowledging the antisemitism baked into the movements he so ferociously applauds.
David Byrne, once the king of satirical absurdity, now recites postcolonial jargon with the zeal of a first-year Scientology recruit. Jarvis Cocker and Annie Lennox sign every fashionable petition that signals virtue while sidestepping the uncomfortable complexities of reality, never pausing to reflect on the grotesque irony of millionaire Western artists denouncing the only democracy in the Middle East while staying silent on Iran, Hamas, or theocratic brutality.
David Byrne, once the king of satirical absurdity, now recites postcolonial jargon with the zeal of a first-year Scientology recruit.
Musical talent and moral clarity do not always coexist. When ideology becomes a fashion accessory—and moral complexity a threat to career survival—artists fall in line. Not because they understand. But because they’re afraid not to.
In the 1960s and 1970s, protest music aligned with the oppressed to uplift and humanize them. Today, oppression is a brand. Aligning with the “right” victims earns clout—even when those victims chant for genocide and celebrate slaughter.
Another significant reason for this collapse is a shift from professional, merit-based gatekeeping—which filtered for skill, originality, and artistic integrity—to ideological sanctioning, where access is contingent on parroting the correct political line. The former was (at its best) about elevating craft. The latter is about enforcing conformity.
In that sense, the disappearance of quality control and the rise of ideological control are not opposites — they’re part of the same cultural decline. Once, artists had to earn their platforms through editors, labels, critics, and mentors. Today, all it takes is a viral moment. Just rage, exposure, and applause.
Although these developments aren’t exclusively bad for music, they are profoundly detrimental to its substance. The erosion of gatekeeping has opened the floodgates to voices ungrounded in discipline, depth, or introspection. What we get instead is a hyperbolic theater of identity and virtue.
Self-centeredness isn’t just a side effect of this charade—it’s the engine. Artist becomes trapped in a feedback loop of validation and exhibitionism, constantly chasing meaning through external applause while avoiding the inner work that gives art its enduring power. They attach themselves to causes not out of conviction, but as a substitute for purpose. Yet because this purpose is rooted in fantasy—that of their self-image as “brave,” “radical,” or “rebellious”—it never satisfies. The result isn’t catharsis. It’s a hollow performance of meaning. While the stage has grown more crowded, the integrity of expression has withered. And that’s a very high price to pay.
Algorithms reward hysteria, not nuance. They push polarizing content that radicalizes. And artists, desperate for attention, learn to out-radicalize each other in a competition of moral exhibitionism.
It’s no longer about justice. It’s about visibility. And the machine doesn’t care if it’s true—only if it trends.
To make matters worse, festivals, grants, labels, and media platforms are all dominated by rigid ideological conformity. You don’t get booked unless you say the “right” things. So everyone says the same things.
Take the case of Azealia Banks, who recently pulled out of Boomtown and Maiden Voyage festivals after being told she needed to chant “Free Palestine” on stage to remain on the bill. She called the demand “cheap group‑think bullshit” and accused promoters of extortion. What Banks exposed is the new unwritten contract of the cultural industry: speak the sanctioned slogan, or lose the stage. And most comply—eagerly.
What Azealia Banks exposed is the new unwritten contract of the cultural industry: speak the sanctioned slogan, or lose the stage.
This isn’t a political awakening—it’s a sadomasochistic performance.
Today’s artists don’t just want to be on the “right side” of history—they want to suffer, to atone, to cleanse themselves through performance. They want to denounce themselves, not because it brings justice, but because it feels good. But don’t be fooled: this ritual is by no means humble—it’s narcissistic. The modern “activist” becomes the main character in someone else’s trauma—a story they don’t live, don’t understand, and often exploit for personal brand growth.
The Vietnam-era protest song asked: “What are we doing?”
The Gaza-era festival chant screams: “Death to – !”
That’s the difference.
The old music tried to stop wars. The new music tries to justify them, as long as the victims are Jews.
And history has seen this performance before. When moral clarity collapses into spectacle, it’s only a matter of time before the oldest hatred returns—draped in new slogans, but preaching the same odious lies.
Antisemitism doesn’t disappear. It mutates. What we’re witnessing is not a trend but a recurring pattern: a civilizational fever that flares up when societies have no positive values that tie its members to another. To break the cycle, we must educate about Middle Eastern history, Islamic colonialism, and Soviet anti-Zionism. But we must also restore perspective: Western civilization—its Christianity, its humanism, its democracy—owes as much to Judaism as to the Hellenic tradition. What’s missing isn’t just knowledge. It’s gratitude.
To replace the cult of victimhood, we need more than responsibility and meritocracy. We need memory. And we need to remember who gave us the moral vocabulary in the first place.
