Punk duo Bob Vylan had the crowds screaming at Glastonbury this weekend and the columnists screaming in SW1. Their chants of “death to the IDF” inspired columns about how the band should be arrested, and even condemnation from Keir Starmer.
I agree with Laurie Wastell that calls for prosecution are absurd. “Incitement to commit a crime” should be related to some direct threat of violence. Are we supposed to believe that Oliver from Cheltenham is about to trade in his tie-dyed t-shirt for a suicide vest?
As with the charges against Liam Óg Ó hAnnaidh of the hip hop trio Kneecap, I also suspect that prosecution would give the group more counter-cultural credit than they deserve. When I hear the lyrics of Bob Vylan, I don’t feel outraged as much as bored.
We’re supposed to believe that this duo are radicals. They have “[the] confidence to say what needs to be said”, with “thrillingly provocative” lyrics that include “hilarious takedowns of … Brexit-voting Top Gear fans”. It’s about time someone had the courage to take on a TV series that effectively ended ten years ago.
The most consistent message of the duo is that Britain is evil. “Since we arrived this place has got so ugly,” frontman Bobby Vylan snarls on “We Live Here”, imitating a racist neighbour, before breaking into his actual voice:
But this is my fucking country
And it’s never been fucking lovely
Inspiring. “I can’t keep up with all the lies it creates,” Mr Vylan spits on “Makes Me Violent” on the 2024 album “Humble as the Sun”, “And it might have it in the name, but trust, there ain’t nothing great.” I haven’t heard such daring and incisive wordplay since the rapper Slowthai called his 2019 debut album “Nothing Great About Britain”.
Had your mind blown yet? Well, on the track “Hunger Games”, on the same album, Vylan asks:
When was it great? (Never)
I suppose the classics are the classics for a reason. But can’t they at least shake things up and point out that the United Kingdom is not in fact united? Bet you’d never see that coming.
I can’t doubt the personal radicalism of Messrs Vylann when they are flirting with criminal prosecution. Like it or loathe it, that takes balls. What haunts their lyrics, though, is not radical insight but the stale memes of a decaying oikophobic cultural establishment. For all of the Vylans’ rage, with their calls to lynch politicians and kill the queen (before she inconveniently died of natural causes), their heads are filled with the ideas of well-heeled luvvies.
On the title track of their latest album, Vylan tells us:
Black man shine
Completing my goals on black man time
No blacks, no dogs, but the Irish are fine
This is a reference to the “No Blacks, No Dogs, No Irish” signs which, as everybody knows, haunted Britain in the 50s and 60s. But they didn’t. It’s a myth. “Got a message to the thieves in the palace,” Vylan snaps on “Reign”, “We want our jewels back.” Repatriation is of course the cringing obsession of British museums — and there is no doubt that some artifacts were seized from British colonies. But the Crown Jewels, as a collection, have existed for the best part of 1000 years. Many more recent objects were legitimately acquired. Why Mr Vylan has a greater right to the Cullinan Diamond than Thomas Cullinan, who extracted and sold it, is unclear.
The Vylans are the angry product of a cultural orthodoxy which has confused reflexive oikophobia with deep and radical thought
Onstage at Glastonbury, meanwhile, Vylan performed in front of the slogan “This country was built on the backs of immigrants”. This is an obvious reference to the “You called … and we came” Windrush narrative, most recently promoted by Prime Minister Keir Starmer. But, again, it is a myth. Non-European immigration played a small part in the post-war reconstruction of Britain. As Ed West writes, the prominence of HMT Empire Windrush in the national imagination can be boiled down to “well-intentioned inclusive myth-making”.
The Vylans are the angry product of a cultural orthodoxy which has confused reflexive oikophobia with deep and radical thought. Unlike self-flattering commentators, critics and curators, though, they have taken this thought to its emotional conclusions — being patted on the back by taste-makers as they do so. To prosecute them would be wrong on its own terms — but it would also be to affirm their radical delusions. Finally, it would be proof of revolutionary credentials.
