Bobby Vylan's 'death to IDF' chant turns Glastonbury into 'Summer of Hate' festival

“If you're going to San Francisco, Be sure to wear some flowers in your hair, If you're going to San Francisco, You're gonna meet some gentle people there.” I’d not realised it until recently but this beautiful hippie anthem was written to promote the Monterey music festival of June 1967, an event said to have kickstarted the so-called ‘Summer of Love’.

Since then, many large music festivals around the world have had a similar vibe. So when Glastonbury organiser Emily Eavis issued a statement this week saying “we will always believe in – and actively campaign for – hope, unity, peace and love”, she was expressing a sentiment very much in keeping with festivals’ pacifist traditions.

The problem, of course, was that the statement was issued after self-described “violent punk” and rapper Bobby Vylan, a stage name, led part of a large crowd in a chant of “death, death to the IDF”, the Israel Defence Forces.

READ MORE: An 'Oasis of Peace' where Arab and Jewish families live together, is a beacon of hope – Laurence Brass

Bobby Vylan of rap duo Bob Vylan performs at Glastonbury festival (Picture: Leon Neal) | Getty Images

Peace, love and bullets in kneecaps

Eavis said the chants “very much crossed a line and we are urgently reminding everyone involved in the production of the festival that there is no place at Glastonbury for antisemitism, hate speech or incitement to violence”.

Almost unnoticed amid the subsequent uproar, Naoise O Caireallain of the Northern Irish rap group Kneecap also told another Glastonbury crowd that they would "start a riot outside the courts”, with the all-important context being that fellow bandmate Liam Og O hAnnaidh has been charged with a terror offence after displaying a flag of the proscribed group Hezbollah at a gig. O Caireallain appeared to have a change of heart, adding “no riots, just love and support, and support for Palestine”.

READ MORE: Why Israel must let food and medicine into Gaza for its own sake

However, I would have thought that a festival that seeks to promote “hope, unity, peace and love” would not have booked a band called Kneecap on the basis of its name alone, given kneecapping refers to punishment shootings by terrorist groups. The band can protest it’s meant in an ironic way all they like, but the hard-right’s exploitation of such excuses has left me entirely sick of them.

The best response to Vylan’s remarks that I’ve read came from UK Health Secretary Wes Streeting, who said: “All life is sacred. And I find it pretty revolting we’ve got to a state in this conflict where you’re supposed to sort of cheer on one side or the other like it’s a football team.” He said he supported Ukraine in the war against Russia but added: “Would I be celebrating or chanting for the death of Russian soldiers? No, I want to see an end to the war, and I want to see an end to the conflict.”

Changing zeitgeist

The way societal values shift over time is a subject that should get a lot more attention. In the 1967 Summer of Love, it was ‘cool’ among the young generation to be an idealistic, rather naive pacifist, and not without reason.

The hippie movement was partly a reaction to the Second World War, particularly the dropping of the first atomic bombs, and the threat of nuclear Armageddon during the Cold War. Something similar happened after the First World War, with the elaborate, bizarre and sometimes manic fantasies of surrealism providing a form of escape from the horrors of the trenches.

The danger of death chants in places like Glastonbury is that they can make violence seem ‘cool’ – ushering in a ‘Summer of Hate’, rather than a Summer of Love. And we should never underestimate the desire of young people to be part of the ‘in crowd’. It is a very human trait that partly helps explain why various societies throughout human history have blithely committed appalling crimes against humanity and seemingly thought nothing of it.

There are other deeply worrying signs of a substantial zeitgeist shift, on both the political left and right. The anti-immigration riots last summer, the level of violence in schools – so bad that it prompted teachers in Kirkintilloch to go on strike – and the social media epidemic of hate-filled misogyny are all evidence that public attitudes, particularly among young people, have been shifting in an alarming direction in recent years.

Violence is anti-democratic

According to polling by the John Smith Centre, 63 per cent of young people think “democracy in the UK is in trouble” and a substantial minority, 27 per cent, say they would rather live in a dictatorship. I suspect this latter group lacks understanding of what that would actually mean. A trip to Putin’s Russia or North Korea, which, like all dictatorships, rely on violence to control dissent, might be instructive.

Democracy is a system designed for the peaceful resolutions of disputes, and violence is inherently anti-democratic. Yet some people, mostly men, remain fascinated and thrilled by the idea of using what they consider to be ‘justified’ violence.

For some, Israel’s horrific actions in Gaza and the West Bank should be met by more violence. For others, Hamas’s acts of mass murder and rape on October 7 provide a similar ‘opportunity’. By adopting such mindsets, both groups are perpetuating a cycle of violence that means a call for the deaths of IDF soldiers is also effectively a call for the deaths of more Palestinians.

Oasis of Peace

Ultimately, the only solution to the Middle East conflict will be a peaceful one and there is no fundamental reason why people with different beliefs cannot live together, as demonstrated by the village of Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam in Israel. The name means “Oasis of Peace” in Hebrew and Arabic and it is a place where Jews and Muslims, Palestinians and Israelis co-exist peacefully.

Amid all the violence, it may seem like a hippie throwback for a few hundred naive dreamers, but it is the only source that I can see of genuine hope. If Emily Eavis wants Glastonbury to be about “peace and love”, she should consider inviting representatives of the village to next year’s festival and giving a platform to those who call for life, not death.