Ed Sheeran’s avowed political neutrality — as if such a thing exists — has finally caught up with him. After facing pressure, the British singer-songwriter, who is playing U.S. stadiums as part of his Loop Tour, dropped Seattle rapper Macklemore from the tour after he made “Free Palestine” statements during a show at MetLife Stadium on Sept. 4.
Let us be clear about what has happened here: Even if he thinks it’s possible to not take a side on hot-button issues — “I don’t get involved in politics,” he said in 2017 about the previous year’s Brexit vote — he’s illustrating that not picking a side means upholding existing power structures and buttressing the oppressive ideologies that support them.
Rather than standing up to this brazen display of ideological censorship, by all appearances, Sheeran kowtowed. He hasn’t made any public statements about what Macklemore said or any statements about his removal.
Billionaire Robert Kraft, who owns the NFL’s New England Patriots, is Jewish and a strong supporter of Israel, told Rolling Stone in a statement that he made the call to keep Macklemore from performing at Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Massachusetts, which is owned by the Kraft Group. Kraft cited what he called the rapper’s “recent actions, material shared from the stage during Ed Sheeran’s shows in New Jersey, and a broader history of antisemitic rhetoric and imagery that we believe has been deeply offensive and hurtful to the Jewish community.”
The magazine said Kraft’s statement didn’t acknowledge Macklemore’s claim that Kraft “rallied some of the other stadium owners” who allegedly “gave [Sheeran] an ultimatum: If Macklemore stays on the tour, you will not be allowed to play in our venues.”
Rather than standing up to this brazen display of ideological censorship, by all appearances, Sheeran kowtowed. He hasn’t made any public statements about what Macklemore said at the MetLife Stadium show or any statements about his removal.
This entire debacle is a microcosm of how power operates in the contemporary American political landscape, and it exposes the galling hypocrisy of those who profess to be the most opposed to so-called cancel culture.
Bill Maher, for example, said on a 2022 episode of his show “Real Time with Bill Maher,” “Comedians [have] gotten fired and lost gigs for exercising their freedom of expression — the toll is high.”
Macklemore has just lost gigs for exercising his freedom of expression, but don’t expect Maher to defend him. To the contrary, Maher has taken on Macklemore in the wake of his comments at the Sheeran show. Maher is just one example of the hypocrisy — CBS News’ Bari Weiss is another — we get from those who complain about cancel culture until somebody who speaks up for Palestine loses work.
In its story about stadium owners canceling Macklemore, Rolling Stone points out that Ye, the rapper formerly known as Kanye West, has also been on a tour of stadiums this year, after previously professing a love for Hitler and Nazis and releasing a song called “Heil Hitler.”
Ye played two shows at Raymond James Stadium in Tampa Bay, Florida, in June, but Tampa Sports Authority confirmed to Rolling Stone that Macklemore won’t be playing there during Sheeran’s November date.
Ye played two shows at Raymond James Stadium in Tampa Bay, Florida, in June, but Tampa Sports Authority confirmed to Rolling Stone that Macklemore won’t be playing there during Sheeran’s November date.
As MS NOW’s Zeeshan Aleem pointed out in July, “A significant and growing number of human rights organizations, legal scholars and historians of genocide” have described what Israel is doing in Gaza as genocide, and Macklemore has consistently used his platform and celebrity social capital to espouse pro-Palestine solidarity, even as mainstream institutions in this country work hard to suppress it.
And we can see him thinking critically about his power in the Instagram post he shared about being dropped from Sheeran’s tour. Referring to the artist Pink, who criticized him, and Sheeran, who didn’t publicly fight for him, he said:
I am not a victim. Ed Sheeran is not a victim. Pink is not a victim. We have careers, money, opportunities, safety and audiences around the world. Whatever consequences any of us face for what we say, we get to go home to our families. The victims are the Palestinian people
MACKLEMOREack
“I want to say something that should be obvious. In this moment I think it matters. I am not a victim. Ed Sheeran is not a victim. Pink is not a victim. We have careers, money, opportunities, safety and audiences around the world. Whatever consequences any of us face for what we say, we get to go home to our families. The victims are the Palestinian people. The men, women and children who have been killed, starved, displaced and forced to live through unimaginable violence. More than 20,000 children have been killed in Gaza alone. People are being killed today, and people will be killed tomorrow. I want to make sure that as I tell this story, we don’t lose sight of that.”
As Matt Bernstein, activist, podcaster and content creator, pointed out, Sheeran is anything but neutral here. Bernstein noted that campaigns to quash criticisms of Israel “require people with immense privilege and relatively little to lose to stand up for the free speech of everybody else, who has relatively more to lose.” He said, “People with net worths in the hundreds of millions, people who are pop stars who can sell out stadiums and cause financial pain to the owners of those stadiums if they pull out. People like Ed Sheeran.”
But Sheeran’s decision to keep playing music without Macklemore as an opening act is proof of his silence. And while he might well think that this is his avoiding taking a side, his decision is, in fact, a salient reminder that to not take a side is to side with the oppressor.
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