For a different take on Macklemore in Dublin (the Guardian review, earlier), here’s Josh Kaplan at the Free Press:
“If the Palestinians were to do something like what happened on October 7 today, I think everyone would be like, ‘That’s kind of justified.’ ”
This is the opinion of a young woman from Dublin called Sarah. Now, to be fair to her, before she said hundreds of Israeli civilians being raped and murdered would be okay in 2026, she did say she “wasn’t sure if October 7 was legitimate” back in 2023.
“Like, did it actually come from Palestinians?” she asked. “I don’t want to say this is true, but there are things I’ve read that have said, like, is Israel behind the scenes actually supporting Hamas to make the Palestinians look like terrorists when they’re not?”
Her mate Charlie then weighed in on the pros and cons of the biggest loss of Jewish life since the Holocaust. “Of course, people died,” said Charlie. “But like, we’re in Ireland. We were responsible for a lot of deaths that gained our independence. America did the same. There are hundreds of thousands of people that have done the same thing because of hundreds of years of oppression and genocide.”
Right. So, not the brightest or most historically literate. They’ve read things on social media.
“We’re big fans of Palestine. By default, that makes us Macklemore fans,” Tania, from County Wicklow, told me. “What he did was enormously courageous. That’s what instigated me to come and support him.”
Enormously courageous, in a world where demonising Israel is the absolute norm, especially in Ireland, and antisemitism is embraced with a passion not seen since the Thirties. Right.
“We’re still colonized,” said Deirdre, who is from Armagh. “We’re occupied. We’re still going through it. Just not anywhere near what it used to be, and nothing to the extent of Gaza, the West Bank, or anything. So we naturally feel that connection to them because we have gone through, you know, we’re still going through it now. . . 65 countries celebrate their independence from England. England’s the worst.”
Everyone I spoke to saw the Irish struggle reflected in the Palestinians, no matter the myriad differences. And many of them repeat baseless allegations of “false flags” and “fake antisemitism” and, to quote Mark, “Jewish Americans going over and taking land.” It’s like everyone is reading from the same hymn sheet of lies, each one absorbed through their phones without a flicker of doubt. They’re dressed in the uniform, too. A thousand keffiyehs on a thousand necks, a tsunami of Palestinian flag clothing, in every iteration imaginable, a great flock of sheep milling around their pen.
And then the show.
Every musician was sandwiched between a fundraising plea or somber political speech. We made it four minutes in before the first “from the river to the sea” broke out from the crowd. As always, it’s unclear whether those chanting knew which river and which sea, but nevertheless their enthusiasm was palpable….
After an hour or so, I needed a break. The wind howled as I made my way to the smoking area. Two women stood a few feet away, and as I smoked, I listened to them bounce around theories I’d only ever heard in the corners of the internet where Groypers tend to assemble. “The Jews in Israel hated the Jews in the Holocaust. They thought they were weak. They’re controlled by the ones with money.” I went back inside.
I came back just in time for the penultimate act, Kneecap, the Irish-language rap group from the Catholic heartlands of Northern Ireland, where supporting the Palestinians is assumed from birth. From their name to their attire to their criminal charges for supporting Hezbollah (dismissed on a technicality), they leave their audience with very little doubt as to where they stand on armed resistance. And before they even took the stage, their furious intro video had proclaimed “Fuck Israel,” “Fuck Zionism,” and “Fuck America.” Over 30-ish minutes, the blood pressure of the arena increased, as three 20somethings whipped the crowd into a frenzy. The music was dark, lit with blacks and reds and violent onscreen graphics. For a split second, I thought I saw an onscreen effigy of Margaret Thatcher, with horns and covered in maggots. They screamed about Zionism and how—even though by any reasonable metric, this Irish government is the most anti-Israel in the West—“the fucking free state government” should be doing more.
And then suddenly, Macklemore. He swaggered onto the stage with a huge smile on his face, and declared that his “silencing” was a result of “two words that are rooted in love and liberation. . . not divisive. . . Free Palestine.” Then he played “Thrift Shop.” As his set rolled on, the crowd was largely indifferent. They just wanted to hear him say those two words over and over again. The crowd swayed to his ode to the Columbia anti-Israel protesters, “Hinds Hall,” comfortably one of his worst musically. But the crowd sang along to the lyrics about “AIPAC control” and “white supremacy” with more enthusiasm than any other song.
As his set reached its crescendo, the crowd began to thin. People started slipping out the back. Scrolling through X as I walked out, I saw the show described variously as a Nuremberg rally and the most uplifting night of someone’s life. I didn’t speak to every one of the 13,000 people in the room with me that night. I don’t know how many of them were there because they liked “Thrift Shop” and how many were because they supported the armed resistance of Hamas and the eradication of the world’s only Jewish state, but this was a room of seemingly normal young people, happy to call for the end of Israel and the end of capitalism and America—happy to say October 7 was justified, that antisemitism isn’t real—and then step out into the night, sure they were on the right side of history.
How very depressing. But yes, the man from the Guardian gave it a five-star review.
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