Labour suspends rappers for "deeply offensive" lyrics
Is it satire if reality is dumber?
Senior rapper Lil Jon has had the Labour whip suspended and faces expulsion from the Labour Party for the lyrics of his 2002 hit Get Low. In a statement yesterday, Labour leader Keir Starmer said that the lyrics “To the window… to the wall…” constituted “a clear and widely understood call for the destruction of Israel”.
Starmer told press yesterday that the status of the East Side Boyz (with whom Mr Jon collaborated on the track) was still in question. “A full inquiry into the role both Big Sam and Lil' Bo is underway,” Starmer told reporters, “And I would like to assure the British public that, whatever the outcome, Labour will continue to root out blatant Anti-Semitism till the sweat drop down my—”. A microphone malfunction briefly cut his statement short.
The move comes soon after similar sanctions were applied to Labour MP Andy McDonald for saying “We won't rest until we have justice. Until all people, Israelis and Palestinians, between the river and the sea, can live in peaceful liberty,” at a Palestine rally.
Sir Keir went on to address concerns that his refusal to condemn Israeli bombardment of a civilian population was alienating the traditionally solid Labour base of Muslims, human rights enthusiasts and the Atlanta Crunk community. “We still Crunk,” Starmer said, “But at this point, it is essential for every British politician to answe r the question: ‘Who U wit?’ Labour be wit Israel.”
The Labour leader and former human rights lawyer (whose father was a tool-maker) concluded by saying: “Skeet skeet, motherf*cker,” and leaving the press conference with a bottle of Krystal.
Asked for comment on the sexist content of the song, a senior Labour official responded: “What does that have to do with Israel?” and asked if the journalist condemned Hamas.
Okay but seriously, that chant…
The demonising of the phrase ‘from the river to the sea’ and the assumption of malicious (or even genocidal) intent behind it has been repeated so many times, regurgitated by media and politicians, you might start to wonder whether they are right.
I cannot speak for everybody who uses it, but as I have attended marches protesting Israeli Apartheid and the killing of civilians in Gaza (because this has happened multiple times), I have heard and repeated the chant myself, and never have I thought it meant a wish for genocide or ethnic cleansing.
“From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” is, to me (and I believe to the majority of people who say it), an expression of hope that all of the Holy Land will experience freedom from oppression and injustice. That all within that space will be free. It is an expression of perhaps extravagant hope that freedom, for Palestinians, will not be offered piecemeal, in ever-smaller and more divided zones of ‘self-determination’ like the Bantustans of South African Apartheid, but across all of Israel-Palestine. [click the links to see what I mean]
The fact that this is controversial demonstrates how far to the right the conversation has lurched. After all, advocating for a one state solution, where Jewish, Palestinian and all other ethnicities, cultures and religions are free to exist in peace between the Jordan and the Mediterranean is at least a legitimate hope, no? You don’t have to agree with it or advocate for it, but it is not an invitation to genocide. If anything, it’s an invitation to multiculturalism and equal rights.
But listen, I’m not naïve. I know the chant is primarily one of resistance. And I suspect for many it is less about a political compromise and restructuring the political reality, and more a cry for liberation. Literally. Those calling for Palestine to be free are calling for the yoke of Israeli oppression to be lifted. If you’re not sure this is the case, listen to BLM voices on the subject.
During the struggle against South African Apartheid, the phrase “Amandla! Awethu!” was the rallying cry. It means “Power! It is ours!” I would say that I shudder to think what our government, so-called Opposition and media class would make of this, but we all know how it would be disingenuously caricatured:
The phrase is deeply problematic and offensive, particularly to white South Africans. It demands ‘power’ over the threatened white minority. A demand for everything in the country to be in the hands of the terrorists calling it ‘ours’. The terrorists have demonstrated their intent through their violent bombing campaign. This is a clear call to genocide.
- Imaginary outraged pundit
Were there voices that wanted to drive all white people out of South Africa? Probably. Did that delegitimise the larger movement to make South Africa free from the Limpopo to the Atlantic and Indian Oceans? No.
The fact that the Palestinian rallying cry is interpreted so widely in the least charitable possible way, while other similar phrases are not, is instructive. Operation Enduring Freedom was the name given to the US war on Afghanistan. That war claimed a huge number of civilian lives and led to years of violent instability for ordinary Afghans. Did any of us, the most cynical politicians or laziest journalists ever seriously suggest the ‘freedom’ being offered was meant to be a genocide? Even as civilian Afghans died, did we believe it meant ‘freedom from Muslims’? An erasure of the state?
And yet here we are.
Palestinian academic and journalist living in the US, Yousef Manayyer, writing for the Jewish Left Magazine Jewish Currents in 2021, addressed the issue of the chant more thoroughly than I ever could. Read his article on the meaning of ‘from the river to the sea’ here, but take a look at this extract:
The claim that the phrase “from the river to the sea” carries a genocidal intent relies not on the historical record, but rather on racism and Islamophobia. These Palestinians, the logic goes, cannot be trusted—even if they are calling for equality, their real intention is extermination. In order to justify unending violence against Palestinians, this logic seeks to caricature us as irrational savages hell-bent on killing Jews. Nor does the attempt to link Palestinians to eliminationism stop at the deliberate mischaracterization of this slogan; rather, it is deployed in many other contexts. In 2015, for instance, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu engaged in Holocaust revisionism by stating that it was really a Palestinian, not Hitler, who inspired the final solution. Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, actually had to remind the Israeli Prime Minister that it was the Germans who were responsible for the Holocaust. Raising the constant specter of eliminationism has political utility for Zionists; in such a threatening environment, perpetual abuses of Palestinians can be rationalized.
-Yousef Munayyer
What I find most disturbing about the crackdown on this phrase is that it is another way in which effective peaceful resistance is being discouraged (and in some cases made impossible). From threats by Suella Braverman that calling for Palestinian freedom and displaying Palestinian flags might (or should) be prosecuted, and calling peaceful demonstrations ‘hate marches’, to the Anti-Boycott Bill tabled in the UK Parliament (and similar anti-boycott rulings in the US), we are being simultaneously told that violence is unacceptable and that peaceful resistance is barely tolerated.
The proto-fascism of making speech that disagrees with the government line illegal is hard to miss. The issue of Palestinian liberation, like the anti-Apartheid struggle before it, is not just about one nation of many facing oppression. It is about countries complicit in the oppression fighting for their own cultural souls.
History will remember where we stood. We can slow the tide of fascism and genocide if enough of us make our voices heard, educate and convince our friends, and stand up for Palestine. Not as a once-and-for-all or excluding focus for activism, but a starting point for consciousness of and resistance to injustice happening from Afghanistan to Yemen.
Hey, we’re also a podcast!
Episode 86: Post-march clarity — Reflections on a Palestine protest dropped this week. You can hear it on most podcast purveyors.
We’re a generally left-wing, evangelical / post-evangelical adjacent podcast that is more chat than investigative, trying to bring those great pub chats about life, faith and politics to an audience that may not have funny Christian leftists of their own to hang out with.
You can find about half of our output since 2019 at beerchristianity.co.uk (we’ll upload the rest from our old site when we become more focused as human beings).
Thanks for reading and pray for Palestine!
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