Ed Sheeran’s “I’m Not Complicit” T-Shirt

It’s raising a lot of questions.

This week rap artist Macklemore was kicked off a tour supporting Ed Sheeran. At two dates in New Jersey, Macklemore said “Free Palestine” and played footage of the destruction in Gaza. The pro-Palestinian advocacy quickly sparked a reactionary pro-genocide backlash from the disgusting reactionary pro-genocide assholes at the Israeli American Council and StopAntisemitism. Pop star Pink, who also, apparently, sucks, amplified criticism. Most consequentially, grotesque Zionists billionaire shill Robert Kraft rallied venue owners to blacklist Macklemore.

In an unsurprising revelation, one of the venues that banned Macklemore, Raymond James Stadium in Florida, refused calls to boycott vicious antisemite Kanye West because of “free speech.” Pro Hitler speech is protected; pro-Palestinian speech is not.

This kind of brazen hypocrisy and naked bullying is a common feature of Zionist attacks on free speech in the name of genocide apology. Ed Sheeran’s, reaction, though, demonstrated a slightly different flavor of moral rot.

Sheeran insisted that he did not push Macklemore off the tour; the decision was made by the Messina Touring Group. He didn’t do much to protect Macklemore, though, and certainly didn’t express solidarity Instead, he insisted:

I am not complicit. I have my personal views on this devastating conflict. Just because I choose not to speak publicly, it doesn’t mean I don’t have them, and it doesn’t mean I don’t care. Nor does it mean I don’t support causes in my own, personal way.

Of course, Sheeran’s actions here are public; he’s kowtowing to Zionist suppression of free speech in a very public way. His effort to separate personal support and public stance is a failure which underlines the uselessness of impossibility of an apolitical stance in the face of genocide.

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Ed Sheeran, Friend to Children, Except Those Ones

Macklemore, who is longtime friends with Sheeran, said he sympathized with the singer, whose “typical apolitical stance was being challenged in a way it never had been before. Sheeran, Macklemore said, had concerns that the Palestinian flag and pro Palestinian statements were offending some of his fans. Macklemore responded that he believed the moral imperative here was to stand with Palestinian people being targeted for atrocities. But, he said, Sheeran “couldn’t get past his public facing, ‘I don’t take sides.’’

This is very much in line with Sheeran’s own public response. As quoted, he insisted that, while he had his own super secret views, he would never share them publicly. He explained:

There is a reason I do not use my professional platform for politics - my audience includes young people, often children, of all backgrounds.

Those who come to my shows do not expect a political forum. I respect Macklemore’s strength of purpose to stand up and shout for what he believes.

However, there is room for multiple approaches to the same end: Peace.

I choose to use my fame and platform to be a place of safety and sanctuary, to maintain diplomacy and keep conversations open, not closed. If we only focus on shouting the loudest, nothing will ever change. There are different approaches to being an advocate for change.

The claim that Sheeran is apolitical in the interest of protecting young people and giving them a place of safety seems particularly ill-judged in the face of a genocide which has been particularly devastating for children. A June UN investigation reported that at least 20,179 Palestinian children had been killed up to that point, and another 44,143 had been injured. These deaths occurred in the context of deliberate targeting of children; neonatal and maternal healthcare infrastructure has been destroyed; deliberate starvation has resulted in mass child nutritional deficits; and, the report said, “Israel’s attacks on schools in Gaza…have resulted in the complete removal of children’s education in the Gaza Strip.”

What are children in Gaza, or children with family members or roots in Gaza, to make of Sheeran’s claim that he is providing a safe space for children when he helps silence those speaking against the violence they are facing? Children in Gaza cannot get to the safe space of Ed Sheeran’s concerts; they are stuck where they are, which is unsafe. Sheeran is not using his “fame and platform” to create a “place of safety and sanctuary” for Palestinian children being murdered. He is using his fame and platform to silence those who are trying to offer them some measure of protection.

Sheeran speaks as if politics itself is harmful or damaging. He is like the many mainstream US pundits who claim that the main problem facing the country is divisiveness. The goal, therefore, in Sheeran’s view, is to silence conflict and dissent so as to achieve peace.

But as Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “True peace is not merely the absence of tension; it is the presence of justice.” Or, in Macklemore’s words, “an entire people [are] being displaced, starved and killed while the world debates…whether our discomfort matters more than the people living through a genocide.” Silencing conflict—ejecting Macklemore from the tour—doesn’t result in peace, and doesn’t protect any children. Fascist politics continue to murder people; to stop those murders, you need, not silence, but antifascist politics.

Your beliefs are what you do

Sheeran claims the ability to create a safe space outside of and separate from the world of politics. Creating that space is predicated on a split between public and private worlds, and between actions and beliefs. Sheeran says that he is “not complicit” because his public persona and his public actions (or inactions) are not who he really is. He has a private self, hidden somewhere, and that privateself believes and acts in other ways. That private self is also the only self that can be judged—even as, conveniently, that self cannot be judged, because no one knows what that self is doing.

Obviously, private acts of charity and solidarity can be valuable and important. But public acts also have political ramifications and meaning, whether you want them to or not. Per Macklemore, when one side is bombing the other “refusing to take a side doesn’t leave you in the middle”—it leaves you over here, watching kids get killed while bellowing, “I shouldn’t speak out about this because a billionaire told me not to.”

Sheeran has a massive public platform, and he had an opportunity to show solidarity. He didn’t. That could be because he (wrongly) believes that saying “Free Palestine” would be antisemitic. It could be because he thinks (wrongly) that being apolitical is possible and virtuous. It could be because he thought he owed it to fans, to workers, and to the other acts to continue (though those other acts have, rightly, left the tour in protest.)

But whatever Sheeran’s reason, the fact is that he collaborated with Zionist censors to silence solidarity with victims of Israel’s genocide. That makes him more than complicit. It makes him an active participant in genocide denial.

What you do is who you are; your public face is your face, one way or another. Sheeran undoubtedly does things out of the public eye. But in the public eye he abandoned his friend rather than stand against genocide. That was a political act, and one he should be ashamed of.