{"id":695868,"date":"2025-10-21T02:40:16","date_gmt":"2025-10-20T23:40:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/id-do-it-again-tomorrow-bob-vylan-frontman-defends-glastonbury-chant-calls-backlash-disproportionate\/"},"modified":"2025-10-21T02:40:16","modified_gmt":"2025-10-20T23:40:16","slug":"id-do-it-again-tomorrow-bob-vylan-frontman-defends-glastonbury-chant-calls-backlash-disproportionate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/id-do-it-again-tomorrow-bob-vylan-frontman-defends-glastonbury-chant-calls-backlash-disproportionate\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cI\u2019d Do It Again Tomorrow\u201d: Bob Vylan Frontman Defends Glastonbury Chant, Calls Backlash \u201cDisproportionate\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

\n\tBobby Vylan has no regrets. <\/p>\n

\n\tIn his first interview since leading chants of \u201cdeath, death, death to the IDF\u201d at Glastonbury, the frontman of punk duo Bob Vylan (pronounced \u201cvillain\u201d), spoke to The Louis Theroux Podcast<\/a> <\/em>about the controversy and its fallout.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe chant ignited a firestorm of criticism, with Bob Vylan, at the time a largely unknown band, at the center of it.<\/p>\n

\n\tGlastonbury condemned the chant, the band was dropped by its agency, UTA, and the U.S. State Department revoked the band members\u2019 visas, forcing them to cancel their planned tour of North America. The BBC has admitted it broke its own editorial guidelines by live broadcasting Bob Vylan\u2019s Glastonbury performance, though the U.K. public broadcaster\u2019s Executive Complaints Unit stopped short of calling the broadcast an incitement or a violation of impartiality rules.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut if he had the chance, Vylan told Theroux, he\u2019d do it all again.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIf I was to go on Glastonbury again tomorrow, yes, I would do it again. I\u2019m not regretful of it. I\u2019d do it again tomorrow, twice on Sundays. I\u2019m not regretful of it at all,\u201d the rapp<\/a>er, who uses the stage name Bobby Vylan (his bandmate goes by Bobbie Vylan), said. \u201cThe subsequent backlash that I\u2019ve faced. It\u2019s minimal. It\u2019s minimal compared to what people in Palestine are going through. [What] is there to regret? Oh, because I\u2019ve upset some right-wing politician or some right-wing media<\/a>?\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBob Vylan briefly became the focus of public outrage, alongside other bands that publicly criticized Israel for its conduct in the war in Gaza. Irish rap group Kneecap was similarly criticized for posting a \u201cFuck Israel, Free Palestine\u201d message on the stage during their performance at the Coachella festival in April, and there were calls to ban the group from Glastonbury. In the end, Kneecap did perform, but the BBC did not livestream their performance.<\/p>\n

\n\tVylan told Theroux the backlash was \u201cso disproportionate,\u201d arguing that it turned public attention away from Gaza. \u201cMy whole issue with this thing is that the chant is so unimportant,\u201d he said. \u201cWhat is important is the conditions that exist to allow that chant to even take place on that stage. And I mean, the conditions that exist in Palestine. Where the Palestinian people are being killed at an alarming rate. Who cares about the chant?\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHe said the controversy, while intense, ultimately \u201callowed for that conversation to have a new life almost,\u201d crediting the debate it sparked for helping to \u201cfocus the attention back onto Gaza, back onto the people of Palestine.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tVylan confirmed that UTA dropped the band the day after the performance, calling it a top-down decision. \u201cThe call came on the Sunday, we played on Saturday,\u201d he said. \u201cOn Sunday, that\u2019s when our agent called and was like, \u2018look guys, I\u2019ve got to let you go.\u2019 He said that \u2018it\u2019s come from the most senior members of the company.\u2019 He didn\u2019t have any choice. It was either we go or he goes.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHe also addressed the U.S. State Department\u2019s revocation of the group\u2019s visas, describing it as \u201ca scare tactic.\u201d \u201cThey have done that specifically, seeing the media attention and the discourse that it created and have sought to suppress that from happening any further,\u201d Vylan said. \u201cPossibly to make us persona non grata, don\u2019t stand next to this band. It might hurt your chances of getting your visa.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWhen asked about accusations that the chant encouraged antisemitism, Vylan rejected any link. \u201cI don\u2019t think I have created an unsafe atmosphere for the Jewish community,\u201d he said. \u201cIf there were large numbers of people going out and going like \u2018Bob Vylan made me do this,\u2019 I might go, oof, I\u2019ve had a negative impact here.\u201d The episode notes that the interview was recorded on Oct. 1, before the Oct. 2 Manchester synagogue attacks in which two people were killed and three others injured.<\/p>\n

\n\tDiscussing the broader reaction, Vylan said the band had been \u201cattacked to a degree that I haven\u2019t really seen anybody else attacked for speaking up about this issue,\u201d suggesting that race was a factor in the scale of the response. \u201cAs with everything, race comes to play a part in that we are an easier villain, no pun intended, than they are because we are already the enemy,\u201d he said. \u201cYou don\u2019t really need to give much context as to why the British public should hate us.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tVylan also responded to criticism from fellow musicians, singling out Blur frontman Damon Albarn for describing the performance as \u201cone of the most spectacular misfires I\u2019ve seen in my life.\u201d \u201cI just want to say that categorising it as a \u2018spectacular misfire\u2019 implies that somehow the politics of the band or our stance on Palestinian liberation is not thought out,\u201d Vylan said. He called Albarn\u2019s use of the term \u201cgoose-stepping\u201d to describe his movements on stage \u201cdisgusting,\u201d adding, \u201cIt\u2019s only used around Nazi Germany\u2026 I think his response was disgusting.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBy contrast, Vylan praised Chuck D for his response to the controversy. The Public Enemy frontman defended Bob Vylan, saying the \u201cDeath to the IDF chants\u201d meant \u201c\u2018death to imperialism,\u2019 \u2018death to colonialism’\u201d not \u201cdeath to a people.\u201d The U.K. rap duo \u201cain\u2019t got no tanks,\u201d Chuck D. noted in an interview with The Independent<\/em> published July 6. \u201cThey\u2019re using words to say something must end. You can\u2019t really kill nobody with a guitar or a microphone.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cHis response was, again, not because it was more favorable to us, but because he understood,\u201d Vylan said. \u201cNaturally, of course, Chuck D from Public Enemy is going to understand where we are coming from with our politics. More so than Damon Albarn.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Louis Theroux Podcast<\/em> is available on Spotify now.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Source<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bobby Vylan has no regrets. In his first interview since leading chants of \u201cdeath, death, death to the IDF\u201d at Glastonbury, the frontman of punk duo Bob Vylan (pronounced \u201cvillain\u201d), spoke to The Louis Theroux Podcast about the controversy and its fallout. The chant ignited a firestorm of criticism, with Bob Vylan, at the time…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":695869,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.hollywoodreporter.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/louis-Theroux-Bobby-Vylan.jpg?crop=0px%2C4px%2C1440px%2C806px&resize=1440%2C810","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[6854,157428,126491,124783,146383,151264,144185,122068],"class_list":["post-695868","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-social-mediaa","tag-bbc","tag-bob-vylan","tag-glastonbury","tag-international","tag-israel-gaza-conflict","tag-kneecap","tag-louis-theroux","tag-uta"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/695868","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=695868"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/695868\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/695869"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=695868"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=695868"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=695868"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}