UK Jewish groups threaten protests if Kanye West’s Wireless shows go ahead

Campaign Against Antisemitism calls on rapper to cancel gigs, while rapper offers to meet Jewish representatives

Kanye West will face mass protests if his three-night residency at London’s Wireless festival goes ahead, according to Jewish groups who say that if the rapper is truly sorry for his antisemitic remarks he should cancel this summer’s gigs.

In a statement on Tuesday, West, who is legally known as Ye, offered to “meet and listen” to members of the UK’s Jewish community after a backlash over his planned appearance at the festival in July.

He has been criticised for making antisemitic remarks including voicing admiration for Adolf Hitler. Last year he released a song called Heil Hitler a few months after advertising a swastika T-shirt for sale on his website.

The Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA) said if Ye was genuinely contrite he should cancel the gigs, and if he did not it would organise protests.

A CAA spokesperson said: “This is about profit, not forgiveness. Nobody knows what might come out of Mr West’s mouth on that stage or subsequently … that is why if the appearances go ahead, we will be organising a mass demonstration outside the festival, whose organisers should be ashamed of themselves.”

In January, Ye took out a full-page advert in the Wall Street Journal apologising for his antisemitic behaviour and attributing his inflammatory actions to his bipolar-1 disorder.

His statement on Tuesday said: “I’ve been following the conversation around Wireless and want to address it directly. My only goal is to come to London and present a show of change, bringing unity, peace and love through my music.

“I would be grateful for the opportunity to meet with members of the Jewish community in the UK in person, to listen. I know words aren’t enough – I’ll have to show change through my actions. If you’re open, I’m here.”

His planned appearance has been condemned by MPs and other Jewish organisations, who have urged the government to ban him from the country.

A Downing Street spokesperson said “all options remain on the table” as the Home Office reviews his permission to enter the UK, and that decisions would be taken “in line with the law”.

The health secretary, Wes Streeting, earlier said the rapper should not be headlining the festival.

But John Swinney, the leader of the Scottish National party, said the rapper should be able to perform, saying the UK was “a free country; people are going to say things. Let’s just let people listen to the music they want to.”

Phil Rosenberg, the president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, the largest and Jewish communal organisation in the UK, said the body was willing to meet Ye but only if he agreed not to play at the festival.

“Even while claiming remorse today, his latest album includes a track first released last year with the abhorrent title Gas Chamber,” Rosenberg said. “The Jewish community will want to see a genuine remorse and change before believing that the appropriate place to test this sincerity is on the main stage at the Wireless festival.

“As such, we are willing to meet Kanye West as part of his journey of healing, but only after he agrees not to play the Wireless festival this year.”

Over the weekend, Keir Starmer said it was “deeply concerning” that Ye had been booked to perform “despite his previous antisemitic remarks and celebration of nazism”.

On Monday evening, Melvin Benn, the managing director of Festival Republic, which promotes Wireless, said it was “not giving [Ye] a platform to extol opinion of whatever nature, only to perform the songs that are currently played on the radio stations in our country and the streaming platforms in our country and listened to and enjoyed by millions”.

He added: “I am a deeply committed anti-fascist and have been all my adult life. I lived on a kibbutz for many months in the 1970s that was attacked on 7 October [2023], am pro-Jew and the Jewish state, while being equally committed to a Palestinian state. What Ye has said in the past about Jews and Hitler is as abhorrent to me as it is to the Jewish community, the prime minister and others that have commented and – taking him at his word – to Ye now also.”

Benn called for Ye to be given a second chance. “Having had a person in my life for the last 15 years who suffers from mental illness, I have witnessed many episodes of despicable behaviour that I have had to forgive and move on from. If I wasn’t before, I have become a person of forgiveness and hope in all aspects of my life, including work,” he said.

“Forgiveness and giving people a second chance are becoming a lost virtue in this ever-increasing divisive world and I would ask people to reflect on their instant comments of disgust at the likelihood of him performing (as was mine) and offer some forgiveness and hope to him as I have decided to do.”

Pepsi and Diageo withdrew their sponsorship of the festival after Ye was announced as the headline act, and no brands appeared as visible sponsors on Wireless’s official website on Monday evening.

However, speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Tuesday, Benn claimed Pepsi had signed off on Ye as the headliner. “They signed off and approved it,” he said. “They’re our headline sponsor, we asked them to sign off on it and they did.”

Benn admitted the festival could have approached the Jewish community earlier and that not having done so until recently might “prove to be a mistake”.

On Tuesday morning, Streeting did not accept the argument. “When Kanye West uses bipolar disorder to justify his actions, I think that is equally appalling, by the way,” he said. “I would ask people to consider, does using bipolar disorder as an excuse to write and release a song called Heil Hitler and plaster it across T-shirts, does bipolar disorder really justify that? Or is it an excuse to justify rotten behaviour?”