Regendans2d ago

Próvaí is calmer, more grown-up; he was a secondary school teacher until his employers found out he was in the band. Someone recognised him when he dropped his trousers onstage to display his buttocks, emblazoned with “Brits Out”.
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They built a fanbase that cut across the usual sectarian divides, their high-energy gigs and witty interviews enhanced for many fans by their outspoken support for Palestinians caught up in the Israel-Palestine conflict. They brushed off naysayers, including then-home secretary Kemi Badenoch, who blocked the band from receiving a £14,250 UK arts grant. (Kneecap took her to court and won: they gave the grant money to youth organisations working with Protestant and Catholic communities in Belfast.) But in April last year things changed. The band had been booked to play Coachella festival in California, both weekends, and the shows went well. But, as they had done at all of their gigs, they used background visuals that included a slide accusing Israel of “committing genocide against the Palestinian people”, and one that read “Fuck Israel, Free Palestine”.

https://observer.co.uk/culture/interviews/article/kneecap-nobody-actually-thinks-were-terrorists-its-a-carnival-of-distraction

#palestine #gaza #music #kneecap #protest
#genocide #apartheid

Kneecap: ‘Nobody actually thinks we’re terrorists. It’s a carnival of distraction’

After a tumultuous 2025 in which they were rarely out of the headlines, the Irish-language hip-hop trio are back with a new ‘statement piece’ album

The Observer
Show threadRegendans

👉It’s part of their lives. Móglaí Bap used to go on pro-Palestine marches with his mum, and to supermarkets “aged around 14”, removing Israeli products. His eldest brother, Aine, is engaged to a Palestinian woman, and in 2020 set up the ACLAÍ (fitness) gym in the Aida refugee camp in the West Bank. Many Irish republicans have long felt an alliance with Palestinians, because they regard the British as occupying Ireland.👈

Mo Chara says he found the court case difficult, but the charges ludicrous. “It’s hard to know exactly what’s happening onstage 100% of the time,” he says. “It’s dark, everyone’s full of energy.” You notice that these days he wears sunglasses for public appearances in the same way that Próvaí wears his balaclava.

“It wasn’t that bad,” he says. “Everything that happened to me, I’ll get over. Any time you are feeling this tremendous stress, it’s worth remembering that it’s marginal, like, fractional, compared to what people in Gaza and Palestine are going through. And it’s not as though I’m the first Irish person to be called a terrorist. In the courtroom, there was not one person in there that thought I actually am a terrorist. Nobody actually thinks that. It’s this whole big carnival of distraction.”

Mar 21 at 9:06amWeb