Kneecap are about as radical as a tea cosy

It’s not often that this can be said, but these terror charges are – without question – the best thing that has ever happened to Mo Chara (aka Liam Óg Ó hAnnaidh), one third of the godawful hip-hop trio, Kneecap.

The West Belfast rapper appeared at Westminster Magistrates’ Court yesterday, to answer for allegedly unfurling a Hezbollah flag at one of his band’s London gigs last November. He’s been granted unconditional bail, ahead of another hearing on 20 August.

To those blissfully ignorant, Kneecap are essentially a parody group who are unaware they are a parody group. Theatre kids who have been forced to forge a career out of shit-stirring stunts and radical chic, given their actual music makes Goldie Lookin Chain sound like NWA.

Formed in an Irish-language community centre, Kneecap first burst on to the scene posing as gritty republican ‘hoods’ for the titillation of the English middle classes. A way for graduates of Cheltenham Ladies’ College to get back at daddy by chanting ‘Up the RA’.

Naturally, Israelophobia was their next port of call. And I don’t just mean the standard libels about Israel killing kids or running an ‘apartheid state’. Videos emerged in May of Kneecap chanting ‘Up Hamas, up Hezbollah’ and raising the latter’s flag, leading to Mo Chara’s arrest.

Under British law, expressing support for or glorifying a proscribed terrorist organisation is an offence. Kneecap, for their part, insist they do not support Hezbollah, which is presumably why they chanted ‘Up Hezbollah’ and waved around the flag of said anti-Semitic terror army.

The one who wears the knitted tricolor balaclava – which really more resembles a tea cosy – also once posed on social media with a book collecting the musings of Hezbollah’s tragically departed leader, Hassan Nasrallah, including that Jews are the ‘descendants of apes and pigs’. Which hardly helps their defence, either.

But if you needed any more proof that censorship is never the answer, look at the scenes outside the court yesterday, as the band were welcomed as freedom fighters by hundreds of fans, waving placards and sweating beneath their hastily purchased Kneecap ballies. ‘For anybody going to Glastonbury, you can see us there’, said bandmate Móglaí Bap, draped in a keffiyeh, before leading a chant of ‘Free, free Palestine’.

Here was the Streisand Effect in action. These outrageous charges have only lavished attention on these cringe-inducing attention-seekers. Worst of all, the state has handed Kneecap the edgy persona they so clearly, desperately, crave. When, in truth, they are about as edgy as an afternoon in the Healing Field.

I know. What they said was despicable and people have been thrown in jail for saying much less. But free speech is for insufferable, Jew-baiting rappers, too. Short of direct, credible incitement to violence – and chanting ‘Up Hezbollah’ to pilled-up Islingtonian students clearly doesn’t qualify – the cops should butt right out.

These charges do nothing to tackle anti-Israel bigotry. They just invite the state further into policing arts and culture. Plus, and I really can’t stress this enough, they have put a smile on the face of the smuggest little cunts in music right now. And that really is unforgiveable.

I’m baffled that anyone takes Kneecap seriously, least of all the counter-terror police. This is phoney, nostalgic, edgelord ‘radicalism’ repackaged for the middle-class, Glasto-going market. The political equivalent of when Topman started selling Ramones t-shirts. They are about as revolutionary as that tea cosy on yer man’s head. Let’s please not indulge them a moment longer.

Tom Slater is editor of spiked. Follow him on X: @Tom_Slater