No, Kneecap there isn’t a conspiracy against you

6 May 2025, 08:21 | Updated: 6 May 2025, 08:38

This point must be made amid the controversy that the group has found themselves in following footage emerging that shows member Mo Chara allegedly shouting ‘Up Hamas, Up Hezbollah’ and ‘Kill your local MP’.

As someone from Belfast and also of the Post-Good Friday Agreement generation, it is disappointing to see such a turn towards the promotion of violent groups and acts. But I must admit I was not shocked.

Recently I have witnessed discourse amongst peers, and Ireland as a whole, become increasingly more radical. So, hearing apparent support for groups that have done nothing but fuel further death and destruction isn’t surprising.

However, for a group that has done a lot to promote cross-community relations at home, it is disappointing to see them follow a path that our history warns against.

The group has now launched a campaign to present themselves as ‘victims’ of a targeted ‘witch-hunt’ for their outspoken stance on the complex Israel-Palestine issue.

A key driver of this is based on the group’s ‘understanding’ of Anglo-Irish history and the Troubles, a history steeped in sectarian division and killing. As another ‘child’ of the Good Friday Agreement, I have grown increasingly concerned with our history being used in such contexts.

The fact is that Kneecap’s members should have known better. They have steered away from artful expression to violent rhetoric. This does nobody any favours and the group must own their actions rather than cry conspiracy.

They have now distanced themselves from supporting Hamas and Hezbollah. In an official statement, the group said in relation to Mo Chara’s comments: ‘We condemn all attacks on civilians, always. It is never okay. We know this more than anyone, given our nation's history.’

But it is here that further questions must be asked. Do Kneecap, who regularly reference our history, really know ‘this’ more than anyone?

If so, why would Mo Chara state ‘Up Hamas’ with full knowledge of the innocent civilians killed on October 7th? My take is that the statement was made in line with the projection of Irish history onto the complex Israel-Palestine conflict.

However, there’s a difference between projecting our history onto other conflicts and using it to understand how the complexities of these drive such destruction and unnecessary suffering.

As the Troubles escalated, hatred-driven between two groups led to an increasing amount of violent rhetoric against one another. That pathway quickly became one of bitter sectarian division, bombings and targeted killings. A contributing factor of this was the inability to consider more than one fixed viewpoint, even as violence spread.

While Kneecap often talk of our history, their statements illustrate how they are actually failing to understand how that situation descended into chaos. They fail to see that it teaches us how staunch one-sided viewpoints can lead us down a path to more extreme beliefs.

Mo Chara’s statements are significant as they represent a more extreme stage on this path and only add to the cycle of violence. For anyone of our generation to not understand this is disappointing and attempts to form a conspiracy narrative risk leading others down a similar route.

The group should realise they aren’t in the Belfast bubble anymore. The cancellation of their concerts is due to their inflammatory comments. Not a conflated conspiracy theory based on their wider Palestinian position.

You can support the rights of Palestinians without chanting for terrorist groups, and in a British context you can oppose the British state without calling for concert goers to ‘murder’ MPs. So, as they claim they ‘aren't the story’, they have to accept they have made themselves the story.

The group’s manager, Daniel Lambert, said in an interview with Irish broadcaster RTÉ, that they wanted to be “on the right side of history”.

Many people during the Troubles supported violence in the belief that they were doing the morally correct thing. Such principles don't guard or prevent you from walking down dangerous paths.

The group also said: “The long Irish history of resistance has given us an instinct regarding conflict”. For me, this ‘instinct’ represents a need to understand the complexities of what contributes to violence and how to spot the signs of dangerous beliefs emerging.

This isn’t to downplay or ignore the tragic loss of life that has taken place in Gaza. Any death is one too many and the deaths of innocent children are horrific.

In 2018, I spent a month amongst communities in the West Bank. I often think of those whom I met there.

I should note that I have myself enjoyed Kneecap’s music. Even for those who didn’t learn Irish growing up, they awoke a distinct sentiment of how as a collective we dealt with growing up in the aftermath of conflict.

This is often hard to convey to others. The tongue-in-cheek references to events, figures and groups of our own past reflected how we dealt with our divided society. This helped cross-community relations in ways politicians could only have dreamed of. I know plenty of people from Unionist and Protestant backgrounds who have seen the group live.

Their hit film was one of the best examples of this sentiment being conveyed in a translatable manner to others. This is why I don’t buy into the accusation of the group having been fundamentally a ‘hate fest’.

But there is a huge difference between referencing our history at home and its projection onto complex conflict in the Middle East. Failing to understand this has led Kneecap to the position they now find themselves in.

They may continue to deflect accountability and blame critics of "buying into the narrative of the British Political Establishment".

But for myself, who grew up in Belfast far away from that establishment, I say they should own their actions. The blame for this situation lies with themselves.

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