And where to start with Ye – the artist formerly known as Kanye West? In January he apologised for five years of rancorous anti-Semitism. A year ago, he announced to 33 million X followers “IM A NAZI” before suggesting “JEWS WERE BETTER AS SLAVES”. Around the same time, his website sold nothing but a T-shirt with a swastika on it. In 2022, West gave us some indication of his direction of travel when he said he would go “death con 3 on JEWISH PEOPLE”.

Would you invite this man to perform at a music festival? Even after he apologised (via an unorthodox advert in the Washington Post); even after he said he is not an anti-Semite, that he loves Jewish people, that this was all a product of extreme bipolar disorder, that he wanted to make amends with the Jewish community, that he was very, very sorry?

What about after a further statement – saying he wanted to come to London “and present a show of change, bringing unity, peace and love through music”? You may know that last year he released a song called Heil Hitler. What if he promised, promised, that he would leave it off the set list?

I would have my reservations, but hey – just the kind of person I am. And the British government does too, it seems. Labour has blocked West from entering the United Kingdom; the festival has been cancelled and the ticket holders refunded.

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Sensitivities are heightened: it has been weeks since ambulances in the Jewish neighbourhood of Golders Green were arson-attacked, and months since the deadly stabbing at Heaton Park synagogue in Manchester. But I don’t think sensitivities would need to be heightened for the invitation to be obnoxious and offensive anyway.

But now that West has been invited – he never should have been – we should let him play. Free-speech absolutism is the only logical position in modern democracy. Yes, even when the speech is as base and bigoted as this.

For centuries, spies and strong-armed police tactics were used to suppress conversations in Britain. And the societal axiom of free speech was the only answer to such bullying tendencies. Plenty of left liberals over the past decade have forgotten that and abandoned the principle, allowing identity-based concerns to take precedence over the universal right to expression. Just look at how certain gender-critical academics have been hounded out of public life.

It was a mistake. Because what do we want society to look like? One where the Government – not just the priggish left – gives into identity-based demands to ban people from entering the country? Or one where we have to put up with some rhetorical ugliness for the sake of free expression, assembly, and all those other principles once believed to be rather important? Seems like an obvious one to me. And luckily, that turbo-censorious turn of the 2010s appears to be self-correcting.

So no, I don’t like that the British government has accidentally made me side with JD Vance on free speech by blocking West’s route to the country (though Keir Starmer was right when he said West should never have been invited). But that’s a matter of the law. What about standards of interpersonal decency?

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On that, I will not hold back in my contempt for the festival’s organisers, nor for the many thousands who had already bought tickets to attend. It is quite hard to conceive of a more egregious failure of taste – who wants to attend a concert headlined by a vocal anti-Semite? What statement is being made here? It strikes me as all rather teenage: an attempt at transgression, an attempt to look above (or below) the shibboleths of polite society.

Unfortunately for them, West’s anti-Semitism isn’t really possible to ignore. It dominated headlines for five years. The apology is not robust. And no, I don’t think anti-Semitism – no matter it was blamed on bipolar disorder – is a socially appropriate field for anyone to exercise their desire to be called edgy, or countercultural, or transgressive. This is about the standards of behaviour we should expect from each other, not a question of top-down legal interference.

I listen to some of West’s music (not Heil Hitler!). I even like the universally loathed self-titled project ye, and I am a rare defender of the gospel-era Jesus is King. But we know there is a material difference between the passive consumption of music that already exists and getting on Ticketmaster and then traipsing across London to watch a concert organised in the wake of the five years of grievous indiscretions.

Necessary caveats apply. Forgiveness is a critical virtue in western, liberal society. And so is sympathy and tolerance for those with mental illness. But as Jewish News columnist Josh Glancy has said, if a musician had attacked another minority in this way, praising genocide and selling merchandise to celebrate it, and then issued one written apology, would that be acceptable? Would his mental illness wash as an excuse in those circumstances?

The British government has no business in banning West from the country, and certainly should not be interfering with the artistic decisions of a private company. But the organisers and ticket holders should be ashamed of their decisions to arrange and attend the show. All while the government protects their rights to do so.

© The Irish Times