Exciting news: free speech is high-status again. The decision by the organisers of Ed Sheeran’s US tour to drop anti-Israel rapper Macklemore is being greeted by the left as an outrageous assault on freedom of speech and cancel culture in action. Wait a minute, I thought ‘freeze peach’ was the cry of racist gammons and cancel culture an invention of the far right? This is the problem with progressives: they’re so busy progressing they never stand in the same philosophical spot for longer than five minutes.

No one was asking Macklemore to be silent. Quite the opposite: they were asking, indeed paying, him to rap

No one was asking Macklemore to be silent. Quite the opposite: they were asking, indeed paying, him to rap

Organisers ditched Macklemore, who has been opening for Sheeran during his Loop tour, after he used two gigs to promote his political views. In addition to telling attendees that US Immigration and Customs Enforcement was a ‘terrorist organisation’, he revealed: ‘A big part of the reason why I wanted to do this tour in the first place is so I could stand up in stadiums like this and say two words that are very near and dear to my heart: “Free Palestine”.’ The 43-year-old, whose real name is Benjamin Haggerty, explained to attendees that he could not be silent merely to preserve ‘my own comfort, and the audience’s comfort’.

Of course, no one was asking Mr Haggerty to be silent. Quite the opposite: they were asking, indeed paying, him to rap. If only there was a medium through which a rap........

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