by Brendan O’Neill, spiked
The Irish elites have turned on Sheeran because he refuses to hate the Jewish State as ferally and rabidly as they do.
Every day is an uphill struggle to not feel ashamed of being Irish. Watching the land of Swift, Joyce and Wilde become the land of Kneecap, Sally Rooney and infinity tits in keffiyehs would shatter even the hardest Irish heart. This week has been especially challenging. Dublin’s insufferably smug media class has risen up like a racket of demented banshees against – wait for it – Ed Sheeran. His crime? He refuses to hate the Jewish State as ferally and rabidly as they do.
The Sheeranphobia that has swept the Emerald Isle is insane. Five minutes ago Sheeran was being celebrated in Ireland as the ‘culturally Irish’ penner of popular if vanilla love songs. Now he’s damned as a ‘gutless coward’ and an ‘extreme disappointment’ who should ‘never feel welcome in Ireland again’. Got that? Unless you bow and scrape before the Palestine cult and gorge on all its filthy falsehoods about Israel, Ireland will blacklist you. McCarthyism in a tricolour balaclava.
It all springs from the Macklemore scandal. The irritant rapper famous for his 14-year-old song ‘Thrift Shop’ and his Pavlovian wails of ‘Free Palestine’ was dropped from Sheeran’s US tour after stadium bosses balked at his Israel-bashing. All of Sheeran’s other support acts and even his house band – Irish group Beoga – walked out in solidarity with Macklemore. Sheeran’s statement saying he hates the ‘suffering’ on ‘both sides’ in the Israel-Gaza war made things worse. Doesn’t he know that sympathy for the Jews who were raped and butchered by the Islamofascists of Hamas is tantamount to a thoughtcrime in virtuous circles? Educate yourself, Ed.