During their set at the Glastonbury Festival in June, the punk-rap duo Bob Vylan became a lightning rod of controversy. Starting an anti-IDF chant that declared “death, death, death to the IDF,” frontman Bobby Vylan joined Kneecap as the posterboys of the pro-Palestinian movement. The public display of anti-Zionist sentiment started a domino effect. Their agency, UTA, dropped them; the U.S. State Department revoked their visas, causing them to cancel their U.S. tour; Prime Minister Kier Starmer made a statement about it, accusing them of antisemitism. It was a big deal. Yet, after all that, Bobby Vylan says he’d do it all over again.
In his first interview since the controversy, Bobby Vylan, whose real name is Pascal Robinson-Foster, told Louis Theroux on The Louis Theroux Podcast (via Rolling Stone, because the episode doesn’t release until tomorrow) that he has no regrets about the incident. “If I was to go on Glastonbury again tomorrow, yes, I would do it again,” he says. “I’m not regretful of it. I’d do it again tomorrow.” It really is a matter of perspective. The “disproportionate” backlash Vylan faced was “minimal,” especially “compared to what people in Palestine are going through.” Ultimately, the only people that he angered with the whole thing were people he believes perpetuated a genocide, so he doesn’t even know what he should regret. “Oh, because I’ve upset some right-wing politician or some right-wing media?” If anything, he says, the controversy brought the conversation back around to Gaza, which is what he was trying to do in the first place.
“My whole issue with this thing is that the chant is so unimportant,” he says. “What is important is the conditions that exist to allow that chant to even take place on that stage. And I mean, the conditions that exist in Palestine. Where the Palestinian people are being killed at an alarming rate. Who cares about the chant?” Theroux conducted the interview ahead of the October 9 ceasefire deal, which, unsurprisingly, hasn’t completely stopped the bloodshed.
In an Instagram post, Vylan says that “turned down every interview request from every media outlet, newspaper and tv channel you can think of.” However, he reached out to Theroux because he has “become increasingly aware that if I do not add my voice to the mix our story will be told for us.” He continues, “I am well aware the problems of talking to someone so affiliated with the BBC, Spotify etc, but when you have been under such a global attack by the media as we have been, the response must too have (potential) global reach and Louis whether you personally like him or not, has that reach.”
Bobby Vylan’s Louis Theroux Podcast episode will be available on Spotify tomorrow. A clip from the interview can be found on Louis Theroux’s Instagram page.
