Kneecap take their name from an unpleasant Belfast tradition but one which commanded a high level of public support. Men who had been causing trouble in their neighbourhood would be given a time and a place for an appointment, frequently turning up with toiletries and freshly laundered pyjamas in preparation for a hospital stay necessitated by a non-lethal shot in the leg.

Even SPLD supporting relatives would say things like “thon was a bad rascal” or “there’ll be no tears for that hallion”, before briefly expressing sympathy for the mother and regretting the necessity of such things.

The kneecapping was one element of a sliding scale of rough justice administered by the IRA in areas it controlled and where the cops were generally seen as a hostile force. The menu ranged from a stern talking to, a beating of variable intensity, a bullet in the leg or a bullet in the head.

Kneecap have had their stern talking to from outraged haters of radical working class culture and are now being given a punishment beating from noted humanitarians and culturally relevant figures like Kemi Badenoch and Sharon Osbourne. What really sets alarm bells ringing is reading things like “Luke Akehurst, a Labour MP, described the onstage call as a “disgusting incitement to violence”. He is a prominent member of Labour Friends of Israel, an organisation which is resolute in its silence on the mass murder in Gaza.

Kneecap’s “offence” was to suggest to an audience “the only good Tory is a dead Tory. Kill your local MP.”  I’ve seen them several times and this sort of braggadocio is understood by everyone in their shows as an expression of righteous class hatred rather than an instruction or even a suggestion.  By way of comparison, no one who listens to NWA has felt the need to copulate with a police officer and no Dead Kennedys fan has murdered a poor person after listening to Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables.

Akehurst has also said, and I am not making this up, “military co-operation with Israel brings benefits to civilian populations in the middle east—Israeli and Palestinian.” Gaza has been rendered uninhabitable, Israeli policy is to starve a million Palestinian children, life expectancy has dropped by thirty years in eighteen months, Israel is the leading practitioner of infanticide and femicide of the 21^st century and this is in some way a benefit to Palestinians.

Here is the moral calibre of the people who dare criticise Kneecap.

What we are seeing is a replay of the antisemitism campaign that was orchestrated by Morgan McSweeny being used against radical musicians who are using their platform to take a public stand against genocide in Britain and the United States, the two countries that are actively enabling the Israelis to engage in it with utter impunity. There has to be serious levels of resource being deployed to dig up videos of Kneecap shows in 2023 and 2024 to be handed over to the cops with the intention of getting the performers thrown into a maximum security prison.

Póg mo thóin

While all this is happening, the British air force is supporting the Israelis and British officers are in constant dialogue with the army which is conducting the genocide.

The group have already had a festival appearance in Germany cancelled and supporters of the genocide are trying to have them barred from Glastonbury. It is virtually certain that their work visas for the United States will be revoked and we shouldn’t be surprised if they are thrown into one of the concentration camps for unwelcome foreigners.

That said, they sold out a 40 000 ticket festival in Belfast in a matter of hours so it is clear that for all the time, money, espionage being deployed against them, Kneecap and their fans’ are a shower of Fenian, internationalist bastards who know which side they take when they see a genocide and whose response to Badenoch, Akehurst, Osbourne is a resounding “póg mo thóin”.