If you are in the business of anointing monsters, you can see why your eyes would light up at a punk act called Bob Vylan. Until last weekend, sure, it might have been a tough sell to proclaim them as an avatar for Britain’s revolting youth: prominent though they might be on the UK’s punk scene, they had about about 220,000 monthly listeners on Spotify – a mere 1,000,000 away from a place in the top 10,000. But then, at Glastonbury, they made the most powerful possible case for broad media attention: they said something controversial about Israel’s assault on Gaza, and opened up a chance to have a go at the BBC.
And so the following morning, on the front page of the Mail on Sunday: “NOW ARREST PUNK BAND WHO LED ‘DEATH TO ISRAELIS’ CHANTS AT GLASTONBURY.” Pascal Robinson-Foster, aka Bobby Vylan, had started a round of “antisemitic chanting” that was broadcast live on the corporation’s coverage of the festival, the story explained. Keir Starmer called it “appalling hate speech”. The calls for the band members’ arrest were quickly picked up, and before long the Conservatives were suggesting that the BBC should be prosecuted as well. On Monday, the story splashed in the Sun, the Daily Mail, the Daily Telegraph and the Daily Express.
