From ‘dee do dee’ to ‘death to the IDF’: how music festivals lost the plot

Eckler was murdered at Bernburg in 1942, while Landmesser lost his life in Croatia two years later. I mention this poignant story because although we are very much not in Nazi Germany, that picture resonates with how my children felt at Reading.

In a video taken by my daughter, the British singer-songwriter Rou Reynolds, the singer and keyboardist of a middle-rate rock band called Enter Shikari, came across more like an evangelical pastor at an outdoors megachurch prayer session than a purveyor of mindless entertainment.

In a quasi-religious rant that lasted several minutes, he delivered a sermon that made me marvel at how jihadi propaganda can be given a veneer of human rights. Every other statement, it seemed, was either deeply provocative or of, shall we say, questionable accuracy. I found myself ticking them off on my fingers.

“We’ve seen the firepower equivalent of six Hiroshima bombs dropped on Gaza in the last two years,” he began, clutching his brow in angst. Did it occur to him that as up to 180,000 lost their lives in Hiroshima, simple mathematics would suggest that 1,080,000 should have been killed in Gaza? Even Hamas wouldn’t make that claim.

“Every single school and university destroyed,” he continued. “Almost 300 journalists murdered. Doctors killed, maimed, detained. Children shot in the head by snipers…. This is the mass murder of the Palestinians in Gaza… livestreamed genocide.”

No mention was made, of course, of who started the war and in what appalling manner, why the hostilities are continuing – hostages, anyone? – and how the jihadis are embedding themselves amongst civilians for the sake of propaganda.

In an NME interview afterwards, Reynolds revealed that he had wanted to put a political spin on his music ever since he saw Rage Against The Machine perform as a teenager. “That righteous rage and indignation, it was very, very alluring,” he said. “I don’t want to see our band as mindless entertainment.”

Well, that one worked out well.

But Reynolds wasn’t the only songster unable to resist that intoxicating allure. Hozier, that chap who sings the “take me to church” ditty that your kids play sometimes in the car, delivered a lengthy lecture centring on Palestine which the BBC, having had their fingers burnt at Glasto, declined to broadcast.

My daughter was in the crowd for both performances. She likes Hozier’s music. Or did. “It put a bit of a dampener on things,” she said. That was an understatement. Around her, several of her friends lapped it up. They simply didn’t know any better.

Why would they? Reading has become a rite of passage for 16-year-olds to celebrate after finishing their GCSEs. The tens of thousands who bop along to the likes of Enter Shikari and Hozier and the rest are young, naïve and impressionable.

Rather than simply give them a good time, the musicians seize the opportunity to brainwash these kids in favour of radical politics. Not that they haven’t been subjected to this stuff before.

You’d have thought that school and, later, university, would be enough, without having to ram the dogma down their throats when they’re simply trying to blow off some steam.

Whether it’s the television news, social media, school and university or music festivals, there’s no escape from the committed ideologues who conspire to weave a world of lies around our children.

In this world, Palestine is simply the side of the angels and Israel is a devil. Everybody thinks that, so it must be right. Those who demur are few, far between and viewed as pro-genocide.

So the truth is undermined, Jews are forced into the company of other Jews, righteous bigotry dominates society and the stage is set for things to get worse.

Dee do dee do de de.