Macklemore believes the US government has been bought by Zionists and downplays the Holocaust. He will now perform at the Gurten and Paléo Festivals.

He has short blond hair and a narrow mustache. His pinkish-white skin is decorated with tattoos, and he has a Palestinian scarf wrapped around his neck. "I kept silent," he says, closing his eyes and sighing, as if moved by his own words. Then he says, "I was afraid." Afraid of losing friends and his career. But now he's no longer afraid, because he's learned a lot and "realized the truth."

The "truths" revealed by rapper Macklemore at a pro-Palestinian meeting in New York on March 22, 2025, can be seen on video – and they repeatedly bring cheers to the audience. In brief, they are: Capitalism has allied itself with white racism and Zionism to oppress the Palestinian people; the US government is "bought by the Israeli lobby," and the media is only interested in October 7th instead of the "genocide" of the Palestinians.

Macklemore's real name is Benjamin Hammond Haggerty, and he's an American of Irish Catholic descent. He's already incorporated this heritage into a patriotic song about pints, English colonialists, and Irish people you'd better not mess with. Currently, however, the 42-year-old is causing a stir primarily with his obsessive "criticism of Israel." He likes to mix this with trivializations of the Holocaust, de facto support for Hamas, and anti-Semitic conspiracy theories.

This also applies to Germany and Switzerland, where Macklemore will soon be performing at major festivals. On July 16, he will be a guest at the Gurten Festival in Bern, two days later at the Deichbrand Festival on the North Sea, and on July 22, he will be on stage at Paléo in Nyon. Paléo organizers are touting "feel-good hip-hop," and the Gurten Festival website celebrates Macklemore as a hyper-successful artist who hasn't yet been corrupted by "PR strategists." He is allowed to be rough and tumble and, among other things, is committed to fighting "systemic racism."

Others are less enthusiastic. For example, Lower Saxony's anti-Semitism commissioner, Gerhard Wegner, declared that this "unbearable anti-Semitic and anti-Israeli propagandist" should not be given a space at Deichbrand. The Central Council of Jews also called for Macklemore's disinvitation. In Bern, Jewish publicist Hannah Einhaus launched an open letter urging the organizers of the Gurten Festival and its main sponsor, Migros, to reconsider Macklemore's invitation. Titled: "Against Macklemore's Jew-baiting at the Gurten."

Such reactions may be exaggerated. However, the underlying concern is understandable, especially in Jewish circles. Violence, threats, and attacks against Jews are increasing almost everywhere. All too often, musicians and party organizers contribute to this aggressive climate by combining justified outrage over Israel's actions in Gaza with fantasies of annihilation and sympathy for terrorists.

Clubs invite representatives of the Hamas-affiliated group Samidoun, as happened in Bern, and activists intimidate artists they suspect of being pro-Israel. A temporary low point was the Glastonbury Festival, where the band Bob Vylan called for the killing of all Israeli soldiers in front of a cheering, Palestinian-flag-waving crowd.

A kind of group dynamic competition is underway to see who can shout the loudest. The British band Idles, for example, have been chanting "Viva Palestina" even more fervently at their concerts since being criticized as cowards by Bob Vylan. The somewhat outmoded band Massive Attack, with its years of anti-Israel agitation, suddenly feels fashionable again. At a recent London gig, they showed a video featuring former Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar.

This, the trip-hoppers assured, meant nothing. At the same time, they expressed their dislike for the Israeli "apartheid system," demanded the release of a terrorist, and expressed their solidarity with the Northern Irish band Kneecap.

Like Macklemore, Kneecap entertain their audiences with a mix of social kitsch, Irish nationalism, terrorist sympathies, and slogans like "Fuck Israel." Their name is a reference to the IRA, which shot its enemies in the kneecap and was once allied with the PLO. Kneecap are repeatedly confronted with calls for boycotts and concert cancellations. This is partly because they celebrate the terror of Hamas and Hezbollah with flags and chants of "Up Hamas!"

In retrospect, they always claim they didn't mean it that way and reject the supposedly outrageous "accusations." Whether Kneecap is about provocation or persuasion is debatable. For some, they stand in the tradition of the Sex Pistols; for others, they are idiots who fashionably package old Catholic resentments against Jews with post-colonial phrases.

Macklemore's approach is clearly more than provocation. He acts as an itinerant preacher who, despite allegedly facing career impending end, dares to speak "the truth." In this role, he has even visited children in a hospital in the Islamist emirate of Qatar, which Hamas co-funds. His song "Hind's Hall" provided the soundtrack for the anti-Israel demonstrations and riots at Columbia University a year ago. Joe Biden, he claims, has "blood on his hands."

Of course, Macklemore also just wants to be anti-Zionist. When he appeared in Seattle in 2014 dressed as a Jew, complete with a black wig, beard, and enormous hooked nose, he claims he wasn't aware of the stereotypes he was perpetuating. The episode would hardly be significant if Macklemore's speeches and his music videos, viewed millions of times, weren't also permeated with delusions and familiar clichés. For example, that Jewish money manipulates the media and "elites."

In the video for his song "Fucked Up," a dollar bill interwoven with an Israeli flag is shown, along with images of the "oligarchs" Trump, Bezos, Musk, and Zuckerberg, who supposedly control everything, so that you're not even allowed to say "#FreePalestine" anymore.

But, as Macklemore raps triumphantly in "Hind's Hall," even if they ban TikTok, it would be too late, "we've seen the truth." TikTok is a network notoriously flooded with fake news and pro-Hamas propaganda. Fittingly, Macklemore quotes the slogan "From the river to the sea," which activists use to veiledly call for the destruction of Israel. In the video for "Fucked Up," protesters can be seen holding a sign reading "Resistance is justified."

Images of Nelson Mandela and Adolf Hitler are also included in "Fucked Up," as if the two were indirectly involved in Gaza. Hitler, Macklemore suggests, is now on Israel's side. To make this clear to even the dumbest person, Macklemore's video producers flash two images simultaneously. One shows a Palestinian child. The other shows a Jewish boy in the Warsaw Ghetto, holding his hands up during a raid in 1943—presumably before being taken to an extermination camp.

The message that has been spread for years by right-wing extremists, left-wing extremists, Islamists, and, more recently, post-colonial activists is clear: The Israelis would do to the Palestinians what Hitler did to the Jews. Those who spread such nonsense today don't have to fear for their careers. Rather, they can count on applause.

Since October 7, writes "Musikexpress" columnist Linus Volkmann, the Middle East conflict has cast a curse over the pop world. Anyone who wants to identify as left-wing and progressive adorns themselves with a keffiyeh. Even the "washed-up white rapper" Macklemore has found a new role after the flop of his album "Ben," as a supposed Middle East expert. He has recognized the rules of the market: "Anti-Semitism sells."

Volkmann is rather alone in this assessment. Many media outlets are reluctant to seriously engage with Macklemore's worldview. The "Berner Zeitung," for example, recognizes the song "Fucked Up" as a "bitter criticism" of white supremacy. The newspaper considers Macklemore's relativization of the Holocaust merely an accusation. SRF, on the other hand, finds Macklemore «known for his socially critical texts».

Some media outlets, organizers, and sponsors are deliberately or unwittingly misleading the public. For example, a spokesperson for the Gurten Festival told Blick magazine in early April that Macklemore advocates for "a safe life for all people, regardless of ethnicity, nationality, or religion." According to the guidelines of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA), his statements are not antisemitic.

A spokeswoman for Migros, which is sponsoring the event, made the same claim. The statements have not been questioned in the media, even though they are obviously false. The IHRA classifies the claim that the existence of the State of Israel is a racist endeavor as antisemitic. The same applies to the dissemination of stereotypes about the power of Jews, for example, through the media. It also applies to "comparisons of current Israeli policy with the policies of the National Socialists."

In response to questions from the NZZ about how they came to these misleading interpretations, Migros refers to the Gurten Festival. They view the media inquiry as an "attempt to divide people" and complain that they have been subjected to pressure and coercion for some time "regarding the engagement of various artists who either originate from Israel or are critical of Israeli politics."

However, they continue to be guided by freedom of art and expression. Indeed, the same applies to Macklemore as to the band Kneecap. The English journalist Julie Burchill writes of the band that she believes it would be wrong to silence them. But she also doesn't favor seeing the band as anything other than "the latest lousy footnote in the Jew-hating history of Catholicism in general and Catholic Ireland in particular."