Look out! Old Mackie is Back!

How the Red Scare of the 1950s has become the Blue and White Scare of the 2020s. 

 By Eli Laifer 

I’m not even mad at Ed Sheeran. That seems like a hot take because, during the week of the 13th of September, it was.

For readers who wisely stay off social media, multi-Grammy-winning artist Ed Sheeran has recently been the latest victim of the anti-Israel movement, after receiving grief from the pro-Israel movement the week before following an outrageous ‘performance’ by the opening act on his US tour, the merchant of north-west London bar mitzvahs, Macklemore. After taking to the stage in a keffiyeh, Benjamin Haggerty chose not to fire up the crowd for a jolly night of redheaded banter, but rather to fire them up to rage against the alleged unending genocide of the Palestinian people.

Ed was initially caught in the crossfire. He was blamed by Israel defenders for facilitating such loaded rhetoric in the first place, whilst the pro-Palestinian side directed their anger towards stadium owners, such as Robert Kraft, who demanded the removal of Macklemore from the tour. After a very heartfelt Instagram post from Ed, talking about how he chooses to keep politics out of his music to make it a free and open space of unity, the mob chose to ignore him, and instead he has been sent to the same dungeon as Gal Gadot, Noah Schnapp, and the rotting carcasses of Arthur Miller and Orson Welles.

For this is the same dungeon used by the entertainment industry throughout time. A place where freedom of expression, variety of opinion, and open discussion between humans is forbidden.

In 1947, President Truman signed an executive order establishing a “loyalty programme” requiring investigations into the political affiliations of federal employees. This was passed during a time of international conflict, where loyalty to one’s country was vital for preventing enemy infiltration. In 1950, Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy gave a speech where he claimed to have a list of secret communists working in the State Department. From there, the era of suspecting everyone to be your enemy quickly hit the mainstream. ‘McCarthyism’, as it became known, fuelled a culture of fear around alleged ideological rivals and Communist infiltration. It was also referred to as ‘the Red Scare’… because… red = commie.

Incidentally, 1950 was also a time of mass European immigration, particularly of Jews who had survived the Holocaust. I don’t need to tell you the history of Jews in Hollywood, because Jews are the history of Hollywood. What may surprise you is that, despite such massive contribution to the American entertainment industry, Jews became a suspicious group because of our European association with communism. The original suspicion of communism was quickly forgotten, and instead we were left with classic antisemitism, holding Jews to a higher standard because of our background and ethnicity.

The point I’m making isn't simply that Jews were victims of McCarthyism. The point is that once an entertainment industry begins treating political conformity as a condition of participation, the mechanism can outlive the ideology that originally created it. Returning to Ed Sheeran’s debacle, the reason I am not mad at him is because he is caught between a rock and a hard place. In this instance, the rock is his desire to avoid politics to keep his work inclusive, and the hard place is those who view silence as compliance.

Put yourself into his Timberlands for a moment. What would you do? Here we have an artist who spent his entire life building his career and, after becoming one of the most successful musicians in the world, is still caught in the crossfire of competing political pressures. Because of the noise, his other opening acts have dropped out of the tour, as well as his house band. All of this because a political controversy had engulfed a tour whose headline artist had explicitly chosen not to take a public position on the conflict.

Those defending Macklemore claim to be fighting for liberation and freedom against oppression, but when an English/Irish folk-pop star is punished for staying out of a conflict he has nothing to do with, it allows us to question what freedom really means to these people. Is it the ability to express oneself with independent thought, or is it just conformity to a certain set of destructive and hateful beliefs?

I, for one, will continue to enjoy Ed Sheeran’s music in every H&M fitting room and trampoline park I go to without worrying about his political beliefs because, with a bit of critical thinking, it is clear that he is an artist trying to share his music and make it in his field. Instead of finding excuses to tear each other apart, let’s work together to find ways to unite and combat the destructive and hijacked use of McCarthyism-like tactics that is still prevalent to this day. 

As the song lyrics go: 

“Ain't got a soapbox I can stand upon
But God gave me a stage, a guitar and a song
My daddy told me, “Son, don't you get involved in
Politics, religions or other people's quotes."

“Love could change the world in a moment; 

But what do I know?”

- Ed Sheeran ( What do I know? )