It feels difficult to be morally true when you’re trying to survive in a corrupt consumerist world that already doesn’t truly value creative livelihoods. Do you protest and boycott evil institutions that happen to be affiliated with certain arts festivals or do you take the money, put it towards a cause, and amplify your message for change and action. Such is the dilemma for many artists these days in regards to speaking out for the people that are being murder aimlessly in Palestine.

Groups like Kneecap have chosen to take their activism to the stage, passionately decrying the genocide. Now, Swedish hardcore group Refused are shedding some light on their choice to play fests that are financially backed by entertainment conglomerate Superstruct, which is owned by global investment firm KKR that has alleged ties to Israel. They’ve decided to continue to play these festivals while loudly and clearly advocating for a Free Palestine. You can read their full statement below:

SO A WEEK AGO WE FOUND OUT THAT SOME OF THE FESTIVALS WE’RE PLAYING THIS SUMMER ARE BACKED BY AN ENTERTAINMENT CONGLOMERATE CALLED SUPERSTRUCT IN WHICH A BAD BAD ACTOR NAMED KKR IS PART OWNER. KKR INVESTS IN ISRAELI CYBER SECURITY AMONG OTHER FUCKED UP THINGS. OUR FIRST INSTINCT WAS TO IMMEDIATELY JUMP SHIP, TO BOYCOTT. WE COMMUNICATED THIS TO THE FESTIVALS AND THE ORGANIZERS WROTE BACK SAYING THEY SHARED OUR VALUES AND FELT LIKE WE DID, THAT THEY LOVED WHAT THEY DID AND WERE PROUD OF THE FESTIVALS THEY’D CREATED, THAT THE MAJORITY OF THEIR AUDIENCE WOULD BE SYMPATHETIC TO OUR POSITION AND THAT THEY WERE GUTTED THAT BASTARDS LIKE KKR HAD BOUGHT INTO SUPERSTRUCT AFTER THEY STARTED WORKING WITH THEM, STAINING THEIR LIFE’S WORK BY EXTENSION. ONE OF THEM ALSO QUESTIONED OUR OTHER ASSOCIATIONS (CHEEKY, BUT HE WAS RIGHT), SAYING THAT LIVE NATION ARE BEHIND SOME OTHER FESTIVALS AND SHOWS WE’RE PLAYING, ONE OF WHOSE OWNERS ARE BLACKROCK, A MULTINATIONAL HEAVILY INVESTED IN WEAPONS MANUFACTURING, AND THAT OUR MUSIC IS ON SPOTIFY WHICH DONATED MONEY TO DONALD TRUMP’S INAUGURATION AND ALSO INVESTS IN MILITARY AI.

THE SCUM OF THE EARTH BASICALLY.

THESE FESTIVALS ALSO TOLD US THEY WANTED US TO MAKE NOISE FOR THE PALESTINIAN CAUSE, ONE OF THEM EVEN OFFERED TO GIVE US A LARGE AMOUNT OF MONEY JUST TO DONATE TO PRO-PALESTINE ORGANIZATIONS.

SO, THE CONUNDRUM BECAME: BOYCOTTING THESE FESTIVALS WOULD MAKE US FEEL GOOD ABOUT OURSELVES, THE BAND’S LEGACY WOULDN’T BE TARNISHED BY ASSOCIATION WITH THESE DISGUSTING COMPANIES. IT WOULD FEEL NICE.

WE’VE MULLED THIS OVER AND ALTHOUGH THERE’S A STRONG ARGUMENT FOR TAKING A STAND AGAINST KKR AND THIS DEVELOPMENT OF AMORAL PRIVATE EQUITY AND HEDGE FUNDS BUYING INTO THE ARTS BECAUSE IT’S NON-CONTROVERSIAL AND COMPARATIVELY SAFE, IT WOULD BE NAIVE TO THINK OUR BOYCOTT WOULD EVEN REGISTER FOR THEM. RATHER THE OPPOSITE, IF PEOPLE LIKE THAT KNEW WHAT WE TALKED ABOUT ON STAGE THEY WOULD RATHER HAVE US STAY HOME, AND WITH THE CHARRED BODIES OF PALESTINIANS BURNED ALIVE STACKING UP IN THE CONCENTRATION CAMP/GRAVEYARD THAT GAZA HAS BECOME, WE HAVE DECIDED TO MAKE SOME NOISE, TO GO MEET OUR PEOPLE, TO CELEBRATE THE RESISTANCE AND RAISE MONEY FOR THE PALESTINIAN CAUSE THIS SUMMER. TO US, IT IS THE RIGHT THING TO DO, TO GET OUT THERE AND BE A THORN IN THE SIDE OF ZIONISTS, FASCISTS, VENTURE CAPITALISTS AND TO FAN THE FLAMES OF DISCONTENT TOGETHER WITH OUR BRIGHT, INFORMED COMRADES ALL OVER EUROPE.

A LOT OF YOU HAVE ALREADY BOUGHT TICKETS AND ARE EXPECTING US, SO WE’D LOVE TO GET SUGGESTIONS FROM LOCAL ORGANIZATIONS AND ACTIVISTS WE COULD WORK WITH IN ALL THE COUNTRIES AND CITIES
WE’RE PLAYING.

FREE PALESTINE!!!

They continued on in the caption, explaining that they take this decision very seriously.

These kinds of deliberations are not new to us. In our late teens, coming out of the DIY underground, we were obsessed with ending our involvement in systemic oppression through the power of boycott, through spreading awareness of the human rights abuses in the countries that produced the consumer objects our generation coveted, the environmental impact of eating meat, the horrific abuses carried out by the USA in South America in order for us to have cheap bananas. These were all hot topics in the leftist punk underground at the time (and if we’re being self-critical for a moment, it’s obvious now that we were deluded in thinking that creating leftist utopias outside of the mainstream would achieve the great system change we were aiming for.

Instead we left the parliaments to the neo-nazis we used to fight in the streets [Antifa did the lion’s share of the fighting, but once or twice we fought them as a band, though most of the time we were too outnumbered and out-menaced to do shit], who gladly put on suits and toned their rhetoric down in order to gain power, an endeavor in which they succeeded beyond our wildest nightmares, as we can see all over the west right now), and it took us uneducated working class morons a while to learn what many picked up during two or three classes at uni: that all of us in the west are complicit in the exploitation and subjugation of a huge part of the non-western world and while we worked hard to rid ourselves of this complicity by becoming incredibly conscious consumers, we slowly started to understand the immense machine of oppression that Europe and the US have constituted from the 1500s to this day, a fact that made our twenty-something consumer choices in the north of Sweden seem pretty insignificant. This didn’t deter us, but it definitely put us in check… [continues in comments]

What we quickly realized though was that we were always gonna be a gateway band. The underground community is a beautiful place, but after having seen the hundredth band preaching about the evils of capitalism or organized religion to a crowd of people dressed exactly the same as them, reading the same books, listening to the same bands, you start to wonder what the point really is: do we want to be right or do we want change? Refused was always a different animal than the pure, DIY or die-bands, and we did things they could not. That was kind of the point, to try and bring these ideas into the light.

The centre-right government of Sweden gave us an award once (thank you @psl) and although we fucking hated their guts, we accepted the award just so we could stand right there in the corridors of power and ridicule them, humiliate them to their faces.

There were minor deals with minor devils made, but through it all, we reached kids who would never have been exposed to these ideas otherwise: we turned a lot of people on to vegetarianism and veganism through our music, and there’s no counting the amount of people who have come up to us and said that our songs sowed the first seed of what grew to be a radical political life. It’s what we’re most proud of, the many activists, teachers, human rights lawyers, doctors and environmentalists for whom we were a companion (or even a stepping stone) on the way to a life of serving the greater good. They didn’t preach to the converted, they didn’t freak out about bar codes on CDs, they actually went out there and did shit.

I guess what we’re trying to say is, these choices are not easy for us but we take them very seriously, and we’ve driven ourselves mad trying to bat a hundred in a crooked game. Which is why our next project will be DIY, more on that later…

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