Macklemore seems to be one of the most loved people on the internet right now (even if many of the posts celebrating him include some version of the disclaimer: “obviously, his music is terrible, but…”). Then again, that’s only half the story: the hip-hop artist was dropped as a support act on Ed Sheeran’s tour after an intense campaign against him, which saw everyone from the Israeli-American Council to Pink weighing in. It started last week at New Jersey’s MetLife Stadium, when Macklemore said “free Palestine” during his set, used the words “genocide” and “apartheid” in relation to Israel, and performed his song “Hind’s Hall” (named for Hind Rajab, a five-year-old Palestinian girl killed by Israeli fire in Gaza in 2024). In his subsequent statement, Macklemore said Robert Kraft, the billionaire owner of Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, had helped pressure other venue owners to oppose his inclusion. Tour promoter Messina Touring Group separately confirmed that multiple venues would not host the shows with Macklemore on the bill.

Ed Sheeran, on the other hand, is being widely denounced online as a coward after posting the blandest and most equivocal statement about Palestine imaginable. Talking about “both sides”: check. Describing Gaza simply as a “conflict”: check. Waxing lyrical about the power of music to bring people together: check. The only thing you can say in his defence is that it seems like he wrote the statement himself. Surely no PR professional would write a sentence as guaranteed to rile people up as “I’m not complicit.”

What might have been a bleak story of censorship turned out quite differently. After Macklemore’s statement, every single support act on the tour – FINNEAS, Aaron Rowe and Lukas Graham – dropped out in solidarity, along with the Irish folk band Beoga, who had been performing onstage alongside Sheeran. Collectively, the withdrawals turned Macklemore’s removal into a much larger show of solidarity, affirming the idea that, as Finneas put it in a statement, “artists must not be silenced when they speak up for the oppressed.”

Macklemore’s onstage comments no longer represent a fringe position; not only is the language of “genocide” and “apartheid” being used by the world’s foremost human rights groups and criminal courts, but this is also how a large percentage of the US public think about Israel’s actions in Gaza

Public figures have long faced professional repercussions and campaigns against them for expressing support for Palestine, but in previous decades it was less common to see such massive outpourings of support or solidarity from their peers. Even last year, when Kneecap were dropped from or banned from playing a series of festivals, including Sziget and the Eden Sessions, there was no comparable cascade of artists withdrawing in solidarity. Since then, public opinion has shifted even further against Israel. The Ed Sheeran controversy is not so much a cultural turning point in and of itself, but evidence that the culture has already turned. Pro-Israel groups and venue owners in the US clearly still hold significant influence: after all, pressure from venues was enough to force Macklemore off the tour. But the episode also shows that such pressure can now provoke substantial backlash of its own. 

But the power to discipline public figures without facing a backlash appears diminished. It’s clear that Macklemore, along with the artists who dropped out in solidarity, has come out of this to significant public support, while Sheeran has faced sustained criticism. The latter might be too big to fail at this point, but the controversy has dealt a blow to his image – for someone who has branded himself “culturally Irish”, it must sting that two of the artists who pulled out, Aaron Rowe and Beoga, both cited their Irish identity, and the history of Ireland, as part of their reason for standing with Palestine. It suggests that being perceived as anti-Palestinian can now carry a significant reputational cost of its own, in a way that was far less evident five years ago. Sheeran’s refusal to use the language of genocide has itself become a focus of criticism.

While pro-Israel organisations and political actors can still exert significant institutional pressure, they have been unable to reverse a sharp decline in US public support for Israel: 60 per cent of US adults have an unfavourable view of Israel, according to a 2026 Pew survey, and this is particularly pronounced among younger generations. Macklemore’s onstage comments, which kicked this all off, no longer represent a fringe position; not only is the language of “genocide” and “apartheid” being used by the world’s foremost human rights groups and criminal courts, but this is also how a large percentage of the US public (up to 40 per cent, according to some polls) think about Israel’s actions in Gaza. Banning these views from being represented in public, to the extent that’s even possible, is unlikely to change their minds.

The recent controversy around actor Mark Ruffalo offers another example of how criticism of pro-Palestinian speech can provoke a backlash of its own. Paramount Skydance accused Ruffalo of invoking “antisemitic tropes” after he spoke about the links between Oracle – a tech company founded by Larry Ellison – and the Israeli military while criticising Paramount’s proposed Warner Bros Discovery merger. Ruffalo rejected that accusation. More than 180 Jewish artists and public figures, including Hannah Einbinder and Wallace Shawn, subsequently signed an open letter in support, which itself described the response to him as a “smear campaign”. It may be too early to say, but there is little public evidence so far that the controversy has significantly damaged Ruffalo’s career: he remains a prominent and regularly employed Hollywood actor. 

On the other hand, that may also be why Ruffalo was able to weather the storm. He is a highly respected and successful figure in Hollywood (and white, and a man). Speaking out for Palestine still exacts a cost, and this is not distributed equally. Susan Sarandon, for example, suggested recently that her advocacy for Palestine has cost her movie roles. Melissa Barrera, who in 2023 was fired from Scream VII following social media posts about Gaza, has said that she was effectively blacklisted from Hollywood, although she now has a number of upcoming film roles. And of course, none of the artists mentioned above are themselves Palestinian: Palestinian artists can face even harsher attacks on their speech, and higher barriers to ascending to such prominent positions in the first place.

The tide may be turning, but that’s not a reason to be complacent. For one thing, Israel is still carrying out its genocide in Gaza, even if at a slower rate and to less international outrage, while the violence and displacement faced by Palestinians in the occupied West Bank have intensified sharply. In this context, the line-up of an Ed Sheeran gig pales into insignificance. But culture has always been an important terrain of struggle for the Palestinian cause, from the revolutionary art of the 1970s to the modern-day PACBI movement. In this case, the efforts to suppress Macklemore’s pro-Palestine messaging have backfired and led to a heartening display of solidarity. The artists who dropped out deserve our respect, and I hope that others will follow their example the next time a similar situation arises. One thing we can all do now is keep the momentum going, which means raising the professional and reputational cost of silence and complicity, supporting the PACBI movement (which is now calling on Sheeran to cancel the rest of his tour), and supporting artists whenever they do the right thing.