I haven’t listened to much of Ed Sheeran’s music. In fact, I’ve listened to it just enough to determine that it’s really not my thing. This means that what I am writing today doesn’t come from a Sheeran fan or a Sheeran hater, but from someone who knows him only by reputation—a reputation that, until recently, was as a pretty good guy.
But Ed now finds himself in a heap of trouble. It began in early September when Macklemore, opening for Sheeran, turned his act into a rally by chanting “Free Palestine,” showing video footage of Gaza, and performing a protest song. Responding to pressure from venue owners, the tour promoter removed Macklemore from further concerts, insisting that those venues would otherwise cancel future events. Sheeran attempted to remain neutral and to press on with his shows, but soon other opening acts and even Sheeran’s supporting musicians withdrew. When he took to the stage in Philadelphia a short time later, he began alone before introducing a pickup group he had thrown together. Who could have imagined that someone that popular could have been left that isolated?
Sheeran soon apologized for his mistakes and said that he never wanted to be an activist musician. Yet immediately he also said that while the events of October 7 were “horrific and compounded centuries of Jewish pain,” what has happened in Gaza since then is “catastrophic and unjustifiable and disproportionate.” Meanwhile, what goes on in the West Bank is “systemic injustice” that “cannot be overlooked.”
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Sheeran’s shift from neutrality to attempting to mollify both sides did little to rescue him from the mob. To understand why, I have been helped by Carl Trueman.
Carl Trueman has often observed that in a world as heavily influenced by Karl Marx as this one, everything is political. Here’s his explanation: “Marx reduces all human relations to political relations. Every human relationship feeds, supports, justifies a political status quo, and therefore all human relationships are politicized. That’s the world in which we now live, where the idea of [non-political] mediating institutions has vanished.” In this way there are no institutions that stand outside politics, and that’s true of even mundane organizations, events, and activities. To borrow his examples: the Boy Scouts if they refuse to condone transgenderism, cake baking if the baker refuses to bake for a gay wedding, and, of course, concerts if the musician fails to take the stand society demands of them.
After Macklemore was removed from the tour, Sheeran responded with an attempt to play by the rules of the old world, insisting that the people who attend his concerts do not want them to be a political forum, and expressing his sadness for the suffering happening on both sides of the conflict. In other words, he held that his concerts are not political events and that he should not need to take a public stand on a complex geopolitical situation. “I am not complicit,” he insisted. “I have my personal views on this devastating conflict. Just because I choose not to speak publicly, it doesn’t mean I don’t have them, and it doesn’t mean I don’t care.” His reasoning might have been satisfactory 20 or 30 years ago, but in this case it merely added fuel to the fire.
It didn’t work and, indeed, it couldn’t work because what Sheeran failed to understand is that if everything is political, that includes concerts. He is not allowed to opt out when others demand he opt in. Instead, he quickly found himself problematized and stigmatized. All those years of pleasing the crowd were tossed aside and judged inconsequential when compared to the magnitude of his transgression.
A politicized world, it’s important to know, is neatly divided into the two classes of oppressors and oppressed who are constantly at odds with one another. Hence, we have straight vs. gay, rich vs. poor, white vs. black, Christian vs. Muslim, Israel vs. Palestine, and so on. All of those who are oppressed are meant to stand together in solidarity, which is why we see transgender people aligning themselves with people who would almost certainly despise them. It’s why we see progressives expressing disgust at Christian convictions (oppressors!) while overlooking Muslim ones (oppressed!) that may be far more offensive to progressive ideals. The oppressor/oppressed binary is everything.
Ed Sheeran has power by virtue of his fame and it has now been made clear to him that he must use it to express solidarity with the oppressed. He may insist that he wishes to remain neutral, but neutrality is complicity with the status quo. To remain quiet or to not take a side is still to take a side—in this case, the side of Israel. As Trueman says, “We live in Marx’s world—a world where the cultural imagination is gripped by the idea that everything is political. Silence in today’s climate on any issue by anybody in any institution is unacceptable, for to take no political stand on anything in our world is in fact to take a political stand—a stand for the status quo.”
Sheeran’s neutrality is treated as alignment with Israel. Though he has since backtracked to some degree, he is likely to find that Marxist ideology offers no clear equivalent to the Christian understandings of forgiveness and reconciliation. According to the standard playbook, he should now agree to set aside his privilege and learn from those who, by their experience of being oppressed, can educate him. Sure enough, he said, “I am already speaking to people across the spectrum to work out how to make a contribution that helps victims of these terrible times, and listening and learning because I do not know enough.” But no amount of kowtowing will return him to the good graces of the crowds. This is not to say that his career is over, but just that this conflict will be with him for the foreseeable future. Marxism offers no absolution.
Sheeran was naive to think that in today’s world he could simply have a concert. He may have gotten away with that mistake for years, but he has now learned the painful lesson that everything is political. Even a concert is a test in which you can be expected to prove or disprove your loyalty to a cause. And once it has become a test, it’s unlikely to ever be allowed to return to something as enjoyable and apolitical as a concert. Sheeran may want to be a mere musician, but he’s learned that this world demands that he—and all of us—become activists. As Trueman says, it’s Marx’s world for now.
