Kneecap make me ashamed to be Irish Their sympathy for the fascists of Hamas exposes the rotten heart of Israelophobia. Brendan O’Neill

Materially, what’s the difference between Kanye West gushing over Hitler and Kneecap saying ‘Up Hamas’? Both are instances of rappers praising Jew-killers, no? Kanye prefers the OG of murderous fascism, even going so far as to post a pic of Hitler next to the goat emoji – in short, Hitler was the Greatest of All Time. Kneecap, meanwhile, seem to have a thing for fascism with an Islamist twist. ‘Up Hamas!’, they cried at a London gig, just a year after Hamas carried out the worst act of anti-Semitic slaughter since the era of Kanye’s hero.

Kanye cuddles up to the man who oversaw the gravest crime of the 20th century, Kneecap big up the army of anti-Semites that carried out the worst act of violent racial hatred of the 21st century so far. Kanye admires the dictator who greenlit the industrialised burning of six million Jews, Kneecap admire the neo-fascist militia that laid waste to more than a thousand mostly Jewish lives on 7 October 2023. Two very different hip-hop acts united by a grim fascination with cunts who kill Jews.

But here’s the thing: where the woke left condemns Kanye, it praises Kneecap. It damns Kanye’s Hitler fandom as evidence of a disturbed mind, but it defends Kneecap’s open flirtations with the fascists of Hamas as a brave stand against ‘imperialism’. You couldn’t ask for better proof of how today’s fashionable hatred for Israel has fried the minds and ravaged the moral sensibilities of those who pose as progressive. That London’s bourgeois brats moshed in ecstasy as Kneecap praised the racist slayers of Israelis is the crisis of civilisation distilled.

Kneecap are a rapping trio from Belfast. They’re theatre kids cosplaying as Irish rebels. One is 35 years old and wears a tricolor balaclava. They rap about taking ket and hating ‘Brits’. This gets Shoreditch shitheads and other plummy pricks hot under the collar while driving the likes of the Daily Mail mad. And they really hate Israel. Of course they do. How else are you going to stay sweet with the Guardian and BAFTA and every other influential ponce in a keffiyeh other than by spouting the Israelophobia that is absolutely de rigueur in such circles?