All news is local, but it’s not every day that a disgraced American musician and reformed Nazi sympathiser attempts to plot his comeback tour in your back garden.
For years, my issue with Finsbury Park being turned over to music day festivals has been the usual NIMBY fare. The privatisation of public space by skint councils is a stain on our city. Our green spaces lack the infrastructure for thousands of people to eat, drink and use the bathroom. It ruins the grass for months by turning it into a muddy pit/a dust bowl, depending on rain or shine. They fence off the viewpoints so you can’t even enjoy the show for free, even as they blast noise pollution into your window each night. Etc. etc.
But now, Kanye ‘Ye’ West is coming to town, and I feel a whole new level of unease stirring. Wireless Festival has announced that West will headline all three nights from 10 to 12 July. Apparently, taking out a full-page advertisement in the Wall Street Journal in January saying “I am not a Nazi or an antisemite” was enough to convince the organisers that West is the ideal choice for a north London residency.
The history of West’s unravelling from musical genius to someone spewing vile, antisemitic statements into the internet void is a complicated one. In 2016, he was hospitalised after his Saint Pablo tour was cancelled midway through, following an on-stage rant that quickly spread across the Internet. Previously an impassioned speaker and activist against racism in America, West pivoted: he began posing with his “friend” Donald Trump and claiming slavery was a “choice”.
Then the antisemitic conspiracy theory peddling began, culminating in West getting locked out of Twitter for threatening “death con 3 on Jewish people,” selling $20 shirts emblazoned with a swastika, and releasing a song called Heil Hitler. Along the way, Adidas pulled out of its partnership with West for his Yeezy shoes.
In the WSJ letter, West confirmed his diagnosis — a “frontal lobe injury” to his brain from a 2002 car crash left undiagnosed until 2023, and bipolar type 1. He took accountability for his destructive period during a four-month-long manic episode in 2025, where “paranoid, psychotic, and impulsive behaviour” saw him gravitate to the “destructive symbol” of the swastika as he “destroyed [his] life”.
Bipolar disorder and a traumatic brain injury are serious conditions that can make people act outside of their control. West obviously endured the disorienting highs of manic periods, complete with delusions and paranoia, all while having access to his social media accounts and millions of eyeballs on him. I’m genuinely glad that he is seeking therapy and medication for a much-stigmatised condition.
But virulent antisemitism is not a symptom you will find in the DSM-5. People live with bipolar and/or a TBI every day and don’t start threatening minorities. He has given an explanation, but it doesn’t excuse him nor undo the damage that has been done. The shirts were marketed, the songs were streamed, and hate speech against Jews was normalised by a public figure with huge global influence. He is yet to show that he can be serious about making amends, or whether he is well enough to perform.
Then there are the allegations of sexual assault. In June 2024, West’s former assistant Lauren Pisciotta filed a lawsuit alleging West sexually harassed her at work and “orally raped her without her consent”, something West’s representatives have dismissed as “absurd and outlandish”. Later that year, model Jenn An sued West for allegedly sexually assaulting and strangling her on the set of a 2010 music video for La Roux. West’s lawyers responded that “the emulation of sexual violence for artistic purposes is not itself sexual violence”. In 2025, possibly during his manic episode, West posted “I BEAT WOMEN” on X in defence of P Diddy during his own lawsuit.
West’s letter advertisement in an American newspaper aimed at serious business people was a deeply cynical choice. Was he really apologising to the Jewish people he put at risk, or to the advertisers and investors he had previously scared away? It was timed to go to print as the ink dried on a seven-figure record deal with Gamma and the launch of his latest album, Bully.
The three-day gig at Wireless feels like another box-tick on a public rehabilitation tour. Despite all the handwringing from the political right over ‘cancel culture’, it’s clear that, if you’re famous enough, you can say anything, do anything, and still rise to the top of entertainment (or politics) if enough people in your entourage stand to benefit. A three-day festival is less pressure than an international tour, but it’s in a field, not a venue set up to manage the crowds a popular and controversial figure will draw. Wireless has been silent on how it will ensure the safety of a vulnerable headliner — and failed to reassure locals that extra safeguards will be in place.
What about Haringey residents? Why should we have to worry over an influx of people prepared to overlook the whole sampling-an-Adolf-Hitler-speech thing? Fans who might actively enjoy the shock factor, or even agree with West’s most paranoid ramblings. Even for those who are fans of his music alone, has Wireless planned for the size of the crowds that West’s first performance in the UK for a decade will draw to the park?
What about our Jewish neighbours, already living in fear of rising antisemitism and reeling from the arson attack on Hatzola ambulances in Golders Green? Stamford Hill is literally right around the corner from the park. Meeting one celebrity Orthodox rabbi back in the US is hardly going to reassure London’s Hassidic community that having West and his followers on their streets is safe.
I’m not a Jew, and I cannot speak for the Jewish residents of Haringey, who may well be able to forgive West and see his three-day concert as part of his atonement process. But the UK’s Jewish Leadership Council has been clear — in booking West, the Wireless festival organisers have been “deeply irresponsible”.
“His most recent apology must be considered in the context that he went on to sell swastika T-shirts and release a song called Heil Hitler after apologising previously,” the council continued. “Any venue or festival should reconsider before providing their platform to Kanye West to spread his antisemitism.”
Mayor of London Sadiq Khan’s statement has, thus far, been more milquetoast. “The past comments and actions of this artist are offensive and wrong,” he said, “and are simply not reflective of London's values.” The decision to platform West, he added, rested with the festival organisers.
Seriously? After we spent last summer endlessly hounding principled artists such as Kneecap and Bob Vylan for taking a stance on Israel committing “genocide” in Palestine — something Khan has agreed is happening — we’ll really let someone who has espoused violently antisemitic rhetoric waltz on stage in one of London’s public parks?
Not that the mayor truly has the power to keep West out. Australia effectively banned him by revoking his travel visa last year. Their Minister for Home Affairs, Tony Burke, cancelled it as soon as West released Heil Hitler, stating he refused to “import hatred.”
Phil Rosenberg, President of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, has also called for West to be banned from entering the UK. “Many Jewish people will worry that that will just inflame what is already a very febrile situation,” Rosenberg said of the festival. “We're really worried that on stage... he'll suddenly come out with more of these things. And the organisers really need to think carefully about this.”
I hope West continues to find healing and ways to manage his bipolar, ideally out of the limelight and away from the people who profit from his performance. It’s tragic that his genius has been so derailed by illness and injury. But the harm he has done is too great, and the message it sends to host him in a London park is not something we should co-sign.
Is it wrong for me to want to see Kanye West perform at Wireless?
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