Kneecap: the Belfast rappers courting controversy

"There's not much that the Conservatives, the SNP and Labour agree on", but the band Kneecap has "pulled off the improbable and united political opponents against them", said The Spectator.

Criticism of the Irish rappers has been mounting after video footage emerged of a 2023 gig, appearing to show one member of the trio saying, "The only good Tory is a dead Tory. Kill your local MP." The band has issued an apology but several of their gigs have now been cancelled amid what their manager has called a wave of "moral hysteria", said the BBC.

A Downing Street spokesperson called the apology "half-hearted" and condemned "in the strongest possible terms" other comments Kneecap appear to have made "about the situation in the Middle East". The Metropolitan Police has said its counter-terrorism unit is assessing both the alleged call to murder MPs, and other footage apparently showing a band member shouting, "Up Hamas, up Hezbollah."

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From Belfast to Baftas to backlash

The Belfast-based group was formed in 2017 by friends Liam Og Ó Hannaidh, Naoise Ó Caireallain and JJ Ó Dochartaigh. They rap in both English and Irish about working-class Belfast culture and post-Troubles Northern Ireland. (Their name is a reference to the punishment Republican paramilitaries would inflict, during the Troubles, on people they believed to be drug-dealers and child molesters.)

After the success of their second studio album, "Fine Art", their semi-autobiographical film, in which the band members played themselves alongside established actors like Michael Fassbender, won the 2025 Bafta for Outstanding Debut.

Kneecap's "punky attitude, fondness for coke and ketamine, anti-coloniser stance on British rule and defiant refusal to let the English language drown out their native tongue has made them social-media folk heroes", said The Scotsman. It has also made them "targets for right-wing tabloids and the British government".

Coachella censorship

Earlier this month, the group's set at US music festival Coachella "caught the attention of the world", with its "heavy political messaging" about Israel's bombardment of Gaza, said Business Insider. Organisers "attempted to censor the band" by removing their second set from the livestream, but this "only increased interest in the performance".

Former "The X Factor" judge Sharon Osbourne called for their US work visas to be revoked, saying they "openly support terrorist organisations". Kneecap's visa sponsor subsequently dropped them, meaning they'll need a new sponsor to be able to play their sellout North America tour in October.

'Coordinated smear campaign'

On Monday, after the daughter of MP David Amess, who was killed by an Islamic State fanatic in 2021, said that "this kind of rhetoric" should not be tolerated, Kneecap posted their "heartfelt apologies" to the families of Amess and Jo Cox, the MP murdered in 2016. "We never intended to cause you hurt," the band said in the 500-word statement on X. "We also reject any suggestion that we would seek to incite violence against any MP or individual. Ever."

Nevertheless, Tory leader Kemi Badenoch has said Kneecap should be prosecuted and "banned full stop", as their "glorification of terrorism and anti-British hatred has no place in our society". Badenoch and Kneecap are "already known to each other", said Sky News. When she was business secretary, she blocked a £14,250 government arts grant the group had won; last November, Kneecap won a discrimination challenge over that decision.

The group maintain that they are facing a "coordinated smear campaign". They said the footage about MPs was "deliberately taken out of all context" and "is now being exploited and weaponised, as if it were a call to action. This distortion is not only absurd – it is a transparent effort to derail the real conversation."

And, although they "won't be silenced" about "the ongoing genocide against the Palestinian people", they have said, "Let us be unequivocal: we do not, and have never, supported Hamas or Hezbollah."