As news broke that Pepsi – the headline sponsor for the Wireless Festival – has withdrawn its sponsorship, Board of Deputies President Phil Rosenberg issued the following statement:
Wireless Festival and Melvin Benn should not be “profiteering from racism” through Kanye West invitation
As we have said over the last week, Wireless Festival have made absolutely the wrong decision in inviting Kanye West to headline their festival over three days.
A man who has described himself as a Nazi, released a song called, “Heil Hitler”, and said the 400 year enslavement of black people was “like a choice”, is clearly not an appropriate booking for this event.
The decision breaches Wireless’s own charter, which says, “We will not tolerate discrimination because of someone’s disability, religion, race, gender, sexual orientation, or gender identity in any form. Discriminatory words or actions have no place at Rockstar presents Wireless Finsbury Park”.
While we have sympathy for Kanye West’s challenges with mental health and bipolar disorder, his management has clearly not been able to support him in refraining from these comments in the past. We also note that bigoted comments of this sort are not an inherent trait of bipolar disorder.
We thank Prime Minister Keir Starmer for calling this out today, and Pepsi for taking the principled decision to withdraw their sponsorship.
Other sponsors, including Budweiser, Captain Morgan, Johnnie Walker, and PayPal, should follow suit. If it comes to it, the Government should ban him from the country, as Australia did last year.
However, the main responsibility here lies with the Wireless Festival organisers. They have spent the last six days being ‘unavailable for comment’. They should not be hiding behind the facelessness of their corporation. Melvin Benn, the Managing Director of Festival Republic, which runs the Wireless Festival, should be called to account. They should not be profiteering from racism.
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