Deleted From Spotify

"What happened to your Notes from a Holocaust album on Spotify?"

After a wonderful evening playing a concert for an appreciative crowd in Copenhagen, we got back to the housing cooperative we're staying at, and I saw a message on my phone from a friend in Olympia.

"What happened to your Notes from a Holocaust album on Spotify?" 

I looked, and sure enough, it was (and is) gone.  The album was published on Bandcamp, Spotify, and the other music streaming platforms in January, 2024.  It's the first of four albums I've put out in 2024 that is mainly an effort to musically document Israel's ongoing genocidal war against the Palestinian population in Gaza (as a result of which genocide the International Criminal Court has just put out a warrant for Netanyahu and Galant).

Writing Spotify, I was told by a member of their customer service team that the metadata for the album had changed, and that I should contact the album's distributor to see what happened.  The album is distributed for streaming by a company called CDBaby, and in my section of their website, everything appears to be in order, including Notes from a Holocaust and all of my other albums being listed for global distribution, with no restrictions.

I'm looking into this further and hoping there might be a way to get the album back up.  I was never notified that the album was being taken down, nor was I ever provided with an explanation when I wasn't notified.  Is it now illegal somewhere for the word "holocaust" to be in an album's name?  Did one of the song titles on the album violate the law somewhere?  Was it some of the lyrics?  Who knows, we're told nothing.

This unannounced album removal comes in the wake of what can only be called the active, ongoing suppression of my career on Facebook.  Presumably a practice instituted by Facebook management at some level, with or without instructions from who knows what possible government agency, for many months now my use of the "Invite" function has been basically disabled.  That is, it works about 3% of the time I try to use it.  But otherwise, regardless of what device I'm using, I am being systematically prevented from using this function to invite people to my concerts.

The impact that this is having would be hard to overstate.  I know Facebook is totally passe and nobody talks about it much anymore, but this horrible corporate monstrosity is still the biggest social media platform on the planet, and is still used actively by billions of people.  Around the world, most gig organizers that I work with still rely on Facebook Event pages as a principal element in their publicity efforts.  Before I was blacklisted from inviting people to my gigs on Facebook, this often worked well.  It's one of the only features on Facebook that's truly useful for promoting local events, and now it's no longer either useful or useable by me.  There is no question in my mind that audiences at some gigs have been smaller in recent months as a direct consequence of this suppression of my ability to use Facebook effectively.

Are Spotify and Facebook being told to do these things by someone, or are they blacklisting political artists and suppressing our careers because of some other motivation?

All that is obvious is someone somewhere is actively trying to suppress my work and its reach, both with regards to finding music online and with regards to finding my shows in the real world.  Whatever actor(s) are involved here, whether it's the corporate leaders of Spotify and Facebook, or people with the skills and access to systems to be able to do things like delete albums from my discography and prevent me from using the "Invite" function, the net result is the ongoing suppression of my career.

"It's a sign that you're doing something right," many people will say.  Yes, this is no doubt the case, and that is not the least bit consoling.  The reality is, not a single press outlet on the planet outside of the Arab world has taken any interest in the obvious and ongoing efforts by nefarious forces to suppress my career, so I'm left to blog about it myself -- one more shout into the void.

Posting about Spotify's removal of the album on various platforms, on Facebook the screen shot of the deleted album has gotten virtually no notice.  As usual, the only platform where me posting about anything has gotten seen by more than a tiny handful of people is X.

As I live through the experience of being constantly targeted for cancelation and suppression in so many different forms, far beyond what I've been describing thus far, I feel like I'm living through a more online version of the kind of experience artists had who were targeted to be "neutralized" by Cointelpro in decades past.

Again, there is no consolation in this, no feeling that it's a sign of me accomplishing anything.  I know too much to feel that way.  Cointelpro targeted a massively broad swath of the population -- you didn't need to be very special to be on their lists of targets for dirty tricks, suppression, disinformation, and cancelation.

What is most concerning to me about this kind of targeting, whether it's the targeting I'm experiencing, or that of other people, is what such revelations generate is generally nothing more than a little flurry of discussion among friends and comrades and reposts on X, and then the status quo of an artist being silenced continues.

That is to say, the fantasy I used to have that being targeted for suppression in obvious ways like this would always be a stupid thing for the powers-that-be to do because it would backfire, and get me or another artist lots more attention than we might otherwise have gotten, is just a fantasy.  It's not what's happening -- quite the opposite, in fact.

I have seen other artists get loads of press attention and grow their fanbase significantly as a direct consequence of getting attacked by rightwing media or having gigs canceled by such elements.  But that's not what has ever happened with me, and I suspect the reason for this has to do with what I'm singing about, and what most of them are not singing about -- Palestine.

But who knows, maybe I'm just paranoid.

Canceled in Gothenburg

The plague of cancellation campaigning combined with a form of puritanical thinking deeply associated with identity politics has, sadly, made its way to Gothenburg.

The concert Kamala and I were going to do there, at a place called the Syndicalist Forum, has been canceled by people involved with the venue.

So, I'm first of all writing here in an attempt to let people know that this is the case.  Unfortunately, the event has already been well-promoted, and with word-of-mouth publicity it's impossible to know how people have heard about it, or how to successfully let them know that it's been canceled.  It is unfortunately entirely possible that people will be traveling to Gothenburg from hours away to catch the show, and they won't have heard about the event being canceled.  This just happened recently elsewhere.

But, as you may already have surmised, there's a lot more that needs to be said about this concert cancelation.

It happens as part of a broader trend involving suspicion and distrust, spurious notions of safety, and exclusionary, puritanical thinking that is rife in certain corners of the left, particularly in the USA, but also in other parts of the world, apparently including this ostensibly syndicalist scene in Gothenburg, Sweden.

It's a problem with the modern left that is extremely relevant to the election that just happened in the US, with its predictable (and predicted, by me and many others) outcome.  Extremely relevant to the future of our species, I'd dare say, because if the left around the world isn't able to form a cohesive, visionary, inclusive, musical movement for a better world and an egalitarian society, then we all lose, everything.

And what has just happened in Gothenburg is a perfect illustration of the problem we face in building that kind of movement (though certainly a very minor and local one).

I know most people reading this are probably reading it on my email list and you're already familiar with the context as I see it, but I'll briefly set the stage anyway. 

A fascist state called Israel is currently in the process of exterminating 2.3 million Palestinians and a whole lot of other people as well, through a ruthless, unending campaign of dropping massive bombs, snipers shooting children looking for water, drone strikes against anyone moving outside of the destroyed buildings, and imposed famine and disease.  The fascist state of Israel is doing this with the support of a very large portion of the Israeli population, who have elected the most rightwing government in Israel's history.  All this is happening with western military and economic support, especially from the US, but also from many European countries.

Having put out four albums about the genocide over the past year, Kamala and I are currently on tour in Europe, trying to raise awareness of and resistance to this ongoing genocide, with lots of gigs coming right up in Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Iceland, and then in the US after that.

A year ago when we were doing the exact same thing in largely the same cities in the same countries as we're touring in now, we sang at a rally against the war on Gaza in Gothenburg, and we played for an audience of well over a hundred people at the Marx-Engels Huset in that beautiful city, under the auspices of Gothenburg's Communist Party.  

We've played at that venue so many times over the past two decades, I've lost count.  This time around, the folks that run the Marx-Engels Huset were busy with other things, which happens.  I'm sure we'll play there again in the future.  

But with no gig there, when someone wrote me and suggested we play at the Syndicalist Forum instead this time around, I thought that was a great idea.

I emailed the Forum email and heard back very quickly with an enthusiastic response.  I was very happy about that, though not so surprised, since I have played for the syndicalist and anarchist scene in Sweden a lot over the years.  I have more monthly listeners on Spotify from Sweden than from most countries.  Not to brag, but I have a few fans in Sweden, particularly on the Swedish left, so if they had heard my music before and that's what prompted the immediate positive response, that's not surprising.

Because I wasn't sure how well they knew me, my music, or my politics, and as far as I knew I had not met these folks before, in the course of talking about doing this concert, I warned them that I was the subject of a trolling campaign online since January, 2021, led by one or more people associated with Rose City Antifa in Portland, Oregon, which is a bizarre little cult that has had a devastating impact on the Portland left since its inception in 2007.

The person answering the Syndicalist Forum's Facebook Messenger account expressed sympathy for me in the context of this trolling campaign, and they went ahead and made a nice listing about the gig on their website, and a Facebook Event page, which had gotten great response from local people.  I had, of course, also been promoting the event, along with the whole tour.

Two days ago I then got a message on Messenger from whoever manages the Facebook account of the Syndicalist Forum, explaining, out of the blue, that they had been contacted by someone who had shared information about me which they then investigated, by reading the article that was shared with them and by reading a book I recommended in an essay several years ago, and that they had come to the conclusion that although they didn't think I was an antisemite, they thought Gilad Atzmon was, and because I recommended his book, the Wandering Who, they "currently don’t feel comfortable with proceeding with the gig" -- although they also didn't seem to want to use the word "canceled" in reference to not going ahead with the event, as I think they realize this is a bad look, to cancel stuff like that, last-minute.

Anticipating that one might say canceling events like this at the last-minute is a bad look, they went on to explain that they aren't concerned with their reputation, but just with being a safe space.  To quote:

We're not very interested in how Syndikalistiskt Forum appears to the public. We care about taking care of our community and creating a space in which people can feel accepted and safe. When discussing controversial books it is necessary to add criticism and context to ensure a healthy discussion and the comfort of our comrades. You do not do this. Instead the book is only recommended.

So, I, a nominally Jewish guy from New York, recommended a book about Jewish history and identity written by a Jewish guy from Israel who is very critical of both Israel and various aspects of Jewish identity in some of the forms it has manifested itself in over the course of history.  

People at the forum apparently either then read the book or were already allegedly familiar with its contents, and because I recommended it in an essay that was about other things, without going into details about it, I'm deemed to make someone somehow feel unsafe or not accepted.

I have written, in song and essay forms, so much more about Jewish history, identity, Israel, and so many other related subjects, but in the one article they read, which is the one the trolls always recommend people read, they found something disagreeable in my book recommendation.

I'm afraid that as I describe what has just transpired, some people reading this may be thinking that the actions of the Syndicalist Forum in this case are somehow reasonable, normal, or sensible in any way.  I find this very worrying, because this kind of puritanical orientation is completely destructive to the kind of movement-building efforts we so desperately need most everywhere.

In reality, you can't ever possibly organize a social movement or have a real forum by excluding people from your midst because they recommended a book you don't like.  The kinds of alliances and bonds we need to build if there's any hope for our future are so much more extensive than only people who agree with the Syndicalist Forum of Gothenburg's take on Jewish history and identity, and everyone else be canceled.

As they messaged me to inform me they were canceling the gig (while studiously avoiding the use of the word "cancel"), and informed people on their Facebook Event page that if they already bought tickets, their purchases would be refunded, there was no mention to this working musician about compensating me for the loss of this gig, for which organizing was already well underway.

Altogether very un-syndicalist and un-forum-like behavior, to say the least.  The Syndicalist Forum was founded many decades ago, and my guess is this crowd running the show now have nothing to do with the people that started it.  I hope the future of the Syndicalist Forum is both syndicalist and a forum, in the radically inclusive sense, and not a puritanical thought-police operation poisoned by identity politics, as it abundantly appears to be now.

May the future involve a much more inclusive left that is able to have reasonable priorities and able to overlook or accept the fact that people can work together -- and play music for you -- even if they have a different take on some aspects of history and politics than you do!

I am stating the obvious here, I think.  What is so extremely alarming to me is there are so many people in our midst who consider themselves on the left who do not agree with me about this.