i always get this way sometimes

The 1975 did not waltz into Malaysia unannounced, they were invited to headline a festival by a government who had full knowledge of the band with its well-publicized political views and its routine stage show. Malaysian festival organizers’ familiarity with the band was the basis of our invitation. Me kissing Ross was not a stunt simply meant to provoke the government, it was an ongoing part of The 1975 stage show which had been performed many times prior. Similarly, we did not change our set that night to play, you know, pro-freedom of speech or pro-gay songs. To eliminate any routine part of the show in an effort to appease the Malaysian authorities’ bigoted views of LGBTQ people would be a passive endorsement of those politics. As liberals are so fond of saying, “silence equals violence, use your platform”, so we did that. And that is where things got complicated. Naturally. the Malaysian authorities were irate because homosexuality is criminalized and punishable by death in their authoritarian theocracy. That is the violent reality obscured by the more friendly term “cultural customs”. But it was the liberal outrage against our band for remaining consistent with our pro-LGBTQ stage show which was the most puzzling thing. Lots of people, liberal people, contended that the performance was “an insensitive display of hostility against the cultural customs of the Malaysian government, and that the kiss was a performative gesture of allyship”. To start, the idea of calling out a performer for being performative is mind-numbingly redundant as an exercise. Performing is a performer’s job. The stage is a place for creating artists’ expressions, which are inherently dramatized. That’s why audiences go to fucking shows. Other people, other apparent liberal people, contended that the kiss was itself a form of colonialism. That The 1975, in the rich tradition of evil white men past, was forcing its Western beliefs on the Eastern world. My how the West has fallen, ladies and gentlemen. The East India Company could have saved a fortune on weaponry if they knew that all they had to do was make out with each other to forcibly subjugate the people that they exploited. To call The 1975’s performance colonialism is a complete inversion of the word’s meaning. Colonialism is the practice of forcible occupation and economic exploitation. Once again, The 1975 was INVITED into the country to headline Malaysia’s music festival in an effort to capitalize on our popularity so they could make money. Despite the band being amateur jiu-jitsu enthusiasts, we’re not very good, we have no power at all to enforce our will on anyone in Malaysia. In fact, it was the Malaysian authorities who briefly imprisoned us. So for performers like Julian Casablancas, who took to Twitter to criticize us, this bizarre mangling of colonial identity politics merely served as an expedient way to express their own disappointment with the festivals cancellation because it would be in poor taste, surely, to lament a loss of performance. So these are the types of mental gymnastics that are employed by celebrities to save face with their liberal-appearing audiences who delight in having their favorite academic catch phrases parroted back at them. I’m not waiting for applause, I’m just calming down.

Levying the accusation of colonialism against Western critics is, by now, a standard PR procedure in the authoritarian theocracy playbook. Just last summer, amidst criticism of human rights abuses against the enslaved workers who built their soccer facilities, the UAE’s representatives contended that Western journalists who highlighted this fact were guilty of enforcing their colonial games on their local, religiously-armed customers. But the fact that the UAE employs the Western consultant McKinsey to write this kind of perverted relativism is a great stroke of irony. And the fact that the UAE was the first country to kick The 1975 out for being gay is the cherry on top. There’s a contradiction at the heart of liberals’ outrage over our supposed cultural insensitivity. Their unconditional belief in inclusivity and tolerance has led them to indirectly support a government which is intolerance of their own existence. What responsibility do liberals have to be ideologically chivalrous to those who wish them death?

If you truly believe that artists have a responsibility to uphold their liberal virtues by using their massive platforms, then those artists should be judged by the danger and the inconvenience that they face for doing so, not by the rewards that they receive for parroting consensus. There’s nothing particularly stunning or brave about changing your fucking profile picture whilst you’re sat in your house in Los Angeles. I’m really fucking pissed off with this shit. Malaysia’s militarized enforcement of laws against public displays of homosexuality creates a clear line in the sand for what artists are allowed and expected to do. But elsewhere, this line isn’t so defined. Even here in America, there’s loads of states which uphold illiberal laws that restrict people’s bodily autonomy and gender expression. I don’t know why you’re cheering. But I suspect, I’ve got an inkling, that those who took to Twitter to voice their outrage over The 1975’s unwillingness to cater to Malaysian customs would find it appalling if The 1975 were to acquiesce to, let’s say, Mississippi’s respective bullshit abortion or trans laws. The idea that it’s incumbent upon artists to cater to the local cultural sensitivities of wherever they’ve been invited to perform sets a very dangerous precedent. It should be expected that if you invite dozens of Western performers into your country, they’ll bring their Western values with them. If doing the same things which made you aware of them could land them in jail in your country, you’re not actually inviting them to perform - you’re indirectly commanding them to reflect your country’s policies by omission. This kind of statement criticism goes against the very idea of a site of cultural exchange where differences are allowed to coexist. This, that, is a more valuable idea to protect than the bigoted sensitive of those that wish its demise. Yeah. Don’t forget who wrote this."

Mad Cool

Madrid, Spain

Matty Healy once said... 6/∞