Refused Debate Effectiveness of Festival Boycott in Trying to Support Palestine

Refused admittedly considered boycotting some upcoming festival appearances after learning that one of the financial backers had invested in Israeli Cyber Security amidst the ongoing conflict between Israel and Palestine. But rather than doing so, they detailed some of the thought provoking conversations that took place in deciding how to approach what to do in trying to share their support for Palestine amidst reports from Al Jazeera of starving citizens due to Israel's blockade from aid.

The veteran rockers announced that they would be embarking on a farewell tour this year and that includes a number of appearances at music festivals around the world.

In an interesting move, the band revealed their initial gut reaction to drop off an unnamed festival after learning that the event had a financial investor that didn't align with their political view and had.dealings in the ongoing Israel-Palestine conflict. But, when reaching out to the festival to share their concerns, they were confronted with discussion of some of the problematic players that have a hand in other parts of their business.

That led to a multi-layered discussion about how to proceed, the effectiveness of the band boycotting the festival and what the band could actually do to best show their support for the starving Palestinians that inspired their reaction.

What Refused Had to Say About Their. Festival Non-Boycott Decision

As stated, rather than immediately acting on the impulse to boycott select festivals they were playing that had a problematic financial backer, Refused reached out to festival organizers that led to a larger discussion on how to best address their concerns.

A detailed account of the band sharing on social media some of the discussions had can be read below:

So a week ago we found out that some of the festival we're playing this summer are backed by an entertainment conglomerate called Superstruct in which a bad bad actor named KKR is part owner. KKR invests in Israeli Cyber Security among other fucked up things. Our first instinct was to immediately jump ship, to boycott. We communicated this to the festivals and the organizers wrote back saying they shared our values and felt like we did, that they loved what they did and were proud of the festivals they'd created, that the majority of their audience would be sympathetic to our position and that they were gutted that bastards like KKR had bought into Superstruct after they'd started working with them, staining their life's work by extension.

One of them also questioned our other associations (cheeky, but he was right), saying that Live Nation are behind some other festivals and shows we're playing, one of whose owners are Blackrock, a multinational heavily invested in weapons manufacturing, and that our music is on Spotify which donated money to Donald Trump's inauguration and also invests in military AI. The scum of the earth basically.

These festivals also told us they wanted us to make noise for the Palestinian cause, one of them even offered to give us a large amount of money just to donate to pro-Palestinian organizations.

So, the conundrum became: Boycotting these festivals would make us feel good about ourselves, the band's legacy wouldn't been tarnished by association with these disgusting companies. It would feel nice, but it wouldn't do any good; Being morally superior doesn't put food in the mouths of starving Palestinians. Also it wouldn't make headlines; We're not top billing on these festivals because, although we have a strong following within a specific subgenre of heavy music, we're not a huge band. Some Swedish leftists sitting out a few festivals wouldn't raise many eyebrows.

We've mulled this over and although there's a strong argument for taking a stand against KKR and this development of amoral private equeity and hedge funds buying into the arts because it's non-controversial and comparatively safe, it would be naive to think our boycott would even register for them. Rather the opposite, if people like that knew what we talked about on stage they would rather have us stay home, and with the charred bodies of Palestinians burned alive stacking up in the concentration camp/graveyard that Gaza has become, we have decided to make some noise, to go meet our people, to celebrate the resistance and raise money for the Palestinian cause this summer.

To us, it it the right thing to do, to get out there and be a thorn in the side of zionists, fascists, venture capitalists and to fan the flames of discontent together with our bright, informed comrades all over Europe.

A lot of you have already bought tickets and are expecting us, so we'd love to get suggestions from local organizations and activists we could work with in all the countries and cities we're playing.

FREE PALESTINE!!!

What Else Refused Said About Their Deliberations

The band continued their discussion in the comments section of their post.

"These kinds of deliberations are not new to us. In our late teens, coming out of the DIY underground, we were obsessed with ending our involvement in systemic oppression through the power of boycott, through spreading awareness of the human rights abuses in the countries that produced the consumer objects our generation coveted, the environmental impact of eating meat, the horrific abuses carried out by the USA in South America in order for us to have cheap bananas," they shared.

"These were all hot topics in the leftist punk underground at the time (and if we're being self-critical for a moment, it's obvious now that we were deluded in thinking that creating leftist utopias outside of the mainstream would achieve the great system change we were aiming for. Instead we left the parliaments to the neo-nazis we used to fight in the streets [Antifa did the lion's share of the fighting, but once or twice we fought them as a band, though most of the time we were too outnumbered and out-menaced to do shit], who gladly put on suits and toned their rhetoric down in order to gain power, an endeavor in which they succeeded beyond our wildest nightmares, as we can see all over the west right now)," they added.

"It took us uneducated working class morons a while to learn what many picked up during two or three classes at uni: that all of us in the west are complicit in the exploitation and subjugation of a huge part of the non-western world and while we worked hard to rid ourselves of this complicity by becoming incredibly conscious consumers, we slowly started to understand the immense machine of oppression that Europe and the US have constituted from the 1500s to this day, a fact that made our twenty-something consumer choices in the north of Sweden seem pretty insignificant," they continued.

From there the group offered, "This didn't deter us, but it definitely put us in check. What we quickly realized though was that we were always gonna be a gateway band. The underground community is a beautiful place, but after having seen the hundredth band preaching about the evils of capitalism or organized religion to a crowd of people dressed exactly the same as them, reading the same books, listening to the same bands, you start to wonder what the point really is: do we want to be right or do we want change? Refused was always a different animal than the pure, DIY or die-bands, and we did things they could not. That was kind of the point, to try and bring these ideas into the light."

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"The centre-right government of Sweden gave us an award once (thank you @psl) and although we fucking hated their guts, we accepted the award just so we could stand right there in the corridors of power and ridicule them, humiliate them to their faces," they recalled.

"There were minor deals with minor devils made, but through it all, we reached kids who would never have been exposed to these ideas otherwise: we turned a lot of people on to vegetarianism and veganism through our music, and there's no counting the amount of people who have come up to us and said that our songs sowed the first seed of what grew to be a radical political life. It's what we're most proud of, the many activists, teachers, human rights lawyers, doctors and environmentalists for whom we were a companion (or even a stepping stone) on the way to a life of serving the greater good. They didn't preach to the converted, they didn't freak out about bar codes on CDs, they actually went out there and did shit," continued the band.

In conclusion, they offered, "I guess what we're trying to say is, these choices are not easy for us but we take them very seriously, and we've driven ourselves mad trying to bat a hundred in a crooked game. Which is why our next project will be DIY, more on that later."

Refused in 2025

As stated, Refused are in the midst of their farewell tour. The band kicked off a North American run earlier this spring. They'll start up their next tour leg on June 13 at the Nova Rock festival in Nickelsdorf, Austria with European dates booked through Aug. 22 in Vilar De Mouros, Portugal.

More dates in the U.K. and Europe will follow in October with the band currently booked through Oct. 12 in Munchen, Germany.

See all of Refused's 2025 tour dates and get ticketing information through their website.