Left-wing politics shocks at Glastonbury festival

The notion that conservatism is "the new punk rock" has been a common trope of the Donald Trump era, repeated by alt-right college kids, thirsty politicians and headline writers.

- Michelle Goldberg

Progressives, the argument went, had become the uptight enforcers of taboos, while right-wingers were impudent insurgents pushing the bounds of permissible expression. As people on the left increasingly valourised safety and sensitivity, members of the new right revelled in transgression and cast themselves as the champions of free speech.

This idea was always disingenuous; when they gain authority, American conservatives almost inevitably use the force of the state to censor ideas they don't like. But it took hold because it contained a grain of truth.

Left-wing culture, especially online, could be censorious, leaving many who interacted with it afraid of saying the wrong thing and resentful of its smothering pieties. The right, by contrast, offered the license to spout off without inhibition.

That is almost certainly part of what drew so many alienated men into Mr Trump's orbit. In 2018, the rapper formerly known as Kanye West said that wearing a MAGA hat symbolised “overcoming fear and doing what you felt, no matter what anyone said.” This year, his id fully liberated, he put out a track titled Heil Hitler.

Increasingly, however, it’s the left that is rediscovering the cultural power of shock, largely because of horror over the massacres in the Gaza Strip and the minefield of taboos around discussing them.

Consider the international uproar over the performance of the punk rap duo Bob Vylan at Britain’s Glastonbury music festival this past weekend. The act's singer led a teeming crowd — some waving Palestinian flags — in chants of “Death, death to the IDF’ the Israel Defence Forces.