She was on air to discuss the increasingly hysterical fallout from the decision to drop Macklemore as the support act on Ed Sheeran’s U.S. tour. Faith believes that because children in Palestine are suffering, it follows that Sheeran’s wish to keep politics at arm’s length from his young fans is unacceptable. Her contribution was a perfect, and suitably uncomfortable, example of how the conflict in Gaza has taken root in the culture.
Previous Israeli-Palestinian conflicts had little direct internal effect on the U.S. and other western democracies. But the Hamas assault on October 7, 2023, and the Israeli retaliation that followed turbocharged such massive levels of engagement on the issue that it has become today’s defining marker of identity politics. From omnipresent graffiti in towns around the Mediterranean to the occupations at Harvard and Columbia, from Hollywood award ceremonies to rallies in Europe’s biggest cities—Gaza animates activism and emotion like nothing else.
But that means it also has an extraordinary power to divide and disrupt. We know the Hamas leadership hoped for, perhaps even anticipated, a political earthquake. They also gained a cultural one.
Having a “stance” has become mandatory, as Sheeran found out. New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft and other stadium owners didn’t want Macklemore; Sheeran’s other support acts pulled out in protest. They all decided taking sides was their duty.
Sheeran, sensing his audience was doing the same to the detriment of his ticket sales, social following and future popularity, felt compelled—clearly under duress—to appease both and, inevitably, given the all-or-nothing nature of this culture war, satisfied nobody. To illustrate how the pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel agenda coalesces with an even more amorphous anti-Western sentiment, former child singer Charlotte Church declared on stage: “He [Sheeran] chose consumerism and capitalism over doing the right thing.” Church may have thought her view of the “right thing” was obvious. To others, it was less clear what, exactly, Sheeran should have done.
Although this nebulous worldview existed before October 7, Israel’s response to Hamas’ attack has created a pretext—or an excuse—for it to become mainstream, and in that time, anger about funding Israel, arms deals or even just companies with tangential connections to Israel added to the sense among the young especially that capitalism itself is a kind of immoral conspiracy. The cultural upheaval caused by Gaza, and the pro-Palestinian movement’s associations with anti-Western, anti-capitalist ideas, seems likely to further destabilize Western societies. The Harvard Youth Poll from fall 2025 shows only 39 percent of American 18- to 29-year-olds said they supported capitalism (down from 45 percent in 2020), while 52 percent said they did not.
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