The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) welcomes the leading dance music platform Boiler Room announcing its support of the BDS guidelines for the international cultural boycott of Israel and distancing itself from the complicit Israeli investments of private equity firm KKR, which owns Boiler Room’s parent company Superstruct Entertainment.
PACBI, a founding member of the BDS National Committee (BNC), the largest Palestinian coalition that leads the global BDS movement, calls on all other Superstruct-owned live music events to distance themselves from KKR’s investments in Israel’s complicit tech sector [1].
All festivals and companies owned by Superstruct Entertainment are clearly implicated in parent company KKR’s complicity in Israel’s genocide and underlying regime of settler-colonial apartheid, albeit through no fault of their own. Regardless, they therefore have an undeniable and profound ethical obligation to urgently take a clear stance against that complicity.
Grassroots boycotts and protests at Boiler Room, Flow Festival, Mighty Hoopla and Lost Village, among other Superstruct-owned events, reflect widespread support for accountability from musicians, DJs and audiences. We deeply appreciate this meaningful solidarity and organizing.
Last year, more than a hundred artists boycotted the SXSW Music Festival in Austin, Texas, over its partnership with the US military and US weapons manufacturers, given their role in the US-Israeli genocide in Gaza. In a major BDS victory, SXSW dropped the partnerships.
Soon after, hundreds of artists boycotted and protested Barclays Bank’s sponsorship of Live Nation’s British music festivals, due to Barclays’ role in financing weapons manufacturers that are arming Israel’s genocide. Live Nation ended the partnership with Barclays, in another impressive victory for artists and organizers, demonstrating musicians’ collective agency.
The founder of Tel Aviv's most prominent club, The Block, admitted to a German researcher in 2022 that "the #DJsForPalestine boycott campaign [led to] a downward trend: BDS became stronger... Suddenly the DJs who used to play with us didn't want to play anymore." He added, "since the emergence of BDS in the scene... Nobody writes about us anymore."
The Block permanently shut soon after, following 14 years of operation. Before its closure, its founder had spoken of the club’s “importance” for “Israel’s reputation in the world” as so significant to whitewashing Israel’s regime of colonial oppression against Palestinians that “the Hasbara [propaganda] branch of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has chosen it to represent the state of Israel” in official material. A Tel Aviv judge agreed, linking the international reputation of the apartheid city to The Block’s prominence and continuation.
Since 2019, BDS has also called for boycotting anti-Palestinian German clubs including ://about blank and Conne Island. According to German media, BDS has caused “massive damage" to ://about blank, and it’s "uncertain” that the racist Berlin club “will survive" until 2030. Similarly, BDS is "seriously damaging" racist Leipzig club Conne Island and "causing financial difficulties".
Other campaigns targeting complicit German institutions Berghain and HÖR Berlin (and beyond music, Berlinale and Frankfurt Book Fair) are also gaining momentum as artists increasingly refuse to artwash genocide. Conscientious artists are recognizing the power of strategic campaigning, with hundreds of dance, theatre, literary, visual arts and film institutions having recently endorsed the PACBI call for the cultural boycott of Israel.
KKR, though, is one of the world’s largest private equity firms. It should be compelled to divest entirely from Israel’s tech sector, which along with Israel’s broader economy, is nosediving. BDS has already caused some of the world’s biggest corporations, including McDonald’s, Intel, Disney and others, to reduce or attempt to disguise their complicity in Israel’s Gaza genocide.
But the question for artists, organizers and supporters is: how can we ensure our collective efforts are the most effective, morally consistent, and most crucially, bring us closer to our movement’s strategic goals of ending international complicity in genocide, including Superstruct Entertainment’s complicity?
How can we balance our ethical principles on the one hand with strategic effectiveness on the other, never losing sight of either? How can we ensure we never fall into the trap of purity politics, nor ethical inconsistency? These questions are a constant feature of our assessments and approaches to any cultural boycott campaign, and are especially complex in this instance.
One factor that PACBI has incorporated into our demands below is the extent to which Superstruct-owned events can ever truly end their own involuntary complicity in KKR’s Israeli investments, as long as the current ownership status remains. If KKR ultimately profits, doesn’t any engagement with these events constitute some culpability, even if remote?
The corporate structure of global capital means this question is almost unavoidable in many contexts, beyond KKR and Superstruct. And yet, we would not reject the vocal support of, say, an artist signed to a major label that is itself indirectly implicated in Israel’s genocide. A core BDS principle is to differentiate between voluntary and involuntary complicity. The most ethical stance that an artist or organization that has little to no say in their indirect links of complicity can take is to offset that involuntary complicity by respecting BDS guidelines and speaking out for Palestinian liberation and our UN-stipulated rights.
With all the above in mind, and drawing on our experience over more than two decades, PACBI offers four key demands that Superstruct-owned festivals should meet, at a minimum – as Boiler Room has – to avoid targeted boycotts and/or pressure campaigns on the basis of corporate complicity.
These strategic demands are realistic, morally consistent, and rooted in international law. We urge all Superstruct-owned festivals to meet them, and we urge supporters of Palestinian rights to pressure festivals to do so!
- Publicly distance themselves from KKR’s complicit investments,
- Adopt ethical programming and partnership policies,
- Respect BDS guidelines and positions, including on the cultural boycott of Israel, anti-normalisation, priority targets and due diligence,
- Engage with artists and organizers on all the above.
1. “Why is Flow’s new owner KKR problematic?” https://flowstrike.info/faq