The Pop Corporation

It’s usually pretty lame when some writer starts bleating on about something being beyond satire, chirruping ‘YOU COULDN’T MAKE IT UP!‘ and all that. However, sometimes things happen in real life and you are left thinking ‘what the actual fuck?’ and we’re wandering into that exact territory when you basically look at a hipster music festival having a sponsor that it the US military.

SXSW has a ‘super sponsor’ of the US army, which is wild to write and in this bizarro time we live in, is barely surprising anymore. Like, we all laughed when The Simpsons had the ‘join the navy’ episode and Spinal Tap played a base, but we laughed because it was somewhat inevitable that some bozos would probably end up doing it.

As such, a number of acts have pulled out of SXSW for their support of Palestine, citing the Texan showcase’s ties to contractor RTX Corps, who make weapons that are used by the IDF, and the literal sponsorship by the US army. The latter is not some vague thread someone followed – they are a literal ‘super sponsor’.

This is from the Army themselves and you can see the page here.

Ella Williams, who goes by the Squirrel Flower moniker, put a statement out, noting that she was removing herself from the bill: “I am pulling out specifically because of the fact that SXSW is platforming defence contractors including [RTX] as well as the US army, a main sponsor of the festival.”

“These defence contractors make the weapons that the IDF uses to bomb Gaza. The IDF has now killed at least one in every 75 inhabitants of Gaza, I refuse to be complicit in that,” Williams added. “I don’t believe that a music festival should include profiteers of war – I believe that art is a tool to create a better world and has no place alongside warmongers.”

A number of other artists have withdrawn also, and a post by Austin for Palestine Coalition asked the festival to lose these cogs of warfare, and Mamalarky’s Noor Khan added that it was a “really easy decision” to pull out of these gigs, because “playing these two official shows could never bring us anything that matters more than the lives that are being lost in Palestine today”.

As most artists play the event for exposure and a free wristband for the weekend, it’s not like their bottomline is going to be affected too much, but honestly, current war or not, what self respecting musician wants to play on the same bill as the US Army doing a panel called ‘The Greatest Innovator In The History Of The World’?