America has a heartfelt message for anti-Semitic rap duo Bob Vylan after their Glastonbury Festival performance this weekend: “I heard you want your visa back.”
Just two days after the infamous performance catapulted the incendiary (if talentless) British hip-hop group to worldwide infamy, a spokesman from President Donald Trump’s State Department confirmed that the band’s United States visas had been revoked for the “hateful tirade,” which included “leading the crowd in death chants” aimed at the Israel Defense Forces.
In case you hadn’t heard of Bob Vylan (led by frontman Pascal “Bobby Vylan” Robinson-Foster, who is apparently unaware that the man his group is named after is an ethnically Jewish supporter of Israel), let me say that we all wish we wouldn’t have. There’s no snippet of “music” they’ve created (no air quotes emphatic enough to put around that word when talking about the atonal shrieking mess that the punk/rap band produces) longer than five seconds that we can post without offending most sensibilities.
However, in the wake of the performance, the one song that went viral — at least in bowdlerized lyric form — is a diatribe about conservatives and moderates in Vylan’s native Britain who have issues with mass immigration, a thoughtful repartee called “I Heard You Want Your Country Back”:
“I heard you want your country back / Shut the f*** up / I heard you want your country back / Uh-uh, you can’t have that / I heard you want your country back / Shut the f*** up / I heard you want your country back / Well s***, me too.”
That refrain is about 80 percent of the song, in case you were curious.
However, in a post-Eminem world, it’s kind of hard to get banned from a country that isn’t yours for obscene lyrical stupidity, particularly with respect to the United States. Unfortunately for them, they also decided to use their set at Glastonbury — the U.K.’s most prominent music festival, basically like Coachella times five — to call for killing IDF members.
After chanting “free, free Palestine” during the performance on Saturday — de rigueur for the festival, sadly — Robinson-Foster said this: “But have you heard this one though? Death, death to the IDF! Death, death to the IDF!”
Amazingly, people chanted along as if he hadn’t just called for murder:
Should Bob Vylan’s visas have been revoked?
“Death, death to the IDF” chanted from the stage by Bob Vylan in front of 200k people at @glastonbury.
Tens of thousands singing happily along.
This is coming to NYC #ZohranForMayor pic.twitter.com/t6vtHVhNQa
— StopAntisemitism (@StopAntisemites) June 28, 2025
“From the river to the sea, Palestine must be, will be, inshallah, it will be free,” Robinson-Foster said.
While the British authorities called it various forms of “appalling” and said they’d be investigating, the Trump administration went a bit further than that. The State Department said they’d look into revoking the band’s visas for an upcoming tour of the United States, with the head of the Department of Justice’s Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism saying the “first thing” he’d be doing Monday morning was calling Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
Well, that didn’t take long to suss out: The State Department has now “revoked the US visas for the members of the Bob Vylan band in light of their hateful tirade at Glastonbury, including leading the crowd in death chants,” State Department Deputy Secretary Christopher Landau said in a statement.
“Foreigners who glorify violence and hatred are not welcome visitors to our country,” he added.
The @StateDept has revoked the US visas for the members of the Bob Vylan band in light of their hateful tirade at Glastonbury, including leading the crowd in death chants. Foreigners who glorify violence and hatred are not welcome visitors to our country.
— Christopher Landau (@DeputySecState) June 30, 2025
The band was scheduled to undertake a U.S. tour starting Oct. 24 in Spokane, Washington, according to NBC News. None of the representatives for the venues they were scheduled to play could be reached as of Monday:
Not anymore. Bob Vylan’s US tour CANCELLED for Jew hatred
— Adam Milstein (@AdamMilstein) June 30, 2025
Robinson-Foster also couldn’t be reached, although he released this rambling non-statement on social media about his daughter writing about her school dinners and how “tomorrow it is a change in foreign policy.”
Look, I may be naive, but I don’t think those school dinners are going to effectuate “death, death to the IDF,” nor am I dim enough to believe that’s what you were speaking up about. Nice try, though — especially hiding behind your kid. Just like Hamas!
As for the general sentiment regarding the visa ban, Article III Project senior counsel Will Chamberlain may have put it best:
Hey @BobbyVylan, I heard you want your visa back
— Will Chamberlain (@willchamberlain) June 30, 2025
Legit question here: Would the visa have been revoked under President Kamala Harris in an alternate timeline? Probably not. As a preview of what that sad counterfactual would look like in this case, we need only glimpse at what British officialdom is doing, which isn’t much when you consider that this is a nation that hops-to whenever someone posts a spicy meme — making sure they’re behind bars pronto — but, aside from calling this 135 different varieties of terrible, isn’t terribly inclined to do anything.
Police are investigating this as the speech crime it obviously is under British law, but they’ll say nothing aside from the fact that they’ve “received a large amount of contact in relation to these events from people across the world and recognize the strength of public feeling,” and also that “there is absolutely no place in society for hate.” Thanks for stating the obvious, Somerset bobbies, but if you’re willing to throw the book at seniors with politically incorrect opinions, the lack of alacrity here is telling.
As for Harris, what would she do? My impression: “This is an important issue, which is an issue because it’s important. We cannot tolerate hate, but we must hate the hate that hate brings as well — right? And to a certain extent, we must love the hate that opposes the hate. That’s what free speech is all about, and why it is free.”
Trump’s State Department when reacting to this appalling threat? TL;DR: “Heard you want your visa back.”
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