British Airways drops Louis Theroux podcast sponsorship after interview with anti-Israel British musician, Bob Vylan

Great Britain’s largest airline has pulled financial backing for Louis Theroux’s podcast, after he hosted and published an interview with Bob Vylan on his show. Accustomed to controversy, Theroux has made a name for himself exposing unsavory characters with extreme views. However, his podcast with Vylan, who once led a crowd of thousands to chant “Death to the IDF,” was widely viewed as supportive of antisemitism and as inciting violence.

“If I was to go on Glastonbury again tomorrow? Yeah, I would do it again. I’m not regretful of it,” frontman Pascal Robinson-Foster declared with a smirk. “I’d do it again tomorrow, twice on Sundays. I’m not regretful of it at all. Like, the subsequent backlash that I’ve faced is minimal. It’s minimal compared to what people in Palestine are going through.”

Robinson-Foster, who performs under the name Bobby Vylan, was clearly not even a bit repentant. More than that, Theroux was effectively showcasing the performer’s loathing of Israel without critique or nuance in the interview broadcast on Spotify last Friday.

The punk duo performed at the Glastonbury Music Festival in June, but their incitement to violence was so severe that the U.S. State Department revoked their visas for an upcoming tour. 

The BBC acknowledged that the decision not to pull the performance, but to continue livestreaming uncritically, broke its own guidelines as the chants could “fairly be characterised as antisemitic.”

According to The Jerusalem Post, a report issued by the Community Security Trust (CST), British Jewry’s antisemitism watchdog, revealed that antisemitic incidents spiked the day after the performance. However, during the podcast with Theroux, Robinson-Foster rejected the report, saying it was unclear what CST was “counting as antisemitic.”

Despite the murder of two Jewish individuals on their way to pray at a Manchester synagogue on Yom Kippur a few months later, Robinson-Foster denied that he had contributed to the surge in antisemitism across the United Kingdom.

“I don’t think I have created an unsafe atmosphere for the Jewish community,” he insisted. “If there were large numbers of people being like, going out and ‘Bob Vylan made me do this,’ then maybe I might go, woof, I’ve had a negative impact here. Again, in that report, what definition are they going by? We don’t know that.”

In response, Dave Rich from CST pointed out that, according to Robinson-Foster’s own words, his call for death to the IDF amounted to a literal call for violence. According to JPost, Rich quoted the performer in his blog as saying, “We are for an armed resistance. We wanna make that explicitly f***ing clear.”

“Theroux’s podcast was recorded before the Manchester attack, which he acknowledges in the introduction,” the CST head of policy wrote. “But they still went ahead and published it anyway, as if the death of two Jews due to an Israel-hating jihadist doesn’t change the context of an interview with someone who became famous for calling for death for Israelis.”

Expressing frustration with the global attention received by his death chant, Robinson-Foster suggested people should concentrate “on the conditions that allow for that chant to exist.”

“Ultimately, the fight is against white supremacy, right?” he asked. “That is what the fight is against. And I think white supremacy is displayed so vividly in Zionists.” 

Theroux agreed with the suggestion that Israel’s actions in Gaza – and Zionism in general – should be viewed through the “lens of white supremacy.”

“I think I’d add to that, there’s an even more macro lens which you can put on it, which is that Jewish identity in the Jewish community, as expressed in Israel, has become almost like an acceptable quote, unquote, way of understanding ethno-nationalism,” Theroux stated. “This sense of post-Holocaust Jewish exceptionalism or Zionist exceptionalism, has become a role model on the national stage for what these white identitarians would like to do in their own countries.”

Although there was some backlash given the charitable presentation of Bobby Vylan and his views, Theroux’s approach might not have been so surprising for those who saw his documentary, “Settlers,” which vilified Jewish communities living in Judea and Samaria.

Whatever Theroux’s personal views on the Middle East, British Airways decided to cut ties with the podcast, as Theroux is ultimately responsible for guests appearing on the show.

“Our sponsorship of the series has now been paused and the advert has been removed,” the carrier wrote in a statement. “We’re grateful that this was brought to our attention, as the content clearly breaches our sponsorship policy in relation to politically sensitive or controversial subject matters.”

In response to the interview, Jewish film producer Leo Pearlman told Jewish News, “Louis Theroux has every right to interview whoever he wants, but with that right comes responsibility.” He added, “When you give a microphone to someone who proudly repeats a genocidal chant that played a part in inspiring attacks on Jews across Britain, you’re not probing hate, you’re amplifying it.”