Should Taylor Swift acknowledge Palestine? This is a question that’s started its own digital wars between fans and critics alike (despite there being an obvious right answer), with the discourse having reignited after the pop star announced her new album, ‘The Life of a Show Girl‘ earlier this month. The glitz and glam of the cover art is a hard pill to swallow for Swifties with a conscience, who feel an uncomfortable dissonance between the fantasy Swift is selling and the reality they are living.
During the COVID pandemic, when some of the world’s most popular stars revealed just how embarrassingly rich and out of touch they are, there was a brief, glorious moment that I believed perhaps celebrity culture was dying. There was no shortage of think pieces being published about ‘the death of our fame obsession’, as ordinary people woke up to the fact that celebrities are only relevant because we believe them to be.
Well, I can confidently say that celebrity culture never really did die. In fact, you could argue it’s back in full swing thanks to a politically fraught world in which any distraction is a welcome one. But with this mentality comes a not-so-implicit implication that pop culture and politics are mutually exclusive, and that entertainers should somehow be exempt from the moral standards we would otherwise hold our role models to. And this is no clearer than in the way people continue to defend Swift’s silence almost two years into an ongoing genocide.
Should we really go to celebrities for politics?
This is the argument I most often come across when people complain about Swift’s silence in relation to the genocide in Gaza, and it’s not a bad one. After all, in a world where everyone is an armchair expert and disinformation is rife, shouldn’t we be more selective about whose opinions we platform?
It might shock some of my readers to know that I somewhat agree with this — generally speaking, I don’t think we should go to celebrities for opinions that are irrelevant to their role and expertise. But the question here is: what do we consider to be political?
Swift was, for a long time, ‘apolitical’. It wasn’t until 2014 that she embraced the label ‘feminist’ and took on the aesthetics of women’s activism — though she was soon accused of white feminism after Nicki Minaj tweeted that MTV’s 2015 Video Music awards had propped up white women at the expense of women of colour, and Swift had responded: “Maybe one of the men took your slot.”
In 2016, Trump won his first election in the US and Taylor Swift stayed silent, refusing to endorse any specific political candidate. It wasn’t until around a year into his presidency that Swift — after being called out by a gay friend for not having a public stance supporting LGBTQIA+ people — came out with her single ‘You Need To Calm Down’ ( “You’re comin’ at my friends like a missile/Why are you mad?/When you could be GLAAD?”). She told the Guardian in 2019 that she is pro-choice but she had learned to avoid politics after the Dixie Chicks were effectively cancelled for speaking out against the Bush administration’s invasion of Iraq.
“I come from country music. The number one thing they absolutely drill into you as a country artist, and you can ask any other country artist this, is ‘Don’t be like the Dixie Chicks!’ she said.
She admitted that a lot of her silence on politics was attributed to not feeling educated enough to comment — but in 2020, she embraced being political.
In that year, Swift spoke out in support of the Black Lives Matter movement and called for Juneteenth to be recognised as a national holiday. She dedicated herself to “ferocious anti-racism” and also publicly accused Trump of “stoking the fires of white supremacy”, promising to have him voted out in the next election.
All this tells us is that Swift is political (even if she’s often bad at it). She has repeatedly presented herself in recent years as a progressive icon who is dedicated to women’s rights and racial justice. And, more importantly, she has done so at times that are strategic to her brand — embracing feminism in 2014 when stars like Beyoncé were popularising it, Black rights in 2020 as people rioted for George Floyd, and an anti-Trump stance in 2024 when there was widespread support for Kamala Harris.
It’s exactly this history that frustrates fans who want her to speak out. Aside from the obvious point that it is the moral thing to do and silence is complicity, it’s also consistent with her brand to adopt the biggest political movement of the moment, which at this point is no doubt support for Gaza, as we are seeing in widespread and sustained protests around the globe.
There’s no shortage of celebrities, politicians and other public figures who have changed their tune regarding Palestine in recent months as supporting Israel becomes a more and more untenable position. Support for Palestine is, finally, becoming mainstream — so what has Swift got to lose?
Usually, it’s here that her defenders would claim that speaking out for Palestine would risk Swift’s livelihood. ‘She’s just a girl!’ they cry while wearing pink bows and writing in glitter gel pens. (One of the most sinister elements of her mythology is the way she has remained infantilised as if she’s a vulnerable teenager when she is in fact a 35-year-old billionaire who sent a cease and desist letter to a college student who tracked her private jet’s carbon emissions, but I digress.)
Taylor Swift’s net worth is close to AUD$2.5 billion. I’m not exaggerating when I say her wealth is so staggering it’s hard for the average person to grasp — she could be cancelled, blacklisted and never work again and, with a high interest account, remain a billionaire. And as we all know, there is no such thing as a good or ethical billionaire in a world where this kind of wealth can only be accumulated through exploitation.
Even if publicly calling for a free Palestine could actually ruin Swift’s career — and I find this impossible to believe given the movement’s popular support — I’d also put forward the notion that being an ally sometimes requires sacrifice, and when we’re talking about the lives of millions of people, a drop in sales or gigs is actually worth it.
And then, of course, there’s the fact that Swifties are dedicated to their idol in a way that is seldom seen in celebrity culture. When Swift toured in Australia, such was her soft power that her Eras Tour was estimated to have injected half a billion dollars into the local economy.
So is it actually unreasonable or unfair to expect her to take on the latest political movement — a call to end Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestine — when we know she has the income, power and support to do so mostly unscathed? When she is literally a billionaire who has made her brand and name adopting progressive politics?
Do I think Taylor Swift will denounce Israel and support Palestine? No, because she’s a billionaire and billionaires don’t come for the system that creates and maintains their wealth. But can you imagine what it would mean if Swift decided to withhold her new music until the blockade on Gaza is lifted? Can you imagine how much money she could raise if she shared fundraiser links for families trying to survive the genocide? And, for her fans, my message is: can you imagine what would happen if you refused to engage in the hype around her album until she speaks out?
If Taylor Swift was serious about being “ferociously anti-racist”, she would have done all this already. I think it’s time we accept her silence for what it is.
Top photo – Pictured: Taylor Swift, Source: Jordan Strauss/AP