Elaine Loughlin: The Ed Sheeran and Macklemore row exposes a bigger battle over free speech
Macklemore performs during day one of Leeds Festival in Bramham Park, Leeds.
Ed Sheeran has attracted more than a little heat over the decision to drop Macklemore from his tour for speaking out about the genocide in Gaza, and rightly so.
Remaining silent, as Sheeran has continued to do, when atrocities are being carried out against an entire race, is complicity. Don't try to spin it as anything else, Ed.
But to solely blame Sheeran is to miss a critical and far more troubling point.
Widespread censorship is being enforced by a small group of elite billionaires who have influence over sports stars, celebrities, politicians, tech bros and business leaders.
It is this group of ultra wealthy who have the ability to muzzle voices they do not agree with — Macklemore is just the latest to suffer this fate.
It may sound like an outlandish conspiracy theory, but a small circle of individuals has the power to shape narratives, and mould policy given the top-level access they enjoy.
Within hours of the US rapper being cut from Sheeran's Loop Tour after promoters and stadium owners took issue with him raising the plight of Palestinians, four support acts had pulled out in solidarity.
It can't have been an easy decision for Irish musician Aaron Rowe, whose involvement in the shows would have been career changing. However, he announced he could not "stand by and allow billionaires to use their position of power to silence the rightful voices of those who speak up against Israeli genocide and who highlight the savage murder of children".
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The billionaire in this latest case of censorship is Robert Kraft, the owner of the Gillette Stadium, who influenced his fellow NFL bosses to stop Mackelmore performing at their venues.
It's worth taking a deep dive into Kraft's background, and to shine a light on the murky world of power and control.
This is not the first time Kraft, who has an estimated net worth of $15.2bn, has used his influence to penalise diverging views. In 2024, he paused his donations to Columbia University in response to the institution's handling of pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel campus protests.
The 85-year-old, who owns the US football team New England Patriots, began his career at his father-in-law's packaging company, later taking over the firm, which would become one of the largest paper and packaging companies in the United States.
His name is as much associated with his philanthropic endeavours as it is with the celebrity and political circles he mixes in, but he has not been without his controversies over the years.
Kraft and his associated foundations have donated more than $400m, with a focus on education, health and Israeli causes.
In 2019, he was awarded the Genesis Prize, which is described as honouring living Jewish individuals who have attained international renown in their chosen professional fields. At the award ceremony, Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel "does not have a more loyal friend than Robert Kraft.”
The same year, Kraft was among 25 people who faced first-degree misdemeanor charges for soliciting prostitution at a day spa, charges which were ultimately dropped after prosecutors lost a key court decision over the admissibility of video and audio surveillance.
He also featured in the Epstein files.
Kraft is often seen mingling with celebrities and sport stars and funded multiple high-profile "Touchdown in Israel" trips, bringing dozens of NFL stars on the "goodwill and heritage" tours.
He attended the star-studded and most-talked-about wedding of 2026 between Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce in New York's Madison Square Garden.
His own surprise wedding to Dr Dana Blumberg in 2022 was also celebrity affair.
Their engagement had been announced by fashion designer Tommy Hilfiger at the inaugural amfAR Gala Palm Beach event.
Guests, Tom Brady, Jon Bon Jovi, and Sheeran, who sang for their first dance, were not told it was a wedding celebration until Elton John announced the couple as "husband and wife" as they entered the room.
Like many ultra wealthy, Kraft has provided financial backing to candidates across the political divide to ensure clout is retained regardless of the administration. He had previously been seen as a significant Democrats donor, including to Barack Obama during his term.
However, he is considered close to Donald Trump, donating $1m to his inauguration day celebrations in 2017.
"I have a lot of people who give me advice and he's been very supportive, and I know he's working very hard to serve the best interest of the country," Kraft said of Trump in 2019.
Kraft's wife was appointed to the Kennedy Center board by Trump in February 2025.
Speaking truth to power, brings with it personal and professional risk and it takes a certain amount of courage to confront those in authority. To articulate a moral stance and provide honest facts is not always easy.
Taoiseach Micheál Martin chose not to refer to genocide during his meeting with US president Donald Trump in Farmleigh House last weekend.
Instead, he said he had deliberately focused on aid, as it was the priority for Palestinians living in Gaza, adding the US was “probably the key interlocutor” with Israel.
When RTÉ journalist Micheál Lehane asked the US president about America's facilitation of the genocide of Palestinians, Trump suggested the issue of Gaza had been sorted.
"There's very little happening right now in Gaza. That's not the place that people are talking about actually now," Trump said, before detailing US involvement in getting Israeli hostages taken by Hamas back.
His response exposed a disinterest or perhaps a convenient ignorance of the ongoing trauma of Palestinians.
Views can only be shaped by the information we are exposed to. If certain facts are suppressed or censored, they cannot be considered.
Asked for her view on the Sheeran-Macklemore debacle, outspoken congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez warned "we need to be very clear about how dangerous a precedent this is".
"This is about how just a handful of stadium owners and the elite can prevent an entire massive issue [from being spoken about], in this case the genocide in Gaza, It doesn't stop there, it could be speaking out about AI, it could be speaking out about any issue, that you can now just get a handful of stadium owners to ensure that a person's career can be jeopardised if they speak out about any issue."
Pointing to the significant prominence Ed Sheeran has as a global pop star, she asked: "If they are saying that to him, they can say it to anybody and at what point does it stop?"
Over the past week, people have taken views and sides in what has become a Sheeran vs Macklemore debate, around who was really wronged.
As the controversy was thrashed out across social media, online and in the media, Palestinian people in the West Bank were being forced out of their homes by violent settlers.
This week, images of a lifeless infant wrapped in a bloodied keffiyeh being carried from the rubble of a building in Gaza circulated online. The ashen-faced baby was among 21 members of a family killed when their missile-damaged home collapsed.
As Macklemore put it in a lengthy statement after being cut: "The victims are the Palestinian people, the men, women and children who have been killed starved, displaced and forced to live through unimaginable violence. More than 20,000 children have been killed in Gaza alone.
"People are being killed today, and people will be killed tomorrow, I want to make sure that as I tell this story, we don't lose sight of that."
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