Wajahat Ali
Role at the time: Writer and political commentator, host of The Left Hook, appearing as a panel guest on Piers Morgan Uncensored
Statement summary
On the September 16 episode of Piers Morgan Uncensored, writer and commentator Wajahat Ali argued that removing Macklemore from Ed Sheeran's tour was a "generational fumble" by Israel, Robert Kraft and pro-Israel figures generally. He compared the reaction to the global turn against South African apartheid in the 1980s, said Israel had "lost the youth" and "lost the culture," attributed that shift to people watching what he called a genocide on their phones over two and a half years, and argued that pressure would amplify rather than suppress Macklemore's message — renaming the Streisand effect the "Sheeran effect." Morgan replied that Israel's popularity had been "consistently plunging" and that a significant majority in America now held a negative opinion of Israel. Ali's characterisations of Israel's conduct, of Kraft's coordination and of public opinion are his own.
“This is a generational fumble by Israel and Robert Kraft and anyone who's pro-Israel. What you're witnessing in real time, Piers, this is fascinating. What you and I are witnessing is what happened in the '80s with the global turn against South African apartheid. Israel has lost the plot. They've lost the youth. They've lost the culture. It's done. No matter how many pro-Israel apologists come on the show, I want you all to know it's over. You've lost the youth. People have become radicalized because they've seen a genocide on their phone for the past two and a half years. And no matter how much, if you will, power you exercise against them to crush them, what's going to happen from here on out now, Piers, is you're going to see more and more people wake up, which is what happened right now. The Streisand effect should be called the Sheeran effect.”
Why we used this label
Ali affirmatively defends the speech before making the argument quoted here: he rebuts the antisemitism charge by citing the Anti-Defamation League's acceptance of Macklemore's apology for a costume incident twelve years earlier, says the MetLife crowd applauded rather than booed, and says Ed Sheeran should have refused to drop him. He then condemns Robert Kraft's role in the removal. That combination places him with Tucker Carlson (853) and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (802), who likewise defend the speech while condemning the removal, rather than with speakers such as Mehdi Hasan (587) who criticise the removal without assessing the merits of the speech. The closest competing label is “Mixed or conditional”; it loses because Ali attaches no condition, concedes nothing to the critics' characterisation, and expresses a single consistent evaluation across the turn.