From the exclusion of Argentine writer Ariana Harwicz from a major Spanish literary festival, to Macklemore's explicit activism on massive stages that cost him his spot on Ed Sheeran's tour: the impact of the Gaza War on the cultural field is dividing artists and creators. In an ecosystem where silence is interpreted as complicity and taking a stance as an affront, the following questions arise: Are there limits to freedom of expression? Is removing someone from an event censorship? Should artists voice their political positions?
On September 14, American rapper Macklemore announced in a statement that he would no longer be the opening act for Ed Sheeran's tour.
"Ed Sheeran and his team made the decision to remove me from The Loop tour," he wrote on Instagram. During two concerts on the tour, Macklemore had used the stage to voice his position on the Gaza War: "One of the reasons I wanted to be part of this tour is because I wanted to stand on stadium stages across the United States and say two words that are very important to me: Free Palestine." His words displeased the American Jewish Committee, who called for his removal from the concerts. Other artists, such as Pink and Culture Club frontman Boy George, joined the discontent. The consequences came quickly. Macklemore revealed that he was sidelined from the tour after delivering his pro-Palestine proclamations. According to the rapper, pressure from venue owners such as Gillette Stadium led the organizers to give Sheeran an ultimatum: remove the opening act or cancel the dates. The news triggered immediate reactions: other opening acts on the British singer's tour withdrew from their shows in solidarity with Macklemore and Palestine. Ed Sheeran responded in an Instagram post, stating that those who attend his shows "do not expect a political forum" and that choosing not to give his opinion on the conflict does not mean he doesn't have one.
What happened with Ed Sheeran's tour? The Palestine controversy that ended with Macklemore and other musicians out of the tour
That debate over freedom of expression also opens the door to conversations about censorship. Was Macklemore censored? For Fernando Arancibia, an academic at UC's Institute of Applied Ethics and specialist in the ethics of war, censorship appears when there is an asymmetry of power, for example, from a state to a citizen. For him, in this case, it would apply. "Even if the stadium owner is a private individual, there is an asymmetry of power whose aim is to censor a speech that is pro human dignity," he tells Culto.
The case of Ariana Harwicz
In another case, in France, the Argentine writer of Jewish origin Ariana Harwicz reported on X that she had been dropped from the International Festival of Art, Literature and Humanities Cultur Alh, to be held from September 21 to 27 in Granada. "They dropped me at the last moment. They caved to pressure from activists. They caved to terror. I wanted to go anyway, even if they held a demonstration; they said it would be dangerous. It will be a Festival without dissent. What a shame for the students," she wrote. Rita Laura Segato, Chilean Lina Meruane, Sabina Urraca, Gabriela Wiener, María Fernanda Ampuero, Brenda Navarro and Ángelo Néstore, who were also invited to the event, backed the organizers' decision three days later. In a joint statement, they affirmed: "We consider freedom of expression a central value of life in society, but that freedom has limits defined by law: insult, defamation and incitement to hatred, among others."
"Harwicz has not only described the peaceful practice of anti-Zionist boycott as an 'anti-Semitic attack,' uncritically aligning herself with the Israeli government's position of equating the Jewish religion with colonialist ideology (...) We believe that those who deny a genocide, just like those who previously denied the Jewish Holocaust, contribute to legitimizing the denial of the racist extermination of an entire people and make themselves politically complicit in these events," they added. "Every cultural or literary festival is entitled to exclude those who hinder or exceed the limits of freedom of expression," they wrote.
After the exclusion, Irish writer John Banville declined his invitation to the same event. He made no statements at the time, nor has he since.
In a manifesto, more than a thousand people supported the Argentine author: "No writer should be excluded from a cultural gathering for their public positions. Defending freedom of expression only for those who think like us is not defending it (...) This statement does not demand agreement with Ariana Harwicz's opinions. It demands something more fundamental: that no one be cast out of cultural life for holding their own ideas, and that no disagreement become a personal condemnation." The declaration was signed by some Chileans, such as writer Carlos Franz, and names like Roberto Brodsky, Andrea Jeftanovic and Lilian Elphick.
Writer Rafael Gumucio also endorsed those words, expanding on his ideas in the essay El placer de excluir in Revista Santiago and in a conversation with Culto. "In some way, if they invited her and then removed her for reasons that have nothing to do with her work but with her opinions, that is called censorship," he argues.
August 6, 2025
Interview with Rafael Gumucio, writer.
Photo: Andres Perez
Andres Perez
"I don't agree with her position at all," he adds, "but I also don't think her statements are unspeakable; I wouldn't say it's the same as a Holocaust denier, although I also fully uphold the right of a Holocaust denier to speak, so to speak, I have no problem with that. But I don't think her statements are what they are claimed to be."
Lina Meruane, invited to Cultur Alh and a signatory of the first letter, elaborated on her view of the matter in a column in El País, published on September 25. "Voices arose framing the incident as a violation of freedom of expression. In doing so, erroneously or conveniently, they omitted the fact that what was being condemned was the normalization of genocide and the demonization of those who oppose it (...) any intervention in the public sphere must assume a political and ethical responsibility, especially when the matter is something as atrocious as a genocide," she argued.
Lina Meruane: "Israel signs whatever it takes, but its policy doesn't change: they seek the total disappearance of the Palestinian people"
That same day, more than 500 people, including Chilean writers Alejandro Zambra, Alia Trabucco Zerán, Nona Fernández, Alejandra Costamagna, Diego Zúñiga and Pía Barros (and 88 other Chileans), signed a declaration in support of Harwicz's exclusion. Among its central ideas, they reject anti-Semitism, affirm that there was no censorship, and call on the publishing world to take a position. One of the signatories was writer and Ph.D. in Hispanic Languages and Literatures Soledad Falabella. "I signed that letter of support in solidarity with the people who are suffering in Gaza, who are living through a moment of great pain and devastation, of genocide," she tells Culto. In the conversation, she asserts that the Argentine writer "is unaware of the pain, does not accept the evidence, and invalidates the limits society places on acts of death and mass destruction." For the academic, "freedom of expression has a limit. The limit is pain and mass destruction, and it also has the limit of not lying; if I spread lies and disinformation, that is not freedom of expression either." She also adds a historical and personal perspective. "Chile lived through similar moments during the dictatorship, when boycotts were carried out over the atrocious things happening under its dictatorial governments. Chile enjoyed international support that sought to denounce the pain the country was experiencing. I was a victim of the dictatorship; I grew up in exile with the pain of not being able to grow up with my family, my grandparents, my cousins. So I don't only show solidarity from the outside; I show solidarity from my own history."
Palestinians inspect the damage caused by an Israeli airstrike on the Al-Shati refugee camp, west of Gaza City, on July 30, 2026. Photo: Xinhua Rizek Abdeljawad
Gabriela Alburquenque, writer awarded the Roberto Bolaño Prize for her novel Aviso de demolición in 2021, also signed the letter. "The genocide of the Palestinian people is being televised, while we, from our cultural spaces, sit around discussing censorship and freedom of expression. There is something deeply obscene about that: those of us who have platforms to speak end up talking about the space we ourselves occupy, while an entire people is massacred, entire families disappear, and death devours everything," she reflects. "I think there is enormous irony in Ariana Harwicz denouncing that she is being silenced from a position of such great public visibility, while those of us who speak out in solidarity with Palestine can indeed face costs for doing so. That was precisely the point of the collective stance we signed: not to demand that a writer be silenced, but to question the decisions and silences of institutions." And she closes: "I dream that we will stop putting writers at the center of this story."
For academic Fernando Arancibia, neither the concept of censorship nor an attack on freedom of expression would apply here, since the latter, according to him, has a limit: human dignity. "All denialist discourses would be contrary to human dignity and therefore subject to the minimum limits of freedom of expression," explains the ethics specialist. "I would say that her statements (Harwicz's) are not covered by freedom of expression, and when I speak of freedom of expression here I mean it in a moral sense, not a legal one," he adds. Nevertheless, "that doesn't mean excluding her is right. I would be in favor of not excluding anyone," he specifies.
Historian, professor at the University of Chile's Faculty of Communication and Image, and specialist in censorship in art, Jorge Iturriaga, also considers that the Harwicz case does not constitute an attack on freedom of expression. "I don't agree with freedom of expression in the abstract, because that freedom can encompass hate speech. In the specific case at hand, which is the genocide in Gaza, I think it is very serious that there are people who do not take a position of unrestricted defense of human rights, because there I believe it must be absolute," he argues.
In a later interview, on September 26, the Argentine writer reflected on the reasons behind her removal: "Deep down I think it's because I'm Jewish. And when someone replies 'but there were other Jews at the festival,' it already seems quite dangerous to me that we start looking at who is Jewish and who isn't. And I would say: I'm being punished for being the bad Jew," she told Radio Mitre.
Ariana Harwicz.
On whether there is a veto against Israeli or Jewish artists, Iturriaga is emphatic: "There is no veto against Israeli artists; social activism is directed at Zionism, at people who staunchly defend the State of Israel; but you are not involved in that simply for having the Jewish religion or ancestry. There are many Jewish and anti-Zionist activists." There is the case of Israeli filmmaker Yuval Abraham, co-author of the Oscar-winning documentary No Other Land, and co-director of NAZA. Abraham denounced the existence of an "apartheid system" over Palestine and called for a ceasefire during the 2024 Berlinale. After those statements, Abraham was accused of anti-Semitism and received death threats.
Sally Rooney and Hollywood
In mid-October, Irish writer Sally Rooney, author of the bestseller Normal People (2018), announced that, by mutual agreement with publisher Faber, she will stop selling her books in the British market. Last year, Rooney announced she would donate her royalties from her works and screen adaptations—one of which is still streaming on the BBC—to fund the activist organization Palestine Action, which was declared a terrorist group by the British government. The decision responds to the fact that, according to the publisher, the country's anti-terrorism legislation restrictions prevent them from transferring to Rooney the proceeds from sales of her works. "Selling a writer's work and not being able to pay her earnings is an unreal situation for a publisher," Faber declared in a statement. For her part, the writer reiterated her support for the cause: "I am fully prepared to accept the consequences."
In a brief letter published by The New Statesman, figures from the cultural world expressed their support for the author. "Sally Rooney is a writer, not a terrorist. Her books must be available to the public. Her withdrawal from the market, based on draconian and ill-conceived anti-terrorism legislation, is an affront to the basic principles of freedom of expression so deeply rooted in this country. We categorically reject censorship," says the manifesto, signed by two Nobel Literature laureates, Anne Carson (2026) and Annie Ernaux (2022).
Jorge Iturriaga defines censorship as "the absolute prohibition of the circulation of content," which functioned to a large extent in the 20th century in film, music and literature. In Rooney's case, he sees old-style censorship "where there is stigmatization and a judicial or political marking, where an organization and collaboration with that organization are being made illegal."
"There is indeed censorship," says Fernando Arancibia, taking the cases of Sally Rooney and Macklemore. Among those supporting the author of Normal People are also the actors starring in the adaptation, Paul Mescal and Daisy Edgar-Jones, and Oscar winners Jessie Buckley (Hamnet), Tilda Swinton and Susan Sarandon. The latter was arrested outside the UN in New York while protesting, alongside other actresses such as Hannah Einbinder and Cynthia Nixon, against the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's appearance before the Assembly. She has already experienced other consequences for supporting Gaza. At the last Venice Festival, she declared that she has lost roles because of her activism. "I have been an activist for a long time because I believe you have a responsibility within your community," she declared in a recent interview with El País.
Susan Sarandon arrested during a protest in New York.
At that same press conference in Venice, the actress expressed her support for Mark Ruffalo, who, along with other actors such as Javier Bardem, uses his fame to name what is happening in Gaza as genocide. Film specialist Jorge Iturriaga explains that "Hollywood operates in a very authoritarian and very coordinated way. For them it is easy to exclude people; it is full of stories of blacklists, very infamous blacklists."
"There is a relationship of asymmetry; it is not only an attack on freedom of expression, but an exercise of abuse of power against these people," concludes Fernando Arancibia.
Art and politics: inseparable?
More recently, Metallica's vocalist James Hetfield was categorical about his band's role on stage: "Metallica is not here, like some other artists, to influence you with our bullshit, okay? We're here, no bullshit. We're here to forget all the shit out there, alright? Metallica's agenda is love, energy and heavy music, baby."
Should artists speak out about political events? "There is an inconsistency between what he said at that moment and what has basically been his career. One could ask: which James Hetfield do I believe, the one from ...And Justice for All or the one who says that? There are two things. First, a kind of contradiction and, second, he is simply giving his opinion on what the link between politics and music should be. In some way he exerts a pressure that I don't think is good on musicians who do want to have a political voice, because Metallica is a band that has money, power, and there is an asymmetry of power," reflects the academic.
"It is not necessarily artists' role to have a political discourse. I leave it up to each one," says Jorge Iturriaga. Nevertheless, their voice can amplify invisible conflicts. "Much of the population doesn't listen to the political class and will never listen to it for various reasons, but they do listen to musicians, artists, singers, painters, because there is a strong bond with many social sectors; it is a layer with much greater resonance. I think many artists feel a great responsibility in that sense," he concludes.