Earlier this month, artists including Bad Bunny, Billie Eilish, and Olivia Dean used their voices at the 68th Annual Grammy Awards to protest immigrant deportation policy under Donald Trump. This comes after an especially eventful January for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, who were heavily involved in the deaths of both Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti during raids in Minneapolis, and who came under fire after accusations of using 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos as bait to lure his father out. It isn’t easy to blame people for getting angry at ICE over such efforts, when these go above and beyond what should be considered normal in the deportation of undocumented migrants. However, I’ve also been of the opinion for some time that celebrities maybe shouldn’t talk politics in a very outspoken manner as they like to. It really rubbed me the wrong way how they do so and are encouraged to do so by my peers. I just couldn’t put my finger on why I felt that way. But with what Bad Bunny, Eilish, and Dean had to say about ICE at the Grammys, I somehow found my answer.
Teenagers and young adults often like to say it’d be the responsible thing for public figures outside of politics to use their status as an icon to speak out on politics and educate the public. To some degree, I get it. Stars like Eilish and Ariana Grande have massive fan bases that they can use to spread their word and encourage change to the most amount of people possible. Even people who say celebrities shouldn’t get involved in politics probably think otherwise subconsciously. They may just flip-flop on the issue depending on a certain personality’s beliefs and whether or not they align. Conservatives trashing Taylor Swift for endorsing Kamala Harris for president in 2024, while praising Kid Rock for endorsing Trump in that same election is a great example of this. It’s clear that this opinion is a decently popular one among people my age, even if most of the time it’s based on hypocrisy. So why am I just not a fan of it when I recognize so much needs to be done towards peace, human rights, and democratization?
The absolute biggest problem I have with celebrity political talk is that first and foremost, they aren’t lawmakers or commentators. They are influencers and trendsetters. When they talk about the IDF committing a genocide in Gaza consistently for millions to hear, they run the risk of getting angry almost seem like something you just go with because everyone else is doing it. Even if such efforts are effective and meet the intended results, chances are our ability to stay angry whenever it’s justified probably goes away. Olivia Rodrigo may be able to condition her fans to feel mighty indignant about human rights violations on minorities under ICE, but who is to say her fans will stay feeling indignant about further Israeli attacks on Gaza, or greater restrictions on abortion rights? She can speak up on as many issues as she wants for as long as she wants, but that only proves she has to do most of the legwork in getting people motivated over such issues.
Individuals shouldn’t rely on famous people to act when needed. My personal opinion on all aforementioned issues may not be as left-leaning as the opinions of my peers or the stars I brought up, but I’d like to think I’m always willing to side with the disadvantaged in these issues. I think the soldiers under the IDF complicit in a genocide in Gaza and are the villain. I think masked agents under ICE deporting undocumented, but hard-working people are clearly the aggrieving party. Though I think it’s important for those that are “in the know” on such issues to speak their mind and get people on their side for the sake of change, I just wasn’t able to take doing so seriously at times, when it felt like some only did so to copy what their idols were preaching. Even worse, in not talking about such issues to avoid feeling trendy, I myself may have also looked the part of a slacker who wasn’t doing much of anything despite recognizing the obvious moral failings undertaken by certain parties. Now, I can’t help but look back at what I said or didn’t say on Gaza and ICE and wonder if maybe I should’ve spoken my mind more, despite how I felt doing so would’ve made me look.
In some ways, it almost feels like the world has been falling apart since the turn of the decade. This means now, people have to learn how to get angry in the most effective way possible: on their own. From Hungary, Türkiye, and once again in the United States, authoritarian heads of state and government have used their power to squash dissent and expand their reach, making apparent their desire to have it all to themselves. We must understand how to get angry about politics on our own again, before these political strongmen get so good at what they do, that we won’t even legally be able to feel angry in the first place.
