Bono: The Narcissistic, Rockin’ Mascot of a Brutal System

The Irish rock star stood deific, with the stiff, translucent-skinned figure of the American president looming at his back. His hands were clasped, as if in prayer, and his eyes, emotion-moist but concealed behind rose-tinted shades, stared earnestly up at the heavens above. The president, this ailing leader of the Free and Liberal World, wrapped the Medal of Freedom around the rockin’ humanitarian’s venerable neck, and a solemn moment was shared. Paul David Hewson—Bono—had transcended us all, elevated at last to the level of liberal sainthood.

The image of the twat Bono, with Biden standing so intimately behind him, the stench of leather and oak filling his nostrils, will, perhaps, one day be understood as an iconic one. It captures a profound moment in time, one last occasion of exquisite self-congratulation, where an aging liberal class could, before the coming madness of a second Trump administration, freely celebrate how humane they all are. This was Biden’s final Presidential Medal of Freedom ceremony, held a day after his administration, as a parting gift to Israel, announced a further $8 billion in arms sales, ensuring its 15-month campaign of annihilation in Gaza is to be extended further still.

Biden and Bono are both, in their respective ways, personifications of an old liberal order in its death throes. Whereas Biden has long been a literal wielder of hard power, working within the Democratic Party establishment to pursue war and dismantle the welfare state, Bono has been its enthusiastic, leather-clad mascot, sprinkling a little star dust upon a political system drenched in blood.

It is no coincidence that Bono’s emergence as a prominent political figure came as the neoliberal era set in. This has been a period in which the welfare state has been chipped away, bit by bit, increasingly leaving ordinary people exposed to the whims of the market. Where once people could, at least partly, rely on the state for housing, healthcare and education, they have since been increasingly forced to turn elsewhere in moments of crisis.

The charity sector and philanthropy, as a result of neoliberalism, have taken more important positions within society over the last few decades. But, as Bono’s compatriot, Oscar Wilde, pointed out in his essay “The Soul of Man Under Socialism” in 1891, “this is not a solution: it is an aggravation of the difficulty. The proper aim is to try and reconstruct society on such a basis that poverty will be impossible.” Philanthropy is a tool used to justify the destruction of the welfare state, and Bono, the ultimate celebrity philanthropist, is the living embodiment of it. He and his U2 bandmates are, in their native Ireland, widely derided as tax dodgers, as, until 2006, they availed of a tax exemption for artists in the country, meaning they paid very little despite their vast fortunes. Once this loophole was closed, they immediately relocated their business to Amsterdam, where the tax rate was agreeably low. For all the millions Bono has raised for charity, he has hoarded many of his own in unpaid taxes.

Bono’s prime obsession is Africa, that “terrible beauty,” as he has called it. That enormous, diverse landmass he has personally taken it upon himself to speak for and patronize, a tragic place where, as the fucking Bob Geldof-penned “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” reminds us every December, suffering is boundless.

That there is suffering in Africa, as everywhere, is obviously true, but, as Geldof and Bono, who, of course, sang on the track, would have it, it is only through the interventions of Western—white—stars and philanthropists that it might be alleviated. Ignore and drown out the voices of people who actually live there, for it is only through the benevolence of the rich, and the artful ways of the market, that Africa might be saved.

Bono is, above all else, a businessman, and, as such, has helped hatch a scheme to rescue the poor by having the rich buy overpriced, luxury shit. He is the co-founder of Product Red, which licenses its trademark to a range of companies on the condition that they donate some of their profits to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. Corporate partners of Product Red include Apple, Nike and Starbucks, all of whom have, at one point or another, been linked to human rights abuses in Africa and elsewhere, but Bono doesn’t seem to detect any potential conflict of interests there.

These companies and others, through their association with Product Red, are able to whitewash their image by selling Red-branded products, giving the appearance of doing good, all while making a profit. The amount of money they actually donate to the Global Fund, incidentally, is actually tiny in relation to the profits they generate. According to Product Red itself, $760 million has been raised for the Global Fund in the nearly 20 years of its existence. That’s an impressive sum, taken in isolation, but Apple alone recorded $93 billion in profits last year. Many of the corporate partners of Product Red grow unthinkably rich by exploiting the lands and people of Africa and elsewhere. But that’s okay, because the freedom-loving Bono has helped to set up a business which skims off a little of the profits to give back.

In reality, despite the medal he wears proudly around his neck, Bono doesn’t give a shit about freedom. There is no freedom for the exploited workers—men, women and children—who toil for the mega-corporations he courts. There is no freedom, either, for the people of Palestine, torn up day after day by bombs provided by the very man who bestowed that absurd medal upon him.

Irish musicians have been unusually vocal on the subject of Israel’s genocidal campaign in Gaza. Led by Kneecap last year, every Irish act due to play South by Southwest in Texas pulled out, citing the U.S. military’s sponsorship of the event. Fontaines D.C., accepting a prize at the Rolling Stone U.K. Awards recently, spoke out at the podium against Netanyahu and Zionism. Lankum, owing to their vocal support for Palestine, were, in November 2023, removed from the bill of a festival in Germany. Bambie Thug, Ireland’s Eurovision Song Contest entrant, faced immense pressure for their support of Palestine, but did not falter.

None of these artists are as wealthy or as powerful as Bono, who, when it suits him, is more than happy to brandish his own Irishness as a way of demonstrating his opposition to colonialism. These smaller artists actually stand to materially lose something by speaking out, whereas Bono, protected by his millions in the bank, could afford to take the hit. But he, for the most part, prefers to remain silent, occasionally issuing vague calls for peace in the region, while accepting awards from one of the men most responsible for its implosion.

Bono is a disingenuous, hypocritical, greedy, narcissistic shithead, but he is not stupid. With his Medal of Freedom on the way, he understood perfectly well that he would be called out for his silence on Gaza, so, on January 4 this year, he addressed the subject in the pages of The Atlantic, the official magazine of smarmy, centrist dickheads. Amid the false modesty and intellectual masturbation of his fittingly self-righteous essay “The Gorgeous, Unglamorous Work of Freedom”—“Rather than go back to school, I went to Africa for my education”—Bono did get around to the thorny matter of Israel and Palestine, where, to his credit, he wrote, “Freedom must come for the Palestinian people. It does not take a prophet to predict Israel will never be free until Palestine is free.”

He is absolutely right about that. But what he fails to acknowledge, willfully, is that the reason Palestine is not free is because of the system of imperialism and exploitation he personally represents. It is not free because liberal elites such as himself have, at best, remained silent over the years and, at worst, actively supported Israel’s crimes. It is not free because of Joe Biden, who, in this same essay, Bono celebrates as “the kind of fighter you want on your side,” which, to be fair, assuming your side is a genocidal apartheid regime, he’s right about.

Bono’s weakness on Palestine is not unique, of course. He is not alone at the top of the music game, either refusing to speak out against Israel or actively supporting it. Taylor Swift and Beyoncé, two of the world’s biggest stars with a combined wealth of about $2 billion, have said little to nothing about it, perhaps mindful of the vicious smears pro-Palestine artists like Dua Lipa have received over the years. Artists I personally have loved, Radiohead and Nick Cave, each, too, have something to answer for when it comes to their stances on Israel and Palestine.

Pop stars and celebrities shouldn’t have such outsized voices in our society, but the fact is they do. Some prefer to steer clear of politics, while others, like Bono, revel in it. But, in either case, these are powerful, wealthy people, and they should be treated as such. If they refuse to use their power to even condemn a genocide, all for the sake of protecting their brands and their wealth, we should condemn them, even if it means disrupting our idealized fantasies about who they are. People capable of creating beauty are capable, too, of moral depravity.

The world is moving in an ominous direction, and the time of Bono’s particular flavor of benevolent liberalism is almost through. In its place comes ever rising wealth inequality, authoritarianism, ecological collapse and a more uncouth variation of megalomania as personified by Trump. The failure of Bono and Biden’s cohort has brought us to the brink of disaster, but is Bono, really, likely to care about that? He has his millions in the bank and, with that medal around his neck, he has received the recognition of his own saintly brilliance that he craves. That, for Bono, is all that has ever really mattered.