I'm not saying he shouldn't be criticized. The point of my post was not to defend him but to narrow the point of criticism: that continuing the tour is not the problem, it's his rhetoric around "not taking sides", "not being political", and "keeping discourse open". In other words, I've seen too many points of contention where people are right to criticize but focusing on the wrong thing, and this is one of those situations.

As Marxists, we can only expect people to act in the collective self interest of their class. If he has potentially thousands or millions of dollars on the line, we cannot reasonably expect Mr. Sheeran to just burn that money when he likely has contracts - which are common in sports and entertainment - that hold him liable in the case of damages due to political speech.

What we should be holding him accountable for is the political speech that he has made, despite not thinking that his speech is political. Showing him the hypocrisy of supporting Ukraine but not Palestine, and especially critisizing his "both-sidesing" rhetoric wrt the horror and damage of the war.

There is a fine line between calling for a public figure to change their stance and agitating the public into hostility towards a person. Both have their place, but I believe our collective tactic towards Ed Sheeran should lean towards the former instead of the latter, at least until further information comes to light.