A peace protester highlighted the death and destruction in Palestine and Sudan at Kendrick Lamar’s Super Bowl halftime show on Sunday 9 February. They managed to unfurl the countries’ flags during a performance of tv off.
However, the security guards who tackled the Black protester all seemed to be white, in a microcosmic example of the white establishment’s attempts to shut down resistance to the oppression of Black and brown people around the world:
A performer waved the flags of #Palestine and #Sudan during the #SuperBowlLIX halftime show and was chased off stage and finally tackled and removed by security.#SuperBowl2025 pic.twitter.com/Qv41X9kQkf
— WAFA News Agency – English (@WAFANewsEnglish) February 10, 2025
The biggest irony was that it was all during the set by Lamar – which was a fairly obvious pushback against white supremacy and ethnonationalism.
White billionaires want Black sweat, but not Black protest
American football’s main event, the Super Bowl, is one of the world’s biggest sporting events, earning hundreds of millions of dollars. Over 100 million people watch it every year, with attendees paying thousands to get in. Consumers spend around $17bn in connection to the event. Billionaires have a field day. Truthout explains that the “clear racial hierarchy” of the game:
It’s a league dominated by powerful white owners who hire mostly white coaches all while profiting in the billions off the sweat and injuries of Black men who make up the large majority of the league’s players and who are disproportionately impacted by the game’s violence.
Companies, meanwhile, invest millions for short advertising spots. These include, in the last couple of years, pro-Israel propaganda. US billionaire Robert Kraft, who has benefited massively from the American football business, Kraft is a close ally of war criminal Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and has a close relationship with the Israeli establishment in general. He reportedly “writes seven-digit checks to the right-wing Israeli lobbying machine AIPAC”, “attends fundraisers for the Israel Defense Forces”, backs his close friend Donald Trump, and routinely smears critics of Israel’s actions as antisemites.
Kraft’s adverts are a bit more subtle than straight Israeli propaganda. He forked out $7m for one in 2024, and the same again for another this year. The subtext of the adverts seems to be primarily that Black viewers should accept the false equivalency between criticism of Israel and antisemitism. As Alan MacLeod writes at Mint Press News:
many Black leaders, as well as movements such as Black Lives Matter, have allied themselves with the Palestinian cause, seeing parallels and connections between the oppression of Palestinians abroad and the treatment of Black Americans at home. As such, Israel has a serious PR crisis in the Black community. Hence, the attempts to reach them through sports and music.
tv off at the Superbowl
You could say the dancer’s timing was perfect as well. They unfurled the Sudan/Palestine flag at the Superbowl as Kendrick Lamar’s tv off was playing – a track that pushes back against conformity with the white supremacist system and also urges us to reject what its proponents would lead us to believe.
In fact, Lamar’s whole set choice was not lost on many people:
the fact that his performance was sarcastic nationalism and he ended with tv off because american media is polluted with propaganda and said yeah shit was CRAZY https://t.co/HZGhKoMTfe pic.twitter.com/rbzHUxjIur
— َ (@yetaao) February 10, 2025
Performing on a playstation controller.
The split American Flag.
Uncle Sam trying to censor Kendrick.
The streetlights.
The “game over” in lights in the crowd after performing TV off??All of this during Black History month. pic.twitter.com/DaOcM0kSDV
— 🍉Rushé 🇵🇸🇸🇩🇨🇩 (@Rushe_C) February 10, 2025
Sadly, Lamar himself has had some issues surrounding public support for Palestine. His Insta posts on the issue were all seemingly deleted. It’s unclear whether it was by him or his social media team.
Ultimately, though, the dancer who has risked their career to show the Sudan/Palestine flag perhaps made the biggest statement of the entire Superbowl.
Featured image via the Canary
