London (archive)
London (archive)Nati Shohat/FLASH90

A London community radio station has been sanctioned for playing a song by a rapper featuring antisemitic lyrics.

Rinse FM played the song “Better in Tune With the Infinite” by rapper Jay Electronica on July 12, 2020. The song “contained antisemitic lyrics” including references to “the synagogues of satan” that might “strip, crown, nail me, brimstone hail me” and the lyrics, “To the lawyers, to the sheriffs, to the judges; To the debt holders and the law makers; F*** you, sue me, bill me.”

Rinse FM bleeped the swear words in the song but played the rest of the song unedited.

In its decision, UK communications regulator Ofcom said that Rinse FM played a track “which included lyrics which amounted to uncontextualised hate speech and derogatory and abusive treatment towards Jewish people. The content was also potentially offensive and not sufficiently justified by the context.”

“Rinse FM acknowledged that the lyrics ‘may be seen by some as an antisemitic trope’ when taken out of context, but that the wording ‘Synagogues of Satan’ was lifted from the Bible and that, therefore, finding it controversial ‘would ultimately lead to the accusation that the Bible itself is antisemitic which would open up a much wider and controversial debate,’” Ofcom added, noting that Rinse FM agreed that the song may have been “offensive to one person but disagreed it was ‘objectively offensive to our community or to the wider public.’”

Ofcom found that the lyrics “would have been understood by some listeners as suggesting that Jewish people are evil or worship the devil and characterized Jewish people and Judaism in a negative and stereotypical light.”

Ofcom ruled that Rinse FM breached rules 3.2, 3.3, and 2.3 of the Broadcasting Code. It ordered the station to “broadcast a statement of Ofcom’s findings on a date and in a form to be determined by Ofcom.”

It added that it had attempted to give Jay Electronica an opportunity to defend himself against the allegations about the lyrics, but his management company and legal representative had not responded to multiple attempts to contact them.

“We also considered that the phrase ‘synagogue of Satan’ has often been taken out of its original Biblical context and used as a form of abuse of Jewish people and Judaism,” Ofcom wrote in the ruling. “We therefore did not accept that the Biblical origins of the phrase would mitigate the antisemitic content included in the lyrics.”