But paranoia may be what’s at play here after all. Matthew Covey co-launched Tamizdat and founded law firm CoveyLaw, which last year helped arrange US visas for nearly 1,000 UK artists. Covey says that “no artist has been denied a visa, detained or deported [under Trump] who would not have been subject to the same process under [former US president] Biden. We have certainly seen denials and we’ve seen people being turned around at the border, but every one of those follows a well-established fact pattern.” Artists, to date, have not been banned due to their political opinions, the content of their art or their public statements, he reiterates.
‘They don’t want to be Springsteened’
What has changed among the arts community, Covey says, is a creeping “fear” about what could happen, given what’s happened to academics and students. Earlier in June, an Australian writer and former Columbia University student called Alistair Kitchen was denied entry into the US and sent home due – he claimed – to his writings on the pro-Palestine student protests at Columbia. The CBP denied this, saying Kitchen had “provided false information on his ESTA [visa waiver] application”.
But creatives are concerned. They don’t want to be Springsteened, to coin a phrase. US citizen Bruce Springsteen has been excoriating about Trump on his current European tour, calling the administration “corrupt, incompetent and treasonous”. Trump, in return, took to his Truth Social platform to call The Boss “highly overrated” and “a pushy, obnoxious JERK”.
Neil Young is another case in point. The US-Canadian dual citizen, who will headline Glastonbury next week, is a long-term Trump critic. In April the 79-year-old rocker openly wondered whether he’ll be barred from US when he returns from his European tour in August. “I may be one of those returning to America who is barred or put in jail to sleep on a cement floor with an aluminium blanket. That is happening all the time now,” Young wrote. You can see why some worried Britons are self-censuring.
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.telegraph.co.uk ’
