“So if you do win an award tonight, don’t use it as a platform to make a political speech. You’re in no position to lecture the public about anything.”
—Ricky Gervais, hosting the 2020 Golden Globes—
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Yesterday, famous pop singer Billie Eilish took to the stage of the 2026 Grammy’s to accept the Song of the Year award for “Wildflower”. Yet rather than devote the majority of her acceptance speech to thanking her legions of fans for making her who she is, Eilish instead used the occasion to sanctimoniously declare “No one is illegal on stolen land” and “Fuck ICE.”
Mind you, the 24-year-old star was speaking to the most gated audience in the world. Every single one of these hypocrites have their homes surrounded by thick walls, surveillance cameras, drones, access codes, armored cars, and enough guards to give Blackwater a run for their money, but they can’t seem to imagine why we normal citizens might want some basic level of protection for ourselves. “Open borders for thee but not for me.” Celebrities get to enjoy levels of security far surpassing what most medieval kings had, but apparently regular people (like Laken Riley, Jocelyn Nungaray, Rachel Morin, and Kayla Hamilton) are free game and shouldn’t complain.
Billie Eilish in particular has protested against immigration enforcement, against the right to own guns, and against having wealth, all while she herself is kept safe by round-the-clock armed bodyguards and owns some of the most exclusive property in the country. If Billie Eilish walked into the kitchen of her $14 million mansion one morning to see her sliding glass door shattered and me sitting at the table eating a bowl of cereal, I doubt my shrugging and saying “No one is illegal on stolen land” would cut it. I’m willing to bet she would consider me to be very much illegal, and would have me swiftly and violently deported from her premises.
(Side note: look at the girl in the stupid feather hat clapping like a seal after Eilish says “No one is illegal on stolen land.” Sweetheart, whoever you are, if you’re gonna attempt to show solidarity for those you think are “the least of these”, you probably shouldn’t dress like you’re representing the Capitol in the Hunger Games.)
All this without mentioning that Eilish’s “stolen land” claim—far from the morally courageous zinger I’m sure she thought it was—is a worn-out ideological slogan as empty of truth as it is of originality.
To quote Mike Solana of Pirate Wires:
“Eilish declared ‘nobody is illegal on stolen land’; a regurgitated leftist meme implying that everything we have was taken from Pocahontas and her talking racoon. Cool. Fact check: there was no country here when Europeans arrived. There were small bands of tribal people with no infrastructure, no concept of property, and no written language. They were—while I’m sure lovely when they weren’t killing each other—primitive. Then, American settlers built the wealthiest and most powerful country in history from trees. Billie is what happens when you listen to teachers who hate you. But the truth is there for anyone who wants to really learn: America was made by Americans. And Americans should be proud.”
Even so, the deeper issue is not the historical illiteracy of the slogan “No one is illegal on stolen land” or the disrespectful juvenility of “Fuck ICE”, but rather the phenomenon of the most insulated people in our country feeling entitled to opine on matters that never affect them.
Usually I avoid writing in reaction to specific events in the news; mostly because specific events are forgotten a week later, and if I developed a habit of always reacting to events I would never have the time to write anything of lasting significance, beauty, or depth. But with this particular incident I just couldn’t help myself, because it’s the perfect example of everything that’s been wrong with the Hollywood crowd for decades. We as a public really do not hate celebrities enough.
And to be clear, the problem with celebrities isn’t that they use their wealth to enjoy lives of comfort and safety. It’s that they enjoy lives of comfort and safety while advocating for a world that’s radically unsafe for us and our children.
They possess an almost religious devotion to the progressive project, but they shoulder none of the cost if the progressive policies they advocate for go horribly wrong.
Billie Eilish can say “No one is illegal on stolen land” because Billie Eilish doesn’t give two flying fucks if an illegal immigrant rapes and murders your daughter. Why would she? Nothing like that will ever happen to her or anyone she knows.
It’s easy to be progressive when you have no skin in the game. It’s easy to be liberal with other people’s property. It’s easy to support laws that make it harder for ordinary citizens to defend themselves, when you have an entire staff of people dedicated to defending you.
But the flip side is that celebrities like Eilish shouldn’t be surprised when regular people finally do start hating them enough.
