Award Shows or Political Rallies?
When Ricky Gervais delivered his infamous monologue at the Golden Globe Awards in 2020, he joked:
“So if you do win an award tonight, don’t use it as a platform to make a political speech… You know nothing about the real world. Most of you spent less time in school than Greta Thunberg. So if you win, come up, accept your little award, thank your agent and your God, and ---- off, OK?”
It was comedy, but it captured a growing reality: entertainment ceremonies have increasingly become ideological stages. That perception only intensified at the Grammy Awards on February 1, 2026, when artists including Billie Eilish and Bad Bunny used their acceptance speeches to criticize immigration enforcement and ICE. During her Song of the Year acceptance for “Wildflower,” Eilish declared:
“As grateful as I feel, I honestly don’t feel like I need to say anything but that no one is illegal on stolen land… And ---- ICE.”
For supporters, it was courageous. For critics, it was reductive. What should have been an evening celebrating music became a platform for border politics. The broader question isn’t whether artists have the right to speak, they do. It’s whether reducing complex policy debates to slogans delivered from insulated stages contributes anything meaningful.
“No One Is Illegal on Stolen Land”
The phrase is rhetorically powerful. It invokes historical injustice and moral absolutes, but it also collapses centuries of geopolitical complexity into a single moral claim. Nearly every modern nation rests on layers of conquest, migration, displacement, and conflict. If historical injustice alone invalidates sovereignty, then borders everywhere are illegitimate - a principle that, taken seriously, would render virtually all modern states disputable.
The hypocrisy becomes more concrete when applied to Eilish herself. Her $3 million Los Angeles mansion sits on ancestral Tongva land. Critics quickly asked whether her slogan implied a willingness to share or relinquish that property. No gesture followed. Influencers even attempted to stay a night or two at the mansion, claiming “it’s our land now,” yet none were allowed inside.
If historical conquest permanently invalidates ownership, then the principle applies globally - North Africa, the Levant, much of Europe, the Americas. Words on a stage are one thing, the consequences in the real world are another.
Selective Outrage
Immigration is not abstract; it intersects with law enforcement, public safety, and social policy. High-profile tragedies show just how real the stakes are.
In February 2024, Laken Riley, a 22-year-old nursing student, was murdered while jogging by Jose Antonio Ibarra, a Venezuelan illegal immigrant who had previously been caught at the border and released. Record fentanyl overdoses in the U.S., exceeding 100,000 annually in recent years, are tied to cartel smuggling across the southern border.
In January 2026, three former members of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), a designated terrorist organization, were deported after illegally crossing the U.S. southern border in 2024. Security concerns also arose over a Gaza man arrested in 2025 for his role in the 2023 Hamas attacks after entering on a fraudulent visa. Meanwhile, foreign nationals such as Mahmoud blocked Jewish students from entering universities in the name of the Palestine movement.
According to U.S. Customs and Border Protection data, in fiscal year 2025 there were thousands of arrests of noncitizens, including over 1,000 for homicide and manslaughter, and tens of thousands for drug trafficking and illegal re-entry, many linked to illegal border crossings. The Department of Homeland Security reported that 70% of ICE arrests in 2025 involved illegal aliens who had been convicted of, or charged with, crimes in the U.S.
Across the Atlantic, similar tensions are playing out since Angela Merkel opened Germany’s doors during the 2015–2016 migration wave. Praised as humanitarian, her policy nonetheless left ordinary citizens to absorb the strains: rising crime, housing pressures, welfare stress, and integration challenges. Leaders and elites navigated these policies under heavy protection, while everyday citizens faced the consequences firsthand.
Policy vs. Performance
Immigration policy is complex. It involves border management, asylum law, labor markets, humanitarian protection, counterterrorism screening, and transnational crime networks. Reducing all of this to slogans like “no one is illegal” or “abolish ICE” may energize crowds, but it does not substitute for governance. Policy requires trade-offs, and those trade-offs affect real people.
The asymmetry is glaring. Public figures demand moral absolutes while securing themselves behind walls and guards. For ordinary citizens, navigating these consequences can feel like living in a real-life Hunger Games, where risks and vulnerabilities are unevenly distributed, and those on protected stages remain insulated.
Entertainment institutions increasingly function as ideological platforms rather than cultural ones. Award shows once celebrated artistry; today, they often resemble political rallies with a soundtrack. Celebrities are free to advocate for open borders or policy change, but responsible debate requires grappling with consequences, not just delivering applause lines.
If someone truly believes borders are immoral, critics might reasonably ask: would they apply that principle to their own property? Would they tear down their walls and open the gates? Until that distinction is clarified, audiences are left to wonder: are they watching a music awards ceremony, or a campaign rally behind very secure gates?
