In Australia, outdoor dance parties — known colloquially as “doofs” — are billed as progressive events that value peace, love, unity, and respect. So why do organizers keep booking artists who celebrate Israel’s genocide in Gaza?
For many Australians, there is nothing that epitomizes high summer more than the doof (for those unacquainted with the local dialect, doofs are outdoor dance parties similar to raves). Although pioneering parties like Rainbow Serpent and Earthcore are no longer running, festivals like Esoteric, Wild Horses and Rabbits Eat Lettuce have stepped into the breach, pulling in thousands of punters looking to dress up, drop acid, and lose their minds to psytrance for a few days.
Smaller, underground doofs are advertised to limited social networks and usually fly under the radar. Larger doof festivals, however, are professionally promoted, feature international artists, and evince a typical and replicable psychedelic aesthetic. Whether a semilegal gathering of mates or a festival with five stages and 15,000 punters, doofs are meant to offer an escape from the day-to-day worries of work, rent, bills, and general late-capitalist precarity. To many, they’re also an opportunity to temporarily take part in a genuinely horizontal set of social relations, and to experiment with new ways of being together where exploitation and oppression are absent. Whatever the flavor, the combination of electronic dance music (EDM), entheogens, and nature is potent and popular.
Cultural studies scholar Susan Luckman explains that “the term ‘doof’ resonates in Australia with sub-cultural capital,” which means in practice that many doofers understand their scene and its values as a way of life and not merely an opportunity to get wasted on the weekend.
The principles of Peace, Love, Unity and Respect (PLUR), which emerged from the 1990s US rave scene, are fundamental to Australian doof culture, and many participants see doofs as a vehicle for personal and social transcendence. There’s undoubtedly a utopian element to this, but unlike festivals such as Burning Man, Australian doofs are largely free of Silicon Valley tech moguls and still offer a relatively egalitarian, progressive atmosphere. That’s why they’re marketed — and often idealized — as spaces for free expression, individual empowerment, spontaneous community, and psychedelic exploration.
Over the last year, however, the trip has threatened to turn bad. This summer, artists who actively support Israel’s genocide have performed at major doof festivals. Others are slated to perform at festivals to be held later in the year. Last summer, the organizers of one festival encouraged attendees to boost and donate to coming_home4life, an Israeli pro-war campaign group. It’s not just an affront to PLUR. It’s something that the vast majority of doof attendees would — and should — reject. It’s one thing to enjoy a temporary escape facilitated by dance music (and substances.) It’s another thing entirely to get down and high to tracks played by artists who publicly and actively support war and genocide.
The Soundtrack to Genocide
Of the international artists at large Australian doof festivals, a significant number have always been Israeli, as have plenty of attendees, many of whom are backpackers fresh from finishing their compulsory military service. In and of itself, this is both inevitable and not a cause for alarm; no festival should bar artists or attendees based on their nationality, let alone ethnicity.
It also makes sense that Israelis are well-represented. Australia has a vibrant outdoor party scene centered around various “psy” genres. And according to anti-Zionist Tel Aviv–based DJ Niv Hadas, psytrance is “the truest form of Israeli folk music.” Metallic bleeps, acid squelches, 148-bpm kick drums, and samples from science-fiction films are core components of what has become one of Israel’s most popular genres.
Numerous factors account for this, not least among them the connection between electronic music and Israel’s highly militarized society. For young Israelis, a period of often hedonistic travel after military service is customary. As a 2023 history of psychedelic culture by Ido Hartogsohn and Itamar Zadoff notes, “The founders of the Israeli psytrance scene were recently discharged male soldiers.”
The emergence of a psychedelic trance scene in Israel — as “warrior backpackers” brought the music back from Goa — was contemporaneous with the First Intifada. The emergence of psytrance as a “truly popular music” by 2000 aligned with the beginning of the Second Intifada. Periods of intensified violence seem to spur the cultural dissemination and popularity of psytrance, offering citizens of Israel an opportunity to unite and forget the violence committed by their state against a racialized enemy. This can appeal to both hard-line Zionists and people who just want to escape “the situation” by way of the drug-fueled pseudo-spiritual transcendence and collectivism characteristic of psytrance parties. As Hartogoshon and Zodoff explain:
The reception of trance culture into Israeli society was facilitated because it contained many cultural components that resonate with Zionistic youth movements and military life — camping in nature, navigation, and male camaraderie. Trance founders repurposed practices acquired during their army service toward participation in the new psytrance culture.
Indeed, as anthropologist of electronic music Graham St John documents, “Psytrance music and culture has permeated everyday life in Israel, where it emerged as a popular music by 2000.” Over the same period — and since — young Israelis have shifted further to the right.
There is of course a spectrum within Zionism, ranging from religious and openly ethnosupremacist Zionism to liberal Zionism, which aspires to a more progressive — but still ethnocentric — Israel. Recent decades, however, have seen the center of Israeli politics shift so far to the right that the liberal Zionist antiwar movement of previous decades is entirely absent. This shift has flowed through into Israel’s music scene. While many Israeli DJs evince a kinder, gentler, more liberal Zionism, what matters is whether they support war and genocide. Whether Israel Defense Forces (IDF) bombs fall in the name of LGBTQ liberation or the total elimination of Palestinians as a people is immaterial to the lives they destroy.
Similarly, psytrance isn’t an inherently militant or nationalist genre or one that openly glorifies violence. Nevertheless, Israeli psytrance has evolved to the right, in step with Israeli culture in general. As anthropologist Giorgio Gristina argues, there is a
more dark, disturbed, militaristic or violent tone that can be found in Israeli psytrance, in the names of albums, artists or events like Expression of Rage, Psycho Sonic, Deeply Disturbed, Becoming Insane, Smashing the Opponent, Conquering the Israeli Desert, Groove Attack, We’re Dangerous, We Must Evacuate, Ground Zero, NuClear Visions of Israel and so on.
Of course, the political aesthetic of Israel’s psytrance scene also encompasses everything from apolitical ambivalence to hippie-flavored Zionism that decries the “cruel darkness” of “people [who] want to kill each other” while expressing faith that “the lights of hope, unity and love are lit.” Meanwhile, at least 61,000 Gazans are dead, and the strip lies in ruins while Israeli politicians — with support from the White House — discuss ethnic cleansing. And while some Israeli psytrance fans and artists may prefer to look away from the IDF’s violence, the reality is that psytrance is the soundtrack to Israel’s genocide.
Bush Doofs and Zionists
Australian doofs have a very different political aesthetic, which reflects the more progressive outlook of most organizers and participants. Most doofs begin with a welcome to country or smoking ceremony given by the traditional indigenous owners of the land on which the festival is held. Festival organizers draw on indigenous Australian practices and traditions to impress upon patrons a connection to the land and support for Aboriginal sovereignty, to encourage respectful behavior, and to showcase progressive politics.
However, this show of support for indigenous sovereignty — and the tacit anti-colonial stance it implies — is undermined when doof organizers book artists who are active partisans for an ongoing settler-colonial movement. Take Wild Horses, for example. As its website states, Wild Horses is “founded over basic human principles: LOVE and RESPECT. We encourage acceptance, we encourage love, we encourage you to be all you can possibly be but make sure you do the same to all the ones around you.
Wild Horses takes place at Carapooee West in Victoria, and last year it ran from December 6 to 8. Israeli psytrance artist Skizologic headlined the festival, and a cursory search of his social media accounts makes plain his support for Israel’s genocide in Gaza. As one post reads, “If you are silent when terrorists murder Israelis, stay silent when Israel defends itself.” His one-sided focus on October 7 is typical of Israel’s basic justification for war, and his outspoken criticism of those who have stood against genocide is hard to reconcile with the Australian doof scene’s avowed commitment to PLUR.
In the case of Wild Horses, there’s reason to believe that the decision to book pro-genocide artists is not simply due to naivety. In 2023 the festival solicited donations for coming_home4life, a Zionist group formed after October 7 that campaigned for the IDF and Israeli government to wage war with the aim of rescuing the hostages and prisoners taken by Hamas. Wild Horses organizers also linked attendees to the hashtags #bringthemback and #bringthemhome, which overflow with racist and pro-genocide material. Wild Horses did not promote any equivalent campaign or charity aimed at supporting the people of Gaza, despite the horrifying hardships they continue to endure. And at last year’s Wild Horses, organizers introduced and enforced a policy prohibiting “political demonstration and disruption.” This is hard to square with anything other than the festival organizers’ fear at a backlash against their support for pro-war artists and charities.
The problem is not restricted to one festival. Rabbits Eat Lettuce, planned for April 17 to 21 this year, features Israeli psytrance legend Astrix, who has shared videos justifying civilian deaths in Gaza, including of children. Other Astrix posts praise the “healing power of music” for Israelis impacted by October 7, in line with the purportedly progressive, peaceful, and apolitical attitude toward genocide characteristic of liberal Zionist psytrance artists.
While such views are commonplace, they also point toward solidarity between the Israeli psytrance scene and the IDF. Take, for example, the 2024 drone light show “renovation” of “Invasion,” a track by psytrance duo Invisible Reality. Or as reported by Turkish news outlet TRTWorld, an instance of IDF soldiers doofing to psy-pop monstrosities amid rubble, to promote a dance party they planned to hold in Gaza. In another case, video footage emerged of IDF soldiers dancing in the ruins of a bombed-out school that had previously sheltered displaced Gazans.
The explicit nexus between the Israeli psytrance scene and the IDF is added impetus for Australian doof organizers to refuse to book pro-war artists. And when they fail, knowingly or unknowingly, doof attendees have an important role to play in ensuring that festivals do not endorse ethnic cleansing and war.
Esoteric Festival is probably the most prominent Australian doof festival. Last year, a major boycott campaign led by ordinary punters pressured Esoteric organizers to rescind the booking of pro-genocide Zionist DJ Antinomy. Shamefully, Estoteric’s organizers soured this decision by also dropping Juman, the only Palestinian artist on the bill, on the grounds of hastily concocted “safety concerns.”
This year, Esoteric was canceled at the last minute after building surveyors for the Buloke Shire Council refused to approve necessary permits, on public health and safety grounds. However, festival organizers had booked several Zionist headliners to play at the event — and at least one, Animato, played anyway at a smaller, consolation event held on March 9, at Melbourne Pavilion. Animato is not an artist who attempts to position himself as apolitical, and he has made his support for the IDF’s campaign in Gaza very explicit. Animato is also explicit in his anti-Arab racism. In one reply to a post on Threads, he asked what “Arab country [sic] contributes to the world beside terror?” It’s a stance decidedly at odds with Esoteric’s self-portrayal as “an environment safe for everyone, free from negative energy that’s filled with love.”
Invisible Reality — mentioned earlier — and their side project Sorin and Shamil were also slated to feature at Esoteric. The duo have shown consistent enthusiasm for the genocidal campaign waged by the IDF. There is no ambiguity in video posts that uphold “peace, unity and love” while claiming that “Israel never targets civilians deliberately,” arguing that “if you think they do, you have been fed fake news.” They are, essentially, wartime propaganda.
Boycott Pro-Genocide Festivals
While the bombs have stopped for the moment, the Zionist state is pivoting toward ethnic cleansing in Gaza and land seizures and home demolitions in the West Bank, with the blessing of President Donald Trump’s White House. This is the context that festival organizers must take into account when making decisions about which artists they book. As Australia Palestine Advocacy Network president Nasser Mashni argues, festivals cannot claim to uphold progressive values while remaining silent or claiming neutrality. Rather,
progressive spaces like music festivals have a moral obligation to refuse to platform artists who support or justify genocide and the oppression of marginalized peoples. When festivals knowingly provide a stage to Zionist artists who publicly back the genocide of Palestinians, they perpetuate the normalization of apartheid, war crimes and crimes against humanity. These spaces cannot claim neutrality while supporting the very systems of violence they purport to oppose. Silence in the face of genocide is complicity, and these events must stand in solidarity with human rights, liberation and Palestinian justice.
At the same time, as Mashni notes, the “normalization of anti-Palestinian racism and Islamophobia is rampant, often unchallenged and deeply ingrained within institutions, including the arts.”
So far, organizers of Wild Horses, Esoteric, and Rabbits Eat Lettuce have not heeded the call to boycott pro-war, pro-genocide artists. The organizers of Wild Horses declined to respond to questions about the types of speech or action prohibited by their “no politics” policy. Similarly, organizers of Esoteric and Rabbits Eat Lettuce refused to answer questions about the steps they took to avoid booking artists who support genocide or whose commitments and actions compromise the ethos espoused by both festivals.
Regardless of whether this stems from conscious support for Israel’s war or a head-in-the-sand attitude, it’s at odds with the values of the vast majority of doof attendees. It’s also a stance that threatens to undermine what is genuinely progressive about Australian festival culture. To experience the unity of shared rhythm amid lights among friends is beautiful. To remain true to that experience, festival attendees have a responsibility to pressure organizers when they make the wrong decisions.
This isn’t to argue that festivals should boycott all Israeli artists, nor is to suggest that organizers should vet every artist’s social media profile for misplaced likes. Nor should it apply to artists who oppose the genocide despite supporting Zionism in some abstract form. Rather, the boycott should apply to all artists — regardless of nationality, ethnicity, or religion — who explicitly endorse and support Israel’s war crimes, racism, and genocide. Because in the case of Israel’s war on Gaza, there is no ambiguity. It was — and is — an open and obvious violation of international law. To dance to music performed by artists who support these crimes is to dance to the soundtrack of genocide.