Billie Eilish is the Bad Guy
Why “No one is illegal on stolen land” made MAGA so crazy
Plenty of artists serenaded viewers with their anti-ICE stances at the Grammys.
So what was it about Billie Eilish’s acceptance speech that struck a major chord?
Just seven words turned out to be coated in professional-grade adhesive: “No one is illegal on stolen land.” I predicted this would be a 24-hour media storm, but we are four days into it (I can’t be right all the time).
Her fellow pro-immigrant vocalists got a pass. The right wing did not take aim at Bad Bunny — he’s next week’s problem. Olivia Dean gets special treatment as a conservative girlie pop favorite. Shaboozey is a Black country artist so … they don’t know him. And Sza got a one-time permission slip for saying we’re all “governed by God.”
Unfortunately for Billie, she meets a lot of requirements conservatives look for in a target: a wealthy, formerly blue-haired, young woman who rejects traditional femininity, is extremely vocal about politics, but imprecise with words. For MAGA, her simultaneous detachment from “real life” and impressionable naiveté set off their community’s Virtue Signal alert system. (Very loud.)
Which is why it took no time for internet sleuths to test her own purity against her declaration that “no one is illegal on stolen land.” Shortly thereafter, an influx of notable GOP creators began to point out that the pop star herself owns two Los Angeles homes on the “stolen land” of the Tongva and Chumash tribes.
Fire, meet gas. The content grew long, fast legs from there.
TRIPLE H
Three kinds of content coming out of this story:
Humor: Social media sketch comedy is typically dominated by left-leaning theater kids (a title the right is very fond of using derogatorily). But boy, oh boy, did some conservatives bring out their best “yes, and.” Creator Evan Faunce, acting out a Billie Eilish press conference, has a ton of moving parts but this is the key:
“Didn’t you say you’re against borders?”
“Well, personally I believe that there shouldn’t be ANY borders.”
“That’s weird cause don’t you live in a gated community?”
That “gotcha” is everywhere right now. Here’s a viral animated video making the same argument to 4M viewers. This one requires acceptance of immigrants into your home as proof of you standing on business. This one below … is a guy in a full Party City native-style outfit joking about moving into Billie’s house. It has 10M views.
History: So many historians in the chat! Rather than calling it land theft, their framing is an exploration of land conquest and sovereignty. Phillip Millar took this approach:
“The whole history of humanity is one of conquering territory, establishing sovereignty, until somebody takes it away from you. That is how land rights are given … you have to have borders to run a country.”
This video from conservative politics creator Nyisha Loraine picks up where Millar left off: “There was no modern sovereign state that was not established through conquest, force, consolidation of power, or war … Conquest is not an exception, it is the rule.”
Histrionics: There’s a bullshitty way to argue that Eyelash is being a hypocrite, and a considerate way to do it. Anthony Rispo put out a thoughtful analysis of this type of “public moral posturing to gain approval.” Megyn Kelly on the other hand … If you’ve ever wanted to hear MK sing like Billie Eilish, today is your lucky day.
She also calls the singer “the most depressed person in America” who wore a “disgusting outfit” that looked like the “human embodiment of a domino.” Where it gets extra funny to me is when Kelly casts herself as the everywoman sentenced to living “ungated” and “unprotected” while Billie “has more money than god” and lives in a gated community. The two have comparable net worths,1 and I’d bet the farm that Megyn’s house has a gate.
LET ME IN
Leave it to a British bloke to ratchet the tactics up a notch. (I wrote that in an English accent but I don’t know how to indicate that to you all.) Ben Leo pulled up to the house of honor and rang the bloody doorbell! Gave a wave to the security cameras and said “Billie, let us in please!” The video’s so viral that I even saw it here on Substack. Rare.
I reached out to Ben to ask a couple questions about his field trip and his feelings on the story. I’ll update this article when I hear back and notify you all in the Who Broke It chat!
WHO IS DOING WHAT?
I was kind of embarrassed to discover I still followed the Kamala HQ account on Instagram last night (have since traded the follow from my personal to my Who Broke It account). When it popped up in my feed with a new video, I can’t lie, my first reaction was just … no. We’re not rummaging through the remnants of Brat Summer in the dead of the Winter From Hell.
I’m relieved to see that this video is not a campaign announcement. It’s the starting point of a progressive organizing initiative that builds on the pre-existing social infrastructure from the 2024 campaign. Except in true Harrisian fashion, it’s already off to a glitchy start.
They posted the video from the well-known handle @KamalaHQ last night. I know this because I shared it to my story and it still says that. So when the reactions and thinkpieces and newsletters got sent out last night and this morning, they all linked to that handle.
At some point today, the handle changed to @Headquarters_67 on X, in reference to the initiative’s name, Headquarters, and the fading children’s internet trend “6-7” (an inexplicable decision, imo). This caused a whole bunch of broken links — I noticed it in both CNN and NewsNation pieces.
To make things even more challenging, the handles are different on every platform — Instagram is @headquartersnewsroom. My two cents? Borrowed:
LOOSE ENDS
📝 Word I learned today: internecine
1 : of, relating to, or involving conflict within a group — “There are some internecine internet dramas that feel like they were written just for me.” (via Hunter Harris, Hung Up)
📰 Something you should read today: Why Do All Millennial White Women Want Chickens? An Investigation — Lisa Kholostenko, Empty Calories
🥹 Something to make you smile today: In the spirit of taking advantage of all of New York’s wonders, endowments, and delights, I embarked on a solo mission to test the limits of this little freeze-dried brain of mine. Ed Manzi, a true individual in the most honest sense of the word, runs a political events series called Unmuted. He gathers all sorts of people for debates on all sorts of topics in all sorts of places. Last night’s affair was a collaboration with the New York Philosophy Club, giving me and 100 other people the space to deliberate on agency (in the philosophical sense) and social media (in the life-ruining sense). I loved every minute. Here’s some scribbles of mine. So vulnerable to show your handwriting online …
Billie’s reported net worth + Megyn’s reported net worth
This is what I wanted to see on the Billie drama cus I didn't know what to think I get the irony or the statement but aren't there loads of celebrities that have mansions in LA? (I don't actually know, haven't researched it) I guess I'm just confused cus it feels a bit trivial when the first step is probably addressing ICE first? (since they are the ones doing active harm) But I do understand the concern with where she lives and everything
This is exactly the kind of media analysis we need right now. Your breakdown of the three response types (humor, history, histrionics) is spot-on and really helps make sense of the chaos. I've been watching how different creators weaponize celebrity contradictions and it's fascinating how quickly a single phrase can snowball into coordinated content. The way you tracked Ben Leo's doorbell stunt going viral across platforms showed me something I hadn't noticed - these arent spontaneous reactions, they're calculated content strategies. Really apreciate the clarity here.