Interview | MUDRAT

Eve H interviews the Australian punk artist and rapper after their secret Camden show on Palestine and indigenous liberation.

On 11^th May 2026 the small but longstanding pub The Elephant’s Head in Camden was packed out with the punk crowd spilling out onto the pavement alongside their drinks, long before 8pm on a Monday night. The Australian antifascist pro-Palestine punk artist MUDRAT had announced on stage last Thursday at London’s popular venue Scala, that he would be playing a secret free show in Camden. This was MUDRAT’s first tour in the UK, and he was treated with a great reception from the heavy music loving, politically aware crowd. 

MUDRAT is known in the Australian antifascist punk scene in Melbourne (Naarm) where he hails from, having only begun performing under this name since 2023. In February 2025, MUDRAT was listed as one of NME’s 100 Emerging Artists, and his most popular singles are: WE DESPISE THE BORGEOISE and YOU DON’T CARE ABOUT POOR PEOPLE, which contain lyrics such as KILL ALL THE BILLIONAIRES / ONE WAR CLASS WAR, which the crowd regularly scream back to him from the moshpit in a call-and-response. MUDRAT quickly became popular in activist circles in Naarm due to his uncompromising lyrics, energetic performances filled with mosh pits, and his clear moral grounding in standing up for Palestinians and against the restrictions that continue to be put in place for people in public life expressing their support. 

His first album SOCIAL COHESION was released on 29th August 2025, the title being a sarcastic nod to the Labour administration in Victoria’s ‘social cohesion’ pledges, which includes mask bans at protests, and places limits on the funding organisations can receive if they do not sign this pledge. MUDRAT’s first album was also released just 22 days after the pro-Palestine March for Humanity in Australia, attended by up to 300,000 people, most likely the largest ever pro-Palestine march in Australian history, which attracted so many people the police sent mass text messages to phones attempting to prevent people from attending on the day itself, and closing the Sydney Harbour Bridge during the march.

The laws against free speech and freedom to protest in Australia, particularly regarding speaking out against the genocide in Gaza, are mirrored in the UK, with laws passed in one country often following the other. In December 2025 the Labor administration in New South Wales passed new anti-protest laws rushed through parliament, which would have restricted protests for three months after a terrorist attack, under the description PARD (public assembly restriction declaration). Activist groups Blak Caucus, Palestine Action Group and Jews Against the Occupation ’48, along with constitutional lawyers, challenged this and it was overturned in April 2026, the second time in two years under the NSW Labor administration that an anti-protest law has been found to be unconstitutional.

In the UK, expressing support for “Palestine Action” can lead to arrest due to the direct action network being proscribed as a terrorist organisation. In NSW, it was suggested that the words ‘globalise the intifada’ be banned as part of the new anti-protest laws, while just days after NSW initially passed these laws, UK police began to arrest those who said these words at protests. The words ‘globalise the intifada’ have been used many times on pro-Palestinian demonstrations around the world, with British activist groups marching with a banner displaying these words in London since November 2023.

In April 2025 MUDRAT was invited to play a set at Camp Sovereignty in Naarm. Camp Sovereignty is a First Nations protest and sacred site, located at a burial site for the remains of unknown First Nations people from 38 Nations. It was first established in March 2006 during the Commonwealth Games, by the Blak GST (Genocide, Sovereignty, Treaty) movement, and was re-established in January 2024 in response to the genocide in Gaza. The camp has been a target for far-right terrorism, most recently being attacked by 40 neo-Nazis in August 2025. Despite this, the camp has resisted attacks and legal pressures to close, and continues to this day.

MUDRAT has also recently collaborated with British punk musician Hyphen on the 2025 track GARY’S ECONOMICS, named after the pop-economist YouTuber and former London banker Gary Stevenson. Gary, who runs Patriotic Millionaires UK, which campaigns for a wealth tax, and recently presented a Channel 4 documentary on the subject, delighted fans with a surprise appearance onstage at MUDRAT’s show in Camden, where he spoke about class politics, saying “never let them make you hate poor people…save your contempt for the rich. Fight them every day. If enough of us fight then we’ll win.”

MUDRAT’s politics are self evident throughout his music and at his shows, and he has no qualms about speaking out clearly and assertively against the Australian Labor government, racists, fascists, “white feminists”, and standing up for the rights of indigenous peoples of Australia. We spoke to him about music, politics, and the power of sharing your journey with others.

Please tell us about your political background: what influenced you, and how did you develop your politics?

MUDRAT: If everything is political, I suppose my politics were initially through life experiences, as well as my work as a social worker for the past decade. I have been blessed to understand the world through the experiences of societies most vulnerable [people]. Prior to October 7th 2023 I had developed an aversion to mainstream liberalism – mainly for its inability to create space for classism as a driver of inequality. October 7th forced me to re-analyse the way I saw everything, and start to find the answers to truly explain why things are the way they are, beyond the vibes of liberalism. It was through this, that I firstly understood and accepted how much I didn’t know, but I also began to understand the political theory to explain what I inherently felt – simply by smashing through liberalism towards Marxist and decolonial theory.

My music naturally transitioned with me through this process of deconstruction and rebuilding – prior to MUDRAT my music gravitated towards exploring the self, trauma, and attachment etc. I wrote to understand things I felt, but could not name, and thus MUDRAT is simply transposing that process [onto] collective issues.

I suppose the thing with our journey is that there really hasn’t been any distinction between the antifascist scene and the punk music scene. We haven’t really been connected to any sort of music scene in general. They have been one and the same – i.e. many of the gigs we played are run as community events / fundraisers by the same people that are at the protests / actions. Music is simply a part of a wider movement. It’s why we talk about it simply being the catalyst for what we see as a project being a band.

In April 2025 MUDRAT was invited to play a set at Camp Sovereignty. Can you tell us a bit about that experience?

MUDRAT: Camp Sovereignty is an incredible space to learn directly from elders such as Uncle Robbie Thorpe. The Black Peoples Union and other First Nations groups play integral roles in the organisation of Camp Sovereignty. As to playing there, it was an honour. Much of the deconstruction I [have] spoken about was in recognising the parallels between Israel and Australia – and settler colonialism generally. As time passed, I recognised that this deconstruction is somewhat of a linear process – noticing others around learning, then processing information in a chain of sorts – often then meeting the same emotional roadblocks / making the same mistakes. Understanding that history repeats itself, and that it is our responsibility to learn from the past, tells us that nobody has been resisting longer, and thus has more experience in these lessons, than First Nation people on this continent.

At your show in Camden, you mentioned that one of the best ways to connect with people was to be vulnerable and share. Has that helped you personally process the political climate?

MUDRAT: We can only know what we currently know in the moment, whilst simultaneously accepting that there is more to learn tomorrow. I think having to live my political journey so publicly has allowed me to not lose track of the process and remember how I felt, when I knew less than I did. We cannot transmit everything we know to the next person like uploading a file to a hard drive. All we can do is to facilitate spaces, and challenge certain barriers that can allow others to begin their own processes of understanding. It’s why I do my best to showcase my limitations as a person despite the elevated platform I find myself in. Sometimes the “I don’t know” is the most powerful tool of all.