He finally said something.
Hi, everyone. Anthony Fantano here, Internet's busiest music nerd. I hope you're doing well. Let's talk about legendary UK singer-songwriter of Radiohead and of The Smile fame, Mr. Thom Yorke. Because he is now talking after months, and months, and months of silence.
For well over a year, fans of the band Radiohead — if you haven't noticed — have been lobbying for either Thom, or individual members of the band, or the band collectively to make some public statement in support of the efforts to free Palestine, or just generally right course when it comes to things such as performing over there in Israel, obviously in hope that some cultural boycott will actually create some dent in the efforts to change things over there politically, Israel-Palestine relations-wise. And on top of it, historically, Radiohead has been a band that has not been shy when it has come to working their political ideology into their art. Being outspoken on certain issues, being someone who came of age in the 2000s, I very vividly remember 9/11, the War on Terror, Invading Iraq — how awful, terrible, and frankly for me, radicalizing all of that stuff was. But also how few artists were willing to stand and speak on this issue at the time, and those who were were actually seeing a lot of flack sometimes in the media.
Radiohead, for the time, refreshingly, actually was one of those outspoken bands, and they actually laced quite a bit of social commentary into their album, Hail To the Thief, too. As a result, I don't know if it's necessarily unfair for people who remember this time period, remember Radiohead taking a stance on this issue, to also come to the conclusion, "Maybe you also care about this other major Middle Eastern political issue, which also is very deeply connected to Western imperialism and also involves using the 'boogie man of terrorism' to punish a populace of innocent people." Given that Radiohead (in the past) has made a right call on that stuff when it came to the War on Iraq and the War on Terror, there doesn't seem to be as much of an awareness of how all of these same issues play into this dichotomy as well.
I get it. Not every person is well-educated on every single foreign policy issue known to man. Lord knows I'm not. However, it's been well over a year since October Seventh happened; since our social media feeds have just been filled with the horrors of one nonstop bombing campaign after another. Not only has there been a lot of information available and time passed, but also it's not like Thom Yorke hasn't had people in his life and in the music industry willing to talk to him and approach him in a friendly and understandable manner on this issue. It's been documented that Roger Waters of Pink Floyd Fame, in fact, tried to do that. But unfortunately, it's all just really fallen on Thom Yorke's deaf ears.
If that's going to be the choice you make, you have to understand that there are going to be members of your fan base who are not really too happy about that, which is why I thought silence on this issue would continue to be Thom's choice. But he, in fact, recently posted a multi-page statement on this issue on his Instagram page.
He seems to start this statement off with a reaction to that infamous video of him at a live show in Australia last year, where someone from the crowd was shouting to him to address this whole thing, and Thom just dismissed the whole thing, I believe he just walked off.
"Come up on the fucking stage and say what you want to say. Don't stand there like a coward. Come here and say it. You want to piss on everybody's night? Come on. Okay, you do? See you later.
As he says [in his Instagram post],
"Some guy shouting at me from the dark last year when I was picking up a guitar to sing the final song alone in front of 9,000 people in Melbourne didn't really seem like the best moment to discuss the unfolding humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza.
Afterwards I remained in shock that my supposed silence was somehow being taken as complicity, and I struggled to find an adequate way to respond to this and to carry on with the rest of the shows on the tour.
That silence, my attempt to show respect for all those who are suffering and those who have died, and not to trivialize it in a few words, has allowed other opportunistic groups to use intimidation and defamation to fill in the blanks, and I regret giving them this [chance]. This has had a heavy toll on my mental health."
I'm a little confused. Is Thom saying that a few words there at that show would have trivialized the situation? Or saying anything at all over the course of the past year would have trivialized the situation? I guess I just don't really get how speaking on pertinent social issues publicly trivializes them. I mean, sure it can if maybe whatever you're saying doesn't really, I guess, address the gravity of the issue, or you come across like you didn't really look into it in any way whatsoever. Or, I don't know, if you talk to the crowd as if it doesn't matter — that certainly would trivialize it. But advocating for what you believe in — given that Radiohead is a band that historically has done that — doesn't inherently trivialize the thing that you're talking about. So that just reads as a sidestep off-the-bat, frankly.
And again, while I understand it can be very sad to be aggressively criticized on the internet by tens of thousands of people who don't really know you, I feel like making the first page of this about your depression does actually trivialize the issue in the way that you're allegedly afraid you would. Personally, I'm pretty fucking depressed over this issue, too, but not over the weirdos that sometimes turn up in my comments or my DMs because I'm either not staunchly enough in agreement with them or because they are just on the opposite side of me. No, I'm mostly depressed over all the innocent people over there in Palestine who are being killed, who are starving.
"I would hope that for anyone who has ever listened to a note of the music my band or any of the music I've created over the years. or looked at the artwork or read any of the lyrics, it would be self-evident that I could not possibly support any form of extremism or dehumanization of others. All I see in a lifetime's worth of work with my fellow musicians and artists is a pushing against such things, trying to create work that goes beyond what it means to be controlled, coerced, threatened, to suffer, to be intimidated...and instead to encourage critical thinking beyond borders, the commonality of love and experience and free creative expression.
Sounds naff...but true."
Yes, I don't disagree with this page! These are the things your fans have accurately read in your work repeatedly, which is why they are concerned and curious as to why you would not be ahead of the curve in talking about this problem, addressing it, and maybe just be a bit more understanding of why you might catch some flack for performing over in Israel while they're very much involved in, at the time, maintaining Palestine as pretty much an open-air prison.
"For others, let me fill in the blanks now, so we're nice and clear.
I think Netanyahu and his crew of extremists are totally out of control and need to be stopped, and that the international community should put all the pressure it can on them to cease. Their excuse of self-defence has long worn thin and has been replaced by a transparent desire to take control of Gaza and the West Bank permanently.
I believe this ultra-nationalist administration has hidden itself behind a terrified and grieving people and used them to deflect any criticism, using that fear and grief to further their ultra-nationalist agenda with terrible consequences, as we see now with the horrific blockade of aid to Gaza."
And yes, this is true. I would add in addition to this that this is the side with all the funding, all the power, endless blank checks, no red lines, tons and tons and tons of political lobbying over here in the US, too. But Thom also says,
"While our lives tick along as normal, these endless thousands of innocent human souls are still being expelled from the earth...for what?
At the same time, the unquestioning Free Palestine refrain that surrounds us all does not answer the simple question of why the hostages have not all been returned? For what possible reason?"
Okay, I guess I'll answer that since Thom asked: because Israel doesn't want them! Israel has, in fact, had multiple, multiple, multiple, multiple opportunities to negotiate for the trade of these hostages. Netanyahu has got in the way every single time.
"Why did Hamas choose the truly horrific acts of October 7th? The answer seems obvious, and I believe Hamas chooses too to hide behind the suffering of its people, in an equally cynical fashion for their own purposes."
I mean, okay, you can make that argument. I don't think that's an entirely incorrect read of the dynamic. But with that being said, that does not justify the collective murder and punishment of thousands and thousands and thousands of people that had nothing to do with the horrific acts of October 7th. It doesn't vindicate the initiation of all of that on October 8th, and it certainly doesn't vindicate continuing on with all of that over a year later. He also says,
"I also think there is a further and extremely important point to make.
Social media witch-hunts (nothing new) on either side pressuring artists and whoever they feel like that week to make statements etc. do very little except heighten the tension, fear, and oversimplification of what are complex problems that merit proper face-to-face debate by people who genuinely wish the killing to stop and an understanding to be found."
Again, while I guess I get the point, and I do believe on some level, when it comes to addressing and changing issues such as this, maybe getting celebrities to say things publicly about all of it isn't like, priority number one. But, I'm sorry, where is the face-to-face debate? When is the face-to-face the face-to-face debate happening? Is Thom Yorke in contact with the person who is scheduling the face-to-face debate? Personally, I think I've seen enough kids starving and getting blown up to figure this should just stop. We should just stop it. When I say "we," I mean the West's military support of all of this.
But while I understand that Thom is entitled to say and do whatever he feels like saying and doing when it comes to whatever topic he pleases — and that it might be a little obnoxious to deal with fans of any sort urging him to make public statements about stuff he doesn't necessarily feel passionate about — we're not talking about an instance of, "Maybe you did some weird social faux pas, and everybody's just dog-piling you over it for no reason." It's not like your comments are flooded with millions of people being like, "Thom, say something about paper straws! We need to start just using paper straws!" The issue we are currently discussing will go down in history as one of the greatest and most awful human tragedies of the modern era. I don't know; personally, I understand the urgency!
"This deliberate polarization does not serve our fellow human beings and perpetuates a constant 'us and them' mentality. It destroys hope and maintains a sense of isolation, the very things that extremists use to maintain their position. We facilitate their hiding in plain sight if we assume that the extremists and the people they claim to represent are one and the same, indivisible.
If our world is ever going to move on from these dark times and find peace it will only be when we rediscover what we share in common, and the extremists are sent back to sit in the darkness from whence they came."
Extremists: not good. I don't really like extremists. I'm not messing with no extremists over here! I don't disagree that there are extremists in the leagues of Hamas, and there are extremists with Netanyahu and the Israeli government — West Bank settlers, too, and all of that. But one of these two groups is most definitely getting a whole lot of American and Western funding to do what they're doing. I don't think my government should be involved in supporting that at all in any fashion. When we all just meet in the center and try to find ways to get along, how, after that point, are we banishing away all the "extremists" to go sit in the corner? When does the banishing happen? When do the extremists get banished? Thom is talking about the extremists like they're Thanos, and we're going to send them over to another dimension, and we'll never see from them again.
"I sympathize completely with the desire to 'do something' when we are witnessing such horrific suffering on our devices every day. It completely makes sense. But I now think it is a dangerous illusion to believe reposting, or one or two-line messages are meaningful, especially if it is to condemn your fellow human beings. There are unintended consequences."
I mean, If I see my fellow human beings doing horrific and condemnable things, I will condemn those things. That is what I will do. I don't care if they're my fellow human beings. If they're doing something that is worth condemning, condemn it.
"It is shouting from the darkness. It is not looking people in the eye when you speak. It is making dangerous assumptions. It is not debate and it is not critical thinking."
Okay, when are we critical thinking? One, when does the critical thinking start? And two, when's the debate happening? When is the Thom Yorke-Roger Waters on-stage debate to help settle this whole thing now and for good?
[From Roger Waters on Bad Hasbara, February 6, 2025:]
"What he said to me at one point — not that we ever had a conversation. He said, 'Imagine how difficult this is for Johnny [Greenwood].' Johnny-fucking-Greenwood!"
"What is the alternative?" Thom asks in the final page of this thing. "I can't answer that easily." Well, damn, Thom, you've been talking this whole time like you have the answer, you know what's going on, or this is all going to build up to something!
"I do know in communities around the globe this subject is now dangerously toxic and we are in uncharted waters. We need to turn back."
Turn back where? What's the direction "back"? What do we need to go back to?
"I am sure that, to this point, what I have written here will in no way satisfy those who choose to target myself or those I work with, they will spend time picking holes and looking for reasons to continue, we are an opportunity not to be missed, no doubt, and by either side."
Yeah, I mean, I don't disagree because if you look at the comments underneath this post, there are a lot of people who are not satisfied.
"I have written this in the simple hope that I can join with the many millions of others praying for this suffering, isolation and death to stop, praying that we can collectively regain our humanity and dignity and our ability to reach understanding...that one day soon this darkness will have passed."
Yeah, this is pretty lame.
I mean, imagine some of the other most major political issues and urgent problems of the past. I don't think any of the very necessary changes during those time periods would have happened if every single group involved — every single group of people who were suffering under the hand of oppression in those scenarios — just quietly sat there and thought, "Well, let's just pray for this darkness to pass!" The action and the solution in all of those situations was not just, "Aimply sit down and pray it goes away."
"Thoughts and prayers!" Thom Yorke essentially says here, which just makes me think: why did he even say this? Why did he even say any of this? Because once more, this does actually trivialize the issue.
As I'm speaking right now, people are being killed. People are starving. This is a very urgent issue, problem, and crisis. Thom's solution is that we need to have a face-to-face debate and just pray it all goes away. And through completely unknown means, vanquish the extremists into the darkness, which just sounds like some BS coming out of a fantasy novel, which I suppose is fitting because it's a fantasy that Thom's mindset here is actually going to change anything for the better. My expectations were low as far as Thom saying anything, and yet I am still disappointed.
And at least for now, I'm going to leave it there. Let me know your thoughts on all of this in the comments. I'm sure you will.
Anthony Fantano, forever.
What do you think?
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