Before people shit on Yorke:
Yorke was playing a show in Melbourne, Australia, as part of a solo tour when, according to multiple videos recorded by concertgoers, a man yelled: “Do you condemn the Israeli genocide of Gaza? Already 200,000 [dead], half of them children.”
I would have been pissed off at that shit too. Does every entertainer you see have to start their show with a condemnation of Israeli genocide?
It’s Thom York, not Joe Biden.
Could he not just have ignored it? Or had security get them out?
I guess if it was a really small gig then maybe not, but it seems like derailing the gig was giving the jeckler the attention and headline they wanted, no?
Or, since it’s genocide and all, answer “yes”.
What does a British musician have to do with genocide
Yorke isn’t the type to ignore something like that, he takes his ethics very seriously
He didn’t leave and never come back. He just walked off to show the person what a douchebag they were being. Then he came back.
Edit: Here’s video (which for some reason shows the end before looping back and showing the start). He literally gave the person a chance to get up on stage and say what they had to say and they wouldn’t, so he lost his temper and walked off stage. I honestly do not blame him- https://www.theguardian.com/music/2024/oct/31/thom-yorke-walks-off-stage-after-being-heckled-by-pro-palestine-heckler-at-melbourne-concert
Fair enough then. I read as he came back and did one song and that was it. Thank you for your clarification. 👍
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Yorke said: “Playing in a country isn’t the same as endorsing the government. We’ve played in Israel for over 20 years through a succession of governments, some more liberal than others. As we have in America. We don’t endorse Netanyahu any more than Trump, but we still play in America.”
Commonsense is so refreshing.They’d probably play in Nazi Germany too
Godwin’s Law at work.
Committing a genocide makes for a good comparison to the nazis.
If that were true he wouldnt have lost his mind about a single protestor. Crowds are rowdy, thats just life.
Yorke said in a statement in 2017 before a show in Tel Aviv.
You kind of left out the most important part. I don’t think Israel’s current genocide is in anyway equivalent to a trump presidency, the comment sounds bloody ignorant without the context.
That being said, there’s no need to start heckling about it when the guy hasn’t been there since 2017. I will however judge harshly any artist that goes there after what has happened in the last year. Israel deserves a boycott.
If we’re gonna do that, boycott every artist that plays in the u.s. why do you guys like to act like your hands are clean while pointing your finger at others? Your country fucked up mine in the very recent past and not a single but of responsibility has yet to be taken, you don’t get to moralize to the rest of the world
I wish I could boycott my own country. I’m very aware of the terrible things that have been done and I will be the first to draw attention to them.
That being said, staying silent about genocide just adds to the blood, it doesn’t take it away.
Of course we do, ‘cause nukes. /s
I applaud your pushback. Until Americans are denied travel visas we wont examine our own actions, and our slow and steady creep toward open fascism will continue.
With our too big ocean borders and large military, America cant be confronted militarily, it has to be dipllomatically. Money is the only thing capitalism values. I also think a new UN should be started without veto authority by the ‘great powers’. China and Russia are no better and also need containment.
Americans don’t travel enough to give a shit about travel visas. The people who’d be most hurt by limiting those would be the people most likely to have some sense that other countries even exist at all other than as places to bomb or exploit for cheap labor.
That’d be a fair excuse for what they’ve done if they were totally ignorant of what Israel’s government has done, but they’ve been told by Desmond Tutu and a bunch of other people. They had a fully informed opportunity to pick their side and they picked it, so they really shouldn’t be surprised when this keeps happening to them.
Not to sound dumb but do you have a list of places they can play? I’m not super informed and would like to be. Specifically what places can they play that a quick Google won’t invalidate with historic or current atrocities?
Doesn’t seem particularly confusing to me, Thurston Moore figured it out.
From the above article,
In a separate statement attached to the letter, Thurston Moore said: “If any concerned, humanitarian-conscious activists employ a boycott to protest brutal injustice in their country and request artists and scholars to refrain from working and/or being promoted as supportive of the normalization of that country—then I choose NOT to cross that line and suggest to all to not be complicit. It is a small sacrifice in respect to those who struggle in honourable opposition to state-sponsored fascism.”
They’re allowed to play wherever they want. If they cared about the genocide then they would boycott Israel.
Historic atrocities are one thing, an ongoing genocide is another.
Forgive me again. I’m dumb. Shouldn’t we boycott any country and all of it’s citizens who purchase things made in China? What with the whole Uyghurs thing going on right now? Also what about nations that give humanitarian aid to Afghanistan? BRICS nations and basically the whole West are all tangentially connected to current ongoing atrocities as are the countries that willfully receive aid from those nations. So just so I know who to support. What countries are clean enough for Radio Head to play there?
You do realize this doesn’t make you look clever right?
You are adding degrees of indirection that don’t apply, the playing dumb act is one thing but all you can say with your reasoning is they shouldn’t play in Afghanistan or China which people might agree with.
Nobody’s saying they shouldn’t play in Germany because Germany supports Israel.
I’m using the same stupid all or nothing logic the people I replied to are using. If playing a concert in Israel means you support Israel then purchasing items or items with components made in China means you support China. If you elect a representative that votes to send aid to the afghans then you support Al Qaeda. It sounds stupid because it is. Just like saying Radio Head supports the Israeli government and it’s actions by playing a concert there is stupid.
People are explaining the nuance to you and you’re not getting it, maybe it wasn’t an act.
Don’t deprive German consumers of Coca Cola they did nothing wrong
let he who is without sin cast the first stone isn’t really about encouraging everyone to cast stones simultaneously and at will
They can only play on carnival cruises
That doesnt matter if they intend to play for their fans and not for their gov. Why should fans be punished for a gov that doesnt listen?
The open letter to them that was signed by artists from Sonic Youth, TV on the Radio, and a bunch of other artists and activists says it better than I could,
We understand you’ve been approached already by Palestinian campaigners. They’ve asked you to respect their call for a cultural boycott of Israel, and you’ve turned them down. Since Radiohead campaigns for freedom for the Tibetans, we’re wondering why you’d turn down a request to stand up for another people under foreign occupation. And since Radiohead fronted a gig for the 50th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, we’re wondering why you’d ignore a call to stand against the denial of those rights when it comes to the Palestinians. **
Radiohead once issued a statement saying: ‘Without the work of organisations like Amnesty International, the Universal Declaration would be mere rhetoric’. You’ve clearly read Amnesty’s reports, so you’ll know that Israel denies freedom to the Palestinians under occupation, who can’t live where they want, can’t travel as they please, who get detained (and often tortured) without charge or trial, and can’t even use Facebook without surveillance, censorship and arrest.
In asking you not to perform in Israel, Palestinians have appealed to you to take one small step to help pressure Israel to end its violation of basic rights and international law. Surely if making a stand against the politics of division, of discrimination and of hate means anything at all, it means standing against it everywhere – and that has to include what happens to Palestinians every day.
Otherwise the rest is, to use your words, ‘mere rhetoric’.
You may think that sharing the bill with Israeli musicians Dudu Tassa & the Kuwaitis, who play Jewish-Arabic music, will make everything OK. It won’t, any more than ‘mixed’ performances in South Africa brought closer the end of the apartheid regime. Please do what artists did in South Africa’s era of oppression: stay away, until apartheid is over.
Why should fans be punished for a gov that doesnt listen?
Their government is, to a large extent, listening. A lot of the nonsense we’ve seen this last year was Netanyahu trying to cling to power, but most of it is Israeli popular will. They want the genocide; some of them just don’t want to sacrifice the hostages to make it happen.
How do you know? Do you have any data that shows that the majority want the violence?
Relevant:
When asked to assess their country’s military response against Hamas in Gaza, about four-in-ten Israelis say it has been about right. Another 34% say it has not gone far enough, while 19% say it has gone too far.
Israeli Arabs are much more critical of the military response, with 74% saying it has gone too far. Only 4% of Israeli Jews agree.
It’s no secret, really.
As of mid sept, polls show 41% of them do. Not a majority but far too much when it’s genocide and ethnic cleansing we are talking about.
If 2/5ths of your population want to keep indiscriminately killing innocent men, women and children, it’s up to the other 3/5ths to tell them to sit down and teach them why they suck. It’s not up to the rest of the world to go “we’ll it’s not a majority, I guess as long as only 40% of them are drooling at the thought of dead children, a boycott would be unfair.”
According to a random poll I just looked up, 29% of Americans “somewhat care” if their politicians support genocide. Maybe we should pressure them to care more and join the 19% that care a lot.
Boycott America until people take it seriously and stop funding them.
Yes
I’m (truly) not sure if this reasoning applies to the people of Israel at large. To be fair, the same can increasingly be said of Americans who continue to support Republicans as they go mask off.
https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2024/05/30/israeli-views-of-the-israel-hamas-war/
https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/war-gaza-netanyahu-likud-israel-election-poll
I’ve thought about if bands started to boycott red states. I live in a red state, and any band that might boycott would also have more liberal fans. So they would really be hurting those that already agree with them.
But also, fuck our government and the 2/3 of people that agree with those crazy fucks.
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That’s not common sense, that’s nonsense. Playing in a country isn’t the same as endorsing the government, but both are bad.
Edit: Wait this is in 2017. Still bad-ish, but less bad.
Love radiohead music, but fuck Thim Yorke, he’s an asshole on the wrong side of history
Too bad, I liked radiohead. Well, onto my personal BDS list it goes.
i think you are a liar.
Just because he’s not willing to glaze Thom Yorke’s dick or what? I liked them too.
Radio head is very much peaceful artists.
Yorke was playing a show in Melbourne, Australia, as part of a solo tour when, according to multiple videos recorded by concertgoers, a man yelled: “Do you condemn the Israeli genocide of Gaza? Already 200,000 dead, half of them children.”
Yorke could have just said “yes”, but instead he decided to get shirty with the man and then walk off stage.
People in this thread are saying that playing shows in Israel doesn’t mean that he supports the actions of the Israeli government. But what does it mean when he refuses to condemn the genocide?
Ockham’s razor: He supports Israel.
Occam’s razor doesn’t really apply here… You can’t use that to just assert that he supports Israel. Besides, he later did say that he doesn’t support Israel.
Honestly, I can understand the response. He’s in the middle of a set and someone starts yelling about some political issue… Fuck that, he’s here to play a concert. And you know what, I wouldn’t want to be backed into making any political statement out of the blue, while on stage.
He’s in the middle of a set and someone starts yelling about some political issue…
Some political issue…? That’s what the genocide is to you?
Ok, so let’s say you’re a performer and from time to time people yell something at you while you’re on stage. Given the context, let’s divide all comments into two categories.
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Commentary on your performance. These could be statements like “wwooooooo!”, “you suck!”, “I love you!”, “get off the stage!” or “play free bird”.
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Other bullshit. This includes any comments not about your music or the performance currently in progress. Basically anything off topic or not covered by category 1.
If someone yelled “do you support genocide?”, what category would you put that in?
Now once you’ve answered that question, I want you to remember that your answer doesn’t actually matter at all either way. Because in the end, a performer on stage is never obligated to respond to anything yelled at them from the floor.
But you’re right I guess, “political issue” was the wrong way to frame it. I should have said “other bullshit” (as laid out above).
Well, maybe I am more sensitive to such a matter because of being Russian.
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Occam’s razor doesn’t really apply here…
Why? Because you like his music?
Haven’t we all been through this with Morrissey?
Even today, any thread about Morrissey will have a few comments about how maybe he isn’t really that racist, despite the now decades of evidence.
Ockham’s razor.
Asserting he’s a fan in a attempt to discredit and bringing up someone else that has nothing to do with the this. Lmao
I didn’t assert it. I asked. There was a question mark.
It was an accusation.
It was a question.
It was both. It was a rhetorical question, which are technically questions while being functionally statements.
It’s worth noting though, arguing this semantic point doesn’t change anything or win any argument, it’s just pedantic.
No actually, I don’t like Thom Yorke. My problem was with a dumb comment trying to sound logical by throwing fancy words around.
If you want to use Occam’s razor in this situation, (a pretty inappropriate situation, because who can truly know what others are thinking or feeling) then I’ll show you how that works…
Occam’s razor: He walked off because he was in a bad mood and didn’t really feel like playing that show in the first place. The crowd comment seemed like a good enough excuse to walk off. That is probably the simplest solution.
“Why won’t you let us ignore the genocide in peace”
Shame Radiohead is willingly going to play in Israel during a genocide. Boycotting America is a far more costly move. Avoiding a small place like Israel is so easy. They have not been there in more than five years, why go now?
