A friend just told me he can’t listen to Radiohead anymore over Palestine. As the death toll in Gaza climbed, the band stayed mostly quiet. And the guitarist, Jonny Greenwood — married to an Israeli artist — kept playing shows in Tel Aviv. There were calls to boycott the band’s tour; frontman Thom Yorke brushed them off as a “witch hunt”.
Now, as a tactic, boycotting has a solid track record, and it makes sense to me. What doesn’t is its distant, poorer cousin: the reflex to shun artists we disagree with politically, without considering each case.
And worse still: using support for an artist (or a cause, or whatever) as an internal purity test. It’s this last habit that’s become so popular on the left. And I’ve come to believe it’s quietly costing us as organisers.
So today I’m going to think all this through. Let’s go.
Radiohead and David Draiman
Back to Radiohead. I grew up with them. I never wrote their name on my pencil case or owned one of their T-shirts. But “Creep” was an anthem in my school, repurposed as an ode to the international kids who never quite fit in anywhere.
In case you’re reading me for the first time: I think the Israeli government is committing genocide, and acting abhorrently. But my gut says I don’t care what Radiohead’s position on Palestine is — it doesn’t change how their music sounds. “You and Whose Army?” will still haunt me. “Burn the Witch” will still get me up in the morning.
Also, I never equated liking their work with paying them. I’ve bought Radiohead albums, but these days you can listen to a band without giving them a cent. Liking their music was never the same as following them, or agreeing with everything they stand for. Or being them. I never woke up thinking “great, another day as a Radiohead fan”. They’re one of many bands who’ve written songs I like.
And yet, with all this, I can’t quite leave it there. A band as big as Radiohead isn’t just a band. It’s a platform — almost a media outlet. And I don’t like it when the press goes soft on the Israeli government.
And the case against Radiohead isn’t only about what the band says or doesn’t say. Greenwood played in Israel during the genocide. That’s conduct, not just a view.
Then take another example: David Draiman of the band Disturbed. I’ve never heard his music. But I know that two years ago he signed an Israeli artillery shell on the Gaza border. Sure, anyone can do something stupid at a photo op. But Draiman still won’t take it back; he now says he’d sign every shell going if it meant the end of Hamas.
That’s not just an opinion – that’s a man turning his platform into a weapon for a politics I forcefully disagree with.
What I’m for, and what I’m against
So where do I stand here? Two things I need to say upfront:
If Israeli bombs were landing on my street, I doubt I’d be writing any of this. For a Palestinian, for anyone who’s lost people to this genocide, I’m not going to tell you to separate the art from the artist. Do what you feel.
And – I’m not talking about the cultural boycott of a state. I already said: boycotts work. So artists refusing to play in Israel, the push to get the country out of Eurovision... that’s leverage, with a target and a demand. It denies a state behaving like this the look of a normal country. And I support it. It helped end apartheid in South Africa, and it’s what more than a thousand musicians are doing right now to Israel. I’m for that.
At issue here are two things which are quite different: a personal decision not to fund an artist, and whether to boycott their tour.
So, Radiohead. If you skipped a Radiohead show because Greenwood played Tel Aviv, I’d understand it. I wouldn’t – he’s one of five, and I’m not giving up the music over one of them – but I wouldn’t talk you out of it either. You’re keeping your own money from someone who’s crossed a line. That’s a fair call.
Now, BDS has gone much further – they called to boycott the band’s tour over Greenwood’s Israel shows. I understand the logic here: playing Tel Aviv gives Israel the look of normality. And on its own terms, it’s leverage: a target, a demand, a cost if they don’t meet it. It’s legitimate.
But still, I wouldn’t back the boycott of Radiohead’s tour. Because that wouldn’t punish Greenwood – it’d punish the band, the crew, and everyone who loves the music.
Now David Draiman. Well, he’s the frontman; what he did was indefensible, and two years on he still DGAF. So even if I liked the music, I’d probably skip his show myself, and heckle the bastard if I saw him.
But I wouldn’t back a boycott of Draiman’s tour, for the same reasons. Again, because it would land on everyone.
Anyway, the line isn’t as clean as I’d like, and I’m still wrestling with it. But that’s where I am currently.
The shun reflex and the purity test
There’s something else, though. I mentioned above (and have written about) the left’s reflex to shun people we disagree with politically. Its worst form is the purity test.
And with Radiohead, Draiman and the calls to boycott artists who cross a political line more generally, I’ve seen it show up. A lot.
It’s what happens when your choice about which artists to support or skip stops being yours and becomes a loyalty oath, which you hold others to. When “I won’t go to their concert” becomes “and what does it say about you, over there, that you’re still going?”
This doesn’t just grate on me personally. It holds the left back. Because it can quickly get built into how we organise.
I’ve seen movements disinviting unfriendly journalists from their events, freezing out members who are wavering on this or that issue, writing off people who are mostly with us but said One Wrong Thing. And none of it feels like a decision, like something done with intention. It’s a process that quietly removes people — and most of them never know they’ve been filtered out.
The knee-jerk shunning, purity-testing left is the left that loses. Why? Because we won’t win by subtraction. We can’t protect a minority, in the end, without first winning a majority. With every cancellation, we write off more of the people we think we don’t need but actually do. Until the only ones still around are those who already agree. It feels good — like filtering out opponents until you’re finally among friends. But it doesn’t shift power.
And the subtraction problem is only half of it. The deeper problem is shunning – exclusion, in other words – as a weapon. And it belongs to whoever can wield it at scale. That has never been us.
Look at Germany, where the state bans protests and moves to deport activists over Palestine. Or Melbourne, where a pianist dedicated a concert to the Palestinian journalists Israel has killed, and his orchestra dropped him. Three people had complained about his remarks; 487 complained about the cancellation. It went ahead anyway. He’s now suing.
When we reach for the same tool, we are picking a fight the powerful are built to win. And our version of shunning isn’t even the real thing. A boycott shifts power only when there are real numbers behind it – the kind that took years to build against South African apartheid. What we reach for instead is a shortcut, a show of disapproval, with nothing behind it. And on that ground, the other side will always win. Because they own the institutions – the concert halls, the record labels, the state itself – and we don’t.
So when it comes to shunning Radiohead, or David Draiman, or whoever – even if part of me wants to, and with Draiman it does – my answer is no. Criticise the politics; heckle the man who signed the shell. Skip the concerts if you want. But keep the music on, keep talking to the people who don’t yet agree, and put your energy where the power actually is. The other way isn’t winning. It only feels like it — applause from people you’d already won.
Five things worth reading
- Persuasion on why banning social media for kids won’t work. This is the ban reflex again. These authoritarian solutions infantilise people and have knock-on effects. As stated the piece, education is the only thing that works.
- Seth Godin on blogs, traffic and Google. Godin’s writing for independent creators, but every word applies to movements. Search traffic is drying up, and the answer isn’t gaming the algorithm. It’s building a direct relationship with the people who already trust you.
- Big Desk Energy on why Substack isn’t your friend, a related post. This is a well argued takedown of the pitch offered by creator-first platforms. The reach it lends you it can take away, and the audience was never yours to begin with. Movements keep making this mistake with whatever platform is hot – IG, YouTube, Twitch. Build on ground you control.
- Eleftheria Kousta on Albania's “flamingo revolution”. Daily, leaderless, online-organised protests opposed a mega resort linked to Jared Kushner. This case study shows organisers are already asking the right question: can they sharpen the mood into concrete demands before the energy drains away?
- Johan on spotting motivated reasoning. A useful field guide to catching the moment your own conclusion arrives before your evidence does — which is the engine under most of the reflexes I write about. (See also my Leica piece, on the same habit of mind when it happened to me.)
From the archive
Where’s the resistance to the Iran war? On the gap between how much people care, and how much gets organised.
One more thing
I wrote this whole piece arguing you can keep the art and ditch the politics — and then caught myself hesitating over a band I’d just found out I disagreed with. The reflex is in me too. I guess naming it doesn’t switch it off...