About Karma Kops

As a lifelong Radiohead fan, I've found it increasingly difficult to ignore the band's actions and statements concerning the genocide in Palestine. To be honest, I tried to rationalize it when they broke the boycott in 2017, but Thom Yorke's recent statements, and Jonny Greenwood's continued crossing of the picket lines have made it heartbreakingly clear that this band has let money and fame rot the parts of them that made us love them in the first place.

I can't listen to them anymore because most of what Yorke sings about sounds so utterly hypocritical. Put on 'Four-Minute Warning' and you'll see what I mean. Or 'Spinning Plates'. I don't understand how anyone can take them seriously anymore and it truly breaks my heart. A band I fell in love with as a teenager, who gave us OK Computer, Kid A, Amnesiac, In Rainbows... it honestly feels like I've lost such a constant companion. When In Rainbows came out, I listened to it every day for a few years. I am not exaggerating. It's been a go-to until recently. I name drop it in one of my poems.

But Yorke and Greenwood have betrayed their fans who earnestly care about Palestine. Yorke's Storming off the stage like a baby, then doubling down and blaming protesters for making him feel bad and Greenwood's decision to ignore the voices of the oppressed in this situation makes these two artists out to be so self-important that they no longer care about any point of view but their own. It's such a conservative stance. It's been hard to believe that Yorke, in the face of an actual genocide, used his platform to post online to whine about how hard the situation is for *him* and then engaged in both-sides-ism: how the situation is 'complex'!? For who?

Women and children first and children first and children... I laugh until my head falls off...

I guess I was hurt enough by this to write 'Karma Kops' in the summer of 2025. I'm releasing it on the first day of Radiohead's Europe tour as an act of protest. I know I'm punching up (understatement of the century) because honestly, who cares what I think? I'm a small artist, with a small following, and yeah, I dunno, it probably doesn't matter what I think. And yes, I have read Yorke's recent PR statements about not intending to break the boycott again... but c'mon man: a PR campaign ahead of a tour isn't really what your fans have asked for. Why not risk something? Because you don't want to.

The song isn't just about Radiohead anyway, it's about more than that. It's about the people we all know who can't be bothered-- who see injustice and atrocities on their screens and ignore it all to salvage their own careers, save themselves from caring about anything, bathe themselves in irony, or both-sides-ism, or just indifference. I feel bad for them, because they’re just cutting themselves off from life, rather than confronting their own complicity, as painful as it is.

I'm 42 years old, and was in my 20's during the Bush era, and I'll say that this is nothing new. Plenty of people threw up their hands during the Iraq invasion in the face of the horrors of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo; the suspension of Habeas Corpus in the USA and so much more. And even more people turned a blind eye to what Obama got up to, drone bombing the middle east into the stone age and enacting mass deportations of migrants in the US that make Trump look like a little puppy.

We're not supposed to give a shit; it isn't very cool. But detached irony is a tool of the state, which, through its manufacturing of 'cool' has absolutely enabled this fascist surveillance state we're living in.

Radiohead, for a lot of us, got us through those dark days in the 2000's when the world seemed to have lost its mind in the build up to and wake of 9/11. It's absolutely baffling how an artist like Yorke could move so far to the right, but history shows this happens. I once wrote an essay comparing the career arc of Yorke's lyrics to those of the poet William Blake, but it looks like I got the wrong William: The more apt comparison would be with an old windbag like William Wordsworth, who came up as a young radical, big-upping the French Revolution, but by the end of his life was a bloated, nationalistic Tory supporter. And Yorke's position on Gaza is about as left-wing as Keir Starmer's, who is, of course, a Tory wearing a Labour badge.

I'll close by saying Free Palestine, and, hey, Free Thom and Jonny, too! They're welcome to join us on the right side of history, but for fuck's sake, stop buying their concert tickets and merch til they do.

- Dr. Caleb Nichols, Unimportant Indie Artist,
Poet Laureate of San Luis Obispo County, California.