US band the Strokes have used their Coachella set to make a stark political statement against America’s history of foreign intervention and war in other countries, including Iran and Palestine.
At the end of their set at the second weekend of the California music festival, the band performed their 2016 song Oblivius in front of giant LED screens that showed a montage of world leaders whose death or ousting the CIA has either been a proven or suspected party in, as lead singer Julian Casablancas sang the lyrics: “What side you standing on?”
The montage showed Patrice Lumumba, the first democratically elected prime minister of the Congo, who was executed in 1961 by a Congolese firing squad with the backing of Belgian military. Lumumba was killed amid a separate CIA conspiracy to assassinate him due to the threat he posed to western control over Congo’s mineral resources, though it was Belgium that admitted “moral responsibility” and apologised for his murder in 2002.
The montage also showed Guatemalan president Jacobo Árbenz, who was overthrown in a CIA-engineered plot in 1954; and Bolivian president Juan José Torres, who was ousted in 1971 and then kidnapped and killed five years later.
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Also shown was Chilean president Salvador Allende, who killed himself during the 1973 CIA-backed coup that toppled his socialist government and brought in the brutal military dictator Augusto Pinochet. Though some still believe the US also played a role in Allende’s death, a scientific autopsy in 2011 confirmed there was “absolutely no doubt” he died by his own hand.
Other leaders shown in the montage included Iran’s democratically elected prime minister Mohammad Mosaddegh, whose removal from power in 1953 was exposed as a CIA-orchestrated coup in declassified US documents in 2013; and Martin Luther King Jr, who was assasinated in 1968 after years of surveillance by both the FBI and the CIA. However, US government involvement in his killing has never been proven and a department of justice investigation in 2000 found no evidence of a conspiracy.
Also shown were Panamanian military leader Omar Torrijos and Ecuadorian president Jaime Roldós Aguilera, both of whom died in separate plane crashes in 1981 that were officially attributed to pilot error.
The Strokes’ montage closed on footage stating that more than 30 universities in Iran have been destroyed by US-Israeli airstrikes since they began earlier this year, followed by footage of the demolition of al-Israa University in Gaza, the last standing university in the Strip before Israeli forces destroyed it in 2024.
Clips of the Strokes’ performance spread rapidly online, with one clip surpassing 5.1m views on X overnight before it was removed.
Casablancas told the audience he was “tempted to come out tonight with a laptop and show you guys some of those Iran Lego videos”, referring to the viral AI-generated clips made and distributed by pro-Iranian groups to ridicule Donald Trump’s administration.
Last month, YouTube removed Explosive Media, the Iranian channel behind most of the videos, for “violating our spam, deceptive practices and scams policies”.
“More facts than your local news. But they were taken down,” Casablancas said, blaming “fucking YouTube or government or whatever” before adding: “Land of the free, am I right?”
They are the latest in a line of musical acts who have recently used festivals as highly-visible opportunities to voice their opposition to current conflicts, footage of which is going viral. Last week at Coachella, singer Gigi Perez called for a “free Palestine” while last year the Irish hip-hop group Kneecap performed in front of messages including: “Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinian people” and “It is being enabled by the US government who arm and fund Israel despite their war crimes.”