Reggie Watts calls for Thom Yorke to “decenter himself” after statement on Palestine
American comedian, musician and actor Reggie Watts has released his own statement in reaction to Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke’s previous post clarifying his stance on Palestine.
On May 30th, Yorke posted a rare statement through his Instagram, which explicitly called out the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu and “his crew of extremists”, who are “totally out of control and need to be stopped, and the international community should put all the pressure it can on them to cease.” It also called for the release of hostages, and levelled that both sides of the conflict are suffering, though Palestine should be free.
Commenting on his own statement, Yorke mentioned what he deems “social media witch-hunts” that necessitate artists’ commentary upon political occurrences, despite their removal from that world. This leads to “deliberate polarization [which] does not serve our fellow human beings and perpetuates a constant ‘us and them’ mentality.”
Watts’ post began by detailing how he was “disappointed” at Yorke’s statement, as it “centers his hurt feelings and frames his fans’ demands for him to speak up as a ‘social media witch hunt’, instead of recognizing the urgency of their call for him to speak out against the world-historical humanitarian crisis in Palestine.”
He writes, “I hope Thom will reflect and decenter himself from the public outcry against the genocide.”
Yorke’s original statement referred to “some guy” who heckled him at a show in Melbourne in 2024, demanding he comment on the ongoing conflict in the Middle East. He said the matter had a “heavy toll on [his] mental health”.
While Yorke states that public figures commenting on the global conflict do “very little except heighten the tension, fear and oversimplication of what are complex problems,” Watts sees it as “a needed affirmation of our humanity in these dark times.”
On his second page, the actor and comedian addresses “Thom’s repetition of a common rhetorical tactic of those who are devoted to maintaining the status quo, that one cannot speak up or demand an end to the genocide unless they fully understand the deep ‘complexity’ of this historical conflict.”
Watts simplifies what he sees as Yorke’s overly aggrandising comments, stating, “you don’t need to be a geopolitics scholar to know that starving children and slaughtering families is wrong.”
Watts suggests that everybody has a “responsibility to speak up”. He ends his statement with a call for change: “All positive change starts with conscious and loving people raising their voices and working together to bring a better world into existence. Please keep fighting until our sisters and brothers in Palestine are free.”
Yorke’s statement also raised eyebrows as he did not comment on bandmate Jonny Greenwood, who is married to the vocally pro-IDF Israeli artist Sharona Katan, and has collaborated with Israeli musician Dudu Tassa a few times over the years. Greenwood had several shows cancelled due to a 2024 show in Tel Aviv, in which Tassa allegedly “repeatedly entertained genocidal Israeli forces in between these massacres of Palestinians in Gaza, willingly acting as a cultural ambassador for apartheid Israel.”
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