The Strokes use Coachella set to denounce US foreign intervention | Coachella

US band the Strokes used their Coachella set to make a harsh 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 California music festival’s second weekend, the band performed their 2016 song Oblivius in front of giant LED screens that showed a montage of world leaders whose death was proven or suspected to have brought down the CIA., as lead singer Julian Casablancas sings: “Which side do you stand on?”

The montage showed Congo’s first democratically elected prime minister, Patrice Lumumba, being executed by a Congolese firing squad with the support of the Belgian army in 1961. Lumumba was killed amid a separate CIA plot to assassinate him because of the threat he posed to Western control of the Congo’s mineral resources, but it was Belgium that acknowledged “moral responsibility” and apologized for his murder in 2002.

The montage also showed Guatemalan president Jacobo Árbenz, who was overthrown by CIA engineering in 1954; and Juan José Torres, the Bolivian president who was overthrown in 1971 and kidnapped and killed five years later.

Also featured was Chilean president Salvador Allende, who killed himself during the 1973 CIA-backed coup that overthrew his socialist government and installed brutal military dictator Augusto Pinochet. Although some still believe that the United States played a role in Allende’s death, a scientific autopsy in 2011 confirmed that there was “absolutely no doubt” that he died by his own hand.

Other leaders featured in the montage include Iran’s democratically elected prime minister, Mohammed Mossadegh, whose ouster from power in 1953 was revealed in US documents declassified in 2013 to be a CIA-planned coup; and Martin Luther King Jr., who was assassinated in 1968 after years of surveillance by both the FBI and the CIA. But it was never proven that the US government was involved in his killing, and a 2000 justice department investigation found no evidence of a conspiracy.

Also seen were Panamanian military leader Omar Torrijos and Ecuadorian President Jaime Roldós Aguilera; Both died in separate plane crashes in 1981 that were officially attributed to pilot error.

Strokes’ montage ended with footage of more than 30 universities in Iran being destroyed in US-Israeli airstrikes that began earlier this year. Al-Israa University in GazaIt is the last university standing on the Strip before Israeli forces destroy it in 2024.

Clips of the Strokes’ performance went viral, with one clip surpassing 5.1 million views overnight on X before being removed.

Casablancas told the audience that he was “tempted to go out with a laptop tonight and show you some of the Iranian Lego videos,” referring to the AI-generated viral clips created and distributed by pro-Iran groups to mock Donald Trump’s administration.

Last month, YouTube removed Explosive MediaThe Iranian channel behind many of the videos for “violating our spam, deceptive practices and fraud policies.”

“More facts than your local news. But they’ve been removed,” Casablancas said, blaming “YouTube or the government or whatever,” adding: “Land of the free, right?”

They are the latest in a string of musical acts to use festivals as highly visible opportunities to voice their opposition to current conflicts, images of which have recently gone viral. Last week at Coachella, singer Gigi Perez called for a “free Palestine,” while last year Irish hip-hop group Kneecap performed in front of messages such as: “Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinian people” and “This is enabled by the US government, which arms and finances Israel despite its war crimes.”