I still listen to Radiohead

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 DraimanBack 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…