The Strokes returned to Coachella’s main stage on Saturday, closing their set with a direct condemnation of U.S. interference in foreign governments. While performing their 2016 song “Oblivius,” which features the lyric “What side you standing on?,” the band displayed a montage accusing the CIA of aiding and abetting forced regime change in Chile, Bolivia, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and concluded with bombings in Gaza and Iran carried out by Israel and the U.S., respectively. Watch it below.
The montage named leaders including former Iranian prime minister Mohammed Mossadegh, former Bolivian president Juan Torres, and former Chilean president Salvador Allende, pairing their photos with captions accusing the CIA of conspiring to overthrow them. At one point, an image of Martin Luther King, Jr. appeared ahead of the caption “USGOVT found guilty of his murder in civil trial,” referencing a 1999 trial in which a jury unanimously decided there had been a government conspiracy to assassinate the Civil Rights leader. (In 2000, the Department of Justice reopened the murder case as a result of the trial, but said they found no evidence of a conspiracy.)
The video did not appear at the Strokes’ Weekend One set. Frontman Julian Casablancas did, however, provide some commentary on the American military during that show, asking the crowd, “You guys excited about the draft? Oh, wait, not the NFL draft.” The Strokes’ display was not the first time a band at Coachella has made a political statement tied to Gaza; last year, the rap trio Kneecap accused Coachella of cutting a pro-Palestine message they displayed during their set from its livestream.
The Strokes will follow up their Coachella performances with a tour later this year, which is set to take them across North America, Japan, and Europe. They’re also preparing their first album in six years, Reality Awaits, which is out on June 26. The band shared a lead single, “Going Shopping,” last week.