Rock and roll used to be about rebellion, cheap beer, and telling the establishment to shove it. Now it’s about millionaire Manhattan prep school kids projecting Iranian propaganda onto a Jumbotron while trust fund babies in flower crowns sway along like they’re at a candlelight vigil for terrorism.
Peak 2026, folks. Absolutely peak 2026.
The Strokes — who haven’t been culturally relevant since your older brother’s flip phone era — closed out their Saturday set at Coachella this weekend by turning their performance of “Oblivius” into a full-blown anti-American film festival. The band projected a video montage behind them featuring images of world leaders they claim were “overthrown by the CIA,” footage of what they called the “last university in Gaza” being hit by a missile, and videos of alleged U.S. destruction of universities in Iran.
They also threw up a photo of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. with the caption claiming the “US Govt found guilty of his murder in civil trial.” Because nothing says “we’re serious intellectuals” like a rock band presenting conspiracy theories on a festival screen between guitar solos.
Lead singer Julian Casablancas — whose father founded Elite Model Management, by the way, because of course the guy lecturing America about imperialism comes from literal modeling industry royalty — took a break from the propaganda slideshow to crack wise about the military draft. “You guys excited about the draft?” he asked the crowd. “Oh wait no, not the NFL draft, I’m talking about in six months, I think everyone’s going to have to register who’s eligible for the military.”
Hilarious, Julian. Really brave stuff from a guy whose biggest personal sacrifice was choosing between the West Village and the Upper East Side.
Here’s what gets me. Coachella tickets run about $500 a pop. Five hundred American dollars to stand in the Indio desert heat and watch a band that peaked in 2001 tell you that America is the real villain in the Middle East. These people flew in from Brooklyn and Silver Lake, paid for VIP wristbands, probably dropped another $200 on artisanal kombucha and overpriced tacos, and their reward was a Julian Casablancas TED Talk about how the CIA ruined the world.
(If you wanted to be lectured about American foreign policy by someone who knows absolutely nothing about it, you could have just opened Twitter for free.)
And let’s be clear about what this actually was. Projecting footage framing Hamas’s war as a righteous cause and painting Iran as a victim of American aggression isn’t “art.” It’s not “speaking truth to power.” It’s a rich kid from Manhattan — net worth somewhere north of $10 million — shilling propaganda for a terrorist organization that murders civilians, uses hospitals as military bases, and would throw Julian Casablancas off a rooftop for his lifestyle choices if he ever actually set foot in Gaza.
But sure. Very edgy. Very punk rock.
Casablancas also wore a t-shirt with the Amazon logo modified to read “crime” — a shot at Jeff Bezos. So we’ve got a multimillionaire musician, performing at a festival sponsored by every major corporation on earth, wearing an anti-corporate protest shirt while promoting terrorist propaganda. The lack of self-awareness is genuinely breathtaking. These people have the ideological consistency of a weather vane in a tornado.
The Strokes have a new album dropping in June called “Reality Awaits.” Based on Saturday night’s performance, reality has been waiting for Julian Casablancas for about 25 years and he still hasn’t shown up.
This is what passes for rebellion in 2026. Not fighting the system — carrying water for the world’s worst regimes while corporate sponsors foot the bill and Instagram influencers clap along. The Ramones would have thrown a shoe at this guy.
Rock and roll didn’t die. It just got a trust fund and started reading Iranian state media.
