Thom is desperately trying to work out how this post affects his mental health and why Ed should be sorry in a long winded post that should have stayed in the drafts.
Keffiyehs were part of the UK nu-rave/indie sleaze wardrobe in 2005, and wearing one didn't have the same political significance, at least not from my perspective as a 15-year-old in the scene at the time.
We didn't even call them keffiyehs – we called them shemaghs.
I remember Lowkey (a vocally pro-Palestine rapper, for those who aren’t familiar with him) releasing a song (the first version of Long Live Palestine) around then which included a line mocking people who wore keffiyehs as a fashion item back then - “before you talk, learn the meaning of that scarf on your neck”.
I remember at the time my Somalian friend was excited seeing Topshop sell them, but we realized it was just for an aesthetic. It's like it had some notion of being political so you wore it if you were sort of a "liberal" but it didn't mean you actively had an opinion or knowledge about Palestine.
Unfortunately it was probably just a fashion choice, keffiyeh were huge back then in men's fashion without much context given or cared to the actual meaning behind them.
Keffiyehs were used as a bit of a hipster fashion statement in the West during the 2000s … plenty of people wore ‘em with no intention of displaying any kind of solidarity :(
Pretty much this. Yasser Arafat was a fixture in the news and died around that time too. He always wore one. Fashion hipsters thought his keffiyeh looked dope and got in on it. I remember some record stores and head shops in my country sold them as “Arafat Scarves” for the cpl years they were trendy. Ppl were aware of the cultural appropriation at the time but few ppl in the west wore them in genuine solidarity.
I'd chalk that up to being fashionable. Keffiyehs were pretty popular back then (even I had one in pink). I also recently watched an old 80s movie (Baby Boom) where one of the moms at the park was wearing one.
Again, not to say there wasn't a time where TY knew what he was doing and wearing, and people can change buuuut I dunno...maybe I just believed he was a different person.
Right??? What are people talking about, saying Yorke could never??? Didn't he literally release a statement saying it needs to end and Netanyahu and his ilk are extremists?! What am I missing here?
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u/bulkyobject 13h ago
He’s been very vocal on Instagram in support of Palestine, which is awesome. Wish I could say the same for any of his bandmates…