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Julian Casablancas, the frontman of the iconic band The Strokes, ignited a firestorm on social media this week after claiming that “American Zionists” act like “they are Black people during slavery” in a controversial interview that’s now blowing up online.
“Well it’s been nice having a career,” Casablancas quipped before dropping the remark during an appearance on the YouTube series “SubwayTakes,” hosted by Kareem Rahma.
The rocker went on to argue that “American Zionists get the benefits of white privileged people, but talk like they are black people during slavery.” Rahma didn’t push back—instead, he agreed “100%” and added his own critique about perceived victim hood in the context of the war in Gaza.
“I’m like, ‘You are going to a wedding in Tel Aviv right now when there are 80,000 plus dead people, including women and children half a mile away,’” Rahma responded. “Absolutely f—ked.”
The comments didn’t come out of nowhere.
Just days earlier, Casablancas and his band used their closing set at the Coachella Valley music festival to slam US foreign policy and Israel’s military campaign — part of a growing pattern of political statements from the singer.
The video montage that The Strokes played at the end of their set last weekend depicted a school being blown up, which was captioned “last university standing in Gaza.” Then the members got up and left the stage while the clip continued playing.
The Coachella star, notoriously anti-Trump, grew up a rich kid in New York City and socialized with the president when he was younger.
Casablancas appeared to have anticipated some backlash from the incendiary comments. “I mean, just for the people that are going to be like, ‘Hamas, October 7th,’ um, yes, bad,” Casablancas said before pivoting to comparisons of historical uprisings.
“You know, Native American rebellions didn’t mean it was, you know, okay to do what we did,” he rambled. “Slave rebellions that were violent didn’t mean that, you know, slavery is not bad.”
If anything, the explanation only fueled controversy and confusion. Reaction to the comments has been predictably explosive and deeply divided. Some fans praised the singer for “speaking out” and called him “brilliant” for his “take of the year.”
“Julian doubling down on criticizing (American) zionists and zionism and American imperialism at large got me feeling hopeful and proud,” read one YouTube comment. “Smart, loud, and so f—king cool.”
Others were less impressed.
On Reddit, critics blasted the remarks as tone deaf and “gross,” with some accusing the rhetoric of veering into antisemitism.
“For him to shrug off Oct 7 like a slave rebellion is a depraved moral inversion,” one Redditor commented. “A white nepo baby is talking about privilege… how rich…,” another commented on Instagram.
