Thom Yorke tweets “Burn the Witch” as Trump wins

Early on Wednesday 9 November, a few hours after Donald Trump passed the 270 electoral votes he needed to win the presidency, Thom Yorke posted lines from “Burn the Witch”, from Radiohead's A Moon Shaped Pool, on Twitter, run together with the spaces taken out, and a link to the song's video. He added nothing of his own.

The animated video has been likened to The Wicker Man. Virpi Kettu, its animator, has said it is about the refugee crisis in Europe and the blaming of different people… the blaming of Muslims and the negativity¹. She also tied it to the postcards some fans had been sent before the album appeared, which she read as a sign of the insecurity and blame that anti-immigration politicians had stirred up.

On Thursday morning Yorke shared David Remnick's New Yorker piece on the result, “An American Tragedy”, with its warning that commentators would soon try to make the election look normal.