Roger Waters, Pathological Antisemite, Due to Sing In Frankfurt

Roger Waters is an aging, quite unnecessarily rich ($310 million), potbellied British rock singer and pathological antisemite. That would be the end of the matter, except that he is scheduled to sing – for a disturbingly large sum – in Frankfurt, Germany this May. Germany, I needn’t remind you, has its own history of antisemitism, and some Germans are correctly incensed that Waters should be allowed to strut his stuff, accompanied by the antisemitic props he enjoys displaying at his concerts, such as flying pigs with Stars-of-David painted on them (Get it? Pigs! Pigs and Jews!).

In 2011, he began his antisemitic journey, as so many do, with anti-Israel rhetoric. He wrote an op-ed announcing he was joining the BDS movement. Over the years, he has encouraged other singers to refuse to perform in Israel. He narrated a 2016 documentary entitled The Occupation of the American Mind, where he stated that “defending a country like Israel by operating [sic for ‘opting’] for collective murder and the genocide of occupied people is not defense.”

The Anti-Defamation League has compiled a sampling of his remarks on Israel and Jews here.

In an August 2022 interview with World Beyond War, Waters repeatedly promoted antisemitic conspiracies and themes, including that a nefarious “Israel lobby” prevented the election of Jeremy Corbyn in the UK. In response to a question about fighting between Israel and Gaza-based terror groups, Waters claimed that Israel thinks Jews are superior to everybody else on the planet, saying: “…religious supremacy, the idea that the Jewish people are somehow superior to everybody else on the planet but particularly the Arabs, the Palestinian Arabs…the Israeli state who believe that the Jewish people are superior, more important than any of those people, those people’s lives are worthless.”

In a July 2022 video interview with the Canadian Foreign Policy Institute, Waters demonized Zionists as “settler-colonialist,” insinuated that Jews had no connection to the land of Israel, and referred to Zionists with the antisemitic canard “cabal,” saying:

“It’s about a bunch of Europeans back in the middle of the 19th century deciding that they were going to take over this piece of land, and kick out anybody that lived there and take it over for themselves and their own little cabal.”

In a May 2021 video, Waters accused Israel of committing genocide, and labeled Israel as an apartheid state.

In May 2019, Waters appeared to compare Israelis to aliens in a rant about Israel hosting the 2019 Eurovision contest.

In an April 2019 op-ed regarding Madonna’s performance in the Israel-hosted Eurovision contest, Waters wrote:

“To perform in Israel is a lucrative gig but to do so serves to normalise the occupation, the apartheid, the ethnic cleansing, the incarceration of children, the slaughter of unarmed protesters … all that bad stuff.”

In a September 2018 interview with a German publication, Waters argued that there is a conspiracy to block criticism of Israel in the mainstream US news media, stating:

“At any rate, in the USA, the press is controlled by corporations. Journalists there who deviate from the narrative that ‘Israel is just defending itself’ can encounter difficulty. Regarding Israel, the mainstream media are still biased. I get my news these days from blogs, some of which are written by people who used to work for mainstream periodicals and lost their jobs because they criticised Israel.”

In a bizarre display in August 2018, Waters projected the phrase “resist Israeli anti-Semitism” during a concert in Poland.

In a July 2017 online interview with BDS movement founder Omar Barghouti, Waters made a number of anti-Israel and pro-BDS statements, including:

“I’m not sure that there any much harsher regimes around the world than this [Israel], actually, if you look at it.”

China? North Korea? Russia? Iran? Afghanistan? Israel has a “harsher regime” than all of those countries?

In reference to a question about how Israel uses Hasbara (translation: “explaining” as in public diplomacy) to reject being labeled an apartheid state: “The thing about propaganda – again, it’s not hard to go back to Goebbels or the 1930s. You understand the tactic is to tell the big lie as often as possible over and over and over and over again. And people believe it.”

In December 2013, he gave an interview to CounterPunch.org where he accused the “extraordinary powerful” American “Jewish lobby” in the music industry of silencing critics of Israel.

Yes, just look at how that Jewish lobby silenced Roger Waters, one of the most frequently quoted of all rock singers.

In March 2013, Waters was interviewed on The Electronic Intifada. In the interview, Waters accused Israel of maintaining an apartheid state and claimed that he has asked other musicians to not play concerts in Israel.

Waters spoke in the United Nations on November 29, 2012 to mark International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People. Waters accused Israel of “international crimes,” such as “apartheid” and “ethnic cleansing” and also alleged that Israel’s treatment of the Palestinian people is similar to the Nazi treatment of citizens in France, Holland, Poland, or Czechoslovakia during World War II. Waters said, “History tells us that the invasion and occupation of a land and the subjugation of its people almost always creates a resistance. Ask the French or the Dutch or the Poles or the Czechs, the list goes on. This crisis in Gaza is a crisis rooted in occupation.”

In 2012, there was not a single Israeli in Gaza. They had all left in 2005. So much for the “crisis in Gaza” being “rooted in occupation.”

Case closed. Yes, Roger Waters is a pathological antisemite. But come to think of it, aren’t all antisemites “pathological” in their hatred?

More about the over-the-hill homunculus can be found here: “Pressure Grows in Frankfurt for Cancellation of Roger Waters Concert Over Rock Singer’s ‘Antisemitism,’” Algemeiner, January 23, 2023:

Pressure is growing for the cancelation of a forthcoming concert in the German city of Frankfurt by former Pink Floyd frontman Roger Waters because of the repeated accusations of antisemitism against the rock musician….

A vocal supporter of the so-called “Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions” (BDS) movement targeting the State of Israel for a comprehensive boycott, Waters’ past tours have featured provocative symbols that included flying pigs branded with a Star of David. In recent years, the singer has flirted with more overt antisemitism, drawing widespread condemnation in 2020 when he described the late pro-Israel billionaire philanthropist Sheldon Adelson as a “puppet master” controlling the US government who believed that “only Jews…are completely human.” Responding to Waters’ attack on Adelson, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) accused him of “deranged antisemitism.”

Several top officials in Frankfurt have already called for the May 28 concert to be canceled, among them the city’s Green Party Mayor Nargess Eskandari-Grünberg. More recently, Uwe Becker, the antisemitism commissioner for the state of Hesse, where Frankfurt is located, slammed Waters as an “example of aggressive, Israel-related antisemitism and he should therefore not be given an artistic platform in Hesse.”…

In recent months, Waters has attracted criticism for his statements supporting Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. After Waters gave an interview last August in which he called US President Joe Biden a “war criminal” and blamed NATO for Russia’s aggression, the head of Russia’s National Security Council, Dmitri Medvedev, said that the singer’s comments were proof that there were “still decent people in the West.”

Medvedev ended his appreciation of Waters with the words “Pink Floyd forever.”…

I am reminded of an old Soviet slogan: “Da zdravstvuet sovetskaya vlast’ plius elektrifikatsiya vsej strany” (“Long live Soviet power and the electrification of the whole country”).

Did you expect anything different? Of course Roger Waters, as one of the “still decent people in the West” (you heard It straight from Putin’s lapdog Dmitri Medvedev) supports Putin’s invasion of Russia. We should have no trouble guessing Waters’ other views: I suspect he greatly admires Kim Jong-un of North Korea, for the plucky little Korean’s refusal to kowtow to Zionist-ruled Amerikkka; he thinks the rulers of Communist China, Communist Cuba, and quasi-Communist Venezuela are fine fellows, doing their best against the American hegemon; and without question; he believes that Iran’s Supreme Leader is a swell fellow who, despite the endless Zionist propaganda against his country, is managing to keep things together and suppress the Mossad-trained agitators who have been creating unrest across Iran.

The German state of Hesse and the leaders of Frankfurt have a few months to persuade those putting on Roger Waters’ concert to change their plans. In 1933, there were 26,000 Jews in Frankfurt; by the end of World War II, only 600 were left. Frankfurt has had quite enough antisemitism in its past. It doesn’t need another dose of the poison, which Roger Waters so much enjoys spewing all over whatever stage he happens to be on. Keep him out. Down and out.