Perhaps Roger Waters Does Need an Education, After All

Pink Floyd’s drug-fueled, paranoid, and overly theatrical vinyl concept albums are a staple of 1960s and ’70s culture. This week, the dark side of one of the band’s former loons is on full display, as founder Roger Waters goes on a geezer-rocker tour.The German police are investigating whether the 79-year-old Mr. Waters violated the law earlier this week by donning Nazi regalia on stage and shooting a fake machine gun at his fans. While the law in the country once ruled by Hitler bans public display of Nazi symbols, Mr. Waters may not end up being prosecuted, as a loophole permits using these symbols for artistic purposes. Yet, Mr. Waters’ protestation that his Berlin performance in fact carried an anti-Nazi message rings hollow. Accompanying his Swastika armband act were depictions of a large pink pig adorned with a Star of David and, even more disturbing, side-by-side pictures of diarist Anne Frank and Al Jazeera reporter Shireen Abu Akleh.Like regrettably too many war correspondents, Abu Akleh was killed at the age of 41 while covering battle. She was shot, likely by a stray bullet, in May 2022, while filming a gun fight between Israeli soldiers and armed Palestinian terrorists near Jenin. Anne Frank was a teenager who wrote about her final days while hiding in an attic from the genocidal Nazi regime. She was a victim of the Holocaust. Drawing a gun-toting Mr. Waters breaking bricks in “The Wall” to storm Anne Frank’s attic, a popular Israeli political cartoonist, Amos Biderman, captured the wide disgust of the Israeli public over such gross abuse of Nazi imagery. The cartoon appeared in the pages of Haaretz, a newspaper with a hard pro-Palestinian editorial slant. “Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis” is part of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of antisemitism, which was endorsed by the White House last week. That comparison, though, is a staple of Mr. Waters’ post-Floyd advocacy of Palestinian causes, which has long turned into a pure hatred of Israel and, often, of Jews. “Sadly @rogerwaters you are antisemitic to your rotten core,” the author Polly Samson, who has written lyrics for Pink Floyd, tweeted in February, adding: “Also a Putin apologist and a lying, thieving, hypocritical, tax-avoiding, lip-synching, misogynistic, sick-with-envy, megalomaniac. Enough of your nonsense.” The band’s co-founder, Ms. Samson’s husband David Gilmour, approvingly endorsed her tweet. As if a lunatic lived in his head, Mr. Waters often accuses Zionists of promoting antisemitism. In an interview last year he denounced “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, he added, believes that “the Jewish people are superior, more important than any of those people, those people’s lives are worthless.”As the Anti-Defamation League notes in a list of Mr. Waters’ worst hits, he believes Israel’s founding is “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.”Following his Berlin antic, Mr. Waters explained to a Frankfort audience that in his performance there he would forgo the leather coat and red armband “out of respect” to the concert hall. It was built on a site where on Kristallnacht Jews were rounded up to be sent to concentration camps. He later described himself as “unnerved” when a protester carrying an Israeli flag charged the stage during the Frankfort concert. Security personnel attacked the protester, calling himself Marcel L., and escorted him out. Other protesters in the hall were reportedly attacked violently by fans of Roger Waters. The aging rocker’s tour quickly turned into an internet sensation, with supporters and opponents of the psychedelic band’s former bass player bombarding social network sites with comments. On Wednesday, Mr. Waters moved his “Us and Them” circus to the land of his birth from the land that birthed Nazism. “His concerts next month in the UK must be canceled,” the chairman of Britain’s Muslims against Antisemitism, Ghanem Nuseibeh, tweeted. “@MayorofLondon has a moral duty to speak out and call for the cancellation of the concert. Antisemitism and nazism must be fought proactively, not only with words.”“On to Birmingham,” Mr. Waters nevertheless tweeted after boasting of a “standing ovation in Frankfurt.” Dreams of storming Britain after German crowds were mesmerized by the antics of a goofy character spewing anti-Jewish slogans from a professionally lighted stage: What could go wrong?

Perhaps Roger Waters Does Need an Education, After All

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