BERLIN, GERMANY: Former Pink Floyd bassist Roger Walters has again sparked outrage after he dressed as a Nazi SS officer at Berlin Concert on May 19. Throughout his performance, Waters reportedly attempted to make analogies between current-day Israel and Nazi Germany as he continued to criticize the nation's treatment of Palestinians.
In his Nazi-inspired attire, he appeared to fire a machine gun in front of the audience. This attire was worn by neo-Nazis in the Pink Floyd film 'The Wall', which tells the tale of a rock star who builds a wall to protect himself.
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Anne Frank, Shireen Abu Akleh, and George Floyd were also displayed
During the concert names of numerous other personalities, such as Anne Frank, Shireen Abu Akleh, and George Floyd were also displayed. Frank was a Jewish teenager who perished in the Holocaust. Her personal journal, which he kept while hiding from the Nazis while they occupied the Netherlands, became one of the most well-known stories of the Holocaust. Last year, while documenting an Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) operation on a Palestinian refugee camp, Abu Akleh, an Al Jazeera correspondent, was shot and killed by Israeli forces.
'F*** the occupation' displayed when Waters sang 'Lay Down Jerusalem (If I Had Been God)'
The screen behind him displayed "F*** the occupation" when Waters sang "Lay Down Jerusalem (If I Had Been God)" Daily Mail reported. The publication said that the musician then changed his outfit to 'Kutiya' a symbol of Palestinian resistance against Isreal as 'Palestinian rights' displayed on the screen. "On a matter of public interest: A court in Frankfurt has ruled that I am not an antisemite," the musician announced on screen before starting his performance. “Just to be clear, I condemn antisemitism unreservedly," he said.
The backlash after the concert
Simon Wiesenthal Center, which seeks to educate the public about the Holocaust were critical of Rogers's performance, they tweeted, "Shame on Frankfurt authorities and Mercedes Benz arena in Berlin — a place from where Jews were deported by the Nazis — for providing anti-Semite #RogerWaters this venue for his concert with no concern/care for the Jewish community." "Visually appalling—in Berlin no less! Holocaust distortion at its apex. #RogerWaters," it wrote in another tweet. "I truly cannot believe Roger Waters believes this appalling co-opting of the Holocaust is not antisemitic. This man hates Jews pure and simple. This from his concert in Berlin (!)," Emily Schrader wrote in her tweet. "Good morning to everyone but Roger Waters who spent the evening in Berlin (Yes Berlin) desecrating the memory of Anne Frank and the 6 million Jews murdered in the Holocaust," the Isreal government tweeted.
Motion on ban on performance
With the performance calls for banning him from upcoming performances have also grown. The report said UK, MP ChristianWakeford spoke out against Waters' upcoming performance in Manchester. He put forth a motion to ban the concert citing the country's rising 'anti-Jewish sentiment'. Walters has scheduled performances in Costa Rica, Colombia, and Ecuador. He performed in Parague on Thursday. Previously he was in Munich for a concert.
Walters view
However, Walters has consistently refuted claims that he is anti-Semitic, blaming an "Israeli lobby of smear campaign." Walter referred to criticism of him as being a part of an "outrageous and despicable smear campaign to denounce me as an antisemite, which I am not, never have been, and never will be," in an interview with Berliner Zeitung. Waters asserted that the Israeli state is engaging in "genocide" and that the reaction was brought on "because I lend my voice to the 75-year-old fight for equal human rights for all my brothers and sisters in Palestine/Israel."
A row with a former bandmate
In a row over Israel and the Ukraine War earlier this year, Waters got into a fight with his old bandmate David Gilmour and Gilmour's wife, the writer Polly Samson, who called Waters "antisemitic to your rotten core." Samson also called her husbands ex-bandmate a "Putin apologist" in the astonishing Twitter rant she launched in February, writing: "Enough of your nonsense." On his official account, Waters replied that he was "aware of the incendiary and wildly inaccurate comments made about him on Twitter by Polly Samson which he refutes entirely”, adding: “He is currently taking advice as to his position.”
