Baseless claims on social media that former Pink Floyd singer Roger Waters used anti-semitic imagery at recent concerts in Berlin are being elevated by media figures and politicians who detest his involvement in the BDS movement and his calls for peace negotiations in Ukraine.
Roger Waters’s Critics Are Smearing Him as Antisemitic Because They Hate His Pro-Palestine Activism | The Jacobin | Chip Gibbons:
June 2, 2023 - "If you’ve been on social media lately, you’ve possibly seen outraged claims about Roger Waters’s recent performances in Berlin. The former Pink Floyd member’s support for Palestinian human rights and calls for peace negotiations in Ukraine have long garnered a litany of demagogic critics. As part of their campaign against him, they’re now disseminating claims that, during the Berlin performances, Waters dressed up as a Nazi SS officer while disrespecting the memory of Anne Frank and those who died in the Holocaust — all while flying a pig balloon emblazoned with a Jewish Star of David..... The central claims against Waters, however, are a mixture of distortions and outright falsehoods....
- Since the band’s 1980 tour for The Wall, Waters’s performances have featured a theatrical element in which he assumes the role of a fictional fascist demagogue (the uniform that critics claimed was a literal SS uniform has now been demoted to merely a 'Nazi-style costume'); this was true of his 1990 historic performance in Berlin to mark the fall of the Berlin Wall. Waters’s performances have up to this point always been understood as condemning, not exalting, fascism.
- As for the balloon, as left-wing British writer Alex Nunns has pointed out, the photographs purporting to show an inflatable pig with a Star of David on it are not from Waters’s Berlin performance. A review of videos of the performance reveal they are not even the same color as the balloon Waters used in Berlin.
- Claims that Waters insulted Anne Frank are simply a malicious lie. Waters featured the name of Anne Frank in a montage of individuals murdered by state actors, in many cases due to racial prejudice. This did not occur during the part of his concert that satirizes a fascist rally. Waters’s performance made clear Frank was the victim of the Nazi genocide because of her Jewish identity.
"That false claims are being made about Waters is not the only disturbing aspect of this episode. What is especially troubling is how quickly these claims made it into mainstream media with little fact-checking. Now even politicians and law enforcement are taking them up.... The official Twitter accounts of the states of Israel and Ukraine have amplified them with surreal, juvenile tweets.... US State Department and European Union officials have also taken to official social media accounts to blast Waters and parrot the claims against him....
"The campaign against Waters soon jumped from social media into mainstream media. In early reports, Waters critics’ key claims were parroted without any fact-checking. Some of the articles included pictures of the pig-shaped balloon with a Star of David that allegedly was flown in the Berlin arena. As a result, Berlin police have opened a criminal investigation into Waters. British Labour MP Christian Wakeford is calling for Waters’s performances to be banned, explicitly citing the pig balloon as justification....
"The only word to describe what is happening is disinformation. The impetus behind it is not a specific Waters performance, but an attempt to destroy his character made by those with larger disagreements with his political commitments. Mainstream media, far from acting as fact-checkers, have helped to aid the spread of lies with its early uncritical reporting on Waters’s attackers. Although panic about disinformation has spurred calls for censorship and spawned a cottage industry of experts, the campaign against Waters has conveniently not been viewed through the lens of disinformation....
"The current campaign against Waters has nothing to do with this specific theatrical performance. In 2006, Waters was asked to perform in Tel Aviv, Israel. At the urging of Palestinians, Waters visited the occupied Palestinian territories, and as a result of what he saw, he heeded their call not to perform in Tel Aviv.... Since then, he has become one of the most high-profile celebrity supporters of the growing BDS movement.... But supporters of Palestinian rights face heightened harassment. In 2017, public officials in Nassau County, New York, citing a local anti-BDS law, attempted to have his concert canceled. That same year, a number of German broadcasters refused to carry a Waters concert over his BDS stance. On his current tour, the city of Frankfurt tried to ban Waters from performing over his alleged antisemitism. A court ruled in Waters’s favor....
"Waters has [also] recently come under fire for his statements on Ukraine. Waters has condemned the Russian invasion of Ukraine as illegal, but has also accused Joe Biden of fueling a horrendous war by refusing to negotiate, and has criticized the role of NATO expansion in setting the stage for the conflict. Earlier during the tour, when a CNN interviewer pushed Waters about why he included Joe Biden in the montage of war criminals in his performance (during the song 'The Bravery of Being Out of Range,' in which Waters profiles the war crimes of all US presidents since Ronald Reagan), CNN aired a heavily redacted version of his comments on Ukraine. Waters has in the past been criticized directly by the Ukrainian government and has said he’s been added to a Ukrainian kill list. His concerts in Poland were canceled over his views on Ukraine.
"Like everyone in a free society, critics of Waters’s political views are welcome to disagree with him. Repeatedly, however, they have sought to censor him; in order to achieve these ends, they have turned to a campaign of disinformation. Although disinformation has been a continuous source of panic in the United States since the 2016 election, disinformation campaigns against critics of US policy seem to get a free pass."
Read more: https://jacobin.com/2023/06/roger-waters-berlin-antisemitism-accusations-media-disinformation
Roger Waters sets the record straight on bogus accusations of antisemitism against him | DiEM25 | June 8, 2023:
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