The targeting of Roger Waters
JVL Introduction
Oh dear! Another pile-up on Roger Waters, with calls to ban his forthcoming shows in the UK.
The excuse this time is the imagery he used in his recent gig in Berlin, where he is accused of unabashed antisemitism.
Except it isn’t, as Clive Gabay makes abundantly clear in a very interesting discussion in The Pickle (thanks for permission to repost!), showing that much of what is claimed about the performance is fundamentally distorted, and placing the issues raised in a broader context.
Critical of Waters for sometimes taking “positions that put him on the crankier side of geopolitical debates”, Gabay is nonetheless absolutely clear that the only way to explain this fabricated attack on him is because of his very high profile as an advocate for Palestinian rights and for the BDS movement.
RK
A study in manipulation
Clive Gabay. the Pickle, 2nd June 2023
Roger Waters has never been far from controversy, but that appears to be reaching new levels as the former Pink Floyd frontman faces calls to ban his upcoming shows in the UK on the grounds that they could fuel anti-Jewish hate. As has become customary in the public debates over antisemitism in recent years, the social media-driven analysis has painted a rather deceptive picture, with the political motivations behind the latest wave of allegations more complex than has been suggested.
This is not the first time Waters has been plagued by accusations of antisemitism, and there is no doubt that he has made antisemitic comments in the past. In 2013, in response to a question about why his fellow musicians were reticent about signing up to a cultural boycott of Israel, Waters responded that “the Jewish lobby is extraordinarily powerful here [in the United States]”. He also once accused the US billionaire Sheldon Adelson of “pulling the strings” of US political figures, although he later issued an apology.
However, it is not those previous comments that have drawn the ire of the Board of Deputies, Labour MP Christian Wakefield (until recently a Conservative), German NGOs, UK Lawyers for Israel, and other assorted defenders of Jews over the past week, even if they have provided the mood music. Instead, it is what happened at Waters’ gig last week in Berlin that became central to demands to ban him from performing, both at further scheduled dates in Germany and now in the UK.
Assessing the claims
In the immediate aftermath of the concert, images began circulating on social media focusing on three aspects that supposedly demonstrated antisemitism.
The first was an image contrasting two big screens shown at the concert; one bore the name of the Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh who was killed in Jenin last year by an Israeli sniper, while the other bore the name of diarist and Holocaust victim Anne Frank. The explicit implication of posing these two images together was that Waters was drawing a set of equivalences between Abu Akleh and Frank, and thus devaluing the Holocaust. Indeed, from the images being circulated on social media, it looked as if the two screens were showing the names simultaneously.
But this was not the case. It quickly became clear that the screens at the show had simply displayed the names of 12 victims of orchestrated state violence, and so, promptly, other lines of attack emerged.
The next concerned a large inflatable pig that has actually been a mainstay of Waters’ shows for many years – an allusion to the pig that Pink Floyd flew above Battersea power station for the cover of their 1977 album Animals. After Waters’ Berlin concert, claims emerged on social media that the pig had appeared at these events emblazoned with a Star of David.
Yet this wasn’t true either – the photo circulating was from a decade ago. The allegation was also, again, narrowly framed, ignoring that the pig from 2013 featured many symbols, including a crucifix, an Islamic crescent, the Shell logo, and various political statements. And while the 2013 stunt did spark accusations of antisemitism from some quarters, it’s notable that the Anti-Defamation League – not usually one to defend BDS supporters – concluded: “we believe there is no anti-Semitic intent here”.
As well as the pig, the focus soon fell on Waters’ decision to dress up as a Nazi – in Germany, no less, and at venues that include the site in Frankfurt where the Nazis rounded up 3,000 Jews in 1938 before sending them to concentration camps. But a Frankfurt court concluded in April that while maybe tasteless, the Nazi cosplaying wasn’t antisemitic (the Berlin police has since opened a criminal investigation into the matter). In response to the latest backlash, Waters seems to have shed the uniform.
Nazi cosplaying, it should be noted, has been absolutely central to Waters’ live performances of Pink Floyd’s 1979 album The Wall – as well as the Bob Geldof-led film that the album spawned – for over 40 years. The lyrics of some of the songs mimic, very explicitly, how Nazis and other European fascists might have spoken about their victims during the second world war. Some people might not like it, but those suddenly feigning outrage never seemed particularly bothered by it before.
What’s more, given the state of affairs in Germany today, one might even consider it appropriate to draw parallels with German history in the context of ongoing events. Just a week before Waters’ concert, Jews protesting in solidarity with Palestine were rounded up by police on the streets of Berlin. Six months ago, a major plot was uncovered to overthrow the Reichstag and install a far-right aristocrat as head of state, with weapons found at more than 50 locations. And the far-right Alternative für Deutschland party is resurgent; having dipped to 10.3% (still a scarily high number) of the vote in the 2021 federal election (from 12.6% in 2017) some polls now have the party at 18%.
Once we see these allegations in their context, we can begin to understand some of the real dynamics at play.
Self-defeating anti-racism
Waters is not a man with a particularly sophisticated or consistent outlook when it comes to liberatory politics. In recent years, he has used his platform to call into question Russian atrocities in Ukraine and accuse the White Helmets in Syria of being a Western false-flag operation. He has also yearned for an Israeli FW de Klerk, referencing the South African leader who negotiated the end of political apartheid but ensured the continuing and successful functioning of white capital in South Africa.
Indeed, among rock-god-egos like Waters, there’s been a marked uptick in bizarre political outbursts of late, with the pandemic seemingly lighting the touchpaper. Eric Clapton and Ian Brown both recorded anti-vax songs (the latter referencing 5G and the “new world order”); Van Morrison wrote a whole anti-vax and anti-lockdown album, which included a song titled They Own the Media; and the less said about Morrissey the better.
In many ways, there is little here that’s new. Musicians are people, and people sometimes say and do really awful things – often without much in the way of public outcry. Lynyrd Skynyrd, the 1970s country-rock band that regularly performed in front of a Confederate flag, continues to hit the AOR airwaves on a daily basis with their hit Sweet Home Alabama – a song that, at best, has an ambiguous relationship to white supremacy. The estates of Jerry Lee Lewis and Michael Jackson don’t appear to have suffered too much from their respective scandals either.
Yet it is not Morrissey, Van Morrison or Ian Brown who are facing calls from MPs to have their UK shows cancelled, only Waters.
We can get a good sense of what’s really going on here simply by considering the organisations that have assembled to try to cancel Waters, which include some notable anti-anti-racists. The Board of Deputies probably needs no introduction here; UK Lawyers for Israel, for its part, is intent on criminalising Palestinians and pro-Palestine speech, even successfully banning artwork by Palestinian children at a recent hospital exhibition in London; and one of the prime movers in the anti-Waters protests in Germany, the Werte Initiative, carries a call to close and prosecute mosques whose websites do not commit to “democracy and indivisible human rights”. Meanwhile, the main symbol of those protests in recent days has been, rather tellingly, the Israeli flag.
And so it becomes clear: while Waters has definitely taken positions that put him on the crankier side of geopolitical debates, he is also one of the highest profile advocates in the world for Palestinian rights, and one of the public figures most synonymous with the BDS movement. In a world where pro-Palestine speech is continuously policed and criminalised, this is meaningful, even if there is a legitimate debate to be had about how useful people who defend Assad and Putin are to Palestinian liberation – but this is a debate for Palestinian movements, not for the Board of Deputies, anti-Palestinian racists, British MPs, and definitely not Islamophobic German philosemites.
As so often before, we find ourselves in a situation where those most vocal in defending Jewish interests are those most deeply invested in policing the voices and movements of racialised and colonised communities. And for Jews, this is a totally self-defeating anti-racist strategy.
So long as Jewish communal bodies fail to understand that the fight against antisemitism is inextricably linked with other anti-racist, anti-imperialist and anti-colonial struggles, and unless those same bodies extricate themselves from governments and organisations that criminalise and violently police Palestinian life, then they will continue to align themselves with the increasingly authoritarian forces that characterise political life in Britain and much of the world right now. These are not forces that are going to be friendly towards Jews, nor are they likely to have any impact on the opinions of Roger Waters or his fans who might actually make a difference to where, when and how he performs▼
Clive Gabay is a Reader in International Politics at Queen Mary University of London, with an interest in Arab Jews, antisemitism and anti-racism. He also really likes Pink Floyd.
This is amusing – by one of the hardest of hardline Zionists; it shows that Israel/Palestine is the issue and the rest is fake outrage:
https://mizrachi.org/uncategorized/roger-waters-anti-semite-sort
The writer seems obliged by ‘liberal even-handedness(?)’ to suggest Waters might have been guilty of some previous lazy anti-Semitism. But the fact that Waters points out nuclear armed Israel has a highly resourced lobby is hardly anti-Semitic. Years ago people were pointing out that Israel’s sister white settler societies – Rhodesia and Apartheid South Africa – also had lobbies. So these are pretty standard anti-Colonial sentiments, which younger writers less acquainted with empire and colonialism just don’t seem to get.
If Waters thinks Ukraine is a US proxy war who can blame him. Violent US imperialism has been a feature of the post war world. Even Obama admitted the US brought down Iranian parliamentary democracy in the 1950s (the list of brutalised countries is long).
Should Waters be critiqued for believing The White Helmets are a false flag operation? The Morning Star thinks the same, citing confessions from its members.
See link – https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/w/white-helmets-group-members-admit-to-staging-chemical-attacks-in-syria-russian-study-finds
There are a couple of factual errors in the above article, plus some of interpretation [not commenting on the Ukraine issue]. First: there is a *Jewish Lobby* entry in wikipedia ~ it does exist: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_lobby ~ so it’s not surprising if people use that term; 2nd: “Waters’ decision to dress up as a Nazi” ~ the uniform is a general [fascist/authoritarian] one, not an SS one that critics have claimed AND it’s a *critical* performance, not a promotion of authoritarianism. ps. I’m also an old Pink Floyd fan; was there when the live side of Ummagumma was recorded.
[This comment has been edited for length – JVL web]
The following are a couple of clips from a Guardian article on May 28 headlined ‘Protesters accuse Roger Waters of antisemitism ahead of Frankfurt gig’:
And this:
Yes, exactly, and the likes of Elio Adler undoubtedly know THAT is the reality – as do the hundreds of thousands who go to Roger’s concerts of course, along with tens of millions of others around the world. And precisely as the hate-mongering propagandists did with Naz Shah and Ken Livingstone and Jeremy and Jackie and many others, they totally distort and misrepresent what was said and pile in with mountain-loads of faux outrage. AND throw in falsehoods to further their smears, as with the Big Lie that Ken said Hitler was a Zionist, for example, or that Jeremy ‘supported’ the mural. He didn’t ‘support’ it, and just enquired of Mear One why it was being removed thinking, as he did, that the mural was about capitalism and exploitation.
NB Note that the author of the piece says that RW ‘claimed’ attempts to portray etc, but DOESN’T say the same regards what Adler said about ‘his words and imagery spread jew-hatred’ etc! It’s subtle, and easily consciously missed.
All well put, though I think Gabay is over-cautious in tending to label doubts about the virtues of the Islamo-Saudi-US war against Assad, or aboutt he virtues of the anaconda-esque eastward extension of NATO in clear breach of assurances given to Mikhail Gorbachev by James Baker, the Bushes and arguably Clinton, as prima, let alone conclusive, evidence of madness or political unreliability.
There is a dark ironic element to dave’s quote at the start of comments.
“I am proud of…The Jewish people came to America, a battered and beleaguered people, and raised themselves up to levels of prominence “.
It might have been hard work but like any other white American group, the land they were living on belonged to Native Americans, taken as part of arguable the worst holocaust in human history. There are more western Jews in the US than surviving Native Americans, and the latter are largely restricted to the reservation system.
Also the money in the pocket of prospering children of white settlers – whatever their religion – includes the unrepaid profits of slavery.
It’s a pity that Clive Gabay spoilt his article by sideswipes at Roger Waters.
It is not antisemitic to reference a Jewish Lobby in the USA that devotes itself to supporting Israel, right or wrong. That is what they call themselves – The Conference of Major Jewish Organisations. AIPAC calls itself a Jewish organisation. Why is it antisemitic to take them at their word?
Of course they are an Israel/Zionist lobby but terminological exactitude is not antisemitism or if it is then antisemitism is now a meaningless concept.
Likewise there are genuine doubts about the White Helmets and of course Ukraine is a proxy war, in which genuine neo-Nazis are fighting on ‘our’ side. NATO has armed, trained and equipped the Azov Battalion and the Right Sector, as has incidentally Israel.
As for being anti-vax I don’t think people can just call everyone who is anti-vax antisemitic. Unfortunately people today, in the absence of a strong labour movement, do resort to conspiracy theories but there is no greater conspiracy theory than suggesting that supporters of the Palestinians are anti-Jewish.
I thought accusing Sheldon Adelson of pulling the strings of Republican presidential candidates was a fact – he certainly boasted of it. If that’s a Jewish conspiracy theory then we really have lost it.
What is really sickening is when racists like Starmer and Christian Wakeford have the gall to call Roger Waters antisemitic.