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.
That this alleged spectacle took place in the former capital of the Third Reich only makes it more sinister. Waters’s critics are citing this as proof that his criticisms of Israel’s apartheid government are rooted not in support for the Palestinians, but in antisemitism.
The central claims against Waters, however, are a mixture of distortions and outright falsehoods. First, there’s Waters’s own background. When he was just five months old, his father was killed by Nazis while fighting with the British Army during World War II. As a result, anti-fascist and antiwar sentiment has been a continuous motif of his work at least since Pink Floyd’s 1973 single “Us and Them.” Such themes also feature heavily on Pink Floyd’s 1979 concept album The Wall.
Then there’s the matter of what actually happened at his concerts. Since the band’s 1980 tour for The Wall, Waters’s performances have featured a...
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