German Commissioner Calls for Cancellation on Roger Waters Tour Due to His Hatred of Israel & Jews
Edited by: TJVNews.com
One of Germany’s top officials charged with combating anti-Semitism has called on German music venues to cancel the forthcoming tour of Roger Waters, the former Pink Floyd vocalist who has emerged as one of the world’s most vocal supporters of the “Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions” (BDS) campaign targeting Israel, according to a report on the Algemeiner.com
Uwe Becker, the anti-Semitism commissioner in the central state of Hesse addressed the issue on Monday and commented that that Waters had “developed more and more into a hateful opponent of Israel.”
“For years, Waters has been using his reputation to agitate against the Jewish state in a defamatory way and to question its legitimacy,” Becker said, according to the Algemeiner.com report. “Waters is a bad example of aggressive, Israel-related anti-Semitism and he should therefore not be given an artistic platform in Hesse,” Becker continued.
The Algemeiner report indicated that in 2023, Waters will conduct a tour across the European continent including performances in the cities of Frankfurt, Cologne, Munich, Hamburg and Berlin in Germany. The report also said that Waters’ “This is Not a Drill” tour that is scheduled to appear in Frankfurt in May of 2023 prompted Becker to ask the tour promoters and organizers to cancel the performance. This request comes on the heels of a similar one last month when Ludwig Spaenle, the anti-Semitism commissioner in Bavaria, for Waters’ concert in Munich asked that the performance be canceled, Algemeiner reported.
Becker referred to the display of anti-Semitic tropes at Waters’ previous concerts, included balloons shaped like pigs and bearing a Star of David, as was reported by Algemeiner. “Roger Waters is not welcome in Hesse with his anti-Semitic worldview,” he said.
FKP Scorpio, an events production company staging Waters’ concert in Hamburg, claimed it had signed a contract with the musician without being aware of his outbursts regarding Jews and Israel, Algemeiner reported. The company told the dpa news agency that it was conducting a “close dialogue” with Waters’ management.
In addition to a long record of anti-Israel animus and overt Jew hatred, in August of this year, the Washington Free Beacon reported that Waters, 78, tried to lay the blame of George Floyd’s 2020 death on Israel and discussed the matter with the pro-Hamas Shehab News Agency. In 2017, Waters tried to cancel a different band’s Israel concert.
The WFB reported that he is now touting pro-China views and appeared on a Chinese propaganda network.
China Global Television Network (CGTN) America, based in Washington, D.C., is an arm of the Beijing-led propaganda network China Central Television. In an interview with CGTN America about China’s sovereignty over Taiwan, Waters attacked the American media in August, the WFB reported.
“You won’t catch me watching MSNBC or Fox or anything in between because it’s all nonsense. It’s all propaganda, all of it … and they’re doing it as an exercise in control,” Waters said.
The WFB also reported that Waters compared the American media’s coverage of U.S.-Taiwan relations to Nazi Germany and to George Orwell’s 1984.
“It’s the same kind of technique that, dare I say it,” Waters said, “the Third Reich used in the ’30s in Germany: You have to identify somebody. They identified the Jews. … Once you identify your enemy it’s much easier to control the people because you close down the window of attention that they have.”
Waters reprimanded the United States for its relationship with Taiwan and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) for visiting Taiwan this past summer, the WFB reported.
“It’s for the Chinese people to make those decisions … it’s none of our business … and it’s certainly none of Nancy Pelosi’s business,” Waters said, according to the WFB report. He described Pelosi’s actions as “retrograde,” “unhelpful,” and evidence that “she has no idea what diplomacy is.”
As a matter of course, during his “This is Not a Drill” tour, Waters references police brutality and abortion and calls President Joe Biden a “war criminal,” according to the WFB report.
The Algemeiner reported that Waters has expressed support for Russian President Vladimir Putin since the invasion of Ukraine in February. An open letter he wrote addressed to the First Lady of Ukraine, Olena Zelenska, blamed “extreme nationalists in your country” for launching the war, to which she replied: “Roger Waters, you should ask for peace from the president of another country.”
As a result of his pro-Russian statements, all of the dates in Poland for Waters’ tour have been canceled, the Algemeiner reported. (Sources: Algemeinerc.om and WashingtonFreeBeacon.com) – Additional reporting by: Fern Sidman
