Roger Waters under investigation by German police for being against Nazis

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Elfdart
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Roger Waters under investigation by German police for being against Nazis

Post by Elfdart »

Singer/songwriter/musician Roger Waters, best known for his work with Pink Floyd, has done well for himself over the last 44 years with live performances of The Wall that include elaborate stage shows mixed with left-wing political harangues about war, religion and a distaste for authority figures in general and fascists in particular, as this clip from the movie version made in 1982 shows:



These tours are quite successful. However, since Roger Waters backs the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement and condemned the IDF's murder of a Palestinian reporter (and since apologists for the government of Israel aren't as sly as they used to be), they tried to smear him as a neo-Nazi for wearing a Nazi-ish uniform on stage* (he was playing the same character played by Bob Geldof in the clip posted above) in his most recent tour.

Variety

Money quote:
Drawing attention at the Berlin shows was a piece of staging during the song “In the Flesh” in which Waters puts on the type of black coat and armband strongly associated with Nazis — although the symbol of two hammers is a takeoff on a swastika — and is handed a prop machine gun, which he “fires” at the audience, accompanied by sound effects. This follows a spoken-word bit in which a “queer,” someone who “looks Jewish,” a Black person (referred to by a racial epithet) and someone smoking a joint are singled out as being worthy of being shot. Since 1979, Pink Floyd fans have understood the song and its staging — and its adaptation in the film version of “The Wall” — as being satirical, in the context of a story about a rock star whose delusional state leads him to become a fascist.
The first reaction to the hysteria over Waters' tour is the usual line that satire is dead because people are just too stupid to get the obvious intent from the artist. As someone who was in the minority who laughed all the way through Starship Troopers as a send-up of fascist milwank, while most of the audience took it seriously, I can appreciate this view. However, too many of the creeps sliming Roger Waters know goddamned well that he's not pro-Nazi so this is just another Goebbelsian smear job like ones perpetrated against Jeremy Corbyn, Ilhan Omar and Bernie Sanders.

* Just imagine the shit that would be dumped on Peter Cushing if he were alive today and backed BDS:

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Re: Roger Waters under investigation by German police for being against Nazis

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Elfdart wrote: 2023-05-30 02:25pm elaborate stage shows mixed with left-wing political harangues about war, religion and a distaste for authority figures in general and fascists in particular
Maybe they were being confused now that he's an apologist for authority figures like Putin, his fascist regime and his unprovoked invasion of Ukraine.
Off course, it's not a crime to be a hypocritical piece of shit
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Re: Roger Waters under investigation by German police for being against Nazis

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wautd wrote: 2023-05-31 09:04am
Elfdart wrote: 2023-05-30 02:25pm elaborate stage shows mixed with left-wing political harangues about war, religion and a distaste for authority figures in general and fascists in particular
Maybe they were being confused now that he's an apologist for authority figures like Putin, his fascist regime and his unprovoked invasion of Ukraine.
Off course, it's not a crime to be a hypocritical piece of shit
Roger Waters denounced Putin as a gangster and condemned the attack on Ukraine as criminal. Besides, if he was really pro-Nazi, the Azov Battalion would have made him honorary member.
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Re: Roger Waters under investigation by German police for being against Nazis

Post by Ralin »

I refuse to watch a 5+ minute video of text that could have just been posted as text like a normal person would
Elfdart wrote: 2023-05-31 09:00pm Besides, if he was really pro-Nazi, the Azov Battalion would have made him honorary member.
Very mediocre troll comment. Improve!
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Re: Roger Waters under investigation by German police for being against Nazis

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Elfdart wrote: 2023-05-31 09:00pm
wautd wrote: 2023-05-31 09:04am
Elfdart wrote: 2023-05-30 02:25pm elaborate stage shows mixed with left-wing political harangues about war, religion and a distaste for authority figures in general and fascists in particular
Maybe they were being confused now that he's an apologist for authority figures like Putin, his fascist regime and his unprovoked invasion of Ukraine.
Off course, it's not a crime to be a hypocritical piece of shit
Roger Waters denounced Putin as a gangster and condemned the attack on Ukraine as criminal.
That's nice, except that since then, he spoke on Russia's behalf at a UN meeting where he justified Putin's war by claiming that the invasion was provoked, and in an interview with the Daily Telegraph earlier this year, he retracted his words on calling Putin a gangster and said that he actually gained respect for him after listening to the Duran (a pro-Russian disinformation channel)
Besides, if he was really pro-Nazi, the Azov Battalion would have made him honorary member.
Ah yes, Azov Batallion, a marginal minority (but handy scapegoat for Putin’s regime) of around 1000 members out of a population pool of 44 million at the start of the invasion (not sure how many of them are left after the Russia's massacre of Mariupol though).
But maybe you think that a population of 0.002 % is more representative to a country than the more than 70 % of the 44 million that democratically elected a Jew to be the president of their country.
There’s still plenty of neo nazi groups/far right groups fighting in Ukraine that can make Waters an honorary member though (Wagner Group, DShRG Rusich Group, Russian Imperial Legion, Russian Imperial Movement, Sparta Battalion,… ).

Oh, and apparatly he's also a fan of Assad. Fuck that guy
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Re: Roger Waters under investigation by German police for being against Nazis

Post by Zaune »

To be fair to the German authorities, it's not like you can trust the fash to actually realise they're being mocked.
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Re: Roger Waters under investigation by German police for being against Nazis

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Zaune wrote: 2023-06-01 06:39am To be fair to the German authorities, it's not like you can trust the fash to actually realise they're being mocked.
Or more to the point, to not shamelessly reinterpret intended mockery.
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Re: Roger Waters under investigation by German police for being against Nazis

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wautd wrote: 2023-06-01 04:59am Ah yes, Azov Batallion, a marginal minority (but handy scapegoat for Putin’s regime) of around 1000 members out of a population pool of 44 million at the start of the invasion (not sure how many of them are left after the Russia's massacre of Mariupol though).
But maybe you think that a population of 0.002 % is more representative to a country than the more than 70 % of the 44 million that democratically elected a Jew to be the president of their country.
Them being a small group doesn't change the fact that they're both neo-Nazis and an official part of the National Guard.

Ukraine isn't a Nazi state by any stretch, but they're weirdly tolerant of it.
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Re: Roger Waters under investigation by German police for being against Nazis

Post by Ralin »

Gandalf wrote: 2023-06-01 05:30pm
Them being a small group doesn't change the fact that they're both neo-Nazis and an official part of the National Guard.

Ukraine isn't a Nazi state by any stretch, but they're weirdly tolerant of it.
There's a war going on.
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Re: Roger Waters under investigation by German police for being against Nazis

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Ralin wrote: 2023-06-01 05:59pm
Gandalf wrote: 2023-06-01 05:30pm
Them being a small group doesn't change the fact that they're both neo-Nazis and an official part of the National Guard.

Ukraine isn't a Nazi state by any stretch, but they're weirdly tolerant of it.
There's a war going on.
They were around before the war.

The official commemorations of literal Nazi Collaborators and war criminals by the Ukrainian state is also pretty weird.

Putin is a colossal shithead and the invasion is wrong but let's not sweep this shit under the rug.
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Re: Roger Waters under investigation by German police for being against Nazis

Post by Ralin »

bobalot wrote: 2023-06-01 07:21pm
They were around before the war.

The official commemorations of literal Nazi Collaborators and war criminals by the Ukrainian state is also pretty weird.

Putin is a colossal shithead and the invasion is wrong but let's not sweep this shit under the rug.
There was a war before the war, and if I understand right Azov came out of that in large part.

Yeah that's all true, but I mean. Priorities.
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Re: Roger Waters under investigation by German police for being against Nazis

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bobalot wrote: 2023-06-01 07:21pm
Ralin wrote: 2023-06-01 05:59pm
Gandalf wrote: 2023-06-01 05:30pm
Them being a small group doesn't change the fact that they're both neo-Nazis and an official part of the National Guard.

Ukraine isn't a Nazi state by any stretch, but they're weirdly tolerant of it.
There's a war going on.
The official commemorations of literal Nazi Collaborators and war criminals by the Ukrainian state is also pretty weird.
Given the genocide, ethnic cleansing and political oppression of Ukraine by Soviet Russia in the 1930's its not that weird that people took up arms against their former oppressors. When the Nazis invaded Ukraine, it wasn't surprising that a lot of Ukrainians viewed them as liberators. Off course, that bubble burst pretty quickly when the Nazis turned out to be just as bad their former oppressors. Not going to deny that there were also really bad people and war criminals that collaborated with the Nazis, but these people could be found in every country. Something that often seems to be forgotten is that hundreds of thousands of Soviets joined the German Army at the start of Operation Barbarossa, as they viewed the Germans as the lesser of two evils.

Do you have any specific examples of commemorations ? I only know that today's Russian propagandists like to point to Bandera a lot, even though a lot of crimes that the Soviet empire of lies accused him of he couldn't have commited because he was a prisoner in a nazi concentration camp at the time he was supposed to commit them. These were the same type of guys that blamed the Katyn massacre on the Nazis.
And before anyone thinks I'm downplaying the nazis, I think they are one of the vilest, most criminal regimes of human history. I regard Hitler and his cronies with similar contempt as other genocidal dictatorial criminals like Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot.

Regardless, Russian propagandists love to bring up WW2 as it would somehow justify Putin's invasion of Ukraine. Off course, it doesn't and it isn't relevant to today
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Re: Roger Waters under investigation by German police for being against Nazis

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One might compare it to, say, the UK's honoring of Churchill for his heroic opposition to the Nazis despite his being an utterly reprehensible shit of a human being in every other aspect of his life
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Re: Roger Waters under investigation by German police for being against Nazis

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I could be wrong on this, what with being sort of half way round the world from Germany, but I've long had the impression that Germany is hyper-sensitive (for good reasons) about Nazis and Nazi-related imagery, and people and images adjacent to them. Has Waters performed this song with this costuming before in Germany without a problem? If so, yes, this does seem off and unreasonable. If not, well, it might be while this was acceptable elsewhere it was not in Germany.
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Re: Roger Waters under investigation by German police for being against Nazis

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wautd wrote: 2023-06-02 02:29am
...

Do you have any specific examples of commemorations ? I only know that today's Russian propagandists like to point to Bandera a lot, even though a lot of crimes that the Soviet empire of lies accused him of he couldn't have commited because he was a prisoner in a nazi concentration camp at the time he was supposed to commit them. These were the same type of guys that blamed the Katyn massacre on the Nazis.

...
Stephen Bandera was a raging anti-semite and his followers murdered tens of thousands of Jews and Poles. The fact he was under house arrest doesn't detract from that as noted by the Wiesenthal Center.

As for commemoration examples, just follow this guy's twitter profile, he is the son of Holocaust survivors and Director of the Ukrainian Jewish Committee. Some examples are:

Dnepro City Council voted to name a street after Heroes of UPA - paramilitary formation of Ukrainian nationalists that perpetrated mass murders of Poles.

Kalush City Council have just named a street after the Nazi Waffen SS «Galizia» Division Hauptsturmführer Dmytro Paliyiv.

Ukrainian Parliament have decided to celebrate the 130th jubilee of Porfiriy Silenko-Kravets - the Nazi SS Galicia Division Hauptschturmfuhrer, who was awarded the Nazi Iron Cross II class in 1944.

Like what the fuck?
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Re: Roger Waters under investigation by German police for being against Nazis

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I've had TWO (2) people red-flag this thread so far. Clean it up or it's going to be closed.
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Re: Roger Waters under investigation by German police for being against Nazis

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Broomstick wrote: 2023-06-02 04:24am I could be wrong on this, what with being sort of half way round the world from Germany, but I've long had the impression that Germany is hyper-sensitive (for good reasons) about Nazis and Nazi-related imagery, and people and images adjacent to them. Has Waters performed this song with this costuming before in Germany without a problem? If so, yes, this does seem off and unreasonable. If not, well, it might be while this was acceptable elsewhere it was not in Germany.
As a solo act or with Pink Floyd, Roger Waters has done this same show in Germany numerous times -including when the Berlin Wall came down:



No fuss was made over it back then because it's obvious that the fascist demagogue isn't being glorified. It's only when Waters attacked the government of Israel that this hilariously stupid smear campaign began.

For the record, I'm not even a Pink Floyd fan (Emerson, Lake & Palmer were more my speed), but I'm familiar enough with their music and stage show to know that using them as evidence that he's Jew-hating neo-Nazi is like suggesting that Jonathan Swift really thought starving Irish peasants should eat their own children.
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Re: Roger Waters under investigation by German police for being against Nazis

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bobalot wrote: 2023-06-02 07:06am Like what the fuck?
As we've learned in a lot of places over the past ten or so years; way more people are way more cool with Nazis than we would have guessed.
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Re: Roger Waters under investigation by German police for being against Nazis

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Gandalf wrote: 2023-06-04 05:41pm
bobalot wrote: 2023-06-02 07:06am Like what the fuck?
As we've learned in a lot of places over the past ten or so years; way more people are way more cool with Nazis than we would have guessed.
It has become edgy thing for young men on the internet to overtly flirt with Nazism and racism.

"I'm not a fascist fuckwit, I'm just pretending to be a fascist fuckwit."
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Re: Roger Waters under investigation by German police for being against Nazis

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Then somewhat horribly, that gives cover for proper fascists to operate and recruit.
"Oh no, oh yeah, tell me how can it be so fair
That we dying younger hiding from the police man over there
Just for breathing in the air they wanna leave me in the chair
Electric shocking body rocking beat streeting me to death"

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Re: Roger Waters under investigation by German police for being against Nazis

Post by Darth Yan »

What about the pig balloon with the Star of David on it? That makes me wonder if he doesn’t have some bigoted views.
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Re: Roger Waters under investigation by German police for being against Nazis

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Darth Yan wrote: 2023-06-16 11:17am What about the pig balloon with the Star of David on it? That makes me wonder if he doesn’t have some bigoted views.
The same one that had the cross, crescent, hammer & sickle, Mercedez-Benz logo and dollar sign? The same Big Pig that's been part of the show since 1977?

If you're genuinely curious, here you go (12:28):

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