Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour Lashes Out at Ex-Bandmate Roger Waters’ Anti-Semitism, Pro-Putin Rhetoric
Yup. Waters still thinks Israel is just like Nazi Germany.
I guess we won’t get a Pink Floyd reunion any time soon. Guitarist David Gilmour and his novelist wife Polly Samson lashed out at bassist Roger Waters after he offered a sympathetic view of Russian dictator President Vladimir Putin regarding his invasion of Ukraine.
Every word demonstrably true https://t.co/KWk4I3bMTN
— David Gilmour (@davidgilmour) February 6, 2023
We all know Roger Waters is anti-Semitic and anti-Israel:
- Roger Waters justifies anti-Israel boycott with fake Gandhi quote
- Roger Waters, you stand shoulder to shoulder with terror
- German TV Pulls Sponsorship of Roger Waters Concert over BDS
- Roger Waters Falsely Claims Israel Taught U.S. Police the Maneuver Used on George Floyd
But Samson and Gilmour’s criticism comes three days after the German newspaper Berliner Zeitung interviewed Waters. The publication asked him about his views on Russia and Israel.
Last September, Waters wrote a letter to Ukrainian First Lady Olena Zelenska, asking the country to negotiate with Russia. She called him out, and Poland canceled his shows.
Then Waters wrote an open letter to Putin with the same message. At the time, it felt forced because he lost his show in Poland.
I guess I was correct because Waters changed course in the German interview. Like WOW. I found the translated version, and we see the real Waters. The bold is the interviewer:
…you called him a “gangster”…
…exactly, I did. But I may have changed my mind a little bit in the last year. There is a podcast from Cyprus called “The Duran”. The hosts speak Russian and can read Putin’s speeches in the original. Their comments on it make sense to me. The most important reason for supplying arms to Ukraine is surely profit for the arms industry. And I wonder: is Putin a bigger gangster than Joe Biden and all those in charge of American politics since World War II? I am not so sure. Putin didn’t invade Vietnam or Iraq? Did he?
The most important reason for arms deliveries is the following: It is to support Ukraine, to win the war and to stop Russia’s aggression. You seem to see it differently.
Yes. Maybe I shouldn’t be, but I am now more open to listen what Putin actually says. According to independent voices I listen to he governs carefully, making decisions on the grounds of a consensus in the Russian Federation government. There are also critical intellectuals in Russia, who have been arguing against American imperialism since the 1950s. And a central phrase has always been: Ukraine is a red line. It must remain a neutral buffer state. If it doesn’t remain so, we don’t know where it will lead. We still don’t know, but it could end in a Third World War.
In February last year, it was Putin who decided to attack.
He launched what he still calls a “special military operation”. He launched it on the basis of reasons that if I have understood them well are: 1. We want to stop the potential genocide of the Russian-speaking population of the Donbas. 2. We want to fight Nazism in Ukraine. There is a teenage Ukrainian girl, Alina, with whom I exchanged long letters: “I hear you. I understand your pain.” She answered me, thanked me, but stressed, I‘m sure you’re wrong about one thing though, “I am 200% certain there are no Nazis in Ukraine.” I replied again, “I’m sorry Alina, but you are wrong about that. How can you live in Ukraine and not know?”
Waters twists himself into a tight pretzel to justify Putin’s actions because some Ukrainians collaborated with the Nazis:
There is no evidence that there has been genocide in Ukraine. At the same time, Putin has repeatedly emphasised that he wants to bring Ukraine back into his empire. Putin told former German Chancellor Angela Merkel that the saddest day in his life was in 1989, when the Soviet Union collapsed.
Isn’t the word origin of “Ukraine” the Russian word for “Borderland”? It was part of Russia and the Soviet Union for a long time. It’s a difficult history. During the Second World War, I believe there was a large part of the population of western Ukraine that decided to collaborate with the Nazis. They killed Jews, Roma, communists, and anyone else the Third Reich wanted dead. To this day there is the conflict between Western Ukraine (With or without Nazis Alina) and Eastern The Donbas) and Southern (Crimea) Ukraine and there are many Russian speaking Ukrainians because it was part of Russia for hundreds of years. How can you solve such a problem? It can’t be done by either the Kiev government or the Russians winning. Putin has always stressed that he has no interest in taking over western Ukraine – or invading Poland or any other country across the border. What he is saying is: he wants to protect the Russian-speaking populations in those parts of Ukraine where the Russian speaking populations feel under threat from the far right influenced post Maidan Coup Governments in Kiev. A coup that is widely accepted as having been orchestrated by the US.
Um, could someone remind Waters that Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union, which at first worked with Hitler?
But then Waters whined about Poland canceling his shows. Poland did it because of Russiaphobia, and they easily fall for Western propaganda.
*rubs eyes* Dude, Poland has hated and feared Russia for a loooooong time. How do I history?
Yes, Waters stands by his previous comparison of Israel to Nazi Germany without even blinking twice:
Yes, of course. The Israelis are committing genocide. Just like Great Britain did during our colonial period, by the way. The British committed genocide against the indigenous people of North America, for example. So did the Dutch, the Spanish, the Portuguese even the Germans in their colonies. All were part of the injustice of the colonial era. And we, the British also murdered and pillaged in India, Southeast Asia, China…. We believed ourselves to be inherently superior to the indigenous people, just as the Israelis do in Palestine. Well, we weren’t and neither are the Israeli Jews.
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Comments
gilmour IS pink floyd–waters and the rest merely accompany him
He certainly brings the pink, in that photo.
It’s DAVID Gilmour, not Doug. David!
I had hockey on my mind. Not kidding. One of my favorite players growing up was Doug Gilmour.
I often make the same mistake. Doug Gilmour was awesome!
Not only is The Wall antisemitic, it is such self absorbed overblown tripe.
Waters is nuts. Dangerous, but nuts.
Artists are sometimes given a pass on their anti-Semitic viewpoints.
Academics conveniently forget Ezra Pound’s toxic anti Semitism. Same with historians. In Lesley Blume’s recent book ‘everybody behaves badly’ Pound’s toxicity is never mentioned. The same people will callout anti-semites if those people are from a different (unapproved) caste.
I think Harvard hosts audio files of Pound reading his poetry but I don’t think they include his WWII anti-Semitic radio diatribes broadcast out of Fascist Italy – he was the Italian version of Tokyo Rose or Lord Haw Haw.
Waters is a demented hater of Jews. Good to see he’s finally being recognized so his legacy can be cemented.
I read Waters’ reasoning and it’s like pouring a gallon of water on a TV set while it’s on–to my brain.
What a freaking moron.
BUT… he’s right about the Nazis in Ukraine; he’s right about the Ukrainian persecution of their own ethic Russian citizens in the Donbas region, and he’s right that preparing to put NATO armament in Ukraine is to Russia precisely the same provocation/offense as putting Soviet missiles in Cuba was to the USA. Too bad most Americans don’t understand this and are happy to drink the Swamp Ade.
Yep. There are real Nazis in Ukraine, which nobody had a problem pointing out before the conflict. And, it doesn’t seem outlandish that one would cynically think our government doesn’t care about Ukraine, but rather our politicians and their donors.
These 2 have been going at each other since 85 and I usually found myself on Gilmour’s side seeing Roger as the liberal lunatic on the grass but when I hear someone vomit one of the many smears like “Putin apologist/stooge/cock-holster etc I know i’m dealing with someone who doesn’t believe they need to think or debate, who can’t get their head around 2 things being true at the same time.
You’ll find red-brown Nazi’s in Russia. The Russians imported Chechen para-military criminal-psychopaths to the Donbas and set them upon civilians in cities and villages. Those same criminals were supported by Russian military assets. I’ve seen photos of Russian mortor tubes mounted in open-toped tractor-trailers. Those assets were used against ethnic Ukr-Rus civilians. This exact scenario was used to reduce Grozny to rubble and ruin.
The notion that this whole sad affair is primarily due to Ukr fascism ignores 300 years of Russain iridentist aggression in Ukraine, Poland, all of rhe Baltics and Finland.
Yeah, probably. But the bear showed zero signs of coming out of hibernation before the US started deliberately poking him.
In 2014?
In Georgia before that?
I expect you know the armed encroachment inventory better than I. So, what US poking, exactly, when, where, and how? Leading to what? What would it take to let the sleeping bear lie?
Ain’t no buts for a bigot.
:I’ve only known one Ukrainian who lived in Ukraine before WW II. There was an active Ukrainian Partisan movement against the Soviet occupation of Ukraine and he was part of it. There never was any love lost between ethnic Ukrainians and Russians. Yes, there are ethnic Russians in Ukraine, primarily due to two factors: 1. The Russian population bordering Ukraine; and 2. Stalin’s replacement of a segment of the troublesome Ukrainian populace with Russians after his effective Ukrainian population reduction in the Holodomor.
It’s heartening to see at least one band member criticize the vile Jew-hater, Waters.
Someone should tell the genius, Waters, that Jews were living in the middle east for millennia before the supremacist and totalitarian ideology of “Submission” was founded. This makes Jews as indigenous to the region as any Arab Muslim, if not more so.
Arabs are no more indigenous to the Middle East than the Spanish in South America.
more so is correct
I guess we are finally seeing the dark side of the loon.
Good one!
Waters needs to educate himself on the ‘Black Sea Germans’. Germans who emigrated to Ukraine throughout the 1800s as skilled labor and farmers at the invitation of Emperor Alexander I of Russia. They formed large colonies of ethnic Germans there. In 1943 they numbered roughly 300,000 and large groupings of them still exist there.
That being said and lest he misunderstand or twist that information, ‘ethnic German’ is not the equivalent of ‘Nazi’.
Pro-Russian, Pro-Ukrainian, Pro-Jew, too.
A Slavic Spring in the Obama/Biden World War Spring series with “benefits”. An illegitimate democratic/dictatorial and apartheid regime in Kiev. More than eight years of denying essential services, attacking, and denying representation to Ukrainians. Billions of dollars to carry out DIEversity under the aegis of social progress… one step forward, two steps backward.
Another one of those famous rock bands from whom I cannot recall even a single “song”.
Oh yeah. For those who make a fetish of naming a host of “famous” songs that I’m supposed to suddenly recall, FUGGEDABOUTIT!!
I was a big Pink Floyd fan, all albums one can find, saw The Wall live. By mid 80s dropped them like a hot rock because of Waters
Waters was just plain toxic.
Then what’s the point of saying anything? The incessant need some people have to jump onto any post related to music and say, “Who?” or “Never heard of them!” is such a tiresome virtue signal of alleged cultural superiority.
I’m from the era when seemingly everyone in my dorm was buying Pink Floyd and other popular bands albums.
Me? I was listening to classical, baroque, Romantic era, swing, big-band, and other delights.
I still do.
Likewise, although my particular tastes nowadays run mostly to smooth jazz and some varieties of New Age.
I listen to SOME like that.
Maybe someone should point out that long before the Ukraine was made part of the Soviet Union, Kievan Rus ruled Moscow. Perhaps the Ukraine should take back THEIR territory? 😛
Waters has been ticked off at the world ever since Gilmour replaced Barrett.
Waters isn’t even a very good bass player.
“comfortably numb” “wish you were here” “money” come to mind–gilmour is one of the most talented rock guitarists of all time–along with page, clapton, srv and a very few others, his talent so far overshadows waters and the other band members that they no doubt came to realize(as did the rest of the world) that he IS pink floyd
nowhere near the musicianship or combined talent of zep, pf nevertheless wrote and produced many classic rock pieces
Waters has been a public antisemite for a long time. But he happens to be right about the Ukranians. It’s not just that they collaborated with the Nazis; it’s not even just that they did so enthusiastically, and survivors described them as worse than the Germans. It’s that they have a centuries-long history of antisemitism and massacring Jews, much longer than that of the Germans themselves, who as recently as WW1 had treated Jews with courtesy as real gentlemen. Bogdan Chmielnitzki, who was Hitler before Hitler, is to this day revered by the Ukranians as their national hero. And there is the Azov brigade. The fact that they elected a Jew as their president means nothing; the Austrians elected Kreisky, and the French elected Bloom just a few years before they turned around and collaborated with the Germans. So I have no sympathy for the Ukranians.
Back when Solidarity started at the end of the ’70s, I was an earnest teenager and wrote a letter to the newspaper supporting Solidarity. I got an earful from Holocaust survivors who couldn’t understand how I could stand up for the Poles. Did I not understand what evil people they were? Let them suffer under communism; it’s their punishment from Above. And the Ukranians were worse than the Poles.
Yep. Too many people have bought into the establishment notion of Ukraine= good guys without any effort to understand the conflict, it’s origins, probable end state or it’s risks. Nor do they acknowledge the consequences in reshuffling the geopolitical deck of pushing China, India, Russia, Turkey and Saudi into a closer relationship due to their individual economic well being in contrast to the Globalist oriented Western hegemony.
Holodomor. When Stalin attempted genocide of Ukrainians. They are smart to oppose neo Russian imperialism. And anti-Semitism is rife within Europe, including the British upper class.
English antisemitism never led to massacres. Not since 1198, at any rate, and the English are not the same people as they were then.
The Ukranians have been Jew-haters for centuries, and when they enthusiastically helped the Nazis kill Jews they were merely staying in character.
I didn’t mention their role in the Russian Civil War. The White army would occasionally massacre Jews, if it was convenient. The Green army, i.e. the Ukranians, went out of its way to massacre Jews whenever an opportunity presented itself. They were the most bloodthirsty of all the various colored armies in that war.
I am confused. We know people suck, right?