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Late last month, German police launched a criminal investigation into Roger Waters for his use of Nazi imagery during portions of his Berlin concerts in which he dresses up in a uniform that resembles an SS officer (echoing Bob Geldof’s fascist character from 1982’s The Wall) and utilizes props that include Third Reich imagery, which he’s been using for more than a decade.
Waters defended himself, writing that “attempts to portray those elements [of the show] as something else are disingenuous and politically motivated,” though at his shows in Frankfurt a few days later, he opted out of wearing the demagogue uniform. In his shows since then, Waters has sporadically donned the outfit (he wore it in London and Glasgow, but not in Birmingham).
The US State Department weighed in on the Waters controversy. As the Associated Press reports, a written statement was issued in response to a question during a press briefing about a tweet sent out by Deborah Lipstadt, the US Special Envoy To Monitor And Combat Antisemitism, which “wholeheartedly concur[red]” with the “condemnation of Roger Waters and his despicable Holocaust distortion.”
“The concert in question, which took place in Berlin, contained imagery that is deeply offensive to Jewish people and minimized the Holocaust,” reads the statement from the State Department. “The artist in question has a long track record of using antisemitic tropes to denigrate Jewish people.”
Waters continues to defend himself. He was recently interviewed by Double Down News, where he again points out the elements of his show in question are not new, and that he has a long history of speaking out against authoritarianism.
“If we shout the lie loud enough — ‘Roger Waters is an antisemite’ — then we’ll be all right, we’ll get people to believe it, we can vilify him, we can probably destroy him and we will get him in the end as well,” Waters said as a hypothetical. “No, you won’t because it’s a lie. You can gather as many fucking morons together as you want to repeat your lie, but it remains a vicious lie.”
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Courtesy : https://www.stereogum.com/2226309/roger-waters-controversy-state-department-response/news/