The guitarist, band co-founder and songwriter, who resigned from the English prog electronic musicians Pink Floyd in 1986, is known for his idiosyncratic view of the passage of time. He regularly cultivates and renews his conspiracy theories, which put him in the vicinity of anti-Semites.
Now, for a change, the 78-year-old has looked back at the war in Ukraine. In an interview with US moderator and blogger Michael Smerconish, he found that US President Joe Biden was “stoking the fire in Ukraine”.
Waters continued: “This is a great crime”. Against the objection of his talk partner, he insisted that the US would lengthen the duration of the war. His steep thesis: If only Biden wanted to, the war would be “over tomorrow”.
Russia’s ex-president Dmitry Medvedev, who has been conspicuous for his radical saber-rattling since the beginning of the war, immediately felt vindicated. “There are still respectful people in the West. Pink Floyd forever,” he wrote on his social media page on a Russian platform. Underneath he laid the soundtrack of the Pink Floyd classic “Wish You Were Here”.
Roger Waters’ of this world, all those who during a cruel war chose a side of neutrality or the aggressor! At some point you’ll know: this was the defining point by which you’ll be judged. Not only by all the tortured, crippled, murdered Ukrainians – but by history. @rogerwaters
— olexander scherba?? (@olex_scherba) August 7, 2022
Kiev’s ambassador to Austria, Olexander Scherba, replied immediately. He called Waters a “willless, heartless, merciless and utterly lost man”. After all, Waters initially “knew” that there would be no war. Reason: Putin would be too smart for that!
“Now we’re at war – and you say there’s a good reason for this attack,” Scherba said on Twitter. Waters should best move to Russia. He was in good hands there.
Anyone looking for borderline statements from Waters does not have to scour the net for long. For example, in an interview with the Islamist news agency Shebab in 2020, he claimed that Israel or the Israeli army was partly to blame for the death of black rapper George Floyd.
Floyd was killed by US police violence in Minneapolis. In an interview with the agency, Roger Waters explained that the police officers’ brutal air pressure tests on Floyd were a technique used by the Israelis during military operations against the Palestinians, which they were only too happy to pass on to the American police. He is one of the most prominent supporters of the anti-Israel BDS movement. In 2013, he put Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians on a par with that of the Nazis’ treatment of the Jews.