A giant inflatable pig branded with a Star of David, a Jewish Holocaust victim’s name lit in giant neon lettering, and a musician wearing a Nazi-style uniform while goose-stepping on stage, were among the more disgraceful scenes during Roger Waters’ recent musical performances. 

Indeed, so offensive were his on-stage antics at a show in Berlin, that German police are now investigating whether Waters’ broke any laws in the country where Nazi symbols are banned from being displayed, except in cases for artistic or educational purposes.

While Waters has insisted that his performance was to show his “opposition to fascism,” one must wonder what part of this message was conveyed at the moments he pointed a mock machine gun at the audience and clumsily compared Anne Frank to Shireen Abu Akleh.

Anne Frank was one of six million Jews murdered by the Nazis for being Jewish. Shireen Abu Akleh was unintentionally killed, most likely by Israeli forces, while covering the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. There is no moral equivalence between the two, and Waters’ intention was clearly to make an equivalence between Israel and the Nazis — a clear example of antisemitism according to the internationally accepted International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance working definition of antisemitism.

Following the announcement by German police spokesman Martin Halweg that Waters was being probed on suspicion of incitement to public hatred, the international media was quick to cover the mounting controversy surrounding the performance.

The New York Times was among the outlets that linked the contents of Waters’ performance to his support for the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaign, and his views that have “long been critical of Israel” — which is a rather toned down way of summarizing the opinion of a man who once likened the Jewish state to Nazi Germany:

Mr. Waters is a vocal proponent of B.D.S., the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, which pushes foreign governments, businesses and performers to cut ties with Israel until it ends its occupation of the territories it captured in 1967, among other demands.

So, what are the mildly-put “other demands” of the BDS campaign that the Times glosses over? None other than the total destruction of the Israeli state, according to the movement’s leader Omar Barghouti.

Also playing down the genocidal goals of BDS supporters were Sky News and SBS News, with the former claiming that the BDS movement simply calls for boycotts and sanctions against Israel “over its treatment of Palestinians,” and the latter mutedly stating that BDS “targets Israel over its occupation of territories where Palestinians seek statehood.”

Numerous news organizations also featured prominently (and failed to challenge) Waters’ unconvincing defense of his performance, including his protestation that “bad faith” actors are seeking to “smear and silence” him because they disagree with his political positions, and his assertion that he has spent his “entire life speaking out against authoritarianism and oppression wherever I see it.”

He also pointed out that the performance and on-stage imagery resembled the 1982 film “The Wall,” which is based on the Pink Floyd album of the same name and starred musician Bob Geldof, who at one point is depicted in a drug-induced hallucination in which he addresses a neo-Nazi rally.

However, as critics of Waters’ behavior have observed, when the original stage show complete with fascist imagery took place in the 1980s and before the fall of the Berlin Wall, it was generally assumed to be a genuine criticism of fascism and authoritarianism. In the years since, Waters has aligned himself with the very people he claims to be virulently opposed, including when he claimed a “Jewish lobby” controls the American music industry, and suggested the Israeli police were partly responsible for the death of George Floyd, a black man who was killed by an American cop.

It was the American poet Maya Angelou who said that when someone shows you who they are, you should believe them the first time.

How many more times will Roger Waters have to show the media who he is before they believe he is an antisemite?

The author is a contributor to HonestReporting, a Jerusalem-based media watchdog with a focus on antisemitism and anti-Israel bias — where a version of this article first appeared.

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