Roger Waters performs onstage at Crypto.com Arena on September 27, 2022 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images) A man charged the stage with an Israeli flag during Roger Waters’ May 28 concert in Frankfurt.
Video footage circulating on social media also showed protesters in the audience unfurling an Israeli flag and chanting, “Am Yisrael Chai!” in response to the former Pink Floyd frontman and bassist’s antisemitic controversy. Waters later told the audience in between songs that the man who charged the stage was “putting me off” and was “unnerving.”
#HERO! This brave man rushes the stage where antisemite Roger Waters was just playing in Frankfurt and waves Israeli flag. Meantime, you hear supporters chant "Am Yisrael Chai" (People of Israel live). 💪🇮🇱 pic.twitter.com/xWfBGMNvMR
— Arsen Ostrovsky (@Ostrov_A) May 28, 2023
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The Times of Israel reported that the man who charged the stage, identified only as “Marcel L.,” is the head of the German-Israeli Society’s Frankfurt youth affiliate. Marcel told Channel 12 that Waters’ “security arrived quickly and violently took me down to the basement. They threatened to break my neck if I didn’t give them my mobile phone. I also didn’t want to let go of the Israeli flag, so the guard told me he would break my arm if I didn’t give him the flag.”
Other footage on social media appeared to show fans attacking the protesters holding Israeli flags in the audience during the show.
German Roger Waters fans attacking Jewish protesters against protesting Waters's antisemitism and Holocaust relativism in a stadium where 3000 Jewish people were rounded up after Kristallnacht. pic.twitter.com/wPwD2DYzZQ
— Michael Weingardt (@Michael_Wgd) May 29, 2023
Waters’ latest tour has come under public scrutiny after he donned a Nazi-like uniform during his recent shows in Berlin––resulting in a criminal investigation against him––and drawing a comparison between Anne Frank and Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, who was killed during an Israeli Defense Force raid in Jenin in 2022. German law bars the display of Nazi symbols but provides an exception for artistic or educational purposes. Waters responded to the controversy with a May 26 statement saying in part: “The elements of my performance that have been questioned are quite clearly a statement in opposition to fascism, injustice, and bigotry in all its forms. Attempts to portray those elements as something else are disingenuous and politically motivated. The depiction of an unhinged fascist demagogue has been a feature of my shows since Pink Floyd’s ‘The Wall’ in 1980.” The 1982 movie of the same name features a scene in which the main character, played by Bob Geldof, enters a drug-induced hallucination of himself leading a fictional neo-Nazi organization. The main character, named Pink Floyd, is a rock star who falls into insanity as the movie progresses.
Waters did not wear the Nazi-style uniform during the May 28 show, telling the audience that he wasn’t wearing it “out of respect for the history of the concert hall,” as “the Frankfurt Festhalle played a central role in the deportation of the city’s Jews as part of the Holocaust,” the German state-funded publication Deutsche Welle (DW) reported. Waters also declared during the concert that he is not antisemitic and “briefly burst into tears” as the audience cheered him, per DW.
Critics of the former Pink Floyd frontman think otherwise. “Always ‘bad faith’, never criticism or a different view,” David Hirsh, a lecturer at Goldsmiths University and founder of the London Centre for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism, tweeted in response to Waters’ May 26 statement. “You accuse us of lying, not getting it wrong. Your Nazi cosplay might have featured in your show in the 80s, when people assumed you were anti-Nazi. [Its] meaning is different when you push antisemitic conspiracy fantasy.”
Always "bad faith", never criticism or a different view. You accuse us of lying, not getting it wrong.
Your Nazi cosplay might have featured in your show in the 80s, when people assumed you were anti-Nazi.
It's meaning is different when you push antisemitic conspiracy fantasy. https://t.co/dZQb5pnGaA
— David Hirsh (@DavidHirsh) May 26, 2023
Jerusalem Post Senior Contributing Editor Lahav Harkov tweeted in response to Waters’ May 26 statement: “The antisemitism is bad enough, but [Waters] is also so deluded that he thinks he has ‘spent [his] entire life speaking out against authoritarianism and oppression’ when he’s an apologist for Russia and Syria.”
The antisemitism is bad enough, but he is also so deluded that he thinks he has "spent [his] entire life speaking out against authoritarianism and oppression" when he's an apologist for Russia and Syria. https://t.co/rZMV9AOfgp
— Lahav Harkov (@LahavHarkov) May 27, 2023
Waters’ next concert is on May 31 at the Utilita Arena Stadium in the British city of Birmingham.
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