Entertainment

/

ArcaMax

Pink Floyd lyricist slams Roger Waters as antisemitic 'Putin apologist.' He disagrees

Christie D'Zurilla, Los Angeles Times on

Published in Entertainment News

It’s another brick in a decades-old wall: Musician David Gilmour and author-lyricist wife Polly Samson are calling out Gilmour’s former Pink Floyd bandmate Roger Waters as antisemitic — and more.

The slam comes after Waters on Sunday promoted an interview with a German outlet where he spoke freely, criticizing Israel, defending Russian President Vladimir Putin and slamming Western assistance to Ukraine.

Samson, who married Gilmour in 1994 and was the lyricist on some later Pink Floyd songs, put it this way Monday on social media: “Sadly @rogerwaters you are antisemitic to your rotten core. Also a Putin apologist and a lying, thieving, hypocritical, tax-avoiding, lip-synching, misogynistic, sick-with-envy, megalomaniac. Enough of your nonsense.”

Waters — who tweeted Sunday, “THE TRUTH WILL SET US FREE Against the backdrop of the outrageous and despicable smear campaign by the ISRAELI LOBBY to denounce me as an ANTI-SEMITE, WHICH I AM NOT, NEVER HAVE BEEN and NEVER WILL BE” — took issue with Samson’s characterization.

“Roger Waters is aware of the incendiary and wildly inaccurate comments made about him on Twitter by Polly Samson which he refutes entirely. He is currently taking advice as to his position,” his account tweeted Monday afternoon.

Waters’ Sunday tweet linked to a translated version of an interview published over the weekend by Germany’s Berliner Zeitung, in which the musician went on at length about geopolitics.

 

Here are a few quotes from the interview:

“I am now more open to listen (to) 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.”

“I think if the U.S. can convince its own citizens and you and many other people, that Russia is the real enemy, and that Putin is the new Hitler they will have an easier time stealing from the poor to give to the rich and also starting and promoting more wars, like this proxy war in Ukraine.”

“What everyone in the West is being told is the ‘unprovoked invasion’ narrative. Huh? Anyone with half a brain can see that the conflict in Ukraine was provoked beyond all measure. It is probably the most provoked invasion ever.”

...continued

swipe to next page

©2023 Los Angeles Times. Visit at latimes.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Comments

blog comments powered by Disqus