Anti-watersism: Another Brick in the Wall
The predictive algorithm that is the online pro-Israel lobby will have picked this article up before you and categorised it as antisemitic. Drawing a line through it and other articles I have written will summarise the whole effort, shape, nuance, argument, irony, consideration, trying shoes on other feet, inversions, inside-outings and reversals that I tend to think of as my essay MO into a single word beginning with A. That word will soon replace “Apple” as the rep for the first letter of the alphabet.
If so, then I propose “Bullshit” to stand for the second.
If you weren’t aware of it, the leaders of the western world have joined forces to cancel Roger Waters, co-founder and bassist of Pink Floyd.
I remember the single, released in 1979, appearing on television. What was unforgettable about the video was the iconic animation of the marching hammers.
I also remember my father turning it off. Its anti-establishment themes, and in particular, the line, sung by schoolkids — we don’t need no education, we don’t need no thought control — didn’t suit his own theme at the time, working his arse off to pay for his kids to attend an establishment school.
My father is now 76, three years younger than Waters. He has been a supporter of the Palestinian cause all his life, and now sees Waters as a hero. We all should. Why?
First of all, don’t believe the hype. As they say in financial circles, do your own research. If you wish to remain on the inflatible bandwagon of mainstream “narrative” then go do that. If you fancy coming back down to Earth, read on.
Waters has recently come under fire for running a show he has run for more than 40 years. A theatrical extension of the single, The Wall, the show depicts the rise and fall of a made-up fascist demagogue, played by Bob Geldoff in the 1989 film, and lately by Waters himself. He wears a leather trenchcoat — not unlike, by the way, those worn by characters in Matrix.
Anyone even vaguely aware of Pink Floyd will understand that all this is sending up fascism. It is sending up, like George Orwell’s 1984 and William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, humanity’s capacity for being led a dangerous dance by those who sing songs of hatred.
In 2013, Waters briefly extended his antiestablishmentarianism (long word!) into the religious sphere, when he deployed an inflatable pig daubed with religious and other established symbols in the show.
The pro-Israel online army has already done a great job of demolishing the truth. A wave of recent anti-Waters articles posted on social media used footage of the 2013 concerts to support deceptive claims that Waters was still using the balloon, on which a Star of David can be seen, alongside other symbols, including the Moon and Venus of Islam, and the Cross of Christianity. Water’s primary satirical symbol, the crossed hammers, resembles far more closely the hammer and sickle of the former USSR than the swastika of nazi Germany.
A Reuters fact-check mentions the presence of the Star of David “as well as other symbols and graffiti,” something of course omitted in Facebook misinformation, e.g. this post:
So that’s it. RIP irony and nuance. The satirical boundary, the boundary of the theatre, the fourth wall collapses. Sending up antisemitism is antisemitic. All it takes is for someone to say it.
And they are saying it, shouting it over and over and over until even Joe Biden was forced out of his senile torpor to make a statement…
That headline ran yesterday, adding to the onslaught of propaganda against Waters. If you were to believe the hype, you would surmise not only that Waters is antisemitic, but that his antisemitism is such a threat to Jews that the POTUS was stirred to weigh in on the matter.
But that isn’t the case. Sleepy Joe hasn’t said anything. It was Deborah Lipstadt, the Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism, who slammed Waters’ show as “a despicable Holocaust distortion.”
But Waters used Anne Frank’s name in a list of victims of state oppression that included George Floyd, like he used other state and religious symbols in a montage of imagery that has been understood for the 40 years of Pink Floyd’s existence as the band’s antiestablishment MO. It’s a 70s rock prog group FFS. This was pointed out in yesterday’s State Briefing (via Mondoweiss).
It is a relief to see established journalists levelling the correct criticism of Lipstadt, and by extension the State, for smearing a show that satirises fascism as antisemitic. That is exactly what Charlie Chaplin did and was widely celebrated for.
Not only that, but the State department’s smear is correctly positioned in the context of the Palestinian struggle. Concerns are raised about the Israeli government’s approach to Palestinian rights and basic human rights. Which is precisely what Waters did in 2009, after a visit to Israel and then Palestine, and seeing the Wall for real. He says in the documentry he made about it that “instinct tells you this is wrong.”
A man moved by instinct to record 11 legendary albums listened to all over the world, whose song The Wall with its marching hammers is ingrained in the imaginations of anyone born between 1960 and 1990, is of course moved by instinct to do something, to leverage his power and influence to help the oppressed.
Here he is in his own words.
My intentions here are to add my voice in support of Waters, and, more importantly, beyond him, to lend my support to the fight against fascism.
Ironic, isn’t it?
But that is what this is. Someone calls ‘antisemite’ or ‘nazi’ — someone or someones with power and influence — and critical thinking goes out of the window.
I mean, like wow, Scoob! If Waters’ use of a Star of David in a show sending up state oppression has to be seen as antisemitic, in other words illegal, could it be that there is a wider agenda at stake? Could it be that cancellation of the Palestinians is a grubby but necessary piece of work in a larger project that sees Israel, UAE and Saudi conjoined into an exclusive AI-driven “paradise” (ha)? Could it be that this project has such alllure that anyone and anything in the way of it must be removed? Could it be that criticism of this project must be redefined as antisemitic, a hate crime?
Or did Waters go too far in putting the SoD on a flying pig?
What about if I post the damn thing here? Am I sending it up? Am I criticising Israeli fascism and apartheid? Is my use of the SoD in this same article where I have Bob Geldoff in a trench coat antisemitic? Am I singling out Israel for undue criticism by posting it alone, unlike Waters, who used it alongside other symbols?
Here it is:
If posting the above geometrical symbol in this article, which defends Waters, satire and irony as a necessary function of cultural discourse, national and global conversation, is a crime then we are really fucked.
If posting the above geometrical symbol in an article that supports Waters in his protest about the treatment of the Palestinian people is a crime, then something is deeply wrong.
If posting the above geometrical symbol does not inspire the thought wait, let me at least try and see what this person is saying, then we are in 1984. We think what we are told to think.
If posting the above geometrical symbol full stop is a antisemitic then we should high-five Satan for the marvelllous piece of black magic he hath wrought.
While we’re at it… if leather trenchcoats and imitation machine guns are soon to be unconscionable, let me post this while I have the chance:
And while I’m at it… yes the Saudis and Iranians and British and Americans and Sudanese and Serbian and Sri Lankan and Peruvian and German and French and Italian states need bricks thrown at them as well.
Why are we singling out Israel? Because it is singling out one of the great heroes of anti-oppression.
Ah, the god-damn irony !
I could throw Yehuda Berg’s Satan, an Autobiography at the wall — the one that separates the god-given State of Israel from the people it displaced, the one that separates the State Department from the people it represents, the one that separates the mainstream media from the people they hoodwink, the wall that separates them and us.
The smearing of Waters’ antifascist rock theatre and support for an oppressed people as “antisemitic” is another brick in the wall.
It is a wall of lies that exploits pain in the pursuit of power. As history shows, such a project will not go well. A New Jerusalem built on the same old blood and downtrodden victims? Come on.
As Waters says in his Double Down video, that wall is crumbling. Soon, all it will take is a book to bring it down.
