Roger Waters

According to some. And for some specific situations. What, according to you, should be written on the displays at Heathrow then ?

 

Cancelling him on aesthetic grounds seems fair, as it does on the grounds of him being a genocide denying Assadist and Putin fan with a history of lazily equating Judaism and Zionism and failing to understand anything at all about politics. It's all a win.

 

I'd never realised that my local rail service Southeastern were contributing to Cancel Culture. Now I know who to blame next time they can't be arsed to run any trains... the tofu-eating wokerati baskets!

 

Oh. So you mean...

 

If I were sufficiently mischievous (or perhaps blinkered) to try to conflate Gary Lineker's comments advocating for the humane treatment of immigrants with Wallace and Daly's consistent and highly vocal position refusing to condemn Putin's invasion of Ukraine - then perhaps so.

But I for one am not quite there .. yet

 

Yes. It's all explained in Emmanuel Goldstein's book, "The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism".

 

During the Cold War, sections of the left fell into ‘Campism,’ i.e. the world was divided between the great camps of Soviet Russia and US Imperialism. Stalinists frequently attempted common cause with enemies of US Imperialism, frequently disregarding the nature of those enemies, leading to the well worn “”my enemy’s enemy is my friend.” I have seen no evidence of Water’s Campism, nor his inability to distinguish Anti-Semitism from Zionism.

Mick Wallace however, is another story…

http://www.rebelnews.ie/2022/12/13/mick-wallace-iran-and-the-irish-times/

 

Ah yes - that's our Mick. Failed, tax-dodging property-developer turned rabid pro-Putin socialist/marxist.
What's not to like..

 

Why does anyone vote for a clown like this?

 

I think the pair of them were perhaps fortunate to ride in on the back of a protest-vote at the time against the normal FF/FG incumbents jobs for the boys / rewarding party loyalists with a well paid EU sinecure tradition.

Had they revealed just how far out of touch they are with the rest of us back at the time, they wouldn't have been elected and given the platform they now so clearly relish.

 

Nah, he’s merely a dick

 

Bit of an unfounded assumption perhaps, but as to your 2nd point, yes quite: as has been said before, go far enough extreme left and you are oft as not likely to meet similarly extreme brethren from the right somewhere around the back

 

Roger Waters may or may not be a dick but I find this disturbing:

https://twitter.com/Christian4BuryS/status/1661677109952086017

I mean, The Wall is political satire, isn't it? It might have all the subtlety of a sledgehammer but it's an album about authoritarianism and fascism, not an endorsement of it. Surely this ought to be obvious to any critical thinker.

The icing on the cake here is that the author of the letter is Christian Wakeford, the Conservative MP who crossed the floor to join the Labour Party. He is a racist, partial to immigrant bashing and demonising ther GRT community - no wonder he feels so at home in Starmer's Labour Party.

For the record, I hate Pink Floyd and I think The Wall is a pile of overblown shite, but this looks like an egregious attack on free speech.

 

Mr Wakeford clearly doesn't understand the concept, for sure and it is correct that free speech should not be under attack. "In the Flesh Pt II" is still a powerful lyric and easily misunderstood if read / heard out of context; this is true for the entire 'hammer concert' section of the story.

But... "The Wall" never featured pigs in the live show, nor Stars of David. Roger is a well known critic of the State of Israel and, whether you agree with his view or not, putting a Star of David on a pig (if what the letter states is true), in the capital of a country that has a historical association with, persecution and murder of Jewish people, is at best naive. It simply reignites the issues of conflating criticism of the state of Israel and Jews as a global faith / race / culture; a bit of an own goal, Rog.

Pointing out the eror of hsi ways is better than outright banning, but then that's what you get in 2023. Don't like what the other side says? Ban 'em, no platform 'em, shout 'em down but never engage or debate.

 

Yes, mostly agree with the middle paragraph. It sounds crass, at best, if it's true.

However, I don't think that can be taken as given - or, at least, it might not be "the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth". I know that Waters has defended his choice by saying that other religious symbols are used throughout the show, presumably with similar satirical intent, but I haven't tried to dig into it further. The truth is, trying to find accurate and objective information about this stuff is difficult and wearing because one almost immediately walks into a blizzard of obviously slanted takes and misinformation.

Life's too short for that, but the fundamental principle of free speech is worth defending, nevertheless.

 

If he has another pigs has a crescent and star on it, I'll believe him. Otherwise he's just being very naive or wilfully ignorant; different symbols used shouldn't have different reactions in the communities that use them, but they do and to not be sympathetic to that is bad.

But agree - we should debate that, not just close it down and hide it away, for all of the problems that causes later.

 

Here is the infamous pig.

I can't see any other religious iconography in these shots - just a collection of what I suppose Mr Waters wants us to think of a 'bad stuff'.

 

Yep. I don't think he's an evil anti-semite, just an elderly rock star whose been told he's a genius for the past fifty years and has started to believe it. Anyone sensible would have listened to why people are offended and had a think about whether they might want to make a change to their concert prop.

Still, as I posted upthread he's a supporter of bloodsports so I'm filing him under 'bellend' anyway.

 

He's a fellow traveller of fascism, at best - he repeats the tropes of actual fascists, and is a supporter of Assad - the man who has single-handedly killed more Palestinians than almost anyone in history - and of Putin. I think people are being a bit soft on him. He may or may not be an anti-semite, but he hangs with anti-semites, and with the far right generally, and almost everything about his politics align completely with the far right. So, I wish him nothing but misery for what remains of his life.

I wouldn't ban his gigs, except on aesthetic grounds, but I think he is utter scum.