Ex-Pink Floyd Roger Waters defends Russia before the UN and revives controversy

1983. Pink Floyd released The Final Cut, the group’s last album with Roger Waters. The singer, bassist and author scratches one last time with his mythical collective the wars which then fracture the globe. The Soviet Leonid Brezhnev, responsible for the invasion in Afghanistan, is one of the leaders invited to ” to remove [leurs] dirty hands of my desert”.

Four decades later, Roger Waters is less virulent towards Moscow and its military projects. To the point of being invited to speak, Wednesday, February 8, before the Security Council of the United Nations (UN), within the framework of a meeting convened by Russia to discuss the armaments supplied to Ukraine by the West. Present by videoconference from Switzerland, the Briton first acknowledged that the invasion carried out in Ukraine for a year was “illegal”before justifying it with an argument dear to Vladimir Putin: “It is not true that the Russian invasion of Ukraine was unprovoked. So I also condemn the provocateurs in the strongest terms. »

The Ukrainian ambassador was quick to urge the musician to stick to his craft “instead of lecturing”. “How sad for his former fans to see him agree to be just another brick in the wall, in the wall of disinformation and Russian propaganda”scolded Sergiy Kyslytsya, in a reference to the lyrics of the famous song by Pink Floyd Another Brick in the Wall. Vassily Nebenzia, Russian ambassador to the UN, hailed “one of the most important militants of the contemporary anti-war movement”. And a valuable relay in its propaganda against any military aid to Ukraine: “Our former Western partners are forcing [Kiev] to hold on as long as possible without thinking about the losses of the Ukrainian Armed Forces and putting morality aside. »

Biden “war criminal”

Roger Waters is accustomed to polemical outings on the Ukrainian conflict. In open letter early septemberhe accused the Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelensky, of having tolerated a “extreme nationalism” before calling him off “this murderous war”. Poland has since declared him persona non grata in Krakow, where his concerts have been canceled. The man takes a backseat to his former comrades from the group Pink Floyd, which last April released its first original song since 1994 in support of the Ukrainian people.

Also read the interview: Russian disinformation: “We reacted too late, the Kremlin’s speeches are already far too established in France”

Conspiratorial twilight of a rock giant or skid of an anti-militarist artist? For the musicologist Philippe Gonin, lecturer at the University of Burgundy, the reading made by Roger Waters of the war in Ukraine prolongs, even if it means supporting a “dictator”there “condemnation of American imperialism” who never failed to irrigate his work. Last August, in a CNN interviewRoger Waters thus camped Joe Biden in “war criminal”guilty of having “Fueled the fire in Ukraine” in unison with NATO.

Anxious today to avoid the loss of“a single Ukrainian or Russian life”, the almost octogenarian has never hidden a deep anti-militarism, fueled by the death of his father during the Second World War. His activism was expressed in a more subtle way in the ranks of Pink Floyd, where allegorical lyrics were preferred to controversial interviews.

Balloon in the shape of a pig

In 1977, the album animals assumes up to the title the reference to Animal Farm by Georges Orwell (1945), satire against the Soviet Union and totalitarianism. “As the main author of the group and passionate about dystopias, at the time he multiplied the allusionsconfirms Philippe Gonin, researcher at the LIR3S laboratory of the CNRS and author of Rise and fall of Pink Floyd (University Editions of Dijon, 2017). With one constant: opposition to powers and their abuses, to the risks of subjugation, whether economic, political, educational. »

However, it is difficult not to see in the multiple controversies that punctuate the solo career of Roger Waters his only aversion to imperialism. In addition to assumed political positions (against Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro, in favor of the Bolivian Evo Morales and the Chilean Gabriel Boric) and the repeated defense of whistleblowers (Julian Assange, Chelsea Manning), several remarks earned him to be accused of anti-Semitism.

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Supporting the Palestinian cause and the BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) movement against the State of Israel, the composer hovered above his audience in 2013 with a balloon in the shape of a pig, black and marked with a David’s star. In 2020, he portrays Jewish American billionaire Sheldon Adelson against the “puppeteer” of Donald Trump and his Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Another conspiratorial controversy: in 2018, he accused the White Helmets, a humanitarian organization of aid to civilians, of “to carry out propaganda for the benefit of jihadists and terrorists”questioning the responsibility of Bashar Al-Assad’s regime in a chemical attack.

European tour in March

Projections that have only further distanced the bassist from his former Pink Floyd companions. Polly Samson, lyricist of the group after the departure of Roger Waters (in 1985), notably qualified him on February 6 on Twitter of“anti-Semite”of ” liar “, of ” thief “of “misogynistic” and of “megalomaniac”. Words that her husband David Gilmour, guitarist and singer of Pink Floyd, judged “obviously true”. Of the “incendiary and totally false comments about him”swiped a post published by the Twitter account of Roger Waters.

On his website, the artist recites the long list of dates scheduled for his European tour, starting in March, before stopping on May 3 and 4 in Paris. There is no doubt that these concerts will, as usual, give pride of place to other positions, direct or via visual creations.

Also read the review (2017): Article reserved for our subscribers Roger Waters, another brick in the wall

It was on stage that Roger Waters first stopped confining his opinions to songs. “In July 1990, he was asked by the Memorial Fund for Disaster Relief, an association helping victims of war, to organize a big concert in Berlinreports Philippe Gonin. This moment undoubtedly marks the beginning of a more explicit, public speech, which shares the same ideological basis as his work. But whose expression sometimes turns to excess. »


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