Roger Waters Hammered on Social Media by Former Pink Floyd Bandmate After Defending Putin's War on Ukraine

I regret to inform you that it is unlikely that the surviving members of Pink Floyd will ever tour together again.

That revelation may not come as a total shock, but it became clearer after the decades-long tensions between former bassist Roger Waters and guitarist David Gilmour heated up again yesterday with a series of social media posts – only instead of asking “Which one’s Pink?”, the posts took on much lighter subjects, like the Ukraine War and antisemitism.

Last week, Waters’ took part in an interview with the German newspaper Berliner Zeitung. According to an English translation of the interview, available on Waters’ website, the 79-year-old musician had some pretty controversial takes on Ukraine, Putin, and Israel.

There is a podcast from Cyprus called “The Duran”. The hosts speak Russian and can read Putin’s speeches in the original. Their comments on it make sense to me. The most important reason for supplying arms to Ukraine is surely profit for the arms industry. And I wonder: is Putin a bigger gangster than Joe Biden and all those in charge of American politics since World War II? I am not so sure. Putin didn’t invade Vietnam or Iraq? Did he?

[…]

Maybe I shouldn’t be, but I am now more open to listen 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.

When asked if he still believes that Israel is just like Nazi Germany, he responded with:

Yes, of course. The Israelis are committing genocide. Just like Great Britain did during our colonial period, by the way. The British committed genocide against the indigenous people of North America, for example. So did the Dutch, the Spanish, the Portuguese even the Germans in their colonies. All were part of the injustice of the colonial era. And we, the British also murdered and pillaged in India, Southeast Asia, China…. We believed ourselves to be inherently superior to the indigenous people, just as the Israelis do in Palestine. Well, we weren’t and neither are the Israeli Jews.

Of course, Waters’ stance on Israel is nothing new.

In the interview, he also stated that it’s “really, really sad” that his former bandmates recorded a protest song with Ukrainian musician Andrij Chlywnjuk.
He also claimed that to Rolling Stone at one point he was on “a kill list that is supported by the Ukrainian government.”

Apparently, none of this sat well with the wife of former bandmate Gilmour, Polly Samson, who tweeted this out yesterday.

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.

— pollysamson (@PollySamson) February 6, 2023

Samson was one of the lyricists for Pink Floyd after Waters left in 1985. After her tweet was posted, fans noticed that Gilmour had liked the tweet, and later on quote-tweeted it approvingly.

Every word demonstrably true https://t.co/KWk4I3bMTN

— David Gilmour (@davidgilmour) February 6, 2023

The accusations are all pretty heavy – heavy enough that Waters had to respond (via a statement on his social media).

pic.twitter.com/CIIy5r6SyA

— Roger Waters (@rogerwaters) February 6, 2023

By the way, apparently that whole lip-syncing accusation has legs. The Internet appears to want answers to the question, and there are tons of threads at places like Reddit where communities seem to just automatically assume he does. To be fair, there are parts of The Wall that can be extremely harsh on the vocal chords, so I wouldn’t be terribly surprised.

Then again, his denial doesn’t specifically mention the lip-syncing accusation, so maybe he’s just denying the other stuff (which is admittedly way worse).

Waters and Gilmour have only shared a state a couple of times since the original breakup. The first was the legendary performance at Live 8 back in the mid-2000s. The more recent was in 2011 when Gilmour made a surprise appearance at a Waters performance during “Comfortably Numb.”