Pink Floyd’s troubled Waters strikes again.
Controversial rock frontman Roger Waters is back in hot water after seemingly cosplaying as a Nazi SS officer — and comparing deceased Al Jazeera journalist Abu Akleh to Anne Frank at a recent concert in Germany.
His stage costume featured crossed hammer imagery reminiscent of that based on a fictitious neo-Nazi organization featured in the 1982 film “Pink Floyd: The Wall.”
The inflammatory performance, which went down last week at the Mercedes-Benz Arena in Berlin, opened up with an announcement on a screen that read: “On a matter of public interest: a court in Frankfurt has ruled that I am not an anti-Semite.“
“Just to be clear, I condemn antisemitism unreservedly,” the message continued, the Jerusalem Post reported.
Waters, 79, has become notorious for making controversial remarks, infamously comparing the State of Israel to the Nazis over their treatment of the Palestinians during various press interviews.
The “Another Brick in the Wall” legend’s comments have sparked outraged with many critics accusing the rock star of anti-Semitism.
In this latest performance, the Rock & Roll Hall of Famer could be seen prancing about on stage gussied up in what appeared to be an SS uniform. Hanging above him were Third Reich-style red banners but with the swastika swapped out for crossed hammer insignias.
Elsewhere during the spectacle, Waters sang “Lay Down Jerusalem (If I Had Been God)” while displaying the phrase “F$%& the occupation.”
At one point, a screen shaped like a crucifix displayed the names of deceased figures, including George Floyd, the black man whose death at the hands of Minnesota police officers sparked global protest and resulted in the formation of Black Lives Matter.
Perhaps most controversial was the inclusion of Anne Frank, the Jewish teenager killed during the Holocaust, and Abu Akleh, an Al Jazeera journalist who was fatally shot last year while covering a raid by the Israel Defense Forces on a Palestinian refugee camp.
Many Palestinian sources, along with CNN, claimed that she’d been deliberately targeted by the IDF, although the latter has denied this claim, the Independent reported.
Either way, members of the Jewish community found this juxtaposition, as well as the concert as a whole, highly problematic.
“Good morning to every one but Roger Waters who spent the evening in Berlin (Yes Berlin) desecrating the memory of Anne Frank and the 6 million Jews murdered in the Holocaust,” the Israel Foreign Ministry fumed in a Twitter statement.
The Simon Wiesenthal Center also condemned the spectacle, tweeting: “Shame on Frankfurt authorities and Mercedes Benz arena in Berlin — a place from where Jews were deported by the Nazis — for providing antisemite #RogerWaters this venue for his concert with no concern/care for the Jewish community.”
This isn’t the first time Waters has been in the social media crosshairs over his inflammatory opinions.
In February, the rabble-rousing rocker gave an interview for Germany’s Berliner Zeitung, in which he doubled down on his prior comments comparing Israel to the Third Reich, and also defended Russian President Vladimir Putin over his decision to invade Ukraine.
He was subsequently eviscerated on Twitter by Polly Samson, the wife of Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour.
The “Kindness” author accused the band’s cofounder of being “anti-Semitic” to his “rotten core” and labelled him a a “Putin apologist and a lying, thieving, hypocritical, tax-avoiding, lip-synching, misogynistic, sick-with-envy, megalomaniac.”
Shortly thereafter, Gilmour, 77, liked and retweeted his wife’s Twitter hit piece with the message: “Every word demonstrably true.”
Apparently not pleased with the husband-and-wife Twitter tag team, Waters’ camp posted a rebuttal on Instagram hours later.
“Roger Waters is aware of the incendiary and wildly inaccurate comments made about him on Twitter by Polly Samson which he refutes entirely,” the statement read. “He is currently taking advice as to his position.”
Meanwhile, in response to the accusations of anti-Jewish bigotry, the Brit declared: “[There’s] not a single millisecond of antisemitism anywhere in my life.”
