US State Department says recent concerts by Roger Waters are antisemitic

The Biden administration weighs in on the controversy over Pink Floyd co-founder Roger Waters, saying his recent performances in Germany were antisemitic.

The State Department says that Waters has “a long track record of using antisemitic tropes” and a concert he gave late last month in Germany “contained imagery that is deeply offensive to Jewish people and minimized the Holocaust.”

The comments come in a written response to a question posed at yesterday’s State Department press briefing about whether the administration agreed with criticism of Rogers from the US special envoy to combat antisemitism, Deborah Lipstadt.

“Special Envoy Lipstadt’s quote-tweet speaks for itself,” the department says. “The concert in question, which took place in Berlin, contained imagery that is deeply offensive to Jewish people and minimized the Holocaust,” the department says. “The artist in question has a long track record of using antisemitic tropes to denigrate Jewish people.”

Images on social media showed Waters firing an imitation machine gun while dressed in a long black coat with a red armband. Police confirmed that the costume could constitute a glorification, justification or approval of Nazi rule and therefore a disturbance of the public peace.