Roger Waters has been getting a lot of backlash over his May concert in Berlin for, among other things, wearing what looked like an SS soldier costume. Well, now the White House has weighed in on the controversy.
During Monday’s State Department press briefing, a reporter asked about a tweet in which the U.S. special envoy to combat antisemitism, Deborah Lipstadt, agreed with the criticism of Waters. In a new statement, the Biden administration backed her up.
According to The Associated Press, the State Department said Waters has “a long track record of using antisemitic tropes to denigrate Jewish people,” noting the Berlin concert in question “contained imagery that is deeply offensive to Jewish people and minimized the Holocaust.”
Lipstadt’s tweet supported another tweet posted by EU antisemitism envoy Katharina von Schnurbein, condemning Waters and the show. The White House added, “Special Envoy Lipstadt’s quote-tweet speaks for itself.”
As previously reported, Waters has already responded to the criticism over the Berlin show, insisting the parts of his concert getting backlash “are quite clearly a statement in opposition to fascism, injustice, and bigotry in all its forms.” He added that “attempts to portray those elements as something else are disingenuous and politically motivated.”
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