Roger Waters Truly Is A Moron

roger waters poster2Remember Roger Water’s defense of his own views? As I posted at the time, he really put the BS into BDS.

But now, thanks to my friend over at Legal Insurrection, we see that it contains an even greater BS quotient than first imagined!

Fake Gandhi quote, anyone?

On March 17, 2014, Waters wrote an “exlusive” column for Salon.com, Why I must speak out on Israel, Palestine and BDS.

In the Salon.com “exclusive,” Waters details the routine justifications, but then pulls out a supposed quote from Mahatma Gandhi to prove that Waters is on the right side of history (emphasis added):

In the furor that exists in the U.S. today about BDS and the right and wrong of a cultural boycott of Israel, a quote from one of my heroes, Mahatma Gandhi, has been on my mind. He prophetically said, “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.” The BDS movement is fulfilling its promise and fits Gandhi’s description. Once dismissed by many as a futile strategy that would “never work,” BDS has gained much ground in recent weeks, bringing with it the expected backlash.

This is a common quote used by the BDS movement. The anti-Israel Mondoweiss website used it, as has a Northeastern Students for Justice in Palestine Facebook commenter and a commenter at the anti-Israel Electronic Intifada.

This student at the recent Northeastern University anti-Israel protest used it to fire up the crowd:

The only problem is that it’s a fake quote.

All available evidence is that Gandhi never said it, as The Christian Science Monitor noted in 2011, Political misquotes: The 10 most famous things never actually said:
8. ‘First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they attack you. Then you win.’ – Mohandas Gandhi
This line is probably the best summary of Gandhi’s philosophy of satyagraha as you can get in 16 words. But there’s no evidence that the Great Soul ever said this.

We don’t know where this quote came from, but it is strikingly similar to something that the trade unionist Nicholas Klein gave in a 1914 address to the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America in Baltimore:

“First they ignore you. Then they ridicule you. And then they attack you and want to burn you. And then they build monuments to you. And that, is what is going to happen to the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America.”

—-

Even WikiQuote lists it as “Disputed.”

Actually, in the Waters piece I posted about – different from the Salon piece – he refers to the Gandhi quote in this way:

I am reminded of Gandhi’s famous saying explaining his non-violent resistance to British Colonial Rule in India: ‘First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.’

In other words, not only did Water attribute a false quote to Gandhi, but he claims it is one of his famous ones!

It is this kind of fact-checking that is indicative of the kind of command of the facts Waters has when it comes to the Arab-Israeli conflict.

As Mahatma Gandhi once said, “What a bloody idiot!”

32 thoughts on “Roger Waters Truly Is A Moron”

  1. An undisputed quote attributed to Churchill in response to one of Gandhi’s innumerable hunger strikes:

    “Why hasn’t he died yet?”

  2. I am far more saddened by Gandhi’s iconic status as the ultimate moral authority–despite a number of hypocritical and callous things he DID say in his lifetime– than by a random quote improperly attributed to him.

  3. I am far more saddened by Gandhi’s iconic status as the ultimate moral authority–despite a number of hypocritical and callous things he DID say in his lifetime– than by a random quote improperly attributed to him.

  4. Norman_In_New_York

    An undisputed quote attributed to Churchill during one of Gandhi’s innumerable hunger strikes: “Why hasn’t he died yet?”

    1. I think that Mr Waters will soon disappear from the music scene, and from view in general. He is afraid of losing his income so the best way is to be seen as a Israel-hater. We have the same doo-doo in Australia.

  5. Norman_In_New_York

    An undisputed quote attributed to Churchill during one of Gandhi’s innumerable hunger strikes: “Why hasn’t he died yet?”

    1. I think that Mr Waters will soon disappear from the music scene, and from view in general. He is afraid of losing his income so the best way is to be seen as a Israel-hater. We have the same doo-doo in Australia.

  6. Desperate Straw-man Argument. This “disputed” quote is used by many publications and authors, the use of it by Waters is a non-issue. Here are some indisputable quotes from Gandhi about the conflict.
    .
    “My sympathies are all with the Jews…But my sympathy does not blind me to the requirements of justice…Palestine belongs to the Arabs in the same sense that England belongs to the English or France to the French. It is wrong and inhuman to impose the Jews on the Arabs. What is going on in Palestine today cannot be justified by any moral code of conduct. The mandates have no sanction but that of the last war. Surely it would be a crime against humanity to reduce the proud Arabs so that Palestine can be restored to the Jews partly or wholly as their national home…
    .
    …to the Jews in Palestine. I have no doubt that they are going about it in the wrong way…if they must look to the Palestine of geography as their national home, it is wrong to enter it under the shadow of the British gun. A religious act cannot be performed with the aid of the bayonet or the bomb. They can settle in Palestine only by the goodwill of the Arabs. There are hundreds of ways of reasoning with the Arabs, if they will only discard the help of the British bayonet. As it is, they are co-shares with the British in despoiling a people who have done no wrong to them.
    .
    “I am not defending the Arab excesses. I wish they had chosen the way of non-violence in resisting what they rightly regarded as an unwarrantable encroachment upon their country. But according to the accepted canons of right and wrong, nothing can be said against the Arab resistance in the face of overwhelming odds.”

    1. “Palestine belongs to the Arabs in the same sense that England belongs to the English or France to the French.”

      Why should England belong to the English or France to the French?

      1. I can’t speak for Gandhi, but I assume he’s alluding to the hundreds of years Britain and France were inhabited by the Brits and French respectively, which confers “ownership”.
        .
        Similarly, Palestine has been inhabited by the Palestinians for hundreds of years consecutively, Palestine being defined as modern day Israel/Palestine, and Palestinians being defined as the majority Muslim population, with minority Christian and Jewish populations.

        1. Just as “Palestine” was inhabited by the Jews for thousands of years. So what? Gandhi also said that the Jews should use non-violent resistance against the Nazis. What could go wrong?

            1. hey kane

              which israeli scholars?

              documentary evidence does not show large numbers of arabs residing in the area which is now known as israel, during most of the ottoman occupation

              im not a revisionist….i read

          1. Problem is, most of the Jews left/were expelled from Palestine, and didn’t seek to return for hundreds of years, during which time the land was owned by the Palestinians, for concurrent generations. Its tenuous at best, to base your claim on another people’s land, on the fact that your great ancestors lived somewhere around there a thousand years ago.

        2. another lie

          arabs didnt “inhabit the land for hundreds of years”

          they were nomadic

          they only moved in en masse when the jew began to return at the end of the 19th century

          1. This is Israeli revisionism, that was dispelled by Israeli scholars in the 70’s. The academic community dismisses these fantasies today. Palestine has been largely populated by Palestinians for hundreds of years.
            .
            Was there an “increase” in population at the beginning of the 20th century? Sure. But was the majority of the Palestinian population already living there? Yes.

    2. are those quotes from the same diaper wearing fraud, who thought the jews who died in the holocaust were cowards and should have committed mass suicide?

      glad the diaper wearing jew hating bastard met his end the way he did

      1. Not sure what you are referring to. Gandhi’s position on the Jews was the same as it was for everyone. Civil disobedience and resistance in the face of persecution. Would that lead to Jews being killed, probably. But to call him a “jew hater” is complete hyperbole.

    3. are those quotes from the same diaper wearing fraud, who thought the jews who died in the holocaust were cowards and should have committed mass suicide?

      glad the diaper wearing jew hating bastard met his end the way he did

  7. “Palestine belongs to the Arabs in the same sense that England belongs to the English or France to the French.”

    Why should England belong to the English or France to the French?

  8. He should have remembered that famous quote by Abraham Lincoln: “The problem with quotes on the Internet is that it’s difficult to guarantee their veracity.”

  9. He should have remembered that famous quote by Abraham Lincoln: “The problem with quotes on the Internet is that it’s difficult to guarantee their veracity.”

  10. Just as “Palestine” was inhabited by the Jews for thousands of years. So what? Gandhi also said that the Jews should use non-violent resistance against the Nazis. What could go wrong?

      1. hey kane

        which israeli scholars?

        documentary evidence does not show large numbers of arabs residing in the area which is now known as israel, during most of the ottoman occupation

        im not a revisionist….i read

  11. are those quotes from the same diaper wearing fraud, who thought the jews who died in the holocaust were cowards and should have committed mass suicide?

    glad the diaper wearing jew hating bastard met his end the way he did

  12. another lie

    arabs didnt “inhabit the land for hundreds of years”

    they were nomadic

    they only moved in en masse when the jew began to return at the end of the 19th century

  13. Gandhi was very anti-black, calling the natives ‘raw’, backwards, and animal-like, during his stay in South Africa, under apartheid, and wanted nothing to do with them. It is laughably ironic and shockingly hypocritical of the idiot Waters to call Gandhi his hero and Israel an apartheid state!

    Just shows you that Waters doesn’t really know ANYTHING about Gandhi! He’s faking it!

    What a loser.

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