Frankfurt’s administrative court ruled that the city can’t cancel a Roger Waters concert after calling him “one of the most widely known antisemites in the world.”
Naturally, Waters is thrilled with the result. And naturally, he is misrepresenting it.
The court did not find that Waters is not an antisemite, as he claims. Rather, it found
…the concert cancellation planned against the musician as a result of allegations of anti-Semitism violates Roger Waters’ fundamental right to artistic freedom...there were no indications of criminal acts – such as the use of propaganda material and signs of unconstitutional organizations or incitement to hatred.
In his show, Waters “obviously uses a symbolism based on National Socialist rule”, which, given the location of the event, “can be assessed as particularly tasteless”. However, such an assessment eludes legal scrutiny.
The concert is scheduled for May 28th in Frankfurt’s Festhalle. In November 1938, in the days following the Night of Broken Glass , more than 3,000 Jewish men from Frankfurt and the Rhine-Main area were rounded up and mistreated. They were then deported to the murderous concentration camps.
In other words, the court did not rule on whether Waters is an antisemite or not, but whether he would be engaging in criminal acts. They found that because Rogers “did not glorify or relativize the crimes of the Nazis or identify with Nazi racist ideology” in past concerts, it was not appropriate to cancel the upcoming one.
While Waters goes on to imply that he is called an antisemite only because people conflate criticism of the policies of Israel with antisemitism, we know better. I had enough receipts when I made the below video over five years ago:
and I have even more receipts now.
