New Delhi: The popular British pop-rock band Pink Floyd has always been political. Recently, bassist Roger Waters made headlines for criticising the United Kingdom’s response and behaviour toward the Russians.
In an interview with American journalist Tucker Carlson, Waters critiqued the leaders as well as the powerful elite in both the UK and the United States for pushing for a war with Russia.
“I’m worried that some of the people in the governments of the United States, the UK, and the European Union are making bloodcurdlingly bloodthirsty noises about the possibility of fighting,” he added.
Waters said that, particularly in Germany, the government was trying to gather 5 per cent of the GNP of all European countries into a “piggy bank” to fight the Russians.
The 82-year-old musician asserted that he does not believe the Russians want to invade Europe, adding that “we have to be cooperating with the Russians.”
He went on to reveal how hurt he is because he cannot watch RT or Russia Today, the state-controlled international news network, since its ban in the UK.
“It sort of breaks my heart that I can’t watch RT anymore. Cause it’s banned. You can’t watch Russia Today,” Waters said.
The changing years
The singer also commented on how the world has changed over the years, reflecting on his youth in post-World War 2 England through the Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair years to the present time. He added that over time “right-wing stuff has been coming back in again.”
Waters cited his 1979 song ‘Goodbye Blue Sky ’, quoting the lyrics: “Did you hear the falling bombs? Did you ever wonder why we had to run for shelter when the promise of a brave new world unfurled beneath the clear blue sky?”
He explained that the Second World War was, in fact, not the war to end all wars like the first one had meant to be.
“It made us realise that this idea that we could have e a socialist future, where we looked after one another, and also a future where we didn’t have wars, nation against nation, was a pipe dream,” Water said, adding that it didn’t suit the oligarchs, because they don’t believe in human rights but in profit.
“So we live in a very difficult time where it may be, unless you, with your audience – or me with my tiny voice – can join with our brothers and sisters and pull together the ordinary working people all over the globe, and we can make the voice of the choir so loud that we can drown out the propaganda of the ruling class,” he said.
Waters added that being the greater nation in the world was no longer important, but whether or not you are kind.