Former Pink Floyd lead vocalist and bass player Roger Waters has refuted “wildly inaccurate” claims that he is a Putin apologist and an anti-Semite in an online spat with the wife of the band’s guitarist David Gilmour.
Polly Samson, who is married to Gilmour and helped write several of the band’s songs after Waters left in 1985, wrote on social media that the former band leader is “anti-Semitic” to his “rotten core.”
“Also a Putin apologist and a lying, thieving, hypocritical, tax-avoiding, lip-synching, misogynistic, sick-with-envy, megalomaniac,” Samson tweeted on Monday. “Enough of your nonsense.”
Sadly @rogerwaters you are antisemitic to your rotten core. Also a Putin apologist and a lying, thieving, hypocritical, tax-avoiding, lip-synching,misogynistic, sick-with-envy, megalomaniac. Enough of your nonsense.
— pollysamson (@PollySamson) February 6, 2023
Gilmour echoed her sentiment, quote-tweeting her message and writing: “Every word is demonstrably true.”
Waters replied, saying that he “refutes entirely” the “incendiary and wildly inaccurate comments’ made by Samson.
The row was reportedly sparked by an interview Waters shared with the German publication Berliner Zeitung, in which the musician voiced his views on Ukraine, Putin, and Israel.
In the interview, Waters condemned the “Israel lobby” for trying to “silence” him amid controversy over his upcoming tour in Germany. After a number of politicians and religious leaders called for his concerts to be cancelled over his stance on Ukraine, and his past comments on Israel, in which he compared the Israeli state to Nazi Germany.
Read the article by Georgie Gray, Entertainment Reporter in The Australian.