Condemnation of Roger Waters is unfair

CANCEL culture has reached its nadir with a Manchester Labour MP, Christian Wakeford, seeking to ban Roger Waters’ imminent gig on the grounds of anti-Semitic conduct in his show.

To provide a context, Waters dresses as a fascist demagogue in a song off Pink Floyd’s album, The Wall, and this was sufficient for Wakeford to condemn Waters as an anti-Semite.

If Wakeford were to form rational opinions based on fact, he would learn that Waters’ father, a Christian pacifist, recognised that the need to counter the evils of fascism outweighed his non-violent stance (Waters’ dad was subsequently killed in action in Italy in World War Two). Further, in his gigs, Waters highlights the names of supposedly free individuals above the stage, such as Sophie Scholl, who were killed as a result of state oppression (Scholl was executed following her brave campaign to eradicate persecution of Jews in Nazi Germany in 1943). Clearly, Wakeford is oblivious to these facts.

Waters has been a long-term activist against the foreign policy of Israel in their treatment of Palestinians in the occupied territories. However, it is fair to state that his stance on Jewish culture is balanced and fair but he receives hostility, threats of cancellation and even death threats.

Thomas Hobbes was the first philosopher to recognise that the state of nature, prior to political society, was “nasty and brutish” as individual men and women strived to survive in a “state of war”. We consented, at some stage in our human history, to enter a social contract to protect our freedoms and political society was then born. However, with his pathetic stance, Christian Wakeford clearly relishes a return to a barbaric and feral prepolitical state environment. Enough is enough.

Ian Roblin Llanishen, Cardiff