More about: Roger Waters
The latest musician to see this horrifying parallel
The prospect of Donald Trump becoming US president is becoming increasingly likely. The outsider has just overtaken Clinton in the polls for the first time since May and the world is sitting tight ahead of election day on 7 November.
Meanwhile, Pink Floyd's Roger Waters has voiced his opinion of the presidential candidate, who, in addition to other regressive political ideas, believes a wall should be built at the border with Mexico and America, and wants to have "a complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States."
Waters was speaking on WTF with Marc Maron about class, inequality and injustice, and towards the end Waters discussed the ways in which fascism can enter society: "It was insidious in Germany in the 30s when National Socialism came. And National Trumpism feels a bit less insidious, but it's just as dangerous."
He continued: "The method for taking over the state and for it becoming a totalitarian police state, is always the same, and it's always the identification of 'the other' as the enemy. In Trump's case, it's the Chinese, the Mexicans, and Islam – it doesn't matter who it is. With Hitler, it was the Jews, the Communists, the Gypsies, anybody who had a physical deformity, or whatever it might be, the homosexuals – they were all lumped together."
Waters also said America seems struck by a sense of defeat and economic lull, similar to how Germany was following World War I and the Treaty of Versailles. "What you have in the States now is everybody's standard of living is falling, like a freefall, and also where the freedoms that are enshrined in your Constitution and in the Bill of Rights are being slowly eroded and taken away from you," Waters said.
This parallel is echoed by Sleaford Mods in an interview Gigwise did with Jason Williamson. And also Rage Against The Machine bassist Tim Commerford.
Williamson made the point that before World War II "society was just as cultured as it supposedly is now." Commerford said: “In a nutshell, Germany is a lot better place since Hitler lost. Maybe him [Trump] getting elected, some horrible shit will go down and then after that the world will be a better place."
Casting more light on his opinion of Trump's motivation to seprate people on race he said: "We all live on the same planet, we should all be together united. But we are not. We are separated every day. The more that happens the more negative the world is going to be. I’m not hopeful that anything good is going to happen. But going back to what I was saying before maybe the best thing that could happen is the worst thing that could happen.”
More about: Roger Waters
Photo: Wenn
