Roger Waters: ‘National Trumpism’ as Dangerous as Hitler’s ‘National Socialism’

Pink Floyd co-founder Roger Water compared Donald Trump’s political rise to that of Nazi leader Adolf Hitler during an interview this week on WTF With Marc Maron.

“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,” Waters said about fascism’s supposed societal ascent in America.

The U.K.-born bassist believes the Republican nominee will enact a “totalitarian police state” by vilifying ethnic minorities, just as Hitler did to the Jews.

“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,” Waters said. “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.”

The 73-year-old singer-songwriter says America is facing the same economic morass that precluded World War I, and suggests that Constitutional freedoms are being “taken away.”

“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.

Last month, Waters took direct aim at Trump during a politically-charged performance at the Desert Trip music festival in Indio, California.

While Waters sang lyrics from Pink Floyd’s 1977 hit “Pigs (Three Different Ones).” images of Trump in a KKK hood, holding a Nazi salute, and holding a giant sex toy like a rifle flashed across the screen.

I got the sense Roger Waters doesn't care for Trump at #DesertTrip pic.twitter.com/XJCrsm4ZFY

— Joe Lynch (@branniganlynch) October 10, 2016

A giant inflatable pig, with the phrases “F*ck Trump and his wall” and “Arrogant, lying, racist, sexist” printed on it were also seen floating above the crowd during the show.

 

Follow Jerome Hudson on Twitter: @jeromeehudson