Roger Waters: "Neoliberal propaganda keeping voters ‘asleep’ like Orwellian sheep"

[Beanz]

I expect this is some kind of stoning offence like John Cleese saying "Jehovah' in The Life of Brian, but I will risk reposting the actual words of the guy himself from the linked to article

" Because they’re asleep. Because they’re the victims of the neoliberalism that Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher brought to the world,” Waters said."

[p4pking]

I have zero issue with you, and the last thing I’ll do is take a side in the endless quibble you have with a few guys here; but, do you think individual politicians are ever solely responsible for mass movements, or that a musicians opinions on them is worth much?

[brocktonblockbust]

The cultural Marxist takeover of the Western World which started I'm going to say and real significant full force in the late 1980s has been powered and manufactured and brain child by groups of educators and policymakers beginning in the 1960s. Political correctness has completely handcuffed people in their free speech and demonises people to be Nazis or fascist or racist or xenophobes or misogynist

Ronald Reagan had nothing to do with that

[walrus]

Roger waters also said if it were not for the Beatles there never would have been Pink Floyd

[Gandalf]

I never really got into Pink Floyd. Very good musicians, but you can tell Waters studied architecture. The music is well constructed, but lacks melody or true emotion. I find Dark Side of the Moon to be a very dull album.

[brocktonblockbust]

Smoked 2 joints, age 16, sitting on curb hot summer night, 9 p.m., August 1980, 3 friends, boom box, smoked 2 joints, it was Hawaiian reefer, sitting in the darkness in suburbia, stoned bad, .....guy pops in a cassette..... So stoned, everything quiet as a mouse, we light a 3rd joint, Mike says "Steve, this weed is Acapulco Gold",....... Stoned even more..... Pure silence, darkness......
Roger hits the play button.......

Faintly, so faintly, at the edge of hearing, you hear strings, so faint.... Slowly, so slowly, crescendoing...... Strings, ...... Louder, drawn out, approaching, crescendoing......

Fucking mouths hanging open in amazement, mind-blowing.....

Stoned as all hell......

Then it hit:. SHINE ON YOU CRAZY DIAMOND

*****ABSO-FUCKING-LUTELY AN EPIPHANY

[Beanz]

I have zero issue with you, and the last thing I’ll do is take a side in the endless quibble you have with a few guys here; but, do you think individual politicians are ever solely responsible for mass movements, or that a musicians opinions on them is worth much?

No. That said Thatcherism definitely changed this country and people's attitude massively. Her saying 'there is no such thing as society' seemed to coincide with yuppies, the 80s obsession with ostentatious displays of wealth and her stamping down the unions and killing the coal industry etc. So to pretend that Waters talking about her and Reagan, which is exactly what he Says, is somehow about political correctness etc is an inversion of reality. Neoliberalism is literally the opposite of socialism. Thatcher started the rush to privatise publicly held utilities. Everything getting reduced down to a financial transaction got us here. Trump is a neoliberalist, so is Peterson and Thatcher and Reagan started it all - https://www.theguardian.com/commenti...george-monbiot

[brocktonblockbust]

So please explain who started Political correctness

[Beanz]

So please explain who started Political correctness

I will start a thread. This is not the thread for such a big question.

[Gandalf]

I disagree that Peterson is neo liberal, Beanz. He said himself that on many things he is liberal meaning progressive. He just accepts that there is a natural struggle between left and right and that this is healthy. My take on that is that we cannot all be equal but by the same token we don't want people starving in the streets. It's about finding that optimal balance. Seems like an ordinary bloke in that regard. You seem to have become a bit obsessed with Peterson, but really I do not consider him to be akin to Thatcher or Reagan in the slightest.

On the topic of Shine on you crazy diamond I do enjoy that song, but think the rest of the album is tedious. I like what Waters says politically, I really do, but I just find his music does not touch me.

[Beanz]

I disagree that Peterson is neo liberal, Beanz. He said himself that on many things he is liberal meaning progressive. He just accepts that there is a natural struggle between left and right and that this is healthy. My take on that is that we cannot all be equal but by the same token we don't want people starving in the streets. It's about finding that optimal balance. Seems like an ordinary bloke in that regard. You seem to have become a bit obsessed with Peterson, but really I do not consider him to be akin to Thatcher or Reagan in the slightest.

On the topic of Shine on you crazy diamond I do enjoy that song, but think the rest of the album is tedious. I like what Waters says politically, I really do, but I just find his music does not touch me.

I can see why you would say that because on the surface his claims would distance himself from those who see terms like liberal and progressive as being interchangeable with having no moral values and favouring a descent from order into chaos. All his actions and most of his rhetoric though confirm that Neo liberalism is an ideology he shares with Thatcher. It is at the heart of everything he has written and lectured about. Everything is reduced down to competition and hierarchies. When Thatcher said

"I think we have gone through a period when too many children and people have been given to understand “I have a problem, it is the Government's job to cope with it!” or “I have a problem, I will go and get a grant to cope with it!” “I am homeless, the Government must house me!” and so they are casting their problems on society and who is society? There is no such thing! There are individual men and women and there are families and no government can do anything except through people and people look to themselves first."




Do you really think that is so different to JP?He believes in non-regulated capitalism just like a Neo-liberal. He is in short a conservative. When he calls himself a 'Classic British Liberal' it's just another way of him saying two things at once, but that does not mean progressive it means economic liberalism surely? You are the Politics and History graduate, I may be mistaken. He seems to believe in social Darwinism and conservative values.