Rise of the Narcissists
If the world begins and ends with you, then why waste time yakking about history?
A few months ago, Piers Morgan interviewed former Pink Floyd frontman Roger Waters, who, as expected, spewed a lot of hateful bile about Jews, Israel, and October 7th. In one of his most offensive rants, Waters repeatedly insisted there was “no evidence” that Hamas terrorists raped Israeli women.
But there’s plenty of evidence:
(There’s lots more of Waters’ idiocy here.)
Despite all the media coverage of this Morgan-Waters interview, no one highlighted perhaps the most revealing moment:
Roger Waters: … When I was about 13 years old, [my Mum] said: “You’re going to come up with all kinds of things in your future that you have to think about and figure out and make your mind up about, and when you do, my advice to you is: Read. Read. Read. Read everything you can find about whatever the subject is [and] when you’ve done all the heavy lifting, the next bit is easy. ‘Oh really, Mum, what’s the next bit, then?’And she said: “Then, Roger, You. Do. The. Right. Thing.” And that was great advice from my Mum.
Roughly 25 minutes later (at 28:22), Morgan and Waters tussle over one of the central questions in the Israel-Palestine debate: Who are the land’s true indigenous people?
Roger Waters: All I’m saying is that [the Jews] are not the indigenous people, most of them…
Piers Morgan: Ancient Egyptian records mention Israel from 1213 BC. Religious literature records Israelites as far back as 1500 BC. As far as many Jewish people are concerned, this is where they come from. Within Judaism, Israel is the Holy Land. It’s the land where the faith began. Jerusalem is the holy city for Jews. Jerusalem is at the core of their faith.
But Waters isn’t interested in ancient Egyptian records, religious literature, or Jewish tradition. So he changes the subject:
I haven’t read that book, I admit, and I’m not sure I want to… I’m going to keep dragging this conversation back to these two things: Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the genocide that the state of Israel is committing on the Palestinian people. And I don’t care about your history books from Egypt — I’m not saying you’re wrong, I haven’t read them, and frankly I couldn’t care less. … It doesn’t matter what happened in the history of the Israelites.
So much for Mama Waters’ instruction to “read, read, read.”
For Roger Waters, the only history that matters begins with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which was ratified in 1948, when Roger Waters was five years old.
In the world according to Roger Waters, human history begins when Roger Waters begins. Nothing that happened before Roger was born truly matters. Which is almost a textbook definition of narcissism.
Another example of Waters’ self-absorption:
Waters: I am in tears over Gaza every morning when I wake up. I’m only 80 years old [and] I have never experienced the genocide of whole people in front of my eyes happening every day. Every day, the calumny…
Morgan: Well, you have. With respect, you have. You were born in World War II when there was an actual genocide of Jewish people by the Nazis.
Morgan [holding his hands a foot apart): I was that big!
The only genocides that matter to Roger are the ones that Roger can witness himself. (Fact check: Gaza is a nightmarish war, not a genocide.) And Roger’s personal snapshot — his lived experience — is all he needs to determine who is innocent and who is guilty. It’s not complicated.
Narcissism’s rising tide
I share all this because Waters is one among millions of people who don’t know any history, nor do they care. All that matters to them is what’s happening right now on their social feeds. Everything else, they say, is a smokescreen thrown up by Israel’s racist, colonial, apartheid, genocidal regime and its global network of Jewish enablers.
One chaperoned tour… and you too can be an expert.
Ta-Nehisi Coates is another deep thinker who is fawned over by the media, but who isn’t interested in history or context (unless he’s writing about reparations for slavery). All Coates needed was a ten-day Palestinian-sponsored tour of Israel and the West Bank: On the right side of the bus, you’ll notice the barbed wire… the walls… the security cameras… the checkpoints… the soldiers… the guns! Suddenly, in a road-to-Damascus moment, the scales fall from Coates’ eyes, and The Truth is revealed: Zionism is racism. Israel is an apartheid state. It’s Jim Crow and South Africa all over again.
All of which makes me wonder: If famous guys like Waters and Coates don’t need to do their homework, then why should anyone else? Because as we’re all learning, the trick is not to have a well-informed opinion; the trick is simply to have an opinion. To join the conversation. To speak your truth. To tell your story.
Well said.
Phenomenally well stated