Roger Waters Goes Nuclear on the US Over Venezuela
Roger Waters is doing what Roger Waters has always done best: turning a global crisis into a loud, uncomfortable conversation.
And this time, he’s not easing anyone into it.
In a fiery Instagram reel posted on January 3, 2026, the former Pink Floyd mastermind publicly condemned the United States’ military intervention in Venezuela, following the capture and transfer of President Nicolás Maduro and his wife to the US, where they are set to face charges including terrorism, drug trafficking, and arms dealing.
Waters doesn’t mince words. He never has.
“It’s 11am on January 3, 2026. We are all shocked,” he says in the video, describing the operation as a “savage act of aggression by the empire of the United States of America” against what he calls “our brothers and sisters in Venezuela.” The language is classic Waters: theatrical, furious, and deliberately polarizing.
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DTDotdtCWaO/?ig_mid=333C8ED6-D6C9-4BE4-8F8F-F2350A8C3CD4
A Familiar Voice, Still Loud
For fans who’ve followed Waters beyond The Dark Side of the Moon, this isn’t a surprise. His activism, from Palestine to Julian Assange to Latin America, has long been inseparable from his public identity. Music and politics aren’t two lanes for him. They’re the same road.
What’s striking here is the intensity. Waters goes as far as claiming he speaks for “probably 99% of the people on the planet,” insisting that no one supports what the US has done. Hyperbolic? Absolutely. But subtlety has never been his currency.
The sharpest moment lands near the end of the reel, when Waters addresses America directly:
“For God’s sake, grow up. Stop behaving like stupid children in a schoolyard. This is our world, not yours.”
No metaphor left unexploded.
Waters closes the video with a direct message of solidarity for Maduro. “If I were a man who prayed, I would be praying for President Maduro,” he says, before adding that he’s not a man of prayer, but of action, promising to support Venezuela as a sovereign nation “left alone by the gringo bullies of the north.”
That line alone guarantees backlash. And Waters knows it.
Critics will argue that supporting Maduro ignores years of controversy surrounding his leadership. Supporters will counter that US intervention is the real issue. Waters plants his flag firmly on one side, daring anyone to try and move it.