Roger Waters said he rejected a “huge” offer from Facebook for the use of the classic Pink Floyd song “Another Brick in the Wall Part II” and called the corporation’s boss, Mark Zuckerberg, “one of the most powerful idiots in the world.”

Speaking during an event that’s part of a campaign to free WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange – the imprisoned subject of an international debate over freedom of expression – Waters said the offer had come directly from Zuckerberg, who wanted to use the song in a film to promote Facebook and Instagram.

“So it's a missive from Mark Zuckerberg to me,” Waters said in a new video clip. “Arrived this morning, with an offer of a huge, huge amount of money, and the answer is – ‘Fuck you! No fucking way!’”

He added that he mentioned the letter as an example of “insidious movement of them to take over absolutely everything.” You can watch the video below.

Waters read aloud some of Zuckerberg's letter: “We want to thank you for considering this project. We feel that the core sentiment of this song is still so prevalent and necessary today, which speaks to how timeless your work is, truly."

"And yet they want to use it to make Facebook and Instagram even bigger and more powerful than it already is, so it can continue to censor all of us in this room and prevent this story about Julian Assange getting out," Waters said. "So the general public could go, ‘What? What? No! No more!’”

He suggested it was important for people with power to stand against alleged limitations of free expression by social media corporations. “I will not be a party to this bullshit, Zuckerberg,” Waters said, before becoming more personal in his attack: “You think, 'How did this little prick – who started off by saying, 'She is pretty, we'll give her a four out of five,' 'She's ugly, we'll give her a one' – how the fuck did he get any power in anything? And yet here he is, one of the most powerful idiots in the world.”

 

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