That was the culmination of the Wall being built. Then there was the "trial" where he's ordered to tear down that wall, and become a "bleeding heart and artist".
>> That was the culmination of the Wall being built. Then there was the “trial” where he’s ordered to tear down that wall, and become a “bleeding heart and artist”. <<
I’d love to believe what you wrote, and I think that’s what Roger would LIKE you to say about it, but the bedeviling thing about the Wall is that the Trial works the opposite of what you say.
The prosecution isn’t criticizing Pink for being a Nazi, but for being a bleeding heart/artist. His punishment isn’t to convert him away from being a Nazi, but to expose him for being a bleeding heart. “The way you made them suffer, your exquisite wife and mother fills me with the urge to defecate! Since, my friend, you have revealed your deepest fear, I sentence you to be exposed before your peers! Tear down the wall!”
(Let’s not forget that this his imagination, and that the real-world event is that he’s humiliated by being exposed as needing drugs to make it through the show.)
Now, the Wall clearly isn’t advocating for Nazism, but what it does expose is that Pink has fantasies of being a fascist, which rather than create a clear narrative, helplessly jumbles the 4th disk. In its former context, these fascist fantasies are a confusing: why would Roger suppose Pink had closet fascist tendencies? In the new context, it makes sense: those fascist tendencies are what 1979 Roger hated about himself, his deepest, darkest secret.
By the way, lest you think this is the ONLY time Roger leaves hints that he’s a terrible racist, check out the lyrics to the very first song AFTER the Wall:
Was it for this that Daddy died?
Was it you? Was it me?
Did I watch too much T.V.?
Is that a hint of accusation in your eyes?
If it wasn’t for the Nips
Being so good at building ships
The yards would still be open on the Clyde
And it can’t be much fun for them
Beneath the rising sun
With all their kids committing suicide
What have we done, Maggie, what have we done?
What have we done to England?
Now, this character is no straw-man right-winger as the fantasy-verison of Pink is explained away as. Not only does Roger keep up the same back-story as his own and Pink’s (”Was it for this that Daddy died?”), but here we see THIS character position himself with Roger’s PUBLIC persona on the LEFT (”What have we done, Maggie [Thatcher], what have we done?”). And yet, rather than ask us to sympathize with the foreigner, this character blames Thatcher for helping the foreigners take British jobs away.
But despite this positioning on the Left, this character is shockingly racist (”The Nips... it can’t be much fun for them beneath the rising sun watching all of their kids committing suicide.”)
Now, consider “When the Tigers Broke Free.” We find that Roger doesn’t actually blame the NAZIS for his father’s death, but rather he blames the BRITISH for sending his father off to fight against the Nazis. (”And the Anzio bridgehead was held for the price of only a few hundred ordinary lives,... and that’s how the high command took my Daddy from me.”)
The British, in Roger’s mind, should have surrendered to the Nazis, just as he wants the Ukrainians of today to surrender to the Russians. No, Roger isn’t a Nazi; he hates war. But he blames Jews for war, which makes him a fair amount in common with the Nazis. He processes nothing after the death of his father, so he knows of no worthwhile cause to fight, only that war took away the only thing he ever loved.