Former Mumford & Sons lead guitarist Winston Marshall sensationally quit the band last year after deciding that being able to speak his mind on opposing Antifa and the violent Far Left was more important than keeping his career by kowtowing to the censorious wokerati. Now forging a new career as an anti-woke culture warrior, he says that looking back, he made the right decision as it allowed him to keep “my integrity, my dignity and most importantly my soul”. The Telegraph has the story.
Sixteen months ago Winston Marshall walked away from one of the world’s biggest bands. But today, when we meet for lunch at Blanchette, a French restaurant in Soho, the former banjo player and lead guitarist of Mumford & Sons seems remarkably perky. The 34-year-old bounds in dressed in a sharp black suit, holding a briefcase and a book, The Wind In My Hair, a memoir of a childhood in Iran by Masih Alinejad, the next interviewee for his Spectator podcast, Marshall Matters.
“This is very nice,” he says, as he looks around the room through a pair of 1970s-style hipster specs. As the son of Sabina, a French-Hungarian Jew, and Tory donor and Brexiteer Sir Paul Marshall, chairman of the hedge fund Marshall Wace, he has a considerably more interesting background than your average rock star. But it’s not just his parents, or the fact that Mumford & Sons won two Grammies and two Brits. It’s the fallout from a tweet he posted in March 2021, commending a book entitled Unmasked: Inside Antifa’s Radical Plan to Destroy Democracy by Andy Ngo. “Congratulations @MrAndyNgo. Finally had time to read your important book. You’re a brave man,” wrote Marshall. Ngo is a controversial figure who has spent the last few years documenting the work of Antifa (as in “antifascism”), far-Left activists in Portland, Oregon.
A hero to many on the Right, Ngo has also been accused of provoking some of the violence he films and of other practices such as “doxxing” – posting online the addresses and personal information of his far-Left foes.
The moment Marshall tweeted, all hell broke loose. Turned on by friends and musicians as well as vast Twitter armies, he was called a fascist and a Nazi (by comedian Nish Kumar), with the band inundated by demands to “fire the fascist”. He was eventually forced, he tells me, to “highlight” the fact that he had Jewish family members murdered by actual fascists in the 1940s. Within days of the Tweet, he issued an apology for the “pain” he had caused and promised to take some time away to examine his “blind spots”. So far so familiar: an outbreak of wrongthink followed by punishment of the perpetrator and then grovelling repentance.
But then Marshall deviated from the script. Over the next three months he mulled, eventually deciding that it hadn’t been a blind spot to praise Ngo. That indeed the point wasn’t about Ngo at all, but about the fact that a matter of truth was at stake. By sticking by his apology and remaining in the band, he realised he would be “spreading the lie, that what I actually thought was that violent extremism was good. Ngo’s book documents 19 deaths in the first 14 days of the Black Lives Matter riots. I don’t think those things are OK and I will stand by that.
“When I published my apology I was open to being wrong, but the more I researched, the more I felt compelled that I wasn’t wrong, and all the things that were said about the author I think are lies. They were said about me, and I thought, well this is f—— b—-. Then Ngo was attacked [the author was chased and beaten by some Leftist marchers at a George Floyd anniversary rally] and my conscience blew up.
“I could have stayed in the band but now I look back and I think actually I couldn’t have stayed. The other option was to give up what I love and what I’ve built my entire adult life on, but keep my integrity, my dignity and most importantly my soul and so, looking back, it was a terrible time, it was horrible, but I made the right decision for me.”
Marshall “explained to the band my predicament and decision. After a few days of conversation there were no great objections, so I published my letter” [on the blog website Medium].
“So,” I ask. “No regrets now?”
“What’s the point?” he replies curtly. “It was horrible but… I made the right decision.” It’s hard to believe, though, that his decision had no impact on his friendship with his former bandmates. So far he has given only boilerplate responses, and today, even when pushed, all he will say, with a twinkle, is: “I wish them well.” But it seems safe to infer that those relationships remain another casualty of The Tweet. Other friends, however, surprised him: “Some people who I thought were very close were not and some people who were not really turned up. My friends, I know who they are [now].” He won’t divulge who, apart from those who stood up for him publicly: Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Maajid Nawaz, Benedict Rogers.
Worth reading in full.
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Despite being a frequent visitor to museums, art galleries and exhibitions I cannot recall ever bumping in to a trans person so why the need for all this woke garbage?
How often in our daily lives do any of us come in to contact with trans people?
Why do the alleged rights of trans people have to be constantly trumpeted over the rights of ordinary people? We are talking about an extremely small number of people here, less than 100k.
This is ideological wokery pushed beyond reasonable and which serves only to aggravate the majority. I appreciate this is the intention but the push certainly hi-lights the enemy –
Richard Sandell, Co-Director of the ‘Research Centre for Museums and Galleries.’
Here we have another grifter with a ridiculous non,-job doubtless being paid an obscene salary from taxpayers money in order that he can lecture said taxpayers on their daily behaviour. These are NOT the types of people we require in our society, they are in fact nasty viruses of the sort that need to be boosted out of existence. Infections like Sandell typify the sad state of public employment in this country. We need to be rid of the lot of it and until we are this country will only continue to sink deeper into the mire.
In order to work (well), brainwashing must be ubiquitously applied. People will only accept that sex doesn’t exist if the claim that it doesn’t is normal because it’s literally everywhere.
I used to like rainbows in a vaguely biblical, redemption-like hopeful way. I used to like visiting museums and art galleries, in an intellectually stimulating, learn-something-new way. But wading through a sea of ideologically hijacked rainbows to find overtly sexualised exhibits of Roman road building or medieval tapestries? Nah, not any more.
Are there any reliable statistics on how many people want to change their biological gender and how many have?
I just want to get an idea of how extensive this issue is.
How many people does it affect directly?
A couple of months ago a slim ‘normal-looking’ young man of around 25 years old was walking across a park in a blue and white floral print dress.
I found this very confusing.
There has got to be a better way of dealing with this trans stuff than all the wokism we currently have.
Ok its a problem to be trans but FFS wokism has made it a genuine problem now for those of us who are not.
https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/2021-census-what-do-we-know-about-the-lgbt-population/#:~:text=93.5%25%20of%20respondents%20said%20their,people%20identified%20explicitly%20as%20transgender.
As I posted earlier, at the last census 96,000 identified as transgender and the vast majority will not pursue surgical intervention.
Thanks huxleypiggles. Very helpful information
Let me quote from part of it for those reading who may not click the link you provide to “2021 census: What do we know about the LGBT+ population?“:
Physically intact and chromasome normal men whose state of mind is such that they ‘identify’ as women and dress as such should certainly be treated kindly. But they are not and never can be biological women. Indeed, chromosome normal men who identify as women can never be biological women. To campaign otherwise is, I suggest, deliberately societally divisive – as are so many recently promoted ideoligies and -isms.
Rather than confusing/propagandising our young with gender fluidity-ism, Hans Anderson’s “The Emperor’s New Clothes” should be foundational reading in all primary schools and, it would seem, in our universities, combined with the fostering of critical thinking skills.
And NO, it is not the role of museums to socially engineer and propagandise. But by all means, if/when budget allows, provide ‘Trans Toilets’.
In Th name of Inclusivity & assimilation, I’l like the Pro TRANS Folks, Write a Guidance for Mosques & Synagogues in general please. Same type of guidance as what they have have written for Museums, Churches & corporations. In fact they could Just send them photocopies. Now that’s a Good idea right?