Until yesterday Winston Marshall was a member of the English folk rock band Mumford & Sons.
In this post on medium.com he explains why he is leaving:
At the beginning of March I tweeted to American journalist Andy Ngo, author of the New York Times Bestseller, Unmasked. “Congratulations @MrAndyNgo. Finally had the time to read your important book. You’re a brave man”. Posting about books had been a theme of my social-media throughout the pandemic. I believed this tweet to be as innocuous as the others. How wrong I turned out to be.
Over the course of 24 hours it was trending with tens of thousands of angry retweets and comments. I failed to foresee that my commenting on a book critical of the Far-Left could be interpreted as approval of the equally abhorrent Far-Right.
Nothing could be further from the truth. Thirteen members of my family were murdered in the concentration camps of the Holocaust. My Grandma, unlike her cousins, aunts and uncles, survived. She and I were close. My family knows the evils of fascism painfully well. To say the least. To call me “fascist” was ludicrous beyond belief.
I’ve had plenty of abuse over the years. I’m a banjo player after all. But this was another level. And, owing to our association, my friends, my bandmates, were getting it too. It took me more than a moment to understand how distressing this was for them.
Despite being four individuals we were, in the eyes of the public, a unity. Furthermore it’s our singer’s name on the tin. That name was being dragged through some pretty ugly accusations, as a result of my tweet. The distress brought to them and their families that weekend I regret very much. I remain sincerely sorry for that. Unintentionally, I had pulled them into a divisive and totemic issue.
Emotions were high. Despite pressure to nix me they invited me to continue with the band. That took courage, particularly in the age of so called “cancel culture”. I made an apology and agreed to take a temporary step back.
Rather predictably another viral mob came after me, this time for the sin of apologising. Then followed libellous articles calling me “right-wing” and such. Though there’s nothing wrong with being conservative, when forced to politically label myself I flutter between “centrist”, “liberal” or the more honest “bit this, bit that”. Being labeled erroneously just goes to show how binary political discourse has become. I had criticised the “Left”, so I must be the “Right”, or so their logic goes.
Why did I apologise?
“Rub your eyes and purify your heart — and prize above all else in the world those who love you and who wish you well.” — Aleksander Solzhenitsyn once wrote. In the mania of the moment I was desperate to protect my bandmates. The hornets’ nest that I had unwittingly hit had unleashed a black-hearted swarm on them and their families. I didn’t want them to suffer for my actions, they were my priority.
Secondly, I was sincerely open to the fact that maybe I did not know something about the author or his work. “Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak,” Churchill once said, “courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen”. And so I listened.
I have spent much time reflecting, reading and listening. The truth is that my commenting on a book that documents the extreme Far-Left and their activities is in no way an endorsement of the equally repugnant Far-Right. The truth is that reporting on extremism at the great risk of endangering oneself is unquestionably brave. I also feel that my previous apology in a small way participates in the lie that such extremism does not exist, or worse, is a force for good.
That speaks for itself, but my eye lingered on one line in particular:
my previous apology in a small way participates in the lie that such extremism does not exist, or worse, is a force for good.
It is proverbial that it takes courage to apologise. Sometimes it takes courage to un-apologise.
Too bad he has little understanding of “fascism.”
He has a better understanding now.
Fascism isn’t Far Right. It’s inventor was an avowed Socialist, and Fascism evolved from Socialism. The Holocaust was not due to Fascism which had no opinion on racial purity, it was due to National Socialism the creator of which, Adolf Hitler, was another avowed Socialist. National Socialism was a melange of Socialism, with some aspects of Fascism (private rather than State ownership of the means of production but still directed by the State in the interests of the State) and eugenics from the Progressive Movement.
Socialism, Fascism, National Socialism, as F A Hayek wrote, share common roots: empowerment of the State over the individual; central economic planning and control. That is the ideology of the Left… de facto ‘Far Right’ is the polar opposite, economic freedom, sovereignty of the individual. The truth is there is no Right, either ‘Far’ or ‘Near’, just some variant of Leftism… State control of society and economy.
If people knew this, this ridiculous and incorrect Far Right/Far Left dichotomy would not distort politics and hide truly what is happening to us. It’s like the mutual religious persecution of Catholics v Protestants as if they were not both ‘Christian’ and in essence one was no different or better than the other, just squabbling over rituals.
Unfortunately it is not understood which is why we are where we are. Screwed.
This should be obvious to everybody here… but watch out, because it is EXACTLY for these reasons that Mussolini called fascism a movement of the “right”. He stopped calling himself a socialist because ‘socialism’ (i.e. Marxism) is DIVISIVE: it divides the nation into classes. At the extreme “left”, Mussolini put individualism and classical liberalism — what you would call the “right”.
I mentioned this last week, in another comment, but unfortunately there are always people who think that “the left” means the same thing in all countries at all times — that, in fact, it is a single movement. (Paul Marks claimed that the term is even applicable to ancient Athens, over 2 millennia before it came into use!)
As for the “far-right” (a term that only came into use after WW2, afaik), its meaning has also changed: it used to be synonymous with fascism/nazism, now it means everybody seriously opposed to the Establishment.
There have been about three occasions I’ve completely refused to apologize. Fortunately, they were before the internet. Once it was to my boss. I can’t say I was any worse off after the refusal than I was before. But again — that was before the internet and its flash crowds of rage. Since then, I’ve tried pretty hard to be innocuous.
That, of course, can lead to its own problems, one of which I had earlier this week. The innocuous I used was not innocuous in somebody else’s world. So I said, “Hell, no!” and explained the difference. Everything’s fine now. Such outcomes are not assured, but I’m retired,almost eighty, and somewhat of a recluse. What can they do to me?
(Don’t tell me, please.)
To most readers of this comment, it will seem astonishing that anyone could read Andy Ngo’s book and not expect tweeting praise of it to summon a twitter mob as brutal as the real-life mobs Andy encountered – but it is worth being aware that there are still plenty of such people out there in the world.
(Why businesses act woke and what to do about it takes it for granted that corporations contain many people as surprisingly ignorant of what social media truly is as the banjo player.)
We of course understand that it can’t be and it wasn’t. It could be and was interpreted as dangerous to far-left fanatics that anyone not be made aware they’ll make it dangerous if they can, and unpleasant if they can do no better, to criticise the far-left.
It may well be that the banjo player, by now, fully understands this too, but knows how effective it is to interweave his criticism of the far-left with his family-history-based rejection of the far-right (what his critics would call far-right, and he himself IIUC – for all we’d mutter “national socialism – short form ‘nat si’, quirky German-pronounced spelling ‘nazi’, not fascism”, before then pointing out that ended-as-a-fascist Mussolini was called ‘the Duce of the Italian socialists’ and was editor of that party’s paper for many many years before he evolved his socialism to the point where it became fascism).
I don’t know if there is more joy in heaven – or on Samizdata – when someone who knelt to the woke mob stands up tall again than for 99 people who never knelt. But I agree with Natalie that it takes courage to un-apologise to them.
Yes indeed both Fascism and National Socialism (note that Marxists resist using the term “National Socialist” as they do not want the evil of socialism to be obvious) were Collectivist, Radical, Revolutionary movements.
It is true that Mr Hitler, unlike Mr Mussolini, was never a Marxist – but his devotion to socialism was real, and the thinkers he followed, such as the composer Richard Wagner and the early 19th century German philosopher Fichte, were deeply collectivist – for example Wagner opposed the very existence of money (although that did not stop him accepting it).
As Erik Von Kuehnelt-Leddihn showed – the National Socialists were not just a radical movement in economics, they were a radical, revolutionary, movement in ethical and cultural matters – certainly NOT the “conservatives” they are falsely presented as by the education system and the “mainstream” media.
As the above being said..
Winston Marshall is still a brave man.
All those who have been “cancelled” (including myself) know the unpleasantness of it – including the cowardly betrayal by so called “conservative” organisations, who rush to do the bidding of the left, the stab in the BACK is the most painful stab of all. And Mr Marshall has behaved well – seeking to shield his fellow band members without betraying Andy Ngo – although, of course, in the end one must CHOOSE. And Mr Marshall has chosen correctly.
This is “Pride” month – but the left has made it very clear they do not care about violent attacks on Mr Andy Ngo, a Gay man – including attacks that were clearly intended to KILL him
The left also scream “Stop Asian Hate” (by which the left mean, stop hatred of Asian people – the left’s grasp of grammar is even weaker than mine).
Yet the left support the violent attacks on Andy Ngo – a man of Asian ancestry. The left support not only the efforts to murder Andy Ngo by the Marxists of “Antifa”, they also support the violent attacks on Asian people by Marxist “Black Lives Matter” supporters.
Marxism has murdered tens of millions of human beings – but the left support it anyway.
The idea that Marxist Antifa and Marxist BLM are some sort of moral high ground, moral guardians of Twitter and the world general, would be funny – if it were not so evil.
It was a mistake to have apologised in the first place. First because apologies no matter how grovelling and self abasing don’t work on these people. Second because the offence for which he was being criticised only existed in the heads of his accusers and had no basis in reality. So he was apologising for something that he wasn’t guilty of. I can understand him wanting to diffuse the situation but really should have realised that it wouldn’t work.
Yes, it was a mistake to apologise.
But in life the question that requires action is “What should I do now?” Knowing that he had made both a tactical and, more importantly, a moral mistake in apologising, Mr Marshall stepped back into the firing line.
I respect him for that.
We ought not be looking at this guy as if he had any merit. He remains a truly progressive woke-schlub.
Had he argued that we shouldn’t be cancelling people for their beliefs, I’d have some admiration for him.
Instead, his point is that he’s not one of those icky horrid rightists who deserve cancellation.
I take joy from his difficulties.
What i find most hilarious are the British “lefties” who seem to think that Hitler chose the word ‘socialist’ to look good.
Those people ignore 2 things:
* the Germans are not the sort of people to be deceived by labels;
* unlike in Britain, in much (most?) of the Continent the word ‘socialist’ has no positive moral associations — indeed Popper, in a footnote in The Open Society, claimed that, in his experience, “leftists believe in their own immorality”.
Actually, there seems to be some ground for debate on the relationship between Marx and Hitler. There is Marx’s antisemitism, to start with. There is Marx’s call for extermination of central and eastern Europeans. (Not sure if that includes Russians.)
Then there is the last footnote in chapter ii of The Road to Serfdom, mentioning that Hitler, in a public speech in February 1941, claimed that “basically National Socialism and Marxism are the same”. (Although at the time Hitler and Stalin were still allies.)
George Watson discussed this issue at greater length in The Lost Literature of Socialism.
Bobby:
I must admit that i did not get the same impression by reading the extensive quote in the OP. He never mentions the “Left” or the “Right” without scare quotes; he consistently writes ‘Far-Left’ and ‘Far-Right’ without scare quotes.
And then he writes:
He seems politically naive, but in the course of his fight, he’ll come around to a better way of looking at things (i.e. more like our way…).
Snorri – it is true that many National Socialists had been Marxists, and there is intellectual kinship between Marxism and National Socialism. But I do not think that Mr Hitler himself had ever been a Marxist.
As a young man he was attracted to the ideas both of the Pan Germans and to the statist (essentially Big Government “Machine”) politics of the Mayor of Vienna. The fact that Franz Joseph (the Emperor) detested the Mayor of Vienna made the Jew hating Mayor even more attractive (as Adolf Hitler’s father had been a supporter of the Hapsburg Emperor – and Hitler hated his father).
But you may be correct.
I must confess that I do not know if Hitler ever read the works of Karl Marx – he may have done, and I may once have known. But, if I once knew, I have forgotten.
Paul: thank you for your reply.
Just want to make it clear that i have no definite opinion on this issue. I just think that it is not settled.
As if anything is ever settled… but some issues are “provisionally settled” (until new evidence becomes available), and it seems to me that this is not one of them.