Winston Marshall, the banjo player in the world-famous folk/rock band, Mumford & Sons, has announced that he is leaving the band over a social media storm prompted by his tweet congratulating the author of a book that is critical of the far-left.
Marshall announced his resignation on his website on Thursday.
Marshall said he took this step because of the effect of tens of thousands of angry retweets and comments on his tweet on a book about Antifa. Marshall tweeted journalist Andy Ngô, congratulating him on his book Unmasked. Marshall’s post on a book that is critical of the far-left was interpreted as approving of the far-right.
The band asked him to stay on. But Marshall was then attacked by ‘another viral mob’ for apologising. Marshall became the subject of libellous articles calling him ‘right wing’. Marshall describes himself as being ‘“centrist”, “liberal” or the more honest “bit this, bit that”’.
Marshall apologised to protect his band mates. He felt Ngô had been extremely courageous in criticising the left, and that his apology participated in the lie that such extremism does not exist or is a force for good.
The controversy was inevitably bringing his band mates more trouble. Rather than stay in the band, and self-censor, he said he wished to speak his mind without the band suffering the consequences.
With regard to the accusation of being right wing, Marshall wrote: ‘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.’