Winston Marshall had congratulated a journalist for analysing the work of Antifa.
Mumford and Sons banjo player Winston Marshall has announced his departure from the band after comments in support of journalist Andy Ngo prompted a sustained online attack against the British musicians.
Marshall, who congratulated Ngo as a “brave man” for publishing his book “Unmasked: Inside Antifa’s Radical Plan to Destroy Democracy”, caused an “unintentional Twitter storm” that has engulfed all four members of the band since.
The 33 year-old had initially apologized for the comment, promising his critics he would re-assess his stance, but yesterday announced he was leaving the band to protect the other musicians and to speak freely “about what I’ve learnt”.
“So why leave the band?,” Marshall wrote on Medium.
“On the eve of his leaving to the West, Solzhenitsyn published an essay titled ‘Live Not By Lies’. I have read it many times now since the incident at the start of March. It still profoundly stirs me:
‘And he who is not sufficiently courageous to defend his soul — don’t let him be proud of his ‘progressive’ views, and don’t let him boast that he is an academician or a people’s artist, a distinguished figure or a general. Let him say to himself: I am a part of the herd and a coward. It’s all the same to me as long as I’m fed and kept warm.’
“For me to speak about what I’ve learnt to be such a controversial issue will inevitably bring my bandmates more trouble. My love, loyalty and accountability to them cannot permit that. I could remain and continue to self-censor but it will erode my sense of integrity. Gnaw my conscience. I’ve already felt that beginning.
“The only way forward for me is to leave the band. I hope in distancing myself from them I am able to speak my mind without them suffering the consequences.
“I leave with love in my heart and I wish those three boys nothing but the best. I have no doubt that their stars will shine long into the future.”
He wrote in the post that he was far from the “fascist” his detractors had painted him as.
“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,” he explained.
“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.”
Marshall’s father, Brexiteer and hedge-fund tycoon Sir Paul Marshall, said he was “very proud” of his son for how he had dealt with “cancel culture”.