Choosing Truth Over Stardom: Winston Marshall

2021, I tweet about a book by an American journalist called Andy Noe covering the BLM riots and the Antifa BLM. It just completely blew up and it blew up my life. All these sort of Antifa trolls were dogpiling me and my bandmates, so I issued an apology. In this episode, I sit down with Winston Marshall, the former lead guitarist and banjo player of Mumford & Sons. The duty of the artist is to tell the truth. So with this groveling apology that I issued, I participated in a lie. Now he's the host of The Winston Marshall Show and co-founder of the Dissident Dialogues Festival of Ideas. So after all that incident that happened three years ago, I feel now it's a duty to speak the truth as I see it. This is American Thought Leaders, and I'm Jan Jekielek. Winston Marshall, such a pleasure to have you on American Thought Leaders. Thanks for having me. We made it happen. Well, yeah, we've been talking about this for quite some time. Our paths have gone like this, and now I'm in a hot seat. And you're here in New York. I'm here in this beautiful skyline on this lovely evening. It's fantastic to have you. It was amazing to be at Dissident Dialogues and see you on stage sort of in the thick of what seems to be your thing right now. And just thinking back to three years ago about this time, your life kind of profoundly changed. So for the very few that might not be aware of what happened, I just want to kind of go back there a little bit. I mean, you were a rock star. You had four albums with Mumford & Sons. You were also a banjo player, which is rare among rock stars, as I understand. If you want to be a rock star, don't pick up the banjo. And really wonderful music. Grammys and basically top of the game, 20,000 people in stadiums. I mean, first of all, what's it like to have that going on? It's three years on from it, you appreciate it even more so. We were talking before the cameras were rolling about miracles, and you were referring to your wife. But I think I see that as well with what happened with the band. It's a bit of a miracle. I thought we were good, and I loved it. I was very proud of the music we made, and we worked very hard. But it's one thing to be good, and it's another thing to have success like we were so lucky and blessed to have. And I really think the stars aligned. Maybe the world wanted that kind of music at that time. I was just reflecting because I saw a poster from our first US tour, which was September 2008, which is exactly when the Wall Street Bailout was. And I was thinking, isn't that interesting that we came to America just at that period, and then our success was at the same time as the beginning of what I call the populist age. But I think there was a whole cultural movement against things that were synthetic. It wasn't just us. There were bands like Avett Brothers, Lumineers, Old Crow Medicine Show, just a kind of folk revival, and other English ones as well. And anyway, so we were a good band, if I can say so myself. But then I think the stars were aligned, and America had an appetite for folksy music, and going back to that. So there was a period there where we had a really good run. So then you mentioned Distant Dialogues, which also should be explained, because your viewers won't know what that is. But it was a festival of ideas that we held in Brooklyn. And the continuation there is that I was one of the bands. We were hosting festivals. We put festivals on across America. We'd go into towns, work with the towns, bringing local food, local booze, local artists, and we'd do these things. And so I thought, having been in the idea space, oh, there's a desire for community here. There's a desire for people. People want somewhere to commune and to come together, a bit like how you might love a band, go to see the band, even though you don't have any friends who like them. And then at the concert, you go, oh, loads of people like this band. I think that that's kind of what we wanted to create with this festival of ideas. So there's a kind of a continuation there. Also, you and I have been to loads of these conferences, and some of them are quite... without purporting any of them, because it's a very hard thing to pull off. Some of them are stuffy buildings. We wanted to do some kind of a fun rock and roll version of that. So that's kind of what this is about. Anyway, for your viewers, I've just painted a very bizarre picture of a model of things there. But that's kind of a sketch of where I went from there to there. Well, I know, and I absolutely do want to talk about that evolution. But let's just talk briefly about what actually happened, because you were, I mean, top of the game, right? Yeah, so three years ago, as you say, it was a pandemic. So peak hysteria. Also music industry, BLM, hysteria. And you'll remember Black Tuesday, which was Black Square Tuesday, which is, I think, June 2020. Anyway, whilst that was going on, I was tweeting about books I was reading through the pandemic. 2021, I tweet about a book by an American journalist called Andy Noak, covering the BLM riots and the Antifa BLM, including the 19 deaths in the first 14 days, the siege, insurrection, technically, of the Portland Federal Courthouse for the entire month of June 2020. This book categorised, or documented, rather, all of these activities. And somehow, even though I had 3,000 followers on Twitter, by something like 24 hours later, it went up all the trending charts, I think in America as well as in my country. By the end of the weekend, it was a segment on Tucker and The View. It just completely blew up, and it blew up my life. Long story short, I issued an apology. All these sort of Antifa trolls were dogpiling me and my bandmates. And I appreciated that I didn't know everything that was going on. So I thought, OK, well, maybe there's more I don't know here. Maybe I don't know this whole story. So I issued an apology, under considerable duress, I would say, but I still did it somewhat willingly. And then spent a few months researching, looking into it, and came to the conclusion not only that I wasn't wrong to tweet the book, that it was bad, the stuff that Antifa had done. It was bad. The riots of the BLM, whatever the cause and motives behind them. And I also came to the conclusion that it was bad that I had apologised because in apologising, I participated in a lie. And so I came to the conclusion that all that could be done was that I, well, I certainly had to retract the apology, but it was also made perfectly clear to me from the band that having those opinions, it wasn't fair on them for me to have my opinions because it would have professional repercussions for them. So it felt like the only way forward was to leave. And any regrets at this point? What you said, you were looking back at those years and how amazing they were moments ago. Yeah, I don't really have time. Regrets aren't helpful, particularly. I look forward, I think, how can I build? How can I grow? My big lesson for all of this is tell the truth and play the chips as they lie. That's the only way through life, you know? You don't know what's ahead. Like the story of Job. The Lord giveth, the Lord taketh away. Blessed be the name of the Lord. You don't know what's going to happen, but all you can keep hanging on to is your soul, your dignity, and the truth. And it's your character that leads you in all those things. We share being inspired by Doug's other sorts of pieces, and especially the Live Not By Lies essay, which I know you referenced. And you've just, you know, a little bit of leakly referenced it again. How important is that? In that period between my apology and my retraction, there's an essay someone sent me at some point, Live Not By Lies, which he published, I think, in 1974, as he was getting exiled from Moscow. It's about five pages long, and I must have read it, certainly at least five, maybe four or five times in that period. I keep coming back to it because there's a paragraph that says, I can't remember the exact quote, but it's something like, how dare you call yourself an artist if you're not prepared to live by the truth? Tell the truth. He's obviously talking about life in the Soviet Union. But why that resonated so much with me is that the role of, the duty of the artist is to tell the truth. So with this apology, this grovelling apology that I issued, that was also not me, or not real. It seemed to me that would detract from all work I would do going forward. So whether, if it was lyrics or songs, it kind of meant that anything I would do in the future couldn't be genuine because of that article, because it would show an inconsistency in pursuit of truth. So in that sense, yeah, Sultanate was a huge, huge impact on me. I started a podcast of that, and my first guest was Alexander Saint-Ignat, who's a phenomenal artist here in New York. And that's another funny sequence of events that you don't appreciate. And he's become a wonderful friend. The line between good and evil cuts through every human heart is a very important principle that I think we forget about when I see what's happening in the world today. One more thing about the music side. Is there some moment that you remember in particular from that time that you cherish or you remember that sticks out in your mind? Oh, I mean, there's 14 years. There's a lot of moments. I mean, you got to play with Bob Dylan. That sounds almost cosmic somehow. Yeah, that was crazy. At the Grammys, we didn't. Yeah, we couldn't quite believe it. Sometimes you meet these people. When I was a boy, these were all posters on my bedroom wall. And then you meet them. They're real. And we were lucky. But you know, I was just thinking about the loveliest of a lot. Some nice people. But really, the loveliest was Robert Plant of Led Zeppelin, because he was so disarming. He immediately started talking about football. So this is lovely. And of all of these people, it's very daunting meeting him. But he would just immediately go, Oh, did you see what happened in Paramount? Boy, he was very sweet. So, you know, then you've had a podcast in The Spectator. And I want to chart that a little bit, too, because it's not necessarily obvious that a, you know, rock star banjo player, if I can say Grammy awarding, is going to become, you know, a meaningful podcaster with we've overlapped quite a number of guests between our shows. But, you know, you have some very big minds on there. Right. And I'm curious if you if you if you would dare to say, you know, which one has been the most impactful or quite impactful, at least for you? Well, actually, at the beginning of this year, I was in Israel and interviewed Douglas Murray. And it was I think that must have been with no disrespect for my other guests. That must have been the highlight. It was so moving. He's so compelling. And it was quite emotional. There's something obviously his ability with words, but it's also his ability to really get to the essence of something when you get to the heart and crux of the most difficult issues, whether it's Israel-Palestine or the various issues we've had in Britain and in America. He's just put out an amazing documentary about the fentanyl crisis here. He's a fearless journalist and such a wit. That's why he's so funny. He's a profound dude who has ability to engage with all aspects of human nature. Well, and the strange death of Europe and the war on the West, strange death of Europe was kind of prophetic. He's unapologetic in truth telling and what he understands to be the truth. And I find that also very inspiring. We need Douglas to run. I think Douglas could save our country. We need him to come and talk about Britain here. I want him to be our prime minister. It would be fantastic. He's the guy. This is another thing. In Westminster, no one speaks the truth. No one says what they're thinking. They're so hamstrung by political correctness. We all see the same thing here. That's a big problem, political correctness. It's literally killing people. Do you find that you get curious that it's this, people would call it American Marxism or critical social justice, woke-ism. This is kind of an American product from Herbert Marcuse at the Frankfurt School and somehow it made its way to the UK. And at least in terms of speech, it's become massively influential in the political class and the elite class. Yeah, I totally agree. And when we look at it here in New York, you can see what's going on in Gaza Plaza at Columbia. It seems to me that it's a lot of the same crowd as the BLM riots in 2020, the Summer of Love. All these over-educated children have been spared from reality for so long. They live in another plane. I can't quite work it. But as you mentioned, Solzhenitsyn earlier, there's good in them. So how do we engage with that? How do we bring it out? Let me ask this. They believe they're fighting the far-right. What do you make of this far-right moniker? I remember when you wrote your Medium essay, I believe, if I recall correctly, you said, the far-left isn't good, but the far-right is equally reprehensible. Yeah, absolutely. And that far-right is thrown around these days kind of like popcorn. Oh, I agree. I have no problems condemning the far-right. I do think that the term far-right, just like racist, or bigot, or fascist, or it's the same way that Hillary used the word deplorable. These words are used to shut people down because they sting. I always called it for reading a book. J.K. Rowling is somehow far-right and bigoted because of her pro-women positions. It's just utterly senseless. But it has a way of censoring the general population and keeping them out, making them want to avoid even getting involved, which helps the ideologues keep winning the debate, I guess. In the UK right now, this political correctness, at least around speech, is really metastasizing. There's police, as I understand it, arresting people for things which are kind of shocking here. The First Amendment is under assault here. It's very clear. But it feels like a whole different level in Britain. Why do you think that is? Well, we have a bunch of things going on at the same time. We have something called a non-crime hate incident. You'll notice the hate crime is a word coming in. It's into the parlance. I'm not sure I can quite see the point in having the difference between a crime and a hate crime. Crime's a crime. I don't think it adds much to the conversation, knowing whether it's a hate crime or not. But in Britain, we have a non-crime hate incident, which is you can be reported to the police for having committed some instance of hate. You won't be tried on it. It's in the eyes of whoever's reporting you, but they deem it hateful. You can't get rid of it off your record. You can't contest it. You don't even know it's there. But future employees can see whether it's there. So it's totally Orwellian. And then you refer to incidences of insane free speech issues. I'll give you an example. There's a girl in Liverpool, I think she's a teenager, 19 or something, and she put some Snoop Dogg lyrics on her Instagram on an Instagram meal. It might have included the N word or something. Anyway, she was charged and then made to wear a collar around her ankle. I think it was in Leeds where West Yorkshire police arrested a young girl who had autism. This young girl had pointed at a police officer and said, look, it's a lesbian-like auntie so-and-so, because the autistic girl thought that the police officer looked like her lesbian aunt. They ended up arrested. There's a horrific video about it. And at the same time, then we see the horrific stuff going on in London with very vile anti-Semitic, anti-Israel stuff and just being completely left alone. In fact, it's worse than that. You'll see in the pro-Palestine, anti-Israel marches in London, not only are the pro-Palestine left alone, and I would say to some extent they should be, except when they incite violence or support prescribed terrorist groups. But at the same time, there's an Iranian guy, his name I've forgotten, but he goes and he holds up a poster that says Hamas is terrorist. And on two occasions, he's been arrested. So there's a ridiculous double standard here. Like, and there's even more, it seems, that there's been examples of Jews wearing yarmulkes or magandavids. And the police videos of this have been police asking them to either leave or they'll be arrested or have the magandavid taken down because they would worry that their presence would incite some sort of trouble. And so, yeah, it's a terrible time to be Jewish. That's another conversation. It's a terrible time to be Jewish in Britain at the moment. When all this happened three years ago, you didn't expect to effectively become a commenter. Not only have you been having guests on the show, you've also become a commentator on your own. You've had a column and a spectator. I mean, and now this is one issue where you're commenting. I go back to this question literally. It doesn't seem obvious that someone coming from, you know... Well, I'll tell you something that I have observed which is very sad, which is that, so after all that incident that happened three years ago, I feel now it's a duty to speak the truth as I see it. Why make the sacrifice and then not to speak the truth? I've been outspoken on Israel issues for a while. Published in the Jewish Chronicle. I've been outspoken throughout this latest Israel Hamas war. I get private messages from Jewish people that I used to work with in the music industry and those I didn't work with. Some of them in powerful positions, others not. But they can't speak in the music industry. And they thank me for writing and speaking, knowing that I can. And that's kind of terrifying is that there's a lot of self-censorship going on. And I think that's because the young crop of artists, let's say the 15 to 25 year olds, are all part of that, have that same anti-Israel ideology, anti-Zionist ideology. And so Jews in the industry are very careful not to speak because they don't want to set those people off. And I know you've interviewed so many people from different industries and you'll notice that the academy is particularly bad. Now, it seems to me the academy is worse than the music industry. Some of the stories I've heard. Music industries are not far behind the creative industries. And I would even say maybe theater is ahead of the academy. Just you cannot speak, you cannot. So in this theater, there's one Jewish actress, I interviewed called Tracy Ann Oberman, said that Jews felt scared wearing a mag and diverted into work. This is even before the war because they would get questioned about Israel just for wearing that and challenged on it. So there's a weird... I mean, you know, the anti-Semitism stuff was completely obvious to me when I was living in New York back in 2016, 17, 18. People talk about white privilege every bloody minute of the day. And it was obvious to me that that ideology ended up in anti-Semitism. It's the same ideology. It's the same stuff that was being said in 1930s Germany. Yeah, I don't... What do you mean exactly? The same ideology as 1930s Germany. How does that work? It's an assumption that because some part of one group, identity group of people are overachieving in a sector or various sectors that the whole group are then not only achieving but also oppressing the others, even when most of the group are on the breadline. That's the same as white privilege concept, which is that, oh, look at all these white males in these top positions. Okay, well, then look at... You're ignoring the tens of millions of like poor whites. And then the other aspect is if you play that game out about privilege, okay, which of the whites is achieving most? Which of the whites is oppressing? And you end up getting some Jews because the Jews are a high-achieving group. So it was obvious that stuff. And I think a lot of progressive Jews now see that. Bill Aikman's a famous example. Speaking out against DEI because after October 7th, and more specifically the reaction to October 7th, Holocaust denial in real time. That's when it seemed that people saw that the white privilege ideology is actually pretty anti-Semitic. As we finish up, you mentioned it's so hard for so many people to speak up in so many industries. You know, it's like this massive cultural phenomenon, right? This extreme political correctness, perhaps. Let's call it that. It took October 7th to catalyze a whole bunch of people. Why does it take something like that, something so extreme to catalyze people to speak up on things that they already know? As you did, obviously, as you were at some level when you went through your situation three years ago. And what would it take to shift that, I guess? On what topic? There's so many, but just rational approaches to the world as opposed to very extreme left-wing perspectives on how the world should work, which seem to be the view that you need to uphold, or the one that's allowed to be spoken about. Not to shit on rationality, but seeing as it's actually rationality is something that Dawkins spoke a lot about at our festival on the weekend. We're not rational beings. Humans aren't rational beings. And I think we're spiritual beings, and we're irrational beings. And so actually being rational is the rare state of being, I guess. And I would not say that I'm rational most of the time. I try to be. I try to contain my emotions and passions and think about things carefully. But it seems every year we have a new thing that we're all being irrational about. With 2020, it was the pandemic and BLM. Same thing happened in 2016 with Brexit and Trump. And it happened, and then October 7th was just another one of those things that it's like, oh shit, like people are mental. What would you say to people who are in that state of not being afraid to say something that they would like to, that there's such a cost, or seems to be such a cost? Yeah, someone asked me that last night. I would say you don't need to recklessly say the truth, but you should not. But you see, my story is that I was essentially forced to lie, and that's the, if I hadn't been, I think I would still be in the band because I wouldn't have had to retract anything. But I think it's important not to lie. It's not to partake in the lie, to paraphrase Solzhenitsyn. When you find yourself nodding along to things that you know not to be true, you might want to have a think, take the opportunity to have a look. Because I know a few people in that situation. Or if you're forced to wear rainbow shoelaces or post something on social media that you don't feel like you support, maybe stop and think. That's when it, you don't want to participate in that. That's where it gets, that's where your soul and your integrity is at stake. Which, as we said earlier, is all we've got in this world. Well, Winston Marshall, it's such a pleasure to have had you on. Thank you for having me. Thank you all for joining Winston Marshall and me on this episode of American Thought Leaders. I'm your host, Jan Jekielek.