Mumford & Sons’ Banjo Player Announced He’s Leaving The Band In A Truly Bizarre Essay
He wishes to "speak freely" about political extremism - and labelled the "extreme Far Left" as repugnant as the Far Right.
It is a legal requirement that any story about Mumford & Sons opens with this quote from the sadly departed Mark E. Smith, lead singer of post-punk legends the Fall.
“We were playing a festival in Dublin the other week,” Smith once said. “There was this other group, like, warming up in the next sort of chalet, and they were terrible. I said, ‘Shut them cunts up!’ And they were still warming up, so I threw a bottle at them. The bands said, ‘That’s the Sons of Mumford’ or something.”
Anyway, with that out of the way: in the early hours of this morning, Winston Marshall, the banjo player for ‘The Sons of Mumford’ posted a lengthy Medium article in which he explained his reasons for leaving the group.
“Why I’m Leaving Mumford & Sons” by Winston Marshallhttps://t.co/JUraN3IDr3
— Winston Marshall (@MrWinMarshall) June 24, 2021
“Who in their right mind would willingly walk away from [Mumford & Sons]?” Marshall asks. “It turns out I would. And as you might imagine it’s been no easy decision.”
In essence, Marshall’s reasons for leaving the group stem from his desire to speak freely about politics without his views being associated with the band.
170263/related_articles]Marshall’s views have been sources of controversy in the past — in March of this year, he Tweeted his support of Andy Ngo, a controversial conservative journalist who has come under fire for frequently ill-informed takes about Antifa and the new global left. Marshall received pushback for his support of Ngo: he describes experiencing “tens of thousands of angry retweets and comments.”
Though Marshall’s Medium article states that his views are mostly associated with the centrist movement, he doubles down on Ngo’s position that the “Far Left” are as dangerous as the Far-Right. In distancing himself from racism, Marshall claims that rejecting the “extreme Far-Left and their activities is in no way an endorsement of the equally repugnant Far-Right” so, ya know, “equally repugnant” is doing a lot of work in that sentence.
Oh, and perhaps amusingly of all, Marshall also took time out of the scribe to drop this legendary brace of sentences: “I’ve had plenty of abuse over the years. I’m a banjo player after all.”
This is not the first time that Mumford & Sons have come under fire for being associated with reactionary movements — in 2018, the band had their picture taken with Jordan Peterson.