In 2021, Winston Marshall sent a tweet congratulating Andy Ngo for his book, “Unmasked: Inside Antifa’s Radical Plan to Destroy Democracy.” He soon found himself and his band, Mumford & Sons, at the center of a firestorm. Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times. Watch the video:
Three years later, he’s the host of The Winston Marshall Show and co-founder of the “Dissident Dialogues” festival of ideas, which held its first gathering recently in Brooklyn in New York City.
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Jan Jekielek: Winston Marshall, such a pleasure to have you on American Thought Leaders.
Winston Marshall: Jan, thanks for having me. We've been talking about this for quite some time, and we finally made it happen.
Mr. Jekielek: Now, you're here in New York.
Mr. Marshall: I'm here with this beautiful skyline, on this lovely evening.
Mr. Jekielek: It's fantastic to have you. It was amazing to attend Dissident Dialogues and see you on stage right in the thick of it. Just three years ago about this time, your life changed profoundly. Let’s go back there for a bit. You were a rock star and had four albums with Mumford & Sons. You were also a banjo player, which is rare among rock stars, as I understand it.
Mr. Marshall: If you want to be a rock star, don't pick up the banjo.
Mr. Jekielek: It was really wonderful music. You were basically at the top of your game, with Grammy awards and 20,000 people in stadiums. First of all, what's it like to have all that going on?
Mr. Marshall:With three years away from it, I can appreciate it even more. What happened with the band was a bit of a miracle. I thought we were good. 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. We were so lucky and blessed and the stars just aligned. Maybe the world wanted that kind of music at the time.
I was just reflecting on this because I saw a poster from our first U.S. tour. It was in September 2008, exactly the time of the Wall Street bailout. I was thinking, “Isn't that interesting that we came to America just at that time, and our success was in the same period as the beginning of the populist age.” There was a whole cultural movement against things that were synthetic, it wasn't just us with our music.
There were bands like the Avett Brothers, the Lumineers, and the Old Crow Medicine Show, and other English ones as well. It was a kind of folk revival.Anyway, we were a good band, if I do say so myself. The stars were aligned, and America had an appetite for folksy music and returning to that. There was a period there where we had a really good run.
You mentioned Dissident Dialogues, which also should be explained, because your viewers won't know what that is. It was a festival of ideas that we held in Brooklyn. The origin of that was from hosting festivals with the band. We were putting on festivals across America. We would work with the towns, bringing in local artists, local food, and local booze. We created this type of thing.
Being in that kind of space, I thought, “There's a desire for community here. People want to go somewhere to commune and come together.” It’s a bit like how you might love a band and go to see the band, even though you don't have any friends who like them. Then at the concert you realize, “Oh, loads of people like this band.”
That's what we wanted to create with this festival of ideas, so there's a continuation there. Also, you and I have been to loads of these conferences. Without dissing any of them, because it's a very hard thing to pull off, but some of them are just in stuffy buildings. We wanted to do a fun rock and roll version of that, so that's what this involves. Anyway, I've just painted a bunch of things for your viewers, but it's a sketch of how I got from there to here.
Mr. Jekielek: I absolutely do want to talk about that whole evolution, but let's talk briefly about what happened recently, when you were at the top of your game.
Mr. Marshall: Three years ago, it was the pandemic, so it was peak hysteria, and also music industry hysteria and BLM hysteria. You remember Black Square Tuesday which was in June 2020. While that was going on I was tweeting about the books I was reading through the pandemic. In 2021, I tweeted about a book by American journalist, Andy Ngo, which covers the BLM riots and the Antifa BLM, including the 19 deaths in the first 14 days, along with the siege of the Portland federal courthouse for the entire month of June 2020.
This book documented all of these activities. Somehow, even though I only had 3000 followers on Twitter, 24 hours later it went up all the trending charts 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 Antifa trolls were dogpiling me and my bandmates. I appreciated that I didn't know everything that was going on, so I thought, “Okay, maybe there's more here that I don't know about. 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.
I then spent a few months researching and looking into this. I came to the conclusion that not only was it not wrong to tweet the book, but the stuff that Antifa had done was bad, and the BLM riots were bad, whatever the motives were behind them. I also came to the conclusion that it was bad that I had apologized, because by apologizing I participated in a lie. I came to the conclusion that I certainly had to retract the apology. But the band also made it perfectly clear to me that having those opinions wasn't fair to them, because it would have professional repercussions for them. It felt like the only way forward was to leave the band, sadly.
Mr. Jekielek: Do you have any regrets at this point? Moments ago, you were looking back at those years and how amazing they were.
Mr. Marshall: Regrets aren't particularly helpful. I look forward to how I can build and how I can grow. My big lesson in all of this is to tell the truth and play the chips as they lie. That's the only way through life. You don't know what's ahead. It’s 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. All you can hang on to is your soul, your dignity, and the truth. It's your character that leads you in all those things.
Mr. Jekielek: We share being inspired by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, and especially the “Live Not by Lies” essay, which you have referenced. How important is that?
Mr. Marshall: In that period between my apology and my retraction, someone sent me the essay, “Live Not by Lies,” which he published in 1974 as he was being exiled from Moscow. It's about five pages long and I must have read that at least five times in that period. I kept coming back to it because there's a paragraph that says something like, “How dare you call yourself an artist if you're not prepared to live by the truth or tell the truth?” He was obviously talking about life in the Soviet Union.
That resonated with me so much because the role and the duty of the artist is to tell the truth. With this groveling apology that I issued that was not me and not real, it seemed to me that would detract from all work I would do going forward. Whether it was lyrics or songs, it meant that anything I did in the future wouldn't be genuine, because it would show an inconsistency in the pursuit of truth. Yes, in that sense, Solzhenitsyn had a huge impact on me. I then started a podcast and my first guest was Aleksandr’s son, Ignat, a phenomenal artist here in New York. That was another funny sequence of events and he's become a wonderful friend.
Mr. Jekielek: His quote, “The line between good and evil cuts through every human heart,” is a very important principle that we forget. I have one more question about the music side. Is there some moment that you remember from that time that you cherish?
Mr. Marshall: It was 14 years, so there are a lot of memories.
Mr. Jekielek: You got to play with Bob Dylan, and that sounds almost cosmic.
Mr. Marshall: Yes, that was at the Grammys and we couldn't quite believe it. As a boy, these people were just on posters on my bedroom wall, and then you meet them and they're real. We were lucky. One of the loveliest people was Robert Plant of Led Zeppelin. He was so disarming that he immediately started talking about football. It was very daunting meeting all these people. But he would just immediately say, “Ah, did you see what happened in the league?” I thought he was very sweet and a very nice man.
Mr. Jekielek: You've also had a podcast in the Spectator. It's not necessarily obvious that a Grammy award-winning banjo player is going to become a meaningful podcaster. We've actually overlapped quite a number of guests between our shows and you’ve had some great minds on there. Who has been the most impactful on you?
Mr. Marshall: At the beginning of this year I was in Israel and interviewed Douglas Murray. 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. He has an ability with words and gets to the essence of things. He really gets 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 has just put out an amazing documentary about the fentanyl crisis here. He's a fearless journalist. He’s such a wit, which is why he’s so funny. He's a profound man who has an ability to engage with all aspects of human nature. well.
Mr. Jekielek: His book, “The Strange Death of Europe, the War on the West,” is very prophetic. He is unapologetic about saying what he understands to be the truth. I also find that very inspiring.
Mr. Marshall: We need Douglas to run for office, because Douglas could save our country. Obviously we're talking about Britain here, but I want him to be our prime minister. It would be fantastic, because he's the guy. This is another thing about Westminster, no one speaks the truth, and no one says what they're thinking. They are so hamstrung by political correctness. I see the same thing here. Political correctness is a big problem. It's literally killing people.
Mr. Jekielek: Do you find that critical social justice and wokeism, an American product from Herbert Marcuse at the Frankfurt School, has become massively influential in the UK political class and elite class?
Mr. Marshall: Yes, I do. Here in New York, you can see it happening in Gaza Plaza at Columbia. It seems to me that it's still the same crowd as the BLM riots in 2020, the Summer of Love. It's all these over-educated children who have been spared from reality for so long that they live in another world. I can't quite work it out, and maybe I need to. But there is good in them, so how do we engage with that? How do we bring it out?
Mr. Jekielek: They believe they're fighting the far-Right. What do you make of this far-Right moniker? When you wrote your Medium essay about quitting, you said, “The far-Left isn't good, but the far-Right is equally reprehensible.”
Mr. Marshall: Yes, absolutely.
Mr. Jekielek: That far-Right term is thrown around freely these days.
Mr. Marshall: 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, is used in the same way that Hillary used the word deplorable. These words are used to shut people down because they sting. I was called out 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 into keeping them out and making them want to avoid getting involved, which helps the ideologues keep winning the debate.
Mr. Jekielek: In the U.K. right now, this political correctness, at least around speech, is really metastasizing. The police are arresting people for things which are kind of shocking.
Mr. Marshall: Yes.
Mr. Jekielek: It's very clear that the First Amendment is under assault here, but it has been taken to a whole different level in Britain. Why do you think this is happening?
Mr. Marshall: We have a bunch of things going on at the same time. We have something called a non-crime hate incident. You'll notice hate crime is a word coming into the parlance. I'm not sure I can see the difference between a crime and a hate crime. A crime is 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 means you can be reported to the police for having committed some instance of hate. You won't be tried for it. It's in the eyes of whoever's reporting you if they deem it to be 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 employers can see whether it's there.
You refer to incidents of insane free speech issues. I'll give you an example. There's a teenage girl in Liverpool that put some Snoop Dogg lyrics on an Instagram reel which might have included the N-word or something. Anyway, she was charged and then made to wear a collar on her ankle.
There's another instance in Leeds where the 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 arresting her. There's a horrific video about it.
At the same time, we see the horrific stuff going on in Londonwith very vile, anti-Semitic, anti-Israel protests and they’re just completely left alone. In fact, it's worse than that. You'll see in the pro-Palestine, anti-Israel marches in London, they are left alone. 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 who holds up a poster that says, “Hamas is Terrorist.” On two occasions, he has been arrested. There is a ridiculous double standard here, and there is even more. There have been examples of Jews wearing yarmulkes or Magen Davids. In the police video, the police are asking them to either leave or they'll be arrested, or take the Magen David down, for fear their presence would incite trouble. It's a terrible time to be Jewish, and that's another conversation. It is a terrible time to be Jewish in Britain at the moment.
Mr. Jekielek: When all this happened three years ago, you didn't expect to become a commentator on your own. You've had a column in the Spectator. Now, this is another issue you're commenting on.
Mr. Marshall: I'll tell you something that I have observed. After that incident that happened three years ago, I now feel it's my duty to speak the truth as I see it. Why make that sacrifice and then not speak the truth? I've been outspoken on Israel issues for a while. I've 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 also some that I didn't work with. Some of them are in powerful positions, others not. But they can't speak out in the music industry. They thank me for writing and speaking, knowing that I can do that.
It’s terrifying that there is a lot of self-censorship going on. That's because the young crop of artists, the 15 to 25-year-olds, are all part of that. They all have that same anti-Israel, anti-Zionist ideology. Jews in the industry are very careful not to speak, because they don't want to set those people off.
I know you've interviewed so many people from different industries, and you have noticed that the academy is particularly bad. Now, it seems to me the academy is worse than the music industry, with some of the stories I've heard. The music industry is not far behind the creative industries. I would even say maybe theater is ahead of the academy. You just cannot speak.
In the theater, there's one Jewish actress, Tracy Ann Oberman, that I interviewed. She said that Jews felt scared wearing a Magen David at work, and this is even before the war. They would get questioned just for wearing that and challenged on it. The anti-Semitism stuff was completely obvious to me when I was living in New York back in 2016 to 2018. People were talking about white privilege every bloody minute of the day. It was obvious to me that this ideology would end up in anti-Semitism. It's the same ideology that was being promoted in 1930s Germany.
Mr. Jekielek: What do you mean by the same ideology as 1930s Germany?
Mr. Marshall: It's an assumption that because some part of an identity group is overachieving in various sectors, then that whole group is not only overachieving, but also oppressing the others, even when most of the group is on the breadline. That's the same as white privilege concept, which says, “Look at all these white males in these top positions.” Okay, but you're ignoring the tens of millions of poor whites.
The other aspect is, if you play that game out about white privilege and ask, “Which of the whites is achieving most? Which of the whites is oppressing?” The answer will be Jewish people, because Jews are a high achieving group. This was obvious and a lot of progressive Jews now see this.
Bill Aikman is a famous example. He's speaking out against DEI. The reaction to October 7th was Holocaust denial in real time. That's when people saw that the white privilege ideology is actually pretty anti-Semitic at its core.
Mr. Jekielek: You mentioned it's so hard for people to speak up in so many different industries. This extreme political correctness is a massive cultural phenomenon. It took October 7th to catalyze a whole bunch of people. Does it take something that extreme to catalyze people to speak up on things that they already know, as you did when you went through your situation three years ago? What would it take to shift them?
Mr. Marshall: On what topic?
Mr. Jekielek: There are so many rational approaches to the world as opposed to very extreme Left-wing perspectives on how the world should work, which is the one you’re allowed to speak about.
Mr. Marshall: Rationality is something that Dawkins spoke a lot about at our festival. We're not rational beings. Humans aren't rational beings. I think we're spiritual beings and we're irrational beings. Being rational is the rare state of being, I guess. I would not say that I'm rational most of the time, but 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. In 2020, it was the pandemic and BLM. The same thing happened in 2016 with Brexit and Trump. Then it happened again on October 7th.
Mr. Jekielek: What would you say to people who are in that state of being afraid to say something because there's such a cost?
Mr. Marshall: Someone asked me that last night. I would say you don't need to recklessly tell the truth. My story is that I was essentially forced to lie. If I hadn't been, I think I would still be in the band because I wouldn't have had to retract anything.
But it's important not to lie and not partake in the lie. To paraphrase Solzhenitsyn, when you find yourself nodding along to things that you know are not true, you might want to take the opportunity to have a look.
I know a few people who are in that situation. If you're forced to wear rainbow shoelaces or post something on social media that you don't support, maybe stop and think. You don't want to participate in that. That's where your soul and your integrity is at stake, which is all we have in this world.
Mr. Jekielek: Winston Marshall, it's such a pleasure to have you on the show.
Mr. Marshall: Thank you for having me.
Mr. Jekielek: Thank you all for joining Winston Marshall and me on this episode of American Thought Leaders. I'm your host, Jan Jekielek.
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