Winston Marshall -Mesrenae Elyoum
Winston Marshall has said he quit Mumford and Sons to spare his bandmates from abuse after he endorsed a book by conservative journalist Andy Ngo.
The musician said his bandmates were “dragged under the bus” by an “internet mob” who disagreed together with his views. “They went for my friends,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today program. “And that’s not fair on them because it’s got nothing to try to do with them.”
The guitarist and banjo player revealed his decision to depart last week.
The saga began in March when Marshall, from London, congratulated Ngo on the publication of his book – which argues that far-left activists have “radical plans to destroy democracy”.
While the LA Times called the book “wildly dishonest”, Marshall tweeted that Ngo was a “brave man” who had written an “important book”.
The online backlash amounted to “tens of thousands” of tweets, he said on Tuesday in his first interview since quitting the Brit and Grammy Award-winning folk-rock group.
“There was just plenty of very horrible negativity… and lots of nonsense and lies,” he said, noting that his bandmates had also been targeted. “In the general public eye we were a unity [sic] and that is what I suppose these internet mobs do – they are going for all those people around you.
“It became quite a big story, particularly in America – and it felt like very distracting, unwanted attention and possibly damaging for the brand of the band.
” After the initial criticism, Marshall announced he would take time aloof from the group, and apologized for the “pain caused by the book I endorsed”.
However, the musician, whose father Sir Paul Marshall could be a hedge fund investor and a backer of the GB News TV channel, now says he regrets that call.
“The apology I put out, I felt, participated a bit within the lie that such extremism doesn’t exist,” he said.
“And that was really bothering my conscience.
“So I felt my integrity being gnawed at and also the only way I could square those two things is by this decision I made,” Marshall announced his departure from Mumford and Sons last week, posting a lengthy statement within which he expressed anguish at being portrayed as a supporter of the far-right.
“I did not foresee that my commenting on a book critical of the far-left can be interpreted as approval of the equally abhorrent far-right,” he wrote.
“Nothing can be farther from the reality.”
He added that 13 members of his family had been murdered in concentration camps during the Holocaust in warfare Two.
Mumford and Sons formed in London in 2007 and rose to fame with hits like Little Lion Man and that i Will Wait.
They headlined the Glastonbury Festival in 2013 and released their most up-to-date album, Delta, in 2018.
Asked whether his continued presence within the band could have damaged their career, Marshall said his bandmates had “stood by me and invited me to continue”.
He added: “They’ve been perfectly honorable throughout and I am very grateful for that. “I still, sort of, obviously regret that this example even befell and, with hindsight, it had been a foolish tweet to own made.
But it’s a form of happened and I am dead with it, I think.” The 33-year-old added that he hoped to be more outspoken about the problems near him within the future. “Whenever topics so inspire me, I hope I can talk about them – whatever those topics are also,” he said. “And I would like to be ready to speak without those around me, those I really like, getting into trouble for that. “Whatever those topics maybe – if it’s urban center if it is the Uighurs, who knows what’s next – I hope to talk freely and that is a giant part of the choice I made.”