Why Winston Marshall Left Mumford & Sons
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I'm Barry Weiss, and this is Honestly. Last week, I was sitting in my kitchen, and I read an essay on my phone that made me stand up and cheer. The essay is by Winston Marshall, who for the last decade and a half has been the lead guitarist and banjo player for the band Mumford & Sons. ♪ I'll find strength in pain and I will change my ways ♪ ♪ I'll know my name as it's cold again ♪

There have been plenty of resignation letters in the last year, including from yours truly. But this one felt different. And I want to read some of it for you right now. Marshall writes, at the beginning of March, I tweeted to American journalist Andy Ngo, author of the New York Times bestseller Unmasked. Congratulations at Mr. Andy Ngo finally had time to read your important book. You're a brave man. Posting about books had been a theme of my social media throughout the pandemic. And I believe this tweet to be as innocuous as the others. How wrong I turned out to be.

Over the course of 24 hours, it was trending, with tens of thousands of angry retweets and comments. I failed to foresee that my commenting on a book critical of the far left could somehow be interpreted as approval of the equally abhorrent far right. 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, and she and I were close. My family knows the evils of fascism painfully well, to say the least.

To call me a fascist was ludicrous beyond belief. I've had plenty of abuse over the years. I'm a banjo player after all. But this was another level. And owing to our association, my friends, my bandmates, they were getting it too. It took me more than a moment to understand how distressing this was for them. Despite being four individuals, we were, in the eyes of the public, a unity. Furthermore, it's our singer's name on the tin. And that name was being dragged through some pretty ugly accusations as a result of my tweet.

The distress brought to them and their families that weekend I regret very much, and I remain sincerely sorry. Unintentionally, I pulled them into a divisive and totemic issue. Emotions were high. Despite pressure to nix me, they invited me to continue with the band, and that took courage, particularly in the age of so-called cancel culture. I made an apology, and I agreed to take a temporary step back. Rather predictably, another viral mob came after me, this time for the sin of apologizing.

Then followed libelous articles calling me right-wing and such. Though there's nothing wrong with being conservative, when forced to politically label myself, I flutter between centrist, liberal, or the moronest, bit this, bit that. Being labeled erroneously just goes to show how binary political discourse has become. I had criticized the left, so I must be the right, or so their logic goes. Why did I apologize? Rub your eyes and purify your heart, and prize above all else in the world those who love you and who wish you well.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn once wrote that. And so I listened.

I have spent much time reflecting, reading, and listening. And the truth is that my commenting on a book that documents the extreme far left and their activities is in no way an endorsement of the equally repugnant far right. The truth is that reporting on extremism at the great risk of endangering oneself is unquestionably brave. I also feel that my previous apology in a small way participates in the lie that such extremism does not exist, or worse, that it's a force for good. So why leave the band?

On the eve of his leaving to the West, Solzhenitsyn penned an essay titled Live Not by Lies. I've read it many times now since the incident at the start of March, and 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 academic or a people's artist, a distinguished figure or a general. Let him say to himself, I am 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 learned 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 would erode my sense of integrity, gnaw my conscience. I've already felt that beginning.

And it goes on from there. There were a few things that made me really want to speak to the person that wrote that letter. The first is maybe the most obvious.

It seems really upside down to me that we live in a world where someone can praise a book, a book of reporting about an important political movement, and that they would feel compelled on behalf of their bandmates to walk away from a project that they loved. That to me is the baseline thing that is so strange and cannot be stated enough.

The second thing is that it's one thing to walk away from something that you've turned against or that has turned against you or wants to cast you out. It definitely felt that way when I left the New York Times. It's another thing to walk away from something that you don't want to leave and that you feel a part of still and that you so clearly love. And that love, I feel, runs through the length of this letter. And to walk away from something you love on behalf of deeper values is

That to me is incredibly courageous. The third reason is that over the past few months, I've talked to a lot of people that have resigned or have been forced to resign from glamorous public posts or impressive jobs. And in private, they say a lot of things. They say that it was unfair. They say that it was unjust. They say that they really regret doing it, that they regret apologizing, that they wish they could replay it.

And when I ask them if they want to speak about it publicly, they say, almost to a person, absolutely not. And I can't blame them because once you've lived through this kind of digital dog pile, once you've lived through a kind of public humiliation and shaming, the natural human thing that you want to do is disappear. It's not to want to take that risk again.

And so the fact that Winston Marshall, days after he published this, is willing to talk about it when he's still very clearly in the emotional experience of it, I think takes a lot of guts. You'll notice that this conversation is a little rougher than others that we've published. It sounds a little bit more raw.

And the reason for that is that I think it's important to document where he is now, because I imagine six months or a year from now, when I hope we'll pick up this conversation, he'll maybe see things from a slightly different perspective. But for now, I was really thrilled to talk to Winston Marshall. I was thrilled that he decided he wanted to talk to me. And without further ado, here he is.

I'm here today with Winston Marshall. Until a few days ago, he was the lead guitarist and the banjo player for the beloved band Mumford & Sons. If you haven't heard of Mumford & Sons, I don't know where you've been for the past decade, go look them up. But the Cliff Notes version is that they were this folk rock band that just totally made it. In 2012, they put out this album Babble. It became the

best-selling rock album of the past decade. They've won Album of the Year at the Grammys and every other award you can think of. They've performed on stage with Bob Dylan, which may be the most impressive part of their bio.

And yet, Wynne decided to walk away from that, a decision that he explained a few days ago in an extremely moving and compelling essay that I'm really, really excited to discuss with him today. Almost a year ago to the day, I left the New York Times, really publicly,

And probably the question that I've gotten the most over the past year is why in the hell would a person who clearly loved her job at the peak of her career decide to walk away from it willingly? And I'm really excited to put that question to another person who I feel like faced similar circumstances and it looks like, at least to me, made a similar choice. So, Wyn, welcome to Honestly. Thank you, Barry. A great pleasure.

One of the reasons I'm really excited to talk to you is I feel beyond just the fact that I was absolutely blown away, as I told you by your essay, it made me cry, is that I think what you've just experienced represents a kind of modern archetype.

in which a person sort of unknowingly stumbles over a tripwire that they didn't know was there. And then everything explodes without them realizing that things are going to explode. And it doesn't just harm the person, you in this case, that stumbled over the tripwire. It comes to affect everyone around them. And the person then faces a kind of choice.

How do you make this explosion go away? It feels like there's a demand for an apology, a demand that maybe is sincere or insincere. It's kind of hard to know. And it feels like, you know, you're damned if you do or damned if you don't. And that the way that most people move through that moment is by apologizing and then remaining quiet sort of indefinitely forever, hoping to never stumble over anything again.

The thing that makes you so different from so many other people that I think have been in this circumstance is that

you decided not to capitulate. You decided not to sort of play by the rules, the rules being remain silent, not along and give in to all of the tiny little lies that are sort of required for you to maintain your prestige or your status or your place in the band. Um, in this case, in my case, a newspaper, I'm not sure if that resonates with you, but, um,

That's the thing that really left out to me about your situation is that you've made a choice that's so different from the choice that so many others have made. Yeah. Well, at the time I tweeted about a book that documents far left behavior in the U.S., which considering I live in London is a

particularly niche topic in my world but I'm not so sure it's that niche in your country and I'd been tweeting about books through the pandemic I didn't have very many followers and this one sort of seemed to take off well there's a couple of waves to what happens so firstly it starts to take off and then you have like a kind of

swarm of snakes they come for every aspect of your life so for example for me they started messing about with my Wikipedia page saying calling me a fascist and Nazi and all these ridiculous things and and then there's a sort of second wave where they where they come for your friends and your associates and their families and

I uh and it's and it's very intimidating um and and when one when they start going for your friends and people you love that's where um it it sort of changes I mean it's a very effective uh mode of intimidation um because it's one thing when they come for you but when they come for those you love you want to defend them and uh

It's very, I imagine it's very confusing for those people, particularly if they don't know what's going on, what's inspired this sort of attack or whatever. And in this case, like what inspired this attack was a tweet that just said that you had, that you read an important book and you praised Andy Ngo, a journalist, as brave. And the book is called, for those who haven't heard of it,

And it's a book about the, you know, the movement Antifa and the kind of violence that Antifa is perpetuating in cities like Portland. That's all you did just for those who are new to this story. And yet it unleashed exactly as you're describing. I think in those circumstances, one, I think it...

one wants to primarily protect those people that you love. Which is one of a couple of reasons why I apologised soon after. And the other reason being that I was sincerely open to understanding what maybe I had missed on the topic or what about my tweet was offensive. Clearly people were upset

And I wanted to examine that. And so then began a period of time examining that. And over a few months, it felt to me like actually, well, keep in mind that at the time of the apology, it wasn't an emotionally sober time. And it was very difficult. But as I sort of saw more and more clearly, I think,

I felt that I had sort of participated in that, in the lie that either those, that extremism didn't exist or was a force for good. And that became, began to really bother my conscience. And I, you know, at the beginning, my integrity for the first month or so, my integrity felt

sort of okay because I was like well no hang on a sec you've you've put your friends first you you're fucked up and I think I did fuck up because now it's clearly it's a totemic and a and a divisive issue and I think if a lot of people look at it in low death it's like and they don't understand what the far-left extremism that's going on they might think well what how you know why

why would you criticize it or, you know, fascism's bad, so Antifa must be good, rather than seeing the fascistic behavior of far-left groups. And then there was other people then assuming that if I was critical of the far-left, then I must be pro the far-right. Obviously, I absolutely unequivocally condemn the far-right.

Well, there's this meme out there that like Antifa either doesn't exist or is genuinely a force for fighting fascism rather than its own kind of extremism. Well, that's how I got that impression anyway from that. I see that a bit. Perhaps you have a sense for that in America. I haven't seen that meme specifically, but is that a specific meme or?

It's not an image, but it's a trope, right? Like when people will post often trying to defend Antifa, you know, images of American soldiers storming the beaches of Normandy and say, this is Antifa. This is what anti-fascism is. And it's so clearly a word game where the group, the modern group that calls itself Antifa is actually about something different than, you know, fighting the Nazis in World War II. That's

That's all I mean. Well, and actually that wordplay stuff

is incredibly effective on Twitter if it's Antifa, if it's in Britain we've got it Don't Fund Hate which is trying to take down TV news and it's like you know there's older examples for you know rereading Václav Havel recently and he talks about the

you know, putting a slogan up in the shop window, Workers of the World Unite. The Greek grocer. Who would disagree with Workers of the World Unite? And

You have the other example of North Korea, the People's Democratic Republic, whatever it's called, of North Korea. I mean, it can be absolutely absurd. I mean, the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks is another thing. The Bolsheviks weren't the majority. They were the minority, but they dominated with the language. And it's a very effective way of...

Well, it's even words like, you know, diversity and equity and inclusion. Like who would disagree with any of those things? There's social justice. Like what does that really mean in the hands of some people? It seems to be deeply unjust. But the whole, the whole thing right now is that we're living in this, like we're living in a perpetual word game. It feels to me. And,

And so much of what's going on is in the way that I think a lot of this ideology works is by trapping people in...

That word game. And I think you were sort of on the receiving end of it in a strange way, because because you praised a book that was in a way exposing or criticizing Antifa. All of a sudden, in the scheme of this word game, you became the fascist because in this kind of Manichean binary world, it's either you're anti-fascist or you're fascist.

quite and there's no point engaging in it because those people's minds are already made up and you're not going to convince them otherwise if they already see the world like that or they if they if they ignore uh the sort of evidence i think you i'm certainly not going to convince them having said that i did curiously get a message from someone who i won't say their name

partly because I'd forgotten what the name was, but it was a very sweet email saying, after I put the Medium post out, saying, I'm part of the far left and I read your Medium and I'm actually going to think twice now about some of the things. So I was, I mean, of all the messages I got, I was really like touched by that, that something resonated. But normally I'd expect that I'm not going to be able to persuade anyone if they've already been convinced that

Well, before we get to the essay and like the goal of writing the essay, let's just stay in the moments that led up to it for one more second. I have personally experienced, and I think not everyone has, what it's like to be in the center of one of these swarms. And one thing that I don't often talk about because it feels vulnerable and embarrassing is...

how much it affected me. Like, I remember really clearly early in my time at the New York Times, so strange to recount this, but there was this video that went kind of viral of an Asian American figure skater named Mirai Nagasu landing a triple axel. And I borrowed the line from Hamilton, it's kind of cringe to repeat it, that was like, immigrants, they get the job done, or immigrants, we get the job done. I might have screwed up the lyric.

And obviously I meant it as a celebration of this woman and as a celebration of immigrants. And I have a long record of being very pro-immigrant, so there's no way in which anyone could possibly call me xenophobic. And all of a sudden, everyone, there were dozens of articles from Chrissy Teigen and famous people, but just really articles everywhere, claiming that I was

at worst, you know, hated Asians or that, you know, at best I had some kind of, you know, blind spot, bigotry. I was a white supremacist without realizing it. And as much as I knew in my heart that I wasn't bigoted and I wasn't xenophobic, when you're facing this like cacophony of everyone saying that you're this thing, that you're this vile, horrible thing,

I think that if you're a person that is empathetic and tries to like respond to feedback you're getting, it's really hard not to ask yourself, like, do they see something that I don't see? And I remember like the weekend that that particular swarm happened, I was in Nashville for a family wedding and I could barely get out of bed. It was really hard for me because it was

Like, I want to be a person that's not hardened to criticism. I want to be able to hear feedback that other people are giving me. And because of that, and this was one of the early ones, it really got under my skin. I say all of that to ask you, like, did you experience that feeling of, you know, everyone kind of, not everyone, but a very loud group sending you this message over and over and over again?

did you kind of question yourself about whether or not they were seeing something that was true that maybe you hadn't seen before? Yes, absolutely. I think that's the normal human natural responses if you're criticized, particularly if you get that much criticism, is to be like, okay, what am I not seeing then? And I think that I had some of my dear old friends who were really worried. So when you see your friends who are worried by a situation, it's one thing, like...

to see trolls online, you know, I'm not particularly affected by, or I don't think about what they think. But when your friends are telling you, like, hey, what's going on? Like, this isn't okay. Then you're like, okay, well, maybe I should really pay attention here. So I'm a man of faith. And so I'm not so worried or worried

on a personal level, if people think negatively about me, that's their choice to. But what is genuinely damaging, and maybe this is what you experience, is that your reputation is then damaged because people will just see the headlines that they may be. And so perhaps that will affect people working with you. And that is a very difficult thing to navigate, I think. So

you know, people might not know at all about. I'm sure very few people who criticize me have actually read the book that I tweeted about. But now there'll, some people who will have a skewed idea of my reputation, if they know me at all, of course, but which might cause me trouble, might not anyway. So there's that side of it. Yeah, I think it's that like,

It's like once you've lived through that and you get a kind of bad Google search result, maybe for the first time, it feels like, first of all, you're walking around the world and you kind of smell bad all of a sudden. And you're wondering if other people think you smell bad the minute you walk into a room. But it's also about, and I think this is like the hardest part about these experiences, is...

the way that things work right now, it's not just that that bad smell hangs over you, it hangs over people that you love. And that's the thing, as you were saying before, that is sort of unbearable. And I wonder if... I mean, I was in a band...

So in public facing, in the eyes of the public, we were unity and so it wasn't fair on them that they got that stuff from me or any of that bad opinion from my behaviour even though my conscience is clean but I can see that

It's unfair for them to be subjected to my shit. And that's a big part, I mean, the main part for me leaving the band. That's the tricky thing. If I was a sole individual, I think it would be different. In fact, now I am a sole individual and I'm happy to express myself without the fear of others getting hurt by it. More with Winston Marshall right after this.

Hey guys, Josh Hammer here, the host of America on Trial with Josh Hammer, a podcast for the First Podcast Network. Look, there are a lot of shows out there that are explaining the political news cycle, what's happening on the Hill, the this, the that.

There are no other shows that are cutting straight to the point when it comes to the unprecedented lawfare debilitating and affecting the 2024 presidential election. We do all of that every single day right here on America on Trial with Josh Hammer. Subscribe and download your episodes wherever you get your podcasts. It's America on Trial with Josh Hammer. You talk about how the band, obviously, you're unified. You're kind of speaking in a collective voice. Have you felt in the past like...

you had had you stumbled onto landmines before i guess is the question i want to ask or had you been kind of tamping down your views about any number of public issues for the sake of the band well this is where i thought that your resignation letter one thing i i sort of i resonated with me is the idea that twitter had become the editor of the new york times and um and where that similar

music or I'm sure for all companies dealing with public relations is that Twitter basically dictates their public relations because if you say the wrong thing or support the wrong thing according to whatever Twitter mob, that then dictates the press and then the press damages reputations or whatever so there's a real similarity there I think and

A previous example, certainly for me, was meeting Jordan Peterson a few years ago. And, you know, for me, his work was pretty influential on my contribution to the last record. But the difficult thing is that firstly, you know, it's another sort of

According to Twitter, it's a divisive issue, apparently. And also music press, I would say, on whole probably is quite biased. So I never really trusted them to be able to talk about something that I thought was really positive and cool and exciting. It was exciting for me. You decide to apologize.

Was the goal to kill the story publicly or was the goal to apologize to the members of the band? Like there's a lot of ways that you can read an apology like that. And I'm curious, like what your goal was. I, um, absolutely was totally sincere in being sorry to the band and remain so. And they, uh,

were gracious to with me at the time and because I brought you know it was it was a catholic weekend let's put it that way and it I yeah I regret absolutely that that what I had done on it it had been unintentional but it had brought a lot of trouble to them and so I was and I'm still sorry for that

And, but I don't, I am going to take responsibility for my apology. I, you know, I don't want to just push it away. Like at the time, you know, I made the apology. I put it out. And the apology wasn't for what I did. It was for how it was interpreted. So I don't think it was a lie. I think it was true at the time. I imagine though, and just from the little bit that I was following this at the time,

that it then inspired a whole other group of people to start criticizing you. Like the anti-woke, for lack of a better term, group start coming after you. Absolutely. I mean, the anti-woke mob, and maybe I wasn't so...

astute to this before but I certainly am now but they behave exactly like the woke mob they're just as keen to cancel as far as I can see as the quote unquote woke mob and does it mean anything? I mean it comes and it goes and they're certainly I guess they didn't start editing my Wikipedia page so maybe not quite as intimidating but there's a lot of behaviour I see similar on both sides yeah for sure

But it must have felt like just like a thankless position, like you're getting squeezed from like in two directions at once. Yeah, but the priority at the time was to protect my bandmates. So I didn't particularly, it wasn't top concern of mine what some random people I don't know on the internet think about me. Yeah. It's just a strange moment that we're living in because apologies are like

Such intimate things and forgiveness is something that's granted between people that are connected to each other, I feel. And it's strange to live in a moment where apologies are something that are like for everyone on the Internet all of a sudden. It just seems so it seems so antithetical to like the nature of what an apology is meant to be about.

I don't know. It's just I just know I'm not sure when people apologize now. I I I'm not so critical of them apologizing Because firstly you don't know what stress they're under you don't know what pressure they're under they they you know they have people there they have to that they're responsible for that, you know It's it's a very difficult. Those can be very difficult moments and I think

I would never assume that those apologies are insincere, which I think perhaps is what you're getting at. No, not at all. I think they're often extremely sincere. They're happening in an extremely high-intensity, high-decibel moment. I think they're very sincere. I think oftentimes, though, the people that are feeling compelled

internally to apologize, maybe can't see the fact that for the people that have created the swarm that demand that are demanding the apology as ransom to stop the swarm for them, the apology ends up being almost a confession of guilt. And that is what enrages me because I feel like the idea of apologizing and forgiving people and giving people second chances is

Those are like foundational values to living in a civilized society. And I resent the fact that there is a group of people that are creating a culture in which apologies become a tool rather than something else. And beyond that,

Mm-hmm.

Like that, that's, that's what I'm reacting against. It is not, I'm not speaking about your situation in particular. I'm speaking about the fact that like the idea of looking your friends who you've inadvertently hurt in the face as I have done and be able to say to them, I'm so sorry. I didn't mean that. I hate the fact that there's now a secondary level, like a secondary meaning to that incredibly intimate act.

Yeah, I'm certainly not totally convinced by the never apologize idea. And I think that, I mean, I suppose you're saying people aren't going to accept the apology. Did they not accept the apology? I mean, was it Billie Eilish who apologized for something last week? I'm pretty sure that apology was accepted. Well, it depends, right? Like, you know, to choose another example, and then I'd love to move on to the essay. Mm-hmm.

You know, Lin-Manuel Miranda is like, you know, the guy that made the founding fathers, you know, people of color in Hamilton. Now he goes and makes the movie In the Heights that, you know, of every movie musical is probably like the most diverse movie musical ever made. And, you know, celebration of Washington Heights and, you know, the Latino community.

And for a certain group of people online, that was somehow still insufficient. And he's accused over the past few weeks of colorism and of not casting enough darker skinned people in the film. And he winds up apologizing, as does Rita Moreno, for defending him. And it's kind of like, hold on. Like, if Lin-Manuel Miranda needs to be apologizing, you know, for making his art and making the choices that he made, like, why?

Where does that leave like the 22 or 23 year old kid who looks up to him or looks up to any number of these public figures? And they're saying to themselves, hold on, like if I want to succeed and I want to make art or I want to make music or I want to be a journalist or whatever, like I better be 100 percent perfect. I better stick to every single aspect of this new world.

I don't know, like creed, this new dogma, this new orthodoxy, or else, you know, if he can't get away with not apologizing, where does that put me? Like, I think the downstream effects of these things are profound and maybe sort of invisible. But I just know that in my inbox, I'm hearing constantly from young people who are like, you know, even college students who say to me, like in my papers, I don't actually say what I believe. I don't.

you know, anticipate what my professor will want to hear and I'll say those things. Or young journalists who say, I can't pitch the things I actually want to write about because I see what happens to people that step out of line. Yeah, that is something that's a worrying state of affairs where we're seeing the sort of good faith and grace increase.

And that's what people are resonating with, I think, with the Medium article I wrote is this idea of self-censorship, which is what I think you're getting at. And that seems worrying to me that we're getting to that place where people are so nervous to speak their mind. And I guess part of that might be that the Internet is kind of a log of everything. It feels a bit more...

definite, like when you say something on the internet or in writing, it feels a bit more... It's there forever. It's there forever. Whereas perhaps that wasn't the case before. But that definitely seems, that's why I've got a lot of sort of thank you messages for the Medium article is the people that I've identified, I think I identified that, that people resonate with that feeling of self-censorship, which is

Not a great place to be at all, particularly if they're reasonable. I mean, this is the kind of moderate middle, free-thinking middle ground. It's not abhorrent people at all, or it's not people beyond the pale. It's people who think for themselves, who are nervous. That's not a good place.

I don't think. Well, that's, I mean, that's why when I read your essay, I, you know, I was alone in my kitchen here in LA and I think I DM'd you right away on Twitter and said, you know, I don't remember what I said, but I was like standing up and screamed for my wife and said, you have to read this. This is so unbelievable. So let's get into the essay. And when you decided, when you started writing it,

and when you made the decision that that was how you were going to leave the band. The important issue for me was that I felt like my integrity had, over the period of months after the apology, I really felt ill at ease with my sense of integrity. And so the primary purpose of the article was to

clear my conscience and with that in mind I wrote it so that even if no one read it I would feel like my conscience was clear. I would say that, well and then another important part to me was to make it absolutely clear of how wonderful

my bandmates are, how honorable they have been, and how, you know, I'm bloody grateful that I got to work with them. I think they're brilliant, and I'm sure that they'll go on to do brilliant things. That was a very important aspect to writing it as well. Well, that comes through, I mean, that was the thing that

I think one of the things other than, you know, Shulzhan Itzin, who we'll get to, but like one of the things that moved me so much is that, frankly, when I left the Times and wrote that resignation letter, I was pretty angry. And I feel like one of the things that comes through in your essay so powerfully and it makes it that much more heartbreaking is just anger.

How much you love this band. And I just want to read a few lines that I thought were beautiful. You say, you know, being in Mumford and Sons was exhilarating. Every gig was its own adventure. Every gig, its own stories, be it odysseys through the Scottish islands or soapbox shows in Soho.

We saw the country and then as things miraculously grew, the world. All the while doing what we loved, music. And not just any music. These songs meant something. They felt important to me. Songs with the message of hope and love. And I was surrounded by three supremely talented songwriters and Marcus, our singer with a one in a million voice. A voice that can compel both a field of 80,000 and the intimacy of a front room.

Fast forward 10 years, and we were playing those same songs every night in arenas, flying first class, staying in luxury hotels, and being paid handsomely to do so. I was a lucky boy. And you feel, when you read the whole thing, just your gratitude and your love for the experience. And I think for people that will read it,

they'll think, wait, he loved this thing. It wasn't like, you know, they were bullying him. Like, he adored being around them. And so it really must not have been an easy decision to walk away. No. It was the bloody hardest decision I can remember, really. And, yeah, I was very scared. I mean, I've been in the band since I was 19. Not quite half my life, but it was a very...

really difficult thing, but I didn't see another way out of this sort of moral conundrum that I found myself in. And so this felt like the right way forward. Yeah. In the months that you were sort of dealing with the moral conundrum, what were you reading and who were you talking to that were leading you or advising you? I actually was reading a great book

was a biography of Churchill by Andrew Roberts because I can't... Oh, it's amazing. You read that one, yeah. I'm a big admirer of Roberts. Well, I say that. I think the only other book I read is Napoleon the Great. But I love that book. But I was reading that kind of just to emotionally unwind and get away...

Just like a thousand page book about Churchill. I love it. Normal. I was I was talking a lot of my mom and dad with whom I'm very close. And I think who who love me and understand me better than anyone and could understand the difficult things.

the complexity of the sort of situation I found myself in. And I was praying a hell of a lot. You quote Churchill in your essay. I do. And you also quote one of my great heroes. And you quote an essay that I've read

dozens of times in the past year, which is the essay Live Not by Lies by the Soviet dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn. I can never pronounce his name. And you write this. He writes this and you quote him.

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 part of the herd and a coward. It's all the same to me as long as I'm fed and kept warm.

I just know over the past year that I've read Live Not By Lies dozens of times. And for me, I'm relating to it

historically, and it's giving me historical perspective and giving me a sense of the importance of having moral courage and living by truth and not bending the knee to the political mores of the moment. But when I saw that you quoted it, given that I know that you are religious and that he was, you know, a devout, devout Christian, I wondered if

it resonated for you on an almost deeper level. And if that was one of the reasons that you decided to quote that essay in yours. I quoted the essay because I was reading it in that period between the apology and my medium article. And that particular passage that I quote just kept hitting me. And...

was really bothering me and that sort of just continued to niggle and continued to exacerbate internally. For me, I think Solzhenitsyn is also relevant to this situation if we rewind a little bit and he talks about the line between good and evil cutting through the centre of every human heart and that is, I think,

sort of lost in discourse a little bit today. I think a lot of people say, oh, he's a good guy, or fuck that guy, he's a bad guy, instead of accepting the sort of what I think is a Christian value of the idea that everyone is fallen. And that's relevant to the Antifa stuff, because it's just, it's back to the binary, black and white, good guys, bad guys, goodies, baddies,

And maybe that comes from, I don't know, the Disney films we watched as kids or something like that, or I'm not quite sure how we've got to that place. But I feel like we have a little bit. And actually, I quote another bit of Solzhenitsyn in the article from...

the Gulag Archipelago, the first volume, which is "Purify your heart, rub your eyes, and cherish above all else those who love you and wish you well", which also, that line gave me much succour in that period and made me feel like initially at least I was doing the right thing in

in trying to protect my bandmates. But I'm not too familiar with Solzhenitsyn and his faith, although certainly for me, my faith has played a big part in this period of my life. And actually, the week before making the final

I was pretty much planted in my local Catholic church around the corner from the house because it felt like a really big, I mean, it's been a bloody big moment for me. And yeah, I think that's maybe why I can imagine perhaps people, that's probably why after a while the apology was bothering me like it,

It did, particularly that I'd felt like I'd been participating in that lie that we already talked about. I couldn't square those things in my conscience. One of the things that I have noticed, and I was thinking of doing an essay on this, and you certainly fall into this camp, is that not everyone, but an inordinate number of people I find who have been willing to tell the truth

and stand up, let's say, maybe you don't think of yourself that way, but I certainly do, stand up to the new illiberalism, are religious. And without making you uncomfortable, I wondered if you could just tell us a little bit more about how your faith guided you through this decision. Or maybe, to put it another way, like, maybe it's that your faith anchors you in religion,

values that are so much bigger and more eternal than the idiot wins that feel like they're sweeping through our politics every day. Well, if I can quote the great American theologian of our time, Kanye West, he said this a couple years ago, I thought it was absolutely brilliant. He said, fear God and you will fear nothing else. And I think that that

I love that because for me, I fear, I do fear God and I think it's true that if you fear God sincerely then you won't fear worldly issues, worldly problems or well,

I mean, I fear God, I still get worried plenty of the time. And so I'm not going to pretend I'm like... Have you read Corrie ten Boom? The sister in Corrie ten Boom, Nolly, I think it is, who's so... Faith is so strong in the Lord that she's quite happy to... She'll tell the truth all the time. Even when the Nazis come into her house,

into her apartment and ask where are the Jews and she goes, "Oh, they're hiding in the cupboard because she can't lie." And you think, "What?" But then, so they take the... Have you read The Hiding Place? No. I mean, good luck not crying when you do read it. But the Jews that she kind of gives away and that night

get rescued by wherever they take it to and they get rescued. Her faith is so strong in the law that she must tell the truth. That's, I guess, an extreme version of telling the truth. But in that sense, yeah, I'm not sure I'm Nolly Ten Boom strong in faith, but yeah, it's an important part. - But maybe you're Kanye West strong in your faith? - I wish.

What a legend. Are you worried that quoting Kanye will get you in the same trouble as quoting Andy Ngo? What's Kanye doing? Oh, what has Kanye not done is really the question. Bless him. So just tell me more about the idea of

How having to follow your own conscience led you to leave the band? Like when you played out in the future, what it would meant for you to stay in the band, what would you have had to sacrifice or how would you have had to maybe like shrink yourself? Was it that you simply would have had to just stay mum on topics that mattered to you? Like what made you think that staying in the band would make you

would force you to betray your own principles? I did, someone asked me, a good friend of mine asked me before this, when I told him that I was going to leave, and he said, but how are you going to feel when you see the guys, you know, on stage or playing Glastonbury or whatever? And my sincere answer was, I'll be so proud of them and happy for them. And I think I would know that to be on stage with them that

Well, it's so hard to tell because that could be years away. But it felt at the moment like to be up there, I would still have the... It's also quite difficult to speak about because my conscience was burning so badly before making that statement. And now, you know, it just really cleared it for me. So it's a little bit hard to articulate and almost can't entirely remember that feeling. But it was really bothering me.

But I'm very at peace with it and I feel fine. I feel like they're going to be absolutely great. They're three great lads, unbelievably talented. They'll do so well. And I'm also excited for the future. I go with love, you know. It's sad, sure, but it's...

I'm so proud of what we've done and I think it was just, yeah, it was wonderful. And back to Kanye, you know, I fear the Lord, so I don't fear the future. But you could also, you know, when I thought about your choice, the way I played it out in my head,

projecting like pretending I was you is you know the music press being what it is this would be like the tweet would come to kind of hang over everything forever that's true and that's certainly a part like so like I'm sure that whatever time we're promoting the next thing that this stuff would come up and it would just be a distraction and um I now that I'm removed they don't have that anymore um

They can be, and I can deal with that. Right, and like, you know, you'd be asked about it, and you would either have to like disavow it every time, and maybe that would feel like a lie. Yeah, certainly. Yeah, that did go through my head a lot. And so much so that it was, you know, quite bothering me quite badly. Exactly that. I imagine you were...

Well, I'll ask you. How nervous were you to hit publish on this essay? Bloody terrified. But, yeah, particularly the last sort of half an hour before, I was very nervous. But I feel like it's gone. I feel like I got my integrity back and I feel like I got my soul back a little bit. And sorry, not a little bit. I got my soul back.

completely. And, and I feel I feel feel good now. Did the feeling of freedom or like the weightlifting come as soon as you hit publish? When did it come? It was received how I'd hoped it would be received. So that's probably when I felt Yeah, I felt pretty good about it. You said that, you know, even if no one read it, that you would feel

the lift you would feel like you had gotten your soul back. But I also imagine that you wanted this to be read. And I'm trying to, I'd love to know what you hoped people would take away from this. Like, what's the, what's the message you wanted us all to receive from it beyond just, you know, hearing about your own experience and the choices you made? What's the message?

People have taken quite a few messages from it. It's been read now, I think, over 660,000 times, which I think that's quite a lot. Was that well beyond what you expected? Yeah, I never imagined that at all. And look, people have taken different things from it. I think my primary goal was, the primary message was to restore my integrity and to...

And let it be known how great those three lads are in the band. They're three brilliant lads. Absolutely sterling, wonderful, generous gentlemen. But the other message that I get is a more universal message. It's way beyond the band. To me, the message I get when I read that is moral courage. The importance in a moment where so many people, understandably, are self-censoring because of the

public punishment you get for falling, stepping out of line. To me, what this essay is about is there are things way more important than being popular on the internet. And that one of the things that's way more important is living a life of integrity and telling the truth. Now, maybe I'm putting it in too high-minded a way for you, but I imagine that was part of the goal of it. Yeah. Or not? Yeah. Yeah.

It was. I don't think, again, it was, I wanted to feel like I'd explained myself. When I wrote my resignation letter, part of it was for me, part of it was for the New York Times and the publisher of the New York Times. But the audience I had in my head was like the 21 or 22 year old young journalist at the beginning of their career.

thinking that the only way that they could succeed and the only way to do journalism was to follow these new rules, which in my mind aren't journalistic at all. That was kind of like who I always had in my head. And I wonder if you had an audience in mind when you wrote it or like who you maybe hoped it hoped you hope who you hoped it would touch.

I certainly, as I've already said myself, and I wanted the band to be exonerated and for it to be known how great they are. Oddly, I had another sort of idea of what, if I had a child, what would they be proud of?

And that was another ghost audience or, you know, concepts in my head. Had you ever worked harder on a piece of writing than you did on that essay? It was very important for me because if it was done badly, it could really screw up a lot. But so I've certainly never worked on an essay harder than that. Yeah.

I can't help but think about, you know, not just life before the internet, but life before it feels like maybe the past five years where it would be really hard to imagine a situation like this. Like, it feels like the idea that things like music and art and friendships and love relationships, like the idea that politics has swallowed everything and that everything needs to be put to a political litmus test is

Like that that's relatively new. And I'm wondering when you started to feel that shift as someone who's, you know, been in this band since you were 19 years old. You've been in the professional music business your entire adult life. Like when did that change feel like it started to happen? It's a little bit pithy to say this, I think, but and not totally accurate. But you could say that.

But before, you know, when we were promoting stuff before 2016, they didn't ask about politics and then after 2016, they basically didn't ask about music. And that's, it's not entirely true, obviously, but there was definitely a change in 2016 where everything became political and there was no, you know, there's nothing political about the music we made.

And that sort of charged everyone. Would you agree with that? I'm sure. Yeah. I mean, it's hard for me to pinpoint a specific moment. But, you know, I was just to choose one example that I thought was like just unbelievable over the past summer was, you know,

After the killing of George Floyd, the band Hanson, you might not remember Hanson. Of course. All my friends had posters of Hanson. Of course. Okay. All my friends. Exactly. And, you know, this was like the band of my middle school, early high school years. And I remember that they came under like.

crazy fire online because they did not immediately post the phrase Black Lives Matter on their social media feeds. And there was like this outcry and people were, you know, floating the idea that the band was like somehow secret racist and secret white supremacists and secret fascists. And they had managed to like hide those bigotries until this moment. And then

Like in a matter of days, Hanson, you know, a band that most of us have not thought of for many years, you know, posted Black Lives Matter and apologized for taking days to do so. But like for fans, that still wasn't enough. And they actually, a group of them, like created this online support group for former Hanson fans so they could share their trauma for having Hanson been unmasked as like these secret white supremacists. And to me, it was like this amazing,

amazing moment of oh wow like we've really lost the plot here I don't know if you followed that whole thing but it was like it was just like it's just like everyone looking with a microscope to discern whether or not you know everyone's fully on board with every aspect of whatever the

it's the thing of the moment I remember thinking at the beginning of the pandemic oh I hope that finally this will be the thing that brings everyone together um you know for all the trouble and all the hell it's been and I thought oh this might bring us together and there were signs of that at the beginning like we had we had the sort of cheers for the NHS once a week in in England and

It felt like unity, which the only other time we really get it is when there's an England football tournament on, which we have at the moment, and it's going quite well. But I did hope that, but I think that the pandemic just exacerbated all the divisions we already had. Everyone was just on a hoax, their phones clicking away. Yeah, exactly. And so it just...

Spun everyone out. Well, the message was like, we're all in this together, but no, we're not because we're just all living online, getting deeper and deeper into our niche political tribes. And like in lieu of actually meetings, people face to face, like it's really hard to say horrible things to someone in the flesh. It's super easy to do it when you're writing from behind an avatar, you know? Yeah, absolutely. I don't know how it ends, Barry. I don't know how it ends. Well, how do you think it ends?

Oh, right. Let's, let's, I hope it ends. I have no idea how. Do you have an idea? I don't see it. I think one way we do it individually, I don't have an answer and I don't know if anyone does for the way that aliens. Okay. Right. Aliens could definitely help. Let's get swallowed up. Common. Yeah. Common enemy or like, you know, they come in peace hoping to transform our civilization. I don't know. Listen, I don't think anyone has a smart answer or a,

satisfying answer, let's say. Lots of people have lots of different ideas about how we can resist the tsunami of change that's being caused by the internet. It's remaking our brains. It's remaking our society. It's remaking what it means to be a human being. So I don't have an answer for the algorithm problem. What I do know is that in our individual lives, that rooting down into the things that matter is

For me, that is my Judaism. It's my family. It's my relationship. It's living a life, as you just said before beautifully, like that my future children would be proud of. And also like absolutely refusing to participate in mobs, like by personally resisting it. Like if enough people did that, it actually seems to me like it would make a difference. Absolutely. Yeah.

Yeah, recognizing that our fellow man, we're all fallen, recognizing that we make mistakes and bring back a bit of grace and good faith. We need some good faith again. Yeah, I mean, it feels like the virtues that civilization, it's more than just liberal democracy, that a decent civilization is based in, right? Like the idea of grace and mercy and giving people second chances and the idea that

recognizing that we all have inclinations for good and evil in us and that no one's a goodie or a baddie. And just like even things like proportionality and, you know, common sense and reason, like those things, it gets more than just like, you know, you hear often like the political center has fallen away. Extremism is on the rise, right?

Like all of that's true, but I think it's deeper than that. Like I think that there is a turning away from these like foundational values on which everything else sits. And I'm really interested in how to recover those values. As am I. As am I. I was thinking about like when music...

and everything else became so politicized. And, you know, you think back to the Ramones, right? And like Johnny Ramone was a Reagan supporting conservative. And Joey Ramone was a, yeah. And Joey Ramone was a Democrat and Marky Ramone talked about the Ramones. You know, he said something like, you know, we're punk brothers, but political enemies. And I was like, holy shit. Like it's, it's almost impossible to imagine someone making a statement like that today.

But like, isn't that the whole purpose of music and art that like people from different worldviews and different backgrounds can come together and unite over this thing they're creating that is not steeped in left or right or Republican or Democrat or conservative or liberal? Yeah, I think generally speaking, we need to separate people from their politics and people find that increasingly hard to do.

And I'm guilty of that as well, or certainly have been guilty where I'll see certain politicians or whatever and I'll kind of cringe or get annoyed or have a prejudice against them for whatever reason, whatever party they're a part of. I'm guilty of that as well, which I need to keep in check. And just remember we're all humans. Yeah, for sure. I think a lot of people...

would see you decide to leave the band and assume, yeah, like he would never walk away from something so good unless he had some like secret plan in his back pocket. And, you know, I know in my case, like that just wasn't true at all. I had no idea what I was going to do next. And I spent a few months kind of like in a daze. I'm wondering if you have, um,

Any idea about what's going to come next for you? Well, I'm certainly excited. What might come next? I'm going to carry on with my Hong Kong integration work. I started, uh, co-founded a, a nonprofit organization in January with, um, an asylum seeker from Hong Kong in London. And we, and we connect Brits with Hong Kongers. Uh, it's called Hong Kong link up and, um, it's been very, uh, uh, fulfilling. And, um,

I'm going to definitely carry on with that in the meantime and I hope to carry on making music. I still feel I might have musical juices that need attending and I'm going to... The response to the Medium article has been so positive that I feel quite encouraged to continue my writing. So I'm going to see about that as well which would be fun and

I know of this girl with a newsletter that might be really interested in publishing you. Which girl? Oh, you've got a newsletter, have you? Have you actually? Uh-huh. Okay, well, let's talk. I'd love to talk. Love to publish you. I want to thank you so much for taking the time and just thinking back to what you were just, what we were talking about before of like how we get out of this.

I think it's a huge question that no one has the answer to, but I think a lot of us feel frustrated about where we are. And when I read your essay, I thought, this is the kind of thing that makes a difference. This is the kind of thing that makes a dent in pushing our sort of merciless culture towards something more human and humane and gracious. And

I just know that I've read a lot of resignation letters and a lot of essays along these lines. And I felt like yours had this particular kind of love that ran through the whole thing. And I want to thank you for it. Thank you for talking to me. And thank you for standing up for me.

the truth. And I'm really excited to see what you do next. And hopefully we can find a way to do something together. All right. That means a tremendous amount from you. So thank you. And thank you for your wonderful questions. Thanks so much for listening. If you have a story idea or a tip or just want to say hi, please go visit us at honestlypod.com and drop us a line. Have a wonderful weekend and happy Independence Day.