Mumford and Sons versus the mob

So it’s finally happened. Cancel culture has come for Mumford and Sons. Winston Marshall, former banjo player in the hugely successful group, has left the band after becoming embroiled in a Twitterstorm earlier this year, during which he was essentially smeared as a hard-right lunatic. It seems that the culture war can now leave no corner of actual culture untouched, from the Royal Academy to middle-of-the-road folk rock.

And what a bizarre Twitterstorm it was. Marshall was first set upon in March because he tweeted about a book written by a conservative author – namely, Unmasked, a book about Antifa by US journalist Andy Ngo. That’s genuinely it. 

Marshall didn’t have a Wiley-style meltdown. He didn’t leave a glowing Amazon review of Mein Kampf. He just called Ngo’s book ‘important’ and said he was ‘a brave man’. In one tweet. And so, of course, he has been cast out and forever stamped as far-right adjacent or something.