Winston Marshall took a risk last week. He is the most successful banjo player ever; he joined Mumford & Sons as a 20 year-old trustafarian in 2007. The British quartet made a lot of money by superimposing a Creedish veneer on classic dust-bowlblues. Their debut record, Sigh No More sold nearly 3.2 million copies.AdvertisementMarshall, now 33, and looking no worse, decided to throw everything away. He announced on Thursday that he would be leaving the band and abandoning Mumford and his remaining sons. Marshall is not leaving due to creative differences, exhaustion on tour, or any other traditional vectors that can pull off a lucrative artistic partnership apart. This banjoist is not leaving because he wants to tweet and his band is hindering him from doing so.AdvertisementAdvertisementSubscribe to the Slate Culture newsletter and receive the best movies, TV, books, music, etc. directly to your inbox. Signing you up was not possible due to an error Please try again. To use this form, please enable jаvascript. Email address: I would like to receive updates on Slate special offers. You agree to our Privacy Policy & Terms by signing up. Thank you for signing up! You can cancel your subscription at any time.Marshall shares his decision on Medium. I hope that by distancing me from them, I can speak my mind and not suffer the consequences. He writes that he leaves with love in his heart and wishes the boys all the best. Their stars will continue to shine brightly into the future, I am certain. I am looking forward to new creative projects, as well as speaking on and writing about a wide range of topics, no matter how difficult.AdvertisementA little context: Marshall was in trouble in March after he tweeted solidarity with Andy Ngo (a conservative journalist who has devoted his career to sensationalizing fringe antifa groups). Ngo is the only person responsible for convincing Fox News' prime-time viewers that they are being pursued by a network of communist agitators. Marshall tweeted, "You are a brave man." Above is an image from Ngo's book Unmasked: Inside Antifas Radical Plans to Destroy Democracy. The front cover also features a Tucker Carlson quote. Mumford fans all over the globe were upset that their favourite banjo player would publicly endorse such an egregious right-wing charlatan. Marshall later apologized.AdvertisementAdvertisementClose observers are aware that Marshall's radicalization began much earlier. Marshall invited Jordan Peterson, a Canadian psychologist who held some questionable views about the sanctity and masculinity of males to the band's recording studio in August 2018. Marshall responded by defending Peterson's Instagram photo of the group and him.Marshall said that he doesn't think Petersons psychology is controversial in an interview with CBC following Petersons appearance. The quasi-political stuff, I believe it's a conversation we were having as a band. Do you want to get into political stuff? Most likely not.AdvertisementMarshall clearly found the answer to his query. Marshall has made the jump into politics, becoming yet another exhausted personality in that inscrutable group of center-right weirdos who can't stop worrying about the perils and waking up. Ngo, Bari Weiss and Meghan McCain have already slammed him, and I look forward to Marshall's Joe Rogan appearance. * (I'm certain hell be moving to Austin by the end of this year. Like many others who have made the transition from celebrity to reactionarythink KanyeWest and Jerry SeinfeldMarshall was keen to present his self-cancellation in a heroic act of cultural defiance. He quotes Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, a Soviet dissident, and more brazenly, Winston Churchill's idiom, both of which aim to express the pain at his core. Marshall chose the second option, which has very serious implications for us all. Imagine you want to tweet so much that you would gladly give up a lifetime worth of future royalties. It's like Smeagol giving up hot meals to get the One Ring. The Discourse is stronger than any other drug.AdvertisementAdvertisementMarshall is allowed to believe in his flawed theories. Hell will likely fall down from here. The rest of the band sent Marshall warm well wishes on his next chapter. I can see Marshall quickly building professional relationships with Andy Ngo, Jordan Peterson and emerging as a seasoned talking head in the conservative media welfare state. This is a bizarre, if not entirely novel twist of fate.It is never worth giving up on a career because of the sweet, psychotic pleasures of posting.Marshall's diction is instructive. Marshall writes with a satisfied gravitas. It's as if he is living on the edge, unmuzzling social media accounts and challenging that radical LEFT. It's time to change that mentality. There is nothing provocative or brave about posting on the internet. In 2007, Twitter was created by Jimmy Fallon to host his monologue jokes. The rest of us shared our lunch choices with our nine followers. We understood that certain things were best left unsaid and some hills weren't worth dying for, so we didn't feel the need to share our bare-bones, clueless, unresearched opinions of the daily news cycle. The platform was launched in 2004 and the society has become disconcertingly wild over the years. We now have a banjo player who invokes Winston Churchill, the man who fought the Nazisas an example of how to express an exasperating, world weary sorrow (even though that quote isn't Churchills). Marshall writes that if he stopped posting at his will, it would damage my integrity. You can gnaw your conscience, but it's not that deep.AdvertisementJordan Peterson, a commentator, tends to talk a lot about free speech's precarious status. Arguments are made that the First Amendment doesn't work as intended if people face real-world consequences for posting online. In a certain sense, that is true. Bad tweets can lead to life-altering consequences. Marshall and I are likely to agree that digital culture should be more gentle and patient than it is currently. It is true that not everyone needs to know everything. Every day, billions of people all over the world swallow up their unfiltered opinions. This is how we stay employed, keep our society sane, and stay polite. It is a 21st century phenomenon to have the urge to break the code of conduct and trade the banjo for an Andy Ngo novel, broadcasting your convictions to all of humanity, regardless of who was listening. It is never worth giving up on the sweet, psychotic pleasures of posting. Marshall, there is a better way. It starts with clicking the log out button.
