Three months after praising right-wing troll Andy Ngo on Twitter, Mumford & Sons banjo player Winston Marshall is leaving the band. Marshall wrote on Medium that the experience has taught him much, but he couldn’t risk staying in the band and self-censoring himself. “For me to speak about what I’ve learnt to be such a controversial issue will inevitably bring my bandmates more trouble,” Marshall wrote. “My love, loyalty and accountability to them cannot permit that.” Marshall received backlash after praising Ngo’s book Unmasked: Inside Antifa’s Radical Plan to Destroy Democracy, which inaccurately paints the anti-fascist movement as some organized plot to abolish America, in March. He announced then he was stepping away from the band, as he didn’t want to offend his now-former bandmates.
