Emily Reynolds on how Morrissey's politics are alienating fans - The New European

Well-thought-out article.

Emily Reynolds on how Morrissey’s politics are alienating fans - The New European

Aged 13 and newly converted to vegetarianism, the discovery of The Smiths’ album Meat is Murder was genuinely revelatory for me. It kickstarted a nearly 10-year-long obsession with Morrissey, the band’s charismatic and pugnacious lead singer – an obsession that carried on well into my early-20s.

Until last year I continued to travel up and down the country – and sometimes abroad – to see gigs and meet up with friends I’d met queuing for the front row or talking about Morrissey with online. I met one of my best friends several years ago via an annual ‘Morrissey meet-up’, and last year we went to Barcelona ostensibly for a holiday but actually to attend a gig in a tiny Spanish nightclub, queueing for hours in the sun to get near the front. I found solace, comfort and community in the spirited spite of Moz’s eloquent lyrics, and even got a few of them incorporated into tattoos.

So, as a proud Remain voter, it’s more than a little disheartening to hear Morrissey’s latest comments on Brexit.

“It’s been shocking to witness the refusal of the UK news media to be fair enough to accept the final decision of the people, simply because the decision does not suit the establishment,” he told Israeli website Walla. “The BBC persistently smear people who voted leave, condemning such people as being irresponsible, drunken racists.”

I’d actually love to say that it feels like a betrayal, but it’s just one more unsurprising addition to a long line of reactionary, poorly thought through statements from the singer. In recent weeks alone, Morrissey has claimed that the media hate George Galloway and Nigel Farage, who he bafflingly describes as “liberal educators”, because they “respect equal freedom for all people”, and criticised London mayor Sadiq Khan for eating “halal-butchered beings”.

Vegetarianism is great, and animal rights are obviously a noble cause, but bringing Khan’s Muslim faith to the fore sounds an awful lot like racism, making it a little rich for Morrissey to describe the (alleged) “condemnation” of Leave voters as “irresponsible racists”.

In 2007, he said he felt like England had been “thrown away”, and complained that “if you walk through Knightsbridge on any bland day of the week, you won’t hear an English accent… You’ll hear every accent under the sun apart from the British accent.”

In 2013 Moz stated that he had “nearly voted for UKIP”, and he’s previously referred to Chinese people as a “subspecies” because of their treatment of animals – hardly the best person to judge whether someone is being falsely accused of racism. It’s a very long way from his 1990 declaration that “there are some bad people on the right”.

In any case, though many of those who voted Leave aren’t racist, what pro-Brexiters have done is stand alongside campaigners who certainly are, and there’s the question of whether a vote for Leave was also an implicit legitimation of that racism. Since the EU referendum, hundreds of incidents of hate crimes have been reported, with many perpetrators telling victims to “go back to your own country”. It’s not hard to see a link between this Us vs Them mentality and the result of the referendum, with freshly emerging racist narratives vindicating the views of many who had previously kept their opinions silent and who now feel empowered to air them publicly – and sometimes violently. The murder of Jo Cox, which came at the height of the Brexit debate, should also have served as a stark reminder of what was at stake when we decided whether to stay in the European Union; a staunch campaigner for the rights of refugees, immigrants and other minorities, Cox represented the multicultural values that genuinely do make Britain great.

This beautifully diverse and multicultural Britain is not the one present in Morrissey’s work, though; throughout his career, he’s wistfully depicted the country as a proud but fading island, adrift without identity. The Queen is Dead more or less screamed “there is something rotten in the state of Salford”, and later songs like Everyday Is Like Sunday and Come Back to Camden painted yearning portraits of an England that had long disappeared – and probably never existed to begin with. At heart, Morrissey’s idea of what ‘Britain’ means is entirely romanticised and closer to fairytale than reality. It would be unobjectionable if such views didn’t have an impact on the lives of so many people.

Morrissey’s anti-Brexit stance is also personally hypocritical; his parents were Irish immigrants to Manchester, and he himself has lived all over the world, including recent stints in Italy. Such freedom of movement will probably still be available to him after Brexit, simply because he’s famous and fairly wealthy; to deny that to others, especially those who don’t have the same material and political privileges as him, is shortsighted at best and deeply selfish at worst.

I still find his position baffling – one of the reasons people love Morrissey so much is because his lyrics speak so directly to those who feel as if they are outsiders, and his large gay and Mexican fan bases show how powerful that draw is. Indeed, his song Mexico criticises racism in America; “if you’re rich and you’re white you’ll be alright”. It’s a sentiment at odds with his support of UKIP, who are often considered to be exclusionary and racist, and highlights the inherent contradiction in many arguments for Brexit.

Although Nigel Farage, who Morrissey says he “likes a great deal”, might like to see himself as a political black sheep, he’s a millionaire public school-educated ex-banker – not an outsider in any real sense.

It’s a stark comparison to those who really are oppressed and who really are outsiders – the migrants and refugees that Brexit will most severely impact – who Morrissey seems completely unable to defend because of his desperation to cling onto an idealised version of England. Whether Morrissey’s criticism of the BBC’s coverage of Brexit is to do with his adolescent fixation on insulting authority figures or whether it really is about politics, he’s only adding 
to a damaging narrative that alienates those in our society who most need to be supported.

Will I always love Morrissey’s music? Of course. But when it comes to politics, he’d be best taking his own advice... Get Off The Stage.

Emily Reynolds is a freelance writer for Vice, New York magazine and The Guardian, among others. Her book A Beginner’s Guide To Losing Your Mind is out next year.
 
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Touching little boys on the penis isn't a race.
Well, it's a race to see who can touch the most the fastest with some of them, but you know...

Poor defense there, since you know, most of the people shrieking about Muslims are lily-white, and most Muslims are not. You cannot ignore the racial implications since nearly every slur against Muslims doubles as a racial epithet.


Most Catholics are non white
 
It's not 'In my opinion'. Nigel has never been a Banker and as per Nigel himself, he is 'broke'.
Straight from the horse's mouth, so we know it's true. Sorry but it's still most definitely your opinion.

Well let's give him the benefit of the doubt, maybe he is broke, what do we know, but the fact remains that his MEP salary is €100k a year for a start (once claiming he took up to £2 million in expenses, not that he bothers to turn up most of the time). That's not taking into account:

He's reported to be living in a £4m house in Chelsea, and yet he's still broke.
He owns a ~£500k house in the country, yet he's still broke.
He has/had wealthy funders behind UKIP (along with the EU taxpayers), and yet he's still broke.
He has declared income of more than €10,000 per month in addition to his MEP salary but is breaking ethics rules by not saying where it comes from. *
And yet he's still broke.

I'm beginning to suspect that his definition of 'broke' is not really what most people would understand it to be.

Never been a banker, fair enough, they should have done better, although I suspect most people will consider "city broker" to be similar enough (although ironically enough, he seems to have done much better out of the EU compared to his time in the city.).

* Interesting side note: Out of 715 MEPs, only 7 declared the above excess of €10k per month additional income, which includes Farage.

Which means that in terms of income from outside sources, he is not only in the top 10% here of an already privileged group, but the top 1%.
 
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Straight from the horse's mouth, so we know it's true. Sorry but it's still most definitely your opinion.

Well let's give him the benefit of the doubt, maybe he is broke, what do we know, but the fact remains that his MEP salary is €100k a year for a start (once claiming he took up to £2 million in expenses, not that he bothers to turn up most of the time). That's not taking into account:

He's reported to be living in a £4m house in Chelsea, and yet he's still broke.
He owns a ~£500k house in the country, yet he's still broke.
He has/had wealthy funders behind UKIP (along with the EU taxpayers), and yet he's still broke.
He has declared income of more than €10,000 per month in addition to his MEP salary but is breaking ethics rules by not saying where it comes from. *
And yet he's still broke.

I'm beginning to suspect that his definition of 'broke' is not really what most people would understand it to be.

Never been a banker, fair enough, they should have done better, although I suspect most people will consider "city broker" to be similar enough (although ironically enough, he seems to have done much better out of the EU compared to his time in the city.).

* Interesting side note: Out of 715 MEPs, only 7 declared the above excess of €10k per month additional income, which includes Farage.
He is not only in the top 10% here of an already privileged group, but the top 1%.

As far as I'm aware, the house he lives in when in London (shared with another person I believe) is either all, or partly paid for by LBC. The house in the country as you say, his wife (possibly ex by now?) lives in that house not him (they have children).

The main UKIP funder that I am aware of WAS Arron Banks. A pleasant, down-to-earth RICH man, who loves Britain and who has, and has always had good intentions (no hidden agenda). Those funds went to UKIP. Not Nigel.

I'm not well-versed in MEP salaries. But the figure you have stated I'm guessing is before tax. I do know that an MEP will get several hundred Euros each day (just for turning up) apparently for expenses. By his own admission, he will not go to Brussels unless necessary.

He works on LBC Monday to Thursday and on Sunday. He also contributes on Fox News. I know he travels to America to give 'talks' quite often too. When we officially leave the EU, Nigel and all the other British MEPS will be out of a job. So Nigel establishing a new career before that happens is acceptable. They are supposed to be receiving a type of 'redundancy' payment too, but, the UKIP MEPS believe this will be withheld. (As far as I'm concerned, no amount of money will be enough for what UKIP has done for Britain).

Nigel traded metals before he entered politics.

Two divorces and several children will make anybody 'broke'.

I forgot to mention how down-to-earth Nigel is too ;)

 
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It's always some pale old toad accused of diddling the kiddles. Most Catholics are deluded and vile, but at least the iconography is pretty to look at.

You are the worst poster to sign up to this website in quite some time. You're just another Marred but with a slightly larger word count.
 
You are the worst poster to sign up to this website in quite some time. You're just another Marred but with a slightly larger word count.
Thank you for the encouragement. I've been here for twenty years in one form or another. Take a thumbs up for your effort.
 
Poorly written, no real context, it's all about her. Came off as an average solo post, not an article by a journalist.
 


Regarding the Huffingtonpost article, a possible issue of putting more and more things under the racist umbrella, is it could eventually lesson the severity of the words 'racist' and 'racism', a bit like branding the word Nazi around so freely to people who perhaps vote Tory.

I don't think the article stands up to scrutiny, it implies a white person can be racist to another white person due to the one on the receiving end being a Christian for example? How does that work?

Also, what Morrissey said about Berlin is not particularly racist, think of it this way, if you invited a bunch of random people to come and live in your house, do you think they would all care about it and treat it as well as you do? Regardless of their race, creed or colour.

Being on the left is something I have always identified myself with being, I've only ever voted Labour for example but unfortunately many of the world's problems are allowed to fester under such liberal ideology. I'd say I'm more central now, I think when you are young you are more idealistic and as you get older you realise the rotten few spoil it for the rest of us. Not to mention some people on this site are so left wing, they make Lily Allen come across like Joseph Stalin!
 
“In any case, though many of those who voted Leave aren’t racist, what pro-Brexiters have done is stand alongside campaigners who certainly are, and there’s the question of whether a vote for Leave was also an implicit legitimation of that racism. Since the EU referendum, hundreds of incidents of hate crimes have been reported, with many perpetrators telling victims to “go back to your own country”. It’s not hard to see a link between this Us vs Them mentality and the result of the referendum, with freshly emerging racist narratives vindicating the views of many who had previously kept their opinions silent and who now feel empowered to air them publicly – and sometimes violently. The murder of Jo Cox, which came at the height of the Brexit debate, should also have served as a stark reminder of what was at stake when we decided whether to stay in the European Union; a staunch campaigner for the rights of refugees, immigrants and other minorities, Cox represented the multicultural values that genuinely do make Britain great.”

This paragraph sorta irks me. It seems to say that though many leave voters aren’t racist they’re responsible for the racists who did vote to leave and what they do after the vote even if the non racists voted to leave due to financial concerns or interest in Britain retain its full governing autonomy. That they should have see. That they should have seen how the racists would react and take responsibility for them and there actions and vote against they’re ownnjnterest. It still seems like labeling leave voters as racists or racist enablers and validating morrisseys comments about the media. You could easily say that the remain voters should have recognized what was at stake and ran a better campaign that didn’t alientate and try to shame or frighten everyone who didn’t think remaining was a good idea beacuase as it turned out that was a losing strategy and they needed those people
 
As far as I'm aware, the house he lives in when in London (shared with another person I believe) is either all, or partly paid for by LBC. The house in the country as you say, his wife (possibly ex by now?) lives in that house not him (they have children).

The main UKIP funder that I am aware of WAS Arron Banks. A pleasant, down-to-earth RICH man, who loves Britain and who has, and has always had good intentions (no hidden agenda). Those funds went to UKIP. Not Nigel.

I'm not well-versed in MEP salaries. But the figure you have stated I'm guessing is before tax. I do know that an MEP will get several hundred Euros each day (just for turning up) apparently for expenses. By his own admission, he will not go to Brussels unless necessary.

He works on LBC Monday to Thursday and on Sunday. He also contributes on Fox News. I know he travels to America to give 'talks' quite often too. When we officially leave the EU, Nigel and all the other British MEPS will be out of a job. So Nigel establishing a new career before that happens is acceptable. They are supposed to be receiving a type of 'redundancy' payment too, but, the UKIP MEPS believe this will be withheld. (As far as I'm concerned, no amount of money will be enough for what UKIP has done for Britain).

Nigel traded metals before he entered politics.

Two divorces and several children will make anybody 'broke'.

I forgot to mention how down-to-earth Nigel is too ;)


This is the worst post I've seen on the entire internet ever, congratulations
 
I'm beginning to suspect that his definition of 'broke' is not really what most people would understand it to be..

It rings of being out of touch in the same way as House Republicans operating under the delusion that $400K is the low end of "middle class."
 
It rings of being out of touch in the same way as House Republicans operating under the delusion that $400K is the low end of "middle class."

It does. The only way I could imagine him being broke is if he was in a lot of debt. If you make a million but owe two you're still broke
 
Emily Reynolds' article is the sort of whining excrement that typifies that god awful 'news'paper perfectly.
 
Emily Reynolds' article is the sort of whining excrement that typifies that god awful 'news'paper perfectly.

Do tell me how many times you've bought that newspaper to form that opinion.

Also - would you say the same if it was in the Mail, Express, Telegraph?
 
...Arron Banks. A pleasant, down-to-earth RICH man,
Eh ok Great?
who loves Britain and who has, and has always had good intentions (no hidden agenda). Those funds went to UKIP. Not Nigel.
Exactly, so Nige should have had plenty of his generous salary left without having to dip into it to push the UKIP line. And even if he did, that's an entirely discretionary luxury that few could afford.

He works on LBC Monday to Thursday and on Sunday. He also contributes on Fox News. I know he travels to America to give 'talks' quite often too. When we officially leave the EU, Nigel and all the other British MEPS will be out of a job. So Nigel establishing a new career before that happens is acceptable. They are supposed to be receiving a type of 'redundancy' payment too, but, the UKIP MEPS believe this will be withheld.

So it's unlikely that he's actually broke then.

Unless of course he has other significant debts we don't know about, in which case it might call into question his financial judgement on such issues. One of his brokerage companies ended up insolvent.

edit: Never mind, who are we kidding. There is no economic sanity behind the Leave campaign apart from hard-right free marketeer deregulation and disaster capitalism.

Two divorces and several children will make anybody 'broke'.
One divorce apparently (twenty years ago), and most of those people in similar circumstances are probably earning less than €200k a year.
 
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I don't know why people are so offended. I was violently against Brexit, I eat meat and I don't care about politics in the middle East. But I am not offended, and I actually find Moz's views generally amusing. He is an artist, so he lives his life like one. Why should he be what you are, what is politically correct, what is "right" nowadays? We have all lost the compass, why shouldn't he. Why should he be your teenage hero anymore? I think he has gone from impressionism to expressionism. Vivid colours in your face, ugliness, flamboyance, all reality filtered through the artist's feelings. To me, his latest albums distill desperation, chaos, ambivalence, loneliness. What was a shy, carefully amassed bedroom melancholy has finally exploded into a crazy running on the streets, yelling at everything and everyone, completely out of proportion in the same way his young isolation was. What were you expecting? It's still his art, and I respect art.
 

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