Morrissey Strikes Back:
The Pin is Mightier than the Sword

2,932 words

“I straighten up, and my position is one of hope. The march backwards is over, and life has begun again.” — Morrissey

 A couple weeks ago, I wrote an article about the iconic ex-Smiths singer and champion of the white race Morrissey and his drift to the Right and support of Anne-Marie Waters and her party For Britain.

I wrote that article in response to a minor controversy sparked by a picture of Morrissey wearing a For Britain pin backstage at one of his New York concerts. “OK,” I thought “Here’s my excuse to write that fanboyish Morrissey article I’ve always wanted to write but was just waiting for it to become remotely topical.”

On top of this, it’s not often that you find yourself uniquely qualified return a favor to one of your heroes. Morrissey has given me a lot over the years. Now, he finds himself in a racism controversy and under assault by mobs of SJWs, and I just happen to be an elite meme warrior skilled at battling SJWs and justifying racism. I write for a publication that guarantees that my spirited defense would be read by . . . well, someone. My lowly article may not be much against the combined arms of the mainstream media, like Tom Hanks firing his pistol at the encroaching panzer, but I’m older now, and I’m a clever swine, and it’s the least I could do.

So I wrote that fanboyish Morrissey article which came out May 13, which, coincidentally, was the same day Morrissey appeared on Jimmy Fallon once again wearing the infamous For Britain pin. Having now worn the pin on national TV and then the Morrissey Pingate controversy exploded ten times bigger and has resulted in bannings and deplatforming for both Morrissey and Anne-Marie Waters.

Oh, but now that Morrissey a big story, all sorts of people on the Right want to come out and start defending Morrissey in a shameless attempt to be like me. Brendan O’Neill at Spiked wrote a piece entitled “Morrissey Is the Rock Rebel We Need Right Now.” What, like Morrissey isn’t the rock rebel we need ALL THE TIME? Get out of here, poseur. David Marcus over at the Federalist wrote one called “Banning Morrissey Only Makes Him Stronger,” and Paul Joseph Watson has now written a couple piece articles defending Morrissey, one of which made the front of Drudge.

But me? I was defending Morrissey before it was cool, because I’m a TRVE FAN. I didn’t wait for him to appear on Fallon. I did not hesitate to answer the bugle call. The minute Pingate broke, I mounted my steed and galloped, saber in hand, towards the sound of guns. I’m not one of those bandwagon hoppers who only defends Morrissey because it’s trendy. Those guys don’t feel Morrissey’s music like I do. They don’t understand what he’s about. Hell, Paul Joseph Watson once called Morrissey “the English Kanye.” Oh, fuck you, Paul. You’re lucky that you didn’t say that to my face. Kanye West is not fit to lace Morrissey’s boots (which are Doc Martins, of course, with red laces)

I digress.

Morrissey on Fallon

On May 13, Morrissey appeared on Jimmy Fallon’s show and performed the song “Mother Starship”  by early ’70s glam rocker Jobriath, a longtime fascination for Morrissey’s.

Jobriath is a guy best known for failing spectacularly despite an unprecedented hype campaign, sort of the musical equivalent of Anna Sten. He was supposed to be America’s answer to David Bowie. He was more Bowie than Bowie. He was gay (actually gay, not just saying it to be edgy like Bowie) and wore even more outrageous costumes. His half-million dollar recording contract was the largest ever at the time, and a promotional campaign included billboards in Times Square and 250 posters on NYC buses. Despite critical acclaim and a small but rabid cult following who “got it,” most of the record buying public did not “get it.” Jobriath was soon dropped from his label and faded into obscurity before dying of AIDS in 1983.

Over the years, Morrissey has taken a personal interest in keeping the memory and legacy of Jobriath alive by overseeing the re-issue of his music and citing him as inspiration in numerous interviews. So when Morrissey decided to record an album of covers, he included a song by Jobriath, and he arrived on the set of Jimmy Fallon ready to introduce the music of Jobriath to a new generation.

But after the performance, no one was wanting to talk about Jobriath, and everyone was wanting to know about the damn pin he was wearing.

The next day, it was in all the music newsites from Pitchfork to Stereogum to NME. Then the story broke in the mainstream media on both sides of the Atlantic: Huffington Post, Daily Mail, Fox News. Now, the pin had already caused minor controversy the week before when a picture was taken of him wearing it backstage at a show. But now he was wearing it on national television, and so it was a bigger story.

Jimmy Fallon himself came under some fire for having allowed Morrissey to wear the pin in the first place. This is funny for a couple reasons. First, Jimmy Fallon cannot possibly be expected know about every fringe party in Britain, and even if he did, For Britain’s platform would not be considered all that radical by the standards of American politics. The platform that Donald Trump ran on in 2016 was arguably more radical than For Britain.

What’s funny about this pin controversy is that you couldn’t even see what the pin said just by watching Morrissey on TV. If the media said nothing, it would have had a negligible effect.

But no. They can’t resist. They have to tell their audiences of millions “Hey, remember Morrissey? That singer you like? Yeah, well he now supports this party called For Britain. Maybe you should check them out.” It is the media, far more than Morrissey himself, who is actually promoting For Britain.

This is very similar to when Stormer Book Clubs go flyering on a college campus in the middle of the night. The first person who sees a flyer calls campus police, who are down in 10 minutes. Maybe 15 people end up seeing the flyers before they are all removed.

But then local TV reporters show up, and they just cannot resist the temptation to show their viewers the flyers. The clip gets shared around social media, and so instead of 15 people seeing the flyers, thousands, sometimes millions of people end up seeing them.

The media cannot resist the temptation to do this. People call them out on this all the time “Hey, you’re amplifying their message,” and they keep doing it.

Neither the commie nor the capitalist in them can resist the dopamine temptation. The commie cannot resist the temptation to virtue signal, and the capitalist cannot resist money-generating clicks that hot-button stories about race yield. If an issue can be connected to race, it will be connected to race for the above-mentioned reasons.

This is some amazing exposure for a relatively unknown party like For Britain. Loads of free advertising that associates them with their iconic and beloved spokesman, plus all the shares and retweets. How much would all that cost if you went to an agency? Morrissey is a strong brand name.

On May 20, Anne-Marie Waters posted a video called “Thank You Morrissey.” “I can tell you that the traffic to our website exploded with the story breaking of you wearing the For Britain button badge, which you have been wearing everywhere from what I can see.”

She then added a mocking thanks to the Daily Mail for inadvertent assistance: “Thank you also to the Daily Mail for your hysterical coverage of this. It has brought loads of people to the party. We’ve grown in membership, products have been selling, and website traffic is huge. Thank you, Morrissey. I hope to meet you one day. Thank you, Daily Mail. Keep up the hysterical smearing. It’s having the opposite effect. You are driving people to us. Thanks.”

This too caused much mouth-foaming and tearing of garments from the usual suspects.

Spillers Records

With a name like Ashli Todd, I can only assume that her parents intended for her to become either a stripper or a porn star. I can think of no other explanation for the spelling of her first name. But it appears that Ms. Todd decided to rebel against her parents by becoming the owner of Spillers Records. Good call, Ashli, as you have neither the face nor the body for porn.

Established in 1894, Spillers Records of Cardiff, Wales is recognized as the oldest record shop in the world. Granted it’s moved locations since it opened so it’s not like if you go there, you’re walking into a 123-year-old record store or anything. Maybe it’s the oldest record-selling business, but calling it the “oldest record shop” necessitates an asterisk if you ask me.

Last week, Ms. Todd (I’m assuming from her cat-ladylike behavior that she is a spinster) made international headlines when she announced that Spillers Records was banning the sale of Morrissey’s music. “I’m saddened but ultimately not surprised that Spillers is unable to stock Morrissey’s releases any longer,” Ms. Todd said. “I only wished I’d done it sooner.”

This story was reported by mainstream outlets like Newsweek, People.com, The Guardian, and many, many more. Mind you, Spillers Records is not a chain. It’s one shop. One shop out of countless thousands bans Morrissey, and it makes news all over the world. That’s the degree of hostility towards Moz at the moment that blows up what should be a minor story into a major story, anything to try to embarrass him.

But by this point, conservative media outlets were waking up to the “Morrissey has gone Right-wing” controversy and began pushing back at the MSM narrative. Breitbart reported on it and Paul Joseph Watson wrote a piece in Morrissey’s defense for Infowars.

I imagine Spillers will get a short-term boost in online orders from fellow SJWs wanting to reward wokeness. How much she will lose in potential customers, I do not know. I don’t know what percentage of her clientele are diehard Morrissey loyalists. Probably not enough to tank the business. But I can tell you that if I ever win a trip to Cardiff (the only way I’d go), I definitely will not be shopping at Spillers.

The Liverpool Subway

So Morrissey had some posters put up throughout the Merseyrail subway system. It was just an innocuous picture of Morrissey’s face. Nothing inflammatory.

But even that was too much for 32-year-old Jack Dotchin (yes, this as a grown man speaking): “[The things Morrissey has said] offend me and a lot of other people. He’s very far right these days, going on about immigrants. It’s just strange to think Merseyrail, being a public service for the people, is advertising someone with his views. It’s just pictures of Morrissey with his new album. He’s not doing anything inappropriate but his name is a by-name for questionable views at the moment.”

Mr. Dotchin complained to the Merseyrail authorities who then dutifully removed all the posters.

But then the same thing happened with the For Britain pin. The media then comes in and just has to show you the verboten image. So instead of only the Liverpudlian commuters, now the poster is being seen by people all over the world. And assuming Merseyrail refunded Morrissey’s money, Moz just scored a ton of free advertising. The Left never learns.

By this point, a lot of people are aware of the brewing Moz controversy, and more and more people started coming out of the woodwork to call out the obvious witch hunt. Libertarian Tim Worstall, the proud owner of the most obnoxious writing style ever (OK, 2nd after Tom Robbins), wrote a piece called “Not To Defend Morrissey but To Defend Morrissey.”

Fiona Dodwell of Tremr gave a rare Left-wing defense of Morrissey. “To be truly open, to be a genuine liberal in 2019, you cannot try to silence/remove anybody based on their opinion.” Dodwell says, “Nobody is being slandered, nobody is being persecuted, nobody is being harmed in the examples which inspired my writing today. In the absence of criminal activity or abuse, we cannot advocate the removal/banning/silencing of anybody.”

For Britain Banned from Twitter

What does it say about our political systems when all it takes for a party to be considered a threat to the establishment is an endorsement from a pop singer? A fringe Right-wing populist party? They can tolerate that. But a fringe Right-wing populist party endorsed by Morrissey? SHUT IT DOWN!!!

And what does it say about Morrissey? Well, it says he apparently has a lot of goddamn clout with the British people. Granted, Morrissey is not just any pop singer. He has one of the most cultishly obsessive fanbases this side of Tori Amos and has inspired countless thousands to take up vegetarianism or start reading Oscar Wilde. It’s not unreasonable to think that some people would take up Right-wing populism for no other reason than because Morrissey told them to. How many? Who knows? But significantly more than zero.

So Twitter banned @ForBritainParty. Anne-Marie Waters’ personal account was already banned, but now the party’s Twitter account is banned too. @ForBritainChair still remains as well as the unofficial account @TweetForBritain.

Anne-Marie took to YouTube to made a personal appeal to Donald Trump for assistance on the matter. Well, good luck with that, sister. Here in America, we can’t even get Trump to do something about his own supporters being banned. Although in fairness to Waters, it doesn’t hurt to ask. After all, Trump did throw a few retweet to Jayda Fransen when she was on trial for hate speech. It’s not like Trump has never done anything for fringe Right-wing parties in the UK before.

An Aside on Trump

Whether or not Trump ever intends to do something about social media censorship, I don’t know. Most casual observers believe he will surely lose the election in 2020, and he has the power to make Big Tech protect 1st Amendment rights if he wanted to. So why hasn’t he done it already?

Well, here’s my 4d chess theory on that. If Trump pulled the trigger on Big Tech now, he would just be letting a bunch of fringe Right-wing people back on the internet. “Nazis” would be the primary beneficiaries of Trump going 1st Amendment right now, and so the media would brand him pro-Nazi. Trump wants to wait for Twitter to start banning less controversial people.

And they will eventually. Twitter has pretty much run out of hardcore White Nationalists to ban, and the Left, never knowing when to quit, is going to continue agitating for more bannings. The longer Trump waits to do something, the less controversial and politically damaging it will be when he does.

But this is just my 4D chess theory. And yes, 4D chess theories have a pretty lousy track record. But Trump does call out social media companies whenever they censor conservatives, when he could just ignore the matter altogether. This makes me think he might be mentally preparing the public for when he does do something. He can say “I asked them to stop, and they wouldn’t stop. I had no choice but to step in.” Boomers might not be aware of the issue of social media censorship issue, so he has to keep reminding them that this is an issue.

Again, just a theory.

Morrissey Responds

By this point, the Pingate controversy is over two weeks old, and the slings and arrows are still flying. For two weeks, malevolent Left-wing philistines have sought to discredit the Mozster while a valiant pro-Moz resistance (led by yours truly) have fought back tenaciously. But all the while, Morrissey, the hero of this tale, being the strong and silent type, remained aloof.

But the silence breaks, and Morrissey doubles down.

OK, first I see that Morrissey forgot to thank me personally. That’s cool, Moz. You’re a busy man with a lot on your mind. You can just mention me in the liner notes of your next album. No hurry.

Second, while that is not the most Right-wing thing I have ever read, but it is unmistakably anti-Left. Certainly the references to “Soviet Britain,” “fashionable outrage,” and “disingenuous media” can only refer to the Left. He does say to “ignore the cold eyes of fascism” but then again, Morrissey thinks Hitler was Left-wing, so that might also be a swipe at the Left.

But what really stands out is how uncharacteristically optimistic Morrissey is in tone. The author of “Unlovable,” “Earth Is the Loneliest Planet,” “Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now,” and multiple songs about suicide is now striking a confident, hopeful, and life-affirming tone. Of all of Morrissey recent reversals of opinion, his new “Ya know, maybe life isn’t so bad after all” stance might be the most shocking of all. There were clues from the beginning that Moz was a Right-winger in the making, but this whole “life is good” things is a real curveball coming from Morrissey.

But then why should he feel otherwise? Cicero once said “I have always been of the opinion that infamy earned by doing what is right is not infamy at all, but glory.” Well, if that’s true, the Morrissey must be doing some heavy-duty basking right now.

Post Script

Late-Breaking News: StyxHexenhammer666 and Black Pigeon Speaks are now on the front page of the Morrissey-Solo web page: