The Man, the Meme, Morrissey

3,974 words

You would think that after more than thirty-five years in the public eye that there would be no more surprises left. You would think that now that he’s turning 60, all the youthful rebellion would be long gone. And you would think that after the last two months of the media losing their collective marbles over Moz’s red-pilled statements and his support for the Right-wing populist party For Britain, that Morrissey would be ready to lay low for a while.

But if you thought those things, then you would be wrong on all three counts. Morrissey is a testament to the fact that one need not be a punk rock musician in order to embody the spirit of punk. In fact, those who are the most punk are rarely ever punk rock musicians. Johnny Rotten lamented that punk was originally about individualism, but quickly became a uniform. I have always been of the belief that Johnny Rotten was the only punk rock musician who truly embodies that punk spirit – and he got tired of punk rock music after one album.

It doesn’t get much more punk rock than the early ‘90s dance group, The KLF. The KLF were two failed musicians turned music business insiders who, after learning how the music industry really works from the inside, decided to give music another go. In 1988, they released a book called The Manual: How to Have a Number One the Easy Way where they explained how any idiot, regardless of talent, could make a hit record if they knew how to game the system (highly recommended; read it here). They then went and proved it by releasing a slew of international hit singles and a hit album. But once hitting the pinnacle of fame and success, The KLF broke up, destroying their entire back catalog and topping it off by setting one million pounds of the money they made on fire. The group was an artistic troll from the beginning. Now that’s punk rock.

This most recent Morrissey controversy started almost two months ago, and has been raging non-stop ever since. If you’re just now tuning in, you can catch up on what’s been going on (it’s quite a long story at this point) by reading the first two installments of this series, “Fash Morrissey,” and the follow-up, “Morrissey Strikes Back.”

Here’s the CliffsNotes version. In 2018, Morrissey did an interview for his Website in which he said some woke stuff about immigration and expressed support for For Britain, a populist party led by Anne Marie Waters and other ex-UKIPers. For Britain, justly or unjustly, has been labeled Far Right by the media, mostly due to its criticism of Islam and its hardline position on immigration. Nigel Farage didn’t exactly help matters when he called Anne Marie Waters and her supporters “a bunch of racists and Nazis.” Thus, Morrissey endorsing For Britain caused a mild controversy at the time, and was a big break for the party. But eventually, the controversy died down.

It erupted again in May, when Morrissey was photographed backstage at one of his New York concerts wearing a For Britain pin. The photo went viral, and then a supernova of Leftist derangement exploded when Morrissey wore the pin again on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon. Morrissey was roundly denounced by the Leftist media and all the SJW celebrities, and poor For Britain got banned from Twitter as a result of the new exposure. But Moz did not cuck. He doubled down.

That’s the Morrissey difference. Not only does he have the balls to say what needs to be said, he has the moral fortitude to withstand the heat that goes along with saying what needs to be said.

It’s interesting to compare Morrissey’s recent controversies with that of comedian John Cleese of Monty Python and Fawlty Towers fame. Like Morrissey, Cleese is a man with an unassailable artistic legacy and enough money that he can afford to be more honest than most. And like Morrissey, Cleese is no stranger to controversy, having dealt with censors and irate busybodies all his life. You would think that if anyone could follow Morrissey’s lead and speak the truth about what is happening to Britain, it would be a battle-hardened contrarian like John Cleese. He gonna be dead soon, so what does he care? And it’s not like he’s doesn’t have a stake in it. If the Left triumphs, they may well ban Monty Python on the grounds that it’s far too white.

Cleese just barely dipped his toe into the water when he said that London is no longer an English city. He didn’t say anything bad about any other race other than imply that they were not English. It wasn’t much, but it was a start. And, of course, it was a perfectly true statement, and something that needs to be said, and said more often.

But then the backlash set in. “What? Are you saying only white people can be English? That’s racist! What about the black players on England’s football team? Are you saying those people aren’t English? London is as English as it always was!”

It’s ironic and shows the disingenuous nature of the Left that on the one hand, they can openly celebrate white Britons being a minority in Britain’s capitol – but don’t you dare say it isn’t English! One moment, they are celebrating London’s multiculturalism, and the next (if not simultaneously) insist it’s one hundred percent English. Well, if English isn’t a race or an ethnicity, and it’s not any particular culture either, than just what the hell is it?

Under fire, Cleese started walking things back. “Look, what I meant was, uh . . .” He really let down the people who defended him. I lost respect for him. How bold Cleese is when he’s mocking religion, the conservatives, or other low-hanging fruit – yet how quickly he cowers and folds like a deck of cards in the face of the rabid Leftist mob. If “London is no longer an English city” is what Cleese is willing to say, what John Cleese thinks is probably a bit more hardcore than just that. But in the end, he just couldn’t take the heat, and went back to living a lie and pretending like everything is fine.

That’s the Morrissey difference. He doesn’t cuck. Even Mel Gibson cucked eventually (Mel’s dad remains a rock of courage and truth, though). But Morrissey is a man who knows how to stick to his guns. Indeed, he’ll do more than that. He’ll take out a bigger gun.

Our hero released a statement on his Website which ended by saying, “I straighten up, and my position is one of hope. The march backwards is over, and life has begun again.” In light of recent events, that seem less a poetic expression than prophecy, After having been under siege by the Leftist media for weeks, always retreating, he has turned his guns around. He’s no longer in a defensive posture; he’s begun what appears to be something of a counter-offensive. Morrissey is saying and doing things that he knows will outrage all the usual suspects and some of his fans, but like Rhett Butler, he just doesn’t give a damn anymore.

On June 24, Morrissey released an interview on his official Website, Morrissey Central, which he recorded with his nephew and the site’s Webmaster, Sam Esty Rayner (who’s true and still thinks the world of Moz). In it, Morrissey talked about a variety of subjects, from his treatment by the media to his new album, as well as veganism and Robert Smith. He also once again expressed his admiration for Anne Marie Waters and his support for For Britain. But there were a few comments that were particularly interesting from a Dissident Right perspective, and a couple in particular that put Morrissey back in the headlines, put the Left into a fresh tizzy, and drew a firm line in the sand.

If you ain’t Ride or Die for Morrissey, you best get out now. All of you people saying that you’d follow Morrissey to the Gates of Hell, now’s your chance to prove it, because we’re going there. Here we go.

Here are some choice selections from the aforementioned interview:

Sam: The Manchester Arena bombing took place on your birthday, and I was there celebrating with you, and I came into the room and announced that at least 19 kids were dead. You spoke out about it immediately, yet you weren’t invited to sing at the Arena event for Manchester. Why was this?

Morrissey: Because I do look back in anger! I would have sung, “World Peace is None of Your Business,” or “Life is a Pigsty,” or something truthful and meaningful. If my child had been killed at Manchester Arena, I wouldn’t be lighting candles and swaying.  I’d be in a complete rage. . . .

Sam: But you are a Brexiteer?

Morrissey: I didn’t vote in the referendum, although I can see how there is absolutely nothing attractive about the EU. My view has always been that the result of the referendum must be carried through. If the vote had been remain, there would be absolutely no question that we would remain. In the interest of true democracy, you cannot argue against the wish of the people. Without the people, nobody in high office gets paid. . . .

Sam: Do you share the sorrow over Notre Dame?

Morrissey: Yes, but let’s be realistic. It’s arson. Everybody knows that.

Sam: Why do you say that?

Morrissey: You can judge it by the speed by which the corporate media rushed to call it an accident, even though the fire had just started and no one was in any position to know anything. Brainwashing! It’s a bit like hearing the full reason behind a plane crash, even though the plane has yet to hit the ocean.

Good to see that Moz is not afraid to don the tinfoil hat. But here’s the part that became the focal point of so much Leftist agony:

Sam: Well, why For Britain?

Morrissey: I think Anne Marie Waters is the only British party leader who can unite the Left and Right. I don’t know any other party leader who even wants to do this. The UK is a dangerously hateful place now, and I think we need someone to put a stop to the lunacy and to speak for everyone. I see Anne Marie Waters as this person. She is extremely intelligent, ferociously dedicated to this country, she is very engaging, and also very funny at times.

Sam: The obvious press assessment is that she is racist, but I haven’t heard her say anything racist.

Morrissey: Neither have I. But if you call someone racist in modern Britain, you are telling them that you have run out of words. You are shutting the debate down and running off. The word is meaningless now. Everyone ultimately prefers their own race. Does this make everyone racist? The people who reduce every conversation down to a matter of race could be said to be the most traditionally “racist,” because everything in life is not exclusively a question of race, so why make it so? Diversity can’t possibly be a strength if everyone has ideas that will never correspond. If borders are such terrible things, then why did they ever exist in the first place? Borders bring order.

In saying “everyone ultimately prefers their own race,” Morrissey took “It’s okay to be white” to the next level: “It’s okay for white people to prefer white people.” Certainly, it’s a true statement. New York is a city where everyone is proudly anti-racist, and Right-wing racists are as rare as rooster’s eggs. But even in PC New York, the different races tend to set up their own little colonies in order to be around people like themselves, where there are a wide selection of shops and restaurants tailored to their specific demographic’s tastes and sensibilities, and where the bars play the kind of music their demographic listens to. Young white people will move to Williamsburg, Greenpoint, or Astoria to be around other young white people. Asians might settle in Flushing to be around other Asians. Indians and Hispanics, and yes, even Bengalis have their own turf in New York. And one thing you can say about blacks in New York – whether they are from Queens, Brooklyn, Harlem, or the Bronx – they are fiercely and vocally proud of where they are from. No one really “hates” anyone in New York, and yet most people, when money is no object, tend to choose to live around people like themselves.

New York, like most cosmopolitan cities, is only able to maintain multiculturalism by making sure every race has its own territory. This leads to metaphorical, and sometimes literal, interracial turf wars. If whites move into black areas, rents go up and the blacks get mad. If blacks move into white areas, crime goes up and the whites get mad. And New York also has the advantage of having smarter blacks. A large portion of New York blacks are descendants of slaves who were either smart enough to figure out a way to escape and make it north, or else were smart enough to find a way to buy their freedom.

The Pakistani Manchester Labour MP Afzal Khan had the audacity to tell His Excellency Morrissey – the man who put Manchester on the goddamn map – that he was not welcome in Manchester. Oh, my. If Morrissey thought it was hard enough when he belonged there, It’s gonna be twice as hard now. It should be noted that Afzal Khan is Labour’s shadow Immigration Minister, so he has an interest in seeing a patriot like Morrissey smeared.

There were the predictable hysterics and headlines from the usual suspects. One from The Independent particularly irked Morrissey:

I like how they also include a link to “Morrissey’s most controversial quotes” so that if you don’t hate Morrissey by the end of the article, they can give you more reasons in the hope that maybe one of those will do the trick.

Morrissey took great exception to being characterized as “Far Right,” which in Britain is a pejorative with a lot of loaded implications. For the record, I do not believe that Morrissey is “Far Right.” He’s something of a red-pilled liberal who understands that there are unavoidable and irreconcilable realities about race and identity which will be disastrous for the West if things continue as they are.

In an another amusing episode, the more than seven hundred thousand strong subreddit “indieheads” announced a ban on sharing Morrissey content:

We pride ourselves on being an open and safe space to discuss music. That’s why headlines like “Morrissey reaffirms support for far-right party and claims ‘everyone prefers their own race’” don’t sit well with us. Morrissey has made it very apparent that he is, in fact, a racist, as he continues to not only share his bigoted thoughts but also show support by wearing a pin supporting an anti-Islam political party with a button over his heart on television and during his Broadway residency. We do not want to publicize him any longer- and he will no longer be given a platform on our subreddit.

This rule is not to ignore his hateful actions, but to take away his audience, even if it is just a small part of it. Thank you for your understanding.

Previously, indieheads had only ever banned Weezer for not being genuinely indie.

So why is Moz doing all this? To the untrained eye, it looks likehe is pulling a KLF: taking millions of pounds in future revenue and just setting it on fire. Is this performance art? I think we can rule out money as a motivator.

One commenter on the Morrissey-Solo message board had his own theory. “Why do you think this is happening?” he wrote. “And the answer you get is the obvious one. Morrissey is a racist right-winger, and he doesn’t care who knows anymore.” Okay, that is one possibility. But while perhaps he is not really a racist Right-winger, he definitely no longer cares if people call him one. The only alternative is to pull a John Cleese: live a lie and pretend like the Titanic is not sinking. That’s not the Morrissey way.

One curious aspect of the interview is that it was recorded in April, but not released until June. Why the delay? The most likely explanation is that when the interview was first recorded, someone probably sat Morrissey down and said, “Moz, I think you went a little too hardcore in that interview. If you put that out, you would lose all your liberal fans, and you will be smeared as a racist in the media. Might not be a good idea to release that with a North American tour coming up . . .” And maybe Moz saw sense in that at the time. So what happened between then and now that made Morrissey say, “Fuck it, release the interview, I want them to know”?

What happened was that he went on his North American tour, but then lost all his liberal fans and was smeared as a racist anyway because he wore a pin. But at the same time, Morrissey became something of a folk hero on the Right, as they were thrilled to see a big-name star of Morrissey’s stature and street cred willing to give the middle finger to the PC Left. Some of the biggest names in Right-wing alt-media were praising Morrissey’s punk rock audacity. Black Pigeon Speaks, with half a million subscribers, made a tribute video to Morrissey, as did StyxhexenHammer (of whom Moz is reportedly a fan), and last week Sargon of Akkad did a stream entitled “Morrissey is More Redpill than Man.” Paul Joseph Watson wrote several articles about Morrissey, as did the Federalist, and even the neocon cucks over at the Turning Point-affiliated Human Events wrote a defense of Morrissey with their own cucky cold take. National Review got a based black guy to give Morrissey’s new album a positive review. Everyone from White Nationalists down to neocon establishment shills wanted a piece of Morrissey.

Has Morrissey decided to embrace his image as a Rightist folk hero? Like William Shatner, has Morrissey the Man decided to become his own meme? I mean, what does he have to lose? The mainstream media is permanently hostile to him. The Left doesn’t do forgiveness. He’s beyond the point of no return now. Why not just play to the only people who don’t hate him? He doesn’t have to go full Fourteen Words or say anything he doesn’t believe. Just give us an edgy interview here and there, and we can give Morrissey tons of free positive publicity and defend him in the comments sections all over the Internet. As the saying goes, “If you’re going to do the time, you might as well do the crime.”

But then on June 30, Morrissey threw a real curveball when he posted a video by Dissident Right blogger/Youtuber Morgoth’s Review on his official Website. In the normie-friendly video, Morgoth compared the fake anti-establishment rapper Stormzy, who is praised by the elites, with Morrisey’s vicious treatment, being lambasted for saying things that are truly revolutionary and are actually anti-establishment.

Now, Morrissey has previously posted a video by Styx defending Tommy Robinson on his official site and has given ambiguous onstage shout-outs to Faith Goldy. There have been clues that Morrissey is a consumer of Right-wing alt-media content. But Morgoth’s Review is not some milquetoast civnat or Alt Lite careerist. Morgoth has been a recent guest on The Daily Shoah, and has had his writings published at The Daily Stormer. He’s as red-pilled as they come.

It makes you wonder how far down the rabbit hole Moz is and ponder what his true power level might be, given that Morrissey even knows who Morgoth’s Review is and is a fan. I’m reminded of Mencius Moldbug, who once said, “Although I am not a White Nationalist, I’m not exactly allergic to the stuff.”

I have seen it speculated among Morrissey fans that it is Morrissey’s nephew and site Webmaster Sam who is posting the Right-wing stuff and/or introducing Morrissey to these ideas. After all, Sam is a 35-year-old white male computer guy, so the odds of him having some exposure to chan culture and Dissident Right ideas is pretty high. But people who know how things work in Camp Morrissey say that nothing gets posted in the “Messages from Morrissey” section of his Website without Moz’s personal authorization.

When it comes to Morrissey loyalism, posting Morgoth’s Review really separated the men from the boys. Kevin Cummins is an acclaimed rock photographer from Manchester who has photographed every great indie band since the late ‘70s and has released books of Joy Division and Smiths photos. He’s also been a longtime Morrissey defender. But the Morgoth’s Review post was over the line for Cummins, who responded to the video by calling Morgoth a “white supremacist”:

Get a load of this cuck.

Indie singer Billy Bragg, an outspoken critic of Morrissey who has recently taken to calling him “the Oswald Mosley of Pop”, also felt the need to be weigh in on Morgothgate.

Race traitor Billy Bragg

But another thing happened on June 30 that, compared to the Morgoth’s Review affair, went comparatively under the radar. On the same day, Morrissey granted an exclusive interview with Kipper Central, an independent pro-UKIP blog founded by 14-year-old Reece Coombes (who is now 17). Some of you may remember Kipper Central as the Website that Kraut and Tea got Rage After Storm fired from, thus beginning the Great Alt Right-Skeptic War of 2017-18. Morgoth’s Review was one of the first people on the Dissident Right to write about the episode.

The Kipper Central interview is short, but spicy. Some select moments of wokeness from the interview:

“When the Left speak, it is free speech; when the Right speak, it is racism. Who decided this? I have begun to suspect that the traditional Right-wing are now disguised as Left-wingers in order to contaminate Europe!”

“Migrant boats mean migrant votes, and so on. Anyone will vote for the party that allowed them into the country.”

“What has unfolded is simply the obvious reality that the extreme Left will not ever be policed or prosecuted for hate crime or hate speech, so they use it to their full advantage.”

“Do not feel persecuted, because you can never possibly be ‘in trouble’ for being attacked by people whose opinion means nothing to you in the first place.”

“Do not be afraid of being called ‘racist.’ It is now as overused and meaningless as words like ‘awesome,’ ‘legend,’ ‘iconic,’ and ‘brilliant.’ When it’s used, it simply means that your opponent doesn’t know how to argue your point.”

When I first heard that Morrissey had granted in an interview to a 17-year-old – a child from those ugly new houses – my mind immediately went to J. D. Salinger. Salinger was known for his disdain for interviews, yet once unexpectedly allowed a random teenager to interview him for his high school newspaper. It’s a cool move and shows that Morrissey is still a man of the people. It assures us that his years in Los Angeles have not caused Moz to “go Hollywood.” Morrissey is a successful man, but that does not mean he is above posting content by j-woke working-class Geordies on his official Website or doing interviews with spunky, teenaged Nigel Farage enthusiasts. Unlike poseurs like Billy Bragg, Morrissey remembers where he came from.

So who knows? Maybe Morrissey is trying to establish some goodwill with the Right-wing alt-media after all. That’s certainly what it looks like, and if that was his intention, he succeeded. But then again, Morrissey works in mysterious ways.