If the circumstances weren’t so dire, maybe the irony might not have left such a sour taste in our mouths. With apparently no grasp of the person it represents, Morrissey’s official Twitter account (@officialmoz) tried to take part in Tuesday’s social media hiatus with the tweet “#TheShowMustBePaused”.
— Morrissey (@officialmoz) June 2, 2020
Aiming to show solidarity with those protesting the death of George Floyd – an unarmed black man who was suffocated last week whilst under arrest by officers of the Minneapolis Police Department – the tweet had been Morrissey’s public way participating in ‘Blackout Tuesday’, a grassroots social media campaign started by music industry professionals Brianna Agyemang and Jamila Thomas. Agyemang and Thomas’ campaign called for a halt to usual business and social media presence for those in the music industry, in order to call attention to the contradiction between a multi-billion dollar industry “that has profited predominantly from black art” versus the treatment of those who create it.
You support the far right of For Britain and Anne-Marie Waters. You’re part of the problem. — Andy Cumella (@acumella) June 2, 2020
However it didn’t take long for Twitter to point out Morrissey’s well-documented history of racist comments and support for racist political groups. One user picked up on Morrissey’s vocal advocacy for the far-right fringe party For Britain, calling him “part of the problem”. Despite the party having only accrued a total of 425 votes in their entire Parliamentary history, Morrissey stated in an interview on a fan website that “For Britain seem to say what many British people are currently thinking”. The 61-year-old went on to name them as the “only … British political party that can safeguard our security” and heaped praise onto its leader Anne Marie Waters, a believer in the Great Replacement conspiracy theory who founded the party after losing in the 2017 UKIP leadership election.
The post falls into a pattern of Morrissey’s performative declarations of anti-racism that have been nullified by his own actions. Despite his claim of “abhor[ring] racism”, the former Smiths frontman took to the same fan website to call the word ‘racist’ “meaningless” since “everyone ultimately prefers their own race”. The most frequent victim of his attacks are muslim immigrants, who he has called responsible for the erasure of British identity and erroneously blamed as the source of London’s spate of acid attacks. “All of the attacks are non-white” he once claimed, though data from London’s Metropolitan Police shows between 2002-2016, just 6% of the perpetrators of acid attacks were Asian. Morrissey has bemoaned the city as “debased”, mocking Mayor Sadiq Khan’s South London accent as evidence of being uneducated and implying that because of his faith he supports Islamic State.
— mundinho Bernadete chocolate c/ pimenta (@dxsintegration) June 2, 2020
Other Twitter accounts did away with calmly calling out the hypocrisy. One opted to post a photo of several hands giving his album the finger, whilst Primal Scream’s Simone Marie Butler wrote “Heaven knows ur into far right nationalistic groups run by anti Islamists now”. One popular counter to the initial tweet was to reply with the JPEGMAFIA track “I Cannot Fucking Wait Til Morrissey Dies”, a song which criticises the veneration of white rock artists (including Morrissey) who have exhibited racist views and sympathies.
Heaven knows ur into far right nationalistic groups run by anti Islamists now . — simone marie (@simonemarie4) June 3, 2020
It should be noted that according to the account’s bio, @officialmoz is the home of “Official Moz Info. Not Moz”, though that has not stopped the account from frequently posting personal opinions that we can only assume represent those of Morrissey himself. Given that he has a proven track record for falsely denying views he has previously expressed, it’s possible that the description in the bio is a mechanism through which Morrissey can distance himself from his online persona. Listen to the JPEGMAFIA track posted in the Twitter thread below:
