Former lead singer of The Smiths, Morrissey, also known as Moz, was blasted on Facebook by Billy Bragg for reposting on his website what Bragg claims was a white supremacist video along with his personal commentary titled “Nothing But Blue Skies For Stormzy… the gallows of Morrissey.” Stormzy, a British rapper who has recently received an immense amount of press coverage for being the first black British solo act to headline the Pyramid stage at Glastonbury, was the focal point of the video, according to Bragg’s post. 

The video reposted on Moz’s website has since been removed, but Bragg described what he watched as expressing “homophobia, racism and misogyny…”

“Last Sunday, while much of the British media were lauding Stormzy’s Glastonbury headline show as epoch defining, Morrissey posted a white supremacist video on his website, accompanied by the comment ‘Nothing But Blue Skies for Stormzy…The Gallows for Morrissey’. The nine minute clip lifted footage from the grime star’s Pyramid Stage performance while arguing that the British establishment is using him to promote multiculturalism at the expense of white culture” Bragg said. 

Bragg expressed that Morrissey should have received more critical media coverage for reposting the video and claimed that he only saw headlines about Brandon Flowers calling the singer a “king” in an interview with NME.

“He’s still a king. He’s unparalleled in what he’s achieved and his prowess and his lyrics and his sense of melody, it’s just incredible. I forgot he was in hot water though, so I shouldn’t have brought him up” Flowers said.

Bragg wrote in response to the interview, “As the writer of the powerful Killers song ‘Land of the Free’, does [Flowers] know that For Britain wants to build the kind of barriers to immigration that Flowers condemns in that lyric?” 

He went on to explain that For Britain that has been noted for being explicitly anti-muslim. On the party’s website, it has written: “We look around the world and see what Islam’s influence brings to people’s lives – it is directly responsible for unimaginable cruelty to women, to atheists or apostates, to children, and to animals.”

Bragg also mentioned that For Britain’s party leader, Anne Marie Waters, has direct ties with Generation Identity, a European identitarian movement that has received financial support from the New Zealand mosque shooter.

Waters has sat down for an interview with Generation Identity in the past and was caught on camera saying “Stop all Muslim immigration now.”

Morrissey is vocal about his support for For Britain as wore a For Britain button during his performance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. Many besides Bragg were outraged by his support and in response, the singer’s music was banned from being sold at the world’s oldest record store. 

Bragg ended the post by writing, “That Morrissey is helping to spread this idea – which inspired the Christchurch mosque murderer – is beyond doubt. Those who claim that this has no relevance to his stature as an artist should ask themselves if, by demanding that we separate the singer from the song, they too are helping to propagate this racist creed.”

PHOTO CREDIT: Raymond Flotat