Morrissey performs in Los Angeles. April 23, 2004.
Karl Walter/Getty Images
If you're looking to feel the polar opposite of what you experienced the first time you listened to The Smiths, former frontman Morrissey is continuing to serve up anger and disappointment with his comments on race. In a new interview posted on his website, Morrissey doubled down on his support for the far-right British political party For Britain, and claimed that he isn't racist because "everyone ultimately prefers their own race."
The interview is conducted by Morrissey's nephew, Sam Etsy Rayner, making the piece reminscent of a Fox & Friends sitdown with Donald Trump. Morrissey praises For Britain's leader Anne Marie Waters as "extremely intelligent, ferociously dedicated to this country... [and] very engaging," and denies ever hearing her say anything racist — in a 2017 recording, Waters can be seen calling Muslim birthrates in Britain "dangerous" and calling for their mass deportation: "The idea that these fuckers can just come along and take it all," she says. "Stop all Muslim immigration now.”
The labeling of Waters as a racist, in Morrissey's mind, a result of a lack of ideas on the part of her critics:
"[I]f 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."
The full interview, which you can read here, contains a whole lot of insults directed at The Guardian, Morrissey's thoughts on white privilege ("a racist comment"), the making of his new album California Son, and much more.
Since his gradual transition into a bench-level Infowars personality exploded in 2019, Morrissey's music has been banned from the world's oldest record store, and Liverpool train service Merseyrail removed ads for California Son after complaints.
Listen to The FADER's weekly playlist of songs you need in your life
