While Morrissey is still popular enough to headline festivals in America, his career suffered in the past few years, largely thanks to evidence of his fucked-up political ties, such as the time that he wore a button supporting the right-wing extremist group For Britain while performing on The Tonight Show in 2019. Last year, though, Morrissey claimed that he was the victim of a "decades-long campaign of fraud, disinformation, and defamation" that aimed to tie him to far-right politics. Now, Morrissey claims that he has identified nine people who have posed as him online, including one with ties to one of Morrissey's former bandmates in the Smiths.
In February 2025, the online protection firm Web Sheriff claimed to have identified a "person of interest" responsible for the fraudulent online campaign against Morrissey, and Morrissey launched legal action against that unnamed person. Web Sheriff also said that it hoped to identify more offenders. A statement on Morrissey's website claimed that this person has led a series of defamatory and deliberate political attacks against Morrissey and that the artist "has been unable to release music in the United Kingdom for five years" because of those actions. (That's no longer the case, as Morrissey's album Make-Up Is A Lie came out in March.)
Yesterday, Morrissey's website posted another statement, which claims that Web Sheriff discovered "nine individuals masquerading as Morrissey operating on behalf of various political groups." The statement says that one of Morrissey's impersonators had a "connection with a generally unsupportive ‘Morrissey’ website operating in the USA" and that another "had connections to an ex-member of The Smiths." The statement doesn't say which ex-member of the Smiths, and Morrissey has publicly taken issue with all three of that band's other members over the years. A couple of months ago, Morrissey took issue with Johnny Marr's story about the Smiths signing to Rough Trade; that's just the latest of many, many public disagreements. Below you can read full text from the statement on Morrissey's site.
Eighteen months ago The Web Sheriff contacted Morrissey’s ex-manager, Merck Mercuriadis. The Sheriff advised Merck that they had discovered “the very worst case of online identity fraud” - namely, nine individuals masquerading as Morrissey operating on behalf of various political groups. Statements urged Morrissey’s “fans” to actively join factions and movements advocating various political ideas. The Web Sheriff pointed out that although this was not unusual, and had befallen many musicians in the public eye, the concentration of Morrissey impersonators was very high. Two of the nine individuals operated from Scotland, one of which had been familiar to Morrissey (in name only) due to their connection with a generally unsupportive ‘Morrissey’ website operating in the USA. The individual was found to have posted 1,800 online messages. Another name had connections to an ex-member of The Smiths. Their posted commentaries severely harmed Morrissey’s status and character. Morrissey has not ever been active on open forums, and has not ever owned a smart-phone, or contributed to Facebook, X, Instagram, TikTok, or joined a political party. His reach is restricted to the M-central site, which has always been based in England.
The planned operation to take police action against the nine individuals requires appointment of two legal firms. The financial commitment of extensive and unremitting expenditure is outside of Morrissey’s personal capacity to shoulder.
The next move is under consideration.
Morrissey is grateful to Merck Mercuriadis for his insight.
Morrisssey also recently announced his deluxe Notre-Dame EP, which is out 6/26.
