Last weekend, US author Naomi Wolf was suspended from Twitter for spreading misinformation about Covid-19, its attendant vaccines and the pandemic. Among Wolf’s many unsubstantiated claims was that the vaccine was a “software platform that can receive uploads”, and that proposals such as vaccine passports were tantamount to genocide.

For observers of the UK’s improvised and experimental music scene, Wolf’s claims rang a familiar and discordant bell.

Just two weeks before Wolf’s suspension from Twitter, London’s Cafe Oto venue hosted an event celebrating saxophonist Evan Parker. The event was supposed to be a launch for Cafe Oto’s recent box set of Evan’s solo recordings, and included a discussion with the saxophonist hosted by his sometime collaborator and label boss John Coxon. However, according to a review on the London Jazz News website, “[During the conversation] Coxon touched on the ‘mystical appeal’ in Parker’s playing which lent a metaphysical twist to proceedings. This allowed Parker to mention a hero of his, the visionary biologist Lynn Margulis whom he felt deserved a Nobel Prize.”

Anyone familiar enough with Margulis to make such a statement must also be aware of her controversial and problematic status as a self-styled ‘rebel’ scientist. Among other things, Margulis, who died in 2011, was accused of being an AIDS denier for claiming HIV was not an infectious virus, or even a thing at all, and didn’t cause AIDS which was more likely syphilis. She also flirted with conspiracy theories including the claim that 9/11 was a US government plot. Discussing the spread of people across the globe, she referred to human beings as ‘mammalian weeds’. In an interview published shortly before her death she stated: “I don’t consider my views controversial, I consider them right.”

The fact that Evan would promote such a figure from the stage of a venue like Cafe Oto (and that a website like London Jazz News would report it without comment), might seem strange. But it was consistent with some of his other recent public pronouncements on the virus, vaccines, and the pandemic.

In February this year the French Sons d’hiver festival posted a newly commissioned recording by Evan online, a ten minute solo saxophone recital which included recorded clips of an interview with another ‘rebel’ scientist’, Kary Mullis, who was awarded a Nobel Prize, although he later claimed that he formulated the scientific theory for which he was awarded the Prize while under the influence of LSD. Like Lynn Margulis, Mullis, who died in 2019, was accused of being an AIDS denier. Critics have claimed that his HIV scepticism was an influence on the South African government’s AIDS denying policy making throughout the 2000s which some estimates say contributed to more than 300,000 avoidable deaths. A note Evan appended to the recording stated: “All these statements used in the piece were concerned with the AIDS epidemic, but they are precisely appropriate to the current Covid nonsense.”

A few weeks later the UK’s Jazzwise magazine published an interview with Evan, conducted by Daniel Spicer, in its April issue, in which he further expounded on his views on the pandemic, describing it as a “sham”, “complete and utter bollocks”, intended to “harvest DNA and sell vaccines”, while the vaccine itself was “a piece of software they are injecting into you”. He also claimed the entire pandemic was the work of a group of billionaire eugenicists “looking for massive depopulation, by hook or by crook”.

While it might seem perplexing that a figure such as Evan would give voice to such views, without offering any evidence to back them up, on the UK’s improvised and experimental music scene he is well known for his outspoken opinions on subjects such as Brexit.

In a previous interview with Daniel Spicer, conducted before the UK’s 2016 EU referendum and also published in Jazzwise, he surprised many on the scene by stating, “I’m for Brexit”, describing the EU as “a self-appointed oligarchy” with “a neoliberal agenda”. At the time, some of Evan’s friends and associates tried to justify his stance by claiming it was a ‘legitimate’ Lexit position. But it turns out that his views on Brexit were influenced by a more sinister sounding source.

In that latest Jazzwise interview, Evan recommended that Daniel Spicer read a book titled The Nazi Roots Of The Brussels EU, originally published in 2010 and republished last year. The book claims to prove that the architects of the EU were Nazi-era technocrats, that the ‘undemocratic’ EU resembles the Nazi’s plans for a postwar Europe, and that the ‘shocking information’ it contains marks the beginning of the end of the EU project.

The book was co-written by a German (or possibly Dutch) doctor, Matthias Rath, and published by his Dr Rath Health Foundation, a large multinational organisation which manufactures and promotes vitamin pills which, it claims, can cure AIDS, cancer, heart disease and other illnesses. The foundation is known for launching aggressive media campaigns against the use of conventional medicines in the countries it operates. Rath also has a reputation for using the foundation’s wealth to sue anyone who questions its activities, including Médecins Sans Frontières. In 2008, two years before publishing The Nazi Roots Of The Brussels EU, Rath attempted to sue The Guardian for publishing a number of articles by investigative journalist Ben Goldacre in his Bad Science column which exposed the foundation’s activities in South Africa, where it campaigned against the distribution of anti-retroviral drugs to AIDS and HIV sufferers in the townships and ran illegal trials of its own supplements. The libel action went on for a year before the high court threw it out, awarding substantial costs to The Guardian. The court’s decision was welcomed by grass roots public health workers and campaigners in the UK, South Africa and elsewhere.

It seems the more you dig into the origins of Evan’s views on Brexit and the pandemic the more a pattern emerges, linking AIDS denial, disputed science, counterfactual history, and scaremongering conspiracy theories. In that April Jazzwise interview Evan even described himself as “a conspiracy, tin-foil hat, swivel-eyed loon”. Apparently, he was laughing as he said it. But even so, it was an unusual statement to make, on the record, and during such an interview.

Inevitably, the response to all this by many on the UK improvised and experimental music scene has been one of shock and dismay, as is apparent by the comments made on social media and in the Letters page of the May issue of Jazzwise. Despite this, Evan appears to be unrepentant (as that reference to Lynn Margulis at the Cafe Oto event would suggest).

The new June issue of Jazzwise includes a letter from Evan himself in which he appears to deflect blame for that April issue interview onto Daniel Spicer, claiming he was “misrepresented”. He does admit, however, that he was not misquoted. He concludes his letter: “As is always said in the community of sceptics, ‘do your own research’. Having been advised to ‘follow the science’, I did.”

It is probably inevitable that Evan, like most musicians, is feeling angry and bewildered at the impact on his professional life of the pandemic, and Brexit too perhaps. As a self-professed sceptic, he obviously felt the need to research the evidence to prove that the whole thing was a ‘sham’, ‘complete and utter bollocks’. So like every conspiracy theorist before him, he followed the science until he found what he was looking for, meanwhile sidestepping the less savoury aspects of that science, and somehow ignoring the overwhelming mass of other scientific evidence to the contrary.

What to make of all this?

Of course it should go without saying that citizens have the right to question the effectiveness of governments’ public health responses to the pandemic. But to deny its existence entirely, and make unsubstantiated claims based on the kind of ‘research’ Evan cites, feels irresponsible at best. By promoting the views of controversial or discredited scientists, counterfactual historical texts, and alarmist conspiracy theories, Evan is actively contributing to a climate of fear and anxiety that is already febrile, and aligning himself with all manner of extremist online scare- and rumourmongers.

Evan is one of the most senior and influential and respected musicians in the improvised and experimental music scene. At a time when everyone else on the scene is trying to figure out how to limit the damage done to it by both Brexit and the pandemic, how best to maintain the infrastructure, keep everyone’s spirits up, boost morale, and rebuild the community, his actions feel like they are doing no one any favours.

As one industry figure who has worked closely with Evan for years put it to me: “Right now, it feels like the whole community around this music needs to pull together and support one another more than ever. The fact that Evan has allowed his worldview to be shaped by internet rabbit holes is extremely unfortunate. The fact he is now sharing these views in the way he is is even worse.”

Evan might feel he is perfectly justified in holding such views and making them public. But when the UK improvised and experimental music community is desperately struggling to survive the drastic impacts of Brexit and the pandemic, it is unfortunate that one of its most senior and respected figures appears intent on spreading so much doubt and confusion, is acting in ways that feel selfish and irresponsible, and all because he has allowed his opinions to be shaped by some disputed science and selective research.

Tony Herrington is the publisher and a director of The Wire.