It was my 47th hour of being awake when a large crowd of hippies and lefties and nomads shifted hauntingly beside my bedroom window like the unquenchably thirsty hoard of zombies we’ve all become so familiar with seeing. I was sitting in my bedroom, a makeshift ashtray constructed from a first aid kit sat precariously from the corner of my bed. (something I saw as being very nihilistic in a trendy sort of way) I had been writing for hours. My eyes were dry, my bladder was full, my battery was low. I proceeded to enter my kitchen where Millie, my perpetually pleasant albeit flaky roommate was preparing to go out, in her arms was a wooden picket sign with so much large and exaggerated text on it my eyes could hardly adjust. I was informed Millie was on her way to attend an anti-austerity march in which 600,000 people would be present. A first year film student, I wasn’t sure which direction I wanted my work to go, I felt obliged to attend the protest with a camera and document as much as I could, feeling that maybe the gritty real-life guerrilla documentarian was my path
I attended the march, despite at the time being very much apolitical. I composed a short film using the footage I captured and quickly forgot about the entire event. This was the first protest I ever attended. The energy was palpable, it was like a loud, warm buzz that shifted and shaked through the crowd, an almost indescribable sense that you were there in the moment, that you had climbed within the pages of history. Whether that was truly the case is almost irrelevant. I attended my second ever protest or rally or whatever you’d prefer only three years later, my political views had shifted drastically and I was angry and confused constantly:
“How could they do this? Why are they doing this? Why isn’t anyone doing anything about it? Shouldn’t we do something about it?”
These questions would ring through my mind constantly as I shredded up my upper back, crouching over a phone, obsessively scrolling social media to feed the rage-hungry monkey that perched on my back. On the 6th of May 2018 I attended the Day for Freedom March in London.
My head was buzzing the entire night before, first of all, I had never travelled to London without my parents before, I always worked nights meaning I had to leave straight from work to the train and then attend the rally, which only made me feel even more like I was some French revolutionary in Nazi occupied Paris, hunched over, smoking in a secret basement base beneath a winery. The march was promoted as being about freedom of speech, as you can imagine, the lineup of speakers were exclusively right wing demagogues, demagogues who I, a genuine liberal/libertarian at the time, would constantly make excuses for. In attendance was controversial pundit and “main character” of 2016 political discourse, Milo Yiannopoulos. Despite disagreeing with a vast amount of Yiannopoulos’ views, I was, and still very much am, a proponent of the sanctity of free speech, at the time I found Milo’s irreverent style of debate mixed with a very dry, dark humour incredibly endearing and entertaining. His politics never bothered me much, or, perhaps, I didn’t want to think about it. Perhaps it was easier for me to see him as a comedian, as thinking about the content of his words would come into direct conflict with my reason and my empathy for others.
There were other famous right wing entertainers in attendance that I was very much looking forward to, these including the YouTuber and political embarrassment known as Sargon of Akkad or Carl Benjamin, a figure that although at the time I found myself agreeing with a lot, I could not help but find ridiculous. Mark Meechan or Count Dankula, a comedian whose work I still find entertaining and whose motives seem the most pure and genuine, was also there but most importantly, Vice news co-founder and admitted chauvinist Gavin McInnes was going to attend. This was huge for me, not only was Vice one of the companies that got me interested in writing but I found McInnes’ abrasive and confrontational style of comedic political commentary unyieldingly amusing and informative. McInnes was another far-right agitator who I would make constant excuses for in my head due to my personal affinity for brash, shock humour. Likewise, present at the event were even more unsavoury characters, if you can believe it. Characters such as Stefan Molyneux, alleged cultist and vague white nationalist, Lauren Southern, Canadian anti-immigration activist and one particularly heinous piece of work that I shall save for later on in the essay as a means to build narrative excitement.
I finished my night shift at 9 am and left for home which was a thirty minute walk. With it being early May, this particular day was one of the hottest I have ever experienced, which is why I must attribute the rush I was in for my foolish choice to wear black skinny jeans to the event. I got out of the shower and ran to the train station to meet up with my friend, in my hand was a copy of Gavin McInnes’ biography The Death of Cool, my goal at the event was to get McInnes to sign my copy of his book. This, however, was not the only reason I was attending. I was under the belief that social media platforms banning bad faith actors and people spreading misinformation were in some way violating freedom of speech. This is what the rally was advertised as, this is what I was interested in. That…and for McInnes to sign my book.
The train journey was long and hot and cramped, it was far too tempting to just get off at a stop and bus back home seeing as there were no tickets that were pre-paid for, no investment already made. Despite this, me and my friend were in the belief that we were in some way associated with a noble cause. Freedom of speech. What’s more noble than that? So, we sat through the entire seven or so hour journey. By the time we arrived at Euston, I was exhausted and I was sweating. The flesh against my black skinny jeans felt like bacon sizzling in a grease pan, I wanted nothing more than to peel the denim vice grip from my pink, raw thighs but somehow, I imagined, a lot of people would not have wanted to see that vile sight early in the morning at Euston train station. As soon as we arrived we discovered the next train to take us home wouldn’t be until late that night or the next morning, me and my friend got a cheap hotel room for the night. I promised I was going to pay him back. To this day I don’t think I have. The rally had already begun and was going to begin at Hyde Park, so me and my friend hopped into a car share and went to Hyde Park.
As we arrived, we were struck by the sheer size of the place, we couldn’t even see this massive rally everyone was talking about. It was only after spending around an hour in the blistering heat that me and my friend discovered that the event was actually not taking place in Hyde Park but rather outside the UK Twitter headquarters. Whether this was a change of location or an attempt to confuse counter-protestors is still lost on me. Regardless, I booted up Google Maps and me and my faithful compadre who we shall name Sancho Panza as a hamfisted and trite literature reference, we decided to walk the distance from Hyde Park to the Twitter headquarters with a spring in our step and an cause in our hearts, a hopeless cause.
On the walk to the Twitter headquarters, my legs started to give away, I could feel different slabs of muscle going to sleep and getting shaky, I imagined the muscles rusting against one another and scraping as I stepped, fibreglass shards of bright red muscle ligaments would flake off and die, it was at this time that I realised I hadn’t eaten or drank anything since I left work at 9 am. This realisation only made things worse. Sancho had to practically drag me to our location and we were horrified to discover the rally wasn’t there either. I nearly called it a wash and suggested we go get a drink or find our hotel but we decided to check one more listed location, 10 Downing Street. As we turned the corner for Downing Street, now several hours late to the event, we heard the unmistakable sound of a loudspeaker, blaring the unintelligible ramblings of one Raheem Kassam, then-editor of Breitbart London, a man I was not even half interested in hearing speak. At this point in the day, I couldn’t give a single solitary shit about whether or not despicable activists and snake oil salesmen had been banned from Twitter or about freedom of speech in general, I was more worried I was going to pass out due to exhaustion, heat stroke, dehydration or all of the above. That was until Milo stepped out.
No one, I don’t care who you are, can deny Milo was born to be on stage. All eyes were on him as he stood on the stage and ranted about pesky feminists and rotten liberals. Milo wore a purple bedazzled, suede blazer and so much jewelry he almost looked like some sort of futuristic pirate from a distance, his hair platinum blonde and his sunglasses enormous. My first concerns grew at this point as the massive waves of violent, communist counter-protestors seemed not to be present. Where was this angry mob I was expecting? Well, they were there, I could hear their yells lightly every time Milo took a breath. Them? That group of fifteen to twenty people yelling several yards away? Those are the terrifying Antifa cultists I had to worry about the entire train journey up? This was my first inkling that I had been lied to. Like a tumour with spider’s legs the doubt creeped up my brain stem and nested deeply within my cerebellum. Waiting.
The exact order of guest speakers I watched has escaped my mind for years now, therefore I will have to use some creative liberties as I piece together the following events which will culminate in a very tasty moral, as stories often do.
Carl Benjamin, shortly before his Biblically disastrous MEP election, got on stage and delivered a speech so generic and predictable it seemed it was ripped from the Sargon of Akkad cutting room floor. Mark Meechan gave a pretty decent speech which featured a call to abandon racism, xenophobia and hatred, seemingly, the crowd went wild for this. Now, I could’ve been situated in a cluster of non-racists and didn’t notice the yells weren’t as loud as they seemed or this was an optics choice but it reaffirmed to me and Sancho that we were in fact in the right place. It was around this point I noticed that I hadn’t actually looked around at the crowd that surrounded me, once I did I noticed an odd collection of people. Pakistani-British men wearing Make America Great Again hats and flying Gadsden flags standing directly beside skin-headed white men with tattoos all over their bodies and English flags draped over them like they were superheroes. It seemed almost as if seemingly opposing groups were so hypnotised by the speeches that they didn’t notice the people around them. It felt like at any moment, a racist skinhead could catch a glimpse of someone with a darker complexion and realise this wasn’t the rally he thought he was at.
We were all then presented with a video of Canadian far-righter Lauren Southern attempting to sneak into the UK after she was banned from the country. Southern is an aryan dream, she’s blonde, she has blue eyes, she’s white and is very attractive. Her ban from the country was most likely related to her attempts to ignite religious animosity in British streets by handing “Allah is Gay” leaflets to Muslim citizens. Despite Southern’s egregious acts I found her banning from our country despicable and, against my better judgement, still do in many ways. But this was of no interest to me, as the moment of truth had arrived, Gavin McInnes gave his speech. McInnes’ speech consisted of a one-man comedy sketch so uncomfortably bad that I almost fainted from exhaustion there and then. Which would’ve been disastrous as McInnes’ hypermasculine fan base would have seen me as a weakling for fainting and would have most likely violently attacked me, which would have been, admittedly, a wonderfully ironic end to the story. McInnes’ speech sucked all the energy from the street and we were left with a crowd of around 3,000 just standing and watching in confusion, boredom and most importantly, silence. A shroud of reality began to fall slowly on my head, like a feather swaying from side to side against the heavy, hot, May air. It wasn’t as if this was a bad set, this wasn’t McInnes at his worst or McInnes trying new material, this was McInnes, this was the humour I had found so funny when watching it through my laptop. Now that it was right in front of me, it wasn’t so funny. It was just racist.
My eyeline would do laps from the stage to the crowd to Sancho. From McInnes, once my hero now embarrassing himself, to the crowd, vast oceans of angry looking white dudes with flags of all varieties but that all screamed “you are not welcome here”, to Sancho, my friend, now looking like a parent forced to go see The Wiggles with his toddler son. I felt embarrassed for everyone. Then came the kicker.
Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, more commonly known as Tommy Robinson, climbed on stage as the headliner. Tommy Robinson looks exactly how you’d imagine he does, short, compact man with a perpetually red face due to his constant rage. Despite being rather discouraged and doubtful, my faith was strong, sure maybe most of these guys have turned out to be massive disappointments in terms of public speaking but the message is still good, free speech is still vital to my life values. Tommy Robinson, for those unfamiliar, is the founder of the EDL (English Defence League) a hyper-nationalist movement characterised by an intense hatred of Muslims and some of the most visually revolting members of any movement in history. Tommy Robinson had many controversies over the years, many of which revolved around making disparaging and down-right inflammatory remarks surrounding the Muslim population, often related to his home town of Luton.
Despite feeling nervous about Robinson’s presence, despite feeling uneasy due to the lack of substance in the speeches, over the months of consuming right-wing content I had fused together two separate ideas into one: I had convinced myself that no matter what, the right-wing believe in freedom of speech, I simply could not divorce the right from freedom of speech, a fundamental value of mine. Therefore the enemy of my enemy must be my friend, who cares if I disagree with most of these guys? At least they believe in my right to disagree with them? Robinson walked on stage to the largest cheer, even larger than that of Milo, it startled me when he stepped in front of the crowd and I was suddenly teleported to a football stadium, bass-toned cheers from drunken baldies and football chants too muffled to make out the lyrics, although, looking back, maybe I don’t want to know what they were singing.
I was immediately filled with more feelings of doubt and shame when Robinson began speaking about freedom of speech and the vast amount of what he was saying was directly tied to him. He spoke of his ban from Facebook, from Twitter, from public speaking events. It was all about him. After every sentence the rowdy hooligan-esque fanbase would cheer him on, I looked around and no one else seemed concerned that Robinson, when apparently speaking about inalienable human rights we all share, could not stop talking about himself. It seemed to me that Robinson spoke about the topic at hand for approximately five minutes before he shifted focused and began speaking of the context behind his social media bans, that being “speaking out against Muslim extremism.” I was shocked as I heard the crowd cheer louder than I ever had before, I felt a bowling ball slip down my throat and land in the basement of my intestinal tract. Robinson proceeded, egged on by the vast amount of crowd attendees, a red wave of spite and hatred, he ranted and raved about Muslims and their impact on the country, his face turned bright red with passion as his voice cracked at the sheer disgust he felt towards this entire group of human people. I felt sick. All I could ask was:
“Come again?”
After the event, having no water, no food, no sleep and no shelter, me and Sancho went to a popular burger chain to eat some food. I couldn’t bare to tell him the profound affect the event had on me. What if he found it amazing? Inspirational? I didn’t want to take the wind out of his sales. Moreover, I didn’t want to fall out with my best friend over politics.
The final nail in the coffin, and the perfect allegory of the entire experience was when I stood up to refill my drink and ran into none other than Carl Benjamin. Saddened by my lack of autograph for this book I had help for up to four hours now, I felt the day shouldn’t be a total wash, so I took a photo with Mr. Of Akkad. Carl Benjamin is a bearded man with white patches sprinkled throughout his dark hair, he often stylises himself in dark clothing which is not uncommon in social commentators (Hicks, Carlin etc. men that Benjamin undoubtedly looks up to in an ironic way). He was short, and meek and soft spoken, he avoided eye contact and seemed generally uncomfortable in his own skin. This was what was behind the mask. This was reality. Me and Sancho finished our burgers and then headed for the hotel. I had one beer and went to bed. We left for the train the following morning and I don’t think we’ve ever spoken about the event since.
There were other notable occurrences throughout the rally and afterwards that I left out due to narrative flow that I will include here in a list format:
Katie Fanning, a member of UKIP’s National Executive Committee, was in attendance despite being exposed as spreading white supremacist messaging on other platforms. David Russell, known terrorist, had his movement, White Pendragons present at the event along with other far-right groups such as Pie & Mash, Michael Brooks and the Polish fascist Janusz Korwin-Mikke who was allegedly invited by Milo himself. Not only was the event malignant due to the people present, but there were several moments in which large groups of people simply lost their mirth and left the rally, not only during McInnes’ tragic comedy set but also at a moment when Milo brought on a right-wing drag queen to sing Shania Twain hits, obviously not adept at reading his audience. Also, it was reported that flags associated with far-right and ethnocentric political movements were present, I, however, never noticed these. Most notably, Ali Dawah, a Muslim entertainer with controversial views surrounding fundamentalism exposed the hypocrisy of the event but being announced as a last-minute guest, only for the so-called “free speech” warriors to demand he be removed from the event, and they buckled, leading to Dawah to actually be physically attacked by those in attendance. Again, all this went out without my awareness, otherwise, this story would’ve been a lot shorter.
So, there I was. A slightly right-leaning liberal, I thought I was attending a free speech rally with a load of online creators I found interesting. What actually happened is I found myself slap dab right in the middle of a fascist, racist hate-rally. Despite being conditioned into believing the mainstream news was conspiring against freedom loving liberals such as myself, it hurt to see the rally in the news the following days being labelled a “far-right” or “white nationalist” rally, I was there, I was nowhere close to being far-right, and there probably were others there who genuinely cared about free speech who weren’t far-right. But I was there. I saw it. It isn’t an unfair categorisation. It was a mouse trap.
Now, three years later, I find myself sickened by the vast majority of the speakers present at the event. I find their politics and social views abhorrent and repugnant. But I cannot judge too harshly, especially with their more moderate and delusional followers, for I was one of them not too long ago. I take pride in myself for never fully swallowing the “red pill”, never embracing racism or xenophobia, or homophobia or misogyny. I genuinely did and still do care about freedom, only now, it’s authentic and not manufactured by false information. Despite this, I will always need to deal with the fact that I was at this event, I had travelled far and wide to be there, I had brought a book for one of the speakers to sign. The entire event was a ruse to hold a large public event under the guise of the right to free speech, or Tommy Robinson’s right to have a Twitter account, to be more accurate. All I can say is in hindsight, I’m glad no shaved-head knuckle-dragger approached me after the rally and asked:
“Come again?”
