Last Friday, the spiritual heirs of Charlie Kirk paid a visit to UCL’s Bloomsbury campus.
Having brought a darling blue tent to avoid the rain (apparently it makes them a little squeamish), they set up camp in front of Gordon House, and invited students to step up to the mic and 'prove [them] wrong'.
Their numbers were restrained, but carefully selected. There were two cameramen, some (significantly less handsome, and much – much – larger) version of a beer-addled Thor and a blonde neanderthal, both keeping careful watch over their equipment and – oddly enough – the tent poles.
The hosts, apparently affiliated with an organisation that seems to believe that freedom needs spectators, were equally representative of their target audience. A young man, barely out of puberty. The founder, who achieved the near-impossible feat of getting kicked out of UAL on the third week of a photography degree. Last but not least, an older, considerably more tattooed, manosphere podcaster.
While it is near certain that most are well acquainted with their rhetoric (which has successfully done away with the cumbersome burdens of factual evidence and internal coherence), perhaps the views they now choose to express may surprise some.
Not to worry, the usual nationalism, rampant homophobia, and general disregard for education are still available to fans, but their fashion choices suggest a hitherto unexplored mine of opportunities for the British far right.
The older man (truly an archetypal manosphere podcaster, complete with biker beard, tattoo sleeves, and self-satisfied smile) wore an embroidered cap.
Not a “Restore Britain” cap (of which they kept a set on their table).
A charcoal cap, with a light blue embroidery spelling out, in thick letters, “AZAT MARD”.
That is the name of a clothes brand, and literally translates to “FREE MAN”. It is meant to represent the empowering of men’s self-expression (as one might expect)… as well as the importance of pride in one’s cultural identity as a means of connecting the global Armenian diaspora.
While it may not be obvious to the layman why far-right activists appear to show such interest in the Armenian diaspora, one must bow to the all-important symbol that is the message-bearing baseball cap. There must be a good reason behind it.
After all, the only alternative is admitting that freedom’s last babysitters can’t fact-check anything, or, for that matter, READ WORDS.