“THE WHITE RACE IS BEING REPLACED! WE ARE BEING REPLACED!”
These were the first words I heard on Saturday 30th September 2023 as I wandered into Glasgow’s George Square. They were being launched into a loudhailer (or loud-heil-er?) by a member of the afore-shouted race. It’s not quite what I expected from a protest about traffic restrictions, but it turns out that there were to be plenty of other noxious emissions unrelated to the topic du jour in the city centre that day.
The Great Replacement scaremongerer wasn’t one of the official speakers, but he claims to have been given permission to speak (well, shout), and had procured his makeshift amplification from one of the organisers. Some of the gathering crowd didn’t seem happy with the outburst, but others nodded along.
As I waited for things to kick off, I scanned the crowd. Middle aged white men seemed to be in the majority, so I fitted right in without any requirement for disguise. I spotted a ‘God’s Children Are Not For Sale’ t-shirt as well; a tip of the hat to QAnon-adjacent child-trafficking fantasy fiction movie ‘The Sound of Freedom’, which has been widely criticised for inaccuracies and fabrications. Not a great start to proceedings.
The purported reason for the day’s protest was Glasgow City Council’s implementation of a Low Emission Zone in the city centre. The legislation aims to prevent the most polluting vehicles from entering the most congested areas of the city, and imposes a fine for doing so. At the surface level it’s a common-sense measure to try to prevent the obvious health implications caused by busy traffic in a highly populated area.
It’s not a perfect plan of course; the noble intentions come with legitimate concerns that small businesses and people of lower socioeconomic status are likely to own the older vehicles which fall foul of such regulations. As with many things, the risk/benefit analysis is crucial. There seems to be reasonable evidence of the health benefits, which should be enough to negate the downsides, but it doesn’t take long for the mask to slip and show that the majority of speakers and protesters are only using those legitimate concerns as a springboard into much murkier, conspiratorial territory.
Talking of masks, the theme of ‘highway robbery’ is prematurely flogged to death by a lady who has beaten the Halloween rush to an outlaw costume. She dances somewhat unconvincingly to ‘Stand and Deliver’ while theatrically waving her anti-LEZ placard. It is however good enough to draw the attention of the somewhat meagre crowd before the speakers commence.
Or at least, it would have been if the speakers had started immediately after. It turns out we still had another fifteen minutes to wait. The DJ expertly fills the void by playing Madness classic ‘Driving in my Car’. He is later heard asking bystanders for “other songs about cars” that he could play. Slick.
The speaking area consists of what appears to be a gazebo from Argos with a low-budget PA setup (feedback, echoing, and complete-audio-drops aplenty). A poster about Fifteen Minute Cities at the back of the gazebo is a further sign that this isn’t really going to be just a protest about emission control.
Finally, with minimal fanfare our first speaker finally takes centre stage (well, gazebo): David Icke-alike Paddy Hogg. His face looks familiar to me but I can’t quite place it, so I send a picture to my editor Michael Marshall, who confirms that Hogg was one of the loudest voices amongst the cacophony of hecklers at Marsh’s talk for Glasgow Skeptics about the White Rose anti-vaxx conspiracy theory ecosystem.
Hogg gained notoriety with his organisation of anti-lockdown protests in 2020, and further courted controversy with somewhat predictable comments about the Gender Recognition Reform Bill.
Since then he’s clearly gone fully down the rabbit hole as he works his way through a veritable greatest-hits of conspiracy theories: The Scottish government is implementing what they’re told to do by globalist dictators, social and economic engineering, fifteen minute city oppression, we weren’t allowed to question Covid or lockdowns, climate change denial (“The science is not settled”), the “mainstream media”, George Soros is funding Extinction Rebellion, excess deaths caused by the Covid Jab, the PCR test is not reliable, and closing out with a final ramble towards about whether viruses even exist, he advises the crowd to look up Terrain Theory (a discredited fringe belief from over a century ago). Exhausting stuff!
Unexpectedly, the next speaker is the most disappointing. There’s the makings of a genuine story here. Colin McInnes is an award-winning founder member of Homeless Project Scotland. They do amazing work. I’ve seen their van in the city centre myself, helping the most vulnerable throughout the year. That refrigerated van is, however, the root of their problem, as it falls foul of the new guidelines. An appeal to Glasgow City Council for an exemption failed, which presumably fuelled the ire of McInnes.
As a result he seems apparently willing to be the vaguely rational meat in an otherwise conspiratorial sandwich. He says he’s less skeptical than the previous speaker about global warming, but “that’s fine” (it’s not by the way). He also says he’s a scientist, although I could find nothing to corroborate that. More strangely though, he says little or nothing about the plight of his charity, but spends more time talking about MOTs and vehicle emission standards.
McInnes’ speech ends with more sinister tones though: “They just want to install systems of control. They want to spy on you and your children”. It seems as though he may possibly be in the process of being radicalised by the somewhat questionable company he’s keeping – perhaps notable, given the fundraiser they kicked off for a new van reached and exceeded its target three months ago.
The headline act of the day is the Daniel Baldwin of political discourse, Piers Corbyn. He rumbles into George Square in a theatrically battered old car festooned with anti-LEZ posters, then shuffles over to the gazebo sporting his trademark dishevelled look. His speech is pretty much the same as many of his speeches from the last few years, and he complements the first speaker’s assortment of tirades to tick off pretty much everything on the conspiracy theory bingo card: The World Economic Forum are trying to bring in a new generation of compliant people and Keir Starmer will be their puppet; Low Emission Zones are here to control you; directed energy weapons; they want to charge you up to £1500 if you don’t install double glazing; man-made climate change does not exist; carbon dioxide is the gas of life and we want more of it; ‘they’ want to get rid of all cars and planes; eventually they want us all stuck in the one place – it’s part of the fifteen minute city agenda; and so on.
Corbyn also claimed that the Clean Air Zone scheme in Birmingham had been scrapped – it has not, although there are of course many cases of people failing to pay the fine. His own story of non-payment is met with glee by the crowd. In an attempt to customise his speech for the Scottish audience he refers to Nicola Sturgeon, presumably not being aware she is no longer in power.
There’s a side note of transphobia as we get near the end of the road (“Men are men and women are women. We’re against the sexualisation of children”), and then it’s all over. All that’s left is for a request for donations, after which Piers and his sidekick work their way through the crowd, with Piers himself using what appears to be a takeaway container wrapped in tin foil with “STOP the Great Reset“ sellotaped to it, while standing next to a fully grown adult inexplicably holding a child’s toy sword.
Equally inexplicably, someone else attempts to speak after the Corbyn show. He’s wearing a t-shirt with various quotes on it, including George Orwell (predictably), and such luminaries as Jordan Peterson, and Julian Assange. He’s strawmanning electric car technology, complaining about cycle lanes, and asking people to upload any videos they’ve taken to rumble.com because they “believe in free speech”. Nobody’s really listening much at this point though, including me, as I’m busy trying to dodge the Corbyn and henchman donation drive that’s making its way through the crowd.
To avoid the shaking bucket takeaway container I decide to start a conversation with one of the most ‘interesting’ looking crowd members. She’s got a LOT of large placards, all laminated, all crammed with the worst of conspiracy theories and pseudoscience. She kindly lays them all out for me so that I can get pictures of them (a small selection are shown below).
Our conversation heads in the direction of old favourite – glyphosate. She says it is very harmful, and has been used on crops in Scotland for over four decades now. I ask her if it’s so dangerous then why has life expectancy been increasing all of that time? A long awkward silence ensues, after which she tells me a website to check out. I make my excuses and head off home to gather my thoughts.
There was certainly something harmful in the air that day in Glasgow, but it wasn’t coming from the vehicles. My only consolation is that not too many people were there to ingest it, and of those who were, most had apparently already overdosed on it.
