by Reggie Yates
These days, whenever I’m stopped on the street, the film that’s most commonly referenced is this one. People continually talk about my bravery in putting myself in that march but I’ve never seen it as being brave. To me it’s always been about getting to the heart of the issue and staring into the eyes of the people I’m trying to understand.
The saddest thing for me about the march wasn’t what was being said, it was who was saying it. For so many of the men marching to be so young yet so adamant in their nationalistic and in most cases outright racist views was heartbreaking. It wasn’t the amount of people that showed up to chant offensive things or the people that went out of their way to intimidate me; it was the age of those who chose to behave in that way. In a digital age, it’s always a surprise to meet a millennial who isn’t taking advantage of the thing I never had access to in my teens. Namely the internet. Being online allows anyone anywhere in the world to socially educate themselves. To hold racist or offensive views in the age of information literally makes no sense as the excuse of not knowing how similar we all are has evaporated.
Now, my Russian was hardly fluent, but being able to pick out the continual use of the word Ruski, or Russian, in the relentless chanting made the message of the march undeniable. Pride was at the core of every word bellowed, but when I asked Diana to translate some of the more specific detail, I was shocked.
The march attracted thousands of people from many different groups. Their flags might have been different colours or displaying different symbols, but their message was consistent. Russian supremacy. The passion of the protest was at its peak and in my colour and bumbling unashamed Britishness, I represented everything they despised.
As knowledge of our camera and my attendance spread, faces began to be covered and the louder, braver few came forward to ensure I knew I wasn’t welcome. I had lost Vadim at this point, and it was becoming increasingly obvious that I needed his co-sign to ensure some sort of explanation and more pertinently, a safe passage out.
When I eventually found Vadim again, I couldn’t help but laugh at who had become my safety blanket. This was the man who’d professed online just how much Russia needs to go back in time to a place before the immigrants. This was also the man who was suddenly responsible for helping me feel safe. I stood out and needed reassurance that things wouldn’t take a violent turn. He assured me there wouldn’t be any problems, all the while totally ignoring the small pack of photographers and cameramen who began to capture our conversation.
He admitted the level of attention surprised even him. As the march went on, voices became louder and chants grew in their intensity. The mood was shifting and I was right in the centre of it all. Vadim walked me deeper into the march, to the frustration of Diana, who was doubling up as a translator. Hardly a shrinking wallflower, she wasted no time in telling off the contributor she’d found and needed to keep on side. We were right in the middle of the march, Diana was furious and the chants here were louder than ever.
The mass of flags and hoods momentarily parted allowing a small pack of men to stride through led by an army-boot-wearing, walkie-talkie-waving man with a smile almost as huge as his ginger beard. I was being pointed at. He’d finally arrived. This was Demushkin, a man I’d heard so much about but didn’t expect to meet with such warmth. He seemed almost excited.
Instantly, he joked about my safety and made a point of saying just how many nationalists I was surrounded by. His point was to highlight that, according to mainstream media, a black man wouldn’t survive in this environment.
The irony of his words delivered with a smile while skinheads smirked and scowled at me from behind his back wasn’t lost on me at all. I knew in that moment that Demushkin saw my presence as an opportunity for his message. Keen to find his way into mainstream politics, his invitation to me was nothing more than a play for the inevitable media attention. Demushkin hijacked our meeting with his own agenda and, judging by the number of cameras on us while we spoke, felt like it was a job well done.
In one five-minute meeting, I’d become a propaganda tool for Demushkin’s social media assault. Living online and growing a huge fan base through videos and written posts, the endless stream of content created by our conversation played perfectly into the illusion of tolerance.
Vadim confirmed all suspicions of an ulterior motive by announcing the message that my safety and tolerated presence would deliver for his cause online. What he neglected to consider was the contradiction of our conversation happening while chants of ‘Smash the migrants’ fucking faces’ could be heard from the passing crowds.
With the march running through rows and rows of tower blocks, the residents lined their balconies to watch. What could be going through the heads of the young immigrants who called the area home? What do you do when you need to start again in a country that offers all the trappings of opportunity, yet you’re constantly made to feel unwanted? How could you realistically feel safe?
As the demonstrations continued, some of the marching men grew in confidence and switched their attention back to me. Now, Diana and I had become fast friends but were still getting to know each other. That being said, I could see just how reluctant she was to share what was being shouted.
With every random bellow in Russian, I asked Diana for an English translation. Her responses became less and less wordy and she got quieter and quieter, with her head dropped. It was only when I watched the final cut when the film actually went out on TV, that the subtitles revealed just how many horrific racist things were being shouted. When Diana and I finally got around to talking about what was said months after the fact, she explained that what she’d heard not only upset her but made her angry. She didn’t want me to know what she was hearing so I could continue to do my job on the day.
As the march closed out, the thousands of attendees wandered off in different directions. Around twenty people were arrested for expressing extreme right-wing views, which in any normal scenario would be a high number. Here, it easily could have been five times as many.
A few days passed and Vadim invited me to sit down with him and Dmitry in a small community centre. It was out in the suburbs, miles from the more familiar corners of bustling Moscow. To be clear, the Russian suburbs definitely didn’t match my naive British expectation of suburbia. We weren’t in the spacious leafy edges of the big city; we were dwarfed by the endless stretches of high-rise blocks and relentless concrete.
The single-story building housed a barbecue, slightly out-of-place pink strip lighting and a yellowing smoke-stained ceiling. Clearly a social club for Demushkin and his friends, he held court in a corner table while chewing a toothpick, flanked by humourless lumps.
With our first encounter being pretty contrived, Demushkin’s use of my appearance at the march to make a public political statement had left me frustrated. I suspected my desire to unpack what I experienced could fall secondary to whatever his chosen agenda for today might be.
I’d barely got comfortable in my seat when Demushkin launched into his mainstream political ambitions, insisting he had changed since his days leading the Slavic Union. Adamant that the more extreme views and offensive language used on the march only hurt his cause, he expressed shock and distaste for the brand of free speech I was subjected to.
With a strong belief that the immigration laws are chaotic and the radical types I witnessed at the march were almost exclusively the young, he seemed considered in his opinions. This was clearly a man who’d invested time and thought to answers that weren’t extreme yet appeased his following.
Demushkin understood the power of concise answers and almost felt rehearsed. He wasn’t just performing for my camera, we were being filmed by Vadim on his smartphone. Vadim insisted the video was for his own private viewing but Demushkin was quick to speak openly about the benefits of discourse specifically with a black man. He was adamant that the media portray him as a monster and the march as a hub for racists, so my presence did their cause a favour.
As the conversation continued, Demushkin referred to me several times as African-American. I had to explain to him that I wasn’t that, or ‘Afro-English’ (whatever that is) as assumed by Vadim, I was British. My Britishness was by the by as Demushkin’s focus was explaining his reasoning behind giving me the strange African-American label. Rather than paraphrase, I’ll quote the man himself. ‘We don’t say nigger here as it’s an offensive word and so we say African-American out of habit.’ Call me crazy but his use of the N-word during his explanation felt a little counterproductive for his professed desire not to offend.
Several chewed toothpicks later, Demushkin gave me his take on modern nationalism. He believes it’s about putting his people first. When pressed, he described his people simply as Russians.
Now, I’m not one for name-calling but Demushkin was definitely a toxic person. He’s like the guy in your office who microwaves fish at lunchtime. Yeah, that guy. The one with an incredible talent to poison any environment with their unique brand of crappiness wherever they go. I felt drained whenever we spoke as his distinctive blend of body odour and attitude lingered. The aforementioned toxicity hung on to his unswerving, and at times abhorrent, views, and I wore that stink all day until I showered it away before bed.
White, healthy and sober
This film was tough. Between the weather, the language barrier and the people I had to meet I was struggling. Calls home became more frequent and room service comfort food binges of ice cream and cake more regular. I would wake up and dread the day ahead, as well as look that bit chubbier every day.
Far Right and Proud was directed by a man who I’d never worked with before, but we were learning loads about each other with every sequence we’d shoot. It was a shame the process was so tough while we were trying to get to know each other both professionally and personally. Being the person in front of the camera, I’ve always found working with self-shooting directors a strange dance. The relationship you share can dictate the tone of the film and more importantly its direction.
I felt isolated and was quieter than usual. Diana regularly pulled me out of my funk and made a real effort to keep me engaged. Thankfully, I can say she’s gone on to become a real friend.
It was our blossoming friendship that stopped me on several occasions from throwing in the towel, as the process was unlike anything I’d ever experienced. Diana’s unshakable energy was responsible for my willingness to continue. On an expectedly icy school night, she found a boxing event for me to attend. But before I went, I jumped online.
With the hard end of the nationalist contingent sharing trophy videos online, attacks on anyone that didn’t look Russian became more commonplace. I watched clips but couldn’t make it to the end of any. The level of hatred on display told me that there was something much deeper at play than boys being boys.
With most going unreported, there are no reliable figures on migrant attacks. This desire to hurt anyone presenting as other unfortunately went hand in hand with a rise in a particular kind of past-time. The violent kind.
I met up with Alexi, a protein-shake-guzzling twenty-two-year-old gym fiend, and Lisa, a tiny baby-faced seventeen-year-old. Both were members of nationalist group Restruct, and clearly saw their views not only as something they needed to share with me but also as something they’d wear.
Wearing T-shirts covered in nationalist symbolism and nods to Nazism, their wardrobe was almost as offensive as their point of view. I found it scary they’d want to be a part of what they saw as a family. Alexi described his preferred future and the country he loves as becoming three specific things: white, healthy and sober.
Alexi took me to the boxing night at a local venue organised by friends from the same nationalist group. The hall was filled with men in bad tracksuits and women with heavy make-up and neck tattoos. It was lovely.
Walking into a busy room with a large camera and a sound guy can attract the strangest of behaviour at times. I say that as the promoter of the event went out of his way for us. I guess we represented some of the razzmatazz he was trying to evoke with the scantily clad women handing out finger food and drinks.
It was all a bit low rent and smelly. The room had a strange pong, probably due to the mix of aggressive aftershave choices and pickled onions being handed out on trays. The scrappy fight took less and less of my attention as I had to get off my chest what had been bugging me since our earlier conversation.
Alexi started to open up with his take on race and Russia but stopped himself. What was he hiding and why didn’t he want to tell me? Finding a quiet corner, I pushed him on how he truly felt. His answers made for fascinating and shocking TV, but in the moment, I had to use every ounce of strength not to walk away.
Alexi finally let it all hang out and it was stunning. Not the good kind, the road kill smashed into the concrete sort of stunning. He believed a Russian person should only mix with whites as he was strongly against the mixing of bloods. As I explained my mixed-race heritage, Alexi was confused and deferred to Diana who was translating.
He struggled to understand and when it finally made sense to him, his reaction was priceless. ‘When you wash clothes, you can’t mix whites with colours. It’s not right.’ As far as Alexi was concerned, mixing bloods in animals produces problems, therefore mixing races in people shouldn’t happen. He had the detail on my family background, yet Alexi saw nothing wrong with referring to me as a mongrel. In principle, he said he believed mixed-race relationships were okay, but his worry was that, ‘In the next generation, freaks could be born.’
I couldn’t spend much more time with Alexi as his level of ignorance was beyond anything I could tolerate any further. The Russia that Alexi and Lisa were fighting for wasn’t about lifestyle, it was about colour.
With Demushkin the top of the tree in terms of my Russian nationalist experience, I knew that to get a better understanding of the likes of Alexi, I needed to go back to the man with the ginger beard. Unfortunately for me, that meant playing a game of niceties with Vadim, my way in. Accepting an invite to his apartment, I found myself in the middle of the odd alternate universe he called home.
Vadim loved weapons and proudly walked me through an endless stream of BB guns and knives. On display and filling every shelf and flat surface, weapons were everywhere. He alluded to using his knives in street fights but, with a broad creepy smile, made a point of leaving things ambiguous.
Knives were clearly a huge part of what Vadim saw as his identity. He never left the house without one. Given his array of different-sized weapons, none of which were small, I wondered what he would carry on a normal day. I would go on to learn quickly that, in the case of Vadim and his nationalist friends, what made a knife dangerous wasn’t its size, it was knowing how to use it.
Trust back in place and showing off out of the way, Vadim invited me to a knife club run by Demushkin. I was going to see how they trained with their weapons and hopefully find out exactly what they were training for. But first I had to put up with the obvious dislike of his nationalist pals during the world’s most awkward train journey.
Demushkin led the class dressed in a pair of dad-like sweatpants. With a guide on how to land a punch and strike without having your knife taken, I was confused as to what this was trying to encourage. The answer I was repeatedly given was self-defence, but this late into my journey that didn’t wash.
With kids in the class as young as fourteen, watching a full-on lesson on how to injure, disable or even permanently damage someone with a knife was frightening. Yes, the packed class was swinging rubber knives, but the fact that they all had the real thing in their backpacks and on their belts scared the crap out of me.
As a London boy born and raised, knife crime is something I grew up around and had no choice but to deal with. To see kids being actually taught how to use knives in the street combat context left me speechless.
One teenager I spoke to described his reason for attending the class as the dangerous immigra
nts. Apparently, as I wasn’t from the country I wouldn’t understand. What he didn’t seem to make a connection between was the only time he’d been attacked was by a Russian and his motivations to protect himself had nothing to do with the people he was afraid of.
I met several immigrants who’d been attacked by young nationalists with knives. My fear was that groups like Demushkin’s fight club weren’t doing anything to fix this recurring problem, only encourage it.
After the class, I found myself back in the metal box of a clubhouse with Demushkin one last time. I raised the amount of immigrant attack videos I’d seen online while he professed no responsibility for such violence. This man was incredibly difficult to engage with as his disgust for anyone non-Russian continually found itself bubbling to the surface.
Fully aware of what he stands for and who his followers truly are, in asking how he sees his future, Demushkin’s answer said everything about his beliefs and the true nature of his message. He believed his future was either in the Kremlin or in jail. With his history and steadily growing following, incarceration for someone like Demushkin would always be a possibility. On the other hand, with former KGB goon Putin running the country, maybe his political ambitions weren’t that far-fetched.
In interviews, I have often been asked about my final spikey conversation with Demushkin. The chat, albeit it amicable and calm on the surface, had an undertone of disgust from both sides. My level of dislike for the man wouldn’t allow me to even shake his hand as I left. He noticed and couldn’t let it go.
As I made for the door Demushkin shouted, ‘If we don’t like the film we’ll send a killer to England.’ I stopped, he smiled and I left.
CHAPTER 3
THE ENEMY IN THE MIRROR
Something odd happened the other day. Rolling out of bed was followed by the usual slouch into the bathroom, but instead of going for the toothbrush or scraping away the eye bogies, I went to the mirror. I’d had five days of hard workouts buoyed by clean eating and for the first time in forever my stomach was flat yet bumpy in the right way. I’d achieved the ever-elusive six-pack. Sixteen-year-old me would have been so proud. Present-day me smiled for a second, then got right back to work on the eye crust.
