At York University in Toronto, a video was captured of a man who attempted to wear a Make America Great Again hat to a vigil remembering the 50 victims of New Zealand’s Mosque attack.
“There was a massacre, and you’re wearing a symbol of racism. Get the f*** out,” said one woman in the crowd.
From the background, one bystander yelled “shame!” as he walked away. One woman apparently goes so far as to knock off his hat before being told by another bystander not to touch the man.
The comments within the video, which was posted onto BlogTO, displays some mixed reactions.
“LOL did she really just flick his hat off? what a fricken snowflake. It’s a HAT for crying out loud, not like he was doing anything malicious” said one commenter.
Another commenter said, “That smirk is the face of someone that grew up in an environment of privilege,” unwittingly invoking the recent Covington Boys media hoax.
One argument argued on the premise of freedom of speech, a law Canada does not have. “Apart of the obvious optics! what happened to freedom of expression? I may not agree with you but I will defend your rights to disagree with me especially at a University!”
Other comments carry the sentiment that it was a heroic act. “Good. This is the 2019 equivalent of ripping off swastika arm-bands,” said one man in the comments. Another person posted a vile meme comparing the young man to Nick Sandmann, the boy at the heart of the Covington hoax.
This is far from the first incident involving Canadians being harassed/bothered for wearing a MAGA hat. Recently, a Vancouver restaurant manager made headlines for refusing to serve a customer who was wearing a MAGA hat to the restaurant.
Eva Gates, vice president of operations and human resources for the Sequoia Company of Restaurants, says the MAGA hat wearing patron was sitting on the patio at a Vancouver-area restaurant, when one of the managers confronted him for his hat.
The Vancouver restaurant manager has since been fired for refusing to serve the MAGA hat wearing customer.
Gates claims that the manager told the man he had to take off his hat in order to dine at the Teahouse, to which the patron opted to leave the restaurant instead.
The manager says he stands by his decision to ask the patron to leave.
“I stand by my decision to ask the patron to remove his hat. The MAGA hat has come to symbolize racism, bigotry, Islamophobia, misogyny, white supremacy, homophobia. As a person with a strong moral backbone, I had to take a stand against this guest’s choice of headwear while in my former place of work,” he wrote.
That led to the restaurant being on the receiving end of several negative Yelp! reviews.
Another incident that took place in 2016 at Calgary’s Mount Royal University was perhaps the first in Canada where students attending the university challenged another student wearing a MAGA cap to remove the headpiece.
As for incidents that have taken place on college campuses, issues of free speech and safe spaces are not difficult to come across. A situation at Mount Royal University in Alberta caused a stir after video surfaced of a man and a woman arguing over whether he should be allowed to wear a hat supporting U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump.
The incident was captured on video, which was then viewed on Facebook more than 524,000 times in less than a week. In that video, a similar situation takes place between a MAGA-hat wearing student, and people who disagree with the sentiment of the hat.
Most recently, a situation involving a 9th-grade student at a Moosejaw, Saskatchewan high school who wore a “Make America Great Again” hat to class was allegedly told that he should be “embarrassed” and “ashamed” for wearing the pro-Trump cap by his own teacher.
According to the boy’s father, who did a phone interview on AM980 with Gormley, his son is a fan of debating ideas and enjoys conversation about American issues. He says his son is a fan of debates and mental sparring, which led to his interest in Donald Trump and the MAGA hat.
Allegedly, an art teacher at the school told the boy that the hat was a symbol of “racism and sexism,” and may have implied that the boy himself was supporting sexism and racism by wearing it.
Later on during class, the teacher allegedly invited his class to boo the boy, publicly shaming him for wearing the hat, and said “that’s a face I’d like to punch,” a line that President Trump infamously stated to a protester at a rally of his, during his 2016 presidential campaign.
The hullabaloo surrounding situations like these doesn’t appear to be going away but instead appears to be intensifying. What do you think of the MAGA hat? Let us know in the comments below.
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