One of the ones which offends me badly is when people wear Keffiyehs and run around with AKs when they couldn’t even possibly relate to meaning of some of the patterns they’re wearing.
They’re the kind of people who’d wear a Palestinian keffiyeh and not understand the message they’re sending regardless of where they stand on the matter.
You see there are levels of ignorance which I think you
have to make some allowance for. I am one of the ignorant. I have never heard of a Keffiyeh. I had no idea whatsoever that the patterns had any symbolism behind them, I just thought they were purely decorative (or in the case of more militaristic ones, sort-of camo) I've been educated today (thank you), but if someone sees a shemagh / Keffiyeh for sale and buys it because they like the pattern... well I certainly couldn't hold them to account for it, because it's something (to borrow a much-mocked phrase) that's "an unknown unknown" to both them and me.
Back to the main topic, I've got some personal experience in the Z patch thing. I'm not sure how to, or even whether I should share, but as I'm typing I feel I might as well keep going, see what you guys think...
There's a young chap who goes regularly to Spec Ops who has worn a Z patch on several occasions. The first time I saw it my blood boiled. I naturally assumed he was just being a twat, or utterly ignorant. My initial desire was to run up to him, rip it off his arm, verbally abuse him for , and generally put either, or both, of us at risk of getting thrown off the site.
Instead I decided to mentally count to 10, and approach it with an opening gambit of "that's a bold thing to wear that today, I can't say I like it".
He explained he's Russian, his family back in Russia support the war (presumably brainwashed by Putin etc), and his uncle is actually fighting. He made a comment about the BBC as 'Main Stream Media', fake news about the Russians etc, from which I reached the conclusion that he's in a Pro-Putin environment where they're all soaking up the propaganda. And as he's got at least one family member in the army, it'd be pretty difficult for him to go against that without alienating himself from his close relatives.
I kind of put him on my "RL ignore list", but as it turned out he's a nice guy, plays airsoft the right way, didn't push the Z agenda at anyone (though I think he'd defend it when questioned, as he did to me). He became too friendly to ignore, and I've turned a blind eye to his patch, and not talked politics since. He greets me by name, gave me a slice of birthday cake (which some others had turned down - not sure if they were ostracizing him for the patch, worried the cake would have Novichok in it, or just concerned their waist-line would end up like mine... but turning down cake is not something I can do easily).
I really don't know if I've dropped my moral compass by not forcefully pointing out that the error of his ways, or being the good person who sees past flaws and make allowance for circumstances.
The only thing I can say for sure is I was mightily pleased when he turned up to the last skirmish without the patch, indeed he was wearing British gear I think. Maybe Carlos had had a word with him.
So yeah. Slava Ukraini
