On March 5, a man named Adil Kayani went to the bathroom on an airplane travelling from Marrakech to Manchester. He was on the toilet for about 10 minutes, he told British newspaper the Independent, when he heard a knock at the door. He told the knocker, a flight attendant, that he’d be out soon, but he didn’t get a chance to emerge on his own terms.

Instead the flight attendant forced their way into the lavatory on the suspicion, Kayani believes, that he was up to no good. He was still on the toilet when they opened the door.

“I feel completely violated,” the 35-year-old Muslim, of Pakistani heritage, told the newspaper about the incident. “I think it’s racial discrimination. They can see the colour of my skin.”

Meanwhile, according to the Independent, the airline says it was following procedure and flight staff claimed Kayani had been in the bathroom for at least 15 minutes, not 10, hence their concern, and subsequent break-in.

But come on. Who hasn’t taken a long time in an airplane bathroom? I certainly have, thanks in no small part to the Air Canada Bistro menu, and no one ignored my calls of “sorry, just a minute” before busting into my stall in a panic. But then, I don’t look like Adil Kayani.

If you’re still confused about what exactly white privilege means, it means that when you take a long time on the toilet, people assume you’re taking a crap, not that you are readying yourself for a terrorist attack.

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But white privilege is also this: wearing a MAGA hat around town — an accessory that is synonymous with xenophobia and racism — and playing the victim when someone gives you a hard time about it. In other words, white privilege is thinking you’re an oppressed minority because you can’t wear a racist symbol without being called a racist.

I’m certainly no fan of racial profiling, but if there’s anyone I’m inherently suspicious of, and frankly afraid of, in a post-Pittsburgh, post-Christchurch world — in a society with a growing white nationalism problem — it’s definitely not Muslims in the lavatory. It’s white men wearing red hats that say Make America Great Again. Wouldn’t it be nice, for a change, if one of those guys was rudely interrupted on the toilet?

I’m only kidding of course. I don’t believe that MAGA-hat-wearing men should be followed into bathrooms. But I do think it’s perfectly acceptable to give them a hard time about their headgear and to embarrass them, in public, especially if they are Canadian. And most especially if they wear their MAGA hats to a vigil honouring the Muslim victims of an Islamophobic hate crime committed by a white nationalist.

This week, footage emerged online of a young white man wearing a MAGA hat at what appears to be a vigil on Toronto’s York University campus honouring victims of the New Zealand mosque shootings.

Needless to say, no one in the camera’s frame is happy to see him there. In the words of one attendee: “There was a f---ing massacre and you’re wearing a symbol of racism. Get the f--- out.” In keeping with the traditions of his tribe, MAGA hat guy smirks, before he walks away from the crowd. And then someone knocks the hat off his head. Good riddance.

The sad thing about Canadian Trump supporters, assuming this guy is a Canadian and not an American student who actually voted in the 2016 U.S. election, is that they don’t even have a horse in the race war they’re so amped up about. They’re like fans of an overseas sports team who show up to the pub and complain that their game isn’t on the TV.

To borrow a word from the team’s captain — a.k.a. Trump himself — they’re losers.

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But they’re also a uniquely scary kind of loser, because where American Trump supporters can at least claim to appreciate the U.S. president on account of some of his more benign policies while disapproving of his racist rhetoric, Canadian Trump supporters can’t. They’re in it for the racist rhetoric, because what else have they got?

As journalist Sana Saeed put it very well on Twitter this week, “Canadians who wear MAGA hats and support Trump terrify me on another level … their attraction to him isn’t policy (he’s not their elected leader), it’s purely his rhetoric & what he symbolizes as the leader of the white insurgency.” That or they’re extremely loyal fans of The Apprentice.

Either way, they’re a sad, scary bunch. Steer clear and stay vigilant.

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