Pulling an alt nighter

A man in large, tinted, diamante-encrusted sunglasses wearing an exuberantly patterned, blue-and-yellow kimono is welcoming us to “the biggest based disco in the world”. It’s a little after midnight, at The Cuckoo Club, a chintzy, Eurotrashy venue in Mayfair, and the downstairs dancefloor is packed. A few minutes ago, a house remix of “Sweet Caroline” sent an extra shudder of abandon into an already raucous crowd.

“Based”, for those with more wholesome internet habits, is the word used by the online right — and sometimes the online left — to mean “ideologically sound”. Tonight, being “based” means you’re a populist conservative. Because tonight is D’ARC, the afterparty for the ARC, or Alliance for Responsible Citizenship, conference that summoned the nationalist international to London for the first three days of this week.

Attendees were treated to Nigel Farage, in an interview with Jordan Peterson, saying that Britain needed to revive its fossil fuel industry and rediscover its “Judeo-Christian culture”. In her address, Tory leader Kemi Badenoch described climate activism as a “poison” and said “all of western civilisation will be lost” if the right failed to achieve its political goals. None of those august names have made it here, though. D’ARC — “dark”; get it? — geared itself towards the kookier end of the ARC crowd. An online registration page circulating in the weeks prior advertised “an electrifying evening of music, dancing and general high jinks”, co-hosted by Sovereign House, a Manhattan venue associated with the right-wing US hipsters of the Dimes Square scene and rumoured to be backed by tech billionaire Peter Thiel.

The kimono-clad host is Matthew Glamorre, who had to run a gauntlet of hugs and handshakes before installing himself in the DJ booth. “Young people!” he booms across the PA, his UV-protected gaze sweeping over the heads of a crowd that is, in fairness, heavy on twentysomethings, though at least 80% male. “Our people! It’s good to see… new people.” Rather sweetly, he then announces that someone has lost their phone, and asks for it to be handed in if found.

Glamorre was something of a London nightlife impresario in the 1980s, 1990s and early 2000s. He hung out with Leigh Bowery; ran club nights; put on art shows involving live body piercings and frozen chickens sewn onto performers’ chests. In recent years, that countercultural thirst has taken him to the right. Social media posts have him hanging out in El Salvador with the younger brother of strongman president Nayib Bukele, and officiating the most recent wedding of influential American New Right thinker Curtis Yarvin. (His outfits, it must be said, are always excellent.)

Glamorre is not the only veteran of British counterculture who’s embraced this world. One of the DJs billed to play is rave legend Danny Rampling, who attended the main ARC conference, and whose Instagram feed is choked with conspiratorial posts, including one describing climate change as a “made up catastrophe used by globalists” – those nebulous international elites that populists position themselves against – “to install fear and guilt so they can tax, regulate and remove our freedoms while pretending to save the planet”. 

Rampling doesn’t make it to the decks tonight. D’ARC’s original venue, Omeara in Southwark, was successfully pressured to cancel hosting duties by the environmental protest group Fossil Free London. “WE SHUT IT DOWN”, they announced in a triumphant Instagram post. Of course, they didn’t – the new venue was revealed with an hour’s notice, and though Rampling was “scared off”, Glamorre informs the crowd, the party is nevertheless popping off. When Glamorre heads upstairs to do a similar MC routine in the larger main room, he triumphantly says: “We cucked them at Cuckoo! We are the in-crowd now.”

Is it really surprising that those who’ve made careers out of provoking the mainstream would embrace right-wing populism, the thing which most reliably offends the sensible centrists of today? Over in the US, a similar impulse has seen a younger crowd, like Red Scare podcast hosts Dasha Nekrasova and Anna Khachiyan, embrace Trump, Catholicism and other conservative signifiers. There are more traditional conservative faces at D’ARC tonight — like journalist Toby Young and historian David Starkey. Though they perhaps seem a little overwhelmed to be around young people and loud music; like guests at this party, in more ways than one.

In-between figures like Young and Starkey, far-right blogger Curtis Yarvin is entertaining admirers underneath a statue of a unicorn with zebra stripes suspended on a fairground pole. “Lord” Miles Routledge, the social media personality known for travelling to Afghanistan during the Taliban takeover, is around, and very amiable, though he doesn’t fancy an interview.

Then there’s the footsoldiers. At the scrum for the upper bar, I meet Jason, a barista from Canada dressed in various shades of beige, who flew over to London to volunteer at ARC. He is, unsurprisingly, a big Jordan Peterson guy. Ernest, a 20-year-old tailor from Portsmouth swaying on the downstairs dancefloor, has accessorised his double-breasted, gold-buttoned blazer with a “MAKE BRITAIN GREAT AGAIN” cap. He’s a member of Reform, and worries about immigration. I ask if he came alone. He clarifies that his friends have “buggered off” somewhere, “so we’re just vibing” alone. He wiggles his hips a little in emphasis. Then the smoking area, where there’s a young woman in a fur coat hitting a big, shiny, vape. She asks to be called “Diamond”, maybe because of the elaborate diamond necklace she has on. She’s enjoying seeing everyone she knows from YouTube in the flesh.

My attempts at reporting on this thrillingly transgressive crowd are repeatedly interrupted by running into journalists I know from mainstream outlets like The Spectator and The Sunday Times. Most are here to let off steam after covering ARC. Maybe this is a worrying signal that the social firewall between the far-right and mainstream right is breaking down. Maybe it’s just confirmation of the iron principle that journalists will go to any party that’ll have them.

Glamorre is more than happy to be interviewed when I ask him. But as Cuckoo staff keep moving us along whenever we find quiet spaces by the cloakroom or on a stairwell, his patience begins to wear. My cause is not helped when someone semi-humorously interjects to say I’m an “Antifa journalist”. Glamorre wants to know what The Londoner is, and what my angle on the party is. I try and sell him on my thesis about the old counterculture finding a similarly anti-establishment friend in right-wing populism. I clumsily describe him, Rampling and similar souls as “you people”.

He doesn’t like that one bit. “OK, I’m sorry, I can’t help,” he says tartly. “You said ‘You people’, not ‘Us’, not ‘We’. The reason why no one’s talking to you is because you’re an infiltrator.” He goes on to describe those I’ve apparently infiltrated as the defenders of Western civilisation. I later reflect that this is a strange thing to be lectured on by a man who once oversaw the staging of scatological performance art.

As Glamorre turns away and swishes back into his party, a young man in spectacles and a blazer, who was hovering next to us, asks me, quite pointedly, what it means to be properly British. It feels like a test. I ask him. He talks about “proper British stock”, and racial lineage. I feel there’s not much I can say to that. The thread connecting tonight to gay 1980s club culture, to the equal-opportunities euphoria of 1990s rave, suddenly snaps.