Over the whole course of the student finance fiasco I’ve noticed a new breed of human, the sort that rarely emerges from the underworld of psy-trance raves or oi punk gigs; the Topman anarchist.

Clearly they don’t suit themselves head to toe in Topman, because like, “that would be taking it in the arse straight from the bourgeoisie,” but their homogenised views based solely on televised rebellion in the past, and a mis-guided attempt at anarchy could not get any closer to the Topman ideal of mass produced counter-culture.

I first encountered one of these breed in my uni library. For some reason a load of students decided to occupy (read: fuck up) the university library, which is situated at least seven miles from parliament (yeah, you’re really showing them who’s boss). I walked through the double doors to be met with a placard building gang, a ‘how to get out of a police kettle’ information kiosk, and a bunch of restless, bored looking people sprawled out on chairs. I later found out that they had all slept there the previous night – again, the house of commons would lose their shit if they found out about THAT. Most of the people there were students who were genuinely concerned with the cuts, be it because they had younger siblings who would forfeit the right to a fairly priced education, or just because they plainly objected to the plans – however one guy stood out from the rest, which was obviously his plan.

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He was dressed in standard crusty fashion; working boots, ripped jeans, a t-shirt adorned with some lame slogan about sticking it to the man, and a pink streak running through his hair. As soon as he noticed a large group of students walk through the entrance together he leapt up from his chair, sprinted to the nearest free computer and started blasting ‘Dig up her bones’ by The Misfits – jerking his head obnoxiously in to the face of the girl trying to work next to him, and proudly swaying his can of K cider around to the music. I thought ‘Ok, he’s a prick, but at least he’s listening to an alright song and not making too much of a fuss.’ Ooooh how wrong I was. You see, for this type of person it’s not the protest that interests them, it’s the pointless flaunting of their ‘fuck you attitude,’ much like the few who chose to randomly destroy stuff in central London last week. Fighting back against the police is totally justified, but when someone politely asks you to turn the music down in a library and you scream (just to make sure everyone knows who you are) “YOU CAN’T TELL ME WHAT TO DO, NO-ONE CAN FUCKING TELL ME” – you are a complete wasteman.

I wrote something just before it all kicked off about how protests don’t work, and the guy I saw in the library was the absolute epitome of the sort of protester I was talking about – putting his misplaced ideal of rebellion ahead of any intrinsic belief in the case he was fighting for. At least now the bill’s been passed he’ll fuck off out of our town-halls and libraries, but what’s going to happen to him? I guess we’ll wait in anticipation for the next big protest – my guess is anti 3d smellovsion TV tax in 2014 – to find out.

This entry was tagged as crusty punk, student fees protest, topman anarchist.