Looking through the National Post’s pictures from the Vancouver riots, I was annoyed and disgusted, just like everyone else. The one that stood out for me the most, however, was the picture where someone dressed in the usual anarchist uniform (yes, it is a uniform, despite what idiots who consider themselves anarchists say) fighting with a riot officer.
While the rest of the pictures may disgust people more, and I’m certain some of you may think this is nothing out of the ordinary; it’s just a punk doing what punks do, right? Not to me. This guy is giving one of my favourite art forms/music genres/movements, punk, a bad name.
This guy, despite what he is attempting to portray, is not punk. He may be a punk in the definition according to the Oxford English dictionary (n: a worthless person or a criminal), but he is not punk.
Punk, at its best, has an energy, a message. It can move people; it can become an inspiration for social change. It can berate, educate and motivate. Above all else, it has a meaning – stand up for what you believe in, what you think is right or stand against what you know is wrong.
But in the case of the guy in the picture, he doesn’t have a clear point or ideology he is fighting for. Nope, he is just fighting riot police who were attempting to stop the wanton unchecked destruction. Regardless of what you think about the police, the point remains that they were merely doing their jobs, protecting the city from the infectious madness brought on by a small percentage of Vancouver residents.
My question to the fellow in the picture is, if you are willing to fight for nothing, where are you going to be when there is a fight for something?
Throughout the world, especially the Middle East and the north of Africa, people die every day in a fight for democracy, for what we have. And here you are, willing to brave injury and arrest – for what?
You don’t deserve the right to call yourself punk. You don’t deserve the right to call yourself anything more than a fucking idiot.
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