Pizza Punks, a restaurant chain owned by a Glasgow-based hospitality group with ambitious growth plans for 25 stores by 2025, state that they, “love challenging the norm with [their] anarchist and anti-establishment outlook”. A communique on their Facebook page cries “POWER TO THE PEOPLE”. Their vision of anarchy? Unlimited toppings on a £12 pizza. Anarchism, with its many interpretations and iterations, has now found new forms as a catchy clothing slogan, or a pizza price deal encouraging rampant consumerism.
As twisted as this profiteering is, its effectiveness cannot be denied. Perhaps most famously, beer behemoths Brew Dog urge their customers to “ride towards anarchy” and “burn the established system to the ground”. A steady stream of marketing and publicity stunts cherry-pick social movements to repackage them as beer logos, most of which consistently fall far short of the mark. Their claims of being a “community owned business” are contradicted by increasingly despotic owners James Watt and Martin Dickie sharing almost all voting power with private equity firm TSG Consumer Partners. Their campaign against gender stereotyping manifested itself in a new beer released on Women’s Day 2018 that came in garish pink packaging and was named ‘Pink IPA’. Their ‘support’ for trans rights raised the ire of the movement when their release of a ‘gender changed beer’ relegated gender identities to mere marketing fluff. Yet this anarchic branding, outlier image, and double-speak politicising has definitely contributed to the meteoric rise of BrewDog, a rise that now puts them amongst the most controversial employers in the UK. They even sued a small independent bar for using the name ‘Punk’, and in the final straw, accepted MBEs in 2016. Because what could be more anarchist than private equity, lawsuits, and the Queen? https://anarchistnews.org/content/beer-punks-and-anarchist-cafes-politics-profit Just for the record I've complained about the BBC depicting Nazbols as anarchs. " The Sons of Anarchy " Hollywood BS, " Anarchy the Purge " BS and threatened to kill anyone involved in " Cypherpunks Ltd " Silence is taken for assent!
