University students are stereotypically left-wing, and that is certainly true at the University of Edinburgh. I’m not just talking about student involvement in left-wing causes such as last year’s encampments, but also the Overton window of acceptable politics in university society. To say that at university it is trendy to be left-wing would be a betrayal of the genuine sentiment behind many students’ political beliefs, but it would be safe to say that (outside of Pollock Halls) no one wants to be known as a Tory. It’s not uncommon to meet someone in a tutorial who can confidently refer to the likes of Franz Fanon, Karl Marx, and Immanuel Wallerstein to get a point across.
It’s also not uncommon to run into that same person later that evening in the Bongos toilets rummaging around in their nostrils with their flat keys. Cocaine has boomed in popularity in recent years, partially in thanks to the gangsters who have dominated the British coke market through superior price, quality, and a well-earned reputation for unimaginable violence.
Everyone knows that the drug trade is an incredibly violent one – from Narcos to Top Boy there is barely a segment of the supply chain undramatised. As a result of this awareness, a venn diagram of hypocrisy emerges, raising the question: how are you a vegan Maoist-Third-Worldist, and also a cokehead?
I suspect that this cognitive dissonance (which does not just apply to cocaine, but a great deal of our consumerism) has been allowed to fester due to anti-capitalism increasingly shifting from the world of politics to the world of culture. Mark Fisher in Capitalist Realism writes about how neoliberalism has so completely captured public imagination that not only can we not conceive of an alternative to capitalism, but the Keynesian welfare states of the post-war consensus also seem impossible. Fisher is right; there is no alternative vision anymore. Since 1991, there has been no second world, no alternative on display. The entire world now subscribes to the same ideology.
Anti-capitalist politics are performed for us through our personal tastes in music, film, TV, and literature. Our political beliefs have become a costume that we wear, a personality trait that bores others, a code of morals that we apply abstractly. We watch TV programmes like Severance so we can feel good about ourselves for noticing the anti-capitalist themes, right before going back to racking up another line.
This cognitive dissonance and hypocrisy are not unique to cokeheads, although it is particularly egregious. We could all do more and consume less. This, however, is not an excuse to do nothing; many appear to take the slogan “there is no ethical consumption under capitalism” to be a green light to indulge in consumerist excess. Just because the cobalt in your iPhone was mined by a slave does not mean you also have to contribute to narcoterrorism.
Illustration by Kayleigh Yule
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Edinburgh Students’ Cocaine Socialism
University students are stereotypically left-wing, and that is certainly true at the University of Edinburgh. I’m not just talking about student involvement in left-wing causes such as last year’s encampments, but also the Overton window of acceptable politics in university society. To say that at university it is trendy to be left-wing would be a betrayal of the genuine sentiment behind many students’ political beliefs, but it would be safe to say that (outside of Pollock Halls) no one wants to be known as a Tory. It’s not uncommon to meet someone in a tutorial who can confidently refer to the likes of Franz Fanon, Karl Marx, and Immanuel Wallerstein to get a point across.
It’s also not uncommon to run into that same person later that evening in the Bongos toilets rummaging around in their nostrils with their flat keys. Cocaine has boomed in popularity in recent years, partially in thanks to the gangsters who have dominated the British coke market through superior price, quality, and a well-earned reputation for unimaginable violence.
Everyone knows that the drug trade is an incredibly violent one – from Narcos to Top Boy there is barely a segment of the supply chain undramatised. As a result of this awareness, a venn diagram of hypocrisy emerges, raising the question: how are you a vegan Maoist-Third-Worldist, and also a cokehead?
I suspect that this cognitive dissonance (which does not just apply to cocaine, but a great deal of our consumerism) has been allowed to fester due to anti-capitalism increasingly shifting from the world of politics to the world of culture. Mark Fisher in Capitalist Realism writes about how neoliberalism has so completely captured public imagination that not only can we not conceive of an alternative to capitalism, but the Keynesian welfare states of the post-war consensus also seem impossible. Fisher is right; there is no alternative vision anymore. Since 1991, there has been no second world, no alternative on display. The entire world now subscribes to the same ideology.
Anti-capitalist politics are performed for us through our personal tastes in music, film, TV, and literature. Our political beliefs have become a costume that we wear, a personality trait that bores others, a code of morals that we apply abstractly. We watch TV programmes like Severance so we can feel good about ourselves for noticing the anti-capitalist themes, right before going back to racking up another line.
This cognitive dissonance and hypocrisy are not unique to cokeheads, although it is particularly egregious. We could all do more and consume less. This, however, is not an excuse to do nothing; many appear to take the slogan “there is no ethical consumption under capitalism” to be a green light to indulge in consumerist excess. Just because the cobalt in your iPhone was mined by a slave does not mean you also have to contribute to narcoterrorism.
Illustration by Kayleigh Yule
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