Class Species: The Resident Communist Fanboy
Having just started my courses, I have decide to, over the course of my MA, strive to identify, understand, and consequently mock with all my ability. Starting the shebang this week: the Communist Fanboy.
Anyone who has ever done an undergrad humanities course would have encountered such a person. Every time discussion begins, or the floor opens for questions, the Communist Fanboy will proudly stand up and spout some typically nonsensical rubbish about how Marxism can fix said problem, or how the capitalists are corrupting the souls of our children, forcing them work hard for material gain, instead of being afforded all the luxurious trinkets of mass-welfare a la Sweden. They are the ones who seem to ignore whatever readings, lectures or speakers who might smell even faintly bourgeois. For them, university is nothing more than an uncomfortable training ground whereby they might hone their ridiculous dogma to a keen edge, so that they might enter the ranks of their given union/youth organisation/anarchist club with all the tools needed to ignore reason an logic for the rest of their unnatural lives.
And then, in my recent experience, there are those glorious comrades who pursue a masters education with this innocuous mindset that they are there to learn. Just as long as they’re not learning from a capitalist. Everything which might penetrate their dense proletariat filters is then quickly digested into something which fits their narrow ideology. Truly I weep for the future generation of political thought.
Some quick tips at identifying your potential Communist Fanboy:
- Narrow, beady eyes
- non-comprehending complexion when in class/lectures
- An unending eagerness to bring up the Marxist/Socialist solution to anything. Seriously. It could be a discussion on the effectiveness of Rommel’s African campaign. Anuthing.
- amnesia with regards to any discourse or information which might be contrary to their own thinly-substantiated rhetoric.
It’s important that this species be distinguished from that of the Religious Crusader; who shares many common traits, but holds no allegiance to the aforementioned buffoonery.
As a final note, the Resident Communist Fanboy will often emulate his or her heroes, which might include physical copy-cat tendencies such as shaggy hair, open-toed sandals and distincly ripe body odour, to habitual practices such as chronic failure to maintain punctuality, aloof and judging gazes, or the corollary: the blank and distant glazed look.
Finally, as a recommend prevention, I recommend the employment of Weber, Smith and related texts. As a last resort, a truncheon to the face is always effective.
