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Eyesores - The Socialist Youth Scourge
One of many Socialist Youth posters plastered on public property in the University area of Belfast
On my way to Belfast city-centre today I couldn't help but notice posters proclaiming "Why you should be socialist" in big red letters. Why could I not help noticing? Well it seems that Socialist Youth are operating under the misapprehension that they own all public property in Belfast. Almost every lamp post and public bin on the way down the Lisburn Road was adorned with a Socialist Youth poster, put up by career litterers who target student areas like the Lisburn Road and the area around Queen's University.
Socialist Youth aren't the only offenders, many nightclubs also use this tactic, although usually preferring abandoned buildings to public property. They're also not usually as unrelenting, being focused on one wall or building and not following you all along your journey. Sinn Fein activists have done it in the past, as I noticed a poster for a some protest rally stuck to the wall belonging to Queen's University itself.
It's a menace and needs to be stopped. That's before I've even considered the specifics of this campaign and its misleading message:
Anti-War? Anti-Poverty? Anti-Racist? Anti-Capitalist?
Why you should be a Socialist
Quite what anti-racism has to do with socialism I don't know, and I'm not quite sure the communist revolutionaries in Russia were anti-war, but try telling them they're not socialists.
At the end of the day what we have is just a bunch of young people with nothing constructive to do, so they revert into stereotypical Rik Mayall-esque student form: the rebel without a cause clue.