In the few years I’ve been socially active, I’ve heard the same refrains: Pride is commercialized and corporatized. Women’s strikes have become non-disruptive marches. Greta Thunberg stopped making headlines when she started talking about intersectionality.
These used to be punk: raw, uncomfortable, and disruptive. So… is punk dead?
Maybe not. Maybe it’s just harder to hear, drowned out by the hum of Western comfort.
But if you listen closely, it’s still screaming. Look at Pussy Riot.
In Riot Days, Pussy Riot’s Masha Alyokhina recounts her resistance to human rights abuses inside Russia’s penal system: hunger strikes, surveillance, imprisonment. It’s not just a book, it’s a performance: part concert, part rally, part political theater. It’s loud, physical, and urgent. It channels the power of protest and the pain of political imprisonment. It creates a visceral experience, shining light on the forgotten and the vulnerable, from political prisoners to war-torn children, calling for solidarity and rebellion.
Pussy Riot shows punk is not dead. It’s alive in the cracks of oppressive systems, where resistance isn’t aesthetic, but survival. Their work throws our so-called democratic reality into contrast. What they do to stay free, we’ve stopped doing even when we are.
Our punk spirit is drowning in the comfort of Western privilege and the illusion that our rights are guaranteed. But they never were.
So here is a reflection to sit with: Are we disillusioned or hopeful and seeking alternatives with community? Do we dare believe in resistance that disrupts—not just performs?
Desirée is a current student of the Hertie-Munk MGA/MIA dual degree programme.
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