Is Vandalism A Religion?

The late 1970s may be a distant past from the perspective of our post-9/11 world, but does Vandalism qualify as a bona fide religion the way it recruits impressionable-aged youths back then?

By: Ringo Bones

The late 1970s and the early 1980s might have for intents and purposes been just a very distant memory to most of the angry young men today currently preoccupied with the radicalized version of the Wahhabi Doctrine - as in the very tragic shooting of civilians in Toulouse, France dominating the news headlines this very instant. Back when the Sex Pistols still got their share of controversial mainstream FM airplay, a sociological phenomena that "seems" to be born out of the punk rock movement had been seducing angry young men of the period the way radical Wahhabism does today - namely Vandalism. But does vandalism qualify as a true-blue bona fide religion?

The Vandalism religion may have had self-evident truths that its church may not have yet been able to withstand back in the late 1970s and the early 1980s. But there are newly-found underlying sociological truths and truisms that impressionable young people - then and now - (at least most of them anyway) tend not to go around destroying stuff without a justifiable excuse on the ready. Vandalism's appeal to the youth back then may have spurned from the inherent "sexiness" of the aesthetic of punk rock - hint Vivienne Westwood, but looking back from our post-9/11 vantage point, it seems that Vandalism is full of self-evident proofs that qualify it as a true religion. But will a "Church of Vandalism" be resistant to the very own doctrine by which it stands?