Oi! is a subgenre of punk rock that originated in the United Kingdom in the late 1970s. The music and its associated subculture had the goal of bringing together punks, skinheads, and other disaffected working-class youth. Oi! became a recognized genre in the latter part of the 1970s, emerging after the perceived commercialization of punk rock. It fused the sounds of early punk bands such as the Sex Pistols, the Ramones, the Clash, and the Jam with influences from 1960s British rock bands. Oi! has come to be considered mainly a skinhead-oriented genre and played an important symbolic role in the politicization of the skinhead subculture.
First-generation Oi! bands such as Sham
… Read more 69 and Cock Sparrer were around for years before the word Oi! was used retroactively to describe their style of music. The word "Oi!" is a British expression meaning hey or hey there! In addition to Cockney Rejects, other bands to be explicitly labeled Oi! in the early days of the genre included Angelic Upstarts, the 4-Skins, the Business, Anti-Establishment, Blitz, the Blood, and Cock Sparrers. The prevalent ideology of the original Oi! movement was a rough brand of working-class rebellion. Lyrical topics included unemployment, workers' rights, harassment by police and other authorities, and oppression by the government. Oi! songs also covered less-political topics such as street violence, soccer, sex, and alcohol. Some Oi! bands, such as Angelic Upstarts, The Business, the Burial, and the Oppressed were associated with left-wing politics and anti-racism, and others were non-political.
Hooliganism includes any form of confrontation between opposing football fans which can occur in a variety of ways before, during, or after the match either at the stadium or elsewhere. Football hooliganism normally involves conflict between gangs, in English known as football firms, formed to intimidate and attack supporters of other teams. Participants often select locations away from stadiums to avoid arrest by the police, but conflict can also erupt spontaneously inside the stadium or in the surrounding streets. This movement was born in the working class of the '60s. It's simply workers who went to football matches and fight the enemy supporters to defend their football club. At
… Read more first, the movement was not politicized, it justs lauded physical force and aggressivity. But then, the movement became political by joining the skinhead movement, which came to football stadiums in order to recruit young workers to join the subculture. Riots, another component of hooliganism, develop more frequently as hooligans travel in firms, leading hooligans to encounter one another more easily. As stadium policing increased, firms met in the streets or other public locations to dodge law enforcement, which enabled riots. The slogan ACAB (All Cops Are Bastards) is very popular among the hooligan movement.
A.C.A.B. (All Cops Are Bastards) is an acronym used as a political slogan associated with radical activists who are opposed to the police. It is typically written as a catchphrase in graffiti, tattoos, or other imagery in public spaces. It is sometimes numerically rendered as "1312," representing the ordering of the letters in the alphabet. During the 1980s, ACAB became a symbol of anti-Establishment, especially within the punk and skinhead subcultures. It was popularized in particular by the 1982 song "A.C.A.B." by Oi! band The 4-Skins. In later years, ACAB turned into a popular slogan among European football hooligans and ultras, and among anarchist and anti-authoritarian movements
… Read more across the world. In the wake of the May 2020 murder of George Floyd by police officer Derek Chauvin, the use of the term A.C.A.B. became more frequently used by those who oppose police brutality. As protests in response to Floyd's death and discussions about racially motivated police violence spread through the United States, A.C.A.B. was more frequently referenced on social media