Your dog spends his days denouncing capitalism, systemic domination and the symbolic violence of the modern world. Fine, so far. The problem is he delivers this speech with a glass of champagne in his paw, from the velvet sofa of a patron funding his short film about the suffering of the working class.

It might be time to accept the obvious: your dog is radical chic.

The 5 signs your dog is radical chic

1. He no longer hunts squirrels: he hands them a microphone

Your dog used to kill squirrels.

Today, he invites them onto his podcast to gather their testimony, document their trauma and deconstruct the power dynamics between canines and pests.

He hasn’t solved anything.

But he’s gained 300 subscribers on Patreon.

2. He explains that cars are immoral... from inside a Porsche Cayenne

Your dog despises the motor car, motorised individualism and the consumerist logic destroying the planet.

Then he climbs, without blinking, into his patron’s SUV, carefully noting that bourgeois comfort shouldn’t be confused with ideological compromise.

You’re not convinced.

Neither is he, frankly, but the heated seats help enormously.

3. He calls his naps “stepping outside the pressure to perform”

Your dog sleeps 16 hours a day, produces nothing, tidies nothing and contributes nothing beyond the gradual flattening of your cushions.

But if you dare mention laziness, he corrects you immediately: what he’s practising is a form of resistance to neoliberal productivism.

So you’re living with a profoundly useless animal, but theoretically a very solid one.

4. He hates billionaires, except the one funding his film

To your dog, the accumulation of capital is obscene.

Wealth is indecent.

The elites must be fought.

Except, of course, that 62 year old Milanese producer advancing him 80,000 for a silent short film about hedgehog loneliness in the face of gentrification.

There, oddly enough, the struggle can wait until Monday.

5. He hates the rich, but mostly the ones who don’t invite him

Your dog loves calling out privilege.

But he takes it very badly whenever a private party, a gallery opening or a militant dinner with a vegan buffet happens without him.

It isn’t really social injustice that wounds him.

It’s not being on the guest list.

How to react to a radical chic dog

Make him live real degrowth

Cut the heating.

Not “turn it down a degree”, no.

Cut it entirely.

Once the lounge hits minus two degrees, he might just stop quoting Gramsci in his dressing gown and rediscover the virtues of moderate social democracy.

Swap his militant coffee for a motorway service station coffee

Your dog drinks a 12 fair trade espresso while talking about social justice.

Serve him a lukewarm motorway machine coffee instead, tasting of plastic and despair.

If he winces, then the revolution had a few quality standards after all.

Confront him with someone who actually works

Invite along a fisherman, a roofer, or anyone who’s been up since 4.30am for the last thirty years.

Then let your dog calmly explain class struggle to them between two digestive naps.

The spectacle should be enough to shut him up. Or to make you laugh a great deal.

Conclusion

You wanted to test the sincerity of his convictions.

So you signed him up for an anti-capitalist commune in the middle of nowhere, convinced he’d finally find the consistency he preaches about all day long.

He left after six hours.

Apparently, “self-management” loses a lot of its charm the moment it involves doing the washing up, chopping wood or sharing a bathroom with people who actually smell of degrowth.

What to Do If My Dog Is Gay and its sequels will introduce you to other equally trying dogs, between regionalists, snobs, militants, conspiracy theorists, or simply unbearable types with a tote bag.