THERE'S a lot of variation in what defines "punk" as a subculture. For many, it’s a music scene defined by its challenges to authoritarianism and white supremacy. For others, its jackbooted Nazi skinheads who should, in the words of the Dead Kennedys, make like a tree and "fuck off".

For all the things that punk can be, however, a £2 billion craft beer empire isn’t one of them. So let’s chat about BrewDog. We all know the story by now – a couple of lads starting out in their shed through sheer chutzpah and grit take on Big Beer only to emerge victorious. It’s a classic origin story – and it probably even has some truth to it.

But the full story is far less aspirational – reports of a working culture of fear throughout the company; allegations of inappropriate behaviour and abuses of power against one of the company’s founders; and now the decision to no longer pay the Real Living Wage to new recruits that has brought the company back into the headlines, and a CEO just back from a luxury trip abroad.

READ MORE: BrewDog could face legal challenge over 'outrageous' wage changes

Whatever aspirations toward being "punk" that BrewDog had remain manufactured – and when you have lengthy articles in your defence being published in The Spectator, it’s probably time to hang up that studded leather jacket.

It’s a symptom of the commodification and enshitification of all things under late stage capitalism, where "revolutionary" as a concept is as applicable to an ideology as it is the next generation of beard-grooming products.

Capitalism consumes its critiques. And so a social movement built around the principles of mutual aid and class consciousness becomes an edgy aesthetic to sell beer, an immersive punk experience without the danger of getting curbstomped for supporting American interventionism in the Middle East.

BrewDog’s inauthentic punk identity is part of the contemporary trend to commodify minority group interests without upholding the ideals they are selling. It’s a facade that lets "doing things punk" look an awful lot like doing things the way that every other billion-dollar business does.

OK, big whoop, big business does what it can to make more money.

Not exactly a breaking news revelation. But all the same, it hollows out the world.

We’d all be better off if more of us found our principles in punk ideologies – better that than the hyper-capitalist hustle culture that encourages poor working practices and more podcasts than any human being could reasonably listen to.

READ MORE: BrewDog boss took luxury holiday before 'outrageous' living wage change

BrewDog is not punk. Yet that is a charge that has been levied against them time and time again. Former staff have described a culture of fear in the company. They have made claims of bullying and being treated like objects.

Growth at all costs was, according to an open letter signed by former employees, the driving force behind BrewDog’s explosive growth.

And if that meant cutting corners in health and safety and creating a toxic environment to work in, so be it. Allegedly.

In another case in the United States, four former employees said they had been fired from a Brewdog bar for being LGBTQ+. Management reportedly cited a “change in culture” as the reason for their termination, though Brewdog later denied that was the reason.

It’s like watching an engineer paste Sex Pistols posters over the cracks of a crumbling building then declaring it safe and beckoning you in.

BrewDog obviously isn’t alone in this. There are myriad companies that hide abusive working practices behind annual Pride collections, and brutally wreck the natural world while sponsoring art exhibits.

But there’s something about the faux adoption of counter-cultural iconography to sell mediocre beer that really catches a nerve for me. I felt it profoundly, too, at the end of watching Withnail and I years ago.

Having returned from their holiday-by-mistake, the film’s protagonists discover Danny in their flat who, having conversed for a while, dejectedly declares: “They’re selling hippie wigs in Woolworth’s, man. The greatest decade in the history of mankind is over. And … we have failed to paint it black.”

It speaks to a feeling of dread, that it is inevitable that all challenges to the status quo will, in the end, be reduced to a children’s Halloween costume on sale in a collapsing department store, or a marketing gimmick for craft beer.

The National: BrewDog boss James Watt pictured at the opening of the company's new pub in Waterloo station,BrewDog boss James Watt - Image: PA

Or to speak more plainly, dread that this is it, and future challenges will fail. That’s what I feel when I look at BrewDog – I see the status quo wrapped in a grunge aesthetic, and the promise of more of the same.

Capitalism sells itself as the only viable economic theory and way of doing things – and we know it likes to enforce that myth with great shows of strength.

But there are better alternatives. The clothes and the music might change, but the underlying principles that built them will live long past their inevitable consumption into capitalism.

The ideals of punk live on – even if Johnny Rotten did end up doing butter commercials.