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The media coverage of the 2010 British student protests has highlighted the centrality of pervasive discourses on the absence of a culture of dissent in Britain while reviving representations of the intellectual as estranged and alienated from Britishness. Reflections on British exceptionalism entail a selection of chosen pasts and idealized/demonized geographical 'elsewheres', which contrast the vision of law-abiding Britain with the insurrectional continent. In an attempt to comprehend the new forms of social protest, debates regarding student 'riots' invoked post-revolutionary tropes of identity and otherness in Britain: black-hooded foreigners were regarded as vectors of disorder linked with images of contagion, until a figure of the home-grown intellectual blended multilayered narratives on the nation, its aliens and dissenters.This article examines long-established representations of British exceptionalism predicated on perceptions of the outsider and alienated dissent in the light of the media coverage of British student protests against a rise in tuition fees (November/December 2010). During the demonstrations, debates highlighted the centrality of pervasive discourses on the absence of a protest culture in Britain. They also revived representations of the intellectual regarded as estranged and alienated from Britishness. The media coverage and debates regarding student demonstrations have underlined the allegedly un-British character of social unrest, related to foreign -predominantly continental -repertoires of dissent. During the student unrest, threats from within ('hoodies') and from without (black-hooded militants crossing

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