August 05, 2008
Defending the 1960s
Peter Marcuse in In These Times:
The protests of 1968 — symbolically, the occupation of the Columbia University buildings, the student uprisings in Paris and the street protests in Berlin — are now in danger of being denigrated as the actions of spoiled, confused, if not neurotic, students and rebellious youth who were “finding” themselves in making trivial demands of their uncomprehending and benevolent societies.
An April 23 op-ed by Paul Auster in the New York Times calls 1968 “the year of the crazies.” Another op-ed, by Jean-Claude Guillebaud, on May 24, calls the protesters “useful idiots,” and the current attention on them a “frenzy of nostalgia.”
In the process, the serious changes brought about by the events of ‘68, the substance of the protests, the reasons for the discontent, and the desire for change, are either ignored or superciliously dismissed as childish daydreams.
Even Slavoj Žižek, in the July issue of In These Times, quotes with approval French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan’s comment about the students of ‘68: “As revolutionaries, you are hysterics who demand a new master. You will get one.”
That that much was, in fact, achieved is beyond doubt.
The Columbia protests stopped both military research at the university and the construction of a gym in a park that was seen by Harlem and its black residents as an insult by a rich, dominant institution.
Internationally, the ‘68 protests changed the character of post-war politics, helped end the Vietnam War, and legitimized concerns about peace, welfare and democracy beyond the prevailing mainstream consensus.
Posted by Robin Varghese at 03:18 PM | Permalink
Comments
Yes, this is so true. The right wing has organized and financed an effort to completely re-write our recent history, eliminating the parts they don't want to face, and inventing new claims to make themselves look good.
For example, the war in Vietnam was a war of aggression in which the U.S. slaughtered 2 million people. We invaded a country whose crime was solely that they wanted to be independent, and did not want to continue to be a colony of France, having their resources stolen and people enslaved by western Europe. For that crime, the U.S. slaughtered two million, and used (gasp) chemical and biological weapons in the process attempting to poison the land forever.
If you watch that horrible movie Forrest Gump, it shows the white southern male revisionist history of the U.S. in which the stupid military volunteer is the good person, and the woman who opposed the war and had sex outside of marriage got aids (long before it even existed) and died, exactly as she should have because she was a bad woman.
According to the right-wing, affirmative action filled our jobs with incompetent minorities and women (never happened), and "the welfare state" broke the country (never happened). The only affirmative action that ever existed was short-lived and mostly only broke down a few barriers for women and minorities who were generally more qualified -- not equally, but more qualified -- than the men who were the getting the jobs in their place.
Back then, the "hippies," now subject to such ridicule, discovered the following: women and minorities are equal human beings; the earth is in danger and we must be more responsible; we must begin to recycle, save, stop consuming so much; war is bad; we need the whole world to join together to care for our children; we need to learn to share; the solitary family unit is isolating and often leads to depression, abuse, sometimes murder and suicide, and we need to rebuild true community involvement to save our own lives.
Everything uncovered and revealed turned out to be true. But sharing, helping others, caring, are dangerous words to dictators, and to the small group of elite who want to take everything for themselves, who would not be happy unless they could control, demean, enslave others. So now we have Bush and Cheney, a bankrupt country, poisoned, disease-filled and cancer-causing food that we can't afford anyway, no community, complete isolation, no public anything, including transportation; loss of all public open spaces; and never ending war.
Congress is corrupt, involved in a massive criminal syndicate in which they all take bribes and sell their votes. We need to simply write the laws, hand them to Congress and if they don't pass them, vote every single one of them out of office.
By allowing our politicians to accept bribes (aka campaign contributions), we ensure that they will always sell us out to the highest bidder. That is ultimately the reason our country is in such terrible shape. If our politicians were standing up for us, rallying the people, speaking out, educating the public, this whole disaster would have been stopped a long time ago.
Posted by: NABNYC | Aug 5, 2008 10:25:07 PM
It is now, essentially, a techno-Rightwing planet. Instead of Godard's "Breathless" to inspire the clever young things, we have the lickable boot of "The Dark Knight" to crush and seduce them. The '68ers were "brats" and "losers"... just like anyone mentioning half a million dead Iraqis is a "flake". Anyone with the nerve to "Question Authority" (a pin we wore proudly in college) is a "conspiracy nut".
When Bowie sang "Scary Monsters" at the dawn of the 1980s he had *no idea* how truly scary things would get, but his passing mention of a pop star's execution (in "It's No Game", from that album) along with Woody Allen's eerily similar riff from near the end of "Stardust Memories", shows that the Collective-Unconscious of the Intellectual Left foretold both Lennon's death and the death of the Intellectual Left his execution heralded. Yeah, and all those lowly writers of dystopian pulp sci fi from the '30s, '40s, '50s and '60s? Bastards got it dead right.
Posted by: Steven Augustine | Aug 6, 2008 7:39:18 AM
I arrived in Paris the day les evenements ended in 1968 - it was actually a near revolution and had significant impact on France, VN and Europe. Its failure and the assassination of RFK had more impact on the course of subsequent events than anything else since WWII. Don't listen to the condescension of the right.
Posted by: John Garrett | Aug 6, 2008 8:31:39 AM
The right wing frat boys of the 1960's (now the neothugs of the current right), drinking and going to Las Vegas were viewed a buffoons by the engaged left at the time, and have suffered a inferiority complex that has deeply affected their self worth.
They must re write this history, or feel forever left out.
Posted by: Dave Ranning | Aug 6, 2008 12:02:14 PM
It kills me how everyone who presently enjoys the fruits of what freedoms we have left us are able to denigrate those years. It's why jerks like Andrew Sullivan can scoff at the sixties and liberalism in general while benefiting from the freedom to be a gay man and express himself as he does. Do people like him think that we were handed these freedoms by the Thatchers and Reagans of his generation?
Posted by: Duarte deOliveira | Aug 6, 2008 4:21:03 PM
Internationally, the ‘68 protests changed the character of post-war politics
It led to a backlash of the common folks that helped fuel the rise of righwing politics in the U.S. and the dismantling of the New Deal.
helped end the Vietnam War
The protests started in 1964 and the war dragged on until 1973, with the last U.S. troops withdrawn in 1975.
and legitimized concerns about peace, welfare and democracy beyond the prevailing mainstream consensus.
I am not sure what this even means.
Posted by: blah | Aug 6, 2008 5:57:56 PM
I am really happy to read this post, and most of the comments.
The problem I detect is a denigration of struggle and resistance as modalities of social change and progress - whether right or left wing.
There is believed to be automatic processes of social progress locked into markets, technological and medical advance, and science in general. But science is itself based on struggle of ideas, in particular the watershed ideas; and markets are only elegant when viewed from the perspective of the victor. Beliefs are pointless, history just unrolls, with bumps; agitation is hopeless, no-one defies the dynamics of markets and genetically-determined behaviour. So we are told.
Those who disparage struggle as a modality of social change - possibly the modality - surely sit atop a stack of privileges and comforts, at the base of which sits a dirty struggle.
The end of history prophesied is nothing more than the end of ideas. I'm inspired by the ideas of the 1960s - and that's quite enough. Whatever hasn't been achieved, that is achievable in any analysis, can be achieved by us, and if not us, then another generation.
We don't have to succeed to be right, we don't have to have map to know the compass direction we wish to follow.
legitimized concerns about peace, welfare and democracy beyond the prevailing mainstream consensus
Posted by: John Manoochehri | Aug 6, 2008 7:07:26 PM
...when 'blah' says he doesn't understand what this means, I just marvel at the capacity of people who disagree with you to simply deny the cogency of what you say, when they feel they might have to concede a big point.
Epictetus, c.55-135 CE.Posted by: John M | Aug 6, 2008 7:13:34 PM
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