The counterculture of the 1960s and 1970s was criticized by many conservatives as hedonistic and destructive to traditional values. But some of the most heated criticism of the counterculture also came from “New Left” student activists involved in the Berkeley Free Speech movement and the civil rights movement. Former SDS member Todd Gitlin, for example, argued that the counterculture was self-indulgent, simply about personal style, and did little to fight real world problems like poverty and racism.
Defenders, in contrast, argued that the counterculture was, in fact, a truly radical and transformative movement, in some ways even more impactful than the political activism of the New Left. Where New Left “politicos” debated about the war and poverty in abstract terms, they argued, the counterculture actually created an alternative culture on the ground through lived experience.
“Hippies are more than just people who walk down Haight Street with beads, bells, long hair, stoned on drugs,” argued a letter writer to the Berkeley Barb in 1967. “They are a concept, an act of rejection, a militant vanguard, a hope for the future.”
Which position do you agree with?
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