Johnny Canuck3
Well-Known Member
I'd say the the hippie opposition to the Vietnam war, which went to the extremes of the Weather Underground and the bombing campaign, is pretty hard to characterize as a right wing/reactionary ideology.
New age cosmic hippies and the far right
- Thread starter Blagsta
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Johnny Canuck3
Well-Known Member
American hippie actress visits communist North Vietnamese antiaircraft gun emplacement used to shoot down US warplanes:
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
No but i've probably read thousands of reviews of books that are either cultural histories of or autobiographies of the period and the general conclusions they draw from them - plus plenty of books that synthesis the research those thousands of books etc were based on or carried out. How about you?
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
Are you just going to count all left-wing things from the 60s and 70s as hippy then? Not a very fruitful way to proceed really - esp as in this particular case a good part of the motivation for the Weather Underground was disgust and anger at the feebleness and passivity of 'Hippie opposition'.
And again, pointing out particular left wing strands of hippie politics or culture in no way means that there weren't competing right wing strands or politics at the exact same point, or even within the exact same people or groups. Unless you're going to find and identify every single manifestation of hippydom ever and conclusively demonstrate that it was unambiguously left-wing.
Johnny Canuck3
Well-Known Member
To be totally honest, I don't think I can say that I've read thousands of book reviews about anything. I'd say the only area where I've read thousands of anything, would be the daily reading I do at work. I'm a fairly prolific reader, but no: I haven't read thousands of book reviews about the hippie era. Tbh, I'm a bit surprised to hear that thousands of books on the subject exist.
I did, however, live through and participate in those times, and my reading and media consumption at that time would have been heavily biased towards 'hippie issues'. I'm certainly interested in hearing how other commentators interpreted the era, but I also have the advantage of having first-hand observations.
Johnny Canuck3
Well-Known Member
The Weather Underground were a species or subset of 'hippies', in the same way that Stalinists and Trotskyites are subsets of communists.
Johnny Canuck3
Well-Known Member
I wouldn't do that, because as I intimated yesterday, trying to lump something as large and diverse as 'hippies' into any pigeonhole, be it 'right wing reactionary' or what have you, is simply a display of intellectual laziness, imo.
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
That included an element that strongly rejected hippydom.
And on thinking further that example is even more problematical if taken as an example of left-leaning hippies as the group contained very strong right-wing authoritarian themes of leadership and elitism that went unrecognised by the participants at the time but which many came to see very clearly in later years. So even this seemingly simple example is shot through with the sort of ambiguities that others have mentioned generally as regards hippies.
Johnny Canuck3
Well-Known Member
No; it rejected pacifism.
I can tell you from firsthand knowledge that there were hippies who were strong advocates of revolution and more.
James Howard Kunstler has it about right:
The rebellion of the hippies-of which the author was nominally one-based itself on the notion that abundance was a natural entitlement and one could 'drop out' of an insecure, deadly and frightening industrial culture to live off the fat of the land. It was inescapably a jejune philosophy, fraught with contradiction. For the hippies, the natural order of things included items such as stereo record players, electric guitars, motor vehicles for adventuring around the country, cheap bulk wholegrains and other products of an oil-intensive industrial way of life. The hippie platform, so to speak, with all its mystical incunabula, rested on the platform of 'normal' American life, and would have been impossible without it. The Vietnam war certainly intensified the revolt by threatening to send a cosseted generation off to slaughter for reasons abstract at best and absurd at worst.
The rebellion of the hippies-of which the author was nominally one-based itself on the notion that abundance was a natural entitlement and one could 'drop out' of an insecure, deadly and frightening industrial culture to live off the fat of the land. It was inescapably a jejune philosophy, fraught with contradiction. For the hippies, the natural order of things included items such as stereo record players, electric guitars, motor vehicles for adventuring around the country, cheap bulk wholegrains and other products of an oil-intensive industrial way of life. The hippie platform, so to speak, with all its mystical incunabula, rested on the platform of 'normal' American life, and would have been impossible without it. The Vietnam war certainly intensified the revolt by threatening to send a cosseted generation off to slaughter for reasons abstract at best and absurd at worst.
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
Along with other classic elements of hippydom - the group was split by those who were into the sex and drugs thing and those who wanted nothing to so with it for example, criticising it and the wider ideas as examples of bourgeois individualism leading to hedonism and rejection of class struggle.Which brings up yet another ambiguity in the example - hippies generally weren't know for class struggle analysis yet this group based their whole philosophy around a (mis)understanding of it and its central significance.
Johnny Canuck3
Well-Known Member
Elements of sexism, elitism etc could be found within 'hippies', because of their prevalence in the culture at large in those days. But there were aspects of 'hippie culture' that recognized the existence of those failings, and actively worked at trying to overcome them.
You aren't suggesting that sexism, elitism etc are always absent from left-wing organizations of any kind?
Johnny Canuck3
Well-Known Member
I'll have to run Kunstler's ideas past my friends who dropped out of 'straight' life in the late seventies and moved to communes in the Interior of British Columbia, where they lived with few of the amenities of the prevailing culture, and remained at it long enough to have and raise children to adulthood in that milieu.
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
These weren't just leftover 'elements' - they were the bedrock of a 'bombing campaign' and political activity over a decade plus, these weren't residues, they were actively fostered qualities, the ones that allowed them to carry out their activities.
What a ridiculous suggestion - not one that follows from anything i've written either. If anything i've been arguing the opposite.
Johnny Canuck3
Well-Known Member
Didn't say they were 'leftover elements'. I said they were part of the prevailing culture - they still are. I said that hippies brought their upbringing with them to their 'hippiedom'. I then went on to say that some of them came to recognize the constraints set by their upbringing, and worked to try to change.
Yes, why not do that?
Johnny Canuck3
Well-Known Member
I don't really need to, because their existence helps put the lie to Kunstler's hypothesis.
Ah, 'their existence.'
Ultimately maintained by the wider society they 'rejected.'
Johnny Canuck3
Well-Known Member
I don't see why a rejection of bourgeois values etc requires a rejection of penicillin and the printing press.
I see. And I guess it was their bourgeois position that allowed them to drop out in the first place.
Blagsta
Minimum cage, maximum cage
Why not read the thread title?I think it needs clarifying which hippies one are referring to in this thread. Is it US hippies, UK hippies or hippies elsewhere? AFAIK in my homeland the hippie movement was quickly absorbed within far left maoist-leninist movements, so that would hardly support the thesis that the dominant hippie ideology was that of the far right. Incidentally, a google search for "hippies and the far right" has this thread as it's no 1 result
It reads like a Ron Paul screed.
Blagsta
Minimum cage, maximum cage
It was middle class in the US too.
Johnny Canuck3
Well-Known Member
I suppose to the extent that such labels serve any purpose, anarchy/anarchism could be better described as 'right wing' than 'left wing'.
Johnny Canuck3
Well-Known Member
Not sure how 'middle class' is being defined, but there were many North American hippies who grew up in blue collar, working class homes.
Idaho
blah blah blah
I think you'd struggle to provide conclusive evidence of that - not least because you'd have to define what middle class was in relation to 1960s America.
Blagsta
Minimum cage, maximum cage
No, not really.
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