Pick a social movement and discuss the implications that the Vietnam War hadwithin that movement (i.e. Civil Rights and the impact of the Vietnam War)Counterculture Movement● Emerged late 1960s● Many young Americans● Rejection of mainstream culture, rebelliousness, style that deviated from thenorm, use of psychedelic drug use, rock, environmental, pro-peace and anti-war● Spiritual exploration (through drugs)● Against normal standards● Descended from the Beat Generation○ 1940s and 1950s○ Rejection of consumerism, capitalism, materialism○ Eastern religions, looser sexuality, drugs● Grew in every major city across the U.S.● Suspicious of mainstream authority● Joined in support of Civil Rights Movement and opposed the Vietnam War● 1969 growing war opposition → greatest anti-war demonstration in all of U.S.history, Washington D.C., other smaller protests● “Love generation” → violence at hippie gatherings (Altamont Music Festival,Manson Murders of 1969, National Guard shootings of students at Kent State in1970)○ Romanticized lifestyle vs sordid reality● U.S. participation in Vietnam War ended 1973, hippie movement declined andinterest dwindled, although certain aspects of the movement such as style andenvironmental practices, had become enveloped into American culture● Some later assimilated into mainstream culture● Movement reached its height during escalation of U.S. involvement, anddwindled as the war ended○ Vietnam War powered counterculture movementSource https://www.history.com/news/vietnam-war-hippies-counter-culture● One of the most powerful movements in the sea of anti-war sentiments● Burning of draft cards, student protests, music● “the peak years were between 1966 and 1969 and included milestone events likethe 1967 Summer of Love and 1969’s Woodstock Music Festival”Sourcehttps://digilab.libs.uga.edu/exhibits/exhibits/show/civil-rights-digital-history-p/counterculturePick a social movement and discuss the implications that the Vietnam War hadwithin that movement (i.e. Civil Rights and the impact of the Vietnam War)● Powerful student movement, challenged inequality in society● “Pervasive fusion of New Left protest and countercultural practices”○ “The underground press pioneered new, alternative forms ofcommunication, publicizing previously unreported information,popularizing a new language, and challenging the journalistic conventionsand business practices of the mainstream press. At the same time,underground papers became the major forums for political protest:advertising demonstrations, challenging the numbers and reportage of thetraditional media, editorializing against the war in Vietnam. For radical artscollectives such as the Diggers, Teatro Campesino, the Art WorkersCoalition, and the Public Theater, aesthetic experimentation, alternativelife-styles, and political activism went hand in hand.”○ “An intimate connection between self-expression and political protestinformed all sorts of youth activism in the 1960s. What David Farber calls"the politics of style, the demand that one must live in the revolution,"formed a fundamental component of radical cultural politics, be it theResistance's assault on an Oakland draft center, the Yippie festival inChicago, or the 1967 march on the Pentagon. The most earnest New Leftradicals and the most flippant hippies shared a faith in the transformativepowers of music and drugs. They both saw enormous politicalconsequences in mundane choices about food, shelter, and clothing. Evenantiwar activists who distrusted the hippie scene understood the searchfor authenticity that underlay what all sorts of sixties rebels routinelyreferred to as "the Movement." In the words of the Resistance leaderDavid Harris, "We all, to one degree or another, found a discreditedAmerica impossible to reconcile with who we wanted to be." In 1962, thePort Huron Statement had linked personal liberation and politicalrevolution, and they remained firmly yoked throughout the history of sixtiesyouth protest. The standard textbook accounts simply miss thisfundamental connection.”○ “In so doing, the texts underrate some of the most important and mostenduring implications of the movement. Together, the New Left andcounterculture adumbrated a new politics-more ideological and national,less instrumental and parochial than the practical liberalism that haddominated the postwar United States. The new politics featured symbolicacts-demonstrations of principle on an international stage-and it cared littleabout the votes, patronage, loyalty, and compromises of politics in thePick a social movement and discuss the implications that the Vietnam War hadwithin that movement (i.e. Civil Rights and the impact of the Vietnam War)precincts. That style would outlive the movement, informing not only therump Left of the 1970s but the politics of the New Right, neoconservatives,and neoliberals as well.”○ “The New Left and counterculture altered more than the nation's politicalstyle; they developed and popularized a far-reaching ethic of authenticity.Emerging from the fusion of cultural and political protest that survey textslargely ignore, this ethic promoted revised notions of obscenity andestablished an "alternative model of politeness," based "not on theemotional restraint of traditional civility but on the expressive individualismof liberated human beings." The result was, in Kenneth Cmiel's terms, athoroughgoing informalization of American society.”Source: Schulman, Bruce J. “Out of the Streets and into the Classroom? The New Left andthe Counterculture in United States History Textbooks.” The Journal of American History, vol.85, no. 4, 1999, pp. 1527–1534. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/2568271.● More widespread during the 1960s● Political turmoil, “massive cultural upheaval and rebirth”Sourcehttps://www.michigandaily.com/section/arts/stop-what%E2%80%99s-sound-how-vietnam-war-changed-american-music● Heart of counterculture: authenticity, individualism, communitySource https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/160407● “A collective attitude through music was expressed in national unity whichcreated an instrumental consensus amongst the American youth. There was aperiod when songs were riddled with patriotic lyrics, but contradiction prevailed inthe anti-war music of 1960s era. In a way more pragmatic approach was adaptedfor using music as a pacifist tool for large-scale
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