Reply #40: The two were pretty separate until Vietnam heated up

[starroute]

In the 1966-68 period, the anti-war activists and the hippies were very different groups, and most young people weren't part of either one.

Even as late as the 1968 protests at the Democratic Convention, the Yippies (Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, et al) were a small minority among the protesters. And if you look at photos of the people getting their heads beaten in, you'll see that they don't look very hippie-like.

But the two groups converged in 1969-71. Maybe it was Woodstock giving the counterculture a sense that it could wield real political power. Maybe it was Nixon's election making the activists despair of being able to work within the system, at the same time that the increasing availability of pot and LSD offered a utopian promise of changing consciousness instead.

At the same time, an entire generation took up the trappings of both groups -- long hair, love beads, peace signs. You can see the changes in photos, and you can hear them in the pop music. The environmental movement (first Earth Day, 1970) also appealed to both interests.

In 1972, this convergence began to fall apart again. The activists dove into McGovern's campaign and then largely burned out. The hippie style faded and gave way to glam-rock and other more decadent images. Marijuana and LSD were superseded by sex and cocaine.

It's true that the counterculture, even at its 1969-71 peak, never had the moral seriousness of the Wobblies. But that's because it consisted largely of 20-ish middle-class kids. And that, in turn, was because the McCarthyism of the 50's had effectively destroyed the possibility of any genuine radical movement in this country. The Boomers were doing the best they could -- but they lacked backup.