# Is the 60s "counterculture" responsible for a lot todays "alt right?" **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [August 22, 2022, 10:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-60s-counterculture-responsible-for-a-lot-todays-alt-right/970125 "2022-08-22T22:52:27Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2022, 7:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-60s-counterculture-responsible-for-a-lot-todays-alt-right/970125/41 "2022-09-07T19:35:08Z")
> [@thorny\_locust](#): > > Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger were “stereotypical commies”?! And Paul Robeson too. They came down on him so hard he had to go live in Europe. ---
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2022, 7:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-60s-counterculture-responsible-for-a-lot-todays-alt-right/970125/42 "2022-09-07T19:45:16Z")
> [@thorny\_locust](#): > > Dylan moved his music in other directions, certainly. I don’t know that that had anything to do with Woody’s politics. He moved away from acoustic folk in general. Dylan’s song “My Back Pages” renounced his youthful protest-song idealism and kicked off his psychedelic period. _Another Side of Bob Dylan_ in 1964 was the first such album, though it was acoustic guitar. Dylan started playing electric blues rock with _Highway 61 Revisited_ in 1965. About the time he released “My Back Pages,” Dylan was quoted as saying the old labor movement songs were obsolete, like “Which Side Are You On?” Dylan asked rhetorically, “Which side _can_ you be on, man?” Of course he joined in the Woody Guthrie memorial concert for old times’ sake. He still revered Pete and Woody; all I meant was that he’d declared an independent artistic direction for himself. ---
**Author:** ![Dr\_Paprika](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr_paprika/32/3042_2.png) [@Dr\_Paprika](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr_Paprika)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2022, 8:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-60s-counterculture-responsible-for-a-lot-todays-alt-right/970125/43 "2022-09-07T20:49:28Z")
I was not around in the sixties, but I doubt it. You might have to go back another thirty years or so. If one accepts that a younger generation rebels against parental values, than a shift should have come earlier, if blaming that. Vaccinations were generally appreciated by people who had seen the tragic manifestations of disease that they usually prevent. Sure, they are libertarian types who resent government overreach and those who prefer alternative medicines. But no one was talking about autism or its flawed links to immunization. If one has never seen severe measles encephalitis, disabilities from polio, etc. than one has no real basis to compare to whatever some gaggle of self-appointed spokesfolks or social media bubblers are squawking. Nothing to do with the 60s. ---
**Author:** ![Workingdude](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/f17d59/32.png) [@Workingdude](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Workingdude)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2022, 1:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-60s-counterculture-responsible-for-a-lot-todays-alt-right/970125/44 "2022-09-10T01:57:14Z")
> [@nightshadea](#): > > A friend of mines grandparent draws this conclusion as he made a comparison that a lot of the things the alt-right follows like anti-vaccinations and a lot q anon types of things started back in the 60s and even if they were well-meaning back in the day as people became older they managed to become conservative but managed to still believe in such things and the message became “corrupted” > > does he have a point? No he has no point as he is coming up with some ignorant hypothetical rhetoric. Also what does he mean by Alt Right? ---
**Author:** ![dorvann](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/df705f/32.png) [@dorvann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dorvann)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2022, 4:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-60s-counterculture-responsible-for-a-lot-todays-alt-right/970125/45 "2022-09-10T04:02:06Z")
> [@Elmer\_J.Fudd](#): > > the right-wing anti-fluoridation crusaders. The John Birch Society were opposed to water fluoridation, which they called “mass medicine” and a communist effort to destroy American children. I would say the Society are a far better 60s precursor to the Alt Right than the Hippies movement. > **[John Birch Society](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Birch_Society)** > > The John Birch Society (JBS) is an American right-wing political advocacy group. Founded in 1958, it is anti-communist, supports social conservatism, and is associated with ultraconservative, radical right, far-right, right-wing populist, and right-wing libertarian ideas. Originally based in Belmont, Massachusetts, the JBS is now headquartered in Grand Chute, Wisconsin, with local chapters throughout the United States. It owns American Opinion Publishing, Inc., which publis The society's founde... ---
**Author:** ![Ulfreida](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ulfreida/32/8014_2.png) [@Ulfreida](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ulfreida)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2022, 9:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-60s-counterculture-responsible-for-a-lot-todays-alt-right/970125/46 "2022-09-24T09:07:30Z")
It’s a myth that people tend to become more politically conservative as they get old. According to several studies I’ve read the results of, people usually stay the same in that regard throughout life. What might look like individuals changing is probably more the result of cultural trends sweeping through. The enormous cultural shift in the late sixties to early seventies among young people affected them all differently. I know plenty of people in my boomer cohort who were just in the counterculture for the dope, music, and sex. Others, like me, were all about utopian Back To The Land, feminism, and the critique of the dominance of the military industrial complex, commodification of everything, and dull unquestioning uniformity (as we saw it) of American life. Radical politics attracted a smaller element, even if it was approved of in general. It was the draft that brought out the crowds of protesters. ---
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2022, 10:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-60s-counterculture-responsible-for-a-lot-todays-alt-right/970125/47 "2022-09-24T10:39:23Z")
My theory is simpler: the counter-culture/anti-Vietnam people, especially those on the margins, became alt-right simply because the two cultures are exactly the same in their demanding of personal sovereignty uber alles. Both are a rejection of civil society via a childish “I don’t wanna and you can’t make me” attitude. The 1965 anti-vietnam protestor became the 1978 prop-13 supporter became the 1984 Morning in America voter became the 1994 Contract With America supporter became the 2004 Kerry bone-spurs agitator became 2016 MAGA. The running theme? [![Imgur](https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/52380296201_1a3dc706c8_z.jpg "6uj2rn") ](https://www.flickr.com/photos/68782016@N08/52380296201/) The boomers were able to use their anti-Vietnam rhetoric to hide their anti-society views under the patina of “anti-establishmentarianism” and “fighting against an overreaching government” (sound familiar?). However, subsequent events have shown that the overriding impulse to all of their activities has just been nothing but personal selfishness. ---
**Author:** ![nightshadea](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/7ba0ec/32.png) [@nightshadea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nightshadea)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2022, 11:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-60s-counterculture-responsible-for-a-lot-todays-alt-right/970125/48 "2022-09-24T11:50:13Z")
wow you said it better than anyone I’ve ever heard … ---
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2022, 12:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-60s-counterculture-responsible-for-a-lot-todays-alt-right/970125/49 "2022-09-24T12:22:29Z")
Thank you. It’s often said that complex issues require complex analysis, but sometimes all that is needed is to just admit that which we don’t want to admit. The Boomers reaction to Vietnam could have meant a lot of things. Subsequent developments, however, have reduced those options, have they not? You protest the Vietnam War… and then follow it up with a 50 year stretch of voting for politicians who merely promise to reduce your tax burden, ignoring their positions on those ‘important’ social issues of the sixties and seventies, the ones you also fought for? Puh-leeze! The simplest answer is the correct one: generationally, the ethos driving the majority of the Boomer generation is _selfishness_. That’s why MAGA grandpa was also pot smoking anti Vietnam guy 50 years ago. ---
**Author:** ![ASL\_v2.0](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/asl_v2.0/32/3525_2.png) [@ASL\_v2.0](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ASL_v2.0)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2022, 12:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-60s-counterculture-responsible-for-a-lot-todays-alt-right/970125/50 "2022-09-24T12:38:23Z")
I think it’s a mistake to assume that the boomers who got the attention of media in the 1960s and 70s are the same ones who are now getting the attention for leading the alt-right and related movements. Generations do not have personality, people do. Pretty sure the last President wasn’t out protesting the war in Vietnam, for example. And I use that example not as a political jab, but as a fairly obvious example of the pitfalls of assigning particular attributes to generations. ---
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2022, 12:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-60s-counterculture-responsible-for-a-lot-todays-alt-right/970125/51 "2022-09-24T12:39:33Z")
I would like to remind people that I referenced the _marginal_ protester. Yes, there are still Boomers who love their Abbie Hoffman, who still agitate for the ERA, etc. Those were the protestors with there homemade signs and shit. But the guy standing beside her in 1968-era Berkeley, the one just yelling because he enjoys being angry? That guy became MAGA, and there were a lot more of him than there were of her. And, I do think that generations show personality. Sometimes it is thrust upon them by history (greatest generation), other times they are allowed to express it themselves (boomers, GenX). ---
**Author:** ![ASL\_v2.0](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/asl_v2.0/32/3525_2.png) [@ASL\_v2.0](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ASL_v2.0)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2022, 12:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-60s-counterculture-responsible-for-a-lot-todays-alt-right/970125/52 "2022-09-24T12:43:18Z")
Well, looking back over the thread, I don’t see any evidence of any sort of longitudinal study into the behaviors of marginal protesters of the Vietnam era. It’s possible I missed it of course as I haven’t followed this thread closely and just went back to give the thread a quick review. Did I miss something? Did I miss the evidence behind the assertions, or is it really all just anecdote and pseudo-sociology? ---
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2022, 1:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-60s-counterculture-responsible-for-a-lot-todays-alt-right/970125/53 "2022-09-24T13:16:06Z")
My apologies, I forgot what forum we were in. Citations that the “Me Generation”… > **[Me generation](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Me_generation)** > > The "Me" generation is a term referring to Baby Boomers in the United States and the self-involved qualities associated with this generation. The 1970s was dubbed the "Me decade" by writer Tom Wolfe; Christopher Lasch wrote about the rise of a culture of narcissism among younger Baby Boomers. The phrase became popular at a time when "self-realization" and "self-fulfillment" were becoming cultural aspirations to which young people supposedly ascribed higher importance than social responsi The cult... … as they were called in the 1970s, are considered selfish in their totality: > **[How baby boomers became the most selfish generation](https://www.businessinsider.com/how-baby-boomers-became-the-most-selfish-generation-2016-11)** > > It's not your imagination. The baby-boomer generation is particularly more selfish than every other generation — and that all comes from one ideology. Paul Begala weighs in: > **[The Worst Generation](https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a1451/worst-generation-0400/)** > > Or, how I learned to stop worrying and hate the Boomers. Here’s an analysis of Boomer selfishness from a conservative viewpoint: > **[The Conservative Case Against the Boomers](https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/the-conservative-case-against-the-boomers)** > > For bleakness, scope, and entropic finality, the progressive critique of the generation has nothing on the social-conservative one. Even the British recognize the issue: > **[Baby boomers are the winners who have taken it all – now it’s time they gave...](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/sep/05/baby-boomers-are-the-winners-who-have-taken-it-all-now-its-time-they-gave-some-back)** > > Abba’s return confirms where cultural power lies, but let’s move past the generation wars Thomas Wolfe explored this idea back in 1976 in his essay [The Me Decade and the Third Great Awakening](https://nymag.com/news/features/45938/) which I haven’t read in 30 years at least (until now, that is, tbf), but his general theses was that America was so wealthy that the old-style communal politics was dead, allowing people to focus on themselves instead of society. He also goes into a lot of drug hooey, but it _was_ Thomas Wolfe in the 70s. Let me quote and tell me this doesn’t sound like intellectual MAGA: > [@](#): > > The saga of the Me Decade begins with one of those facts that is so big and so obvious (like the Big Dipper), no one ever comments on it anymore. Namely: the 30-year boom. Wartime spending in the United States in the 1940s touched off a boom that has continued for more than 30 years. It has pumped money into every class level of the population on a scale without parallel in any country in history. True, nothing has solved the plight of those at the very bottom, the chronically unemployed of the slums. Nevertheless, in Compton, California, today it is possible for a family at the very lowest class level, which is known in America today as “on welfare,” to draw an income of $8,000 a year entirely from public sources. This is more than most British newspaper columnists and Italian factory foremen make, even allowing for differences in living costs. In America truck drivers, mechanics, factory workers, policemen, firemen, and garbagemen make so much money—$15,000 to $20,000 (or more) per year is not uncommon—that the word _proletarian_ can no longer be used in this country with a straight face. So one now says _lower middle class._ One can’t even call workingmen _blue collar_ any longer. They all have on collars like Joe Namath’s or Johnny Bench’s or Walt Frazier’s. They all have on $35 Superstar Qiana sport shirts with elephant collars and 1940s Airbrush Wallpaper Flowers Buncha Grapes and Seashell designs all over them. He was _this close_ to spitting out the phrase ‘welfare queen’. The appeals to base consumerism is, honestly, shocking - I had forgotten about it when I started this reply. But he also goes into just how Boomer hippies threw themselves into Evangelical Christianity: > [@](#): > > What the Urban Young People want from religion is a little _Hallelujah!_ … and _talking in tongues! … Praise God!_ Precisely that! In the most prestigious divinity schools today, Catholic. Presbyterian, and Episcopal, the avant-garde movement, the leading edge, is “charismatic Christianity” … featuring talking in tongues, ululation, visions, holy rolling, and other nonrational, even antirational, practices. Some of the most respectable old-line Protestant congregations, in the most placid suburban settings, have begun to split into the Charismatics and the Easter Christians (“All they care about is being seen in church on Easter”). The Easter Christians still usually control the main Sunday-morning service—but the Charismatics take over on Sunday evening and do the holy roll. > > This curious development has breathed new life into the existing Fundamentalists, theosophists, and older salvation seekers of all sorts. Ten years ago, if anyone of wealth, power, or renown had publicly “announced for Christ,” people would have looked at him as if his nose had been eaten away by weevils. Today it happens regularly … Harold Hughes resigns from the U.S. Senate to become an evangelist … Jim Irwin, the astronaut, teams up with a Baptist evangelist in an organization called High Flight … singers like Pat Boone and Anita Bryant announce for Jesus … Charles Colson, the former hardballer of the Nixon administration, announces for Jesus, and the man who is likely to be the next president of the United States, Jimmy Carter, announces for Jesus. Oh Jesus People. If you need something more academic, I’m sure someone with access to sociological research databases can pull up something. Regardless, the idea that the Boomers operate from a core of selfishness is not new, it’s not unexplored, and it is a mantle proudly taken up by the generations most outspoken promoter all the way back in 1976. ---
**Author:** ![ASL\_v2.0](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/asl_v2.0/32/3525_2.png) [@ASL\_v2.0](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ASL_v2.0)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2022, 1:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-60s-counterculture-responsible-for-a-lot-todays-alt-right/970125/54 "2022-09-24T13:43:49Z")
Let me be clear: I am very aware that there are generational stereotypes. I am aware a great many books have been written about how generations, and generational descriptors in particular, are supposedly totally legit, based in data (again, supposedly), and in fact we can even predict how one generation will turn out according to how previous generations have acted. Like in cycles or something. But they’re all just so stories. Not one of them, to my knowledge, holds up to any sort of scientific rigor. It’s pseudo-sociology. But that’s not really what this thread is about, or even the thrust of my prior comments. The point is this: assertions and anecdotes aside, is there any actual evidence–like, data–to establish that the “marginal” protesters of the Vietnam era became the alt-right of today? Or is it just that boomers, like all generational cohorts, is a term that encompasses a wide number of people with very different attitudes, experiences, and beliefs, and _it would be a mistake_ to assume that the venn diagram representing the _fragment_ of the generation that forms the bias of our popular perceptions of them fifty years and the _fragment_ of the generation that has gained notoriety for seizing on the the alt-right today _is by no means a circle_? ---
**Author:** ![Charlie\_Tan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/charlie_tan/32/12582_2.png) [@Charlie\_Tan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Charlie_Tan)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2022, 2:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-60s-counterculture-responsible-for-a-lot-todays-alt-right/970125/55 "2022-09-24T14:06:30Z")
> [@JohnT](#): > > But the guy standing beside her in 1968-era Berkeley, the one just yelling because he enjoys being angry? That guy became MAGA, and there were a lot more of him than there were of her. Do you have any kind of evidence supporting that assertion. Please don’t point to your cites above. I want to know if there is any kind of study that has tracked attitudes of groups\* or individuals regarding politics, morals and so forth, i.e. something that confirms that the guy who was going with the flow then is a supporter of TFG now. I’m sure some are, while some are not. Painting a whole generation with the same broad brush is a bit imprecise. FTR: I don’t hate the boomers. I hate that the greediest generation in history got away with it and left scraps for us who came after. If given the opportunity, I’d have done the same. \*I don’t mean a whole generation. With groups I think of reducing it to e.g. “The graduates from law school in Berkley in 1976” or “Discharged with honors from [military branch] in 1973.” ---
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2022, 2:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-60s-counterculture-responsible-for-a-lot-todays-alt-right/970125/56 "2022-09-24T14:27:10Z")
Team, as I mentioned above, I did not realize this was in Great Debates, otherwise I would not have posted. If a citation from the generations leading spokesperson calling his generation selfish, a charge which became part of the national discourse about his generation, in which he describes the process of how deadheads became Evangelicals, in a piece which, 45-years later, sounds _really_ Ur-MAGA doesn’t convince you, I will admit defeat as I am not going to do so myself. Therefore, this being a lovely fall Saturday and having a franchise exposition to go to for work reasons, I am withdrawing from the debate and putting this one on ‘normal’. Y’all have a beautiful day. ---
**Author:** ![Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/qadgop_the_mercotan/32/83_2.png) [@Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qadgop_the_Mercotan)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2022, 2:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-60s-counterculture-responsible-for-a-lot-todays-alt-right/970125/57 "2022-09-24T14:41:50Z")
Leading spokesperson from my generation?? Why on earth would we give Wolfe such credence? He may have had some good points on some topics, but he hardly has the credentials to claim expertise in those other areas. I appreciate Linus Pauling for his acumen about chemical bonding and his peace work, and receiving 2 Nobel prizes in his lifetime, but I do NOT embrace his other ideas, which have tended towards the whacko. ---
**Author:** ![ASL\_v2.0](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/asl_v2.0/32/3525_2.png) [@ASL\_v2.0](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ASL_v2.0)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2022, 2:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-60s-counterculture-responsible-for-a-lot-todays-alt-right/970125/58 "2022-09-24T14:57:00Z")
> [@Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](#): > > Leading spokesperson from my generation?? Indeed. A generation is made up of people with voices, but it does not have a voice. People have voices. Which voices get amplified and so form part of the popular perception of a generation is another matter. Whether those voices are–or even could be considered–representative is yet another. Personally, I think the idea of finding attitudes “representative” of a generation is pretty much incoherent. Because, again, people have attitudes, generations don’t. And none of that gets us any closer to the assertion–still unsupported, so far as I can tell–that we might reliably map anti-war or counterculture types of the 1960s to the alt-right of today. ---
**Author:** ![carrps](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carrps/32/2957_2.png) [@carrps](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carrps)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2022, 4:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-60s-counterculture-responsible-for-a-lot-todays-alt-right/970125/59 "2022-09-24T16:32:48Z")
> [@Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](#): > > Leading spokesperson from my generation?? Why on earth would we give Wolfe such credence? Seriously. Tom Fucking Wolfe? He was born in 1930. ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2022, 4:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-60s-counterculture-responsible-for-a-lot-todays-alt-right/970125/60 "2022-09-24T16:35:28Z")
And when was Abbie Hoffman born? Most of the leaders of the 60s generation were born in the 30s. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-60s-counterculture-responsible-for-a-lot-todays-alt-right/970125.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-60s-counterculture-responsible-for-a-lot-todays-alt-right/970125.md?page=4)