The Counter Culture Movements

1. The Counter Culture Movements Instructor Pacas

2. The Civil Rights Movement: A Victory? • The social movement of the African American communities to demand human/civil rights ushered a period of great social change to mainstream U.S. society. • Many minority groups either followed suit independently or combined forces to make similar demands on the government. • Women’s liberation, American Indian Movement, Chicano movement, Students for a Democratic Society, etc.

3. Cont’d • Threatened by INRMs abroad as well as domestic grass roots movements attempting social changes the government was forced to consent to some of the demands from these domestic groups. • Perhaps the most important effect of these social movements was their impact on education in mainstream America. • The voices of ‘minorities’ their interpretations of U.S. history’ made the rounds and new interpretations that painted a different image of the U.S. and domestic and foreign policy were available to higher ed. Population.-History of the Alternative

4. Pop Culture • The decade between 1960-1970 was one of many different facets. It was a decade of extreme changes in the entire globe. • It was a period of great social upheavals from which ‘traditional or mainstream’ society emerged completely transformed. • It was a period in which old values were consistently questioned. • A period in which whole generations broke free from the constraints of mainstream society.

5. Cont’d • All mainstream venues of disseminating information were questioned i.e. media, education, politics, religion, etc. • Much of the youth questioned the motives of the older generation. Many decided to forego former norms and form ideas and concepts of their own influenced by their personal experiences. • This movement was named Counter-Culture because it was anti-societal it went against the cultural norms of the time.

6. Cont’d • The movement found many advocates in the music and arts culture, in institutions of higher education and in the youth of society. • The movement was wide-spread throughout the ‘Western World.’

7. What factors caused such a change and transformation of a generation? • As more generations had access to higher education more of the population were exposed to inquisitive methods of thinking. • A disillusion from costly wars not only economically but more tragically in human lives often left many in society questioning governmental policies.

8. The threat of nuclear war. • An aversion to indoctrination. • The Civil Rights Movements, Human Rights Movements and INRMs. • Improved media technology made the world smaller and put different ideas and cultures in touch with each other.

9. Government Stepping up to the Challenge

10. Implementing a Program • Implementation of policies to deal with supposed insurgent groups. • COINTELPRO- • FBI- • COVERT OPS-

11. COINTELPRO and the 1960’s • COINTELPRO- an acronym for a series of FBI counterintelligence programs designed to neutralize political dissidents. • COINTELPRO's 1956-1971 targeted radical political organizations. • COINTELPRO and other similar programs were created to neutralize civil rights, anti-war, and many other groups, many of which were said to be "communist front organizations."

12. From J. Edgar Hoover Director of FBI • “The forces which are most anxious to weaken our internal security are not always easy to identify. Communists have been trained in deceit and secretly work toward the day when they hope to replace our American way of life with a Communist dictatorship. They utilize cleverly camouflaged movements, such as peace groups and civil rights groups to achieve their sinister purposes. While they as individuals are difficult to identify, the Communist party line is clear. Its first concern is the advancement of Soviet Russia and the godless Communist cause. It is important to learn to know the enemies of the American way of life.”

13. Silencing Voices of Dissent • Once MLK became vocal about his anti-war stance in the late 60’s the FBI kept close surveillance on MLK. • He was assassinated in 1968. • His assassination brought a fresh crop of urban outbreaks that were violently suppressed by law enforcement agencies and many covert ops.

14. Vietnam War

15. The Vietnam War • After WWII the world was contested between U.S. and INRMs (some assisted by the USSR). • This was an attempt by U.S. to gain spheres of geo-political and economic control.

16. Indo-China • At the end of the war 1945 this region determined to end colonial rule drove the Japanese out and celebrated Vietnamese independence. • They made it publicly known the atrocities that the Vietnamese people had to endure under the colonial rule of the French and Japanese. • The Vietnamese people asked the U.S. to recognize their independence in 8 separate letters address to President Truman. All letters went unanswered.

17. French Vietnamese War 1946-1954 • The French wishing to reclaim their former colony invaded Vietnam and bombed Haiphong on October 1946. • By the end of the war the U.S. had supplied the French armies in Vietnam with 300,000 small arms and machine guns and $1billion economic aid to French war effort. The U.S. was financing 80% of the entire French war effort.

18. National Security Council • In 1952 a memo of the NSC pointed to the danger posed to strategic U.S. military bases in the area if the area fell to communism. • More importantly it stated the danger to U.S. markets and the natural resources particularly rubber, tin and oil if the area fell to communism.

19. Cont’d • The region was also rich in coal and iron ore and the memo along with a State Department memorandum a year later explicitly indicated that the U.S. should intervene if France was unable to keep the area under its control.

20. French Lose the War • In 1954 the French sued for peace and it was agreed between Ho Chi Minh’s forces and the French that popular elections would be held in two years (1956). • Before these elections could take place and out of fear for Minh’s popularity the U.S. installed a puppet Ngo Dinh Diem.

21. Diem • Diem was extremely unpopular with the people. • He came from Vietnamese aristocracy and continued the practices of exploitation of the peasant class. • Diem was Catholic in a predominantly Buddhist nation and he suppressed Buddhism. • Diem was a dictator that ruled Vietnam with an iron fist. • In 1958 guerilla movements funded by communist Hanoi. • In 1960 the National Liberation Front formed primarily of dissatisfied Southern Vietnamese Peasantry was formed to fight against Diem’s regime.

22. 1961 • John F. Kennedy supported Diem by mounting covert ops to try to topple the N. Vietnamese Communist government. • JFK claimed that Diem had been popularly elected and that Diem had implemented a respectable democracy in Vietnam. • The situation actually was only escalating through out the early 60’s.

23. 1964 • President Johnson used the fabricated incident of the Gulf of Tonkin to get the U.S. fully committed to the war effort in Vietnam. • It would prove an extremely unpopular war and a costly one in lives. • At the end of the war the U.S. had dropped 7 million tons of bombs in the country.

24. Cont’d • U.S. did not enjoy popular support from the Vietnamese people or from the American population. • U.S. was equally divided in favor and opposition to the war effort. • Countless Vietnamese lost their lives and the U.S. lost 58,000 young men in the struggle the majority coming from poor urban areas of the U.S.