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Comment by Mediterraneo10 | Hacker News Reader

I like to read about the 1960s counterculture in Europe and North America. It was always funny to see Rolling Stone in the list of "underground newspapers" of the Sixties, because for my generation, it has always been a completely ordinary and conventional magazine that you can buy anywhere.

Also amazing is that Time Out, which will strike most people today as an unremarkable and boring listing of events, was considered a key achievement of the London counterculture when it first came out. Apparently any countercultural vibe was gradually purged from it over the course of the 1970s.

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"You either die a counterculture or you live long enough to become the culture."

The young/anti-establishment people of the 60's and 70's are the old/establishment people of today.

And, at the same time, there are no young/anti-establishment people of today of any consequence.

Not in any such numbers as to constitute an actual counter-culture anyway...

The anarchist scene has seemed thriving in every city I've lived in.

Thriving in the sense that the goth scene is also thriving.

It has a few places people hang out, occasionally they organize this or that, and they have a good time.

Other than that just as insignificant, in influence, in power, in numbers and in mass appeal as the juggalo scene.

Not much to write home about.

I think it's shocking how normative the culture is today. Fringe media says exactly the same things - pro-social justice, pro-a large social safety net, deep concern about climate change - as the major media. The only actual "counterculture" seems to be Breitbart et al, which is ... a change.

Paper Magazine, the New York Times, and Gothamist now mostly reflect the same cultural ideals. It's fascinating. Was this what the 80s was like?

Funny that you mention Breitbart. Their founder Andrew Breitbart claimed that he helped start Huffington Post in an effort to show that mainstream news sources (NY Times etc) actually share most of the views of groups toward the far left, ie the former counterculture.

Was he successful? He certainly convinced most of the people on the right, but they were already on his bandwagon anyway... As someone in the middle, it's looking more and more like he had a point. (Even if the site that bears his name has become.. well, whatever it is, now.)

Is that true? It's not like effective counter-culture stuff is ever easily recognizable by older generations. Otherwise it wouldn't be fun. Remember ever cool word/ term you knew as a kid and how they immediately stopped being cool once you heard your parents use them?

>It's not like effective counter-culture stuff is ever easily recognizable by older generations.

It might not be easily understood, but it's usually both easily recognizable and frequently condemned.

We're not talking about some secret society, but about major currents for change.

>Remember ever cool word/ term you knew as a kid and how they immediately stopped being cool once you heard your parents use them?

Yes. That's pop culture. Not anti-establishment culture.

>And, at the same time, there are no young/anti-establishment people of today of any consequence

LGBTQ spaces and movements? Black Lives Matter? Occupy Wall St and the subsequent progressive upswell which led to Bernie Sanders, an unknown independent from Vermont, to garner nearly as many votes as one of the most well-known politicians on the planet?

Those are so tame, popular and media-friendly that are their own part of the modern establishment. Furthermore, they focus on small niches (gender, police brutality, etc) and are otherwise totally content with modern society. And OWS died before it was even born -- the best it could manage to was to prop up an alternative Democratic candidate (that would have given the same kind of fake "Hope" Obama ended up delivering to those that believed in him).

If tame middle aged people who listen to Enya and mass media outlets can root for your cause, you're not exactly a counter-culture.

> Furthermore, they focus on small niches (gender, police brutality, etc)

Neither of these is a small niche. Police brutality is a huge, huge issue. It may seem like a small niche to people who are not members of targeted demographics, though.

> and are otherwise totally content with modern society.

What leads you to believe this? From my personal experience this couldn't be more wrong

Anyway, if you want real counter culture that middle aged people will still clutch their pearls over... what about Antifa?

>It may seem like a small niche to people who are not members of targeted demographics, though.

I'm not saying it's not important -- but as a request for change it is niche in scope, that is constrained to a small area of life (even if you are one of the targeted demographics).

>What leads you to believe this?*

Well, some internet ranting and rare protesting aside I don't see any alternative lifestyles there (or only very trite ones, the "fair trade coffee" equivalent of politics). It's all business as usual otherwise.

>Anyway, if you want real counter culture that middle aged people will still clutch their pearls over... what about Antifa?

Better in the shocks middle aged people respect, but scores less points on "culture". It's a reaction-based group, not an alternative cultural force.

> constrained to a small area of life (even if you are one of the targeted demographics).

The specter of police violence is not constrained to a small area of life for members of targeted demographics....

Police culture and worship is incredibly ingrained in mainstream America. How can you say its a "small area of life" when the police have authority in nearly every matter of your life? The police have the power to kill you indiscriminately. They can legally rob you. They are omnipresent in America and the NFL and FOX continually blast pro boys in blue imagery. To even talk ill of cops is seriously shunned - I grew up in a small town and the police were absolutely worshipped and had obscene amounts of power.

To argue, as BLM does, that we should restructure the entire policing system (some say even dismantle it) is to conduct a reimagining of what power and authority means in this country.

In a place where "law and order" (one of Trump's favorite phrases) and the administration of "justice" is upheld as the highest ideal, to decisively argue against normative ideas of them is certainly counter culture.

Also antifa is not reactionary. Many members of antifa orgs run community kitchens, organize reading groups, or build small farms or communes.

Private Eye has done a pretty good job of maintaining the vibe.

Private Eye was never really countercultural. When Richard Neville, founder of the legendary 1960s countercultural newspaper OZ, moved to London, he met with Private Eye staff thinking that they might be on the same wavelength. Instead, he found they were very classist and old-fashioned (and homophobic). The counterculture wanted to utterly tear down the establishment. Private Eye might have poked fun at some establishment figures, but that doesn’t mean it had the same revolutionary aims as the true counterculture.

This is a fair point.

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