As a kid my Dad really warped my perspective on Hippies. He was born in the 60s and loved the music of the 60s and 70s and he’s very Liberal. At first I used to think Hippies were the best people that humanity could ever bring forth: Peace-loving folks who love everyone and believe in preserving nature. And I still appreciate a lot of that sentiment, especially protesting the Vietnam War, but as I became a Marxist I became sorta disillusioned with the Hippie’s dedication to non-violence and how their “free love” was often used as an excuse to be a sex-pest drug-addled parasite who refuses to work. I don’t like Forrest Gump’s portrayal of Hippies exactly, it was written by a right winger, they aren’t all assholes and they usually don’t beat women for sure. Nowadays I can respect their anti-war sentiments and their pro-nature stances but so much of being a hippy seems to be a misunderstanding of what gets shit done. Also some Hippie music is great but FUCK jam bands, nobody’s trying to hear a song that’s as long as a full album and just repeats over and over again with slight variations. That’s all I have to say about Hippies, what are your thoughts?
hippies are an annoying side effect of the american “new left” of the 60s. a revival of leftism, sure, but not one that was too effective or theory-based at all. the entire thing was kinda centered around the vietnam war, which was a fantastic mobilizer for the years that it was happening, but once the united states was defeated in vietnam and pulled out and the war ended, all the hippies stopped caring and settled down while they gave birth to one of the most wretched groups, the yuppies. the hippies were basically like the first iteration of the “calls themself a leftist but still buys some CIA propaganda” type you see all too often nowadays. america was bad, sure, but the soviet union was JUST as bad. lets just have world peace and everyone in harmony, man. there were of course active radical marxist-leninists, and not to mention the incredible black panther party, but i think they were kinda overshadowed in general by the “new left” hippies who were so high on CIA LSD that they didn’t really do much in the country aside from protest the war that was already on its way out thanks to the brave soldiers of the NVA.
nowadays, you can find hippies living in million-dollar homes in cities that were once cool and radical and are now just havens for the rich (think san francisco), living out all the ideals that they “rebelled against” in the 60s and posting 5G covid conspiracy theories online.