[sploop!]

Where has all the rage gone?

In 1968, fury at the Vietnam war sparked protests and uprisings across the world: from Paris and Prague to Mexico. Tariq Ali considers the legacy 40 years on

* Tariq Ali
* The Guardian,
* Saturday March 22 2008


Students hurling projectiles against the police on the Boulevard Saint Germain, Paris, May 6 1968

Students hurling projectiles against the police on the Boulevard Saint Germain, Paris, May 6 1968. Photograph: Bruno Barbey/Magnum

A storm swept the world in 1968. It started in Vietnam, then blew across Asia, crossing the sea and the mountains to Europe and beyond. A brutal war waged by the US against a poor south-east Asian country was seen every night on television. The cumulative impact of watching the bombs drop, villages on fire and a country being doused with napalm and Agent Orange triggered a wave of global revolts not seen on such a scale before or since.

If the Vietnamese were defeating the world's most powerful state, surely we, too, could defeat our own rulers: that was the dominant mood among the more radical of the 60s generation.

In February 1968, the Vietnamese communists launched their famous Tet offensive, attacking US troops in every major South Vietnamese city. The grand finale was the sight of Vietnamese guerrillas occupying the US embassy in Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City) and raising their flag from its roof. It was undoubtedly a suicide mission, but incredibly courageous. The impact was immediate. For the first time a majority of US citizens realised that the war was unwinnable. The poorer among them brought Vietnam home that same summer in a revolt against poverty and discrimination as black ghettoes exploded in every major US city, with returned black GIs playing a prominent part.

The single spark set the world alight. In March 1968, students at Nanterre University in France came out on to the streets and the 22 March Movement was born, with two Daniels (Cohn-Bendit and Bensaid, Nanterre students then, and both still involved in green or leftist politics) challenging the French lion: Charles de Gaulle, the aloof, monarchical president of the Fifth Republic who, in a puerile outburst, would later describe as chie-en-lit - "shit in the bed" - the events in France that came close to toppling him. The students began by demanding university reforms and moved on to revolution.

That same month in London, a demonstration against the Vietnam war marched to the US embassy in Grosvenor Square. It turned violent. Like the Vietnamese, we wanted to occupy the embassy, but mounted police were deployed to protect the citadel. Clashes occurred and the US senator Eugene McCarthy watching the images demanded an end to a war that had led, among other things, to "our embassy in Europe's friendliest capital" being constantly besieged. Compared with the ferment elsewhere, Britain was a sideshow ("...in sleepy London Town there's just no place for a street fighting man," Mick Jagger sang later that year): university occupations and riots in Grosvenor Square did not pose any real threat to the Labour government, which backed the US but refused to send troops to Vietnam.

In France, the existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre was at the peak of his influence. Contrary to Stalinist apologists, he argued that there was no reason to prepare for happiness tomorrow at the price of injustice, oppression or misery today. What was required was improvement now.

By May, the Nanterre students' uprising had spread to Paris and to the trade unions. We were preparing the first issue of The Black Dwarf as the French capital erupted on May 10. Jean-Jacques Lebel, our teargassed Paris correspondent, was ringing in reports every few hours. He told us: "A well-known French football commentator is sent to the Latin Quarter to cover the night's events and reported, 'Now the CRS [riot police] are charging, they're storming the barricade - oh my God! There's a battle raging. The students are counter-attacking, you can hear the noise - the CRS are retreating. Now they're regrouping, getting ready to charge again. The inhabitants are throwing things from their windows at the CRS - oh! The police are retaliating, shooting grenades into the windows of apartments...' The producer interrupts: 'This can't be true, the CRS don't do things like that!'

" 'I'm telling you what I'm seeing...' His voice goes dead. They have cut him off."

The police failed to take back the Latin Quarter, now renamed the Heroic Vietnam Quarter. Three days later a million people occupied the streets of Paris, demanding an end to the rottenness of the state and plastering the walls with slogans: "Defend The Collective Imagination", "Beneath The Cobble- stones The Beach", "Commodities Are The Opium Of The People, Revolution Is The Ecstasy Of History".

Eric Hobsbawm wrote in The Black Dwarf: "What France proves is when someone demonstrates that people are not powerless, they may begin to act again."

I had been planning to head for Paris - it was something we had been discussing at the paper - but then I received a late-night phone call. A posh voice said, "You don't know who I am, but do not leave the country till your five years here are up. They won't let you back." In those days, citizenship for Commonwealth citizens was automatic after five years. I would not complete my five years until October 1968. Already Labour cabinet ministers had been discussing in public whether or not I could be deported. Friendly lawyers confirmed I should not leave the country. Clive Goodwin, the publisher of our mag, vetoed the trip and went off himself.

I went a year later to help Alain Krivine, one of the leaders of the May 1968 revolt, in his presidential campaign, standing for the Ligue Communiste Révolutionnaire. As we touched down at Orly airport, returning from a rally in Toulouse, the French police surrounded the plane. "Hope it's you, not me," muttered Krivine. It was. I was served an order banning me from France which stayed in force until François Mitterand's election many years later.

The revolution did not happen, but France was shaken by the events. De Gaulle, with a sense of history, considered a coup d'état: in early June, he flew from a military base to Baden-Baden, where French troops were stationed, to ask whether they would support him if Paris fell to the revolutionaries. They agreed but demanded rehabilitation for the ultra-right generals whom De Gaulle had fired because they opposed pulling out of Algeria. The deal was done. Yet De Gaulle slapped down his interior minister for suggesting that Sartre be arrested: "You cannot imprison Voltaire," he ruled.

....

History rarely repeats itself, but its echoes never go away. In the autumn of 2004, when I was in the US on a lecture tour that coincided with Bush's re-election campaign, I noticed at a large antiwar meeting in Madison a very direct echo in a utopian bumper sticker: "Iraq is Arabic for Vietnam." The sound engineer in the hall, a Mexican-American, whispered proudly in my ear that his son, a 25- year-old marine, had just returned from a tour of duty in the besieged Iraqi city of Fallujah, the scene of horrific massacres by US soldiers, and may show up at the meeting. He didn't, but joined us later with a couple of civilian friends. He could see the room was packed with antiwar, anti-Bush activists.

The young, crewcut marine, G, recounted tales of duty and valour. I asked why he had joined the marine corps. "There was no choice for people like me. If I'd stayed here, I'd have been killed on the streets or ended up in the penitentiary serving life. The marine corps saved my life. They trained me, looked after me and changed me completely. If I died in Iraq, at least it would be the enemy that killed me. In Fallujah, all I could think of was how to make sure that the men under my command were kept safe. That's all. Most of the kids demonstrating for peace have no problems here. They go to college, they demonstrate and soon they forget it all as they move into well-paid jobs. It's not so easy for people like me. I think there should be a draft. Why should poor kids be the only ones out there? Out of all the marines I work with, perhaps four or five percent are gung-ho flag-wavers. The rest of us are doing a job, we do it well and hope we get out without being KIA [killed in action] or wounded."

Later, G sat on a sofa between two older men - both former combatants. On his left was Will Williams, 60, born in Mississipi, who had enlisted in the army aged 17. He was sure that, had he not left Mississippi, the Klu Klux Klan or some other racist gang would have killed him. He, too, told me that the military "saved my life". Following a stint in Germany, he was sent to Vietnam. Wounded in action, he received a Purple Heart and two bronze stars; he also began to change following a rebellion by black troops at Camranh Bay protesting racism within the US army.

Following a difficult period readjusting, Williams read deeply in politics and history. Feeling that the country was being lied to again, he and Dot, his companion of over 43 years, joined the movement opposing the war in Iraq, bringing their Gospel choir voices to rallies and demonstrations.

On G's right was Clarence Kailin, 90 years old that summer and one of the few remaining survivors of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade that had fought on the Republican side in the Spanish civil war. He, too, has been active in the movement against the war in Iraq. "Our trip was made in considerable secrecy - even from our families. I was a truck driver, then an infantry man and for a short time a stretcher-bearer. I saw the brutality of war up close. Of the five Wisconsinites who came to Spain with me, two were killed... later, there was Vietnam and this time kids from here died on the wrong side. Now we have Iraq. It's really bad, but I still believe there is an innate goodness in people, which is why so many can break with unworthy pasts."

In 2006, after another tour of duty, G could no longer accept any justification for the war. He was admiring of Cindy Sheehan and the Military Families Against the War, the most consistently active and effective antiwar group in the US.

A decade before the French Revolution, Voltaire remarked that "History is the lies we agree on". Afterwards there was little agreement on anything. The debate on 1968 was recently revived by Nicolas Sarkozy, who boasted that his victory in last year's presidential elections was the final nail in the '68 coffin. The philosopher Alain Badiou's tart response was to compare the new president of the republic to the Bourbons of 1815 and Marshal Pétain during the war. They, too, had talked about nails and coffins.

"May 1968 imposed intellectual and moral relaivism on us all," Sarkozy declared. "The heirs of May '68 imposed the idea that there was no longer any difference between good and evil, truth and falsehood, beauty and ugliness. The heritage of May 1968 introduced cynicism into society and politics."

He even blamed the legacy of May '68 for greedy and seedy business practices. The May '68 attack on ethical standards helped to "weaken the morality of capitalism, to prepare the ground for the unscrupulous capitalism of golden parachutes for rogue bosses". So the 60s generation is held responsible for Enron, Conrad Black, the subprime mortgage crisis, Northern Rock, corrupt politicians, deregulation, the dictatorship of the "free market", a culture strangled by brazen opportunism.

The struggle against the Vietnam war lasted 10 years. In 2003 people came out again in Europe and America, in even larger numbers, to try to stop the Iraq war. The pre-emptive strike failed. The movement lacked the stamina and the resonance of its predecessors. Within 48 hours it had virtually disappeared, highlighting the changed times.

Were the dreams and hopes of 1968 all idle fantasies? Or did cruel history abort something new that was about to be born? Revolutionaries - utopian anarchists, Fidelistas, Trotskyist allsorts, Maoists of every stripe - wanted the whole forest. Liberals and social democrats were fixated on individual trees. The forest, they warned us, was a distraction, far too vast and impossible to define, whereas a tree was a piece of wood that could be identified, improved and crafted into a chair or a table. Now the tree, too, has gone...

full story

March 1968. March 2008. Different wars, but the same old story.

Echoes of 1968 return to haunt the divided Democrats

The Democrats head for their convention beset by splits and overshadowed by a war, just as they did 40 years ago when Chicago became the focus for extraordinary anti-Vietnam riots. As two films recall those tumultuous events, veterans are reflecting on the similarities with the conflicts of 2008

* Paul Harris
* The Observer,
* Sunday March 23 2008

Forty years ago, John Froines was a Sixties radical leading anti-war hippie protests to the Chicago Democratic Convention. After the 1968 convention descended into riots and more than 25,000 troops and police were deployed on the streets, Froines became one of the famed 'Chicago Eight'. He was put on trial for inciting the disturbances in one of the most controversial cases in American history.

Now, as a distinguished chemistry professor in California, Froines sees a country again mired in a seemingly endless foreign war. Once more the Democrats are headed for a bitterly divided political convention. Yet Froines thinks the world is now in even worse shape than it was in 1968. 'We are in a much more serious time,' he told The Observer. 'Our problems are much more intractable.'

Perhaps that is why the 40th anniversary of the Chicago convention, the riots that surrounded it and the resulting trial are being examined as never before. Not only were the events of 1968 pivotal, but they have never seemed more relevant to the shape of American politics. If you substitute Vietnam for Iraq and Chicago 1968 for Denver 2008, the parallels can become eerie.

source

Different names, but the same old politics...

Is it just too easy to draw the parallel between now and then? Or is there really something in it? Maybe history really does repeat...

[Red Star]

1968 was a different movement to the one today. Much of the Stop The War stuff against Iraq is not centred or grounded in a larger project, while the 1968 "revolution" in France was:

 it [the working class] can still produce new types of struggle, it will hang on to this gain. The revolutionary nucleus has grown and tomorrow it will constitute a firm point of departure - Cohn-Bendit, in The French Student Revolt: The Leaders Speak, Page 81

1968 had the context of the counter-culture movement, in some ways it gave birth to it. The Stop The War stuff now doesn't seem to be a catalyst for new social behaviour.

You have to be careful in drawing parallels. 1968 was after all, at least in France, Italy, Czechoslovakia and Poland a movement against the status quo rather than just an anti-war protest.

[Pleb]

What Red Star said about the cultural shift is very important. The sixties was giving birth to a new individualism and autonomy in thought. Youth culture today is directed towards consumption. Today's attitudes towards drugs, music and sexuality pass for rebellion, but there's a market for hedonism now, we're supposed to be hedonistic. The soixante huitards weren't.

Couple that with the fact that the people who were protesting had a stake in the struggle. It doesn't matter to today's protestors if they don't stop the war because they're not getting drafted. It's just a hobby

[Nets]

Couple that with the fact that the people who were protesting had a stake in the struggle. It doesn't matter to today's protestors if they don't stop the war because they're not getting drafted. It's just a hobby

Bingo.

[Red Star]

It doesn't matter to today's protestors if they don't stop the war because they're not getting drafted

This is true for the American wing of 1968, but not for the European one. There the stakes were framed in a different context - they had a stake in reforming the education system and university rules (which is how it all started out), and that spiralled into a much larger project.

In Eastern Europe, of course, the stakes were much higher.

[PBVBROOK]

In 1968 there was room for a diversity of action while still fashioning oneself as 'counter-culture'. Not so much now.

In the 1960's the US society was insular and lock step. The American dream was pretty universal. So an individual could oppose the war -OR- do drugs -OR- work on civil rights - OR - just grow their hair long and still feel that they could lay claim to what we then called the hippy movement. Look at who the counter-culture icons were at the time. There were few real and effective leaders among them. Other than MLK (who was far from radical) there really isn’t any of lasting significance.

History remembers 1968 as a time of turmoil. It really wasn't in any real sense of the word. In 1968 Nixon won the presidency and took a large percentage of the youth vote. Four years later he won against the anti-war candidate McGovern by a landslide taking over 60% of the popular vote. With the threat of the draft ended we all pretty much went back to school (or stayed there) and (sadly) became the yuppies of the 80's and 90's. Little remains of the so-called radical fervor of the late 60's and early 70's.

A few of us wear our hair long and our new battle is the environment but we do it from the comfort of our Prii and without the participation of anyone under about 40.

And that is the sad thing. Very sad. The thing that gives me the most concern for the future of the US is the apathy of its youth to the problems we face. I think the average young adult today really has no burning issues. And youth does really well fixing problems.

While my generation rebelled against the prosperity and comfort of the lives our parents gave us we turned around and gave the same comfort and protection to our own children. And we did NOT teach our youth about the importance of activism. We did not teach them about the counter culture. What we gave them was 'just say no' and endless cultural sensitivity classes. We turned them into ineffectual little demagogues.

And the real pity is that the few of us who rebelled against what we saw as a system based upon white privilege and corporate greed put down our signs and presided over a culture of business ethics that would have made our parents sick; a society so acquisitive that one of the fastest growing industries is self-storage. We have so much stuff that even though the average size of our families has fallen the average size of our family homes has grown from 1660 sq ft in 1973 to over 2400 sq ft today we have to rent additional space in which to put stuff we no longer use. (2450 square feet is 228 square meters)

I think that it is fair to say that, as far as the US was concerned, the events of the 60's were a media event with little real substance and certainly little lasting value. I exclude the civil rights movement which has most certainly had a profound effect on American society but it was, by definition, NOT a radical movement. It wasn't really a youth movement either. It crossed all age and economic lines.

The sad commentary on my time is that once the threat of the draft as a personal issue ended we all just folded our tents and went home.

[KurtFF8]

Worry not my friends:

http://www.recreate68.org/

[Pleb]

I think that movement is missing the point by a long shot. They don't even have a list of demands and their website makes them look like they're prepared for violence. It sounds like they want to recreate Seattle 99 but I'll bet that there's very few people willing to get themselves a criminal record for the war in Iraq.

You have a candidate with the appearance of an anti war stance. That's defused the rage and Rage is what you need here

[Political Interest]

How can the youth be revolutionary if they are only supporting it because they think it looks cool?

[stalker]

Consumerism is the new opiate of the masses.

[PBVBROOK]

Consumerism is the new opiate of the masses.

QFT

[edwardsdv]

There is nothing going on today. The Iraq War is not the Vietnam War. Things are different. Iraq is by comparison, a limited war. The unpopularity of the war is based in economics, isolationism, and international image. Mostly, however, it is about American frustration over the incompetence with which the war has been executed.

Vietnam was a total war. It had a draft and many more people went to war. In addition, as compared to the Vietnam war, there is NO legitimate authority in Iraq competing with the U.S.( well outside of Kurdish territory.) While it ma ystill be a fool's errand, its not the suicidal- backing military dictatorships and oppressive regimes that our vietnam involvement was. It's ok to be against the war, but it is NOT vietnam.

Just to be clear.

[R_G]

It's just a good idea for a segment on CNN.

That's all.

Comparing Nam to Iraq is idiotic in every sense of the world.

Secondly, there isn't near the same social revolution as back in 68.

For you see, back in 1968 there were very many hippies and getting STDs was cool.

[Donna]

Unlike Vietnam, the anti-War movement in respect to Iraq was big before the war even materialized. Early 2003 was a fairly unique event in history, with the demonstrations in Rome, Paris, Berlin, London protesting a conflict that didn't even exist yet. For Vietnam, it took years of escalation before it began to become unpopular. Iraq's anti-war movement is passe and without energy. In Vietnam at least, there was a fair bit of sympathy among the radical left for the Vietcong. Sympathy for Iraq's Islamism is very marginal, hence the anti-war movement has no ideological dichotomy to it among leftists other than deriding American imperialism.

[R_G]

For Vietnam, it took years of escalation before it began to become unpopular.

Really? Really?

As history indicates to me ( and this is one of those courses in University I never go to classes or study for and still get 85+ ) the Vietnam conflict didn't reach the boiling point until CON-MOTHERFUCKING-SCRIPTION!

After that you had some big names going to jail instead of serving, like Ali, and you also had Woodstock, etc.

What do you have with Iraq?

Oh, yes, thousands of people protesting....okay....little wake up for you buddy, there's always going to thousands of idiots who have nothing better to do than stand outside and march for some " cause ".

Things still don't change.

And all those protesters were probably hardcore Dems/Greens.

So who gives a fuck?

Not I.

[Donna]

As history indicates to me ( and this is one of those courses in University I never go to classes or study for and still get 85+ ) the Vietnam conflict didn't reach the boiling point until CON-MOTHERFUCKING-SCRIPTION!

This is more of an issue for Americans.

So who gives a fuck?

Not I.

I for one don't. Canada is not involved, so I don't really care. Iraqis can continue killing each other and the odd American soldier, it does not alter my life in any way.

[R_G]

This is more of an issue for Americans.

Historically? I can study any country. Or is there a copyright?

it does not alter my life in any way.

Unless you live in complete solitude with no contact with the outside world, it does have an impact on your life, however minimal, if you give it a thought, it does impact you.

Ever heard of the butterfly effect?

[Donna]

Historically? I can study any country. Or is there a copyright?

If French, German and English students suddenly became outraged at the Vietnam War because the American government enacted conscription for American citizens, I would find that a bit bizarre.

Unless you live in complete solitude with no contact with the outside world, it does have an impact on your life, however minimal, if you give it a thought, it does impact you.

Ever heard of the butterfly effect?

Yes, and while I'm not much of an economist, with the falling value of the U.S. dollar I may actually be benefiting from the war as I make purchasing rounds online from the United States quite often.

[KurtFF8]

In Vietnam at least, there was a fair bit of sympathy among the radical left for the Vietcong. Sympathy for Iraq's Islamism is very marginal, hence the anti-war movement has no ideological dichotomy to it among leftists other than deriding American imperialism.

Exactly, and if the PKK were our main enemy in Iraq, you'd see a much stronger resistance movement in the US.

Although it is a misconception that all of the groups in Iraq engaged in resistance are "Islamisists".

[Dave]

I imagine that today's generation of empty youth have found other ways to fill the void left by their lack of self esteem via other means than vainglorious protesting. The Barack Obama and Ron Paul campaigns, environmentalism, and vegetarianism are all great sources of self-esteem for the empty. Looks like market fragmentation!