Who was reviled more in the 60's and 70's?

[leftofthedial]

Poll question: Who was reviled more in the 60's and 70's?

I come from a military family, although I never served. I respect and admire the veterans who did dedicate themselves to the service of our country. I don't want to diminish in any way the sacrifice, suffering and disgraceful lack of respect that has been accorded Viet Nam Veterans in this country.

BUT, I grew up in that era and can attest that "hippie" anti-war people were hated, ridiculed, spat upon, beaten, arrested, harassed and even murdered for their views.

I'm not talking about criminals or terrorists who resorted to violence in their zeal to fight against the war. I'm talking about ordinary citizens--students, clergy, artists, musicians, housewives, working people--who opposed the war or who visibly embraced the revolutionary spirit of the times in their grooming, dress or lifestyle.

I had friends who were arrested, beaten. I was routinely ridiculed for having long hair and was myself assaulted by conservatives, merely for how I looked. I was detained against my will by police in my small hometown for protesting at a Spiro Agnew campain stop in 1972, less than a year before he resigned in criminal disgrace. I broke no law, but enjoyed the hospitality of the backseat of a police cruiser for a couple of hours until Agnew flew on the his next stop.

Those who protested the war deserve a measure of our credit and our respect for having had the courage to oppose injustice and to become agents of necessary social change. We need to look beyond the advertising caricature of the times and recall the reality. Members of the peace movement were murdered--at Kent State and in dark places and jail cells throughout the country--they were spat upon and attacked. They were a minority and viewed with distrust and ridicule by most Americans at the time.

[Monkeyman]

1. I was and still am VVAW both

[leftofthedial]

4. thanks for your service

and for your commitment to peace

[Maddy McCall]

2. Depends on where you lived.

[leftofthedial]

7. some parts of the country were definitely worse than others

Those regional divides still resonate throughout our political rhetoric--"San Francisco lifestyle," "Massachusetts liberal," "Southern redneck," etc.

[saltpoint]

3. In most of my extended family, "hippies" were reviled as subversives, but

on a family vacation one of our family's young teenagers was lost and later rescued by a small group of "hippies," all of whom knew the forests around Lake Tahoe quite a bit better than he did.

Later he said he had never encountered trees so tall (redwoods) or people that kind (his rescuers).

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

5. Kind of a false dichotomy.

Many hippies were vets. And the people disrespecting both were the same people.

[leftofthedial]

10. I agree with the first sentence,

but not entirely with the second, at least not without some qualification.

I think ALL Americans failed to accord returning vets the respect and accolades they deserved. I knew "hippies" who indeed did think of vets as "baby killers," but I also knew many conservatives who hated returning vets for being "losers."

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

14. ...

"I think ALL Americans failed to accord returning vets the respect and accolades they deserved."

See, now back then it was like it is today. If you protested against the war, then you're "disrespecting the troops," you're "spitting on the troops." If you call Lt. Calley a "baby killer," and he was, literally, then you were calling all the troops "baby killers."

It was all a load of bullshit. Then and now.

[Sapere aude]

20. I think you may be wrong,

Many people protested the war but accepted vets with open arms. I was one of those vets. The idea was to learn from the experience and teach others. Some vets did not join the anti war movement and some did.

Most people when they learned the truth about My Lai thought Calley was a murderer and so were the troops that killed the villagers but that did not necessarily attach to all vets. There were many people who took advantage of the situation to join in the excitement of the times but who lacked any kind of real commitment to one side or the other. They just wanted to be part of the scene. I would guess it was one of those types who spat on me.

[TahitiNut]

21. I agree with that. Too many depict those days with cartoonish simplicity.

The broad-brush characterizations of various 'groups' just don't wash, really. For example, some of the most arrogant wannabe Rambos were veterans who never set foot in Viet Nam. They often didn't have a clue. The "anti-war" crowd came from both the right and the left - it was "Johnson's War" after all. There is NO POLITICAL STANCE that confers blanket innocence on any group. There are assholes associated with every political position.

Besides those fallacies that abound when looking in the revisionist rear-view mirror, people forget how regional differences were enormous. The Detroit area, for example, didn't experience "the 60s" until the 70s - if then. In the SF Bay area, on the other hand, "the 60s" was already banal and retail by 1970-71 - it was fashionable even among the most politically clueless. When "counter-culture" becomes mainstream, it's no longer "counter" anything.

By around 1974, "hippie" had become a backwater epithet to denigrate anything urban, collegiate, and liberal. It was the one-size-fits-all label used to facilitate Nixon's Southern strategy - a ubiquitous replacement term for "n_____-lover." In this usage, it has almost NOTHING to do with the actual 60s counter-culture.


Here's a "hippie" from 1970 ... me, on a 3-week motorcycle trip, getting my head straight. (My ponytail isn't quite visible, nor are the love beads.)

[Sapere aude]

18. You are the first person I know of who gets it.

I don't know of anyone who disrespected both simultaneously, but the fact that they disrespected a group of people be they vets or hippies puts them in the same crowd.

The people who disrespected vets were not the honest anti war community. They were people with their own agenda. It is too bad that we have to use todays political context to try and make some sense out of the Vietnam War era. That is way to simplistic. There were anti war people on both sides of the political spectrum as is beginning to happen more and more today. It wasn't a left vs right thing.

We seem to classify people as this: hippie, anti war, democrat, leftist; clean, pro war, republican, right wing. It wasn't that way back then.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

19. There isn't much of a difference between then and now.

Freepers are constantly going on at length about how those crazy liberals over at DU are constantly hating the troops, spitting on them, and calling them "baby killers."

It's not true now, and it wasn't true then.

[WI_DEM]

6. I would say both hippies (or anti-war demonstrators in general, not all were hippies)

and returning vets.

[acmavm]

8. Anyone against the Viet Nam war and was public about it ran the

risk of physical reprisals or sneaky reprisals and persecution by the nixon administration and the military/industrial complex. They used the FBI, local police, every dirty trick in the book.

[leftofthedial]

12. not to mention the pickup truck full of rednecks

[acmavm]

16. No shit.

[Monkeyman]

23. At the Park where we were FBI and CID have us on film

[acmavm]

24. Here in Bumf**k Nebraska we had this little magazine type

thing that was published semi-regularly called the 'Hippie Survival Manual'. (I still have a copy). It explained how to avoid arrest, what to do if being hasseled by the cops, what your rights were, etc. It also had little tabloid type stories about some of our high-profile hippie types.

[no_hypocrisy]

9. My father saw a lot of "bad" in hippies:

Free love, dopers, communes, Woodstock, antiwar, anti-American, drop-outs, anti-establishment, anti-capitalism, flower children, revolutionaries, socialists, communists, equated with YIPPIEs, demonstrators, children-who-refused-to-grow-up, etc., etc.

My father was always rooting for Archie Bunker over Mike (a/k/a "Meathead").

Hippies were nearly extinct by the time I was old enough to be one.

[leftofthedial]

17. I had a pretty hardcore redneck extended family

with a few exceptions

I still don't understand how these people come to think the shit they "believe."

[tularetom]

11. I was a vet and a hippie

well, at least a vet with long hair, and I'd say the pro war faction was a hell of a lot nastier. I was definitely not made to feel welcome by our local american legion post.

[leftofthedial]

15. that was what really galled me

My father was a 20+ year Air Force vet, who served during WWII, Korea and Viet Nam (although he never served in theater in Viet Nam). He wasn't the American Legion type, but the extended veteran community was like a big family . . .

. . . until Viet Nam, when, as I recall, some American Legion posts actually voted not to admit Viet Nam War vets.

Disgraceful. Thanks for your service and, hey! also for the long hair!

[Monkeyman]

13. Impact moments Chicago- Kent State- John Kerry's Statement

100,000 of people in the streets. May Day was huge in D.C. When we toss our ribbons back. Seeing Young people beat by Chicago Cops. Seeing young kids shot to death at Kent State. These all where the big moments of the movement.

[treestar]

22. Thank you, that is a great point.

This is one of those "framing" things we have to get around instead of thrashing around withing the wingnuts' imposed framework. They are always trying to make the strongest among us into the victims - they only succeed by managing to draw your attention away from the rest of the world.

And even if somebody did spit on a soldier, that doesn't make the war right. It is one of the most idiotic and probably urban legendary stories out there.