The 60s: Counterculture, the CIA, and other Absurdities

[RottingCorpse]

Nacho and I I have been having a fairly nice email back and forth about 60s counter culture that should be brought here. I'll let him repost his links lest I seem like the cool informed one.

But I'll kick off my side of it with an introduction to Mae Brussell, the late CIA Conspiracy Queen. Her website is filled with archives of her radio show which covers everything from Nixon to 9/11

http://maebrussell.com/

[nacho]

Oh...well...from the emails...

This all started when RC wanted the text to the Port Huron Statement and HST's "Wave Speech":

History: http://counterculture.wikia.com/wiki/Port_Huron_Statement

Text: http://www2.iath.virginia.edu/sixties/HTML_docs/Resources/Primary/Manifestos/SDS_Port_Huron.html

Alternate link: http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Port_Huron_Statement

HST's "Wave Speech":

http://ow.ly/gWdLc

And this is my chance to repost the Port Baltimore Statement!

http://www.greatsociety.org/?p=1948

In reply to satire as revolution, I pointed RC to the world of Abbie Hoffman, the Yippies, and the antics of our first "urban prankster."

And, when it came to the homogenization of the world today, and how Krassner (and all the others) could not exist, I had this reply:

No way. and that's the point. Also read this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Selling_of_the_President_1968

Nixon would go on to homogenize the whole thing in 72. The Conventions we know today didn't really exist prior to 72.

And, of course, Nixon was the "law and order" candidate. The whole point of the "silent majority" was to create the world we live in today -- a world where pipe bombs did not go off in the circuit court, and the streets of Chicago didn't burn, and black people didn't block bridges.

To that end, you want to study COINTELPRO: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO

Overall, the rise and fall of the 60's is a fascinating topic... HST's Wave Speech really hits the nail on the head... There we were, united in revolution. And then it all got so, so terrible and splintered. And, now, those icons who survived are mostly conservative republicans who kind of make you wonder if, maybe, Manson was on to something...

This is the real war that America lost. Not Vietnam...but the social revolution of the 60's. We lost it because, like Vietnam, we didn't have the stomach for it. It got too serious, and tried to do too much at once. And then the waterheads and the monsters among us wiped out the great voices, and showed us that giving peace a chance was not enough. And when we turned to violent protest, we become just as bad as them...which was the goal all along, perhaps. We burned out and turned into the "Me Generation," followed by "Morning Again in America" and the yuppies, followed by political correctness, and whatever the fuck we are now. Gentrified neo-yuppies complaining about gun control while doing nothing behind our desks for 12 hours a day and gulping down X anax by the fistful.

[RottingCorpse]

Which brings us back to Brussell who was convinced Nixon fully employed the CIA to shut down the counterculture movement. She said Manson was a patsy being used to make hippies (and by proxy, the counter culture) look bad... the same way they were trying to make the Vietcong look bad in Southeast Asia. I don't know if I buy her Manson theory, but she makes some good points about how badly the powers that be wanted to stifle the counterculture.

[nacho]

Which brings us back to Brussell who was convinced Nixon fully employed the CIA to shut down the counterculture movement. She said Manson was a patsy being used to make hippies (and by proxy, the counter culture) look bad... the same way they were trying to make the Vietcong look bad in Southeast Asia. I don't know if I buy her Manson theory, but she makes some good points about how badly the powers that be wanted to stifle the counterculture.

Well... We love to whip the CIA, but the (mainly FBI) attempt to bring down the counterculture movement was public knowledge.

Remember that Hoover's FBI was a very different beast than today's FBI...and pretty much above the law. I think people often forget that, in Hoover's heyday (the 50's and 60's), the FBI behaved pretty much like the CIA in terms of black bag ops and so forth.

The CIA is also much younger. They didn't exist till 47, and didn't really get their footing until the 50's. Even into the early to mid 60's, the CIA was still very much something of a fledgling organization.

I'm amazed, in terms of 60's history, how Hoover gets a pass as a comical cross-dresser. In reality, he was the most powerful man in the US, and his agents acted without any oversight.



 

[Disco Dust]

NS seems to think the current FBI is on the up-and--up...but I like to think he is not that naive 

[RottingCorpse]

Well, we've all been Zero Dark Thirty-ed of late, no? The CIA has replaced the FBI as the big underground gestapo.

I had a friend who was an organizer of Second Iraq War protests in DC who told me that her phone was *very* obviously tapped. She was alos pretty sure that a couple of volunteers were FBI agents. They weren't very subtle about letting her know she was being watched... which I told her may have been the point.

I guess the more things change, the more things stay the same.

[nacho]

Compared to the Hoover era, the modern FBI are boy scouts.