1968: The Birth of New Conformism

"... the movement that emerged in response to postwar conformism was to realise a new form of conformism. In the period between 1970 and 1990, most of the ideas associated with the countercultural movement became absorbed by mainstream society. The 1960s obsession with individual self-fulfilment and emotional and personal issues was thoroughly written into society’s cultural script.

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Frank Furedi
Spiked

From the standpoint of history, 1968 represents a brief interregnum. It did mark the end of the apathetic era of the 1950s. But it also foreshadowed the era of depoliticised conformism that kicked in in the early 1970s.

To understand the meaning of 1968, one has to understand that, during the late 1940s and 1950s, Western societies were haunted by the legacy of the interwar era – an era in which the social structure, and the largely liberal values on which it was purportedly based, were called into question. Such was the postwar fear of drawing attention to what amounted to a crisis of legitimacy that critical thought was banished to the margins of intellectual life. The marginalisation of critique and dissent was aided by the postwar boom, which served to distract society from the political impasse prevailing over public life. The Cold War was useful in this respect. It reinforced the mood of political passivity, channeling the public’s attention towards uniting against an external enemy.

But suddenly, out of nowhere, the 1960s countercultural movement appeared on the scene. To many at the time, it seemed as if the world had been turned upside down. As the head of the conservative Adenauer Foundation in West Germany put it, ‘The revolt of 1968 destroyed more values than did the Third Reich’. The 1960s countercultural movement succeeded in forcing significant sections of society to question the values that underpinned their daily existence.

The highpoint of the countercultural moment was the revolt of French students in May 1968. Their revolt, which helped mobilise French workers and precipitated a general strike, appeared to many as the precursor of an era of radicalism. With good reason: in the months after May, student protests proliferated, the civil-rights movement grew further, and mass demonstrations against the war in South-East Asia continued to dominate the headlines. Yet, in spite of what appeared to be a building momentum, the radical moment soon passed away. By the early 1970s, the counterculture had become de-radicalised, and it gradually entered the mainstream in the form of youth culture.

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