Idk, born in 2006 and goth, I don’t know about other subcultures that much.

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.

Putting them in their historical context might help. The 60s were a time of social upheaval in the US, with the BPP (and its sibling the White Panther Party), anti-war movement, AIM, Young Lords and a lot of trade unions and other groups all stacked on one side against the KKK, CIA, COINTELPRO, HCUA, Indian Termination and both parties, as well as the general climate of a possible world ending war anytime now, including the Turkish Missile Crisis. There were also coups happening all over the US international holdings as part of the red scare, though I’m not sure if Yankees ever heard about those.

This also manifested in the music of the time, with disco, rap, hip-hop and jazz flourishing, as well as some genres that didn’t survive as well like punk, folk and psychedelic rock. The time of both Dead Kennedy’s and Yoko Ono’s participation in The Beatles.

It was also the time of what’s called the “sexual revolution,” caused partly by the sudden increase in the access to contraception such as latex condoms and birth control pills, in which both men and women (but specially women) could now date and have sexual relationships outside of marriage with less of the biological constraint of pregnancy, while pushing back at the US’s weird social views on sexuality.

So putting those into that historical perspective, I see the “Hippies” as a particularly white, “libertarian” and idealist “movement,” surrounded by much stronger and more motivated forces. There were lots of people that might be called that who actually stood up for something, for example the riot at the 1968 DNC, but as usual the ones we get to hear the most about in the media are the overly arrogant pacifist drug addicts. There are better lines one can draw the other user pointed out about the Yippies, but I’m just reinforcing how very important it is to demystify this very turbulent and fascinating period of Yankee history.

Often the propaganda is so deeply rooted that you might as well just throw out your entire understanding of history and start over. And in the case of the “Hippies,” they serve as the “pathetic and degenerate” side of the eternal fascist equations of “all-powerful and destructive but also pathetic and degenerate,” while the non-white groups served as the other side. Meanwhile both got regularly infiltrated by informants and wreckers, making sure to single out and eliminate all effective leaders that got a hold, like Seale, Hampton, Peltier, and to a lesser extent Hayden.

There was also a lot of overlap and (dare I say it) contraditcion between all of those aforementioned groups. Some “Hippies” destroyed military research facilities with arson and explosives (Sterling Hall), BPP members generally were also part of the broader anti-war movement, AIM is often forgotten despite being the most dedicated fighters in all of these causes. I’m no US specialist, so if you are a Statesian, I’d really recommend you doing your own deeper research on those times as I think they’re possibly the closest the US got to an actual revolution.

Disclaimer that I am too young to have experienced the hippie era and we never really had a coherent hippie movement like in the US however I have encountered enough hippie adjacent people here to have formed an opinion.

There’s so much about the hippie movement that should make me sympathetic towards it: valuing peace, vegetarianism/veganism, queer-friendliness, being countercultural etc. etc.

Despite this fact, I really really dislike the hippie movement.

It’s idealistic, utopian, individualistic, naive, anti-scientific, orientalist, Walden-esque transcendentalist nonsense, and it tends to encourage really arrogant, sanctimonious attitudes.

The movement had an opportunity to work towards achieving societal change and, at one point, I believe that they could have really made an impact but they were so steeped in individualism that they never really got their shit together and organised because they were too busy pursuing their own individual goals or gratification.

I think that the hippie movement is a really good example of how liberation has to come from a material basis first or otherwise, as with ancapism, if you allow for certain freedoms then you risk increasing the oppressive elements that are pre-existing in society. In the case of hippies, amongst other things it was free love before the liberation of women which I suspect led to many opportunistic men exploiting women and potentially even abusing them.

It’s absolutely no coincidence that a lot of cults, small and large, sprang up within or alongside the hippie movement. Charles Manson’s was probably the most notorious example here but all of the seeds of Manson’s exploitation of vulnerable people were sown by the hippie movement.

Hippies are generally a classic case of what MLK posited as the “white liberal” (in his Letter from a Birmingham Jail) who values a negative peace over a positive presence of justice; they’ll end up opposing righteous anger and violence against the system in favour of maintaining the status quo and the precious negative peace which is characterised by the absence of justice.

They also grossly fetishised eastern and indigenous cultures.

I could go on but I’ll spare you.

Hippie/hippie adjacent music had some really shocking ties to military establishment families and I do wonder if there was more behind the hippie movement than just a grassroots culture that developed organically.

Honestly, I have no time for most hippies. I don’t trust them, I don’t like them, they are insufferably preachy and arrogant. Of course there are some good people who are hippies but I treat them with a ton of well-deserved skepticism. Usually the good hippies are good in spite of being hippies rather than being good because they are hippies, in my experience.