There have been counter-culture movements of one kind or another in the U.S. since at least the beginning of the Industrial Revolution in the late 1800s. This rapid industrialization lead to population gains in major urban areas like New York, Chicago and Detroit as workers moved there in search of factory jobs. This urban growth lead to a variety of social problems. With access to affordable printing presses, people with ideas to address those problems were quick to publish them. In the age of electric lights, people were eager to gather in public places to discuss the latest blockbuster book or article that claimed to have it figured out.
For this article, the story really begins with the Beatniks of the 1950’s and the Hippies of the 1960’s. With the end of World War II came the cold war with the Soviet Union. Certain segments of the American population were very concerned about the spread of communism across the globe and particularly into the Western Hemisphere. Cuba, only 90 miles from Florida, became a communist country in 1959 and several countries in central and South America flirted with communist or socialist structures.
McCarthyism was a natural, but unfortunate response as politicians took advantage of these fears by promising to root out the communist threat. Yet there were many in America who were attracted to the idea of a socialist utopia. In fact that allure remains. But those who wanted to investigate, discuss and debate various political alternatives were pushed into backrooms out of fear of being discovered. Hollywood, most famously, blacklisted actors and others in the industry who were suspected of being communist sympathizers, making it difficult or impossible for them to find work. Entertainers who were disturbed by this censorship of ideas became part of the counterculture movement. Branding someone a communist or communist sympathizer was an easy way to “cancel” them during that period.
Comedian Lenny Bruce, writers Jack Kerouac and Hunter S. Thompson, along with many others, began to push back against the repression they felt from Sen. McCarthy’s committee, the major Hollywood studios and conservative America. In 1964-65, Free Speech Movement protests broke out at the University of California-Berkley in response to the university’s written policy banning communists from speaking on campus. These new liberals became proponents for freedom of speech and freedom in general. The free speech and anti-war movements reached their zenith at the Woodstock festival in New York in 1969.
When Ronald Reagan cobbled together a coalition that included enthusiastic Moral Majority/religious right support in 1980, progressives were understandably concerned about the influence the growing evangelical movement might have on free speech. Senator Jesse Helms from North Carolina was very public in his disdain for the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and often used examples of art funded by the NEA to whip up his base. There was talk of banning certain books and magazines as well as banning or creating a rating system for various kinds of music. As expected, liberals balked at these and framed them as an attack on free speech. Comedian George Carlin and others railed against the threat they saw from the right throughout the 1980s.
Flash forward to the 2000s. The liberals have won the debate. There are few limitations to artistic expression on television, in movies, on audio recordings or in books. People with ideas well out of the mainstream are able to present those ideas to any public square, including the internet, with very few barriers. Conservative voices calling on limits to artistic expression and offensive speech are limited to a small minority.
I noticed a change after the 2016 election, but it may have started sooner. Supporters of Hillary Clinton claimed the election was influenced by outside forces disseminating misinformation on Facebook and other social media sites even as the Clinton campaign was pushing a knowingly false narrative regarding Donald Trump and Russia. “Misinformation” evolved into a full-fledged American buzzword during the COVID-19 pandemic, as some people, most notably podcaster Joe Rogan and even President Trump at times, took issue with the CDC’s edicts on the matter. The government began taking steps to shut down any questioning of the official government line, which was dubbed “the science.” “The science shows masks work,” for example, when the data wasn’t so clear. Dr. Fauci, head of the CDC, went as far as to say, “I am the science”
The election of Donald Trump in 2016 so angered those same liberals at Cal-Berkley and other universities that they morphed into mini-McCarthy’s themselves. A quick internet search will reveal long lists of conservative speakers who were invited and later disinvited to speak on campuses. They were either prohibited from speaking due to “safety concerns” (meaning we’re afraid of the protestors) or were allowed to speak but disrupted by vocal groups intent on drowning out the dissenting voice. Many events were forced to be cancelled due to immature interruptions. So much for the Free Speech Movement.
Dubbing someone as “racist” since 2016 is intended to have a similar chilling effect as calling someone a communist in 1960. Being labeled racist means anything you have to say does not deserve to be heard. If you don’t like Biden border policies, you are a racist and if allowed to speak, you will certainly incite violence against Hispanic and Latino peoples. If you are an investment banker, you are a capitalist and capitalism historically has not benefitted marginalized people, therefore you are not allowed to speak. If you are concerned trans athletes who were born male competing in women’s sports is unfair to biological women, you are homophobic and transphobic and not allowed to speak.
From the pandemic through the 2020 election, the large social media platforms Facebook and Twitter took sides. President Trump was permanently banned from Twitter for being “dangerous” and multiple conservative groups were shut down. Now it’s the conservatives screaming about free speech. In April 2022, Elon Musk announced he was buying Twitter to make it a more even-handed, less biased platform, and President Biden promptly responded by announcing the creation of a Disinformation Governance Board to police the internet during the 2022 midterm elections. Sounds a bit like McCarthy’s House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), doesn’t it?
Does anyone want to live in an America where truth is whatever the party in power says it is? I didn’t like it in the 1980s and I don’t like it now. It’s going to be interesting to see who emerges as leaders of the new counter-culture. I hope there is one.