A few days ago Gerard Henderson, bought and paid-for propagandist of the status quo, had yet another bash at one of his obsessive themes, the left of the late 1960s and early 1970s. This time the excuse was the 40th anniversary of 1968.
Henderson's view is that nothing much happened in '68, and certainly not what the so-called left thinks happened.
If nothing much really happened, it's interesting that Henderson has spent much of the past 40 years talking about it. Has he spent the past 40 years writing about nothing much? Well, actually, he has, much of the time. Like his mercifully now-retired partner in crime Paddy McGuinness once did, he writes the same few columns over and over, presumably familiar with the tried and tested propaganda technique of repeating a few simple ideas often.
In the case of 1968, however, there really is something worth talking about 40 years later. Henderson's talking about it because that was the year ordinary people around the world shook his beloved status quo to its foundations.
Students and workers took over the streets of Paris and brought down the government, Vietnamese national independence fighters gave the most powerful army the world had ever seen a swift kick up the khyber, mass demonstrations against the war in Vietnam startled the rulers of Britain, Germany and the US, and the people of Czechoslovakia stood up to Moscow's tanks with nothing but their own bodies, supporting an alternative vision of socialism. Tariq Ali provides a more extensive description of the year in the article that prodded Hendo into his semi-automated response.
Some people, from a distance, equate 1968 with fashion and mind-altering substances, but those are not the reasons people are still talking about that year. Every time has fashion and drugs. Unfortunately, every time doesn't have very large numbers of people questioning the way their society is being run and deciding to get involved and change things.
That's what Henderson and his paymasters hate about 1968. It scared the daylights out of them, and that's why they're still talking about it.
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I asked a 25 year old graduate co-worker what she thought about 1968. She didn't know what the hell I was talking about. But, but, y'know, student politics, radicals, hippies, love and peace, gay liberation, etc, etc.
Response: Are you talking about Tiennamen Square?
But, didn't you ever learn about it at school?
Response: No, I went to a public school. We didn't learn anything much.
The counter-revolution was massive wasn't it.
Well, Fanny, the best I can do in response to that is to quote George Santayana: "Those who can't learn from history are doomed to repeat it."
It's unfortunate that so many people forget the many influences from the past that shape our society.
Right-wingers such as Henderson and Keith Windschuttle think that controlling people's understanding of the past will help them to shape the future.
It's important to understand what really happened. We neglect that at our peril.
Since when did or would schools in Australia teach young people 20th century revolutionary history or even labour movement history? The Russian revolution perhaps, but what else?
Yet May-June 1968 in France saw the largest industrial strikes in French history, the shutdown of France’s educational, commercial and media institutions, and the severest challenge up to that moment of Gaullist political authority.
These events had long term global impact on student and a range of other key social movements that reached their radical peak around this time, the counter-culture and the labour movement.
May-June 1968 provided the context for and came to symbolize radical politics and revolt in the 1960s and beyond. Its influence reaches into day even amongst the yoof. Well, I think it does. Though you'd have to look hard.
You forgot the massacre of Tlatelolco. October the 2nd 1968 Mexico city.
Thanks for mentioning Tlatelolco, Fenix. We're going to hear a lot about 1968 this year, as right-wing propagandists try to rewrite history, but we probably won't hear a lot about the Tlatelolco Massacre because it was carried out by a US ally, with the knowledge of US government, through the CIA and other sources
For several months before the Mexico City Olympics in October 1968, students had been protesting in what often these days would probably be called a democracy movement. Specifically, by early October, they were protesting against the occupation of the university campus by troops trying to stop the protests before the Olympics, which were due to start on October 12.
This democracy movement didn't get the support of the US government that some carefully chosen movements do these days, and the consequent patriotically labelled "revolution" (think Orange, Rose, Cedar, etc).
Instead, on the evening of October 2, after a larger protest earlier in the day, Mexican troops surrounded about 5000 protesters in busy Tlatelolco Square, which was crowded at the time with others just passing through, waiting for transport, etc.
The troops opened fire without warning and killed several hundred people. The exact numbers were never established, and some say thousands died that day.
The government, predictably, said armed students had started the shooting, but it appears that no government troops were killed or injured by bullets and it later emerged that government snipers in buildings around the square had started the firing.
As well as protesters, the dead that day included people who were just passing through the square.
Later, members of the goverment of President Gustavo Diaz Ordaz admitted that the students had been unarmed and implied that the shooting was planned to as a way of stopping the protests.
There's a lot more about the
Tlatelolco massacre at the link to my title, above.
Seems like the only people who want to talk about how mad, bad or irrelevant the 1960s were are those who weren't a part of its best bits - either by unfortunate choice, lack of maturity or actual physical absence, i.e. not yet born.
Why and who would care what they think now?
I spent a week in Mexico city last year. On my way to the Teotihuacan pyramids, I did a quick stop in Tlatelolco's Three cultures plaza, which is where the massacre took place in 1968. I also made friends with a nice elderly woman who sells cigarretes and candy in Mexico city streets. After I felt comfortable talking with her, I asked her if she was in Mexico city during the Tlatelolco massacre. She told me that in those days she would take her kids with her so they would help her with the merchandise she sold. The night of Tlatelolco massacre, her and the kids could not walk through those streets since they were full of dead bodies layin in the ground.
The saddest part about all this, is that the people who developed and executed the massacre have never been convicted of any charges.
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