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Denoting more than a single year or one student protest in the West, 1968 has come to symbolize an entire era of international protests and student-led movements, as Norbert Frei successfully illustrates in his book 1968. Student Revolt and Global Protest. He analyzes the movement’s specific character within individual countries, whereby his focus extends beyond the well-known events in France, the USA, West Germany, and Great Britain to include Japan, Italy, and the Netherlands. He also contrasts the “protests in the West” with the “movements in the East”, those efforts to gain freedom which took place on the other side of the Iron Curtain, in countries like Poland, Czechoslovakia, and East Germany. By highlighting their differences and revealing their common attributes, Frei creates a sweeping portrait of the complex events known as “1968”.
What all lies behind the catchword “1968”? Where are the roots of this international movement? And what were the social consequences? According to Frei, we must examine the global scope of the protest movement as well as its individual manifestations in order to answer such questions. So when was “1968” and where did it take place?
Frei identifies the civil rights movement in the U.S.A. as the precursor of the social protests in the 60s. The massive discrimination of blacks in the U.S.A. led to initiatives advocating inalienable civil rights as early as the 1950s. Although the protests were initially organized largely by black minorities, general discontent soon spread throughout universities, and the aims of the protests broadened as well. Equal rights for all, freedom of speech at universities, and comprehensive political participation ranked among the protesters’ most urgent concerns. Yet beneath these individual demands, the student revolts all shared a common goal: a vision of a new society. The intellectual debates, especially at the universities, aspired to find a “perspective beyond Soviet communism and capitalism”. By the time of the Vietnam War, the waves of protest had reached larger sectors of society. Civil rights activists, peace activists, and students all teamed up in the anti-war movement to establish new and creative forms of protest. With sit-ins, teach-ins and mass séances, the protesters wanted to call attention to social injustices – and their calls did not go unheeded. Meanwhile, at the periphery of the protest movement, San Francisco’s Haight Ashbury district was establishing itself as the “Mecca of a new models of existence.” Clothes, music, drugs and “free love” all became avenues of resistance. Needless to say, the spectacular images were a goldmine for the press.
Students in West Germany protested as well, and Frei asserts that their motivation lay largely in renouncing the country’s repression of its Nazi past. The indifference with which German society accepted that an ever-increasing number of former Nazis held high government office outraged members of the younger generation. The gag order their parents issued regarding the young nation’s Nazi past only served to drive a wedge between the generations. Here as well, the universities became the centers of protest. At the Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt, Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, and Herbert Marcuse assembled a new leftist movement based on their critical theory of society. After 1967, demands grew louder for more concrete forms of protest. Under the influence of Rudi Dutschke, the charismatic spokesperson of the student movement, numerous initiatives emerged, and West Germany underwent several turbulent months. It was during this period that the activists first saw themselves as part of a historical movement. Their firm belief that they could “make history” with their crusades only revealed how naïve their underestimating was of the complex mechanisms of modern societies. Yet on the other hand, it was precisely this (mis-)perception that accounted for the movement’s growing momentum.
Following a detailed account of the events in West Germany, Norbert Frei turns his attention to the “protest in the West” and compares the unrest in America and West Germany with the protests in Japan, Italy, the Netherlands and Great Britain. These brief incisive surveys are highly instructive because they demonstrate how each country had its own specific forms of protest. Whereas, for example, the student revolts in Japan were extremely violently, the creative protests of the Provos and Kabouters in the Netherlands led to hardly any rioting. And Italy is the only country in which the new leftwing movement successfully mobilized the working class. In sum, Frei claims that “in these years, young people’s attitudes change, due in part to their new perceptions of social involvement and their demands for political transformation.”
The same cannot be said for the “movements in the East”. In countries behind the Iron Curtain, protests often arose from within mainstream society; in Czechoslovakia, they even began right within the communist party. Unrest in these countries tended to reflect the “anti-Stalinist tradition of revolt against the Soviet Union in the name of freedom”. However, the forms of resistance are similar: the images of self-immolation, especially in Prague in 1969, are highly reminiscent of the U.S. protests against the Vietnam War.
Norbert Frei provides his readers with a chronicle of global resistance: “1968 was (almost) everywhere.” And yet 1968 was nowhere the same, nor was it confined to one year. Instead, the roots and characteristics of conflict were specific to each individual country. What the different movements share is their moral outrage, their quest for a more just society, and their need for a new way of life. Were these goals reached? What remains of ’68? In his summary, Norbert Frei claims that although the soixante-huitaires were unable to implement their political agenda, their new lifestyle brought about enormous social liberation and change. Especially with regards to West Germany, many initiatives, such as the women’s and gay rights movements, emerged directly from the student protests of the 60s. The student revolts thus hastened the transformation to a more liberal society that most people take for granted today. In this respect, Frei’s book not only presents historical information on the years and events surrounding 1968, but also enables readers to understand the present better.
Eva Kaufmann
November 2008
[Translated by Franklin Bolsillo Mares]
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