tzimmer_history

tzimmer_history, 20 days ago

What has entered our collective memory as “1968” was the culmination of student-led protests that erupted in around 60 countries at the same time. This was a truly transnational phenomenon, and those who protested certainly perceived of themselves as part of a global movement. 2/

tzimmer_history, 20 days ago

These protests had country-specific origins and contexts – but there are some really striking transnational parallels and similarities. The key actors, those at the center of the protests, were part of a younger generation that had come of age after the Second World War. 3/

tzimmer_history, 20 days ago

The campus was the epicenter of the “unrest” that was animated by a longing to overcome the status quo, as the students were convinced the elites in power were betraying the ideals and promises they constantly invoked to perpetuate and legitimize the existing system. 4/

tzimmer_history, 20 days ago

The frustration had a variety of sources and causes. In Senegal, for instance, students pointed to the promise of independence from colonial rule that stood in contrast with the reality of continued cultural and economic dependence on France. 5/

tzimmer_history, 20 days ago

In Egypt, the frustration resulted from the gap between the Nasser regime’s promises of “development,” of modernizing the country – and the fact that the social and economic circumstances had remained dire for most Egyptians. 6/

tzimmer_history, 20 days ago

If we zoom in on the “West,” it was the frustration over the gap between the promise of liberal democracy and the reality of a society and political system that certainly was quite democratic for some groups and something else entirely for others. 7/

tzimmer_history, 20 days ago

The gap between promises and proclamations on the one hand and existing power relations on the other was particularly stark in the United States, where “All men are created equal” contrasted violently with the reality of a racial caste society. 8/

tzimmer_history, 20 days ago

A global superpower that was presenting itself on the world stage as the oldest democracy in existence and a beacon of freedom for people everywhere was, in reality, a society in which the individual’s status was significantly determined by race, gender, religion, or wealth. 9/

tzimmer_history, 20 days ago

The central demand that spoke to the generational frustrations of millions and convinced them to protest even if they had nothing much to do with the inner circle of protest organizers was to close that gap, to end the hypocrisy, to finally realize the promise of American democracy. 10/

tzimmer_history, 20 days ago

Protesters across the world saw the Vietnam War as irrefutable proof of the system’s hypocrisies. America was sending its children to die and to kill in support of an authoritarian regime, all in the name of a “freedom” it was denying so many of its own citizens. 11/

tzimmer_history, 20 days ago

The vast majority of young people who were politicized by the protests of the 60s didn’t become terrorists or just retreated into hedonism. Many actually channeled their frustration into new political ventures - their energy fueled the social movements of the 70s. 12/

tzimmer_history, 20 days ago

Whatever social, racial, and political progress we have achieved since the final third of the twentieth century: The protests of the 60s have had a lot to do with that. To reduce their legacy to “Nixon won” is simplistic and disingenuously reductive. 13/

tzimmer_history, 20 days ago

Students were at the forefront of the protests against the Vietnam War in the 1960s, South African apartheid in the 1980s, the Iraq War in the early 2000s. All of these protest movements were, at the time, widely derided as manifestations of leftwing radicalism. 14/

tzimmer_history, 20 days ago

It does not follow from this pattern that all left-coded student protesters are inevitably correct in their diagnosis and always justified in all the actions they take – or that all their specific demands are necessarily helpful and constructive. 15/

tzimmer_history, 20 days ago

But we must grapple with the role large student protest movements have consistently played in recent U.S. history: As a corrective, reminding the nation that it was failing to live up to its own promises and aspirations, at home and abroad.

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tzimmer_history, 20 days ago

@peterbutler I am quoting a piece from a WaPo columnist there. Not my words.

tzimmer_history, 20 days ago

The university has provided an environment that allowed young people to formulate an unsparing critique of America’s shortcomings and the injustices it ignored or actively perpetuated. The core message has always been: We demand you do better! 11/

tzimmer_history, 20 days ago

Students have the time and resources to think critically about society and creatively about potential ways to make the world a better place – and they are not yet too jaded or too exhausted to believe this might actually happen: We could really make the world a better place. 12/

tzimmer_history, 20 days ago

Any assessment of the historical significance of student protests and of the “lessons” 1968 might offer would do well to distinguish the question of immediate, narrowly defined electoral outcomes from the underlying diagnosis and discontent that brought students together. 13/

tzimmer_history, 20 days ago

The vast majority of young people who were politicized by the protests of the 60s didn’t become terrorists or just retreated into hedonism. Many actually channeled their frustration into new political ventures - their energy fueled the social movements of the 70s. 14/

tzimmer_history, 20 days ago

Claiming to affirm and celebrate past progress while aggressively denouncing the young people who were instrumental in reminding the nation that a course correction was needed and then poured so much into trying to make that happen: That’s simply disingenuous.

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tzimmer_history, 20 days ago

@BlueWaver22 As a response to a piece about how the exact same arguments have always been used to delegitimize protest movements you offer the exact same argument.

tzimmer_history, 20 days ago

@BreakingImpossible @guncelawits Did you actually read the piece? Because it has a very long section on the global dimension of “1968” and emphasizes that this was not just a Western phenomenon.

tzimmer_history, 20 days ago

@BlueWaver22 Hitler was never elected, the Nazis got over 40 percent (in March 1933) only after he had already ascended to power, and I think this is indicative of the way you are a little too quick to draw clear-cut lessons that fit your priors from a history that was vastly more complex.