Hussin Hejase's comment about foreign agendas taking over got me thinking about the student movement in the West in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Communists (Stalinists, Trotskyists and Maoists) tried to take it over from the left and police (RCMP in Canada) and the CIA tried to take it over from the right. In Canada the NDP rejected its manifestation and the Liberals tried to secure the youth vote. The leadership of the movement was taken over by the Yippies (at least one of the two leaders was working for the CIA). In the end, a social revolution occurred but not a political one. A political reaction set in and reactionary governments were elected, at least in part in reaction to the student movement.
Having been part of that "western student movement" I would say there are some parallels mostly in the sense of forming a coming social agenda about national issues that some of us thought were unconscionable. Of course, we were not revolting by feeling oppressed by traditional oppressive governments, but we were feeling a sense of equity oppression in terms of civil rights issues and a stupid war.
You are quite correct that a political "revolution" did not occur, but I am not very sure that any real social really occurred either. Revisionist history seems to always upgrade the impact of that social movement, but in the end, that movement did nothing to stop the basic greed of the individual American consumer.
I recall when the two of us listened carefully to the aspirations and enthusiasms of Yippie leaders at York University ca. 1968. Which one was the CIA plant?
If I were compelled to choose, my money would be on Jerry Rubin despite/because of the fact that he accompanied Phil Ochs when a pig was needed to run for the US presidency. Jerry and Phil (not to be confused with Ben and Jerry) purchased theirs from a farmer in Indiana and he/she/it was ultimately nominated. Abbie Hoffman, on the other hand, stole his (which seemed to be a somewhat revolutionary gesture at the time) only have it defeated in the primary/run-off at the edge of Lincoln Park.
Jerry and Phil's pig was, of course, to run for the Democratic nomination against Hubert Horatio Hornblower. As you no doubt recall, not only was "Pigasus" defeated, but the was actually arrested by the Chicago Police Department and never seen again.
As for the CIA connection, I wish we could ask Jerry and Abbie (and maybe Phil) about it now, but they died under mysterious circumstances ... some say at the hands of the CIA.
Re: a "social revolution"
Eleanor:
Like G. Bothun, I am unsure that a social revolution occurred - or at least not the one we might have anticipated. It's true that professors no longer wear suits (never mind academic robes) in class and the Church pews hold fewer believers, but that (and other) matters are secondary at best and frivolous at worst.
Meantime, as the 1960s morphed into the 1980s, we got something closer to a "social revolution" in the mantra that "greed is good," the triumph of neoliberalism, the continuation of the "permanent war," etc., etc.
As John Hiatt sang in "No More Dancin' in the Street":
"Martha and the Vandellas taught you how to do as you please,
Now all of you idiots are dancin' to the Bee Gees!"
So it goes. So it went.
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