True Left

"I posit that it started in the 1950s with the beatniks."

This is a possible interpretation. Zea_mays and I in a private discussion came up with term "proto-Counterculture" to cover this period where divergence was clearly occurring yet was not yet fully self-aware. This distinguishes it from the 1960s when the divergers were totally conscious of the extent of their divergence and its logical implications.

"Sexual liberation also started in the 1950s"

We could go back even further:



But I don't consider sexual liberationism in itself to be Counterculture, so long as it still celebrates high sexual dimorphism. For me, the turning point was when men and women started dressing more similarly, as I was explaining to some idiot here:

https://trueleft.createaforum.com/questions-debates/re-dress-decolonization/msg5864/#msg5864

In fact, I consider it a mistake on the part of the early Counterculture to be uncritically associated with the sexual liberationists. Sexual traditionalism definitely deserved to be attacked, but I would have preferred the attack to have been launched from the angle of romanticism rather than that of hedonism. This is why I prefer the later Counterculture works which realized this mistake and tried to correct it with more romantic emphasis, as well as Counterculture works from originally non-Western countries which to a greater extent avoided the mistake of associating with sexual liberationism in the first place.

"The 1980s were a decade of backlash against countercultural ideals, it's enough to look at Reagan and Thatcher. And many former countercultural students became "yuppies" in the 1980s, embracing Western capitalism and career-oriented lifestyle."

I disagree with this part. They still felt closer to the Counterculture values than traditional Western values, and brought these feelings with them as they moved up their various career ladders, thus taking them over from within. Rightists have a name for this phenomenon: the Long March Through the Institutions. And indeed society did not return to the way it was prior to the 1960s, but instead continued shifting left (examples given above). Capitalism back then was (despite its faults) perceived as more aligned with the Counterculture than against it, since the Turandom Warsaw Pact countries were the ones completely cut off from from Counterculture ideas by the Iron Curtain and hence largely retained traditional Western values:

https://trueleft.createaforum.com/true-left-vs-right/western-civilization-is-ugly-48/msg3911/#msg3911

I agree with Dugin on this:

https://trueleft.createaforum.com/enemies/duginism/msg222/#msg222

Dugin admits that - just as I have long accused him - he is a Westerner after all (he merely dislikes the Counterculture era):

irrussianality.wordpress.com/2017/09/13/interview-with-alexander-dugin/

Quote

PR: There are people who say that you are anti-Western.

    AD: No, I don’t agree. I am not anti-Western. I am anti-liberal. In fact, I love the West. I have written eight volumes dedicated to Western culture, Western philosophy. I have written two volumes on Greek and Byzantine culture; a volume on Latin culture; a volume on Germany; a volume on France; a volume on England; a volume on America, including North America. I am interested in the Western logos; I study it; it is extraordinarily complicated. I don’t only criticize it, I know it and understand it deeply. Until a certain moment when this liberal, globalist ideology triumphed, the West was a jewel. The West produced daring thought, beautiful thought, sunny thought. It had everything. Until the 1980s. What happened in the West in the 80s affected universities, art, mass media, all of society. I consider that contemporary Europe is an anti-Europe. I simply cannot accept the West in its current condition, at the end of modernity. I find that I have more sympathizers in Western cultural circles than in Russian ones. The West is my spiritual, intellectual motherland. That’s not to mention Western European culture, which I admire. I know all the so-called ‘cursed’ French poets by heart. I love English culture. I’m not some evil Russian peasant who hates the West. I know European languages quite well. I know the West, I live my life through it. One can even say that I love the West.

To this day, rightists dislike capitalists for supporting open borders based on free market arguments.

"These definitions contradict each other."

Yes. Hence:

https://trueleft.createaforum.com/counterculture-era/counterculture-and-western-civilisation/msg10049/#msg10049

I disagree with Mazda