"What exactly defines the Counterculture era? On Wikipedia this seems to refer very specifically to the 60s-70s, and not with the 90s which you also apply it to, for example."
The Counterculture era certainly began in the 60s, in the US overlapping most notably with the Civil Rights movement as well as opposition to the Vietnam War. However, in a worldwide context, the Anti-Apartheid movement which also began in the 60s:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Apartheid_MovementThe Sharpeville massacre occurred on 21 March 1960, when 69 unarmed protesters were shot dead by the South African police, triggered an intensification of action. The organisation was renamed the "Anti-Apartheid Movement" and instead of just a consumer boycott the group would now "co-ordinate all the anti-apartheid work and keep South Africa's apartheid policy in the forefront of British politics",[1] and campaign for the total isolation of apartheid South Africa, including economic sanctions.
continued to strengthen through the 80s:
In the 1980s, the international campaign to free Nelson Mandela from prison became a global cause. In close co-operation with the exiled leaders of the ANC, the British Anti-Apartheid Movement increasingly personalised the liberation struggle, with Mandela as its symbolic figurehead.[8] The Anti-Apartheid Movement worked with a range of organisations in Britain, such as the International Defence and Aid Fund, local council authorities, churches, and trade unions, to demand Mandela’s release from prison and campaign for the end of apartheid in South Africa. A notable feature of the campaign across Britain was the renaming of buildings and streets after Nelson Mandela, which resulted in the UK having more streets named after him than anywhere outside of South Africa.[9] The Free Nelson Mandela Campaign gained prominence when Glasgow's local authority gave Mandela the Freedom of the City in 1981,[10] and a further eight cities and councils including Aberdeen, Dundee,[11] and Sheffield followed this lead during the 1980s.
A major part of the campaign revolved around music, which helped publicise Mandela and the anti-apartheid struggle to the British public. In 1984, The Special A.K.A released the hit single 'Free Nelson Mandela' which reached number 9 in the UK music charts. In 1986, Artists Against Apartheid organised the Freedom Festival at Clapham Common in London, in which 250,000 people attended. The most famous event was The Nelson Mandela 70th Birthday Tribute which hoped to secure his release in time for his 70th birthday in June 1988. There were four elements to ‘Freedom at 70’: the Nelson Mandela 70th Birthday Tribute concert held at Wembley Stadium on 11 June; a rally in Glasgow to launch the Nelson Mandela Freedom March on 12 June; and the five-week long Freedom March from Glasgow to London, which finished with a rally in Hyde Park on 17 July 1988. These events attracted an unprecedented level of interest in the Anti-Apartheid Movement and the struggle against apartheid. For example, the Wembley Stadium concert was attended by around 100,000 people and an estimated 600 million people in over 60 countries watched the event.[12]
As a direct consequence of the 70th Birthday Tribute, the Anti-Apartheid Movement membership doubled to nearly 18,000 in 1988.[13]
and reached its peak in the 90s with the toppling of Apartheid South Africa itself:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negotiations_to_end_apartheid_in_South_AfricaThe apartheid system in South Africa was ended through a series of negotiations between 1990 and 1993 and through unilateral steps by the de Klerk government. These negotiations took place between the governing National Party, the African National Congress, and a wide variety of other political organisations. Negotiations took place against a backdrop of political violence in the country, including allegations of a state-sponsored third force destabilising the country. The negotiations resulted in South Africa's first non-racial election, which was won by the African National Congress.
In this perspective, the Counterculture era was at its most powerful in the 90s, also manifesting in Clinton's heroic bombing of Serbia (which is our template for US foreign policy):
https://trueleft.createaforum.com/issues/remembering-the-yugoslav-wars/as well as environmentalism:
and continuing into the 00s with BDS:
https://trueleft.createaforum.com/counterculture-era/anti-racism-before-the-counterculture-era-ended/which was explicitly modelled after the Anti-Apartheid movement:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boycott,_Divestment_and_SanctionsBDS is modeled after the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa.[10] Its proponents compare the Palestinians' plight to that of apartheid-era black South Africans.[11]
We consider 9/11 to be the event which ended the Counterculture era. Before 9/11, Western civilization was widely viewed as the cause of most of the world's problems. After 9/11, this was flipped on its head with the notion that Western civilization was under attack and had to be preserved at all costs. (For example, a movie like "300" could never have been made in the Counterculture era, and even visually looks nothing like the Counterculture era movies.)
"The stereotypes associated with it are also more like long-hair and drugs."
This was back in the 60s when young leftists had no power to change things, so they sought escapism:
But by the 90s these same individuals who were powerless youths in the 60s were now in power:
So what was going on in the 90s was social justice attitudes cultivated in the 60s finally beginning to be applied in international politics. This was what Jews realized had to be stopped before Israel became the next target, hence 9/11.
"if one points out the ugly baroque styles of Western art, the racism, sexism, materialism, etc. then someone can easily point out examples that break this pattern."
Yes, and these examples would be examples of (earlier cycles of) Counterculture. The key is that Western art considers itself to be superior to non-Western art, whereas Counterculture art considers itself to be superior to Western art but not to non-Western art. For example:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_landscape_gardenThe Far East inspired the origins of the English Garden via Holland. In 1685, the English diplomat in The Hague and writer Sir William Temple wrote an essay Upon the garden of Epicurus (published in 1690), which contrasted European theories of symmetrical gardens with asymmetrical compositions from China, for which he introduced the Japanese term sharawadgi.[19][20][21] Temple had never visited the Far East, but he was in contact with the Dutch and their discourse on irregularity in design, had spoken to a merchant who had been in the Far East for a long time, and read the works of European travellers there. He noted that Chinese gardens avoided formal rows of trees and flower beds, and instead placed trees, plants, and other garden features in irregular ways to strike the eye and create beautiful compositions, with an understatement criticizing the formal compositions of the gardens at the Palace of Versailles of Louis XIV of France.[22]
The English landscape garden, despite being English, is not Western as it considers itself closer to China than to France.
"anything that does agree with Aryanist ideals (or at least not disagree too strongly) also in "Europe" seems seperated from Western Civilisation."
This is correct.
"My arguments as to why Western Civilisation is bad are therefore dependent upon me removing good ideas from my definition of Western (which others would still call Western)"
The others are wrong. For example, Catharism was a good idea. But how were Cathars treated by Judeo-"Christians"?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albigensian_Crusadehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massacre_at_B%C3%A9ziershttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catharism#Treaty_and_persecutionIf you were a Cathar, would you feel closer to Judeo-"Christians" or to Muslims who were fellow victims of the Crusaders (and who, as we have previously noted, never bothered the Cathars)?
http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v04/v04p335_Whisker.htmlWe find the Cathars emerging by about 1025 A.D., in Germany, Italy and France, also spreading to England and Flanders. Originally they were simply "the new Manichaeans," and were so labeled by those whom the Church sent to weed out the recurrent heresy. There are many legends about the founders of the Cathar heresy, but no single figure or small, identifiable group can be credited. Gerbert of Aurillac, Archbishop of Reims, for example, in 991 made a declaration of principles which were decidedly gnostic and Manichaean, but he cannot be said to have led or encouraged the spread of Cathar religion. In 1028 William V, Duke of Aquitaine, summoned a council of bishops to deal with the heresy, and there it was held that it had spread northward from Italy. Ademar of Chabannes believed that a woman and another peasant had carried the doctrine into France, perhaps from Italy. Modern scholarship suggests that a portion of it, at least, came from Bulgaria, Armenia, and/or the Byzantine Empire, with another portion coming out of the Moslem Empire, where there was an unusual tolerance for strange gnostic sects.
So how can Catharism be considered Western? Actual Westerners persecuted them while non-Westerners did not!
"I would really appreciate simple and clear definitions as to what these terms mean and do not mean"
Western civilization = anything that uses Moses and/or Aristotle (esp. both simultaneously) as positive foundations
Counterculture = any consciously hostile cultural reaction to any aspect of Western civilization
(I disagree with Mazda; I consider the Renaissance more significant to the development of Western civilization than the "Enlightenment". The beginning of the colonial era predates the "Enlightenment", and the colonialists were already behaving like Homo Hubris.)