American counterculture movements: where the past meets the present

USA Today

06-02-2025

American counterculture movements: where the past meets the present | The Excerpt
On a special episode (first released on February 5, 2025) of The Excerpt podcast: From conservative social movements such as those tied to prohibition, the Moral Majority evangelicals, and the Tea Party, to liberal social movements focused on Civil Rights, Women's Liberation and LGBTQ+ Rights, America is no stranger to social dissent. But what makes a social movement a counterculture movement? And what have been some of the unique intersections between counterculture movements and the arts, money, and even violence? Alex Zamalin, professor of Africana Studies and Political Science at Rutgers University-New Brunswick, joins The Excerpt to explore how counterculture becomes the culture. His new book 'Counterculture: The Story of America from Bohemia to Hip-Hop' is out now.
Hit play on the player below to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript beneath it. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.
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Dana Taylor:
Hello and welcome to The Excerpt. I'm Dana Taylor. Today is Wednesday, February 5th, 2025, and this is a special episode of The Excerpt. From Conservative social movements such as those tied to Prohibition, the Moral Majority, Evangelicals and the Tea Party, to liberal social movements focused on civil rights, women's liberation and LGBTQ+ rights, America is no stranger to social dissent, but what makes a social movement a counterculture movement, and what have been some of the unique intersections between counterculture movements and the arts, money and even violence? Here to help us explore how counterculture becomes the culture is Alex Zamalin, professor of Africana Studies and Political Science at Rutgers University-New Brunswick. His new book, Counterculture is Out now. Thanks for joining me, Alex.
Alex Zamalin:
Thank you for having me.
Dana Taylor:
Before we dive into just a few of the counterculture movements that have helped shape who we are, you wrote about revolutionary freedom. What did you mean, and is that a key tenet of a counterculture movement?
Alex Zamalin:
Absolutely. So the book begins with a survey of movements from the 1830s and 1840s, specifically Bohemians in New York, and extends all the way to anarchism, the Beat Generation, the Harlem Renaissance, the Black Arts Movement, and more contemporary iterations with graffiti and pop art in the 1980s. I think the core aspect of any counterculture is that it's guided by at once, a desire to break off from the mainstream, to push against the mainstream, but also to articulate a vision of freedom, which I call revolutionary freedom.
And what distinguishes revolutionary freedom from other forms of freedom is that it aims to make its own rules. It aims to work through the idea that somehow the world can be transformed into a more utopian space that's based in ideals rather than reality. And so when we look at all of these movements, the guiding principle is this notion of freedom that allows citizens and people to explore their lives, to reflect on the world, to create, to act politically in ways that know no bounds, in ways that are ultimately connected to a utopian ideal.
American counterculture movements: where the past meets the present
America is no stranger to social dissent, but what makes a social movement a counterculture movement?
Dana Taylor:
It's interesting to follow the thread of something like the Transcendentalist movement that started in the late 1820s to the environmentalism and climate activism we see today. Can you tell us about the Transcendental Club and how they challenged the status quo?
Alex Zamalin:
So the Transcendental Club was founded in New England, and among its most famous figures was Ralph Waldo Emerson. Emerson's ideal was rooted in this notion of self-reliance. He was a poet, he was a professor, he was a theologian. And one of the things that Emerson argued early on in his texts was that it was crucial for Americans to practice the ethic of self-reliance. For this, he meant Americans needed to practice moral conscience, and as a consequence, he was a devoted suffragette. He was a devoted abolitionist, and he was concerned with economic equality. And so when you look at the Transcendental movement and the Transcendental Club, you see echoes today with the environmental movement, partly because it too tries to push moral conscience and this idea of freedom as self-reliance into the mainstream to challenge injustice.
Dana Taylor:
And are today's environmentalists a part of that club? Have we moved on to a different counterculture movement, or is the original movement no longer counterculture, but simply part of the culture?
Alex Zamalin:
The original Transcendental Club was rooted in a particular moment, in a particular time. That era was an era in which we had racial slavery. It was an era of early capitalism. It was an era of the disenfranchisement of women and poor people. And so the Transcendental Club at the time tried to articulate a set of demands and goals and ideals that would create for a freer and more just world. Today, the conditions have changed, but I think in many ways, the ethos that inspired the first counterculture in the United States is still with us in the sense that you have young people today who are calling for action now with regard to climate, you have young people who are calling for racial justice or thinking about the ways the world can be fundamentally transformed. The conditions may change, but ultimately, the spirit that drives counterculture, the spirit that moves us in a more utopian direction is with us still.
Dana Taylor:
The Village Bohemian counterculture movement in the late 19th century and early 20th, with its artistic creativity and alternative lifestyles feels very current. However, this was a largely anti-capitalist bunch. In what ways were the Village Bohemian counterculture and the Harlem Renaissance counterculture which emerged during the 1920s similar?
Alex Zamalin:
There were a lot of similarities. The first thing is that there were many who were involved in both scenes. For example, Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Emma Goldman loved to go to Harlem and to visit the various jazz clubs and discuss politics. There was a certain kind of resonance in terms of trying to create a world that was both artistically free, but also free from the cruelties of capitalism, of racism, of injustice. So when you look, for example, at the Harlem Renaissance, figures like Langston Hughes over the course of their career become increasingly interested in questions of capitalism.
By the 1930s, Hughes is at the forefront of talking about the ways in which economic inequality during the height of the Great Depression is ruining American society in a way that affects both black citizens and white citizens. At the same time, when you look at the Village Bohemians early on as they're writing, they're concerned with issues related to the progressive era, control and regulation over corporations and so on. They move in the direction of racial equality as it becomes clear that events in the world, such as, for example, the various race riots in 1917 in St. Louis, the Chicago Massacre in 1919, there's a pronounced increase in white supremacy and racism, which forces the Bohemians, many of whom are white, to begin to consider these questions of race.
Dana Taylor:
Some counterculture movements become a violent clash between advocates of a movement and those who crush them. I'm thinking specifically about the Stonewall riots and the LGBTQ+ community. What happened there?
Alex Zamalin:
What happened, especially in the late 1960s, Stonewall was in many ways a reflection of the Gay Liberation Movement and the Women's Liberation Movement, which had been percolating for many years. And Stonewall in particular saw many of the folks who were involved in the uprising also involved in the Civil Rights Movement. So you see the intersections between various movements throughout American history, but there at the same time is always the pressure that comes from the state, which tries to maintain order, which tries to police dissent. And in the case of Stonewall in particular, it was met with crushing force. Just like in the 1960s, many of the civil rights activists were met with crushing force. Just like many of the anti-Vietnam activists, the antiwar activists were met with crushing force. In many ways, the state does not like for there to be a counterculture in the sense that it offers an alternative way of being to what is acceptable and mainstream.
Dana Taylor:
Whether someone chooses to engage or not, we're all living in a digital age defined by algorithms. What do you think the Beat Generation would make of not only social media, but the web as a tool of self-expression?
Alex Zamalin:
That's a great question. Part of the things that made the Beat so interesting was that they used certain mediums experimentally. So for instance, William Burroughs tried to fuse film, music, and poetry. One of his major achievements was to create the idea of the cut-up, where he would put newspapers together in various ways, a kind of collage of sorts. Alan Ginsberg would repurpose certain snippets of conversation that he heard on the street to make it into high art and high poetry. I think the resonance here is that just as the Beats tried to take everyday life and tried to make what was profane sacred, social media takes many things that we put in the realm of low culture and tries to experiment with it. When you think of TikTok, when you think of the various ways that young people are engaging with these platforms, they're repurposing ordinary life and everyday life in a way that can be creative and can be serviceable for action and reimagining.
Dana Taylor:
Alex, you wrote that for many young people, their first encounter with politics is through counterculture. How so? What might that look like?
Alex Zamalin:
I think many young people understand the visceral response of listening to a song or reading a poem that moves them, reading a great novel that completely transforms the way that they see the world. And this is an emotional experience. It's a lived experience. It's not necessarily a political experience because politics is about understanding institutions. It's about understanding power structures. But at that moment, when you're exposed to something different, when you're exposed to something that is unique and moving, you begin, I think, to foster a sense of idealism and a sense of desire to understand the world at large. And I think it then moves you into a space of thinking about your own convictions, your own moral attitudes. All of this ultimately moves in a political direction because you are asked to consider larger questions about life, about community, about society, and about freedom.
Dana Taylor:
And finally, do you think there will always be counterculture agitators? Do these movements represent necessary growing pains in the pursuit of what you call revolutionary freedom?
Alex Zamalin:
I do. I think the one through line throughout the book and throughout the history of the counterculture is that as much as counterculture is always incorporated and co-opted by the mainstream because it's fashionable, it's exciting, it's much easier to sell products when they have flashy things and titles affiliated with them. I also think that counterculture from the beginning has always wrestled with this process of co-optation, precisely because the people who found these cultures, whether it's the Bohemians, whether it's the Harlem Renaissance, whether it's black feminists in the 1960s, all of these figures and movements have something they want to say and say differently. And to the extent we have a society, which on some level creates space for dissent, there will always be countercultures that refuse to be co-opted by the mainstream.
Dana Taylor:
Alex, thank you so much for being on The Excerpt.
Alex Zamalin:
Thank you so much, Dana. I really appreciate it.
Dana Taylor:
Alex's new book, Counterculture, is out now. Thanks to our senior producers, Shannon Rae Green and Kaely Monahan for their production assistance. Our executive producer is Laura Beatty. Let us know what you think of this episode by sending a note to [e-mail]. Thanks for listening. I'm Dana Taylor. Taylor Wilson will be back tomorrow morning with another episode of The Excerpt.