1968: The Year of Rebellion: The Year of Rebellion

Author: Tariq Ali
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2003-02-01
Features: Whether as tragedy or comedy, history will not repeat itself; but it has its own unchanging melody and rhythm. Thirty years later, the echoes of 1968 are still present. Rereading the texts about the French strikes and student movements of 1996-1997, the more intense scenes that paralyzed France thirty years ago come to mind. Laurent Kabila’s cross-Congo victory march led by Laurent Cabilla and the Western-backed, ignominious airlift against the dictator Mobutu remind us that the anger of the people can still manifest in the form of a People’s Liberation Army. In the mid-1950s, American poet Thomas McGreggor wrote in his "Letter to an Imaginary Friend" about those who mock the past. In 1968, a wave of radical protests swept the globe. From Washington to London, from Paris to Saigon, from Berlin to Prague, from Chicago to Mexico, oppressed people took to the streets, demanding liberation and freedom. 1968 was a year of rebellion: the "Spring Offensive" launched by the Viet Cong’s National Liberation Front shattered American military confidence and changed the course of history. The struggle of Black American youth against racial discrimination gave birth to the nationwide Black rights movement; the universal resistance of the oppressed inspired the global spread of the modern Western women’s movement. 1968 was a year of revolution: in France, students faced off against police with barricades and roadblocks, workers went on strike and occupied factories; in Czechoslovakia, the "Prague Spring" surged forward; in Pakistan, the nationwide uprising triggered by the Han blood incident overthrew the military dictatorship. This book is a hymn to the people—a reinterpretation by millions of people against war, dogma, and oppression—spanning the globe. Handwritten and illustrated materials vividly and concretely depict the strong demands for reform, portraying the hopes, friendships, rebellions, and struggles of that era, as well as the mocking language, alternative music, avant-garde theater, and films that were widely popular at the time.