ABSTRACT
JUST BEFORE HE DIED, Abbie Hoffman said that "nostalgia is just another form of repression." When we try to make sense of 1968, it is important to keep in mind that while 1968 epitomizes what we all remember as "the movement," its darker side is often forgotten. Many died in the Vietnam War and some in struggles at home; others had their careers ruined not merely through political repression but by taking romantic and utopian slogans too uncritically, or losing themselves in drugs. It is not as if 1968 offers a single clear picture. Better to view it as a montage: demonstrations at universities across the country; the assassination of Martin Luther King; the slaughter of two thousand students in Mexico; the general strike in Paris; the "days of rage" in Chicago; the Prague Spring; the Tet offensive.
