1970's Lifestyles and Social Trends | Hoffman, Abbie 1936-1989

SOCIAL ACTIVIST

Revolutionary Hedonism.

Abbie Hoffman was a countercultural leader whose commitment to radical politics spanned the civil rights, antiwar, and environmentalist movements. When the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee expelled all whites in 1964, Hoffman moved into the hippie movement, seeing the counterculture as an arena for political change. He pioneered the idea that experimental use of sex, drugs, clothing, and communal living were revolutionary activities.

Street Theater.

Hoffman, who was born in a middle-class Jewish family in Worcester, Massachusetts, and graduated from Brandeis University, was influenced by both Marshall McLuhan and Herbert Marcuse. His political career demonstrated his dramatic flair in using the media to promote himself as well as his unconventional Marxism. The generation gap, not class conflict, sparked his social and political revolution. With fellow...