[dcx]

No, the counterculture is actually thriving. But many people just don't understand it yet, because of how, well, counter it is to their ideas about culture: its roots are now in conservatism. It currently seems to be cool and edgy amongst the kids to be alt right in pretty much exactly the same way that it was cool and edgy to be very liberal in the 60s.

I'm not saying I agree with or subscribe to the tenets of conservatism (I don't). But it's a natural process for the pendulum to swing as society advances. Liberal counterculture "won" and went completely mainstream. Which is great! Gay marriage is legal, we care about sustainability, and so on. But every system has gaps and blind spots, and movements which oppose the incumbent mainstream are, by definition, not liberal counterculture.

Some touchpoints - President Obama's failure to penalize banks in the Great Recession. One percenters and the new cathedral. Joe Rogan. The intellectual dark web (Jordan Peterson et al). The red pill. The alt right.

I feel many of the above are often stupid, but in the same way that there were a lot of stupid 60s counterculture movements. It doesn't invalidate the fact that valid ideas exist within both. Also, they aren't using your signaling channels. For example, music doesn't seem to be a relevant cultural rallying point any more.

[omnicognate]

I don't think a movement can be called countercultural once it's taken over one of the two major US political parties and chosen a president.

[throwaway4aday]

90% of the people that would identify with those touchpoints listed above wouldn't and didn't vote for Trump. I think they get lumped in with die hard Trump supporters because they weren't buying in to the same paranoia and delusions that the rest of society was imbibing while Trump was in office.

[dcx]

I think we might still consider this counterculture as long as its norms are not mainstream culture. And I think it's fair to say the dominant culture of many cultural institutions in the US currently has a distinct leftward lean - Hollywood, news, education, research, social media, advertising, other large swathes of industry. (Which again, I'm not saying is a bad thing)

Also, Trump represented many things to many people, as opposed to just this emerging alt-right counterculture idea cloud. And by the numbers, most voters soundly rejected him in 2020.

[chasd00]

Hah, kids today. I’m half expecting cigarettes to make a comeback. Imagine the reaction millennials would have to a handful of teens smoking in front of drop off at a high school.

[trinix912]

They might be out of fashion in the US, but just go to a high school in Central / Eastern Europe...