AHC - Swap the reputations of the Hippie and Skinhead Subcultures

Your challenge is to swap the OTL reputations of Hippie subculture being inclusive / anti-racist and the Skinhead subculture being white power / fascist / racist within popular culture.
 
The nice skinhead?

One could actually argue that the roots of skinhead subculture were more multicultural than the hippies, with the Jamaican/West Indian background and white kids digging black music - in contrast to the hippies, whose psychedelia faves were almost exclusively white. One way to do it would be to link the hippies more with Altamont, the Hell's Angels and Charles Manson. Then, they'd basically have a crypto-racist image, which might attract some far-right lunatics in the Seventies. On the other side, instead of "queer/Paki"-bashing, the black and white skins promote their image of togetherness and possibly link up with the more militant elements of the US civil rights movement, and political reggae artists like Peter Tosh. A skinhead version of the White Panthers, basically.
 
It's definitaly possible, skinheads started in the UK as a working class kids against the upper crust, much like the greasers in America in the 50s, it wasent until the 80s they became the racist skinheads we see now
 
Skinhead subculture spreads to working-class African American youths in the '60s, and from there spreads to some white youths. I don't know how hippies could be associated with the far right, but I could see them maybe having a reputation like modern hipsters: out of touch middle-class white kids.
 
I don't know how hippies could be associated with the far right, but I could see them maybe having a reputation like modern hipsters: out of touch middle-class white kids.

Funnily enough, the word "hippie" was originally a derogatory term for a wanna-be hipster (i.e. the original 1950s Beatnik types).
 
The nice skinhead?

One could actually argue that the roots of skinhead subculture were more multicultural than the hippies, with the Jamaican/West Indian background and white kids digging black music - in contrast to the hippies, whose psychedelia faves were almost exclusively white. One way to do it would be to link the hippies more with Altamont, the Hell's Angels and Charles Manson. Then, they'd basically have a crypto-racist image, which might attract some far-right lunatics in the Seventies. On the other side, instead of "queer/Paki"-bashing, the black and white skins promote their image of togetherness and possibly link up with the more militant elements of the US civil rights movement, and political reggae artists like Peter Tosh. A skinhead version of the White Panthers, basically.

Like the idea of linking the Hippie movement with Altamont, Hell's Angels and Charles Manson.

Not sure how workable the following is - One thought worth exploring would be the ATL Hippie movement taking a darker turn after a US victory in Vietnam and the collapse of the Anti-Vietnam War movement, where as a result of the US government somehow playing up the prominent role by patriotic African American GIs and others in the war causes some within the Hippie movement to feel betrayed and end up lashing out towards African-Americans / other minorities.

Which together with other events (Altamont, Manson, etc) ends up tarring the Hippie movement with a crypto-racist image, with even the Hippie art-car Volkswagens being seen by some in a more critical light as a result of racist Hippies painting their cars with messages of hate.
 
If the OP is defining hippies ideologically, then the idea of a switchover is a contradiction in terms, since hippies are almost by definition liberal. If they switched to right-wing, they would no longer be hippies.

That said, assuming we mean that the people who were hippies migrate en masse over to the right, but still maintain the sartorial and lifestyle trappings with which they were associated, I guess one scenario could be to have those hippies who were already into Hinduism. embrace some of the more reactionary elements of Hindu culture. Maybe some fascistic, proto-BJP guru gets a following among the counterculture(perhaps supplanting the Maharashi and the Hare Krishnas), and tells his followers to go harass gays and Muslims and whatever other groups he doesn't like. This could lead to violent street clashes with the Nation Of Islam, among others.

Things pretty much settle down in the 70s, as most of the guru's followers decide to get a life. But in 1982, some dead-enders carry out a few bombings of movie-theatres showing "Gandhi", prompting some wags to shake their heads bemusedly and say "Sheesh, what is this, the 60s all over again?"
 
If the OP is defining hippies ideologically, then the idea of a switchover is a contradiction in terms, since hippies are almost by definition liberal. If they switched to right-wing, they would no longer be hippies.

That said, assuming we mean that the people who were hippies migrate en masse over to the right, but still maintain the sartorial and lifestyle trappings with which they were associated, I guess one scenario could be to have those hippies who were already into Hinduism. embrace some of the more reactionary elements of Hindu culture. Maybe some fascistic, proto-BJP guru gets a following among the counterculture(perhaps supplanting the Maharashi and the Hare Krishnas), and tells his followers to go harass gays and Muslims and whatever other groups he doesn't like. This could lead to violent street clashes with the Nation Of Islam, among others.

Things pretty much settle down in the 70s, as most of the guru's followers decide to get a life. But in 1982, some dead-enders carry out a few bombings of movie-theatres showing "Gandhi", prompting some wags to shake their heads bemusedly and say "Sheesh, what is this, the 60s all over again?"

The ATL racist Hippies do not necessarily have to be far-right, they would still define themselves as part of the left and retain their sympathy for Communism / Revolution just that they would later express disdain for other racial groups (perhaps initially towards their ideological opposites) akin to the Skinheads evolution in popular culture from originally a multicultural to a racist subculture.

How they start to express their racism is another matter, one idea would be in reaction to a US victory in Vietnam and the recognition given to African-Americans for their role (with the opposition to that war eventually being taken out on African-Americans / other minorities along similar lines to the OTL slander thrown at Vietnam Veterans), another would be minorities not subscribing to messages of extremism and revolution.
 
You have added an interesting racist element.
WI the US military propaganda mill bragged up the battles won in Viet Nam by courageous Afro-Americans?
WI returning AA veterans were praised and feted and given medals and preferential treatment for high-profile government jobs?
WI lazy white kids were forced to be polite to all blacks, out of fear of offending their new masters (AA gov't bureaucrats)?
WI lazy white kids found themselves excluded from cushy gov't jobs because they did not serve in the military?
WI lazy white kids got frustrated with their poor prospects of promotion?
Would lazy white kids grow their hair long in defiance of clean-cut, upwardly mobile AA?
Would lazy white kids become racist?
 
The ATL racist Hippies do not necessarily have to be far-right, they would still define themselves as part of the left and retain their sympathy for Communism / Revolution just that they would later express disdain for other racial groups (perhaps initially towards their ideological opposites) akin to the Skinheads evolution in popular culture from originally a multicultural to a racist subculture.

How they start to express their racism is another matter, one idea would be in reaction to a US victory in Vietnam and the recognition given to African-Americans for their role (with the opposition to that war eventually being taken out on African-Americans / other minorities along similar lines to the OTL slander thrown at Vietnam Veterans), another would be minorities not subscribing to messages of extremism and revolution.

Hm. I think it would be a pretty fine line, if not outright impossible, to walk between being racist, while managing to remain left-wing.

I'm trying to think of left-wing groups or parties that have managed to do that. North Korea quite openly appropriates nazi-like racial pseudoscience, but they spend more time attacking "multiculturalism" as an ideology, rather than other races directly(their "monkey" diatribes against Obama notwithstanding).

I know that LaRouche went through a phase where, in directing his trotskyite followers to attack heterodox African-American ideologues, he used words like "n*gger", with the scare quotes in the original, to idicate that he was supposed to be speaking ironically, though it's more likely the case that he was conditioning them to accept that kind of language as regular party jargon.

But your Vietnam idea is intriguing. Okay, for some reason that I can't elaborate on now, the US government decides to make African-American participation in the war the centrepiece of "support the troops" propaganda. This leads to a bit of unofficial, quasi-racist murmuring among the white New Left, beginning with ostensibly ironic phrases like "house n*gger" to describe the unabashedly patriotic black vets, but morphing over time(as ironic racism has a tendency to do) into outright anti-black bigotry.

But you'd still need some sort of Larouchian or Ron-Paul-Of-The-Newsletters to come along and harness that liberal white racism into something more systematic. Maybe if someone like that had a better handle on how to reach out to the counterculture. Both LaRouche and Paul would have been too much the "angry old white guy" to have much appeal to the lava lamp crowd.
 
For what it's worth, some of you doubtlessly know the name Rob Ford. One thing that's not so well-known about him is that a significant portion of his support came from the immigrant-heavy suburbs, where he garnered a lot of support from blacks and other visible minority groups. During his "glory" days, it was not entirely unheard-of to read comments on Toronto websites along the lines of "The reason we have this right-wing bigot for a mayor is because of these immigrants from third-world crapholes who blah blah blah". For the most part, though, that type of rhetoric was not embraced by the official left.
 
That said, assuming we mean that the people who were hippies migrate en masse over to the right, but still maintain the sartorial and lifestyle trappings with which they were associated, I guess one scenario could be to have those hippies who were already into Hinduism. embrace some of the more reactionary elements of Hindu culture. Maybe some fascistic, proto-BJP guru gets a following among the counterculture(perhaps supplanting the Maharashi and the Hare Krishnas), and tells his followers to go harass gays and Muslims and whatever other groups he doesn't like. This could lead to violent street clashes with the Nation Of Islam, among others.

Things pretty much settle down in the 70s, as most of the guru's followers decide to get a life. But in 1982, some dead-enders carry out a few bombings of movie-theatres showing "Gandhi", prompting some wags to shake their heads bemusedly and say "Sheesh, what is this, the 60s all over again?"

That sounds quite plausible, considering OTL crossovers between esoteric groups and right-wing extremist theory (usually in line with völkische thoughts of the early 20th century). One might also add reactionary environmentalists like Dave Foreman, a Goldwater supporter-cum-hippie/libertarian-cum-misanthropic ecofascist, into this mix.

I guess such a reactionary hippie movement would not attract the casual thugs, but mainly middle-class, intellectual right-wing extremists. So technically, the resulting extremist groups would be closer to OTL RAF/Brigate Rosse/Action Directe than Blood & Honour.
 
I don't think you could swap them. You could make better skinheads through political changes in influences, more diverse groups ending up involved in the culture, that kind of thing. But hippies will never have the reputation of being pseudo-fascist to fascist paramilitaries.
 
Weren't skinheads initially fans of black music, of various colours? I've never been fully clear on where the shift to skinhead = National Front began, but the NF originally had lots of hairy people in it, and skinheads were originally raucous but tolerant youths who dug reggae.
 
Hippies were actually very influenced by the German nature movement of the early twentieth century. This involved elements like the Wandervogel hiking/scouting, vegetarianism, nudism, nature worship, and anti-capitalism under the various rubrics of "life reform". It was simply transplanted from Germany to southern California from early German immigrants in the 20th Century.

Of course out of this same milieu grew Nazism, since both originated in early twentieth century Germany. Other than nudism and long hair, Hitler - a vegetarian, animal lover, environmentalist, and anti-capitalist - certainly fits the same bill. Of course, not all the Nazis fit this profile, but it was a very important part of the romantic volkisch movement the Nazis sprung out of (and was also present in many other non-Nazi organizations).

All that you would need is some neo-Nazi disciples to emphasize these aspects of Nazism so that this becomes identified with Nazism in popular consciousness and thereby toxifies the hippie brand. All you would need is some prominent neo-Nazi leader to do so, and then some media expose. Perhaps in order to get that leader, you might need Hitler to be a stronger advocate of some of these green measures that would become prominent in the hippie movement.

Such an association would need to be done early enough to identify hippies with racists. Otherwise, you just end up having a racist subgroup within hippies that doesn't define the movement in public consciousness.
 
Not sure about hippies, but OTL there are explicitly anti-racist & anti-fascist skinhead movements:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skinheads_Against_Racial_Prejudice
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_and_Anarchist_Skinheads

There also has been a shift in the last 15 years. Growing up in East Germany in the early 1990s, one could see that the skinhead look was very much en vogue among neo-Nazi thugs. I think that was similar in the UK in the 1980s and 1990s. But nowadays, the people I come across sporting the original skinhead style (Fred Perry/Lonsdale shirts, braces, Doc Martens) are usually from the left-wing side of things and of the SHARP/red skins kind.
 
Top