Hunter S Thompson: And How The Counter Culture Was Hijacked

 Throughout the 1970s and 1960s much of the same resentment and anger we feel today

was present although not in the form we see today. The 1970s and 60s saw the horrors of 

the Vietnam war as well as the troubles in Northern Ireland. This created a generation

of young people so over-exposed to warfare and the bloated arms of the state that it 

created a ground swell the likes of which we have not seen for years although only 

echoes remain in the present. In order to change attitudes it is vital that those people

carry themselves in a way and speak in a way that offers an alternative to the prevailing

culture. Thus in a way an inverse of it this of course lead to the counter culture movement

which offered people a new perspective one of peace, civil rights and small government. 

an antithesis to the prevailing culture of taxpayer subsidised warfare and puritanical 

tyrants who believed that Marilyn Manson was responsible for school shootings. And that 

the state should forcefully divide cultures on the basis of skin tone despite the prevailing culture

not seeing through the eyes of race and accepting everyone provided they met the same standards as

everyone else. The counter culture upon its founding was at its heart an anti-government movement

with some people even describing themselves as anarchists. It targeted wholeheartedly the military

industrial complex and the states monopoly on violence. Its main figure of course being the 

legendary Hunter S Thompson which many say is a gun-toting madman with a craving for illicit substances.

which in and of itself of course is obviously true but when it comes to Thompson people must look

at the whole picture. Thompson was incredibly smart despite all of his excessive drink and drug use 

and spoke of people living under less control of the government. He created the counter cultures

biggest export which was that of gonzo journalism a movement that still exists and was on major 

tv platforms such as Vice- before they went all sensitive of course. Gonzo journalism was a direct

and present rejection of the prevailing media culture one of clean upper class tv presenters 

who looked like they'd call the police over a kid riding a motorbike or skateboarding. These journalists

where gritty and edgy they showed society for what it was and every corner of it from the most 

depraved to the most beautiful it left out no blemishes and presented it for what it was. And

the picture was unnerving the reality of a society plagued by the threat of nuclear war, injustice and

state control. However the joy, freedom, and self-governance of rock and roll and the counter culture would unfortunately

not last for ever. A movement so big and such a threat to state interests is of course as we know from

history desperate to be hijacked and by the 1990s and 1980s with early warning signs showing in the late

1970s the counter culture would quickly be subverted. High ranking globalist and socialist interests

would hijack this movement to create what we know now as Agenda 2030. In other words they convinced these once

freedom loving individuals that liberalism must be performed by an overarching state structure and any threats

to it must be subdued in an almost Stasi-esque fashion. That the aspect of nationhood doesn't exist and that

it is up to the state to tell you what a nation is or should be not up to the people who live in said nation. 

And who would of thought that the people that once prescribed so eagerly to bodily autonomy allow themselves

to be stuck with a Pfizer vaccine by the likes of Mr dog experiments Anthony Fauci and then complain when people

don't conform to such blatant state tyranny as the lockdowns or mask wearing and call for those people to be 

arrested and put in camps. This subversion and the end of what was the true counter culture is reflected in the 

following passages of Hunter S Thompsons Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas “Strange memories on this nervous night in Las Vegas. 

Five years later? Six? It seems like a lifetime, or at least a Main Era—the kind of peak that never comes again. San Francisco in the middle sixties was a very special time and place to be a part of. Maybe it meant something. Maybe not, in the long run . . . but no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time and the world. Whatever it meant. . . .

History is hard to know, because of all the hired bullshit, but even without being sure of “history” it seems entirely reasonable to think that every now and then the energy of a whole generation comes to a head in a long fine flash, for reasons that nobody really understands at the time—and which never explain, in retrospect, what actually happened.

My central memory of that time seems to hang on one or five or maybe forty nights—or very early mornings—when I left the Fillmore half-crazy and, instead of going home, aimed the big 650 Lightning across the Bay Bridge at a hundred miles an hour wearing L. L. Bean shorts and a Butte sheepherder's jacket . . . booming through the Treasure Island tunnel at the lights of Oakland and Berkeley and Richmond, not quite sure which turn-off to take when I got to the other end (always stalling at the toll-gate, too twisted to find neutral while I fumbled for change) . . . but being absolutely certain that no matter which way I went I would come to a place where people were just as high and wild as I was: No doubt at all about that. . . .

There was madness in any direction, at any hour. If not across the Bay, then up the Golden Gate or down 101 to Los Altos or La Honda. . . . You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning. . . .

And that, I think, was the handle—that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn’t need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting—on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. . . .

So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark—that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.”

― Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas