1968 as a German Political and Cinematic Event

The Year 1968, or rather the era of what Fredric Jameson influentially periodized as the long sixties, changed the world in countless ways, politically and socially. Anti-colonial and anti-imperial wars were being waged around the globe, in particular in Southeast Asia, Africa, and Latin America. The protracted US-Vietnam War was emblematic of these selfliberation and self-determination struggles, and social movements sprung up internationally to protest it. In the United States, the civil rights movement challenged racism and demanded equal rights. The Black Panthers inspired countless other groups, including the American Indian Movement, a Native American advocacy group; the Brown Berets, a Chicano rights group; I Wor Kuen, an Asian-American rights group; the Young Lords, a Puerto Rican nationalist group; and the Young Patriots, a poor and working- class white group. Many of these organizations came together to form the Rainbow Coalition, through the organizing efforts of Fred Hampton of the Black Panther Party, of José Cha-Cha Jiménez of the Young Lords, and of members of the Young Patriots Organization. The 1969 Stonewall Riots led to the first Christopher Street Day and gay pride protests in 1970. In European social movements, solidarity with third world politics played a key role. Additionally, feminists challenged patriarchal structures and sexism, also among the left, demanding changes in the workplace and at home, which led to the Wages for Housework campaigns of the 1970s. Solidarity alliances across classes were crucial domestically as well, as student protests and labor struggles joined forces, most notably but not solely in France.

In addition to these political changes, what we will call ‘68 here but will construe throughout this introduction and volume as the “long 1968” was also decidedly a media event. Graphic, gruesome images from the Vietnam War were broadcast on television on the nightly news and printed as photographs in the daily newspapers. Most famous among them, Eddie Adams’ photograph, “Saigon Execution,” shows South Vietnamese General Nguyễn Ngọc Loan, chief of the National Police, firing his pistol into the head of suspected Việt Cộng officer Nguyễn Vén Lém (also known as Bay Lop) on a Saigon street, February 1, 1968, early in the Tet Offensive.