Not an Annus Mirabilis: 1968 in the USA

1968 was significant not only for Germany and Europe. The USA also had its 1968, even though it took a different course and is remembered differently. To the Americans, it is the year in which, from the viewpoint of Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement, the ’dream died’, and in which the fragmentation of the New Left engendered helplessness. It was the year in which the Tet offensive caused protests, in which the ’silent majority’ rehabilitated Richard Nixon, and a neo-conservative counter-revolution was given a boost.