The Threefold Crisis – Algeria, Vietnam, Prague
This text is a preview of History of the Reception of Hegel, volume II, to be published in 2026 by Reflexivity Press.
The Movement of the Whole
1968 is not a year but the culmination of developments that began in the 1950s. Three wars, three defeats, three illusions that shatter:
Algeria (1954–1962): France’s colonial war ended in 1962 with Algerian independence, but the traumas linger. Torture (systematically applied by the French army), expulsion (one million pieds-noirs flee to France), domestic French terror (the OAS carries out attacks)—all of this shows that “civilized” Europe is capable of barbarism when its colonies seek liberation.[1]
Philosophical consequence: Jean-Paul Sartre’s preface to Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth (1961) becomes a manifesto: Europe has dehumanized itself through colonialism. The violence of the colonized is counter-violence—a legitimate response to centuries of oppression. This is an anti-Hegel position: it is not the cunning of reason that leads to freedom, but armed struggle. Not mediation, but confrontation.[2]
Vietnam (1955–1975): The American war in Vietnam escalates from 1965 onward (massive bombardments, defoliants, napalm). The Tet Offensive (January 1968) shows: the Viet Cong cannot be defeated militarily. The My Lai massacre (March 1968, publicly known from 1969) shows: American soldiers murder civilians. “Free” America is waging a dirty war.[3]
The media revolution as turning point: Vietnam is the first television war. For the first time in history, war enters the living room. Every evening, millions of Americans see the corpses, the burning villages, the crying children. Television makes propaganda difficult—one cannot claim “we are winning” when the images show the opposite.[4]
The Tet Offensive (January 1968) is militarily a failure for the Viet Cong—but a PR disaster for the United States. Walter Cronkite, America’s most trusted news anchor, declares in February 1968 that it seems increasingly clear to him that the only rational course out of Vietnam would be negotiations, not victory. President Johnson is said to have remarked that if he had lost Cronkite, he had lost Middle America.[5]
This is the watershed: for the first time in history, public opinion (shaped by media) ends a war. The anti-war movement wins not militarily but communicatively. The military draws conclusions from this—from now on, control of public opinion becomes a priority. Embedded journalism (journalists attached to the military), the pool system (only selected reporters), and later “strategic communication” and “cognitive warfare” are the military’s responses to Vietnam.[6]
Philosophical consequence: the legitimation of the West—defense of freedom against totalitarianism—collapses. What began as “defense of democracy” turns out to be a neocolonial war. Herbert Marcuse’s One-Dimensional Man (1964) becomes the bible of the movement: Western capitalism is not free but repressively tolerant—it absorbs criticism without changing.[7]
Prague (1968): “Socialism with a human face” (Alexander Dubček) is crushed in August 1968—Soviet tanks roll into Czechoslovakia. The Brezhnev Doctrine (“limited sovereignty of socialist states”) shows: the Eastern Bloc is not a voluntary community but an empire held together by force.[8]
Philosophical consequence: the Marxist legitimation—that socialism leads to liberation—collapses. What began as the “dictatorship of the proletariat” turns out to be a party dictatorship. In the East too, a critique emerges: Karel Kosík (Dialectics of the Concrete, 1963) shows that “Diamat” (dialectical materialism) is a ossification of Hegel, not his fulfillment. The Prague Spring attempts to develop a democratic socialism—and is crushed.[9]
The Simultaneity of Crises
What matters is the simultaneity. It is not one bloc that is in crisis, but all three. The Third World liberates itself (Algeria, Vietnam), the West shows its imperial face, the East shows its totalitarian structure. None of the three answers to the question “How do we prevent fascism?” (see Chapter 1) has proven itself:
- The West (freedom through capitalism) wages colonial wars.
- The East (justice through socialism) suppresses dissent.
- The Third World (self-determination through liberation) sinks into civil wars.
This threefold crisis forces a philosophical reorientation. The simple answers—liberalism, Marxism, nationalism—no longer work. What is needed are more complex theories, more self-critical positions, more dialectical approaches.
On the history of the Algerian War see Alistair Horne: A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954-1962 (1977); Benjamin Stora: Histoire de la guerre d’Algérie (1993). ↩︎
Jean-Paul Sartre: preface to Frantz Fanon: The Wretched of the Earth (1961). On the philosophical controversy see David Macey: Frantz Fanon: A Biography (2000). ↩︎
On the Vietnam War see Marilyn Young: The Vietnam Wars 1945-1990 (1991); on the Tet Offensive see Don Oberdorfer: Tet! (1971). ↩︎
On television and Vietnam see Daniel C. Hallin: The “Uncensored War”: The Media and Vietnam (1986); Chester J. Pach: “The War on Television” in: A Companion to the Vietnam War (2002). ↩︎
On Walter Cronkite’s turn see David Halberstam: The Powers That Be (1979), pp. 514–515. ↩︎
On cognitive warfare see Paul Trögel: Kognitive Kriegsführung: Neueste Manipulationstechniken als Waffengattung der NATO (2023). ↩︎
Herbert Marcuse: One-Dimensional Man (1964). On its reception in the student movement see Douglas Kellner: Herbert Marcuse and the Crisis of Marxism (1984). ↩︎
On the Prague Spring see H. Gordon Skilling: Czechoslovakia’s Interrupted Revolution (1976); Kieran Williams: The Prague Spring and Its Aftermath (1997). ↩︎
Karel Kosík: The Dialectics of the Concrete (1963). On its significance for Czech philosophy see Ivan Sviták: Man and His World: A Marxian View (1970). ↩︎