Yippie! Pop 

Abbie Hoffman Andy Warhol and Sixties Media Politics

DAVID JOSELIT

In his 1968 manifesto,Revolution for the Hell of lt,  Abbie Hoffman wrote:

Did you ever hear Andy Warhol talk? ...Well,I would like to combine his style and that of Castro's. Warhol understands modern media. Castro has the passion for social change.It's not easy. One's a fag and the other is the epitome of virility. If I were forced to make the choice I would choose Castro,but right now in this period of change in the country the styles of the two can be blended. It's not guerrilla warfare but,well maybe a good term is monkey warfare. If the country becomes more repressive we must become Castros. If it becomes more tolerant we must become Warhols. 1

Castro and Warhol:what strange bedfellows And indeed Hoffman hints at a queer union-why else would he explicitly label Warhol a"fag"?But for Hoffman,the yippie! activist who built a movement by capturing free publicity on TV,the nature of this fantasy is genealogical not erotic.2 In their combination of radical politics and a  ruthless understanding of media culture, yippie!s are indeed the legitimate progeny of Castro and Warhol. 

What is puzzling and exhilarating in Hoffman's pairing is the political distinction he draws between his two progenitors:"If the country becomes more repressive we must become Castro s. If it becomes more tolerant we must become Warhols."The first half of this prescription is ordinary enough. When times are bad,activists use force. But the second part is mystifying.Warhol-the paragon of indifference and passivity,the celebrity groupie and ambitious art world operator- is held up as a model of politics appropriate for "tolerant times." In this essay I will reflect on this surprising assertion. I will try to understand Hoffman's declaration by sketching out what a Warholian politics might be and why it is particularly well-suited to"tolerant times."Before I turn to Warhol,I need to establish Hoffman's under-standing of media politics. And for this there is no better source than Hoffman himself. Yippie! actions were premised on soliciting and addressing the media through what Daniel Boorstin famously called pseudo-events. 

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