Adorno saw young people’s resistance as a fragile counter-tendency against societal self-destruction

Evidence

It is only in the recent past that traces of a counter-tendency have begun to appear, among a whole variety of groups of young people: resistance to blind conformism, freedom to choose one’s goals rationally, disgust at the existence of a world of cheating, and an idea, an awareness, of the possibility of change. Whether society’s growing urge to destroy itself will nevertheless triumph against this counter-tendency remains to be seen. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 2647

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the Frankfurt School’s ambivalent relationship with the 1968 student movement and to Adorno’s later clashes with student radicals.