before i lose my style

babylonfalling:

I’m a huge fan of the Yippies in general and Abbie Hoffman in particular, but you can’t ignore the fact that he made a name for himself by ripping off the Diggers and routinely dry snitching on the counterculture. Here’s Peter Coyote in Sleeping Where I Fall:

The deeper implications of anonymity were lost on Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin, both of whom came to investigate our activities in 1966. Abbie returned to New York and published a book (for sale) called Free, which catalogued every free service in the city of New York that supported truly needy people; these services were immediately swamped by an influx of suburban kids into the Lower East Side. He plastered his own name and picture on the book, thus advertising himself as a “leader” of the free counterculture. While egocentricity may be as authentic as anything else, performing under its influence does not represent a new form of any kind, and we criticized Abbie for confusing the issue.

I always suspected Abbie Hoffman was this kind of asshole, but it’s nice to have a firsthand recollection as a citation.