In the present moment, the counterculture is always hard to find and identify. That's what makes it the counterculture.
Now you can read and listen to the Beat poets anywhere, but that would have been challenging in the early '50s. You had to go to the right coffee shop on the right night and if you went and saw what was going on you might question if these were geniuses pushing the frontiers of expression or a bunch of degenerates exploiting impressionable young people.
You can still have that experience today, probably easier than ever.
> if you went and saw what was going on you might question if these were geniuses pushing the frontiers of expression or a bunch of degenerates exploiting impressionable young people.
To be fair, a lot of people still have this question about the Beat Generation.
The hippies were the counterculture, weren't they? Yet they weren't hard to find or identify. I guess it can get muddy, but what you're describing sounds more like underground culture to me. It can be happily compatible with the mainstream culture, it's not oppositional, it's just obscure and hidden because of it.
I would argue that a counterculture has to be oppositional and can't be happily compatible.
The hippies who were burning their draft cards, dropping out of school, and living as mendicants were a counterculture that could not truly coexist with the mainstream.
These dramatic characters inspired a youth culture that adopted more moderate signifiers (long hair, folk/rock music, nonviolent protest, maybe vegetarianism/meditation/yoga) that could coexist with the mainstream.
An argument could be made that there is a lot of ideological overlap between current far right GOP/Qanon people and the tenants of Nazism. Considering the number of elections won by the GOP you cannot tell me they're not mainstream.
There's a lot of overlap between the Nazis and both major parties in the US. That said, I don't think it is fair to say that being a Nazi is mainstream because there is some ideological overlap.
It just means that some parts of their platform have become mainstreamed. A simple and non-controversial example is that the Nazis were extremely Progressive on animal rights. Just because modern political parties also endorse animal rights, that does not make them Nazis
Another example is that Nazi rhetoric relied heavily on utilitarian analysis of the greater good. I don't think it's reasonable to say that any party that promotes the greater good over individual freedoms is a Nazi party.
Now you can read and listen to the Beat poets anywhere, but that would have been challenging in the early '50s. You had to go to the right coffee shop on the right night and if you went and saw what was going on you might question if these were geniuses pushing the frontiers of expression or a bunch of degenerates exploiting impressionable young people.
You can still have that experience today, probably easier than ever.