Counterculture was an anti-establishment cultural phenomenon that developed in the United Kingdom and the United States in the 1960s as a part of post-WW2 cultural climate and spread to the rest of the Western world during the 1960s and 1970s. London, New York City, and San Francisco became centers for the movement, and it gained momentum as the Civil Rights movement enjoyed more successes and as the Vietnam War escalated. The movement supported "free love", women's rights, psychedelic drugs (especially marijuana and LSD), left-wing politics, pacifism, radical environmentalism and rejection of modern technology. The rise of alternative lifestyles (such as the hippie movement) and the advent of psychedelic rock were results of the movement. The end of the draft and the Vietnam War in 1973 and Richard Nixon's August 1974 resignation as president effectively ended the era, but drug experimentation, youth rebelliousness, and alternative lifestyles still remain aspects of American (and Western) society in the 21st century.
While being generally a leftist movement, the Counterculture has some conservative elements, such as upholding traditional (especially indigenous) group identities and dislike for consumerism. Both conservatives and counterculturalists aim at protecting some ideas from criticism, only conservatives do it for religious reasons and counterculturalists in name of avoiding supposed victimization.