Levellers in the context of "Countercultures"

In Welsh and English church history, Independents were a Puritan group who advocated local congregational control of religious and church matters, without any wider geographical hierarchy, either ecclesiastical or political. They were particularly prominent during the Wars of the Three Kingdoms as well under the Commonwealth and Protectorate. The New Model Army became the champion of Independent religious views and its members helped carry out Pride's Purge in December 1648.

Unlike their Presbyterian allies, Independents rejected any state role in religious practice, including the Church of England, and advocated freedom of religion for most non-Catholics. Their religious views led some to back radical political groups such as the Levellers, who supported concepts like Republicanism, universal suffrage and joint ownership of property.

Radicalism (from French radical) was a political movement representing the leftward flank of liberalism between the late 18th and early 20th century. Certain aspects of the movement were precursors to a wide variety of modern-day movements, ranging from laissez-faire to social liberalism, social democracy, civil libertarianism, and modern progressivism. This ideology is commonly referred to as "radicalism" but is sometimes referred to as radical liberalism, or classical radicalism, to distinguish it from radical politics. Its earliest beginnings are to be found during the English Civil War with the Levellers and later the Radical Whigs.

During the 19th century in the United Kingdom, continental Europe and Latin America, the term radical came to denote a progressive liberal ideology inspired by the French Revolution. Radicalism grew prominent during the 1830s in the United Kingdom with the Chartists and in Belgium with the Revolution of 1830, then across Europe in the 1840s–1850s during the Revolutions of 1848. In contrast to the social conservatism of existing liberal politics, radicalism sought political support for a radical reform of the electoral system to widen suffrage. It was also associated with a variety of ideologies and policies, such as liberalism, left-wing politics, direct democracy, republicanism, modernism, atheism, secularism, antimilitarism, civic nationalism, abolition of titles, rationalism, casual clothing, redistribution of wealth and property, and freedom of the press.

A counterculture is a culture whose values and norms of behavior are opposed to those of the current mainstream society, and sometimes diametrically opposed to mainstream cultural mores. A countercultural movement expresses the ethos and aspirations of a specific population during a well-defined era. When oppositional forces reach critical mass, countercultures can trigger dramatic cultural changes.

Prominent examples of countercultures in the Western world include the Levellers (1645–1650), Bohemianism (1850–1910), the more fragmentary counterculture of the Beat Generation (1944–1964), and the globalized counterculture of the 1960s which in the United States consisted primarily of Hippies and Flower Children (c. 1965–1973, peaking in 1967–1970). Regarding this last group, when referring to themselves, counterculture will usually be capitalized and is often hyphenated as: Counter-Culture or Counter-culture.

The Friends of the ABC (French: Les Amis de l'ABC), or simply the ABC, is a fictional association of revolutionary French republican students featured in the 1862 novel Les Misérables by Victor Hugo. In French, the name of the society is a pun, in which abaissés ('the abased, humiliated, degraded') is pronounced [abese], very similar to A-B-C ([ɑ be se]). Their members represent a wide variety of political viewpoints, ranging from communist agitation to advocacy for democracy to supporting the Levellers and more, but on 5 June 1832 they all join the popular insurrection known as the June Rebellion and organize the construction of a massive barricade. They are based on the real political group Friends of the People [fr] (French: Société des Amis du Peuple). Hugo brings them into the narrative when Marius Pontmercy, one of the novel's principal characters, attaches himself to the group without becoming one of them. With their fight led by Enjolras, all of the members of the group die during the rebellion.

Characters Jean Valjean and Gavroche both also fight with the student rebellion, with Valjean barely making it out alive and Gavroche dying. The central story is also told in the 1980 musical version of Les Misérables, though many of the members lack characterization in the musical.