Transcript Anti-War Movement

Anti-War
Movement
 Student
Activism
 Media Coverage
 The draft
 Lack of censorship
Immoral War?
 Two
anti-war activists set themselves
on fire in November
 32 year old Norman Morrison at the
Pentagon
 22 year old Roger Allen LaPorte at
the UN headquarters in NYC
 Protests
against the Vietnam War
took place in the 1960s and 1970s.
The protests were part of a
movement in opposition to the
Vietnam War and took place mainly
in the U.S.
Executions

On February 1, 1968,
a suspected NLF
officer was summarily
executed by General
Nguyen Ngoc Loan, a
South Vietnamese
National Police Chief.
Loan shot the suspect
in the head on a
public street in front
of journalists
Public Sympathy
 The
execution was filmed and
photographed and provided another
iconic image that helped sway public
opinion in the United States against
the war.

On October 15, 1969, hundreds of
thousands of people took part in National
Moratorium anti-war demonstrations
across the United States; the
demonstrations prompted many workers
to call in sick from their jobs and
adolescents nationwide engaged in
truancy from school. However, the
proportion of individuals doing either who
actually participated in the demonstrations
is uncertain

My Lai Massacre
Over 300 civilians killed by US special
soldiers
 The explosive news of the massacre
fuelled the outrage of the antiwar
movement, which demanded the
withdrawal of American troops from
Vietnam. It also led more potential
draftees to file for conscientious objector
status. Those who had always argued
against the war felt vindicated; those on
the fringes of the movement became more
vocal.

 Many
Americans opposed the war on
moral grounds, horrified by the
devastation it was wreaking on
ordinary Vietnamese civilians
Unwinnable War?
 Many
anti-war activists were
themselves Vietnam veterans, as
evidenced by the organization
Vietnam Veterans Against the War. In
April 1971, thousands of these
veterans converged on the White
House in Washington D.C., and
hundreds of them threw their medals
and decorations on the steps of the
United States Capitol.
The Draft
 The
large cohort of Baby Boomers
who became eligible for military
service during the Vietnam War also
meant a steep increase in the
number of exemptions and
deferments, especially for college
and graduate students
Poor go to War
 This
was the source of considerable
resentment among poor and working
class young men, who could not
afford a college education
Draft card burnings
In late July 1965, Johnson doubled the
number of young men to be drafted per
month from 17,000 to 35,000, and on
August 31, signed a law making it a crime
to burn a draft card.
 On October 15, 1965 the student-run
National Coordinating Committee to End
the War in Vietnam in New York staged
the first draft card burning to result in an
arrest under the new law

 In
1967, the continued operation of a
seemingly unfair draft system then
calling as many as 40,000 men for
induction each month fuelled a
burgeoning draft resistance
movement.
Anti-War Slogans
Common slogans and chants
 "Hey, hey LBJ, how many kids have
you killed today?"
 The chant "One, two, three, four! We
don't want your fucking war!" was
chanted repeatedly at demonstrations
throughout the U.S. in the late 1960s
and early 1970s.
 "Draft Beer, not boys", "Hell no, we
won't go", "Make love, not war",
"Eighteen today, dead tomorrow",

and "LBJ – pull out like your old
man should have!" were a few of the
anti-war slogans.
 "Fight the VD, Not the VC!" displayed
sentiments to concentrate more on the
familiar problem of venereal diseases
than the foreign group, the Vietcong.
 "Love our country", "America, love
it or leave it" and "No glory like old
glory" are examples of pro-war
slogans.

 There
are many other pro- and antiwar slogans, however the mere
informational use of those are very
small. The group that mostly used
the anti-war slogans were called
"doves"; those that supported the
war were known as "hawks."
Anti-War Songs
 "Imagine"
- John Lennon (1971)
 War" - The Temptations, later
covered by Edwin Starr (1970)
 "The Unknown Soldier" - The Doors
(1968)
 "What's Going On" - Marvin Gaye
(1971)