I sense that some of the hyperbolic way that Bruce Franklin put things
in his argument pushed some of Michael Wright's buttons. I think Bruce
may embellish in places (20 antiwar movement veterans for every war
veteran) --perhaps because the media culture has so profoundly reversed
realities regarding the war. But I think in rising to the defense of
the middle-class student's role in the antiwar movement (e.g., we didn't
have credit cards), Michael may also be missing some important valid
points Bruce raises.
One of the most interesting to me is their discussion of class and
opposition to the war. I'd like to shed a little more light on this
from some investigation I've done for an article that's coming out in
the fall Radical History Review (stay tuned).
First, as Michael Wright points out, Bruce is referring to a public
opinion poll that demonstrated stronger antiwar opposition among the
non-college-educated, more working-class, more minority segments of the
population. And as Bruce argues, this would make sense given the
heavily disproportionate burden for fighting the war that the sons of
the working class (and racial minorities) were carrying.
But it seems as if Michael then takes this (or reads Bruce as implying
this) as an argument about the make-up of the active antiwar movement,
which the public opinion poll did not, in fact, measure. Here, we're on
trickier ground. Quite clearly, college students and recent college
graduates were a highly significant proportion of the activist antiwar
movement, and VERY DEFINITELY this population was played up in the
mainstream media. As this movement became increasingly militant and
flamboyant, the media increasingly gravitated to this group as if the
WERE the antiwar movement --and the symbols they projected and behaviors
some engaged in gave American mainstream media viewers an impression of
a distinctly anti-American, unlike-me (hippie attire, etc.) movement
(regardless of how this in fact distorted the overall movement which as
we know included thousands of veterans, active-duty soldiers,
housewives, mothers, business people, socialists, long-time pacifists,
etc.).
Hence, something curious started to happen. By late 1967 and through
1968 (at least), increasing numbers of Americans became increasingly
antiwar in their opinions. Simultaneously, increasing numbers of the
public at large became increasingly alienated from the antiwar movement
they saw in the media. A crucial turning point was Chicago, '68, where
despite the public outcry in the media against the police 'riot,' more
people were sympathetic to the police than the protesters. And studies
of these poll data indicate the intriguing explanation that is
class-based: working class whites, in particular, were prone to feel
this sharp alienation --though blacks didn't! (a "dissonance" between
their antiwar views and their views of the protesters). Hence, I argue,
you begin to have poll evidence for the crucial voting block that later
became known as Reagan Democrats. (Part of Tricky Dick's "silent
majority" pitch). 60s-bashing, Right-wing Vietnam propaganda
('soldiers fighting with one hand tied behind their back' etc.) -along
with other things like race-baiting, helped to mobilize a voting public
(and a public agenda and media spectrum) significantly to the right of
the ones that prevailed in the 1960s. [Hence alot of implications re.
the earlier discussion on this point about the significance of the
"Right" in and since the 60s.]
So, class became a manipulated issue (indirectly --directly since we are
all taught that ours is, of course, a classless society). The
working-class opposition to the war --which, could, of course, go
different directions, potentially resonating with old WWII ideology--
and potential solidarity among the white working class, African
Americans, and the antiwar Left would be enormously threatening to
elites in power and to the profitability of capitalism (recall the
response to the coalition including labor & environmentalists in Seattle
'99). With the unwitting help (in my view) of some of the "activists"
drawn to the media culture's politics of statement and display, elite
hegemony was restored. The targets and arguments of 60s movements have
been largely erased in the popular media culture; only their behaviors
(and non-threatening views of the war, racism, poverty, sexism, etc.)
remain.
Ted Morgan
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