Marty Jezer wrote:
Be that as it may, Franklin's piece greatly exaggerates the support and the nature of the support the movement had, especially before 1968. After 1968 the war became unpopular. But so did the movement. I wish it were otherwise, but it is wrong to equate opposition to the war with the anti-war movement.
Some support for this notion: According to a Harris poll in mid-December "popular hostility toward antiwar critics was so deep that one-third of Americans believed that citizens did not have the right to demonstrate against the war. . . . The great majority of people . . . believed . . . that antiwar demonstrators were motivated either by personal exhibitionism, communist manipulation, or a desire to avoid the draft" (Charles DeBenedetti, with Charles Chatfield, An American Ordeal (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1990), pp. 137-138). In 1970, Americans placed antiwar protestors in the most negative category in a poll askung to rate different political groups and leaders. Over half of those rating antiwar proestors most negatively actually favored immediate withdrawal of American troops (ibid., 284).
Tony Edmonds
Ball State University
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