Antiwar Movement: The Great Silent Majority

 Introduction

    In our current age, there are not many outspoken and well-known antiwar voices. Why is this? There could be multiple explanations to why the antiwar movement is significantly quieter, but first let's first look at some history.

In the Past...

    The Antiwar Movement originated a long time ago, and can even be traced back to groups of people with these sentiments during the Revolutionary and Civil Wars, but it really took off around World War I. This can be attributed to Woodrow Wilson promising to keep America out of the war, yet later involving the U.S. in the conflict. The antiwar opinions continued to spread and become more popular which caused Wilson to pass two laws called the Espionage Act (1917) and Sedition Act (1918) which silenced government officials and private citizens respectively of criticizing the government's actions. This led to the arrest of some prominent individuals such as Eugene Debs, a presidential candidate and leader of the socialist party, for speaking out against the U.S. going to war. Four similar court cases (including one involving Debs) caused Supreme Court Justice Holmes to relay the importance of the Marketplace of Ideas (1919) which emphasizes that all ideas must be heard in order to figure out which ideas are "good" and correct. This began to open the door to more discourse on subjects such as the antiwar opinion. Later in 1921, William Howard Taft became the Chief Justice and engineered in the following years more protections for citizens through the first amendment and free speech. This is evident through Antiwar sentiments during the Vietnam War where people were able to have their voices heard about their disdain for the U.S.'s involvement. 

What About Now?

    Where have the antiwar voices gone? These opinions can be found on relatively unknown websites such as ANTIWAR.COM and American Conservative. Both of these sites contain articles addressing military topics and addressing the the importance of avoiding conflict. For example, many of the current stories address the Russia situation in Ukraine as it discusses what went wrong that led to this point and then what must be done in the future to avoid an armed conflict. Some of this lack of exposure may be from cancel culture, which tends to quiet people and ideas that do not agree with the "expectations" of society. While many people may not want war, many people still do not want to "rock the boat" and force change so they do not want to promote any "radical" ideas. Some people do not see any strong antiwar movements and rhetoric needed because they see elections as the way to promote their beliefs on war and armed conflicts. Then, other people suggest that a strong antiwar movement is irrelevant right now because there is a consensus that there is a distinction between current enemies and past enemies, and there is no draft in affect so it is an all volunteer military.

Conclusion

    In the United States, there has been a constant history of war and this has inevitably led to people opposing those wars. These voices used to be prominent, even considered as the great silent majority by Richard Nixon in 1968. But nowadays we have heard about less opposition to war because of many possible reasons including but not limited to election results, an all volunteer military, and the nature of our current enemies. While all of these might be valid reasons for a less prominent antiwar movement, it really boils down to the sentiments of the antiwar movement not aligning with the goals of the federal government and how we are viewed around the world. We consider ourselves to be the police force around the world to keep everything in order, which leads to more conflict and so when there are disagreements, those arguments that do not align (in this instance the antiwar opinion) they will be discredited and inevitably become silenced and unpopular.