Anti-war movement
Many prominent intellectuals of the time, including Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau (see Civil Disobedience) and William Ellery Channing contributed literary works against war.
Other names associated with the movement include William Ladd, Noah Worcester, Thomas Cogswell Upham, and Asa Mahan.
Another distinct feature of antebellum antiwar literature was the emphasis on how war contributed to a moral decline and brutalization of society in general.
Characteristics of the anti-war movement included opposition to the corporate interests perceived as benefiting from war, to the status quo which was trading the lives of the young for the comforts of those who are older, the concept that those who were drafted were from poor families and would be fighting a war in place of privileged individuals who were able to avoid the draft and military service, and to the lack of input in decision making that those who would die in the conflict would have in deciding to engage in it.
Opposition to World War II was most vocal during its early period, and stronger still before it started while appeasement and isolationism were considered viable diplomatic options.
The grim realities of modern combat, and the nature of mechanized society ensured that the anti-war viewpoint found presentation in Catch-22, Slaughterhouse-Five and The Tin Drum.
This sentiment grew in strength as the Cold War seemed to present the situation of an unending series of conflicts, which were fought at terrible cost to the younger generations.
In 1967 a coalition of antiwar activists formed the National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam which organized several large anti-war demonstrations between the late 1960s and 1972.
Senator John Kerry and disabled veteran Ron Kovic, spoke out against the Vietnam War on their return to the United States.
[4]: 109–110 [5]: 85, 89–90 Her arrest and lack of a trial sparked Bella Abzug and WILPF members to write to the United States Congress and petition President Richard Nixon to appeal to South Vietnamese officials for her release,[4]: 126 [5]: 90 which was widely covered in the press.
[citation needed] Following the rise of nationalism and political tensions after Slobodan Milošević came to power, as well as the outbreaks of the Yugoslav Wars, numerous anti-war movements developed in Serbia.
[14][12] According to professor Renaud De la Brosse, senior lecturer at the University of Reims and a witness called by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), it is surprising how great the resistance to Milošević's propaganda was among Serbs, given that and the lack of access to alternative news.
[12][10] The Rimtutituki was a rock supergroup featuring Ekatarina Velika, Električni Orgazam and Partibrejkers members, which was formed at the petition signing against mobilization in Belgrade.
Millions of people staged mass protests across the world in the immediate prelude to the invasion, and demonstrations and other forms of anti-war activism have continued throughout the occupation.
[26] The American country music band Dixie Chicks opposition to the war caused many radio stations to stop playing their records, but who were supported in their anti-war stance by the equally anti-war country music legend Merle Haggard, who in the summer of 2003 released a song critical of US media coverage of the Iraq War.
Beginning in early 2005, journalists, activists and academics such as Seymour Hersh,[27][28] Scott Ritter,[29] Joseph Cirincione[30] and Jorge E. Hirsch[31] began publishing claims that United States' concerns over the alleged threat posed by the possibility that Iran may have a nuclear weapons program might lead the US government to take military action against that country in the future.
Additionally, several individuals, grassroots organisations and international governmental organisations, including the Director-General of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed ElBaradei,[32] a former United Nations weapons inspector in Iraq, Scott Ritter,[29] Nobel Prize winners including Shirin Ebadi, Mairead Corrigan-Maguire and Betty Williams, Harold Pinter and Jody Williams,[33] Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament,[33] Code Pink,[34] the Non-Aligned Movement[citation needed] of 118 states, and the Arab League, have publicly stated their opposition to a would-be attack on Iran.
Speeches were made by anti-war campaigners and trade union members including demands that the UK government disinvest and sanction Israel.
[41] As of December 2022, more than 4,000 people, including Russian opposition politicians and journalists, had been prosecuted under Russia's "fake news" laws for criticizing the war in Ukraine.
The work of poets, including Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon, exposed the contrast between the realities of life in the trenches and how the war was seen by the British public at the time and the earlier patriotic verse penned by Rupert Brooke.
The German writer Erich Maria Remarque penned All Quiet on the Western Front, which has been adapted for several mediums and has become of the most often cited pieces of anti-war media.
[citation needed] The second half of the 20th century also witnessed a strong anti-war presence in other art forms, including anti-war music such as "Eve of Destruction", "And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda" and "One Tin Soldier", and films such as M*A*S*H and Die Brücke, opposing the Cold War in general or specific conflicts such as the Vietnam War.
