Peace movement?
: At Spiked, Jennie Bristow scolds the peace movement for disappearing.
Or is it? Just two months after its celebrated birth, the anti-war movement seems to have melted away….However you choose to play the numbers game [on declining protest attendance], these protests clearly did not represent a movement of people committed to a cause. They can better be understood as a series of gesture politics – go there, see it, do it, wear the t-shirt and go home, secure in the knowledge that you have made your point….
By 12 April, the UK’s national demonstrations were looking less like the anti-war protests against the Vietnam War than the funeral of Princess Diana….
Whatever happened to the anti-war movement? It said ‘Not in my name’, and it got what it asked for: a shoulder-shrugging detachment from politics, and the forward march of the culture of fear.
This is the same writer I linked to who found unfavorable comparisons between the ’60s peace movement and this one.
