AHC: 1960s anti-war movement dominated by isolationists

Would it be possible for opposition to the Vietnam War in the 1960s to be led largely by the ideological heirs of Charles Lindbergh and the America First Committee? Or does the anti-Communist nature of that conflict pretty much guarantee that Old Right types are going to side with the war effort?

I'm thinking that if there had been no draft, that would remove a considerable amount of the youthful opposition to the war, along with the leftward political bent that youth, by its nature, usually brings to a cause. So, any involved right-wingers could just end up ruling by default. That is, if there were any right-wingers around in the movement.

I believe that Lawrence Dennis, a leftover fascist from the 1930s, eventually became a critic of the Vietnam War and American imperialism generally, though according to wikipedia he renounced his earlier views. And I know I've read things by anti-Catholic(and hence likely anti-immigrant) zealots who opposed the war because they thought the Republic Of Vietnam was a Vatican puppet.
 
Isolationism is going to be a tough sell with REd Tanks in the Middle of Germany and Communist Cuba right off the coast and communist rebels on the march in the Third World all armed with AK-47s.
 
I like the timeline where every idealistic and left-leaning young person who participated in the anti-war movement OTL still participates, but because there are so many conservative members of the movement, the young people find themselves a distinct minority.

The conservatives argue the only way to do it right is by nation building, but we don't have the track record for that, we don't have the political will for the money that will require, administrations of both parties have shown they don't really want genuinely democratic governments, they just want to prop up some strongman who they feel they can make deals with, etc, etc, etc. And yes, make them conservative rather than fascist.

As a starting point, maybe if the Greek Civil War really gets some belated attention. That we sided against the partisans who had formerly fought with us against the Nazis, and we sided with the former Nazi collaborationists, and the reason we seemed to do this is because the Yalta treaty gave Greece to 'our' side.

And that the story of Iran is more widely told, that the Iranians expropriated British petroleum properties according to the UK's own law and it wasn't good enough for them. Well, certainly not going to let social inferiors use our own law against us, now are we?

So, in large part the conservatives become critics of the elite Eastern establishment much as they did in OTL. Only this time they're more knowledgeable about foreign policy. Maybe also make them big advocates as the wave of the future and the only real long-term path to peace.
 
Isolationism is going to be a tough sell with REd Tanks in the Middle of Germany and Communist Cuba right off the coast and communist rebels on the march in the Third World all armed with AK-47s.

Indeed, even Robert Taft was opposed to communism taking hold in the Americas.
 

LordKalvert

Banned
Nixon always maintained that the anti-war movement was really anti-draft. The Gulf war pretty much backed him up.

Given that, the movement may have taken an isolationist turn but anti-communism ran rampant in American society
 
I like the timeline where every idealistic and left-leaning young person who participated in the anti-war movement OTL still participates, but because there are so many conservative members of the movement, the young people find themselves a distinct minority.

The conservatives argue the only way to do it right is by nation building, but we don't have the track record for that, we don't have the political will for the money that will require, administrations of both parties have shown they don't really want genuinely democratic governments, they just want to prop up some strongman who they feel they can make deals with, etc, etc, etc. And yes, make them conservative rather than fascist.

As a starting point, maybe if the Greek Civil War really gets some belated attention. That we sided against the partisans who had formerly fought with us against the Nazis, and we sided with the former Nazi collaborationists, and the reason we seemed to do this is because the Yalta treaty gave Greece to 'our' side.

And that the story of Iran is more widely told, that the Iranians expropriated British petroleum properties according to the UK's own law and it wasn't good enough for them. Well, certainly not going to let social inferiors use our own law against us, now are we?

So, in large part the conservatives become critics of the elite Eastern establishment much as they did in OTL. Only this time they're more knowledgeable about foreign policy. Maybe also make them big advocates as the wave of the future and the only real long-term path to peace.

Just so I'm understanding your Iran example, you mean the Old Right realizes that Ajax was a self-interested move by the Brits to protect their oil company, and hence not in the USA's interest, and that they later apply this model to analyzing Vietnam?

If so, I think that has potential for my Challenge, but what you'd really need is for France to maintain an active military involvement in Vietnam, with French officials making a bit of noise about how the war is all about restoring Indochina to its proper place at the French bosom(if not as an actual colony, at least within the sphere of influence), which for obvious reasons ticks off the isolationist Right in the USA, and makes the war a much tougher sell to the general public.

And it would probably help also if the Soviets and the Chinese, while still commited to the cause of Vietnamese Communism, were much less generous in their material support than in OTL. This might reuqire a weaker, or more distracted, USSR, and an even more dysfunctional China.

Also, on the tawdry side of things, it might help if there were more Jewish names among the Establishment players in the 1960s. In OTL, Kissinger came along at just the right moment to be a lightning rod for some of the Old Right's anti-semitic vitriol, focused on the supposed sellout of South Vietnam. It seems to me that the Best And The Brightest of the previous few decades were a generally WASPy lot.
 
Last edited:
Top