Blog Post #8: Anti-War

Overview

War. A concept that has unfortunately existed for centuries and centuries. The first war can be traced all the way back to 2,700 B.C. in Mesopotamia between the forces of Sumer and Elam. Fast forward to 2021 and you have countries like the U.S. and Afghanistan in battle right now with thousands of troops having already Lost their lives through the war that is still ongoing right now. For many years now in America, there have been citizens who have held strong anti war views and have advocated for there to be no war. This was first heavily discussed during The Progressive Era, a time period that came to fruition by WWI. Many of the anti war voices expressed their opinions on how they did not want America to get involved with the war and saw no benefit of going to battle. However, all of these people with the anti war views ended up being persecuted for their opinions and hundreds of them would find their way into jail for just opening their mouths. Translate all of that to today many news sources refrain from discussing issues of war on their channel making it seem like it is not a prominent issue in our society today when it really is. If you want to even hear antiwar  voices, you will have to do some deep digging to find them. The good news is that they are out there and they have the potential to be discussed on a more consistent basis if executed correctly. Now you may be wondering why is war not talked about by these news sources? Why do they feel the urge to never report on combat and violence especially if our country is involved in some cases of it? Well the answer to that is The Progressive Era which was a time period during the 1900s that ended serving as a long lasting effect as to why anti war voices were not heavily appreciated as they should be today. 

Mesopotamia is reported as the site of the first ever war. The war took
place all the way back in 2,700 B.C.

The Progressive Era

1917 was the year when the U.S. entered World War I and the anti war voices began and it was by 1919 during the quartet of cases where those who were anti war and publicly expressed their opinion were thrown into jail. Now you may be wondering, wasn't free speech a thing during 1919? Didn’t all Americans have every right to voice their thoughts on war without receiving any sort of cruel punishment? Well the answer to that is no, they did not have the right to fully protected free speech? This was due to a concept called incitement which is speech that causes violence or lawless actions. In other words, speech was being so heavily monitored during the progressive era that any mention of war by someone would result in bad things coming for them. Nowadays people can freely express their opinions on war without directly being thrown into jail. That is because we are not experiencing direct wars happening in right our nation even though we are still experiencing combat with other nations in areas outside the U.S. Times have changed since World War I, but it’s crazy to think that war while so prevalent in society back then wasn’t thought of as something bad and something that could have a severely detrimental effect on the U.S. Over 117,000 Americans died in World War I and those people could have continued to have a life if it weren’t for us going into combat at the time. 

Connecting the Progressive Era to Today

Today, protests are such an enormous part of our society and have honestly grown to become an identity of our nation and something we are well-known for. Specifically last year in 2020 with the Black Lives Matter protests, people were not afraid to go out and voice their opinions on an issue that was severely affecting our society in a negative manner. Even a couple years ago in 2018, shortly after the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting, protests occurred all across America in order to raise awareness and attention about gun violence. Our nation is not afraid to get together, organize protests and go against some of our present standards in issues in the U.S. Protests weren’t really thought of as something to be done back during the Progressive Era. Everything was so controlled and freedom was more heavily restricted back then. It wasn’t even until 1920 where the 19th amendment was passed, that ended women’s suffrage and gave them the right to vote. You also had African Americans still fighting for freedom during this time period as well. Add in a whole massive world war, there were numerous issues occurring in our society at the time that didn’t make it easy for our nation to be unified in any manner. While there may have been numerous attempts by people like Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln to get the nation to be unified together, that really didn’t happen for a very long time and even today there still is division amongst our society as heavily seen throughout the duration of the COVID-19 pandemic. Nevertheless, voicing an opinion on a topic like war is much more acceptable today and as matter of fact is advocated in a sense as it allows more people in America to hear about how the issue of war is affecting the overall development and unity of our nation as a whole. 

In 2018, gun violence protests started across America after the
Stoneman Douglas High School shooting that killed 17 people

Why is war not talked about on mainstream news? 

There are perhaps a couple of notable reasons as to why war is not constantly talked about on mainstream news, but one of those notable reasons is the controversial reputation of the media. Fact-checking is such a critical component of journalism and reporting and some of these news sources may want to report on the issue of war, but when they do not have anyone at their station right on scene at the war, it can be hard to formulate an accurate story to share on air. Telling the truth as a journalist is critical and these media sources can severely hurt their reputation if they were to provide false and inaccurate information on a particular war. Now I’m not making this as an excuse for every news source because there are actually certain ones that DO have the access to reporting accurate and up to date information on war but they refuse to do so. Why? Your guess is as good as mine. However, I do strongly believe that these news sources are refraining from reporting on war simply because they do not want their station to become associated with combat and they do not want to have anti war vocalists coming onto their station. Compare this to the COVID-19 pandemic. Some news sources are still spending immense amounts of time reporting on the latest news happening with COVID as they have created segments into their newscasts and online sites that are directly focused on the topic of COVID. Meanwhile, other sources are limiting the discussion of COVID as much as possible because they are trying to create separation from the other news sources. Keep in mind that all of these news sources are fighting to be known as number one. MSNBC, CNN, FOX News, all of them.

Now you may be asking well if all of these sources want to be number one couldn’t reporting accurately on war be one way to help them achieve that feat? No one can really know for sure, but what we can rely on to try and guess the answer to that question is by tracing all of this back to the Progressive Era. Those in favor of anti war were severely discriminated against and this was just back in the early 1900s. Literally just less than 100 years ago was when those in favor of anti war were wrongly thrown into jail. Now while we do not witness anything near that today, many news sources haven’t forgotten about the Progressive Era and the controversy that sparked over differing viewpoints of war. Discussing a topic like war can spark serious arguments all over the place similar to a topic like politics. How often do you see a fight breaking out on Twitter over opposing views that differing political parties have? Probably pretty often right? The amount of times I witnessed that especially during the final stages of the 2020 Presidential Election was insane. The media just does feel comfortable nor the urge to report on war which is pretty unfortunate because it is an issue affecting our nation tremendously with everything happening with our troops in Afghanistan at the moment. However, some of these journalists and sources would rather sit behind and watch rather than take the risk of reporting on a topic like war. This is why I have such immense respect for those anti war sites because they are constantly discussing the issue of war and the detrimental effects it has had on our nation as a whole. Because anti war is not searched on a regular basis online, it can be hard to find these websites, but with the way our search history is tracked, if you search and visit one antiwar site then you are very likely to get recommendations to visit other antiwar sites as well. Anti war views can be accessed, but it just requires some hard digging to find it. Will that hard digging become easy digging someday? Only time will tell but as of now with the limited coverage war gets on the media it seems that those in favor of anti war need to control what they can control and do their best to advocate for change through protests and various speeches of advocacy.

Conclusion

I completely understand that our nation will never be “perfect” and that war is still going to find its way to enter our society, but its overall presence in America specifically can be diminished significantly. There’s certain issues that do not need to be resolved through war. When you enter war, you are entering a lengthy time period where innocent lives will be lost and there is a severe risk of potential harm and destruction occurring in one or all of the participating nations in the war. As to whether anti war voices will ever be profoundly respected, that still remains up for a debate. I strongly think like what I was talking about earlier in my blog with the immense presence of protests in our society today, if more people in favor of anti war team up with others with the same opinion and organize public protests to help raise awareness on the issue. Doing something like getting the hashtag #antiwar to trend on Twitter could help out tremendously in the long run. I just feel as though that not enough people are made aware of the conflict of war today. Especially for those that 110% rely on news sources to acquire information, it is very likely that these people are just not thinking about war unless they are in a history class learning about the Civil War or the World Wars. Ultimately, its going to take strong advocation to be spread across America in order to get this issue in the minds of more citizens which can help increase the chances of the mainstream media reporting on these issues of war. Sometimes its all about getting in the ear of those sources and telling them what to report on. Essentially, it is a form of citizen journalism where citizens help find stories for the media. In this case, there are numerous counts of war that are failed to be reported on a daily basis, but with the idea of protests and more aggressive speeches arguing for antiwar then this prominent issue in our society can change into a well-executed solution in no time.