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ANTI-WAR PROTESTS, A CHICAGO DNC: IS IT 1968 ALL OVER AGAIN? SOME
HISTORIANS SAY NO  
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Rachel Treisman
May 14, 2024
NPR
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_ The wars, the issues, and the protests, differ in key ways. _

Delegates from New York demonstrate in favor of the anti-war plank at
the Democratic National Convention in Chicago on Aug. 28, 1968.,
Anonymous/AP

 

In late April, with election season in full swing and pro-Palestinian
demonstrations sweeping college campuses across the U.S., a historian
named Keith Orejel
[[link removed]] voiced an
observation.

"I just can't believe the parallels with 1968," the Wilmington College
professor wrote on X
[[link removed]], formerly
Twitter. "I mean ok, Columbia has unrest
[[link removed]] and
there's widespread anti war activism, that might be coincidence. But
there is a guy named Robert Kennedy running for president and the
[Democratic National Convention] is in Chicago. Like is this a bit?"

That question seemed to resonate, and not just among the more than
8,000 people who liked Orejel's post.

It has appeared in a growing number of think pieces and political
interviews in recent weeks, especially with the school year ending and
the general election — along with this summer's political
conventions — fast approaching.

Many see parallels between the political and cultural events of 1968
and 2024, especially with the Democratic National Convention happening
in Chicago in both years and against the backdrop of extensive student
protests against U.S. involvement in foreign wars — the Vietnam War
then and the Israel-Hamas war now.

In fact, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., said this month
[[link removed]] that the conflict in
the Middle East and the U.S. response to it "may be Biden's Vietnam."

"Lyndon Johnson in many respects was a very, very good president,"
Sanders told CNN. "He chose not to run in '68 because of opposition to
his views on Vietnam, and I worry very much that President Biden is
putting himself in a position where he has alienated not just young
people but a lot of the Democratic base in terms of his views on
Israel and this war."

In 1968, that left incumbent Vice President Hubert Humphrey, anti-war
Sen. Eugene McCarthy and former U.S. Attorney General Robert F.
Kennedy vying for the Democratic primary nomination, until Kennedy's
assassination that June.

The Democratic National Convention that August was tumultuous inside
and out. Chicago police were seen on live TV beating, tear-gassing and
arresting hundreds of protesters on the streets, while the convention
itself was marred by infighting between competing slates of delegates
and among party members over the (ultimately rejected) Vietnam "peace
plank" of the party's platform.

Chicago police (center), backed up by the National Guard (foreground),
move against a large group of demonstrators on Aug. 28, 1968, as seen
from the Conrad Hilton Hotel, headquarters of the Democratic National
Convention, looking north up Michigan Avenue. AP

Humphrey somewhat predictably won the nomination of a profoundly
divided Democratic Party but eventually lost the general election to
"law and order"-focused Republican Richard Nixon. His presidency kept
the U.S. in Vietnam for another five years and ushered in a turn to
conservative politics
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would persist for some three decades.

"A lot of folks sort of see the choice people are being presented with
in 2024 as a similar thing," Orejel told NPR in an interview, pointing
to the rematch between Biden and former President Donald Trump.

Thousands of voters opposed to Biden's handling of the Israel-Hamas
war voted "uncommitted"
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their state primaries, earning at least eight delegates for the DNC.
It's unclear how many of those voters will support Biden in
November; several have told NPR
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they don't know yet.

It's not just politics that seem to be repeating. Both years also saw
new _Planet of the Apes_ movies, Summer Olympics
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U.S. moon missions (though we're still far
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another moon landing).

And yet, Orejel says, 2024 is by no means a replica of 1968, which is
widely considered one of the most tumultuous years in recent American
and global history.

That's an assessment shared by all three historians NPR interviewed
for this story, who acknowledge some similarities between the years
but caution against relying too closely on 1968 as a guide.

Marsha Barrett, a professor of history
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University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, says it makes sense that
people are looking for historical examples to understand what's
happening now. But 1968, she argues, may not be the best one to use.

 

"Maybe making a comparison helps you to make it clear why this moment
is different or what was unique about that past moment in time," she
says. "But I think there's too many factors that have changed between
now and 1968 [for us to] really look to 1968 to help us understand
what's going to happen next."

The wars — as well as the protests against them — differ in some
key ways

A police officer squirts tear gas at a crowd of anti-war demonstrators
outside the Conrad Hilton Hotel in Chicago on Aug. 29, 1968. Michael
Boyer/AP

Both years involve impassioned demonstrations — including many on
college campuses — against U.S. involvement in foreign wars. But the
dynamics of the wars and the scopes of the protests against them are
very different, historians say.

For one, the U.S. sent troops directly into Vietnam, starting in 1965.
Nearly 500,000 American service members were in Vietnam by 1968
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following year would see a peak in troop numbers and the
reintroduction of the draft lottery
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All told, some 58,220 Americans were killed
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the conflict.

"That is just a drastically different level of involvement than
clearly what you have now, which is the U.S. providing weapons,
providing military aid and providing diplomatic support [to Israel],"
Orejel says.

The current Israel-Hamas war dates back months, not years, to Hamas'
Oct. 7 attack on Israel. Many Americans have lost family members
abroad, though U.S. troops aren't directly being deployed.

The U.S. has since provided military assistance
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Israel and sent troops to the Middle East
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growing regional tensions, but the Biden administration maintains that
U.S. troops won't set foot in Gaza — instead, the military
is constructing a pier off the coast
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deliver humanitarian aid.

"There is an argument ... that the proportionality is out of whack in
those similarities, right?" Orejel says. "That what the U.S. was
experiencing in '68 over Vietnam seems to be on a much different scale
than its level of involvement in what is currently going on in Gaza at
the moment."

He acknowledges the ongoing conflict is "dramatically galvanizing"
people in the U.S., especially students and activists.

But he says today's protests are generally much smaller than the
sustained anti-war demonstrations of the 1960s, which in some cases
drew as many as hundreds of thousands
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people.

It remains to be seen, Orejel adds, how far protests might spread
beyond college campuses this summer and whether they will unfold not
only at the DNC but at the Paris Olympics, as they did in Mexico in
1968.

Anthony Michael Kreis [[link removed]], a
constitutional law professor and political scientist at Georgia State
University College of Law, says both 1968 and 2024 are "pivotal
moments in the sense that I think people's sense of real changes are
afoot."

"But you really can't compare, I think, aptly, a handful of very
important, salient, deeply divisive protests and counterprotests to
the kind of rampant and seemingly nonstop political violence and
social unrest that was 1968," he says.

1968 was a year of nearly unprecedented turmoil in the U.S.

Delegates on the convention floor hold a large banner that reads
"Bobby We Miss You," during the final session of the Democratic
National Convention in Chicago on Aug. 29, 1968. Associated Press

While the news cycle [[link removed]] —
especially online and across social media — can feel tumultuous and
relentless these days, historians stress that 1968 was a uniquely
turbulent year in American politics and society.

It began in January with the Tet Offensive
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coordinated attacks on the U.S. and South Vietnamese militaries by
North Vietnamese and Viet Cong forces, which represented a major
escalation of the war and U.S. public opinion against it.

"And then from there on, throughout that entire year, it just
continues to be one sort of upheaval after another," Orejel explains.

Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis, Tenn., in April,
prompting the eruption of riots in over 100 cities
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the U.S. and galvanizing the more militant Black Power movement.

RFK threw his hat in the Democratic primary to challenge establishment
favorite and heir apparent, Humphrey, and had generated considerable
momentum before he was assassinated in June
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the night he won the California primary.

RFK's death brought an end to the feeling of optimism that had defined
the 1960s for many young people. In fact, Kreis says, many began to
feel "that the world was just unraveling."

And part of that, he says, was the unraveling of the dominant
political order.

The New Deal coalition — the voting bloc of union members, ethnic
and religious minorities, white Southerners and others who had
effectively powered the Democratic Party since 1932 — began to fall
apart, weakened by splits over issues such as Vietnam, civil rights,
immigration reform and urban riots, as well as "white flight" to the
suburbs.

"At the core of them all was just this ticking time bomb, this kind of
political powder keg, where people were really fighting over the
nation's identity and what it meant to be an American," Kreis
explains.

Kreis doesn't think the U.S. is in exactly that position today, though
he sees similarities in the growing divisions
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the Democratic Party, especially when it comes to the young anti-war
protesters who make up a crucial part of its voting bloc.

He'll be watching to see how Democrats reach out to disillusioned
voters — especially young and Muslim voters — in the months ahead
and how party and city officials respond to expected protests at the
convention.

One big takeaway from 1968, Kreis says, should be to let protesters
air their grievances "without turning the entire convention into a
story about protests."

"I do think it could be problematic for the Democratic Party if there
isn't a better threading of the needle on this issue," he adds.

The dynamics of the parties and their conventions have changed

Chicago police guard the area around the convention hall prior to the
opening of the Democratic National Convention on Aug. 26, 1968.
Charles Tasnadi/AP

The Democratic Party that embarked on the 1968 convention looked very
different from the one that emerged from it afterward — and from the
version of the party that exists today.

Heading into the election, the party faced major criticisms from
within for a lack of transparency in how it chose delegates, Barrett
says, and for keeping people with a more "activist-minded approach"
away from power.

The internal chaos of that convention ultimately prompted a series of
rule changes
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reformed the nominating process and gave more young people, members of
racial minorities and women a role, from 1972 onward.

"The party changed in response to those activists, and the legacy of
that remains," Barrett says. "And that's a main reason why the
Democratic Party remains much more diverse today than it was then."

Another difference this time around lies in the options — and lack
thereof — available to disillusioned voters.

In 1968, anti-war Democrats could throw their support behind McCarthy,
who campaigned on a swift end to the war in Vietnam, or Sen. George
McGovern of South Dakota, another anti-war candidate who briefly
jumped into the race
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a stand-in for RFK.

Today, Barrett says, "there is no alternate choice."

Third-party candidates
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Stein and Cornel West this year, are widely seen more as spoilers than
viable alternatives. And the 2024 Kennedy candidate — RFK Jr., who
is now running as an independent — is hovering around a 40%
favorability rating
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national polls.

Democrats still risk losing voters — but the dangers are different
than they were half a century ago.

In 1968, Nixon capitalized on the disarray in the Democratic Party and
the contrast between their convention and the orderly Republican
proceedings in Miami. Some Democrats who were already drifting to the
right saw Nixon as a viable option and voted for him in the general
election as part of what he called the "silent majority
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Barrett thinks it's less likely that disappointed Democrats will
similarly back Trump.

And when it comes to the convention itself, she says, "Considering how
the party functions today [and] who is involved," it's not likely to
devolve into chaos on the floor, even if there are protests outside.

"I think many Americans, they're both bracing for the possibility of
some unscripted chaos and perhaps also hoping for it, maybe, because
it means that maybe the democratic process has been reactivated in
some way at the convention that has become pro forma," she adds.

Became pro forma, that is, in the aftermath of 1968.

Barrett says there's no single year that can offer a precise blueprint
for what to expect this time around, though the Supreme Court's role
in the 2000 election could be worth studying in light of
the presidential immunity case
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before it.

Instead, she's looking more at changes over time, especially when it
comes to voting-age Americans' likelihood to vote, faith in democracy
and views of things like the Electoral College and money in politics.

"Paying more attention ... to where we are in that longer history,"
she says, "could maybe help us to make sense of where we are right
now."

_RACHEL TREISMAN (she/her) is an editor on NPR's digital news desk,
where she reports news of the day and leads the network's live blogs,
helping shape digital coverage of breaking stories and political
events. She also writes in-depth features and reports for broadcast,
including the hourly newscast._

_She has written hundreds of high-performing breaking news and feature
stories across a wide range of topics, with a special focus on
politics and pop culture. She joins the Newshub from Morning Edition,
where she reported news and feature stories for both digital and radio
platforms, traveling to London for Queen Elizabeth's funeral and
Michigan for its 2024 primary._

_Treisman has worn many hats since arriving at NPR as a National Desk
intern in 2019, including writing for NPR's flagship Up
First newsletter, running Morning Edition's social media accounts,
curating radio content for the NPR One app, live blogging multiple
election cycles and tracking every state's restrictions and reopenings
during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic._

_Treisman previously covered business at the Pittsburgh
Post-Gazette and evaluated the credibility of digital news sites for
the startup NewsGuard Technologies, which aims to fight misinformation
and promote media literacy. She is a graduate of Yale University,
where she studied American history and served as editor in chief of
the Yale Daily News._

_Donate to NPR [[link removed]]_

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