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BRINGING DOWN A PRESIDENT  
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Timothy Braatz
July 14, 2025
Z Network
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_ How does an antifascism movement halt and reverse the expansion of
Trumpism? Perhaps the U.S. antiwar movement of 1965-75 offers some
clues. After all, it caused two elected presidents to give up the
presidency. _

A woman basks in the sun next to a copy of the Washington Area Spark
and "Impeach Nixon" signs October 27, 1973 at an impeach Nixon rally
on the Ellipse. Nixon resigned less than two weeks later, on August 8,
1974, (Image credit: Washington Area Spark/Flickr. Original held in
the American University Library -- Special Collections).

 

Critical Mass

Imagine a cartoon: Unarmed protesters surround a palace. Inside, the
royal mathematician frantically scribbles numbers. Nearby, an unhappy
king slumps in his throne. His bags are packed. He says, “Let me
know when it hits 3.5.”

As you may have heard, every unarmed resistance campaign in recent
memory that mobilized at least 3.5 percent of the population for an
action against rulers they considered illegitimate forced the desired
regime change. This so-called “3.5 percent rule” is merely an
academic curiosity. It explains nothing about what came before the
“peak event” of participation, nothing about how that event
contributed to regime change, nothing about what followed.

The tiny number—_Just 3.5 percent!_—may give resistance organizers
hope. Less helpful, it may cause them to focus on crowd size rather
than fundamental movement-building. Recently, when I invited a local
50501/Indivisible coordinator to attend my  nonviolence workshop, she
replied, “We just do big events.”

Internet communication makes it relatively easy for rally organizers,
like her, to generate satisfying turnout. But casual participation,
however impressive at the outset, is unlikely to persist in the face
of suffering and disappointment. Movement commitment is more likely to
come through person-to-person engagement. Here’s a more useful
“rule” to ponder: Organize collective work and shared
risk-taking—you can’t achieve much without it.

Here’s another: The more a ruling group must rely on threat power,
rather than voluntary cooperation, the more fragile their regime.
Removal of an unpopular dictatorship is, in theory, relatively simple.
Inspire a critical mass to withdraw their obedience; persuade the
armed enforcers not to inflict harm; when the institutionalized fear
is gone, the dictator flees. History suggests this may be easiest in a
small country with a narrow economy and just one or two major cities.

But what if you’re challenging the policies of a corrupt,
sociopathic, authoritarian head of state who, thanks to a
sophisticated propaganda system, most voters accept as democratically
elected and lawfully governing, and who has the political approval of
a substantial minority? And what if this is in an enormous country
with numerous major cities, a highly diverse population, and a complex
and de-centralized economy? In other words, how does an antifascism
movement halt and reverse the expansion of Trumpism?

Perhaps the U.S. antiwar movement of 1965-75 offers some clues. After
all, it caused two elected presidents to give up the presidency.

Pressure

In 1965, President Lyndon Johnson significantly expanded the U.S. war
against Vietnamese independence. The antiwar response was broad (peace
groups, college students, Black liberation organizations, political
radicals, women’s groups, war veterans, clergy) and multifaceted
(teach-ins, picketing, canvassing, marches, rallies, fasts, draft-card
burning, lobbying Congress, hounding top officials, etc.). For many
participants, the primary concerns were the military draft and U.S.
combat deaths.

In 1967, the Spring Mobilization saw 400,000 protesters marching in
New York City—at the time, the largest political demonstration in
U.S. history—and 100,000 in San Francisco. Yet Johnson kept
increasing U.S. troop levels in Vietnam.

In October, the umbrella National Mobilization Committee, shifting to
nonviolent intervention, sponsored “Stop the Draft Week.” At the
University of Wisconsin, the Oakland (CA) Induction Center, and the
Pentagon, unarmed occupiers encountered police brutality. Public
approval of Johnson as commander-in-chief reportedly dropped to 28
percent, as domestic turmoil, more than overseas slaughter, troubled
the average citizen.

By making Johnson’s war policy controversial and, therefore,
newsworthy (compared to, say, U.S. war policy in Afghanistan,
2001-21), the antiwar movement generated pressure. In this context,
_pressure_ means political conditions that cause ruling elites to
believe they must choose between two or more undesirable options,
i.e., a dilemma. To maintain false claims of “progress” in Vietnam
(a political necessity for his reelection campaign), Johnson believed
he had to send even more troops. But troop increases, he understood,
would bring increased antiwar activism, which would further erode his
public approval numbers (a campaign disaster).

By early 1968, Johnson and “Defense” Secretary Robert McNamara
were politically stalemated and emotionally exhausted. “Losing
Vietnam,” they now understood, was inevitable: The mighty U.S.
military state, stymied by domestic disapproval and Vietnamese violent
resistance, couldn’t permanently maintain the southern half of
Vietnam as a client state.

After secretly recommending a slaughter slowdown, McNamara left office
on February 29. Similarly, his replacement opposed troop increases
because the war was “hopeless” and “domestic unrest” was
“rampant.” On March 31, Johnson announced he would begin war
“de-escalation” and wouldn’t seek reelection; the antiwar
movement had, in effect, chased him into early retirement.

When the next president—Richard Nixon, inaugurated in
1969—didn’t halt the slaughter, the antiwar movement went
mainstream. The New Mobilization Committee appealed to labor unions,
high school students, military members, and religious groups. The
moderate Vietnam Moratorium Committee tried to reach middle-class
voters in every congressional district.

In mid-October, the Moratorium to End the War drew large turnout in
major cities, including 250,000 for a candlelight march in Washington
D.C. and 100,000 for a polite rally in Boston. In response, Nixon
canceled Duck Hook, an unannounced military operation which would have
escalated the destruction of North Vietnam, possibly with nuclear
weapons. In mid-November, a Mobilization drew over 500,000 protesters
to Washington, while 250,000 marched in San Francisco.

Statistically, October-November 1969 may have been the peak of
civilian participation in the antiwar movement. Moratorium and
Mobilization participants nationwide engaged in diverse local actions,
from prayer services to high school walkouts, which cultivated more
antiwar sentiment. (If two million people took part, that’s 1
percent of the population.) According to some observers, half the
population now rejected U.S. war-making in Vietnam.

Under antiwar pressure, Nixon reluctantly began withdrawing U.S.
ground troops. To delay “losing” South Vietnam, he employed
“secret” bombing campaigns—secret from the U.S. public—and
strengthened the surrogate South Vietnam military. Without fail,
Congress approved his war funding requests.

Antiwar actions continued, highlighted by campus uprisings in May 1970
(which likely shortened a U.S. invasion of Cambodia), massive marches
in Washington and San Francisco in April 1971, the May Day occupation
of Washington in 1971, and growing resistance from active-duty
soldiers (which unsettled high-ranking officers). The movement
triggered Nixon’s personal and ideological paranoia—he imagined an
international communist conspiracy—but the constant threat of
popular uprising kept him reducing troop levels.

The resultant decline in U.S. draftees and U.S. casualties contributed
to a decline in antiwar participation. In 1972, with ground troop
withdrawal almost complete, Nixon easily won reelection over antiwar
candidate George McGovern. At that point, it appeared U.S. officials
could perpetuate airborne slaughter, despite body count now in the
millions, so long as U.S. boys weren’t dying. Nixon’s public
approval rating in January 1973, shortly after his brutal “Christmas
bombings” of North Vietnam, was reportedly 68 percent.

Critical Networks

Now for a closer look:

Sometime around 1946, in California’s Bay Area, a bookstore clerk
allowed a penniless young man to take a book on Gandhi. Anyone who
wanted such a book, the clerk told him, could be trusted to come back
and pay for it. Thus began Ira Sandperl’s career as a scholar of
nonviolence. With folksinger Joan Baez, his most enthusiastic devotee,
Sandperl participated in many civil rights and antiwar actions,
advised Martin Luther King, and, in 1965, founded the Institute for
the Study of Nonviolence.

In March 1967, Sandperl protégé David Harris initiated an anti-draft
network. In October, Harris helped organize Stop the Draft Week
actions in Oakland, which left him, Baez, Sandperl, Roy Kepler (a
Second World War conscientious objector), and two hundred other
participants briefly imprisoned.

Among them was Randy Kehler, a Stanford graduate student who had been
attending a workshop led by Sandperl, Baez, and Kepler. Incarceration
was Kehler’s first experience with “a community of people that
were committed to something larger than themselves.” He quit school
and accepted Kepler’s invitation to work for the War Resisters
League, a branch of War Resisters International (WRI).

Meanwhile, on the East Coast, Harvard graduate student Janaki
Natarajan joined the antiwar movement. Natarajan was well-versed in
Gandhian philosophy, having participated in the Sarvodaya Movement in
her native India. In 1968, at a conference co-sponsored by the
American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), she charmed a military
state insider named Daniel Ellsberg (Marine Corps, RAND Corp., State
and “Defense” departments) and inspired him to read about
nonviolence.

 In 1969, Natarajan invited Ellsberg to a WRI conference. One of the
speakers was Kehler, who explained that he would soon be joining
friends in prison for draft resistance and said “there was something
really beautiful about it.”  

Ellsberg had volunteered for combat in Vietnam as a counter-revolution
analyst and had worked on a secret study, commissioned by McNamara,
called _U.S. Decision-Making in Vietnam, 1945-68_ (aka “the Pentagon
Papers”). He had grown skeptical of the war, knew of the secret
nuclear contingency plan, and was dismayed to learn that Nixon
secretly intended to maintain a residual force of 50,000 U.S. soldiers
in South Vietnam. 

But encountering Kehler’s moral courage and clarity was, for
Ellsberg, like “an ax had split my head, and my heart broke open.”
The former Marine sobbed for an hour, then pondered what he could do
to end the war, now that he, too, was prepared to go to prison. An
active loyalist had defected to the active opposition: Ellsberg
resolved to leak the Pentagon Papers to reveal how presidents had
repeatedly misled the public. 

“No Kehler, no Pentagon Papers,” Ellsberg later acknowledged, and
we should add Natarajan, AFSC, and WRI. Indeed, the list of
indispensable influences behind Ellsberg’s conversion includes
Sandperl, Baez, Kepler, Harris, and all the other anti-draft
campaigners who inspired Kehler.

Safe to say, none of them anticipated the remarkable repercussions. In
June 1971, when newspapers, in collaboration with Ellsberg, began
publishing Pentagon Papers excerpts, Nixon overreacted. Goaded by
“National Security” Advisor Henry Kissinger, he arranged a
counter-intelligence team to discredit Ellsberg (who “knew too
much”) and blackmail him into silence. These so-called
“Plumbers” attempted a physical assault on Ellsberg and
burglarized his psychiatrist’s office.

When the Plumbers, in 1972, were caught wiretapping a Democratic Party
office, Nixon tried to cover up this smaller crime (which he hadn’t
ordered) because he didn’t want his criminal conspiring against
Ellsberg exposed. Nixon’s obstruction of justice became, in 1973,
the centerpiece of the Watergate scandal, with Ellsberg’s espionage
trial producing key revelations.

The scandal deflated Nixon’s public support numbers, allowing
otherwise deferential legislators to oppose him. Lobbied by peace
groups, Congress—at long last—voted to defund Nixon’s bombing
campaigns and the South Vietnam military. In August 1974, facing
ouster by Congress over Watergate, Nixon resigned the presidency. When
Kissinger and President Gerald Ford, in early 1975, requested new
funding for South Vietnam, Congress said no. In short, war resisters
had driven Nixon into greater domestic criminality, which, when
exposed, undermined his ability to continue a war made unpopular by
the antiwar movement.

Hope

U.S. political elites will publicly deny an anti-violence movement’s
influence over policy decisions. Organizers have to take it on faith
that their efforts, one way or another, are grinding away at the
ruling regime, stressing fault lines, troubling consciences, inflaming
personality disorders, bringing out the best in some insiders, the
worst in others. Political lobbying and public
outreach—face-to-face—are essential, as are nonviolent direct
action and civil disobedience. It may take years (and perhaps some
luck), but the combination of critical mass, critical networks, and
moral integrity will produce unexpected yet desirable results. Keep
the pressure on: you never know what will pop out.

_Timothy Braatz teaches nonviolence and is writing a book on antiwar
efforts in U.S. history._

_Z is a participatory platform to engage with educational content,
vision, and strategic analysis that aims to assist activist efforts
for a better future. Since 1977, we’ve produced a series of
independent media projects that go beyond critique to explore and
organize alternatives._

_Dedicated to developing vision and strategic activism, resisting
injustice, defending against repression, and fostering liberty, we
view the racial, gender, class, political, and ecological dimensions
of life as fundamental to understanding and improving contemporary
circumstances._

* Anti-War Movement
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* Anti-Fascism
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* Richard Nixon
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* LBJ
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* Donald Trump
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* non-violence
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* Vietnam War
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