Out Now: A Participant's Account of the Movement in the United States Against the Vietnam War

by Fred Halstead

An irreplaceable account of the fight for a political course able to organize working people, GIs, and youth and help lead growing world opposition to the Vietnam War. 2 16-page photo sections, map, notes, index.

Genres: History

1015 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1978

About the author

American Trotskyist politician.

Halstead was the candidate for President of the United States of the Socialist Workers Party in 1968.

He was known for his role in the movement against the Vietnam War and as a writer for the newspaper The Militant.

He also held jobs as garment cutter and bouncer.

Reviews

[Donna Davis · Rating 5 out of 5]

I first read this book 30+ years ago! How is that POSSIBLE?

There was no Goodreads back then, and I just read it again.

In the mid-20th century, the Southeast Asian nation of Vietnam underwent a popular revolution that sent French troops packing. The USA entered and attempted to overthrow this revolution and install a regime friendlier to US interests in its place. This book tells the story of the resistance of US citizens (soldiers among them) to this intervention.

This tome is a substantial and very detailed piece of work, not for the faint of heart. Written by Fred Halstead, a key member of the national organization that called the mass marches that helped force the US government to end its genocidal war against the people of Vietnam, it is meticulously documented and has a really good index also. If the reader is looking for material regarding a single aspect of the Vietnam War, use of the latter may get you there more quickly. For those with a genuine interest in the nitty-gritty history of the role the US played in Indochina in the 1960s and 1970s and the protest movement that, together with the people of Vietnam, brought it to its knees, this is the most comprehensive book I have ever seen.

In addition to being a member of a key national steering committee, Halstead was a member of the Socialist Workers Party (US; the name has since been adopted by at least one other small political party in Europe, and the two are not related or in agreement with one another). (I use the past tense because I think he has died, but I did not check this—if you’re out there and reading this, apologies, Fred.)

Because he was documenting not only the war, but also a piece of SWP history, and also most likely because he understood that his membership in a very small Marxist political party might open him up to skepticism from others in terms of his scholarship, he went to great pains to use primary documents when possible to back up his facts, and when it was not possible to go to the primary source, he used mainstream sources such as the Associated Press. In other words, there is no dogma to be found here. He is also careful to make it clear whose perspective he is representing with any given viewpoint: the SWP’s, his own personal opinion, or that of the Student Mobilization Committee or some other antiwar committee on which he served.

This review is impossible to write! I have at least thirty sticky-notes or bookmarks here, and you don’t really want to hear about all of them. If you do, you probably care enough about the subject to go ahead and order the book yourself. I will attempt to remove myself enough to touch on the highlights. Another word of caution, though: there were so many committees and organizations that there is a lot of alphabet soup to wade through. If you make it through the first third, you’ll make it to more compelling information with less jargon and fewer now-obscure references.

The movement to end the war blossomed from bits and pieces of the Civil Rights Movement. Some traditional peace groups were leery of participating in, or lending their name to, an organization that included Marxists (of various stripes, primarily the SWP, which had split on the side of Trotsky when Stalin came to power in the former USSR, and the CP USA, or Communist Party). Remember that this period comes right after McCarthy has thoroughly terrorized and red-baited America to the point where the left was demonized, and so including everyone who wanted to participate in the anti-war movement was a huge battle. However, the broader the forces that were permitted to participate, the greater the workforce of volunteers; the larger the mass marches became; and the more ultimate power was wielded against a US ruling elite that had gone into Vietnam under the pretext of spreading democracy.

Students for a Democratic Society, or SDS, chose to abstain as a national organization till the war was nearly over, claiming that it was not possible to force the US out of Vietnam, but that with proper organization, they might succeed in stopping “the 7th war from now”. Individual chapters, however, chose to participate in building marches in their home cities.

The anti-war movement attracted such luminaries as Isaac Deutscher, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and Dr. Benjamin Spock fairly early on. Halstead quotes Dr. King in a speech given in Beverly Hills, California on Feb. 25, 1967: “The promises of the Great Society have been shot down on the battlefield of Vietnam. The pursuit of this widened war has narrowed domestic welfare programs, making the poor, white and Negro, bear the heaviest burdens both at the front and at home…”

As the bombing intensified to the point where napalm burned the flesh of civilians and exfoliant chemicals destroyed crops as well as the jungles in which Vietnamese soldiers hid, it became increasingly clear that this was not about democracy at all, but rather the US government imposing its will upon an unwilling nation.

A US captain explains of the increased force used against Vietnam during the Tet Offensive: “It became necessary to destroy the village in order to save it.”

The marches that unfolded across the country included delegations of Native Americans, including the Rosebud Sioux, who carried a banner saying “Do not do to the Vietnamese what you did to us.” Later years would see the United Auto Workers also participate (despite the opposition of labor leader George Meany), and ultimately the greatest anti-war leaders of all were the US Vietnam veterans themselves. The pressure and opposition on the home front, together with the atrocities committed and documented in the press, brought down international condemnation on the heads of presidents Lyndon Baines Johnson and Richard Nixon.

Halstead has little use for electoral politics, and I agree with the mass action perspective he shows here. With tens of thousands, then hundreds of thousands of voices chanting, “Hey, hey, LBJ, How many kids did you kill today?” it is unlikely that any congresspersons did not know that the public was present and had an opinion. Why waste money and time wining and dining bureaucrats who may or may not bend in the wind, when the masses are revealed in the streets where these same bureaucrats are employed?

Halstead recounts the horror of students being shot down by National Guardsmen at Kent State University (“They aren’t using blanks!”), and of the teach-ins initiated by college faculty, then later student strikes that spread like wildfire across the USA.

Later, Richard Nixon drew up his enemies list and pretended that he still held the support of the “silent majority” of Americans. He disdained the march that took place past his residence on November 15, 1969, an immense, peaceful crowd so huge that after six hours, it had still not been able to march past the White House.

Famous actors and musicians, Senator Eugene McCarthy, and the cast of Hair had the stage at various times. Meanwhile, Nixon was so fearful that he might be physically attacked that he had buses placed around the perimeter of the White House as a barricade to shield him. Halstead characterizes the joyful, dancing crowd who moved to “The Age of Aquarius” as a counterpoint to the administration, “An affirmation of life while the dour, frightened man in the White House sat behind his steel wall, according to his press releases watching a football game on TV.”

Later Nixon would ride, ironically, to reelection as a peace candidate, pretending to end the war while actually escalating the atrocities and including wider swaths of Indochina in the bombing. The antiwar movement hit a crisis and the mass marches came to a halt, but their work had been done. International opinion was against the US and the soldiers had reached a point where consensus was necessary for anyone to deliberately engage the North Vietnamese Army; largely they had arranged to move around each other, so that even though US troops were still there, not much fighting was taking place on the ground. Terrible things began to happen to hotshot officers who insisted on leading their men into heat against their wishes.

Ultimately, this was the first war clearly and resoundingly lost by the USA. It should never have started at all.

[Victor · Rating 5 out of 5]

Still one of the best and most detailed first-hand accounts of the US anti-war movement in the 60s and 70s, however criminally underrated and not given the attention it warrants; no doubt partly because SDS-focused histories and memoirs so thoroughly dominate the narrative.

One hopes that whatever happens to Barnes et al and the husk masquerading as the SWP, there is an effort to save Pathfinder as a press and renew it. There are too many good and well produced books made by Pathfinder to let it collapse once that clique does.

[Fredrik deBoer · Rating 4 out of 5]

A gleefully biased account of the anti-Vietnam war movement from someone who was there, on the ground. Halstead was beloved by many radicals in his lifetime, and he writes this book from the standpoint of an enthusiastic participant. There's so many nuggets here to enjoy; the discussion of protest newspapers written by soldiers is a highlight. The fact that this isn't a widely-acknowledged classic speaks to the vagaries of status in publishing. Not just essential history, but a lot of fun.

[Marc Lichtman · Rating 5 out of 5]

“The Movement and the ‘Madman,’” a new PBS documentary, offers a version of the movement against the Vietnam War in 1969 that blames President Richard Nixon for the war and plays up the role of the Democratic Party that year in the Vietnam Moratorium. The demonstrations drew hundreds of thousands into their first protests and attracted working people.

Some 8 million U.S. military personnel were deployed in the course of the Southeast Asian War against the struggle of the Vietnamese people for self-determination and to reunify their country.
Washington went down to a historic defeat in 1975. Vietnam was reunified, and the US hasn't won a war since then.

In the midst of a shooting war, more and more working people in the U.S. began to question it and an anti-war movement — unprecedented in wartime in U.S. history — grew. The largest ever anti-war demonstrations were organized, having a powerful impact on the ranks of the armed forces. The movement was deeply intertwined with the ongoing struggle against Jim Crow segregation.
Produced and directed by Stephen Talbot, “The Movement and the ‘Madman’” focuses on 1969. It shows interviews with some leaders of the Moratorium, footage of the massive demonstrations in October and November, and interviews with government officials. Nixon planned to “threaten the North Vietnamese with nuclear weapons,” Morton Halperin, then an aide to Nixon’s Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, says. “To make that threat credible,” Nixon wanted “the Vietnamese to fear he was crazy and might actually do this.”

Nixon would later admit the spread of anti-war protests helped to destroy “the credibility of my ultimatum to Hanoi.”

Early in the film David Hawk, one of the organizers of the Oct. 15, 1969, Moratorium, heaps praise on the “courage” of congressional representatives who joined anti-war actions. Their speeches on the steps of the Capitol are shown prominently. David Mixner, another organizer of the October Moratorium proudly tells filmmakers that Bill Clinton, then working as an intern for a senator, visited him at the Moratorium’s office.

Anyone looking for an account of the class forces that ended the war, and the working-class perspective of many who led the fight, would do well to pick up a copy of Fred Halstead’s ‘Out Now! A Participant’s Account of the Movement in the U.S. Against the Vietnam War.’ Halstead was one of the organizers of the 1969 anti-war demonstrations and had been Socialist Workers Party candidate for president in 1968. He describes how the war was escalated by the previous Democratic Party administrations of John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson. “Dove politicians didn’t lead,” Halstead writes, “they followed, far behind.” This documentary portrays Halstead as a “fringe element” rather than as an essential organizer.

“Even after the dramatic switch in public attitude” toward the war “made dovishness permissible on Capitol Hill,” Halstead said, “the vast majority in both parties — doves included — consistently voted for the Vietnam military budget up to 1973.”

“For all their tactical disputes,” Halstead writes, the rulers “never did change their minds about their right to brutalize Vietnam to keep a piece of it under U.S. domination.”

“They were forced — first of all by the resistance of the Indochinese peoples but also by the American anti-war movement and international opposition to the U.S. role,” he said. “They backed off, bit by bit, brutalizing as much as they could get away with, all the way to the end.”

Little mention is made in the film of the huge impact of the Black-led working-class movement for civil rights underway as the war took place. That successful struggle transformed the attitudes and the self-confidence of millions, giving momentum to those protesting the war here and in the army.

“The Movement and the ‘Madman’” barely mentions the shifts already taking place among U.S. soldiers. By 1971, “the morale, discipline and battle-worthiness of U.S. Armed Forces,” wrote the Armed Forces Journal, was “worse than at any time this century.”

By focusing heavily on Nixon’s plans to threaten a nuclear attack, the film minimizes the actual horror inflicted by Washington on the Vietnamese people, including carpet bombings and widespread use of napalm.

Some 60,000 U.S. soldiers were killed in the war. Millions of inhabitants of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia lost their lives as the U.S. rulers dropped more bombs than in all previous wars combined. From 1962 to 1971, their forces sprayed 21 million gallons of defoliants across southern Vietnam. Agent Orange, known to produce cancer, was widely used, turning vast tracts into wastelands. Thousands of U.S. veterans suffer from the effects of Agent Orange today. Nixon’s nuclear threats were not those of a “madman,” any more than the sharp escalations of the war by Johnson.

The anti-war mobilizations “changed the political face of the United States and motivated a healthy distrust of the rulers in Washington,” Halstead concludes. “It broke the fever of the anti-communist hysteria and weakened the efficacy of the red scares,” he said. It challenged “the image of GIs as obedient pawns of the brass immunized against dissenting currents within the civilian population."

Other people make the mistake of saying that "liberals ended the war in Vietnam. They are so wrapped up in electoral politics that they view everything in those terms. But every major election year it was harder to organize protests. Far from leading the protests, the liberal "peace campaigns" tried to marginalize actual protests. And I don't define "liberals" as people who usually vote for the Democrats. Liberals are ideologues--If they're not people running for office, then they're closely associated with those campaigns, or they're part of the liberal media, or prominent professors.

Today, sharpening conflicts among the world’s capitalist powers accelerated by Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, and the ensuing worldwide arms race, point toward inevitable wars to come. Halstead’s account of the class forces that came together against the Vietnam War is essential reading.

I also suggest reading Revolutionary Strategy in the Fight Against the Vietnam War. For the Black struggle, without which this couldn't have happened, I recommend the 3-vol. 'America in the King Years' by Taylor Branch, despite its King-centric views. But also, be sure to also read Malcolm X, Black Liberation, and the Road to Workers Power.

[Julio The Fox · Rating 4 out of 5]

"The antiwar movement represented a time when we were both moral and powerful".---Mario Savio, Leader of the Berkely Free Speech Movement
St. Mario was right, and OUT NOW! vindicates him. Fred Halstead, a star of the anti-Viet Nam war movement, so prominent Norman Mailer hailed him in THE ARMIES OF THE NIGHT, can truthfully say, with Virgil, "These great things I saw and took part in". In the early Eighties, he counseled a new generation of protestors fighting the U.S. intervention in Central America, myself included, and offered the best summary of this magnificent documentary of the rise and fall of the Movement, with a capital M, as everybody spelled in those days: "As late as 1966 you couldn't get 500 people to come to an anti-war demonstration in the United States. By 1969 500,000 people protested nationwide in the anti-war Moratorium. By 1972, you couldn't get 500 people to come to an anti-war demonstration". Cycles of circular time, but the in-between was glorious. Fred's first task was to build a coalition around the right slogan and demand. In the mid-Sixties, liberals wanted "Negotiations now!" Fred tells of a hilarious exchange he witnessed and recorded: Liberal student: How do you even get to a U.S. exit from Vietnam without negotiations? Radical student: The same way you got in. With ships and planes! At the same time, comrade Fred had to fight off other radicals who wanted "Victory to the Viet Cong!" for an anti-war message. Fred: "A Viet Cong victory? I don't know. I'm not Vietnamese". OUT NOW! is filled with such juicy and memorable details. If the book has a great fault it is that Halsdtead never really explains why the anti-war movement collapsed by the end of the Sixties. Nixon ending the draft and Congress granting 18-year-olds the vote bolstered the government, but could not have finished off the great cause by themselves. The Movement was mostly White, male-led, and composed largely of youth who were safe from the draft in college or past draft age. Did fissures along class, race, and gender lines inside the Movement lead to its demise? A tough question, and still worth pondering today.

[Irazú · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read this to learn how to organize against the US-Israeli War on Palestine. Invaluable book to learn how to build an anti-war movement.