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Radical Prints Up Close and In-Depth

Click the Print to Go Closer

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Berkeley # 42 Title: Peace is Patriotic Description: 38 x 56 cm ; red, violet and blue on white computer paper Image: U.S. flag

It may appear to be a simple slogan on the surface; but it is difficult to understand the complex social issues navigated by this poster without first comprehending the dangerous position occupied by anti-war posters vis-à-vis their identities as Americans.

Even in the second half of the 1960s, as body counts of U.S. solders increased, protestors still remained “extremely unpopular;” in the view of many Americans, “demonstrating in the streets at home while U.S. troops were overseas in combat was unpatriotic, and very possibly treasonous.”¹

Suspicions of this kind were especially painful in a cold-war America still stinging from communist paranoia. Anti-war protesters were placed in the difficult position of having to choose between stating their moral opposition to the war and retaining their moral authority as good citizens. If they rejected the war, they were perceived as rejecting America as well; and for some at least (as this poster demonstrates) this was much like throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

This print thus criticizes the rather rigid confines of 'Americanism' as it was inherited from the 1950s, with its enforced homogeneity and intolerance of dissent. Through its simple statement, the print attempts to re-configure the false binary between opposing a war and being patriotic, thus undercutting the conception of anti-war protestors as America-hating misfits. This attempt to reclaim the American identity from the Cconservative Right prefigures in some ways the 'Culture Wars' of the rest of the century. This is a battle that continues today, as the evening news will often show.