Anti-War Voices

War has been a constant theme in United States history since the revolutionary war gaining independence for the United States. After the United States joined World War 1, anti-war voices started to come out against the war. Resulting from this, congress passed the Espionage Act. This act basically made it illegal to speak out against the war. Thousands of people were arrested for speaking against the war, and received no sympathy from those who were in support of the war. This started a silencing of anti-war voices that still goes on today. 

The website antiwar.com features plenty of articles speaking against the war currently going on in Israel, and the United States contribution to it. There are plenty of people against this war currently going on, but there is little coverage on people who are against it. To look into this on my own, I searched on google “people against the war in Israel”, and what came up was either posts from antiwar.com, or smaller news sites talking about these voices. None of the major news sites seem to be speaking about the anti war voices. When looking at news from the war on the bigger sites there are only updates on the war or about the protests on college campuses.

This extends the question: why aren’t we seeing anti-war voices being represented? My first thought comes from going back to the espionage act in the 1900s. Although acts like this would not pass now, major news sources are fearful of speaking out against the government. This could also be seen as a type of agenda setting. Anti-war voices are not the majority opinion, and news sources want to put out the popular opinion on issues. Secondly, this issue is not split between democrats and republicans, there is only a smaller portion of the general public that is against the war. This makes it hard for even right leaning or left leaning news sources to cover the issue. The smaller obscure websites represent the specific group of people that are against it.