GI's Against Fascism

rdf:langString GI's Against Fascism

rdf:langString yes

rdf:langString December 2017

rdf:langString GI's Against Fascism was a small but formative organization formed within the U.S. Navy during the years of conscription and the Vietnam War. The group developed in mid-1969 out of a number of sailors requesting adequate quarters, but coalesced into a formal organization with a wider agenda: a more generalized opposition to the war and to perceived institutionalized racism within the U.S. Navy. Although there had been earlier antiwar and GI resistance groups within the U.S. Army during the Vietnam era, 'GI's Against Fascism' was the first such group in the U.S. Navy. The group published an underground newspaper called Duck Power as a means of spreading its views. By late 1969 they merged with a group of marines at Camp Pendleton to form the Movement for a Democratic Military (MDM) and continued publishing their newspaper until the middle of 1970. Although short-lived, because they were pioneers within the U.S. Navy and helped found the influential MDM, they had an important impact on later expressions of dissent within the U.S. military and the overall anti-Vietnam War movement.