Lembcke details the resurrection of the myth of the spat-upon veteran during subsequent Gulf War efforts as a way to silence public dissent.Ī persistent but unfounded criticism leveled against those who protested in opposition to the Vietnam War is that they spat upon and otherwise derided returning soldiers, calling them "baby-killers". Lembcke equates this disparagement of the anti-war movement and veterans with the similar stab-in-the-back myth propagated by Germany and France after their war defeats, as an alibi for why they lost the war. The book also documents efforts of the Nixon Administration to drive a wedge between military servicemembers and the anti-war movement by portraying democratic dissent as a betrayal of the troops. Lembcke contrasts the absence of credible evidence of spitting by anti-war activists with the large body of evidence showing a mutually supportive, empathetic relationship between veterans and anti-war forces. The book examines the origin of the earliest stories the popularization of the "spat-upon image" through Hollywood films and other media, and the role of print news media in perpetuating the now iconic image through which the history of the war and anti-war movement has come to be represented. The book is an analysis of the widely believed narrative that American soldiers were spat upon and insulted by anti-war protesters upon returning home from the Vietnam War. The Spitting Image: Myth, Memory and the Legacy of Vietnam is a 1998 book by Vietnam veteran and sociology professor Jerry Lembcke. ![]() For other uses, see Spitting Image (disambiguation). ![]() ![]() This article is about the Jerry Lembcke book.
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