The Vietnam Syndrome: 6 Anti-War Songs

In a 2011 interview with Ross Wolff, David Graeber discussed how neoliberalism responded to the anti-war protests of the late 1960s.

“This made me think of what neoliberalism is really about: it’s a political movement much more than it is an economic movement, which is a reaction to a series of victories won by social movements in the sixties — whether the anti-war movement, feminism, the counterculture, and so on.

That became a kind of sanction: achieving political victory by preventing any social movement from feeling that it had been successful in challenging capitalism in any great, empowered way, or in providing any sort of viable alternative. So it became a propaganda war that was continually hierarchized over creating an actually viable capitalist system.

The way the Iraq War was conducted is another great example of that. It’s very clear that the real obsession on the part of the people planning the war was to overcome what they called “the Vietnam syndrome,” i.e., the wave of anti-war demonstrations in the sixties that had really prevented the U.S. from deploying large ground forces in any kind of major land war for 30 years.

In order to get over that, they needed to fight the war in a way that would prevent widespread opposition and resistance at home. What they calculated was that “body count is everything”; therefore, they had to create rules of engagement such that few enough American soldiers would die that there would be no mass uproar in the form of an anti-war movement.

Of course, in order to do that, their rules of engagement meant that hundreds of thousands of Iraqi and Afghan civilians died, which in turn pretty much ensured they couldn’t win the war. But it seemed more important to them to prevent the anti-war movement than to win the war.”

We’ve compiled a playlist of some of the most influential songs about the Vietnam War, many of which appear in David Graeber’s music library.

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“Ohio” — Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young (1970)

“Ohio” was written by Neil Young in reaction to the tragic events of May 4, 1970, when four student protesters were shot dead by the National Guard at Kent State University in Ohio. Within minutes, Young had written one of the defining songs of the anti-war movement, complete with a churning guitar riff and a chorus that bluntly asks, “What if you knew her and found her dead on the ground?”

Young later described the Kent State incident as “probably the biggest lesson ever learned at an American place of learning,” and reported that David Crosby cried when the band finished the take.

The line “Tin soldiers and Nixon coming” refers to the Ohio National Guard troops who shot and killed four students during a protest against the Vietnam War. Crosby later stated that Young’s decision to keep President Nixon’s name in the lyrics was “the bravest thing I ever heard.”

The American counterculture of the 1960s responded strongly to the song and saw the musicians as spokespersons for their generation. The lyrics evoke a mood of horror, outrage, and shock in the wake of the shootings, especially the line “four dead in Ohio,” repeated throughout the song. “We were speaking for our generation,” Neil Young said.

In 2025, Rolling Stone ranked “Ohio” at number 9 on its list of The 100 Best Protest Songs of All Time.

This song is still relevant today. David Graeber’s music library also includes a cover version of “Ohio” by The Dead Warhols.

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“Give Peace a Chance” — John Lennon & Yoko Ono (1969)

John Lennon and Yoko Ono were at their second Bed-In for Peace in 1969 when Lennon decided to record this counterculture classic. Hunkered down in Room 1742 at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel in Montreal, the newlyweds recruited a loose collective of friends and activists for the recording.

The song brackets its simple anti-war chorus with vintage Lennon wordplay — “Minister, sinister, banisters and canisters / Bishops and fishops and rabbis and Popeyes and bye-bye, bye-byes.”

Released as Lennon’s solo debut single, “Give Peace a Chance” became an anthem sung by protesters as the Vietnam War raged on. It was later ranked at number 19 on Rolling Stone’s list of The 100 Best Protest Songs of All Time.

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“For What It’s Worth” — Buffalo Springfield (1967)

Stephen Stills wrote the lucid folk-rock rumination “For What It’s Worth,” which was quickly absorbed by the anti-war movement. Although originally inspired by a confrontation between police and young people on the Sunset Strip in Los Angeles, the song became inextricably linked to Vietnam through film and television.

A protest about civil liberties on one American street expanded exponentially to represent a global struggle for human rights. The song appears in David Graeber’s music library and was performed by fellow Buffalo Springfield member Neil Young.

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“Some Mother’s Son” — The Kinks (1969)

“Some Mother’s Son” is widely regarded as a haunting anti-war ballad that focuses on the individual human cost of war, particularly the grief of mothers who lose their sons. The song is praised for its emotional restraint, simplicity of storytelling, and its place within Ray Davies’s broader reflections on war, memory, and social change.

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“What’s Going On” — Marvin Gaye (1971)

On May 15, 1969, California Governor Ronald Reagan sent hundreds of police officers to dismantle People’s Park in Berkeley — a semi-autonomous space created by students and activists. The violence of the police response led the day to become known as Bloody Thursday.

Around the same time, Marvin Gaye was hearing harrowing stories from his brother, a Vietnam veteran. He infused “What’s Going On” with his own anguish, political awareness, and one of the most extraordinary vocal performances in popular music history.

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“The Revolution Will Not Be Televised” — Gil Scott-Heron (1971)

Like some of the best graffiti, Gil Scott-Heron’s “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised” collages early-Seventies cultural debris — advertising slogans, cartoon characters, sitcoms, pop stars — and reworks them into a vivid act of defiance.

The piece became a cornerstone of protest culture, endlessly reappropriated in slogans, rap music, dance tracks, and — ironically — television commercials themselves.