this post was submitted on 15 Mar 2025

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1074

history rhymes, or something (lemmy.dbzer0.com)

submitted 3 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

61 comments fedilink hide all child comments

sauce: https://x.com/susanabulhawa/status/1900617696531644531

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[–] [email protected] 150 points 3 months ago (4 children)

Let's see...

Nazism
McCarthyism
Vietnam War
Racial Injustice
South African Apartheid
Occupy Wall Street
Gaza Genocide
etc.

I am curious. Has there ever been a wide-scale student protest movement that WASN'T unequivocally vindicated by history?

[–] [email protected] 42 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

The Young Turk movement started with medical students.

There were quite a few pro-segregation protests when schools were desegregated.

There's also a lot of cases where students with real grievances and positive intentions are coopted; most of the students protesting in the early 90s in eastern europe didn't intend to do a color revolution and have their countries stripped for parts.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Thank you for bringing those up. However, unless I'm misunderstanding them, the only one of those where the protesters were in the wrong were the pro-segregation protests, correct? But weren't those protests by-and-large made up of parents? (Perhaps along with some of their children doing what they were told?) Not exactly the "rebellious youth sticking it to the man" we generally mean by the words student protest.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 3 months ago

weren’t those protests by-and-large made up of parents?

Yes and no, a number of universities had pro-segregation actions by students including protests

History is always more complicated and nuanced than any narrative would lead you to believe.

[+] [email protected] 23 points 3 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (5 children)

[deleted]

[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 months ago (1 children)

It's possible English isn't your first language? No worries.

The word "vindicated" doesn't mean "won in the end," it means "they were right." As in, justified in their demands, on the right side of history. Even of the protests I listed in my first comment, half of them didn't actually win in the end (Vietnam, Occupy, Gaza, and arguably more).

From Wikipedia:

...(the Seven Demands) for the government:

Affirm Hu Yaobang's views on democracy and freedom as correct.

Admit that the campaigns against spiritual pollution and bourgeois liberalisation had been wrong.

Publish information on the income of state leaders and their family members.

Allow privately run newspapers and stop press censorship.

Increase funding for education and raise intellectuals' pay.

End restrictions on demonstrations in Beijing.

Provide objective coverage of students in official media.[84][83]

I hope that you'd agree that the students were in the right, and that the oppressive CCP was in the wrong?

[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 months ago

They are winning.* It's not over yet.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 months ago

wasn't the Red Guard also a student movement? it didn't get deleted, but it's definitely not looked back upon fondly. tbf most of what I know of it comes from Three Body Problem though, so I could be wrong.

there's also the Red Army Faction (Baader-Meinhoff gang) in Germany during the '70s which killed some people.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago

Never knew until I immigrated to the US. And even then, its merely a brief mention on it and calls it “communism” (its not lol) and then the teachers proclaim its why “communism” is bad, USA constitution rule of law blah blah.

That's when you bring up Kent State

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 months ago (1 children)

University students lead the Hungarian Revolution, and history doesn't remember them fondly. They rebelled against the Soviet Union, which makes them Nazis. It's a good thing our dear leader Stalin sent the tanks in to kill those students.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 3 months ago (2 children)

I had to look it up (dont know much about it), but in the Wikipedia entry it notes:

Time named the Hungarian Freedom Fighter its Man of the Year

And

In 2006, Hungarian Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsány referred to this famous Time cover as "the faces of free Hungary" in a speech marking the 50th anniversary of the uprising.

Which makes me think they were later vindicated. But maybe I'm missing something.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (2 children)

I may be wrong and lack any historical knowledge on the subject, but I think author is sarcastically self-identifying as a tankie?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago (2 children)

I'm not a troll, I'm a 100% serious and proud Marxist-Leninist. And I think there was nothing wrong with Stalin selling lumber and steel to Nazi Germany in the 1930s to make weapons with. Because I'm a real communist!

[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Ok but you are a troll. You're just not very good at making jokes because when called out you are doubling down on being stupid

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 months ago

How DARE you!? I would never satirize Marxist-Leninist positions to raise awareness of problems with the Soviet Union and promote anarchism as a viable alternative. Because anarchists are all stinky!

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 3 months ago (6 children)

The guy you're responding to is a liberal doing a piss-poor satire of a ML.

The students protests was quickly co-opted by nazi collaborators entirely unaffiliated with the students, it'd be like if Jan 6 happened during the 2020 protests.

The government vindicating those protestors also built monuments to nazi collaborators.

It's a complex issue, the students had genuine issues the government was failing to address, but if the soviets didn't step in, things would have been far, far worse. For comparison, here's what tended to happen in countries that failed to stop the counterrevolution around that time.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago (4 children)

there ever been a wide-scale student protest movement that WASN'T unequivocally vindicated by history?

National Socialist German Student League were literal Nazis
The Red Guards were a Student-led paramilitary group.
Japanese Students protested against the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty (Anpo)
Veganism?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (2 children)

The key word is "widescale". The reason is that a malignant narcissist can get a small group of cultists to do anything. But in order to get a large group of cultists to do something, he needs a propaganda machine like fox News and they have a much older demographic

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[–] [email protected] 92 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Weren't they revoking degrees now for protestors? Anyone who considers Columbia a real school at this point is incurable.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago

Haven’t seen that, just the green card of one of the organizers.

[–] [email protected] 57 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Given enough time, we were always going to have right wing authoritarians back in power.

But call me an idealist, I didn't think it would be actual Nazi sympathizers. Thought the brand was appropriately tarnished what with the Holocaust.

[–] [email protected] 29 points 3 months ago (1 children)

The US always had right wing authoritarians in power. They just prefered to slaughter people abroad.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 3 months ago

Cherry picking history is what US excels at. So, they're always the good guys. Always…

There'll probably be some footnotes about their heinous history just so they can point and say they're not hiding anything. But the way they control almost all major social media companies and mainstream media. They get to play god with what sticks and what doesn't.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 3 months ago

Thought the brand was appropriately tarnished what with the Holocaust.

I wish I had the faith in humanity you have

[–] [email protected] 32 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Didn’t the USA join a war against some Nazis?

[–] [email protected] 74 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

Not unprovoked and not for 5 more years. Germany declared war on the US. Until Pearl Harbor, the US was quite neutral.

Edit: correct 4 to 5

[–] [email protected] 34 points 3 months ago (4 children)

They were about as “neutral” as they were in the Ukraine conflict under Biden.

They were selling loads of weapons at discount prices and supporting the allies in many ways.

You’re right though that the US public was generally against joining the war, and the US as a whole, tended to be quite isolationist until Pearl Harbour.

[–] [email protected] 38 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (2 children)

They were selling weapons to both sides. GM controlled Opel until the 1940s, they built a lot of the nazi war machine (using forced labor), the Ford-Werke factory in Germany produced V2 rocket turbines among other parts, and US strategic bombers were specifically told to avoid bombing it because it was owned by an american, Exxon and Dow licensed patents for synthetic rubber and other war materials Germany lacked, Chase provided loans necessary for the rearmament, IBM sold the nazis the computers they used to carry out the holocaust.

The capitalist class looked at fascism as the savior of capitalism; they'd been terrified of a revolution in Germany and Hitler had just shown them an alternative. There's a reason he was Time's man of the year in 1938.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Adolf Hilter was Time's Person of the Year in 1938. Joseph Stalin was 1939.

Source: https://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/completelist/0,29569,2019712,00.html

[–] [email protected] 18 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (2 children)

Good catch, I have edited it accordingly. Real "giving the nobel peace prize to Henry Kissinger and the guys he is currently dropping chemical weapons on" vibes.

Also: Holy shit, Chiang Kai-Shek is there for 1937.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Person of the year is not a honorific. It just means most important or influential.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 months ago

excuse me i won person of the year and i'm taking it as an honorific

[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 months ago

Time Magazine Person of the Year is for the most influential person of the year. Not the best, or most admirable. Merely the greatest agent of change.

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 3 months ago

US was selling stuff to EVERYONE, including the Nazis

[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 months ago

The USA made a hell of a lot of money off weapons sold to the allies. It created the USA industrial farming system.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 months ago

They were about as “neutral” as they were in the Ukraine conflict under Biden.

Ah yes, and during Palestine conflict. They ultimately come out on top, it doesn't matter if they're funding a genocide. And people like you just spread around the "good", and hide the actual heinous history.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 3 months ago

So I'm not so sure this is actually a Science Meme other than proving that sometimes history does repeat itself?

I was skeptical that this was actually real, but it is indeed on the NYT website and the image was taken from their "Timeline view"

[–] [email protected] 16 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Yes, yes, every piece slowly falls into place. *Cue maniacal villain laughter

It's like they actually studied history, to try and replicate the desired results as identically as possible. Or they didn't, at all, and this is just 2+2=4 scenario but with history.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Is this a science meme? Am I on Reddit?

[–] [email protected] 10 points 3 months ago (1 children)

You are on sciencememes, and this is a meme about academia?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Academia = Science ?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago (1 children)

My dude, it's right there in the description

A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.

Honestly, I have no idea what you are trying to argue

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 months ago (1 children)

How does the post have anything to do with what you just quoted from the community rules?