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?
this post was submitted on 15 Mar 2025
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Closest I can come with is nuclear disarmament. Not because I think they were on the wrong side of it, but I think it's far less clear cut and there's a credible argument that MAD has worked.
Tiananmen got deleted.
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.
Look how good the constitution is, its being ripped apart right now.
Sure, the western world knows it happened, but its only a few shitposters on the internet cares about it. If you go on the street and ask the average westerner, they'd have no clue on what you're talking about.
A few posts on reddit shitposting on June 4 is not exactly being "Vindicated".
The CCP won, they erased history.
The USA is now following the same path.
Autocrats of the world have won.
They are winning.* It's not over yet.
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?
In Mainland China, most people don't know about Tiananmen, the older people who heard about it didn't know much unless they were in Beijing, my parents (in Guangdong province at the time) just think its some kids "causing trouble".
Most of the liberalizations goals failed, there is no free press. China is a State-Capitalist dictatorship.
Fact is, even in the west we don't know much. The historical record has holes. We know of the protests. We know the military went in and nobody came out, but I'm not sure we really know what happened.
At least... I don't.
Yes, I understand that. Perhaps I was not empathetic enough, I am sorry to hear that about your family being deceived, along with the rest of mainland China.
The fact that the oppressive CCP won does not mean they were right. The world is not a Disney movie, the good guys don't always win.
"Vindicated" just means that the good guys were good. Whether or not they won.
Dictionary Definition:
vindicate *verb*
- 1 a: to free from allegation or blame
- b (1): confirm, substantiate
- (2): to provide justification or defense for : justify
- c : to protect from attack or encroachment : defend
- 2 : avenge
- 3 : to maintain a right to
- 4 obsolete : to set free : deliver
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/vindicate
So imagine a person defending against an assailant and inadvertently kills him.
The polices comes and accuses the person for murder, but its self defence.
So the man get convicted for murder.
Sure, his family may believe him. Some friend may believe him. A rebel group might also believe him.
But most people either don't care or just believe what the police says.
The man spends life in prison. And his identity, records, papers are all shredded.
He may be in the right, but that's not exactly being "vindicated".
Vindicated is:
to free from allegation or blame
Yea maybe in the west, but in Mainland China, it doesn't exist. Those who witnessed it thinks it was a riot.
Being "Vindicated" would be the CCP topples, and the new government shares the truth.
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.
If they won they wouldn't still be trying to exert power. It's not over until they stop.
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.
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.
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.
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Weren't they revoking degrees now for protestors? Anyone who considers Columbia a real school at this point is incurable.
Haven’t seen that, just the green card of one of the organizers.
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.
The US always had right wing authoritarians in power. They just prefered to slaughter people abroad.
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.
Thought the brand was appropriately tarnished what with the Holocaust.
I wish I had the faith in humanity you have
Didn’t the USA join a war against some Nazis?
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
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.
US was selling stuff to EVERYONE, including the Nazis
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.
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
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.
Person of the year is not a honorific. It just means most important or influential.
excuse me i won person of the year and i'm taking it as an honorific
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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Do you mean the other way around? German companies had the patents for synthetic rubber, most notably Buna-N, and when the USA joined they simply stole it?
The USA made a hell of a lot of money off weapons sold to the allies. It created the USA industrial farming system.
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.
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.
The more things change…
Is this a science meme? Am I on Reddit?
You are on sciencememes, and this is a meme about academia?
Academia = Science ?
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