the Kent State massacre was metabolized as a tragedy in history books, but it was cheered by reactionaries at the time. the fantasy of delivering violence to naive young liberals is foundational to the modern right. they never learned the lesson of Kent State because they never stopped supporting it
I would have thought this picture would have the same notoriety by now as some of the ones from the 60’s but not really. Like the country just processed and left that shit there like it never happened. Pretty fucking bleak
There’s a reason for this actually! Cal put a ton of effort into scrubbing this photo/related coverage after the fact. It was a major SEO push. Strongly encourage looking into it, as I expect to see similar PR campaigns in the coming months/years.
Not surprised. I remember that meme where the cop was photoshopped into all these classic paintings. I don't think they liked authority being mocked like that.
Yeah, I think that's why most people moved on from it so fast...it was a current events meme and (most) memes have a QUICK shelf life. Reminds me of "DON'T TAZE ME, BRO!"
The total dissolution of the internet's basic functionality is a feature to this sort of thing. I can't even figure out which CIA freak I told to go to hell on the birdsite because google is worse than useless now.
Guess you can't get Striessanded if you just have google scrub it, right?
I feel like the attacks on protestors during the Obama years were pretty memory-holed as well. I was a street medic in Portland around that time and we were constantly doing trainings for chemical attacks. I remember going out dancing after a particularly bad one and the sweat reactivating it lmao.
Lol just remembered it was my 21st birthday actually so after taking like five showers to wash off the pepper spray we went out, got drunk, and danced all night. Cops (and weapons manufacturers) are real bastards so the pepper spray actually reactivated and burned again if you tried to wash it off.
If you ever want to see just how unserious we were then about what dangers lay ahead, check out the “don’t tase me bro” music video to see the complete apathy that was the early 2010’s
I know of a guy, former Marine, he was a Marine One pilot for Reagan among other things and retired as a Pentagon bigwig. He proudly has an old “Kent State: 0. National Guard: 4” t-shirt. Real piece of shit! They’re all psychos
obama’s marine one pilot took an espresso class from me once and brought me presidential m&m’s and a challenge coin. different experience, sounds like.
a huge part of Reagan's ascent (aside from the happy smiling embrace of racists) was his continual vows to crush those awful students and the uppity professors doing all their protesting and whatnot
The massacre at Jackson State (Miss.) has also been memory-holed, along with the claim of "protecting innocent students" (several people at both Kent State and Jackson State were not participants in the protests when they were killed).
We had great awareness of Jackson State and of course Kent State when I was a student at University of Wisconsin. The semester ended six weeks early that spring because of the demonstrations. National Guard troops there with fixed bayonets, local cops/deputies just itching to hurt people.
