this post was submitted on 15 Mar 2025
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I am curious. Has there ever been a wide-scale student protest movement that WASN'T unequivocally vindicated by history?
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.
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.
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.
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:
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.
Well, maybe not "nobody"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Yellowbird
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:
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:
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.
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.
I had to look it up (dont know much about it), but in the Wikipedia entry it notes:
And
Which makes me think they were later vindicated. But maybe I'm missing something.
I may be wrong and lack any historical knowledge on the subject, but I think author is sarcastically self-identifying as a tankie?
Oh its 100% possible, I have no idea.
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!
Every future member of the Allies did this.
What really separated the Soviets from other future Allies is it approaching Britain and France on the eve of the war with an offer of an anti-Nazi pact. imagine if those countries were not so rabidly anti-communist that they agreed to this.
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
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!
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.
Yeah, that is why it was justified to shoot protesters. Because of what might have happened. The people are clearly misguided, we need to roll over them with tanks to prove we are the true proletariat. A lot of governments built monuments to Nazi collaborteurs. That doesn't mean jack shit. Hitler was vegetarian and against animal abuse.
If that's what you think I'm suggesting, you need to work on your reading comprehension.
There were protesters protesting for a change in government, there were organizers setting up alternative structures to compensate for the government's failure, there were also fascists lynching government officials in the streets.
Are you suggesting it would have been better to just let the fascists seize power?
Oh lmao.
[...]
...
Let me simplify this for you: Shooting communist protesters trying to reform the system is bad. Shooting fascists lynching people in the street is good and necessary.
Why would you say something so based, and so true?