The history of the American labor movement and the socialist wave front that propelled FDR to the presidency for four terms are never discussed in American schools because capitalists control what our children are taught. Howard Zinn should be required 9th grade reading.
The Business Plot, a series of corporations conspired to overthrow FDR, was also hidden from history books.
Corporate leaders and oligarchs don’t want the People to ever be so strong that they can topple businesses with monopoly charges and jail time for shareholders.
Trump is just the Business Plot 2.0; and it looks like it’s working so far
No doubt about this.
“Damn that sounds pretty significant, I learned about similar events in school but definitely never this. I wonder if it’s as big as the post implies or if it’s being exag-”
The Battle of Blair Mountain was the largest labor uprising in United States history and is the largest armed uprising since the American Civil War.
“… Huh.”
Well I see why they left this one out.
Yeah, it would give folks ideas
Or we organize our own industrial worker cooperatives and try to avoid a shooting war.
Organize workers into a co-op, negotiate staffing agreements with the capitalists, and use the staffing margin to fund a business plan for the co-op to operate.
And then of course, drop the staffing contracts when they’re no longer needed. Too bad so sad, find your own workers now.
Guess what the ownership class does when they notice these things happening. Hint: it involves so many bullets.
They have my ip.
And my axe!
…wait that’s not what we’re doing here is it?
if people organize into cooperatives all at the same time we can have a general strike. How the bougie bastards respond is up to them
This isn’t a fair description of events.
You forget how the US military and WV National gaurd also got involved, not in a neutral way to end the conflict between these two groups. Oh no, they fought with the private big buisness forces. Tax dollars at work
And now they all vote for Republicans
I took a roadtrip to Matewan (where much of the war itself was centered, Blair Mountain is nearby, but it’s just one battle in a larger war), and there’s a little gift shop across the street from the Mine Wars Museum.
I distinctly remember looking at a rack of bumper stickers, and on the left side were stickers about the Mine Wars: Miners Union logos, “Rah rah, we’d do it again if we had to” kinds of slogans. Stuff like that. In the right side of the rack were all Trump stickers.
Matewan is a fascinating place with a lot of history, in a very beautiful part of the US. I would encourage everyone to go, if you have the chance. The people there are all incredibly kind, and very excited to tell you about the history of their home. But it is nothing of not a land of contradictions, and that rack of bumper stickers was really emblematic of that.
Hard to argue with that
I grew up maybe 30 min from Marmet and never even heard of this until I went to college in NC.
“history books:”
Which ones? My high school US history textbook talked about the Coal Wars with a mention of Blair Mountain. Which isn’t necessarily representative, but then “history books:” is an unfalsifiable claim.
It’s not unfalsifiable (James Loewen does an excellent job of thoroughly reviewing information across dozens of the most commonly sold American history textbooks), it’s just a pain in the ass to do it.
Sorry, I should’ve clarified that I meant “unfalsifiable” not in the sense that it’s impossible to evaluate statistically but in the sense that it’s weasel wording, where regardless of the evidence, you can always retreat and declare what you said isn’t false because you never made a specific enough claim compared to what you’re implying.
“Doctors believe vaccines cause autism.” is true in the sense that there are doctors who exist who believe that, even if the overwhelming consensus of the medical community is that the claim is fraudulent nonsense.
My high school history book had a small paragraph about the trail of tears. I don’t believe any American history book for high schoolers fully explain it. So OP isn’t wrong.
I remember spending a lot of time on the Holocaust in history and almost zero time on the Native American Genocide.
Make the prospect of death equal in appeal to the current standard of life and suddenly people act like they have nothing to lose? How odd…
Always good to be reminded that executives and billionaires don’t really care about anybody else, and they were willing to nuke the entire world not that long ago rather than let working people have a chance at a decent life.
There are plenty more and current events are pushing for another one.
What? I watched Justified… is that not enough?
Wow that would make a great movie. Funny Tom Hanks didn’t choose that one.
This thing. It’s totally in the history books that you didn’t read.
We don’t want to give people ideas.
…but plenty of books talk about this lol. Very well known
