• Hot Saucerman@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    You’re really dedicated here to handwaving away the violence committed by the police before the bombing and also handwaving away that the cops were asked by the Mayor to not interfere. Maybe, just maybe, if the pigs hadn’t fucking showed up, it would have never happened.

    It’s also handwaving away that only 2 of the 8 men put to death for the bombing were actually at the Haymarket event, and it was never conclusively proven that any of them built the bomb. They also never proved conclusively who threw it, but they put 8 men to death over it.

    Also, it’s handwaving away the brutal crackdown on union organizers afterwards. Maybe, just maybe, the reason the labor organizations acquiesced and distanced themselves is because all the businesses, property owners, newspapers, and government were busy vilifying them. How much choice did the labor movement actually have in the date?

    There was disagreement among labor unions at this time about when a holiday celebrating workers should be, with some advocating for continued emphasis of the September march-and-picnic date while others sought the designation of the more politically charged date of May 1. Conservative Democratic President Grover Cleveland was one of those concerned that a labor holiday on May 1 would tend to become a commemoration of the Haymarket affair and would strengthen socialist and anarchist movements that backed the May 1 commemoration around the globe. In 1887, he publicly supported the September Labor Day holiday as a less inflammatory alternative, formally adopting the date as a United States federal holiday through a law that he signed in 1894.

    So the labor movement is Grover Cleveland? And so it’s pretty clear it was because they wanted to prevent socialists from strengthening their numbers. Give me a break. Stop trying to rewrite history and get that boot out of your slobbery mouth.

    Also, finally, stop repeating “anarchist” like it’s supposed to be an insult. “Not on May 4th” is the definition of splitting hairs, chucklefuck.