War Pigs: The Violence and Rhetoric of Kent State Echoes Across Campuses Today

A reflection on how the rhetoric and push for violence against anti-war protesters in the Vietnam era echos calls from politicians and media today.

Yesterday was the anniversary of the Kent State University massacre. On May 4th, 1970, the National Guard fired into a crowd of people at a sit-in called to protest Nixon’s expansion of the Vietnam War into Cambodia and the presence of military on campus. US troops shot 13 students, murdering four.

When I close my eyes at night and see the reflective smirk of Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) officers who dragged off my classmates, barking at each other to “go for the fingers,” my vision blurs across time. Nixon called Vietnam War protestors “bums.” The Ohio governor described Kent State demonstrators as “the worst type of people that we harbor in America.” Today’s politicians echo the rhetoric of the violent men who killed college students. U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson commanded Columbia’s president to resign if she couldn’t “bring order to this chaos.” Representative Cody Harris (of Palestine, Texas) referred to the UT protesters who are trying to stop another unspeakable horror as “snot-nosed, entitled, mindless brats.”

The tragedy at Kent State did not deter the anti-war protests. Heart-stricken and furious, students around the country took action. At the University of Kentucky, they heeded a May Day call to “occupy it, stone it, or burn it.” Students flooded the Office Tower to demand a condemnation of the massacre from a meeting of the Board of Trustees. On May 6th and 7th, students at the University of Cincinnati occupied the Van Wormer Administration building and Beecher Hall.

In response, university administrators gave the same lines we are hearing today. The governor of Kentucky denounced the action as a plot not in reaction to the invasion of Cambodia or to demand justice for murdered students, but as the work of dangerous outside agitators “who wanted to create turmoil all across the country.”

Agitators. Bums. Disorder. Chaos. We shouldn’t be surprised that those in power aren’t clever enough to invent new rhetoric to justify state violence. Our enemies can’t be creative because their only power is to destroy. That is our power—to create.

This week on the lawn, I’ve seen doctors sharing stories of their experiences in Gaza, students teaching students, students teaching ‘non-students’ and vice versa, impromptu performances by talented musicians, interfaith learning, a sharing of customs, a sharing of food, a developing vision. A self-sustaining ecosystem of beautiful resistance unfolding. What I saw and continue to see isn’t disorder. It’s a disavowal of ‘their’ order. It’s an order of creation, of life, of magnitude.

An order of freedom for Palestine and subjugated peoples worldwide.

photo: Screenshot via Sky News