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Harvard Bookstore’s Bowling Green Massacre memorial section is a sick, erudite burn

If we don't learn about the Bowling Green Massacre, we're doomed to repeat it.

 

Jay Hathaway

Internet Culture

Posted on Feb 9, 2017   Updated on May 25, 2021, 1:05 am CDT

One of the biggest embarrassments of the early Donald Trump administration occurred when Trump advisor and spokesperson Kellyanne Conway made reference to the “Bowling Green massacre,” a terrorist attack that did not actually occur. Many have mocked Conway over the made-up attack, but no one’s done it better than the Harvard Bookstore.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BQQQiACgusf/

The indie bookstore, located near a certain Boston-area university, understands that if we don’t learn history, we’re doomed to repeat it. And while there aren’t any books about the Bowling Green massacre (because, again, it’s not a real event), Harvard Bookstore found plenty of selections that could help scholars understand it.

There’s Anti-Intellectualism; The Death of Expertise; Philip Roth’s novel The Plot Against America, It Can’t Happen Here; and naturally, Assholes. Seems like that just about covers the possible explanations for citing a fake terrorist attack to justify a ban on immigrants from seven majority-Muslim countries.

A very sick, very erudite burn. 

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*First Published: Feb 9, 2017, 2:03 pm CST