It didn't have all this vitriol against China associated with it.
I personally thought it was commonly interpreted a different way, but it's hard to explain. Would be interesting to dig up some ancient reddit posts about it
In my lifetime it's definitely morphed from a sort of uplifting idea about the power of 'simple humanity standing up in the face of authoritarianism or the war machine' into a sort of bizarre invented 'last moments' pre-gore pic for a lot of wild accusations without much basis in reality.
Sort of uplifting anti-authoritarian shorthand turned dehumanizing atrocity propaganda for a bunch of gruesome urban legend stuff.
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