Has this ever happened in America? I'm having trouble finding a historical reference with these modern search engines. I just get articles about Striketober, whatever that was.
A broad general strike? I don't think so, but the closest thing I could think of would be the the Coal Wars across Appalachia the laegest one being the Battle at Blair Mountain. All the miners and their families (they lived in company towns) armed themselves, took control of the mines they worked at and fought tooth and nail against Baldwin-Felts Detectice Agency, the Logan County Sherriff's department, WV state police and the National Guard stationed in WV.
10,000 strikers took to the mines and tried to hold out against a force of 30,000.
Its like they don't want us to believe fucked up shit happens within our own country. Which just weakens our society as nobody prepares for domestic terrorism of any kind. Its unacceptable that this piece of our own history is hidden from us. I'm thankful every day my junior year history teacher was a madwoman, and precisely picked out all of these juicy disgusting pieces of history for us to learn. It shocks me that there is no arbiter of truth in our entire system. It should have never gotten to the point where we turn a blind eye to our misdeeds. But it has always been that way. We can be better.
Not to say it's acceptable, but many governments will downplay the ugly side of their own history in public schools. Japan is notorious for this.
I think the best course of action outside of education is to distribute suppressed history knowledge as much as we can. Thankfully, it's much harder to stop this knowledge from being shared outside of public schools.