I have to admit she's KINDA right on this point - most victims of the guillotine in the French Revolution were revolutionaries who for some reason found themselves at odds with the Committee of Public Safety at that point in time. It wasn't only about being "insufficiently pure" - sometimes it was, but it could be about being overly zealous, incompetent, corrupt, disloyal, too Catholic, too atheist, or too closely associated with someone who was any of those.
The modern radicals' admiration for guillotines comes from the idea that the guillotines had been used to kill the nobles and the rich - which is mostly after-the-fact anti-French-Revolution propaganda. The French Revolution was a lot more complex than how it is simplified. Some nobles and some rich were indeed killed, but most had either fled or ingratiated themselves with the Revolutionary government - per usual, the elites got off scot-free, while the poor and middle killed each other for them.
So, yeah, empowering a Committee of Public Safety too much, and then letting dreadfully corrupt forces take over after its fall, ARE lessons for the Left. We do want the rich and powerful to fear guillotines though. Otherwise they do a lot for damage than Robespierre ever did.
Am I the only one that is ok with error occurring? It's going to be a mess. There's going to be no information and people are going to be acting on essentially no resources half the time. Decisions will be necessary and under no circumstances is "just imprison them all" going to be a viable option during the middle of a revolution with no resources to manage them.
I know innocents will get sucked up in that. That sucks. But the success of the revolution is the number 1 most important thing once it has begun, its failure will result in a greater fascism than what came before it, so to start and fail is not an option. There's going to be a lot of unpleasant things that occur during it and while some will be wrong much will be right. People making decisions will absolutely make mistakes and I've more or less come to terms with that.
Like, in the case of her response yes she's right and my sort of thought process is -- So? I'd rather have a imperfect successful revolution than no revolution or a failed one.
"When our time comes we will make no excuses for the terror" is legit about this concept. There will be actions that are literally not justifiable morally on an individual level, but are necessary for the greater good. For instance, there is no moral argument for murdering children, but killing the Romanovs was necessary.
Not necessary, but it happened. It also wasn't the point of the revolution. You can't judge the revolution as a whole because of those acts. Meanwhile, directly bombing an elementary school and medics is handwaved away as if it wasn't a direct high level decision meant to grind away the will of the people.
Collateral. Fucking. Damage. Neocons ruined the phrase, but it exists for a reason
Absolutely fair take! I think Robespierre and the Committee of Public Safety staying in power until the peace may have been the optimal outcome of the revolution (it's impossible to say for sure without a time machine). Some of the last people he purged were the overzealous executioners - those who endangered the revolution through their sadism/bloodthirst.
My point is that the image of the guillotine as the chief tool of the revolution is right-wing propaganda that even the left has internalized. The real blows to the French ruling class were property confiscations, democratic reforms, a sense of empowerment by the sans-culotte, the peasants, the radical intellectuals. The guillotine is a good symbol, it strikes fear in the right people, but its real history is mixed.
Choppyboy memes are speculative militancy. This article is well worth reading to understand why all lib media has taken away our ability to joke about guillotines and the like:
https://roarmag.org/essays/chop-chop-the-liberatory-militancy-of-guillotine-memes/
i'm not okay with it, but i am willing to accept that accidental or unjust deaths occur in any war, even one fought with the intention of stopping the existing violence and greater harm that's occurring.
OP is right though, corruption is obviously bad and it's also not inevitable. We still need to limit harm as much as we practically can, while accepting that perfection isn't attainable.
Right I agree.
I am also however consciously aware of Lenin's words on the purpose of the vanguard in those times. To uphold the revolution, and to press it against enemies both internally and externally. Their job, as he saw it, was nothing other than ensuring that revolution happens and that everyone against it was their enemy.
I agree with him. And I don't see it as attacks against "purity". I can see exactly why Lenin felt that way and the outcomes of the failed revolutions we've seen scare me enough to be completely on-side with such a demand for purity towards the revolution. Anyone against it or seeking to soften it is a threat of a terrifying sort.
Speaking in hypotheticals of course. It's not like this is remotely relevant right now.
I mean the usual argument is that the fuck ups of the committee directly led to the revolutionary governments loss and the rise of Napoleon. The main concern is that it heavily contributes to the failure of revolution. I think the purges that occurred throughout the 1920s heavily contributed to long term problems the soviet union had, obviously in a different context than the french revolution though.
Also:
There were two “Reigns of Terror,” if we would but remember it and consider it; the one wrought murder in hot passion, the other in heartless cold blood; the one lasted mere months, the other had lasted a thousand years; the one inflicted death upon ten thousand persons, the other upon a hundred millions; but our shudders are all for the “horrors” of the minor Terror, the momentary Terror, so to speak; whereas, what is the horror of swift death by the axe, compared with lifelong death from hunger, cold, insult, cruelty, and heart-break? What is swift death by lightning compared with death by slow fire at the stake? A city cemetery could contain the coffins filled by that brief Terror which we have all been so diligently taught to shiver at and mourn over; but all France could hardly contain the coffins filled by that older and real Terror—that unspeakably bitter and awful Terror which none of us has been taught to see in its vastness or pity as it deserves.
-Mark Twain
That's true, but what they said is true if you look only at Paris IIRC
Correct, the most casualties of the Reign of Terror occurred in the Vendée, though most of those were civilian peasants. And even the counter-revolutionaries had been provoked by Paris instituting a draft. They had monarchist/Catholic sentiments, but were willing to sit quiet until sufficiently harassed.
However, the comment in the OP was about guillotines specifically. The Vendée was a bloody civil war of pike, musket, and bayonet, not the guillotine. Some of the other most famous atrocities, like the September massacres or the drownings and cannon executions in the regions were likewise done more haphazardly.
The guillotine was used for regular people too (including common criminals), but being a revolutionary with the wrong politics was the swiftest path to it, rather than being rich or noble.
Yo, you calling me out =D?? Please tell me where I went wrong - which is the liberal propaganda? Also - what kind of liberal? They were all liberals in the French Revolution, save for Gracchus Babeuf. Socialism grew up afterwards.
I completely agree - it is maliciously exploited by modern liberal propaganda. To paraphrase Mark Twain, the Terror was nothing when compared to the long Terror of feudalism that came before.
I am just coming from a place of historical pedantry. The guillotines really were used to kill a lot of revolutionaries over sometimes minor political differences. And the Terror was mismanaged/misdirected/overdone in many places which even the Committee of Public Safety recognized at the time. None of that discredits the Revolution as a whole or even its use of violent repression in particular.
Neera is a liberal and this is a very normal liberal response (from more conservative libs to their most radical manifestation). Hell, chomsky along with a lot of anarchists would probably say the same thing.
The only liberals who are on the same page as the left with this stuff are the neocons. They just fought for capitalism in the same way the ML types want to fight for socialism. (Fascists are still something different btw)
Robespierre's mistake was purging his left, and leaving the centrists live long enough to overthrow him. Literally, he should've sent all the centrists and royalists to die.
wait is she saying royals = fascists? bc i agree
Also of course she's a monarchist
Eh tbf if Robespierra had his way, he would've forced a new republican religion on France
