I think it was not the libs who killed aristocrats during the french revolution. They merely filled the void and took power once this was done.
The Convention was a clutter of different ideologies and views on the way to conduct the revolution. Yeah, there were many liberals but not only, and they were not the ones fighting for killing aristocrats. The Mountain had to fight Girondist attempts to keep the king alive. And Robespierre does not strike me as a lib by any mean.
The French lib take on the revolution today shows that pretty well. It's basically "Yeah, yeah, the revolution was great. Except the short period were leftists were in power and guillotined people. But liberalizing property rights, damn, that was revolutionary :liberalism:."
I don't know that much about the internal politics of the French revolution so this is a genuine question. Were any of the parties/factions actually leftists? Or were they just pursuing the liberal goal of abolishing the monarchy more violently than the other factions?
Difficult to answer your question directly. There are a bunch of leftist historians that did their analysis of what went down, but I haven't read them.
Difficult to have a clear view of what happened exactly and what kind of ideologies existed back then because (1) it was such a messy period without real parties but mainly convenient alliances between opportunists and (2) the revolution became such an important part of the "national narrative", you have to study history to really go beyond the myths.
But you can look into "la Montagne". Apparently many of the lefty historians I talked about consider the fall of Robespierre, their leader, as the end of the revolution. Here is the wikipedia page for what happened while he was in command. He himself ended up under a guillotine. Robespierre's nickname was "the Incorruptible" and here are some of his viewpoints:
Abolish the death penalty and slavery
Universal suffrage as opposed to householder franchise (private property gives you the right to vote)
Including letting Jews, POC and comedians vote
Death to the king, "so that the country lives"
Putting a maximum (decreasing through time) price on bread
He did some shitty things too. Unexpected from a guy leading a millenary monarchy through a revolution.
Was looking up the guy online and saw an opinion piece saying "Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mao, and Pol Pot are of the same mold. They are the characteristic scourges of humanity in modern times, but Robespierre has a good claim to being the first."
The liberals did not only arrive to "fill the void" as I implied. They indeed were here from the very beginning and led the revolution in many aspects. Some kind of vanguardism on their part existed I guess. But there was also people with a genuine social agenda (see my reply to @Sarcasm24).
The left in power had a strong tendency to send counter-revolutionaries under the guillotine. Libs quickly felling like they were being targetted + opportunist traitors who were very common in this unstable climate = one of the main reasons why they failed and moderates took over.
Liberalism at this point has to be a bit. They can't be this dumb unironically
:man astronaut::pistol::man astronaut:
Do you think french revolution liberals were killing aristocrats as a bit
I think it was not the libs who killed aristocrats during the french revolution. They merely filled the void and took power once this was done.
The Convention was a clutter of different ideologies and views on the way to conduct the revolution. Yeah, there were many liberals but not only, and they were not the ones fighting for killing aristocrats. The Mountain had to fight Girondist attempts to keep the king alive. And Robespierre does not strike me as a lib by any mean.
The French lib take on the revolution today shows that pretty well. It's basically "Yeah, yeah, the revolution was great. Except the short period were leftists were in power and guillotined people. But liberalizing property rights, damn, that was revolutionary :liberalism:."
I don't know that much about the internal politics of the French revolution so this is a genuine question. Were any of the parties/factions actually leftists? Or were they just pursuing the liberal goal of abolishing the monarchy more violently than the other factions?
Difficult to answer your question directly. There are a bunch of leftist historians that did their analysis of what went down, but I haven't read them.
Difficult to have a clear view of what happened exactly and what kind of ideologies existed back then because (1) it was such a messy period without real parties but mainly convenient alliances between opportunists and (2) the revolution became such an important part of the "national narrative", you have to study history to really go beyond the myths.
But you can look into "la Montagne". Apparently many of the lefty historians I talked about consider the fall of Robespierre, their leader, as the end of the revolution. Here is the wikipedia page for what happened while he was in command. He himself ended up under a guillotine. Robespierre's nickname was "the Incorruptible" and here are some of his viewpoints:
He did some shitty things too. Unexpected from a guy leading a millenary monarchy through a revolution.
Was looking up the guy online and saw an opinion piece saying "Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mao, and Pol Pot are of the same mold. They are the characteristic scourges of humanity in modern times, but Robespierre has a good claim to being the first."
You get the idea.
Did the liberals use a primitive vanguardism? I've never actually looked at how it went down.
The liberals did not only arrive to "fill the void" as I implied. They indeed were here from the very beginning and led the revolution in many aspects. Some kind of vanguardism on their part existed I guess. But there was also people with a genuine social agenda (see my reply to @Sarcasm24).
The left in power had a strong tendency to send counter-revolutionaries under the guillotine. Libs quickly felling like they were being targetted + opportunist traitors who were very common in this unstable climate = one of the main reasons why they failed and moderates took over.
Yeah, a bit bad 😎😎😎😎