ghostgirlash

YOU DO NOT NEED TO START A NEW HOBBY!

STEP AWAY FROM THE TEXTILES!

YOU DON'T NEED MORE YARN!

The popular understanding of the Revolution is that it started off great, yay human rights, but spiraled out of control due to local bourgeois catboy lawyer Maximilien Robespierre, an anti-death-penalty pacifist who got corrupted by power into a monster who guillotined everyone who disagreed with his specific vision of a better France. It's a good story, a cautionary tale of the folly of man, but the story is not true.

By "genocide," I'm assuming you mean the atrocities committed in Lyon and the Vendee. But are you aware that the men who committed those atrocities were also the ones who banded together to take down Robespierre? He was not "overthrown" by the common people, as popularly assumed; he was purged by political enemies mostly MORE radical than him, who he had tried to hold accountable for their atrocities, who then killed him and spread lies on a massive scale to blame everything they did on him. Collot d'Herbois, Joseph Fouche, Billaud-Varenne, and the rest of the "Thermidorians," as they're called. They made sure history would remember Robespierre's name so we wouldn't remember theirs. (Though if you look into the Napoleonic era you will definitely remember Fouche). If Robespierre were actually a dictator, he would have had a hell of an easier time dealing with the likes of them. What kind of dictator surrounds himself with those who loudly and publicly accused him of being too moderate until he agreed to add his signature on the arrest warrant for his once closest allies (Danton & Desmoulins)?

Most of the Thermidorians were more radical than Robespierre, but they were also more short-sighted. They didn't realize that by purging Robespierre and so many of his associates, they also destroyed the backbone of their own party. This allowed the conservatives to swoop in and pull back the Revolution. Popular narratives imply that this was a good thing, that France finally breathed easier after ousting its greatest tyrant. Conveniently glossed over are the grotesquely corrupt and incompetent Directory that followed, the rampant inflation and continued suffering of the common people, and the White Terror where fancily-dressed young men got discreet government approval to beat up and kill the poor sans-culottes who rose up militantly during the Revolution because they wanted to stop starving. Napoleon led 400,000 men to their deaths in Russia compared to the 40,000 who died during the Terror, but that's okay, that was in the pursuit of imperial glory; he can still be considered a national hero and get a giant fancy mausoleum in Paris.

You see the issue? There is an over emphasis on the Terror and Robespierre, who supposedly reigned over it. This is not to say that the Terror can't be rightfully criticized as a mess of human rights violations (most victims were actually commoners in the provinces), but there is a hidden motive in how these narratives pretend like the times before and after the Terror weren't ALSO shitty in different ways.

Ask yourself: who gains from cautioning against the French Revolution? Who gains from talking about it like it was the worst, bloodiest thing to happen to France and must not be repeated or emulated? Who gains from simplifying it down to the doings of a single madman instead of a chaotic and messy WAR between those who wanted to remake the order of the world vs those who wanted to hang on to it? Why do revolutions have to go perfectly to be spoken about in any positive way, but the existing institutions of power can keep operating indefinitely with its exploitative flaws?

It's important to rethink the way we view popular upheavals like the Revolution because it ties back to how corrupt, unjust, and conservative institutions stay in power. Cynicism helps them. They WANT people to believe that revolution is pointless, dangerous, and always leads to something worse. They WANT people to be scared of change. They WANT those who critize existing systems of power to do it without threats. Speak, but only without bite. Protest, but only in designated spaces and times that do not actually inconvenience the rich and powerful, and definitely do not bring weapons. Radical change is bad. The people cannot be trusted to govern themselves. Letting every man over age 25 vote leads to chaos and terror; better restrict it to only the 200,000 men who pay the most taxes, because money makes you civilized or something. Yeah, a significant portion of society is still starving to death, but at least no one's getting guillotined!

Hilaire Belloc’s 1927 biography of Robespierre is not remotely favorable to him, but I do think he describes the issue very succinctly here:

And this was written in 1927!! Almost a hundred years later and the same old myths are still being repeated.

I don’t actually recommend this bio because Belloc gets very grating with his constant railing on Robespierre for what are clearly just symptoms of autism, but a more modern bio I do recommend is Robespierre: A Revolutionary Life by Peter McPhee. McPhee has also written a general overview of the revolution in Liberty of Death, but that is a VERY dense book and not for casuals.

For a more detailed look at the 11 other men who ruled France WITH Robespierre in the Committee of Public Safety, RR Palmer’s Twelve Who Ruled is a classic. For an exploration of how the whole concept of the Reign of Terror is mostly retroactive propaganda, see Terror: The French Revolution and Its Demons by Michael Biard and Marisa Linton.

For something more fun (at least, I thought it was a fun page turner), The King’s Trial by David P. Jordan focuses specifically on Louis XVI’s trial, but shows that the Girondins were the ones who provoked the Montagnards and backed themselves into a corner with their sheer incompetence instead of the popular narrative that the Montagnards went after the Girondins because of fanatical bloodthirst. Its descriptions of the revolutionaries are also hilarious. It roasts EVERYONE.

Another book that’s not about Robespierre but I think is an important testament to how the most committed of the revolutionary Left were demonized is Jean-Paul Marat: Tribune of the French Revolution by Clifford D. Conner. Marat gets popularly portrayed as a failed scientist who turned to aggressive political writing as, idk, revenge on society on something, but he, along with Robespierre and Saint-Just, were in fact three of the only clean political leaders of the time. They never took any bribes, meant everything they said, were genuinely committed to progressive change, yet they got branded with the worst reputations over people like Danton, who was corrupt af but gets painted as the only sensible leftist who tried heroically to stop the Terror.

Now, what NOT to take seriously:

- Anything written by Simon Schama (conservative and borderline royalist but pretends like he’s unbiased)

- Fatal Purity by Ruth Scurr (falls into the same tendency as Belloc to make weird negative psychoanalyses of Robespierre simply because she can’t stand what he was like as a person)

- Alfred Cobban and other revisionists (the Cold War inspired a lot of reactionary takes)

- The BBC documentary (do not trust what the British have to say about the Revolution) (it was hilariously gay though, see here for a compilation of its gay moments)

- The History Channel documentary (wrote Robespierre as their gigachad tragic villain OC responsible for the entire Revolution??)

- ALL pop history videos on YouTube about the Revolution (they all suck, ALL OF THEM, I am in the process of remedying this)

- ALL movies about it currently accessible in English. The only satisfactory adaptation is La Terreur et la Vertu (1964), and it’s not subbed yet.

Season 3 of Mike Duncan’s Revolutions podcast is often brought up as a good comprehensive introduction to the French Revolution, and it is, but just beware that he portrays Marat, Robespierre, and Saint-Just in undeservingly negative ways because he used historians like Schama and Scurr as part of his sources. Otherwise, it’s decent.

To grown-ups, being bad at stuff is a sin. Forgetting stuff is the worst sin of all, and also doesn’t exist - it is widely believed (and your behaviour will be interpreted thusly) that in some Freudian sense, it is impossible to forget things if you care about them or their consequences or the people who care about those things.

Your being happy and enjoying what you do doesn’t matter. All that matters is whether you are Fulfilling Your Potential.

Human beings do not require rest outside of sleep. Thinking that you do is called ‘being lazy’.

Who you show physical affection to is a matter of politeness and social protocol, and has nothing to do with your own desires

It is rude to inform people of your preferences, even if they seem to care about catering to them and therefore might find this useful information.

How the hell are y’all NOT getting bats?!?? I mean, I live in a medium sized city, not in the woods or anything and these are just the ones I have pictures of, like damn. How tf? I get like, 2-3 bats a year and that’s just the adults.

anon, this idea spoke to me when i first got this ask a few months ago, and after a lot of procrastination and a little bit of drawing, I present to you:

hauntwheel, cardaver, and vanslaughter