"[...] le commencement de l'immortalité"

Some people seem to believe that Thermidor only happened because Robespierre made "a stupid speech", and Saint-Just refused to read his to men who had insulted and assaulted him on the night before.

It fails to acknowledge the reasons Robespierre made that speech, or why we expect Saint-Just to submit to the inspection and judgment of men who just demeaned him and physically attacked him.

Their speeches weren't the cause. They were a pretext.

Even if Robespierre's speech was "stupid", one evidence remains: the people who let the conspiracy build in the shadows and refused to intervene, the ones who watched the assault in the night of the 8 to 9 thermidor yet still expected loyalty, they're the ones who truly ended the Revolution - the ideal, the dream, the hope and the Republic they were building - by sacrificing the principled for an union with mediocrity.

We've basically adopted an interpretation that absolves the Thermidorians of all responsibility.

Robespierre wasn't "too far gone" and didn't "lose himself". Saint-Just didn't become "too arrogant" to the point he couldn't be "reasoned with". That is the narrative of the men who murdered them to appease their own guilty conscience.

A note on the "too far gone" trope: it implies madness, and moves the conversation from political ideology in order to pathologize radicalism. It's a very common and useful trope: not only is it successfully used in La Révolution française: les années terribles and arguably in Saint-Just et la force des choses, it's also used with Anders in Dragon Age, Viktor in Arcane, and Daenerys Targaryen in Game of Thrones - a decision so poorly executed, it participated in making the finale universally loathed and destroyed the franchise overnight as a cultural phenomenon.

Transforming the oppressed victim who becomes a champion for the marginalized into a "mad tyrant" is, again, very common and very useful. And, of course, it's psychophobic/ableist.

8 Thermidor

Citizens,

Others draw flattering pictures to you; I come to tell you helpful truths. I do not come to  carry out the ridiculous terrors spread by perfidity; but I want to smother, if it is possible, the flames of dissension by the only force of truth. (I will reveal the abuses who tend towards the ruin of the patrie and which only your integrity can repress.) I will defend before you your outraged authority, and violated freedom. If I also tell you something of persecutions of which I am the object, you will not do me injustice; you have nothing in common with the tyrants whom you fight. The cries of the outraged innocence do not importune your ear. The cries of outraged innocence do not importune your ears, and you are aware that this cause is not foreign to you.

the historical precedent issue is pretty easy to grasp. basically every single successful social movement involved a violent element, whether primary or secondary. the labor movements that got us the fucking weekend off involved a violent element. stonewall was not a petition. the nazis were not defeated because the red army and the partisans decided to launch a public awareness campaign about the regime's atrocities. even the carnation revolution that is always lauded as unusually peaceful began with a military coup. there is no indication that nonviolent or incremental movements are more successful in achieving widespread change. in fact, historical evidence points to the contrary, and many of the "nonviolent" movements often cited/praised in these arguments were not in fact strictly nonviolent.

the other issue these arguments ignore is the reality of imperialism, which probably explains why a lot of these posts seem to come from liberal zionists. imperialism necessitates regions that are exploited and regions that commit and benefit from the exploitation. because the wealth and status of the imperial-core regions are derived and maintained through exploitation of the rest of the world, attempts to solely 'improve conditions' in the imperial core without addressing the way in which said conditions are tied to exploitation will always fall flat. the foundation that the imperial core is built upon is inherently unjust. the issues that spring from said foundation will not go away so long as that foundation continues to be what is being built upon.

and if for some reason you can't bring yourself to acknowledge the injustice of imperialism, you can also look at the shape subjugation takes within your own borders, such as the prison system. even in the most "progressive" nations, police and carceral violence exist. and in the united states, for example, prisons and jails are fucking death traps. you cannot spend any amount of time in a usamerican jail and not come out with an understanding that something is deeply, deeply wrong. I suspect that many of the people who make these kinds of institutionalist posts simply have not seen or experienced the worst of what empire can offer to even its own citizens.

this is why so many people (myself included) believe revolution is genuinely necessary. it's not because we're hopeless or because we get off on violence or because we think that it will be easy. incrementalism is in fact the easy option, where you can do good and help others without having to get your hands dirty or do the difficult work of deconstructing which systems you refuse to interrogate and why.

Joyeux anniversaire, Robespierre. Wherever you are, thank you again and here's to another year.

idk which version I like the most so I'm posting both 🦆

Je peux lire tous les reportages anciens de l'assemblée nationale mais je ne peut pas entend les conversations normales 🫠 You guys string the words together c'est très difficile

This is Fragment 41 - Verso of the Institutions républicaines, theorized by Anne Quenneday and myself (after reading and analyzing them thoroughly - yes, I did actually do that for my PhD thesis) to be a first draft:

Highlighted is a passage saying: "those who love each other are spouses" (ceux qui s'aiment sont époux).

Here is the final draft "On Affections", Fragment 18 - Recto:

You want to see what comphet and self-censorship looks like? You're looking at it right here.

Here you have 13 statements on affections:

11 of them go in depth about male friendship.

One is about tutors for children.

One is about heterosexual marriage.

Except the very same "mistake" was there again: he had written "ceux" (those) then struck it out and wrote (in darker ink, which shows it was revised at another time) "l'homme et la femme" (the man and woman). Almost as if he had realized he had gone too far, he self-corrected to a more traditional definition of marriage between men and women - a type of partnership he clearly has little interest in. Here's comparatively an abundance of text dedicated to the revolutionary, sacred bonds between men, and then there's that one cramped, self-conscious "correction" that forces a heteronormative structure onto a resolutely much broader philosophy of affection.

He spent eleven statements fleshing out state-codified partnerships between men, proposing a radical, expansive, gender-neutral and definitely queer definition of partnership (ceux) only to forcibly narrow and correct it to fit the heteronormative expectation (l'homme et la femme).

This is not me "writing fanfic". This isn't about "ships and yaoi". That is queer theory. That is a queer reading of history.