Richie B Frío

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.

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.

the ex-president bolsonaro ran away from brazil and refused to participate in the ceremony, breaking one of brazil’s democracy’s staple traditions that is to hand the presidential sash to the successor. lula received the presidential sash from individuals representing the brazilian people.

this going to be a long post, but it’s really important for us.

francisco, 10 years old, swimmer of corinthians, a brazilian sports club. he lives in a outskirts of são paulo. after watching a movie about lula, he saw that he could be a president too.

aline sousa, 33 years old, garbage collector since she was 14 and the 3rd generation of collector in the family. aline is a mother of 6 boys and 1 girl, in 2012 she was elected director secretary of the CENTCOOP-DF (a central of work cooperatives of collectors in distrito federal, brasília) and 3 years later the first president of the entity.

chief raoni metuktire, 90 years old, dedicated his life to the defense of the amazon and the peoples of the forest. he is recognized by indigenous and riverside communities as one of the main representatives of the struggle to preserve the forest and the amazonian peoples.

weslley viesba rodrigues rocha, 36 years old, metallurgist from ABC region since he was 18 years old. married and father of two boys, cauã, 18 years old, and apolo, 2 months old. he graduated in Physical Education with the help of fies (a program of the ministry of education for funding the higher education of the undergraduate students). weslley is also a DJ in the rap group ‘falange’. 

murilo de quadros jesus, 28 years old, teacher, graduated in portuguese and english languages (UTFPR) and lives in curitiba.

jucimara fausto dos santos, cook born in palotina. she dedicated her life to cooking and it was in a cooking contest at vigília lula livre (a civil movement supported by several brazilian social movements and union entities to help free lula from the prision) that jucimara was called to make bread. today she cooks for the employees’ association of the state university of maringá.

ivan baron, 24 years old, he’s from rio grande do norte and at the age of 3 had viral meningitis, a disease that caused his cerebral palsy. ivan is a reference in the anti-capacitist struggle and considered one of the ambassadors of inclusion in an exclusionary society and he’s also part of the lgbtqia+ community

flávio pereira, 50 years old, from pinhalão - paraná. he is an artisan and was at the vigília lula livre for 580 days helping with daily activities.

aline sousa passing the sash.

obsessed with watching behind the scenes clips of hyper-realistic cgi movies like lion king 2019 or avatar 2 and the director or whatever is talking about how since they used mocap or a fancy virtual reality camera the expressions and movements are extremely realistic and better than anything before, , and then on-screen it shows the most absolutely dead-eyed character i’ve ever seen lmao . like these side-by-side comparisons …man 

its like theyre ashamed of it being animation so they have to try get it as realistic as possible, especially the d*sney remakes have this vibe*, .… and then everything looks absolutely soulless. also like immediately dated somehow?

and then you compare that to cgi animation like in arcane or spiderverse that isnt trying to be hyper realistic and its extremely expressive, like huge attention to micro-expressions and faces that are absolutely full of life., like look at this!!!! ⬇️

shaking n crying please realise that realism and cgi as close to live-action as possible isnt the final purpose of animation in cinema 

‘I’m pretty sure that the majority of my sexual experiences in my teens and 20’s were done out of politeness’ says Maya, 28. ‘You end up in a situation where you’re worried about offending someone if you don’t go ahead – whether you’ve led them on or what they’ll think about themselves if you back out at the last minute. And in relationships, I’ve had sex when i definitely did not want to but just kind of felt bad about not doing it – what if the other person thought that i thought they were crap in bed or didn’t fancy them anymore?’

The sardonic, reductionist headline here could be "Scientists finally figured out why you get more colds in winter: bEcAuSe iT's CoLd!"—but the actual science involved here is both interesting, and potentially very relevant to everyday life and especially the immunocompromised:

It turns out the cold air itself damages the immune response occurring in the nose. [...] In fact, reducing the temperature inside the nose by as little as 9 degrees Fahrenheit (5 degrees Celsius) kills nearly 50% of the billions of virus and bacteria-fighting cells in the nostrils, according to the study published Tuesday in The Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology. “Cold air is associated with increased viral infection because you’ve essentially lost half of your immunity just by that small drop in temperature,” said rhinologist Dr. Benjamin Bleier, director of otolaryngology at Massachusetts Eye and Ear and an associate professor at Harvard Medical School in Boston.

Want to avoid catching or spreading respiratory viruses like CoVid-19, RSV, influenza, or a common cold? Mask up, please, but also bundle up! Wrap up in a scarf, wear a balaclava, and just generally keep your face warm. There's no single magic solution, but that's not a reason to do nothing. Rather, it's a reason to take several simple precautions that help avoid the spread of disease and protect those around you. (I can't tell you how much "this isn't 100% effective so I shouldn't do it at all" frustrates me.)