Lol, Mr. Duncan does provide a very entertaining pop-history podcast don’t get me wrong, but please don’t go quoting him as a reference.
I think you and I are arguing two different things, your source lumps together all the deaths during the Revolution, including Reactionary military actions while I am arguing specifically that very few people of the 3rd estate were killed extra judicially as a method of “terror” by the guillotine.
Best of luck in your slow road to fascism. I hope you succeed in improving your lot with non-violent means. Maybe if the revolutionaries asked nicely Louis would’ve just enacted the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen voluntarily.
It’s hardly a controversial position that the Reign of Terror had virtually nothing to do with the nobility or monarchy, both of which had been abolished by that point; and everything to do with the suppression of political dissent by means of state terror.
The lesson of the Reign of Terror is not “kill the rich”. It’s not even “kill your enemies”. It’s “normalizing political violence will inevitably, maybe literally, blow up in your face.” People who equate the guillotine and Reign of Terror with successful political violence, or even successful economic and political reform, are not just wrong but dangerously wrong, and need to corrected.
Lol, Mr. Duncan does provide a very entertaining pop-history podcast don’t get me wrong, but please don’t go quoting him as a reference.
I think you and I are arguing two different things, your source lumps together all the deaths during the Revolution, including Reactionary military actions while I am arguing specifically that very few people of the 3rd estate were killed extra judicially as a method of “terror” by the guillotine.
Best of luck in your slow road to fascism. I hope you succeed in improving your lot with non-violent means. Maybe if the revolutionaries asked nicely Louis would’ve just enacted the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen voluntarily.
It’s hardly a controversial position that the Reign of Terror had virtually nothing to do with the nobility or monarchy, both of which had been abolished by that point; and everything to do with the suppression of political dissent by means of state terror.
The lesson of the Reign of Terror is not “kill the rich”. It’s not even “kill your enemies”. It’s “normalizing political violence will inevitably, maybe literally, blow up in your face.” People who equate the guillotine and Reign of Terror with successful political violence, or even successful economic and political reform, are not just wrong but dangerously wrong, and need to corrected.