Comment by ekianjo | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ekianjo | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

> The former leftist French presidential candidate, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, called it “propaganda against the people, the people who are [portrayed as] barbarians, bloodthirsty savages,” while the “cretin” that is Marie-Antoinette and the “treacherous” Louis XVI are portrayed as noble victims. “The denigration of the great Revolution is a dirty job to instill more self-loathing and déclinisme in the French,” he told Le Figaro (link in French).

Melenchon, for those who do not know him, is an utter moron in French politics. Now we know he is also ignorant about History, because there's ample evidence that the age of Terror was barbaric and without mercy against anyone who may have shown any kind of sympathy for the nobility or the king, no matter their status. And with bloodthirsty guys like St Just, "Sympathy" could be defined as not being a fanatic for the revolutionary cause. And let's not forget the genocide in Vendee against masses of civilians still in favor of the King. The problem is that the Revolution did not stop at killing the King and its supporters, it basically turned into a massive genocide where everyone could become the next target. Hell, even Danton and Desmoulins were convicted to betray the Revolution ideals.

On a side note, Melenchon is known soviet Russia supporter and he probably has the same reading of the Gulags.

Well, no, Mélenchon is not a moron, but one the the greatest intellectuals France has at the moment. He is one of the few French politicians to actually develop new ideas, instead of supporting the liberal dogmas which are ruining Europe. And one of the few to take seriously the question of video games. His blog (in French, here, www.jean-luc-melenchon.fr/) is always very interesting read, with in depth analysis of French, European and World situations.

Mélenchon is not a "known soviet Russia supporter" either. Or, known from whom, exactly ?

You are making a very strange use of the word genocide. There was no genocide during the French revolution, since there was no intention to deliberately extinguish any population. There were, though, very hard measures, and of course debatable, taken to try to keep the revolution going against treasons from all places against the republic.

And do not stop there, since even Robespierre was beheaded, shortly after having himself agreed to the arrest and execution of Danton and Desmoulins (which were close friends of him).

> The problem is that the Revolution did not stop at killing the King and its supporters, it basically turned into a massive genocide where everyone could become the next target

So, just like almost every other revolution in history, eh? (The American Rebellion and the English Civil War are arguably two exceptions, both enabled by extremely special circumstances.)

The curious thing is that that anyone bothers with revolutionary change any more. "I know! Let's have a revolution! That's hardly ever worked before so it's bound to work this time!"

Admittedly, revolutions do happen in part because of the breakdown of tyrannical regimes, but incrementalism, even in the face of tyranny, is historically far more likely to produce better outcomes. It is what freed most of Eastern Europe from the Soviets, for example.

Unfortunately incrementalism takes patience, and humans are far too willing to pursue quick fixes that don't work over long games that do. It's a very curious thing.

> So, just like almost every other revolution in history, eh? (The American Rebellion and the English Civil War are arguably two exceptions, both enabled by extremely special circumstances.)

There's actually lots of examples from regional separatist movements that had strong buy-in from the local elites, like the American Revolution (to use its popular local name, though it really wasn't really a revolution.)

> Admittedly, revolutions do happen in part because of the breakdown of tyrannical regimes, but incrementalism, even in the face of tyranny, is historically far more likely to produce better outcomes.

Tyrannies violently purge even incrementalists, and revolutionaries (because they start out with stronger boundaries and an expectation that they'll be hunted whereas incrementalists are more open expecting to be able to work within the system) are, on average, more prepared to deal with that kind of effort.

> It is what freed most of Eastern Europe from the Soviets, for example.

It may be what freed most of Eastern Europe from Soviet-style local tyrannies, but what freed them from the USSR was the economic collapse of the USSR after a protracted spending war with the most developed economies in the world (no small part of which involved the more developed countries backing revolutionary groups in places that were within the Soviet sphere of influence, so in a very real sense revolutionaries were quite instrumental.)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com