I Was Shocked To Find Out How Many People The Terror Killed

Hopefully future Terrors, wherever or whenever they may be if there are any more, will live up to the name. Surely there are more than 10,000 aristocrats and their arrogant non-essential minions.

Some years ago, I realized, while talking to a well-educated lawyer friend casually, that almost no one outside academic specialists knew much about the French Revolution. Some Americans, including me at one time, become obsessed with the American Civil War or World War II. But, the French Revolution, despite its importance as precedent and milestone on the road to modernity in Western Europe, is not familar — not even to the common Frenchman!

There is a reactionary trope that not much changed as a result — or as Alexis DeToqueville, writing after the 1848 echo, argued: the changes were already well underway in the late years of the ancien regime and the violence was unnecessary to the course of that progress. That reactionary argument has been applied to the American Civil War to suggest that eventually the slaveholders would have freed the slaves — slavery as an institution was dying, being killed by modern progress. I have seen it applied to the horror of the First World War: reactionaries sometimes argue that “the wrong side” won and the world might have been better served by a German victory and that Woodrow Wilson ushered in all kinds of ills with his Fourteen Points, including Big Government.

Anglophile French idealists of the Enlightenment, admiring the British and American examples, approached the French Revolution with expectations of a consensus in favor of some form of constitutional monarchy, Westminister parliament, rationalized law in equity, religious tolerance, free market economics, and an efficient civil administration amidst a society cleansed of hereditary privilege but celebrating merit. Expectations of such progress were almost tangible and swayed the king at times, who sought the approbation of Public Opinion. The Rights of Man would be declared with great enthusiasm.

Where the violence of the Terror came from remains mysterious, if all could agree upon the Rights of Man. If the Terror had simply consumed oppressive nobles of high rank, we could make some sense of it. It was the way the Terror consumed so many of the Revolutionaries themselves, masses of random criminals, many poor and pious priests, that made such an impression on historical memory. That and the terrible echo of Russia under Stalin with his purges. Must Revolutions eat their young? Are ideals poison?

Who constitutes our Ancien Régime?

This is where it gets tricky, right?

Who represents the status quo, and who represents “revolutionary” change?

Dems in the US have been mired in protecting and preserving the status quo (whatever it is or might have been) for decades, since Reagan, though they have not held the reins of power most of that time. Nevertheless, they are seen by many Americans as throwbacks and recalcitrants. Sticks in the mud as it were.

Meanwhile the Rs have become more and more emboldened and more extreme, edging closer to fascism all the time, and truly never facing consequences except for occasional sexual impropriety.

The voters may reject them but it doesn’t matter. Pretty much anything they want is doable given enough time and the propaganda mills that support them. On the other hand, very little is possible by the Dems — who almost always go along with what the Rs want.

We’ve analysed this situation to death. We know why it is so: the Overclass rules both parties, and only what they want will get done. Period.

So who should be the first against the wall when the Revolution comes? Remember the Revolution is on the right and has pretty much completely captured the Republican Party. So when they win — which is looks like they will beginning next year — who do they select for punishment/elimination? Not those of their own kind, at least not until much blood has been shed on the other side (if I recall correctly more than 60 were killed by rightists during the BLM protests…) and they start turning on one another (cf: Night of Long Knives, etc.)

No the Terror in France nor the Bolshevik overthrow of Kerensky’s “government” did not produce the mountains of bodies and rivers of blood we’re often led to believe. A large number of aristos managed to escape as they always do. Some of their descendants make their mischief to this day.

A leftist revolution is almost inconceivable these days, and even moderating the depredations of those in power — whoever they might be — seems next to impossible.

What then is to be done?

If Americans today tried to emulate the original “Terror” in order to prune or destroy the ruling class, many people would die and the result would be chaotic violence and harsh state repression (if the ruling class survives) or warlordism (if it does not survive).

No genuine revolution is possible without a new system of governance and economic redistribution to replace the old.

In today’s world neoliberal capitalism is the only game in town. Russia and China, the two main rivals to American dominance are both capitalist nations hooked into the global economy, The left wing governments of Latin America are capitalist, with a few “socialist” tweaks around the edges of the system. Even the Chavistas in their heyday only reformed the system (and left in place the privileged elite which would later revolt and, with American help, stick a spanner into the spokes of Venezuela’s Bolivarian revival).

A revolution without a coherent ideology underpinning it will fail. Think how easily and quickly Occupy Wall Street was crushed by the cops, how the Bernie Sanders-led “movement” collapsed after he joined mainstream Dems or how the post-George Floyd BLM protests petered out after the initial cathartic release of tension.

Nobody is going to sacrifice their family and any creature comforts they might enjoy to risk life and limb on behalf of a leaderless group without a plan. Vague slogans and a laundry list of grievances (no matter how valid these might be) do not a genuine revolution make.

People calling for revolution today are just LARPers high on internet fumes. When I see Twitter accounts labelling themselves ‘proud Communist’, ‘proud anarcho-syndicalist’ or whatever I have to laugh. Do these people work in an organized political movement or are they isolated individuals alone behind a screen who’ve confused making revolution with posturing on the corporate/national security state controlled internet?

(Imagine also how quickly Twitter and Facebook would be shut down in the event they are used to plan a coherent revolution that genuinely threatens power.)

People forget that “the system” is not primarily driven by individuals and egos. These play a roll but every system has an internal logic that runs on autopilot, enabling it to promptly replace any key players that are taken out. That’s what systems “do” and this little fact is easily forgotten in a world where “evidence based” rationalism rules supreme and everything that cannot be observed and quantified is treated as an externality and ignored.

This simplistic thinking also, partially, explains why conspiracy theories that involve secret cabals and smoke-filled rooms are so popular. In a highly-individualistic world, it must be individuals that drive events, right?

Anyway, my point is that there won’t be a revolution any time soon. There is no alternative system/ideology waiting in the wings; there are no popular radical movements for people to unite around and, besides, the citizenry is too busy fighting itself and pretending the internet = real life.

The German economic sociologist Wolfgang Streeck wrote about how the future in capitalist democracies will unfold in his book ‘How Will Capitalism End?’ and he has hit the nail on the head. Basically he says that when capitalism is hegemonic it will double down on itself when in crisis and that it can function just fine without democracy.

This outtake published at NLR explains some of his key points
https://newleftreview.org/issues/ii87/articles/wolfgang-streeck-how-will-capitalism-end

“Vague slogans and a laundry list of grievances (no matter how valid these might be) do not a genuine revolution make.”

Seems to have worked for Trumpism. And Facebook continues to duck and weave around its facilitation of Jan. 6.

Speaking of which, should we call it the metaverse or the zuckerverse because as P. T. Barnum said, There’s a zucker born every minute.

The British Civil Wars of the 17th century were rife with elite incompetency and a proliferation of sects and civil ideologies: Quakers were thought a great threat to civil order; Fifth Monarchists anticipated a Second Coming, Cromwell went to Ireland bloody-minded with a belief that Irish Catholics had perpetrated a slaughter of Protestants, Levelers propagated an ideology that immigrated to America.

Before the First World War, the hunger for a cleansing war was palpable in certain quarters, even as others, led by the unlikely form of the Czar of All the Russias, campaigned for peace at the Hague. And, nationalisms were giving rise to Young Turks and Young Bosnians and all sorts.

Revolutions, historically, are rarely made by the oppressed rising up. A society organized around exploitation of the masses usually has the means in place to keep them down. More common trigger scenarios are a reactionary right over-reaching in an attempt at pre-emptive counter-revolution or a stubborn and contentious liberal center unable to overcome their own petty corruption long enough to solve acute problems.

I agree with Astrid and others here who don’t see the current leadership of this place hanging on. That said, analogy to the previous revolutions seems farfetched. Some kind of breakdown is clearly ahead when the petrodollar and the SWIFT system stop holding up the house of cards here, but I imagine it will look more like what happened to the Soviet Union in the 90s than any revolution. Lots of people will die and terrible hardships never experienced here previously will be widespread. Eventually when millions have died and other millions have fled the country, some new competent leadership will emerge and cobble together something new from the rubble. It will be more impoverished, more local and nothing like anything we can imagine from where we are today. Comparing what will soon happen here to any revolution is much too flattering to a rag tag citizenry like ours.

Nearly as many people were butchered when the Paris Commune was crushed as died in the whole Terror.

The real problem with the Terror is that it didn’t kill enough of the right people, in multiple senses of the word right.

Revolution isn’t a time to be nice, and class warfare isn’t a metaphor. When the opportunity arises to slaughter the ruling classes, take full advantage of it. One of Castro’s mistakes was letting so many of the land owners flee to Florida, where they became a permanent anti-revolutionary force, perpetually directing US policy to attempt to screw Cuba.

Another American example would be the fact that after the Civil War ended, thousands of former Confederate officers should have been hung as traitors. A huge swath should have been cut through the Southern gentry, such that it would never fully recover. This should have been combined with forceful breaking up of the land holdings, divvying them up among both former slaves and poor whites.

@bruce wilder

One of these is not like the others. World War I was a war of monarchist thugs in which no side were the good guys. Would it have been better if Germany had won? I don’t know, but we likely wouldn’t have gotten the Nazis in that scenario.

@someofparts

Stoller doesn’t deserve to get his head chopped-off, but he’s also of extremely limited usefulness. He, vocally, isn’t a leftist, not really. He’s an FDR/New Deal Liberal, who wants to turn the clock back to an era of meaningfully enforced regulations and anti-trust law.

Which is fine, so far as it goes. But Stoller has very hard limits on his political vision. He absolutely refuses to engage with Marx, and on that topic he sounds like any right-wing reactionary, citing black book of communism-level propaganda as evidence of the evil of Marx.

Hugh: ‘Sometimes it was the French or Germans or Russians doing the invading of Dear Olde England. It varied according to who looked more menacing at the time.”

H. G. Wells did what’s now the best-remembered variation on this by picking invaders _nobody_ had thought about before.

someofparts, no. US leadership hasn’t been great, and its hegemony is passing –because of its dysfunctional/nonfunctional political system and climate change. But there is a simple law of hegemony. It takes an enormous outlay of resources to maintain it even if you are doing it well, and we aren’t. And there are zero contenders to replace us. Both China and Russia draft off the current system. The Russians’ economy is small. It can’t even rebuild its client Syria. It can’t even pretend to. China has its Belt and Road, but it is structured to return a profit to China. The problem is it goes through and deals with some of the most unstable real estate on the planet, and it assumes that sufficient US hegemony will be around to keep its security and stabilization costs small to non-existent. The costs of power are what get left out of all these next hegemon scenarios. And it is certainly not just these two countries. Take Germany and the EU. The EU has been wildly profitable to Germany and Germany’s rich. But we not Germany bear most of the costs for Germany’s and the EU’s defense. Just consider what they would have to spend if we weren’t there. But Germany nickel and dimes its, and by extension, the EU’s defense. And it does the same economically. It destroyed Greece to save some losses for its banks. It exercised not no leadership but negative leadership in the crisis that followed. And it has steadfastly refused to extend real aid to the EU’s whole eastern tier to keep it going authoritarian, which it has.

What I see as US hegemony recedes is much more chaos and many more failed and failing states. There are no post-US hegemons in waiting. There is no world system to replace it. There will be chaos.

Hugh- I don’t disagree with any of your points. Just because we cease to dominate the world does not mean anyone else can do it, or even wants to.

Mark Pontin- I wish the scenario you describe in Zardoz sounded improbable, but it sounds altogether too likely. The thing I remembered about Zardoz was what a fool Connery looked like in that red diaper and those ridiculous boots.

The US is a terrorist state. It ignores international laws and norms. It supports other evil states such as Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Columbia, to the detriment of whole regions. It meddles in the internal politics of other nations. It killed generations of the Left and deprived us of better options than Biden or Trump. In this, perhaps it’s not so different from the Brits, the Spanish, the Romans, the Greeks. But go ask Syrians or Iraqis or Libyans or Okinawans how they feel about this Pax Americana.

I don’t think a post-US world will be more violent. Sure, neighbors may go to war against each other, but they would be constrained by their respective resources and popular will. There are also super-national organizations that may help facilitate peaceful coexistence. But even without, going it alone seems better that than having an ignorant, evil, master of chaos dictating war after civil war, sanction after sanction, coup after coup, supporting the worst elements of those societies to subvert them within, and then sanctimoniously condemn those countries as incapable of competent self governance.

Only someone as deluded and ignorant as Hugh can still believe that America is still the essential and essentially good country, after 250 years of history showing otherwise.

someofparts: ‘The thing I remembered about Zardoz was what a fool Connery looked like in that red diaper and those ridiculous boots.’

That whole movie is something else, given that it starts with a giant flying stone head spewing rifles out of its mouth and booming ‘The gun is good! The penis is evil!’ and then gets stranger from there.

I doubt if anybody could get the money to make a movie so ludicrously weird today. But for the first two-thirds — till the scene where Connery’s character says “Stay within my aura” and it jumps the shark — it actually makes more sense as a piece of quite visionary science fiction than people give it credit it for.

That director, John Boorman, has a long string of amazingly individual movies from the likes of POINT BLANK (best use of Lee Marvin ever) and DELIVERANCE, through stuff like EXCALIBUR (with its weird post-modern Merlin who’s into the Tao and knows about nuclear weapons) and HOPE AND GLORY (about Boorman’s childhood during the London Blitz).

Che –

Regarding “ No the Terror in France nor the Bolshevik overthrow of Kerensky’s “government” did not produce the mountains of bodies and rivers of blood we’re often led to believe. A large number of aristos managed to escape as they always do. Some of their descendants make their mischief to this day.”

It might be useful to consider what happened after. There is a direct link between the Bolshevik overthrow of Kerensky and Stalin.

For everyone who despairs of the terrible US ruling class, I recommend reading about Lavrentiy Beria – a true product of the Russian revolution.

MP – Well, now I’m going to watch Zardoz again and take a look at some of those other Boorman films. Thanks.

I don’t think a post-US world will be more violent.

Just stop, will you please. Your incessant propaganda is ridiculously transparent and obvious.

Antibody produced an excellent reply and provided a link to an excellent analysis. It’s not America per se. It’s late stage capitalism and the the global economy, of which every nation is a part and player, is late stage capitalism. A “post-US world” is still late stage capitalism and as such, the doubling down in the late stage will continue unabated. Late stage capitalism transcends America. Late stage capitalism is the cancer and America is one massive tumor but there are many other tumors as well to include China and Russia.

Once again I will state, history is useless as to what will come next. So much has changed at this juncture, history doesn’t even rhyme let alone repeat. Many of you have an impressive knowledge of history but it cannot and will not serve you for what is coming. It does make you appear intelligent though, and I guess when all is said and done that’s all that matters. I mean, you can’t even agree that Stoller should get chopped if there is a Terror. Who else will you save? See, you don’t want change. You just want to continuously whine about the permanent Ancien Régime because it’s better than prunes or Metamucil in keeping you regular.

Logan’s Run is more like it. How is it a remake of that movie has never manifested? Perhaps it’s because that’s what’s in store and they know it. Soylent Green too. Maybe a hybrid of those two movies.

Can you see it? Isn’t it beautiful? How could I know? How could I ever have imagined?

Yet the Chinese by and large forgave Mao. I knew people (now dead) who suffered greatly during the Cultural Revolution, people who went hungry during GLF and people who were tortured and hailed for years doing the Cultural Revolution. But none of them want to roll back 1949. How many Chinese (and Indians and Africans and aboriginals of the Americas and Oceania) died in the century of humiliation between 1842 and 1949? Want to run a body count and see how the ledgers run up?

But what else would you expect from a know nothing woke imperialist? One who continues to repeat the empire’s debunked lies while loudly proclaiming his wisdom over people who actually have to face the bayonet’s end of Hugh’s intersectional empire.

@someofparts

Yeah, I stand by that. Donzinger is a comically corrupt lawyer, who won a fraudulent judgement in Ecuador through bribery and other corruption. That judgement was subsequently ruled unenforceable by an international tribunal in the Hague: https://www.wsj.com/articles/tribunal-condemns-ecuadors-9-5-billion-ruling-against-chevron-1536337680

The Kaplan Federal court judgement is brutal, and if you think Donzinger is a hero, I recommend you go and read it, because it goes in depth into very specific examples of how Donzinger achieved his victory in Ecuador through deceit. https://casetext.com/case/chevron-corp-v-donziger

His current status as being in contempt of court stems from his refusal to hand over data related to that case. It’s pretty obvious there’s stuff in there he doesn’t want the court to see.

On top of that, there was a fawning documentary, Crude, made about the Ecuador case. It presents Donzinger and his team as heroes, but Chevron later successfully subpoenaed hundreds of hours of outtake footage that features numerous examples of Donzinger openly talking about how he used lies and manipulation to win.

He’s a disbarred fraud of a lawyer, who is attempting to portray himself as a hero as a last ditch effort. And much of the left has fallen for it, hook, line, and sinker (the left often overzealously rallies around bad causes. Wesley Cook/’Mumia Abu-Jamal’ is almost certainly just a cop killer, as another example).

If you actually take the time to look into it, instead of just accepting Donzinger’s narrative, it quickly becomes clear that his claim that he’s the victim of the of an omnipotent Chevron-led conspiracy is all wet. Chevron have already won their side of the case Ecuador case; the judgement was ruled unenforceable (incidentally, they weren’t even the largest stakeholders in that oil project. Petroecuador was. Chevron aren’t the ones who have to pay out compensation). They have literally nothing to gain by persecuting Donzinger. He isn’t being persecuted. He’s being held to account for being a corrupt lawyer.

It takes a lot of be more slimey than an oil company, but Donzinger is managing to do it. For the record, the oil giants absolutely were guilty in that Ecuador case. But because Donzinger decided to resort to scummy tactics to win, he rendered his victory invalid. Chevron was a minority in that project, and Texaco already paid to clean up their share of the damage. Meanwhile Petroecuador continues to drill in that region to to his day.

This is a super high-profile case, in a super-liberal circuit court. It isn’t some minor case in some fringe court out in the boonies, away from the major media spotlights. The story he is spinning about corrupt judges on the Chevron dole simply doesn’t hold up.

Considering that Soredemos doesn’t even touch on the fact that this is a private prosecution with a Chevron paid prosecutor, both judges have strong ties to Chevron and didn’t recuse themselves, and one is a leading member of the Federalist Society…and Donzinger is the one that “doesn’t hold up”?

Anyhow, I’m out. My own fault for following after a someofparts response to Hugh. Feel free to call me all the vile names you like, better to expose the vile people that you are. Enjoy the USian justice that you all want to foist on everyone else in the world.

@Plague Species,

When the EuroExplorers brought their diseases to North and South Turtle Island, most of the Indigineous nationals died in the Great Exploration Germocaust of the Native Peoples.

Best estimates made by combining reports of Arellana and other Spanish exporers who floated down the Amazon River combined with more-and-more recently discovered evidence of massive earthworks, systems of broad-acre agriculture, etc. in the Amazon which show Arellana was not making it up show that before the Germocaust, about 6 million people lived in the Greater Amazon Basin. Best estimates are that 99% of them died in the Germocaust. So the survivors of the Germocaust and their descendants unto today have experienced something like what the coming Great Jackpot will offer to everyone from today going forward.

Perhaps the survivors of the Great Germocaust have survival lessons. Perhaps they plan to keep those lessons a secret from us.

The petrodollar isn’t a thing, at least not in the way people who are constantly talking about it imagine it is. The entire oil economy could be magically replaced by renewables tomorrow and the status of the US dollar as global reserve currency wouldn’t change one iota, because it isn’t dependent on oil trade. It’s dependent on the US intentionally running massive, permanent trade deficits.

That’s also why coming up with a viable alternative payments system that bypasses Wall Street would only be of limited usefulness. Yeah, it would enable the transfer of money outside of Wall Street, but it would do nothing to alter that fact that most producers *want* to do business via Wall Street because they want to sell to the US.

If a country wants to overthrow the dollar as GRC, they’d need to deliberately sacrifice their own domestic jobs in favor of running trade deficits. And China definitely doesn’t want to do that, and I see no sign that Russia, or any other major economy, does either.

@Astrid

I don’t care what the media reports. Go and read Kaplan’s judgement. There’s a lot more than ‘he said, she said’ going on there:

“Cabrera was not even remotely independent. He was recruited by Donziger. He was paid under the table out of a secret account above and beyond the legitimate court-approved payments. He was promised work on the remediation for life if the LAPs won. The LAPs gave him an office and life insurance, as well as a secretary who was a girlfriend of one of the LAP team members. Stratus and, to some extent others, wrote the overwhelming bulk of his report and his responses to Chevron’s objections, as well as to the deceitful comments Stratus had written on its own report. And, in accordance with Donziger’s plan to ratchet up the pressure on Chevron with a supposedly independent recommendation that Chevron be hit with a multibillion dollar judgment, he repeatedly lied to the court concerning his independence and his supposed authorship of the report. – G. Donziger’s Explanation ”

“Parts of the meeting were recorded by the film makers. Yanza began by introducing the participants and setting out the general agenda. He introduced Cabrera to the full team for the first time. Fajardo set forth the plan for the final phase of the evidentiary period, explaining that, while Cabrera was likely to be appointed the global expert, “the work isn’t going to be the expert[‘]s. All of us bear the burden.” Maest then asked whether “the final report [was] going to be prepared only by the expert?” Fajardo responded, “what the expert is going to do is state his criteria, alright? And sign the report and review it. But all of us, all together, have to contribute to the report.” Maest commented, “But .. not Chevron,” which provoked laughter. The video clips of the meeting ended with Donziger commenting, they could “jack this thing up to $30 billion in one day.”

“Reyes—who had been Mr. Donziger’s first choice for appointment as global expert—testified that:

“At the meeting, Mr. Fajardo, Mr. Yanza and Mr. Donziger dropped any pretense that Mr. Cabrera would act independently in writing an expert report that would be technically sound and executed according to professional standards. On the contrary, it was obvious that the plaintiffs had already predetermined the findings of the global assessment, that they themselves would write a report that would support their claim for billions of dollars against Chevron and would simply put Mr. Cabrera’s name on it. The purpose of the meeting was to establish all the conditions for controlling and managing the expert’s work, in secret, in accordance to the plaintiffs’ interests.”

“…better than prunes or Metamucil…”

Genius. LOL

Someofparts,

You have absolutely nothing to be sorry about. I just said that because I routinely skip over comments by Hugh and a couple others that I stop responding to, due to past nastiness. I mentioned that do it’s clear that I only commented on his comment because I still read other comments, not because I routinely take time to read and respond to him and others like him. I’m trying to minimize the amount that they think their nastiness can exert control over me. That’s all I can control for.

And okay, I can’t resist. Soredemos, you managed to not respond to any of my points about the nature of the private prosecution that sent Donziger to jail, that they start witness against him is a process liar, or the conflict of interest of Kaplan and Preska. Instead, you cite to the Kaplan’s opinion, presumably the one that put Donziger under house arrest and now jail for an offense that, even if proven true, almost never results in jail sentences.

This is you “holding up”? By going off on irrelevant tangents and quoting the very people whose opinions are highly suspect due to known conflicts of interest and whose actions are extremely unusual and punitive, to say the least. I hope I never come under your powers of judgment.

Which has nothing to do with why he is in jail or why Chevron is allowed to privately prosecute him. And that’s not even getting into why the US has any say in what happens in an Ecuadorian court. And again, your evidence comes from Kaplan and Preska, who are clearly departing from judicial norms (albeit not that much, certainly lots of crooked judges in this country, mostly against the poor) in their rulings against him. And those accusations are largely coming from a discredited witness.

This blame the victim routine was tired and ugly when used against Assange regarding his purported sexual abuse. In this instance, I can only conclude that you have a particular interest in closing your mind to the transparent injustice of privately persecuting Donziger, putting him under house arrest for over a year, and sending him to jail, because the judge found him in contempt for refusing to hand over attorney client privileged information.

Makes me wonder why you go to such length to not think about it or make a valid case for why it’s okay for corporations and their conflicted judges to prosecute people who just happen to have a large judgement against the corporation.