When we had schools, Americans learned about the French Revolution, mostly as a peasant uprising against the king. The storming of the Bastille is usually characterized as the riff-raff reaching their breaking point and taking control of a the dungeon the king used to imprison his political opponents. While the fortress was a symbol of royal authority, it was hardly a tool of royal oppression. The Bastille, when it was stormed, had just seven prisoners. There were four forgers, two lunatics and one degenerate aristocrat inside.
The truth is, the French Revolution was a cosmopolitan affair, led by men who were educated and well off, relative to the peasantry. The Jacobin Club was not for hod carriers and sewer workers. It was lawyers and academics. These were the men who had internalized the ideas of the Enlightenment and began to think about the political framework that should spring from those ideas. Of course, it was centered in Paris, which was where the cognitive elites were centered. These were urban revolutionaries.
That does not mean the countryside had no role in things. It’s just that the waves of change radiated out from Paris.The key insight of the Jacobins was to send representatives out into the smaller towns and cities to organize radicals and incite rebellion. It was a stroke of genius that has been copied by radicals and revolutionaries ever since. Many rural peasants welcomed the revolution as it meant some degree of freedom and the redistribution of lands seized from the Church and aristocracy.
As is always the case with radicalism, they went too far and were soon alienating the people they claimed to champion. The Civil Constitution of the Clergy was passed on July 12, 1790, requiring all clerics to swear allegiance to the French government. The radicals could get away with seizing Church lands, but when they seized the priesthood, the people in the countryside began to resist. The Church was the center of rural life and the foundation of French rural traditional. The radicals were now making war on this.
Imagine you’re living in a farming community and government officials show up and haul away your parish priest because he refuses to swear an oath to the state. Further, those government agents closed the local churches. It would be a lot like the state coming in and telling the Christian baker that they had to celebrate gay marriage and pay for their employee’s abortions. Imagine the government one day saying that your mother and father’s life is no different than two men sharing rent and a bed. Crazy.
The revolt in the Vendée region, on the west coast of France, began with the March 1793 conscription requiring Vendeans to fill their quota of 300,000 men for the army. The enraged populace took up arms and quickly formed a Catholic Army. What started as a demand for reopening the churches and getting their priests back, turned into a Royalist counter rebellion against the Republic. Initially, the Republicans were caught off-guard and the rebels enjoyed some success, even though their army was ill-equipped.
The Republic got its bearings and sent a 45,000 man army to suppress the rebellion and by the fall of that year the rebel army was defeated. The Committee for Public Safety decided that beating the army was not enough and opted for pacification. Whether or not the word “genocide” is appropriate is debatable. Some estimates put the death toll at 400,000 for a population of 800,000. Then there was the “scorched earth” policy of razing the homes of anyone suspected of being a rebel, which was anyone who owned a home.
The War in the Vendée is interesting for a number of reasons, but one important lesson is the fervor of those protecting their way of life is no match for the zeal of the Utopian fanatic building his paradise. The romantic rustics of the countryside were beaten by the savvy fanatics of Paris. It was not just the numbers or the resources. The people of the Vendée were people defending the limits of human conduct, while the Committee For Public Safety was limited only by its imagination. They would do anything to reach the promised land.
Another important lesson is the savagery of Louis Marie Turreau, the French officer sent by the Committee for Public Safety to pacify the region, was the result of righteous enthusiasm for his task. The radicals were murdering their enemies not as a means to end but as an end in itself. For the radical, murder becomes a sacrament. When Turreau inquired about the limits of what he could do to pacify the region, the answer from the committee was “eliminate the brigands to the last man, there is your duty.”
This is something to keep in mind when thinking about the present crisis. The revolt that put Trump in office is a revolt of the provincials. Plenty of Trump voters went to college or have office work. It’s not the old class divide. It is the new class divide. The revolution over the last 25 years has been led by a cosmopolitan elite, based in the coastal cities of America. These are the people dreaming up gay marriage and transgenders, not because they make any sense, but because they offend the sensible provincials out in the suburbs.
It’s comforting to think that the pendulum is swinging back toward normalcy, but it could simply be a rearguard action. The radicals running the American “republic” are no less bloodthirsty and malevolent than those who razed the Vendée. They may not unleash genocidal infernal columns on the suburbs, but they are plenty enthusiastic about importing hordes of foreign peasants to wreak havoc on the people. They are also smart and savvy, masters of the tools of power. But most of all, they have no sense of restraint.
I think if they hound Trump from office with a combination of innuendo, media lies and brownshirt violence; that it will be on. I honestly believe (and fear) that blood will flow. Disenfranchising 65 million people can’t turn out well, especially if they already feel like they’re losing their nation.
Agreed. I say that older men will be in the front line of this civil war. We have raised our families, and we know reality. We [ or at least I] have less to lose. If I was in the action over there I would carry a weapon and use it in any Antifa mummy boy attacker.
Just remember that buckshot leaves no ballistic fingerprint once it leaves the barrel.
Finally, someone gets it right in regards to the MO of the leftist elites in their pursuit of and attainment of power. The ends do justify the means. You have to crack a few egg to make an omelette. Don’t know how many articles I’ve read or conservative news/analysis TV/Radio types commenting on how the left is delusional, insane, off their rockers, going nuts, in denial….blah, blah, blah…..over Trump becoming president. It is absolutely incredible that anybody believes this crap. The left is NOT delusional, insane, etc. They are engaged in a purposeful, well organized, very persistent , well funded… Read more »
Just grabbed this off americandigest.org. Describes the tactics the leftist elites utilize to destroy all those they oppose.
“Before mass leaders seize the power to fit reality to their lies,
their propaganda is marked by its extreme contempt for facts as such, for in their opinion fact depends entirely on the power of man who can fabricate it.” ― Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism
You need to differentiate between the leftist lemmings and their leftist overlords. The lemmings are “delusional, insane, off their rockers, going nuts, in denial….blah, blah, blah….”. Their masters are not.
The radicals running the American “republic” are no less bloodthirsty and malevolent than those who raised the Vendée. They may not unleash genocidal infernal columns on the suburbs, but they are plenty enthusiastic about importing hordes of foreign peasants to wreak havoc on the people. They are also smart and savvy, masters of the tools of power. But most of all, they have no sense of restraint.
OK, that’s a money shot. That should be posted all over the internets.
Yes. The cores of Conservative / traditional Liberalism and Christianity are restraint. The Ten Commandments, the Golden Rule, Rule of Law, the Constitution and Bill of Rights. They are all different forms of restraint.
That’s why conservatives have so much trouble combating progressives – until they are pushed so far they are willing to start shooting progressives on sight.
In one word: zeal. Utopians have zeal for their dream. That is why they are so effective. We need to match them.
I would modify that to say that zeal and restraint are flip sides of the same coin. There’s nothing wrong with zeal if it is tempered with restraint. We would call that “common sense gung-ho”, or something like that. An example would be someone in the military who will commit themselves 100% to their role in attaining the assigned military objective, but will refuse to follow an illegal order. It’s a recognition that every engine needs brakes, and that the existence of conscience is the defining element which decides when to apply the brakes. The difference between Utopianism and a… Read more »
True, a good copy and paste is hard to find, but this one matches up.
Z: These are the people dreaming up gay marriage and transgenders, not because they make any sense, but because they offend the sensible provincials out in the suburbs. I truly believe that hatred of normal people and normal values is what drives the Cult. Why else support the Muslim “religion” that throws gays off roofs, forbids abortion and makes all women slaves? Why not leave a Christian baker free to not bake a cake for a gay couple, when there are many bakers who would be happy to? Why support BLM and thugs like Trayvon Martin and the guy in… Read more »
And this is what I see on sites like these:
“Let California secede!”
“I don’t have to worry because I’m in a red state.”
“Move all the Lefties somewhere and they’ll leave us alone”
We cannot do this. It’s the mindset of failure. The Left will never leave us alone. Even the reddest state has cities full of Lefties. When we have power, we have to force them to conform to our rules. We can’t allow their bases of power to remain untouched.
But unfortunately blood will have to flow to counteract this. The left has worked their agenda too long and too hard to rectify it through some form if reeducation. We need a civil war I’m afraid.
Our legal system and government provides an easy lifestyle to too many useless/ pernicious people- fear of losing their easy govt. pay is a critical support for the (D)irtbags. “It is hard to doubt that which gives a paycheck”, no matter how ridiculous and obviously unfair to others. Our best bet to reverse the rot is to defund the myriad fascist feedbags our government has become, starting with unpopular and clearly harmful programs. A “freedom of education” amendment would divide many of the urban poor from the indoctrinators in the k-12 ed system and remove a lot of funds from… Read more »
“Cities full of lefties.”
Careful there – this city has a reputation for liberalism, yet a lot of conservatives live here too. It might behoove you to get to know some of them.
The movement behind Trump is more Dutch reformation/American revolution than the Vendee. Attending Trump rallies or fundraisers you saw the productive middle class with the productive upper class in attendance. People were still married to the first wife and the Bush people were nowhere to be seen. High dollar donors to Trump were the sort who gave to Gingrich pre 1996-7 era, ie before he was corrupted in/by power. They knew by publicly giving to Trump they were not winning any dinner invitations. Bushies and Dem supporters at fundraisers tend to be people who are courtiers, not fighters. Often they… Read more »
I mentioned this to Milo in my question to him after his talk at Ohio State: is there something, in fact, diabolic, about the Left, and its craving for blood?
His answer was ambiguous; mine, is “yes.”
By Any Means.
Don’t forget the basic rule of confrontation: If you find yourself in a fair fight, your tactics suck.
As if a sodomite can offer a dispositive opinion on what is and what is not diabolical? Go figure.
Damn. I’m speechless. Too true.
Not true at all, but a perversion of history.
Here is the antidote: https://westernrifleshooters.wordpress.com/2017/05/25/a-response-to-american-vendee/
Liguori, this article must have hit a sensitive nerve with you. We know what you “progressives” are planning for us.
The difference — I hope — is that, 18th century life being what it was, even the most coddled Parisian radicals had seen blood, pain, and death. They were very hardcore, by our standards — they could take at least some of what they were dishing out, so they pushed on in the face of resistance. Our modern radicals, by contrast, break down sobbing if the barista forgets to double-foam their venti soy chai latte. The possibility of a Based Stickman beating has dampened the enthusiasm of many a would-be “antifa.” I hope that’s enough.
The Counter-Revolution will be deemed impossible – until it happens. Then it will be deemed inevitable. For reference see “Soviet Union, The Fall of”…
“Based Stickman” is hard to pronounce. You have to pause between the “d” of “Based” and the “S” of “Stickman”. This makes it difficult to cheer him on: “Go, Based Stickman!” becomes “Go, Based … ahem … Stickman!” (Unless “Based” is supposed to be bisyllabic — “Base-Sed”?)
ZMan, your two most recent works are an excellent peephole into a possible future. Human nature is the constant over time. Really appreciate what you do.
Actually, the playbook for the rise of tyranny here is pretty well known.
First, use covert indoctrination to convert or compromise as many as possible. Second, use false flag provocations to instigate internal strife and deplete the stock of able-bodied good guys. Third, unleash brutal repression and incarcerate high threat individuals (e.g. intelligent, motivated, capable).
As with the Vendees, a conventional response is likely doomed to fail. A new paradigm is needed.
Make the “government” grind to a complete stop. For a very long period of time. Permanent cyberwarfare.
The present head of Government is on your side Tax Slave . We just need to let hin know that we are with him.
TomA the massive Internet alliance is the best we have so far. But I am hearing Twitter and Facebbok and Google are all acting for the Global NWO. This will be a strange and bitter war.
To deal with the urban sophisticates behind all of this. Hit them them where they live. Deny water and power to the handful of major coastal cities where they dwell and just sit back and watch their prized minorities turn their precious power centers into rubble.
A day without water and power should be enough to send the dindu’s into full on rage and pillage mode.
The thing is almost all our urban centers are veritable powder kegs kept from blowing up with a combination of bribes(welfare) and heavy police presence. Deny them services and the ethnics will go nuts..
The term “force multiplier” comes to mind. Virtually all the power and fuel consumed in the cities flows through trumpland.
The other term that comes to mind is “fragile complexity”. Modern Western megacities are models of fragile complexity, easily disrupted.
An examination of the recent elections county by county vote map suggests how badly a breakdown in the trust that conservative / individualist / Constitutionalists still have in our government could damage the nation. Note that most of the Progressive / Globalists (Hillary voters) are concentrated in larger cities, which are heavily dependent on regular and uninterrupted road, rail, pipeline, HV electric, and other transport systems for food, fuel, water, and other consumables. Most of the conservatives I have spoken to or read seem more the type who, if pressed to that point, would be the “asymmetrical warfare” types, who… Read more »
I guess our Paris would be a combination of Los Angeles, New York, and Cambridge. Anti-volk/anti-provincial ideas and policies hit us from New England, poisonous financial rackets have their node in Manhattan, and soul-poisoning entertainment comes from the Left Coast. Our enemies are organized, but not quite as centralized as the Parisians. I think the idea that power doesn’t lie with the people, but that it’s the job of an intellectual class to direct the people for some long-off utopia, probably has its apotheosis in Gramsci’s philosophy. The academic left took his “war of position” and turned it into “the… Read more »
It’s already worse than bloody.
“I have said many times that we live – now, in The West – in the most evil time and place ever; and I mean this quite factually and objectively. Never before has there been (so far as we know) any human society in which The Good has been so comprehensively subverted, and indeed inverted.”
Only a few (of us, on the dissident right) remember the mouse utopia, but fewer of us still remember what the cartoon from our childhood means . . .
http://mouseutopia.blogspot.co.uk/
I know about mouse utopia and the “beautiful ones” experiment. What I meant was that the “student movement” types like “Red Rudi” in Germany or Obama’s buddy Bill Ayers in America engaged in terrorism, but nothing on the order of the people they admired, like Mao or Lenin. I also still leave open the possibility that the left could equal or outdo their heroes of yore. I was on some “Patriot News” site and all the conservatives were laughing about some photo of liberals dressed up in fatigues trying to shoot guns for some kind of progressive militia they were… Read more »
Mouse Utopia is new to me, and it is a fascinating read. Different observers have various take-aways from the work, but Dr. Charlton’s explanations carry some weight for the situation we find ourselves in. Unfortunately, his interpretation suggests no way out. It is a helpful reminder that many of those who do not see the world our way are lost causes. Their take on things is coded into their existence. We can only walk and talk past each other, as we live in different universes.
from what part of french society was the army (back then) drawn from, which part of American society is the army drawn from (today).
I spent some time in the army, and a lot of our armed forces are multi-generational military (sons and daughters of people in the military, who’ve known nothing but the military base as their entire world). These people are loyal to the military (who pay all medical bills, for daycare, a clothing allowance, etc.) and will do what the military says to do. My main observation is that the more dangerous the job in the military, the better the quality of the people involved. Infantry and explosive ordinance disposal are usually white and rural types, and quality people who think… Read more »
Soldiers in a “volunteer army” are self-selected … being men who willingly choose obedience over the exercise of individual’ conscience. They actively choose to “follow orders”.
It would be foolhardy to expect salvation from this quarter.
As far as I’m aware, there’s no precedent for significant rebellion amongst such men.
In short, they’ll kill you without compunction, when so ordered.
The Japanese raped and pillaged Shanghai, tortured prisoners of war, and generally went all the way to the bitter end. Yet we still dropped two big bombs on them. So may it need to play out again. I have no doubt “our” side will ultimately rise to the occasion, not out of mania or bloodthirstiness, but because they will be clear-eyed about what must be done. As it was in 1945.
But they were on one side of the Pacific and we the other. How do you exercise the nuclear option on liberals who live in the house next door to you?
The point is that there is a difference between getting all excited and racing out to pop someone, and sitting down, calmly and rationally surveying the situation, and then coming up with a decisive and thought-through response. The Japanese example shows the difference between blindly fighting to the end, and giving no quarter, versus thinking through what it will take to accomplish a clear victory (one where the enemy decides to quit fighting), and then following through with it. The “other” side appears full of the former, and “our” side would benefit, IMO, by taking a thoughtful but overwhelming approach… Read more »
00 Buck is nuclear enough when you’re in the same room with an Obamaphile.
Targets. Hiroshima and Nagasaki was significant Urban and industrial centers. And also ones in which America had no investment interest.
Nuking Dell Rapids would eliminate a minuscule number of peasants and is not likely to impress anyone, except possibly Lame Cherry ™. And if they nuke or radiate any of our urban areas, that would be shooting themselves in their own foot, economically speaking. This would also require the cooperation of the military professionals. On the other hand, deploying a few million Dindus and Towelies from abroad would inflict serious harm. That is what immigration is all about.
One difference between then and now is communications. I’d bet that the average folk in Vendee had little knowledge of their opponents views and methods before the actual fighting broke out. I guess you could fault the Catholic Church for thinking itself immune and so not taking an active counter-revolutionary role in propaganda. Today we cannot escape knowing and seeing our opponents’ views and methods every day. Will this be sufficient_? In any event this post should serve as a reminder that the smug certainty of Red America’s ability to prevail should the struggle come to violence is quite possibly… Read more »
There is one wrinkle, though, that will prevent history from repeating itself – not that it ever does in exactly the same way. The revolutionaries combined a proselytizing zeal for exporting revolution with xenophobia within France. They didn’t import foreigners to dilute the troublesome native class: it was one of their gripes against the king that he DID. Louis XVI brought in Swiss guards because he didn’t really trust the French troops around him, and it infuriated the French to have these foreigners oppressing them. Once the Revolution got underway, it became very dangerous to be a foreigner in France,… Read more »
Ethnic cleansing is not a new strategy.
it’s the root strategy of human beings
One can only hope that the soldiers who massacred the religious peasants of the Vendee got what was coming to them in the frozen wastes of Holy Russia.
It was not only the Vendee. IN 1920-21 the Antonov Revolt in Tambov Province was very similar, both in causes and intensity. And also in terms of losses.It was a major reason for Lenin’s New Economic Policy.
I was going to bring up the Antonov Revolt. If I remember correctly, one of the causes of the Kronstadt Rebellion was sailors going home on leave and seeing War Communism conditions themselves or reading about it in letters from home.
Zman: any thoughts on what a scenario of “the spark to ignite the firestorm” might look like?
I daydream of an army of say, 100,000 men and women quietly traveling to DC, well armed, and silently erecting fully operational gallows on the National Mall closest to the Capitol, of course.
not just lawyers and academics but the clergy as well. one of the leading figures was Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmanuel_Joseph_Siey%C3%A8s
globalists vs nativists early edition
“… representatives out into the smaller towns and cities”. Today they’re called community organizers.
Which was all a longer essay to give you what C.S. Lewis wrote much more succinctly on the subject 60 years ago:
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.“
A French Genocide: The Vendee, by Reynald Secher, tells of the revolution going into massacre mode and the barbarity brutality visited upon the Vendeeans in the name of liberty, equality, and fraternity. We haven’t changed much since then. A good book to see what was is likely to be what will be again.
The American church is already owned by government through the IRS code and the clergy are a bunch of pussies. No worries for the leftists that an uprising against Washington will spring from our dead churches.
thank you, good post, with a riveting coffee kick start ” When we had schools .. I am referred here by Adam Piggot Australian
“Then there was the “scorched earth” policy of raising the homes of anyone suspected of being a rebel, which was anyone who owned a home.”
razing, not raising.
It’s “razed.”
Thanks.
[…] As any of the national election maps over the recent election cycles have indicated, we are quickly being divided into an urban and coastal Leftist archipelago surrounded by unprogressive “flyover country”. Taking the parallel of the French Revolution, and especially the Reign of Terror, further, we see the perfect example of what happens to those who dare stand up against the enlightened agents of revolution and change: […]
I’ve likened what we have happening in America to the French Revolution many times, all the way back to Trump winning the nomination. You put better words to it.
Bravo. We are indeed watching the end of our Republic. A few years back, a dear and trusted friend of mine reminded me, “Christ did not say that the gates of hell will not prevail against the United States …”
Saint Louis de Montfort was active in the Vendee was it? Thus the Faith of the Vendeans in the face of the Satanists of the Revolution perhaps?
There is a rumored prophecy of Father Pel, contemporary of Padre Pio, that eastern France will be utterly destroyed by meteorites. Western France not due to its greater Catholic piety.
Z –
You’re on Lewrockwell.com tonight! jb
Excellent essay, as are nearly all from The Z Man. Just one nit to pick: back when there were schools (or back before auto-correct) we knew that radical lunatics were razing homes, not “raising the homes.” A house-raising is something very different.
This is what comes from publishing, not from paper, but a dictaphone.
“the people of the Vendée were people defending the limits of human conduct, while the Committee For Public Safety was limited only by its imagination. They would do anything to reach the promised land.” CPS were similarly limited, human nature limits all. The people of Vendée lacked strategic vision and the desire and willingness to carry through to victory. The important thing is to inculcate the sense that we need to vanquish the enemy entirely. We still have time to form these visions and attitudes and to take up the bloody mind necessary to enact them. Planning is also important… Read more »
Methinks you need to work on your reading comprehension. Zman’s post reads that the people of the Vendee were defending the limits of human CONDUCT, not that the people of the Vendee were limited by human nature.
I believe the point of the paragraph was that the people of the Vendee underestimated the lengths to which the Committee for Public safety would go.
And their own goals were limited: they just wanted to keep their traditional life. To be left alone, as so many conservatives today put it. They had no ambition to march all the way to Paris and eradicate the sophisticates dreaming up the insanity.
Which if a war starts eradication is something dirt people will have to do in self defense simply because it will be done to them . If/When such a war starts there can be no mercy or reconciliation with the Left since they have no capacity for mercy cannot honor any agreement and are to use a Russian expression “Not agreement capable” Even if the few sound minds on that side prevailed , they won’t think they’ll need the dirt people The left if they can will almost certainly use bio-weapons and chemical weapons of not nukes . However unlike… Read more »
I don’t know why you think I’m the one who needs to work on his reading comprehension when my comment is mostly an unpacking of the word you emphasize (and I quote) WRT to the higher principle governing it, (i.e., human nature, the common factor that found different expression in their different actions). The three short statements I make after the quote are about specific conduct or dispositions that motivate or direct said conduct. That is, again, I was emphasizing some things for consideration, not as contradiction. Much of what I see on the dissident right is romanticism or magic… Read more »
I think you need to work on your reading comprehension because you very clearly did not get the gist of that paragraph. It appears you still don’t.
I suspect VD ignores you for good reason.
If you want to be a willfully obtuse little b****, that’s your business. You can go back to playing Sancho Panza to Bill Lind and lickspittle to the runaway fake Indian armchair general of the Alt-Right. Its least endearing that you all warm so quickly to his clearly stunted use of his own primary language.
And this is exactly why when things go hot the right side of the spectrum had best be prepared to produce a class of warriors who are willing and able to become death incarnate, with 1 rule only. No quarter asked, no quarter given. For it is the enemy who decides when a battle is over, you must kill them until they are no longer willing to die for their cause, only then may rational discourse take place.
Human nature and human conduct go hand in hand. The individual who is lawless in society is himself lawless within. Without a personal sense of accountability to a Creator, what is it that keeps a civil society civil? The answer is: Nothing. Thus, we find results such as the author’s example, and oh just how many more just like it? The state can no more create a utopia than a cow jump over the moon.
i believe we are farther down the article. where trump is demanding . the people take loyalty oaths to him. we are still going down the wrong path. trump is the swamp/
keep praying to god for forgiveness and guidance, to do the right thing.