Is this the worst interpretation of the French Revolution ever?

[Don Vito Corleone]

https://twitter.com/baseballcrank/status/1387910800271097860

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

It is probably because all the classical liberals died over 100 years ago and the people who still call themselves that are edgy reactionaries.

[P. Clodius Pulcher did nothing wrong]

Twitter baseball man thinks post-French Revolution monarchism must have an origin in the French Revolution I guess.

[Diabolical Materialism]

Twitter baseball man thinks post-French Revolution monarchism must have an origin in the French Revolution I guess.

In a way he'd be correct.

[Statilius the Epicurean]

Baseballcuck

I think the worst take of all time on the French Revolution has to be de Maistre's, that Divine Providence was responsible for the Terror so that Justice "will not be encumbered by the large number of guilty".

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

https://twitter.com/baseballcrank/status/1387910800271097860

Fascism, technocracy, socialism, and communism necessarily arose from within the post-1789 liberal milieu, so perhaps technically correct so lomg as we forget edgy monarchists and edgier primitivists.

[Statilius the Epicurean]

But fascism was an explicit attack on the values of 1789. That's why even though they disagreed on everything subsequent the entire left from communist to liberal came together in popular fronts to oppose the advance of fascism. Hobsbawm makes this observation.

I suppose there's a well actually about the French Revolution being the origin of mass politics or the modern state or whatever, but then one is talking about form and not content.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

The standard liberal take in the initial historiography of the French Revolution (see: Carlyle, Guizot, Thiers) was that 1789 was good in that it represented the unshackling of the Third Estate and the destruction of the decript feudalism via a quasi-democratic body of liberal aristocrats and the upper crust of the Third Estate. People like Lafayette, Mirabeau, Bailly all were thought of fondly by the more liberal Orleanists. This is contrasted with the 1792 insurrection, when Danton launched a Second Revolution that would depose the king, and in the process transfer power from the elite salons to the radical Parisian sections, which is certainly not looked on fondly by liberals.

[Buffalo Mayor Young Kim]

If you call yourself a liberal and also side with the second estate, you don’t know what one of those things is

[buritobr]

The worst interpretation is the one that considers that France is not a superpower today because of this revolution. According to this interpretation, France is less powerful than the US, UK and Germany because of the revolution.

[Joe Haydn]

Maybe, but the worst take in that tweet is his downplaying of 1688-89 and outright erasure of 1640.

The whole history of the movement which resulted in the establishment of the Commonwealth of England will be misread and misunderstood if we fail to appreciate that it was the first modern, and not the last mediæval, movement; if we fail to understand that the men who figured in it and the principles for which they contended, are strictly akin to the men and the principles that have appeared in all similar great movements since: in the English Revolution of 1688; in the American Revolution of 1776; and the American Civil War of 1861. We must keep ever in mind the essentially modern character of the movement if we are to appreciate its true inwardness, its true significance. Fundamentally, it was the first modern struggle for religious, political, and social freedom, as we now understand the terms. As was inevitable in such a first struggle, there remained even among the forces of reform much of what properly belonged to previous generations. In addition to the modern side there was a mediæval side, too. Just so far as this mediæval element obtained, the movement failed. All that there was of good and of permanence in it was due to the new elements.

[Agonized-Statism]

Yeah. The ideas behind both classical liberalism and to a lesser extent utopian socialism were present in the Atlantic Revolutions, which opposed the monarchic, aristocratic, and clerical leaders of the old feudalist mode of production. Corporatists (who later gave us fascists and arguably Nazis) were on the reactionary side looking to protect the Church's corporate privilege. I guess you could say classical liberals got one of their mass movement enemies out of the French Revolution (socialism), but they came out of it as well. Corporatism, on the other hand, is a defensive repackaging of the feudalist system, which the Revolution was fought against.

[EngDawg2020]

I would think socialism is more influenced by the failure of the revolution neo jacobins were disliked by most socialist if my history of the later Paris commune is correct.

[Agonized-Statism]

I would think socialism is more influenced by the failure of the revolution neo jacobins were disliked by most socialist if my history of the later Paris commune is correct.

The utopian socialism of revolutionary figures like Henri de Saint-Simon and François-Noël Babeuf is considered a major point in the development modern socialist theories and movements. Proto-socialists were definitely present in the French Revolution, and like the liberals, better distinguished themselves in the post-feudal world.

[StateBoiler]

But fascism was an explicit attack on the values of 1789. That's why even though they disagreed on everything subsequent the entire left from communist to liberal came together in popular fronts to oppose the advance of fascism. Hobsbawm makes this observation.

The advance of fascism is one hundred and forty-five years removed from the French Revolution. You're telling me that the definition of "left" did not change in that timeframe when we can tell the definition of "left" has changed in the modern-day just in the past decade or two?

If I wanted to rationalize I could say that the French Revolution was the embodiment of making the people the state, which could be easily turned into a fascist take of the state before all others, because the people are the state (examples of which can be seen in a couple of East Asian communist countries that have presently merged communism with nationalism - two philosophies that would've appeared to be polar opposites 70 years ago). I'm not saying the revolutionaries were fascists because they weren't, leaving aside the mistaken historiality of trying to pigeon-hole people into future or past political identities presuming their beliefs and actions don't change an iota due to politics, culture, identity, personal anecdotes, etc., which is clearly false.

[The Mikado]

It works in the sense that all modern ideologies on all sides essentially were recreated in the 1790s and 1800s. The French Revolution is also the genesis of a lot of counterrevolutionary and reactionary thought, whether people like Metternich, people like Burke, or even the religious conservative peasant ideology of the Vendee rebels.