Everyone quote dunking this saying the French Revolution was bad. No, the French Revolution was good. - ThreadSky

johnbrownstan.bsky.social • 21 days ago

Everyone quote dunking this saying the French Revolution was bad. No, the French Revolution was good.

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Both the French and Russian revolutions affected positive change for the majority of their respective populations. There are less destructive ways to have a revolution, but hereditary, exploitive aristocrisies are bad, actually.

osmanvuk.bsky.social•21 days ago

Kind of depends on what you think the counterfactual is

riffcahokiashill.bsky.social•21 days ago

So many idiotic posts by people who think Napoleon was a reaction against the revolution! I'm literally going to kms.

johnbrownstan.bsky.social•21 days ago

Napoleon was the synthesis

birblib.bsky.social•21 days ago

I will say that I generally disapprove of this sort of thinking, but the current US administration is doing everything in its power to persuade me of its merits.

isaiahbishop.bsky.social•21 days ago

The real casualties in the rural uprisings were not great™️ but i am getting to the point where some people need to feel some stakes

johnbrownstan.bsky.social•21 days ago

It would have been better if there had been some sort of revolution that resulted in a lasting constitutional monarchy or republic, but that probably wasn't in the cards given the forces at play. Maybe if Louis XVI hadn't tried to run away.

glocks4interns.bsky.social•21 days ago

i dunno i think it was bad. like you traded one set of kings for another, killed a lot of people, set up the situation to kill 5 million more, and did more for the cause of monarchies than like anything else, maybe ever?

johnbrownstan.bsky.social•21 days ago

The ancien regime had to go, not just in France but across the whole continent, and the revolution was the first step in that. Really no avoiding it. The old system was too entrenched for some peaceful transition.

glocks4interns.bsky.social•21 days ago

the revolution broke a lot of power structures but failed in breaking the european monarchies. counterrevolutionaries were in power across europe for decades afterward.

screecycle.bsky.social•21 days ago

They tried, though didn’t they, they really did. Between the storming of the Bastille and Louis coming apart a lot happened.

johnbrownstan.bsky.social•21 days ago

"No, no, it would have been better if there were no terror and no Thermidorian Reaction and then no Napoleon". Yeah, sure, but revolutions are never tidy. You're trading oppression for uncertain change.

hurricanexyz.bsky.social•21 days ago

"Started well and ended poorly" is a fairly common story huh

Don't think anyone really thinks that just sticking with the ancien regime would've been better

hurricanexyz.bsky.social•21 days ago

I mean, Tories I guess

johnbrownstan.bsky.social•21 days ago

Plenty of people at the time thought that, and thought it all the way through 1848. The bitter struggle is why it ended poorly and took another half century to (mostly) win.

claybird1.bsky.social•21 days ago

Our problems today are rooted in the fact that after the civil war was won we didn’t have a reign of terror for the rebels.

osmanvuk.bsky.social•21 days ago

The implicit assumption here is that absent a violent Revolution France would’ve continued as an absolute monarchy indefinitely. Or that the second - terror - phase had to necessarily follow the first - liberal - phase.

glocks4interns.bsky.social•21 days ago

i think this would be a convincing case if you ignore french history from 1799-1870

like, it failed. fell flat on it's face, taking out millions of europeans along the way.

let's celebrate successful revolutions

arrogantmonkey.bsky.social•21 days ago

French aren’t ashamed of it

https://youtu.be/5hTMYk7orHw?si=GfqEj5m0jSBZa-aV

glocks4interns.bsky.social•21 days ago

yes but i hold them in quite low regard

kissingersghost.bsky.social•21 days ago

and also trading the sweet sweet blood lust towards one enemies. That's worth the guillotine build alone!!

snowjob.bsky.social•21 days ago

You're trading the death of the old world for the life of the new one struggling to be born

osmanvuk.bsky.social•21 days ago

This is essentially that what happened and how it happened was inevitable. It wasn’t. And if it was, whats the point of even discussing it?

nekename.bsky.social•21 days ago

Americans wildly underrate how much harder it is to found a republic when the tyrant king lives on the same continent

osmanvuk.bsky.social•21 days ago

Several countries have done it

johnbrownstan.bsky.social•21 days ago

Or when literally every one of your neighbors also has a king who's a relative of your king and hates that you deposed him.

nekename.bsky.social•21 days ago

Also we cheated by saving the hard part until four score and seven years later

jobe00.bsky.social•21 days ago

Guillotines aren't portable. Wood chippers are portable, and you can convert them to be all electric and include a solar panel to make them a green method of ending the parasite class.

ofpope.bsky.social•21 days ago

Nonsense you could put wheels on a guillotine.
And a hinge so the upright slicey bit doesn't catch on overhead wires.

jobe00.bsky.social•20 days ago

Wood chippers give you mulch which is good for the plants.

ofpope.bsky.social•20 days ago

Guillotines give you heads which are good for Halloween decorations!

shawnconnery.bsky.social•21 days ago

I agree. And I don't think the reference to the French Revolution is meant as an all-out endorsement of its consequences. People are trying to say that becoming king is a bad proposition and can end badly. That's it.

thedude1.bsky.social•21 days ago

Their success on the battlefield far exceeded what the monarchy had achieved

guineaprince.bsky.social•21 days ago

Even today the French don't hesitate to flood the streets and burn things down. Which, to nobody's surprise, actually gets them results.

gbaji.bsky.social•21 days ago

It wasn't very neat and tidy, though.

johnbrownstan.bsky.social•21 days ago

They never are! But sometimes they're worth it anyway

johnbrownstan.bsky.social•21 days ago

This is like dunking on the US Civil War because hundreds of thousands died and a few decades later you had Jim Crow. Still worth it!

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