It’s worth pointing out that the guillotine was primarily used to terrorize the poor commoners, not nobles (who had already fled the country by that point.)
Also many leaders of the revolution were capitalists bourgeois who found it unfair that nobles had more power than them by birth right. Analphabetic people with close to no news access didn’t care that much about politics. Some far left fantasy that French revolution was led by peasants against capitalist is really ironic. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bourgeois_revolution
It’s hardly a controversial position that the Reign of Terror had virtually nothing to do with the nobility or monarchy, both of which had been abolished by that point; and everything to do with the suppression of political dissent by means of state terror.
The lesson of the Reign of Terror is not “kill the rich”. It’s not even “kill your enemies”. It’s “normalizing political violence will inevitably, maybe literally, blow up in your face.” People who equate the guillotine and Reign of Terror with successful political violence, or even successful economic and political reform, are not just wrong but dangerously wrong, and need to corrected.
It’s worth pointing out that the guillotine was primarily used to terrorize the poor commoners, not nobles (who had already fled the country by that point.)
Also many leaders of the revolution were capitalists bourgeois who found it unfair that nobles had more power than them by birth right. Analphabetic people with close to no news access didn’t care that much about politics. Some far left fantasy that French revolution was led by peasants against capitalist is really ironic. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bourgeois_revolution
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For example, https://theconversation.com/the-french-revolution-executed-royals-and-nobles-yes-but-most-people-killed-were-commoners-200455 which cites this book https://www.amazon.com/Incidence-Terror-During-French-Revolution/dp/0844612111 (unavailable online as far as I can tell.)
I’d also highly recommend Mike Duncan’s Revolutions podcast series on the French Revolution.
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It’s hardly a controversial position that the Reign of Terror had virtually nothing to do with the nobility or monarchy, both of which had been abolished by that point; and everything to do with the suppression of political dissent by means of state terror.
The lesson of the Reign of Terror is not “kill the rich”. It’s not even “kill your enemies”. It’s “normalizing political violence will inevitably, maybe literally, blow up in your face.” People who equate the guillotine and Reign of Terror with successful political violence, or even successful economic and political reform, are not just wrong but dangerously wrong, and need to corrected.