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by the_drunkard 1972 days ago
That tactic worked out well during the French Revolution...
4 comments

Give the Revolutions podcast by Mike Duncan a listen. The French revolution was not what it seems... it was elites vs. elites, not peasants vs. monarchy.
It's always elites vs. elites. The problem now is that there's plenty of elites on the outs. Elite overproduction and all that.
It's not as simple as that. I don't think any of Jean-Clément Martin books are translated to english, but its really not as simple as that.
Yeah, what a weird take. As if La Bastille was attacked by French aristocracy. This argument only holds if you hold 2 very loose claims. 1) To confuse the leaders with the whole movement. 2) To compare the rag-tag group of young lawyers, acerbic journalists, disgruntled politicians with the whole ancien regime.

Mike Duncan is an entertainer, not a professional historian.

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."
"There are four boxes to be used in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
Stalin empirically disproved that statement.
Fair point, so I guess if the leader gets really blatantly violent, along with enough government propaganda, it can stop a revolution.
Luddites is also a good example. Oh, you are poor and starving and protesting on the streets? They start destroying machines? Time to arrest everyone, even those who did nothing.
I'd also make the argument that it's easier to do with today's technology than when Stalin did it.
The propaganda is easier, the violence is harder. Don't know how that balances out...
That tactic backfired multiple times in history, for example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defenestrations_of_Prague
Obligatory we are at higher inequality than immediately before the French Revolution. Wonder what that means?

Some interesting reading:

Professor Walter Scheidel examines the history of peace and economic inequality over the past 10,000 years - https://news.stanford.edu/2017/01/24/stanford-historian-unco...

Revolution and the Rebirth of Inequality - https://www.jstor.org/stable/2777764?seq=1