[JumpCrisscross]

During France’s Reign of Terror, executions by guillotine were public. It was considered distinguished for victims to go stoically, and many did, which left the crowds to have their fun.

I recall, however, and this may be apocryphal, that one woman went to the stand screaming and crying and begging for mercy. This humanized her. The crowds, soured to their revelry, went home.

I am curious if her pleas were heard because those people were better than we are today, or because social media amplifies our cruelty beyond even that of our darkest modern histories.

[spwa4]

During France's Reign of Terror, the line towards the guillotine is rumored to have been over 4 kilometers long. 30% of Paris died. This done to kill the bourgeoisie, despite that over 90% of those executed didn't hold any titles. It turned into a massacre, and was replicated across France. The son of the king was locked up at age 8, alone, until he died, before his 11th birthday. The youngest person actually guillotined was 13 years old.

... I don't think there was much "humanizing" going on at all.

[touwer]

Bs. I live in Paris. There is no evidence at all of 4 km or your other claims. The total number of executions in France during the Reign of Terror is estimated at around 16,000 to 40,000, with about 2,600 to 3,000 executions in Paris alone. Paris's population at the time was roughly 600,000, so the percentage of Parisians who died by execution was closer to 0.5%, not 30%.

[kjsingh]

Likely so - when executions expand to 30% of the population, they are no longer fun

[throwaway91827]

Revolutionary terror in 1789 wasn't about killing the Bourgeisie- the French Revolution was a Bourgeois revolution- the Revolution was about overthrowing the Aristocracy, the nobles, the people with, as you say, titles- Being Bourgeois generally meant that you're common-born but well-educated and moneyed.

The fact that the Bourgeois of France were growing in real power, but completely unrepresented in the formal political systems in France, was one of the major pressure points that caused the entire system to explode into Revolutionary violence.

I think you're right to point out the irony that revolutionary violence mostly affected the common man, and not the aristocracy, but the "enemies of the revolution" were nobles, clergy, and their sympathizers (perceived or otherwise), not "the bourgeoisie".

Proletarian revolutions against the Bourgeois don't really happen until there IS an urban proletariat in the first place- in pre-industrial 1789, the bourgeois and the sans-culottes were grouped together socially in the "Third Estate".

[JumpCrisscross]

Oh I don’t mean to humanize the Reign. I’m just saying that even in those depths of depravity, tears were recognized for what they were, at least once, perhaps, again, apocryphally. The notion that tears would inflame an audience to more violence is interesting juxtaposed against that.

[justonceokay]

Social media makes things further away. It allows the callous of the inner city to grow over the heart of the most rural peasant. It democratizes a kind of mental illness that used to only affect famous Hollywood stars.

But this is all irrelevant to the article at hand

[JumpCrisscross]

> this is all irrelevant to the article at hand

I don’t think it is. The White House describes the image as a meme because it’s designed to go viral. It’s made for the algorithms to boost to specific audiences.