you've got to understand their roots.
As a West Coast Strausian historian and self-described conservative, VDH sometimes makes crazy historical comparisons like equating the South and the Confederacy with the left, which is totally nuts. As an example see Brion McClanahan's
Hanson’s Strange “Blue Confederacy” https://www.brionmcclanahan.com/blog/hansons-strange-blue-confederacy/
But VDH has redeemed himself presently and does a good job comparing the evolution of the leftist crazies of today with their ideological forefathers, the French Jacobins. He isn't the first to do this, but he deserves credit for writing about the undeniable similarities again up to date.
The Impending Thermidor Reaction in Jacobin AmericaAt peak woke, our reign of terror is beginning to lose momentum because its continuation would destroy all the work of 247 years of American progress and sacrifice.By Victor Davis Hanson
May 7, 2023
Quote:The decade-long French Revolution that broke out in 1789 soon devolved into far more than removing the monarchy, as it became antithetical to the earlier American precedent. American notions of liberty and freedom were seen as far too narrow, given the state, if only all-powerful and all-wise, could mandate “equality” and force “fraternity” among its subjects.
Each cycle of French revolutionary fervor soon became more radicalized and cannibalistic—until it reached its logical ends of violent absurdity.
Originally, the idea of curbing the power of a Bourbon king through a parliamentary republic became lethally counter-revolutionary.
Soon even attacks on the Catholic Church and the abolition of the monarchy entirely were deemed insufficient. The king himself and his consorts had to be beheaded. Monasteries and churches were to be ransacked, and priests exiled or lynched.
The sometimes moderate Girondins, who favored constitutional government, were mostly executed by their former friends among the Montagnards. In turn, the latter were soon deemed too conservative for the emerging crazy Jacobins. So they, too, had to be decapitated. The ensuing year-long reign of terror guillotined thousands of innocents, deemed guilty of being guilty of something.
By 1793, the revolution had turned nihilist and suicidal. The foundational date of France was recalibrated (not as 1619 but) as 1789—or “year one.”
Jacobins sought to wipe out religion, both materially and spiritually. They replaced God, first, with the atheistic “Cult of Reason” and then a stranger still “Cult of the Supreme Being”—a dreamed-up, living, humanistic god that only the murderous Robespierre could fully envision, but eerily similar to our own Green New Deal deity.
More...
https://amgreatness.com/2023/05/07/the-impending-thermidor-reaction-in-jacobin-america/
