#There's a french revolution side of tumblr

[lookimtryingmybest]

what do you mean that old books don't have fandoms like tv series do. What am i meant to do with this obsession now. Scream??? Cry???? Become a mushroom?????

[northwest-by-a-train]

New rule for Anglos: you are not allowed to talk about the French Revolution if you don't spend at least three minutes on the wikipedia article "War of the first coalition"

[enlitment]

Huge shout-out to my friend who lets me indulge my hyperfixations and somehow managed to track down a photo of my old high school history notes on the French revolution??

Some higlights!

Headline: The Impact of the French Revolution (on the Czech Lands) (which was part of the Austrian Empire back then, making it just a bit more spicy)

After the fall of the Bastille in 1780, the revolution gains traction, making Austrian authorities uneasy

Leopold II. (Austrian emperor) knows it is important to filter the news getting to Austria from France

The news about the revolution are apparently more censored in Czech-language newspaper than the German ones, since the Czechs were known to rebel against authorities (kind of a "don't want to give them any ideas" type of situation") -> this meant that Czechs who spoke German would have had better access to the news about the French Revolution

The French Revolution would have more support in the Czech intellectual circles, compared to the countryside

a first disinformation campaign was launched in the Austrian newspaper, focused on making the French Revolution look as bad as possible (designed to protect the "traditional regime = the right solution" narrative)

This was contrasted with the experiences of real French people brought to the Czech lands by French soldiers (e. g. during the Napoleonic Wars - the Battle of Austerlitz, arguably the most important battle on our territory)

it also says that the French army was apparently viewed largely positively by Czech people and that the soldiers generally behaved quite decently? (I guess there's a really low bar for a behaviour of a foreign army but still. This surprised me, definitely not something I remembered from my class!)

After the ideas of the French Revolution spread to our country, it influenced the intellectual climate and made people rethink the status quo under the Austrian rule

last point (in all caps for some reason lol): FIRST RECORDER TIME IN WHICH THE STATE USED A DISINFORMATION CAMPAIGN, trying to paint France in a bad light

you also get to witness my horrible handwriting I guess~

[nando161mando]

The French

[joons]

So I became a huge fan of the French Revolution a few hours ago and I'm particularly interested in Maximilien Robespierre. I've been speed-reading lots of articles and they all say different things. Some present him as an Evul Bloodthirsty Executioner Dictator, others present him as a misunderstood kitten. And whenever I find a headline that goes "He was a complex individual, click here for a nuanced take" when I click on it, it says "This post is deleted." 1/3

I’ve browsed your entire Robespierre tag (as well as your French Revolution tag). In a post a long time ago, you called him a “fretful adorable hopelessly self-righteous psychopath.” And more recently, you reblogged a post talking about how he wasn’t really a psychopath, but a scapegoat and not really to blame for the executions in France. So now you have me really curious! 2/3 I already have a list of books about him to check out, as well as a list of films. What I'm mainly interested in is your present personal opinions about him (particularly on a moral, good vs. evil scale) and how/if your perspective on him has changed over time. 3/3

I love this question, anon! "A few hours ago." [zooms through all the reading immediately]

I have been interested in the French Revolution since childhood and started reading more about Robespierre specifically at 17. My earliest sources were Thomas Carlyle's The French Revolution and Ruth Scurr's Fatal Purity, which are both entertaining but flawed. Carlyle, writing in the 19th century, really nails the fever high of the period, taking readers on a lurid, emotional journey through the events of the Revolution, but it's a history based on popular misconceptions that existed at the time and is not the best way to get to know the characters well (but it is brilliant literature). Fatal Purity is a Robespierre biography that comes very close to characterizing him as a "fretful psychopath," endearing at times but ultimately unhinged. Scurr is basically interested in how he rationalizes certain things to himself, but she tends to stay kind of shallow, like, "Well, he was just Like That," instead of going deeper into the time period and examining how Robespierre compared to his peers and how the revolutionaries adapted as circumstances changed. I've read many more books since and don't think Scurr is the final word on him, but even though she situates him as more of a "villain" figure, that book had a big emotional impact on me. I found his death absolutely haunting, and I immediately wanted to learn more about him.

I think you will find quite quickly that the French Revolution still generates heated emotions for a lot of people, and it's often true that you can pinpoint someone's exact political leanings and the time in which they are writing based on their depiction of Robespierre. A lot of this starts to make sense if you look into historiographies of the Revolution, how the story reshapes itself in the telling, how its central figures can become caricatures and symbols that are no longer regarded by their words and actions but by what we believe about them. They become portents, not people, and they bear the anxieties of whoever writes their story. Robespierre's image as a bloodthirsty, deranged, egotistical dictator was set by the people who drove him from power in a way that was quite bloodthirsty itself, and many of them were much more actively involved in constructing systems of violence and persecution in France than Robespierre ever was. However, there are also plenty of sources that are politically invested in downplaying or excusing the mobs and the massacres that were at least politely sanctioned by all revolutionary leaders. You can see the positive appraisals skyrocket after the Paris Commune's rise and fall - many budding Marxists wanted to look back with fresh eyes at the progressive ideals championed by the revolutionaries and even by the Terror, so while we owe a debt to many of those historians for sifting through the reactionary propaganda that way overstated Robespierre's culpability, they can be misleading too. A lot of the scholarship is fun to read because Robespierre always forces people to take sides, to speak in absolutes, because he would not hedge on what he believed - ever. And because he held the ideal of the Revolution above himself, because he defended it and was so strident about its moral necessity, because he was willing to be judged by the Revolution, then of course now he is going to be judged for it, even when his influence is entirely absent from the scenes of its most extreme violence.

All this to say I am not interested in the Revolution because I necessarily see my politics reflected in it; that is not what interests me about it. I love it because it was one of those rare moments in history where anything felt possible and no one knew what would happen next - and I love learning how the people living through it responded and resonated and reckoned with the world coming unglued under their feet. I stan Marie Antoinette, Robespierre, and Napoleon equally, all of whom could not be more different politically or personally, but they all show why this is my favorite historical period to explore.

Robespierre is just one man of many who got jostled into action and into prominence by the Revolution, a bright, ordinary lawyer with a heart for ordinary men, who went from advocating against the death penalty to inflexibly calling for the death of the King, not out of hypocrisy, or social pressure, or contrarianism, but by seeing no other way to proceed while staying true to his highest ideals. The Revolution is full of moments of supreme irony like this, where you can see people steeling themselves against the horrible thing that is coming next, suspicious of everyone else's motives, only for the thing never to materialize, or for them to be so accurate in their predictions that no one around them is ready to hear it. The events that preceded Robespierre's downfall were not of a man consolidating power but languishing in his bed and clutching at a way to again make sense of what France should be, first by envisioning a grand revival of patriotism (not logic or calculation, but a bid for the heart) and then - when he felt disillusioned and betrayed - by refusing to abandon his faith in his country. He could never doubt her, only the people who served her. That optimism drove his paranoia, his disappointment, and it drove him to the scaffold believing there was one more turn of destiny waiting for him. He is a fascinating person who could be exceedingly warm and terrifyingly cold, whose idealism was mixed with a clear-eyed practicality (but not with cruelty), who was often on the verge of nervous, sickly breakdowns but whose appearances at the Convention brought out his fierce tenacity and passionate moral vision. He had a sense of his own myth, aligning himself too closely with the soul of the country, but he also refused to be revered as any sort of hero or leader, preferring to spend time studying minute details and writing in his room. He saw himself as a servant of the greatest ideals, someone who could bring justice to those with none. Any way you look at it, whether he was always essentially pure-hearted and stymied by those who were more self-serving, or whether he lost his sense of justice and gave into a kind of manic paranoia, becoming subsumed by the contradictory demands of the Revolution's ever-evolving aims, perhaps sacrificing something essential and human in order to serve the hope of something better, it is still a tragic story. That is how I see him.

Some recommendations, if you don't have them on your list already:

Books

Twelve Who Ruled - R.R. Palmer (absolutely ESSENTIAL; there are few texts more measured or more informative, and it does a fantastic job of showing the spheres of responsibility of each member of the Committee of Public Safety); Robespierre: A Revolutionary Life - Peter McPhee (one of the latest English biographies, and very good at clearing up misconceptions without being overly romanticized or ideological).

Films

La Revolution Francaise (1989) - A detailed, accurate epic with great casting; Danton (1983) - I remember this being pretty good, but I watched it a long time ago while having the worst migraine of my life, so who knows; Napoleon (1927) - Visual feast! A classic.

Novels

A Place of Greater Safety - Hilary Mantel. I have my quibbles with some of the characterizations (mainly for Saint-Just), but I love her writing and I think she portrays the main three wonderfully. She also wrote this great essay about Robespierre I reread a lot. ("He was a man of spectacular absent-mindedness. He liked flowers. Sometimes he laughed till he cried. He caught Madame Tussaud when she slipped and fell downstairs on her sightseeing-trip to the Bastille. Discern a subject, not an object, and feelings creep in.")

[veshadi]

[anneofkeys]

Ya'll it finally happened, after months of being on the side of tumblr that makes fan art of the French Revolution, I have been blessed with tumblr giving me the side of tumblr with American Revolution fan art. This is a joy!

[kerlhau]

Je pense que ça pourrait faire un très chouette stickers ! J'aime dessiner Louis-Jean ♥

[frenchie-fallen-angel]

If anyone needs soundtrack for their life tonight, let me share mine 🔥🔥🔥

[whencyclopedia]

African Americans in the American Revolution

On the eve of the American Revolution (1765-1789), the Thirteen Colonies had a population of roughly 2.1 million people. Around 500,000 of these were African Americans, of whom approximately 450,000 were enslaved. Comprising such a large percentage of the population, African Americans naturally played a vital role in the Revolution, on both the Patriot and Loyalist sides.

Black Patriots

On 5 March 1770, a mob of around 300 American Patriots accosted nine British soldiers on King Street in Boston, Massachusetts. Outraged by the British occupation of their city, as well as the recent murder of an 11-year-old boy, the crowd was filled with Bostonians from all walks of life; among them was Crispus Attucks, a mixed-race sailor commonly thought to have been of African and Native American descent. When the British soldiers fired into the crowd, Attucks was struck twice in the chest and was believed to have been the first to die in what became known as the Boston Massacre. He is regarded, therefore, as the first casualty of the American Revolution and has often been celebrated as a martyr for American liberty.

Five years later, in the early morning hours of 19 April 1775, a column of British soldiers was on its way to seize the colonial munitions stored at Concord, Massachusetts, when it was confronted by 77 Patriot militiamen on Lexington Green. Standing in this cluster of militia was Prince Estabrook, one of the few enslaved men to reside in Lexington, who had picked up a musket and joined his white neighbors in defending his home. In the ensuing Battles of Lexington and Concord, Estabrook was wounded in the shoulder but recovered in time to join the Continental Army two months later. He was selected to guard the army headquarters at Cambridge during the Battle of Bunker Hill (17 June 1775) and was freed from slavery at the end of the war.

Attucks and Estabrook were just two of the tens of thousands of Black Americans who supported the American Revolution. There was no single motivation for their doing so. Some, of course, were inspired by the rhetoric of white revolutionary leaders, who used words like 'slavery' to describe the condition of the Thirteen Colonies under Parliamentary rule and promised to forge a new society built on liberty and equality. These words obviously appealed to the enslaved population, many of whom were optimistic that, even if slavery was not entirely abolished, they might receive better opportunities in this new nation. Others enlisted in the Continental Army to secure their individual freedoms, as the Second Continental Congress had proclaimed that any enslaved man who fought the British would be granted his freedom at the end of his service. African Americans also enlisted to escape the day-to-day horrors of slavery, to collect the bounties and soldiers' pay offered by recruiters, or simply because they were drawn to the adventure of a soldier's life. Additionally, several Black Americans were forced to enlist by their Patriot masters, who preferred to send their slaves to fight instead of going themselves.

Of course, not all Black Patriots served in the Continental Army or Patriot militias. Some, like James Armistead Lafayette, were spies; posing as a runaway slave, Lafayette was able to infiltrate the British camp of Lord Charles Cornwallis and procure vital information that helped lead to the Patriot victory at the Siege of Yorktown. The French general Marquis de Lafayette was impressed with his service and helped procure his freedom after the war, leading James Lafayette to adopt the marquis' name.

Other Black Patriots showed their support for the movement with their words. Phillis Wheatley was an enslaved young woman who had been brought to Boston from Senegal, where she had been seized. She was purchased by the Wheatley family, who quickly recognized her literary talents and encouraged her to write poetry. By the early 1770s, Phillis Wheatley was already a celebrated poet. She began to write extensively on the virtues of the American Revolution, praising Patriot leaders like George Washington. Despite his status as a slaveholder, Washington was moved by Wheatley's work and invited her to meet him, stating that he would be honored "to see a person so favored by the muses" (Philbrick, 538).

Continue reading...

[icyfox62]

One of the wildest things about Tumblr and how people are reacting to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is knowing the obsession Tumblr has had with Les Mis, Karl Marx/communism, and/or the French Revolution (or at least the guillotine part of it).

Like, we saw what happened, right? In Les Mis, the students, though they had a cause many would deem as noble, were doomed to fail. They put blind faith that in a pipe dream that everyone would come to their sides because they were so sure that they were the majority. They didn’t even do their research or know the face of Javert, a local policeman, yet expected to win against an army.

Karl Marx created a system that makes it easier for fascists and tyrannical groups to hold power because it requires limited individualism and a level of trust that’s almost impossible on a large scale.

Or how during the French Revolution, the people started blaming the leaders of the revolution and killed them. Because they got accustomed to shedding blood at every slight instead of putting a form of government in that was actually going to try and do the work. The empty power vacuum made it super easy for people even more radical to take control.

How do you see realistic examples like these and still think things are going to end well? Please explain to me how do you get a free, no-risk trial run to a descent into chaos, know that it’s bad, and still put decide to go full steam ahead?

[theorahsart]

I’ve been happily dragged into the French Revolution, do you have any recommendations on where to start learning about this??? My brain doesn’t hold French names very well so I literally only know Robespierre and the dude that got killed in the bath

OH NO my enthusiasm has caught on, welcome to the insane drama that is French Revolution 😆

So if you're able to listen to podcasts, I feel like Grey History is a good place to start because it paints a really good picture of the situation, culture and feelings of the public leading up to the revolution.

It then delves in a straightforward timeline into the various events during the revolution and gives all the different points of view from each side (there's so many different 'sides' it's a lot like modern day politics where everyone is quite divided in their motivations).

So I feel like it's a good starting point before going into the many books, that in contrast tend to look at more individual moments without giving much overall context.

If you'd prefer reading books to listening, I'm reading currently 'Liberty or Death' by Peter McFee which also (so far, I haven't finished it) feels also like something that is painting a good overall picture in a straightforward timeline, and giving loads of cultural context that helps you understand various people's motivations and actions.

My favourite book in English that I've read so far is 'Twelve Who Ruled'- but it's very specific to the one 'reign of terror' year which is pretty far along in the first part of the revolution. But I think I would recc reading this anyway- you might not understand all the context but it's so riveting I think it helps you see why the topic and people involved are so fascinating.

As I'm not an academic/easily remembers facts kind of person, I really like that it so vividly painted a messy situation in a story telling kind of way, without being particularly biased to any side. Each politicians very different personality shines through, which is one element of Frev that makes it so interesting. It also does a great job of sharing in this story telling way, the overall culture at the time, psychology/sociology of the public and individuals, and various messy af situations that had to be dealt with.

It basically breaks down really well something horrific and complicated so that you understand how it came to be that way, and how people ended up making the decisions they made. Also, SO much drama in this one year, so many friendships broken down, so much back stabbing lol

Outside of that, I think actually the online community is really amazing and there's so many people on here translating stuff into English and answering questions to info that is normally scattered across several books/archival information, and then these amazing ppl just like bring it together in Tumblr posts. Looking through the Frev tag is a good way to piece together all the various details when you're just starting out.

[hasdrubal-gisco]

here's a heads up for the next civilizational step - feudalism 2 ! you can already see it beginning to form. the centralization of states that dominated the 19th and 20th centuries (sidebar. considering switching to the french style when referencing centuries, in this case eg. XIXth and XXth - do we like ?) emerged at a time when the productive parts of the economy (laborers, natural resources, capital (real and money)) had a much tougher time moving around – not so much the case today. financial capital can move around relatively easily, increases in productivity and infrastructure have made it so that startup cost to for example build a new factory elsewhere are much lower than before, relatively speaking. people can move around much more easily (source: the tumblr dashboard, linkedin recruiters). we’ve already seen countries deliberately change their legislative systems in order to attract money and people from abroad – think city states and tax havens like singapore, dubai, monaco, belize. the national bank of lithuania (a country with a population of 3m) gave revolut (fintech company) a banking license which counts for the whole of the EU, so now there are something like 50m bank accounts registered in and insured by the national bank of lithuania. this kind of competitive advantage-seeking behavior will only continue (because as long as there are arbitrage opportunities, it will work). the easiest way for countries on the losing side of this trade to hedge their losses is to enforce a feudal serf-citizen status. a french passport will not mean a right to participate in the french political system, but rather an obligation to the state treasury. the US already does this – if you have a US passport, you have to disclose your income to the IRS even if you live and work elsewhere, and have that other country designated as your tax home; you have to annually disclose to the IRS all international bank accounts holding more than $10k (if you don’t, that’s okay. every bank you can think of (excl. in switzerland) voluntarily provides detailed info on every account held by US citizens – look up FBAR and the array of international agreements to support this). the UK has long struggled with people pulling out every penny and asset out of the UK economy because of high tax rates, and while there’s no chance france will pass a marginal 90% income tax rate over 400k EUR/y, the solution will simply be to put the money and declare income elsewhere – while still living and working in france. The only solution (from a state’s view) is the american model of you being a serf, and being subject to THEIR rules regardless of where you go

[enlitment]

Dearest most virtuous Citoyens

(aka beloved Frevblr),

as the 20 Prairial — or 8th of June — is slowly approaching, as well as in the spirit of celebrating Pride, I thought it would be fun to do some kind of Festival of the Supreme Being blogging/celebration on Saturday.

I mean everyone knows that Tumblr absolutely blows up on March 15 during the Ides of March, and I was wondering whether something similar could be pulled off on the French Revolution side, albeit on a much smaller scale

I don't really have anything specific in mind (memes, a playlist, something like that?), so if you have any cool ideas on how to do it, feel free to reblog!

[marxistjughead]

there is apparently a side of tumblr who believes in génocide vendéen and i am not a "it didn't happen but they deserved it and we'll do it again" person because i don't think it's a very funny bit given how closely it resembles negationism but the term genocide should not be thrown around lightly on tumblr.com and is heatedly debated even in academic circles (source: i am in the trenches) and depends a lot on how you perceive revolutionary violence and what the french revolution brought in general. and like sure war crimes not great but do you want to have the very same politics as philippe de villiers? really? for realsies?

[mask131]

I have been seeing a lot of people recently on Tumblr go 0_o upon the wave of antisemitism that is flooding Europe, the USA and the Internet recently. The reason they are shocked by this, however, is not because of the antisemitism itself... But because they see it comes from "the left". And this turns out to be a shock for them, because they have a hard time understanding how people on the "left-wing" of the political spectrum could end up being VERY antisemitic, as antisemitism was - even before the Nazi party was created - typically associated to the extreme-right and to the right-wing part of the political spectrum.

Except that... when you have been paying attentions to little details and some history lessons, it comes to no surprise at all. The extreme-left (because we have to say things as they are, the current wave of antisemitism is partially born from the extreme-left) is basically the twin of the extreme-right. And I am not just speaking of the fact antisemitism exists as a principle beyond any political party and any religion (antisemitism has been carried on throughout History by the left, the right, by apolitics, by Christians, by Muslims, by basically everyone that is not Jewish).

There was a French comedy movie that is talked about a lot - because it is a movie that never got to be made. It is a movie called "Le Crocodile", "The Crocodile". One of the reasons this unmade movie is so famous is because it was planned to be the "final" movie of Louis de Funès, considered to this day one of the greatest French actors and a monument of French humor. Louis de Funès' archetypal character, his "type-casting", was as a greedy, tyrannical, wrathful and petty, but ultimately ridiculous and sympathetic, middle-management type of guy, an ambitious, vain and cowardly person in a position of power that abused of it, but ultimately ended up either humbled by the story/events/other characters, or had his good side come out in the end. He was an antisemitic factory owner who ended up learning how to love and appreciate the Jewish community ; he was a tyrannical maestro who ended up forced to work for the Resistance during World War II ; he was a scheming, pollution-endorsing mayor who ended up forced to abandon everything because he was bested by his wife ; he was an abusive and criminal minister that kept knowing disgrace after disgrace, and ended up doing heroic deeds but just because the villains of the story were preventing him from doing his own political conspiracy... And "Le Crocodile" was supposed to be the culmination of these specific roles, as de Funès was to play a dictator losing his power during a revolution.

Inspired by Charlie Chaplin's own take on dictatorship, this movie was supposed to depict Louis de Funès as a Pinochet-caricature, "Crochet", an extreme-right dictator in an imaginary country. After a series of adventures, the dictator ended up overthrown by a rival and sent to prison. But his cunning and scheming knowing no bounds, he ended up going back to power... by shifting to the left-wing of the political spectrum, joining with left-oriented political activist, overthrowing his replacement, destroying his own old extreme-right government, to replace it by a new, left-revolutionnary government... That quickly became an extreme-left dictatorship led, once again by Crochet. And this was supposed to be the final, bitter joke of the movie: the beginning and ending of the story were supposed to be identical, because despite the political goals and vocabulary having changed, the dictatorship Crochet had rebuilt in the extreme-left was in all identical to his extreme-right dictatorship.

The movie was never made, unfortunately, due to Louis de Funès passing before shooting could begin. But the same message can be found in the classics of a fiction genre that is much more well-known by English audience: dystopia. What defined the "classical" dystopias, born during the height of the Cold War? From George Orwell's "1984" to Harlan Ellison "I have no mouth and I must scream", there is always this recurring motif of "You had various super-powers with opposing ideologies that waged war against each other... and yet now, we can't actually distinguish these opposite powers from one another, because they are doing the exact same thing and their ideologies end up reaching the same goals and the same points." This was a reaction to the dead-end of the Cold War, where the extremes of the Americanized, capitalist, "Western" block and of the Sovietized, communist "Eastern" block matched each other, resulting in the two looking identical in the eyes of many countries and people stuck in the middle of the two... But the lesson can be applied to any other situation, because it contains one core, fundamental truth people seem to have forgotten about today. Any extreme is bad ; and any good thing, taken to an extreme, will be horrible.

Take Christianity! A religion built on love and peace, and giving your food to the poor and offering the other cheek when you are slapped and forgiving those that betray you... And we ended up with the fucking Inquisition, and the witch hunts, and the religious wars, and many more atrocities, all in the name of "love and peace".

I digress here but honestly I want to get all of this out while I can, so that I have no more to say.

So yes, the "left" as people learned to know it today is based on good principles. (I personally hate reducing things to the "left" or the "right" when it comes to social matter, because for example defending people's right to have their own sexual orientation respected and recognized is not a political question, it is a human question... But since Tumblr users are still in shock unable to understand why the "left could be bad", and since we are facing extreme-left movements, I'll stick to this binary system for now). Yes, the left is the "side of the people" that works on helping the masses against the elite ; yes the left is the side of the "minorities" against "oppresors", yes the left has fought for excellent and needed things like feminism and acceptance and anti-racism... All good principles. And all principles that are turned into tools of hatred and oppression by the extreme-left.

I don't think I need to explain why the extreme-right is bad - in general people on Tumblr are very aware of it, and history has proven us what happens when the extreme-right rises up. Racism, discrimination, xenophobia, homophobia, religious fanaticism... All things typical of the extreme-right, no need to go further. But a lot of people seem to have a hard time wrapping their head around the system and the processes that lead to the "left" becoming the "extreme-left", and why the extreme-left can end up mirroring the extreme-right.

But the answer is very simple. It is this logic as old as time of "reverse bullying". When the bullied decided to take their revenge on the bully by bullying it in return, the bullied becomes the bully, and it does not solve anything since it just reverses the situation. Or more generally speaking: when the defense, love and acceptance of a minority/victim/side becomes hatred and rejection of the majority/bully/other side, there is an open gateway for BAD things. And the wave of antisemitism currently going on is a perfect representation of that.

I personally strongly disliked the extreme-left long before the whole Hamas-Israel situation. I hated the extreme-left because, especially in France, the extreme-left had the worst possible thing when it came to anti-intellectualism. Extreme-left politicians and activists have explicitely spoken against or attacked things such as higher education or any kind of school beyond high school, as well as things such as classical literature or old books. There is this "populist" idea behind the extreme-left, that, as "men/women of the people", as the "voice of the masses", they need to opposite, shit on and destroy anything seen or deemed as an "elite". But the "elite" isn't just your old rich white guy, oh no! The elite also means stuff seen as the intellectual elite. For example, classics of literature. Authors of older generations. And if you wonder how bad it can be: when during the last presidential elections the candidate for the extreme-left was not elected, its young supporters went to the university of the Sorbonne and trashed it. They destroyed computers, destroyed rare books within the university's library, they destroyed the papers and works of the students and teachers in there... Because they were angry at their candidate not being elected. And an university as old and as famous as the Sorbonne, THE French university, was thus seen as the "enemy" and as a symbol of what opposed the access of their candidate to the presidential position. And the result was... destroying books. Yes, bookburners can be as much from the right as from the left. Quite literaly some times.

There was this very hilarious but very very sad thing that happened in French Canada some years ago... There was this group of Canadians (white and Christians if I recall well) that wanted to show an open support and public excuses for how the Catholic Church, how the Canadian government and how white settlers treated the people of the First Nations and the discrimination they had to face. Nice, isn't it? The intention is good, public manifestations recognizing this dark side of the history is good, doing events to move forward is good, right? Except... we are talking about French-Canadians here. French-Canadian-Christians, who are... really something. So what did they do, to show their support to the First Nations? Give back some of their land? Remove some of the horrible laws against them? Recognize them more rights? NO! THEY BURNED BOOKS! Sounds like a joke? It is not. To show their support, what they did was take various comic-books and children books from the early-to-mid 20th century with representations of Native-Americans considered "offensive", and they burned them in a great bonfire. They literaly did... book-burning. To fight colonization and racism. A perfect example of how fucked up and warped it can all be.

This incident above is just one of the many incidents that I have collected across the years and that illustrated what I called the "bad woke". Now... when designating those ridiculous and dangerous excesses, I hate to just say "woke". Because the root of the "woke" ideas are good! Good and positive things: defend trans-people, defend gay people, encourage diversity and body-positivity and fight against racism and religious discrimination. These things are good! And too many people who are just homophobic, transphobic, racist or any other of fucked up jerk use "woke" as an insult and as a derogatory term for just being a normal uman being. So I do not like using "woke" alone to designate the fucked-up extremes the polar opposite side can ledn itself to. But... I have to recognize that there is a bad, extreme and toxic form of "wokeness", and until I can find a better term to designate this phenomenon, I will use the term "bad woke". And the process, the thought-system, the workings of the "bad woke" are the exact sames behind the extreme-left, and the sames that led to this wave of antisemitism drowning the Internet.

I evoked an incident that took place in France again years ago, which was more of an unthought, stupid mistake than an actual malicious intent, but showed how a slight twist can turn "good" from "bad". A "safe place" had been created somewhere, for women and trans people to be able to gather without any presence of men or non-trans people. So far so good, but the twist of the story is that when creating this space the rules for it were too summarized and too-shortened up, and so the creators of the space said this and plastered this on the walls: "Only women and trans people allowed. No men allowed." Do you see the logical problem? What about trans men? Trans men literaly didn't know what to do, since "trans" people were accepted and this space was built for them... and yet "men" as a whole were forbidden. Meaning if a trans man entered the space, they had to somehow not be recognized as a man, but as rather something closer to a woman?

This truly was just a stupid mistake by people who had not thought about it - but it actually shows the process by which defending one minority or an oppressed group can end up harming or hunting another minority/oppressed group. We are all aware of what happened when feminists and the feminism fight to defend women or provide them equal rights, ended up drifting into transphobia and hate on trans women for not being "real women". It is all a messy bag of snakes.

And so, what is the link to the antisemitism today? What does all this proves when it comes to the extreme-left and the Jews? Well, easy.

Why is the extreme-left antisemitic? Because one of the core of the extreme-left is, as I said, to fight against the "elite". Be it a social, cultural, ethnic or political elite, the "left" defined itself mostly as "the mass against the elite, the many against the few". This is mixed with the left fighting against racism, and also fighting against things such as colonization. Again, all very good things. But let's place ourselves in the mind of an antisemitic extreme-leftist. What happens? Why would I come after the Jews, who themselves are known to be an oppressed and discriminated against minority, in both ethnic and religious terms? Why would the extreme-left decide to make a prey out of the people the extreme-right was known to hunt?

Because they are seen as the "elite". We know that extreme-left groups feed into the same antisemitic delusions and conspiracy theories that the Jews are the secret elite controlling the world. Even if they are not hardcore conspiracists, the extreme-left movements have several Jewish stereotypes widespread among them - to take France, just a recent study showed that a lot of people who identified on the left-wing also recognized that Jews were wealthier than regular French people, that they had too much presence in finances, and too much presence in media. The extreme-left searches for a form of elite to fight against and shit upon and hate with all of its might - and when the antisemitic cliches present the Jews as this elite, as some sort of secret powerful cabal controlling the finances and the media and being wealthy and friends with politicians, the extreme-left will latch onto these ideas as if truth, because they hate any form of elite, no matter if the elite actually exists or not. It is no surprise that the same conspiracy cliches about "satanic cults murdering babies and drinking human blood" are used for both the Jews (supposedly the shadow elite) and the actual rich and wealthy, white WASPs family of the USA. Same conspiracy theory, different people.

Of course, the Hamas-Israel war has been what sparked the fire. Because Israel is seen as a colonizer, the Jews as a whole are identifying with other colonizing countries and historical colonizing empires. Because Israel currently has a right-wing/extreme-right government, the Jews are a whole are seen as being from the extreme-right. Because of the retaliation against the Hamas attacks upon Gaza are just a massive unleashing of destruction causing massive deaths and a humanitarian crisis, Jews are a whole are seen as being genocide-endorcers. With people even going as far as to say they became as bad as Nazis or worse, or that they are causing a new Holocaust - the Jewish history being literaly returned against them. Everything that surrounds the Hamas-Israel war needs a post of its own because we have EVERYTHING all at once. We have people who refuse to understand a conflict is not black and white, and that in this war there is no good guy or bad guy, just people suffering on both sides and a lot of deaths and horrors on both sides. We have people who generalize Israel as being somehow the embodiment of all the Jews in the world, and consider Jews from Africa or Europe or America to be responsible for Israel's actions - and who disguise antisemitism as "anti-zionism". We have people who, in their effort to paint Israel as the sole villain, will literaly treat the Hamas as heroes, and ignore for example the fact that they are a terrorist organization, that they actually attacked Israel in terrorist attacks (people even deny the Hamas attacks even happened, the same way you have negationists of the Holocaust), or that they are using the people of Gaza as meat-shield for Israel attacks, or that they have extremely fanatical and racist ideologies based on a genocide of Jews as a whole and the destruction of the USA. And the list goes on and on and this is such a mess...

But here is the thing... The Hamas attacks on Israel and Israel's retaliation were just the spark. Meaning there was fuel before that. And I already started explaining why. The extreme-left had strong latent antisemitic feelings which were widespread, but since not openly hostile or aggressive were not much spotted. (Unlike for example fanatical extreme-right Christians which are very loud and open about their hatred of Jews and parade Jewish caricatures around on signs). And while I evoked before the warped belief that the Jews are somehow an "elite", hence the discrimination, there is another factor that must be taken nto account... What I call the "pick-and-choose your minority" game.

To take for example extreme-left groups in France - but I think it works in other countries too. They are very open about defending minorities and people of color, and they have been strongly standing by the side of black people and Arab people and Muslim people and people from African descent. So far, so good... But the thing is that when you are careful, you see that they do nothing about or never speak about other minorities. For example the Jews, but also Asian people. Not a word, not a peep. And we know there is discrimination in France against them - we already have studies that proved that in universities (which, surprise, are mostly left-leaning) a "common" antisemitism was very widespread, not physical, but taking the form of discriminatory joke, the common use of slurs and other verbal abuse. But we also had a wave of discrimination against people of Asian ethnicites (mostly people of Chinese culture or descent, but given the perpetrators were racist I doubt they'd make a difference between China, Japan or Korea). There was a wave some years ago of brutal street-agressions and mugging and theft targeting Chinese women and Chinese elders (or Chinese-looking people). And the thieves and muggers, once caught, gave the same excuse antisemitic thieves gave: "Everybody knows they have money."

But the thing is that while extreme-left groups are very vocal and very violent when it comes to islamophobia or racism against black people... they are very quiet and discreet when it comes to antisemitic or discrimination against Asian people. (Or at least they were, because since their antisemitism was revealed, they have been very vocal about Jewish people on media, to defend themselves). And this little phenomenon, that mostly went unnoticed and unanalyzed by media, reflects a larger concept that was found everywhere - and in fact very present on the Internet - and that imbues the extreme-left. And this perverse concept is "Some minorities are real minorities. Others are not. Some people are real POCs. Others are not."

To be clear: many people consider that Jews or Asians are not supposed to be minorities, couldn't be oppressed and shouldn't be defended as much as "actual" people of colors or "true" minorities". Because, in their words, these ethnicities are "too white", or "too close to white people". They are "model minorities", they were "integrated", they are seen as coming from either "powerful" nations ranked the same as former colonialist powers (Japan, China), either from "sheltered" and "untouchable" areas (the massive Jewish acceptance and defense after WWII). And the result of these considerations is that the extreme-left treat these groups as just "shades of White people", and they get conflated with things such as "those racist WASPs folks" or "the dominant all-white Christian xenophobes". And then all the stereotypes are thrown at them - the Jews, just like Asians, have supposedly too much influence on politics, too much presence in media, they are naturally wealthier than regular people, they are naturally less discriminated and less hated than others... And in turn, the extreme-left decides "We will not speak of them. We will not fight for them or stand up for them because they do not need it, because they are too close to the elite, because they are too close to our enemies. We'll focus on more "important" people."

And thus, from the noble cause of defending oppressed and discriminated minorities that knew a long history of racism and persecution... we go perpetuating the discrimination and erasure of OTHER minorities and ethnicities that had a long history of racism and persecution. It is... like some sort of perverse "discrimination contest" where people somehow "deserve" to be defend against discriminations and others do not? Some sort of fucked-up ethnic hierarchy that in the end is literaly no different from the same ethnic hierarchies racists of the extreme-right put in place to justify their hatred.

And if the slightest event produces a spark strong enough to set the fuel ablaze... the extreme-left goes from ignoring and passive discrimination to active discrimination. As we can see today by the left of extreme-left antisemitism.

I don't think I have anything else to say? This post is very long, but I got to say everything I had to say, and I am quite glad I did. I wrote it all in one go, so there might be typos, but I do not think I can sum up my words anymore than that.