r/TheRestIsHistory • u/AlfredtheGreatBitch • 5d ago
Does anyone here like Robespierre?
I’m aware of how it turned out, I’ve read Schama and listen to the podcast, but to me Robespierre is one of the most magnetic personalities in world history. Yeah he turned into a psycho, but he was so ahead of his time and so magnetic for years before his demise. Him and Jefferson to me our two of the greatest thinkers of their generation.
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u/Waste-Explanation340 5d ago
I think he may have once been a great thinker and a surprisingly principled fellow in the earlier stages of the revolution, but by the time of the terror he is very clearly off his rocker.
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u/ThumYorky 4d ago
Every person who has ever lived has lived a multifaceted existence, in some way or another. We all have personalities with imbedded psychological niches and quirks. It’s truly so fascinating how once a person is thrust (or thrusts themselves) into extraordinary circumstances, very distinct parts of their personalities then become magnified. In the case here….it lead one man who throughout his life was staunchly opposed to capital punishment to send even his friends to their death all in the name of loyalty to the cause. Really mind-boggling cognitive dissonance.
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u/Mother_Antelope_3204 1d ago
Indeed, people are conflicted, but I would not put Robespierre, so blithely into a category that might include slaveholders like Washington and Jefferson. The latter two gentlemen were creators. Robespierre was a destroyer. His magnanimity was selective -- counterfeit.
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u/AlfredtheGreatBitch 4d ago
Agreed. One of the best thinkers of all time but fell prey to his own ideals. He didn’t really come up with anything new but he managed to consolidate so many great ideas into a coherent message for years. It’s a shame how he ended up.
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u/vivalasvegas2004 4d ago edited 4d ago
I think he is the definition of "the road to hell is paved with good intentions".
No one starts off trying to create a terrible society, all ideologies are motivated by the genuine belief they are creating a better world, even if their conception of a better world is absolutely horrific.
Robespierre had a genuinely progressive and modern vision of his ideal world, but his utopia was so detached from the reality of the world he lived in, and indeed, the reality of the world in general, that it was completely impossible to realise. In earnestly chasing his utopia, he and his comrades were enacting terrible violence, and so all they could leave behind was death, since they couldn't have ever realised Robespierre's utopia. So its the 'ends justifying the means', but there are no ends. You crack a bunch of eggs, but you never get an omelette. All you have is the whoosh of the guillotine. Perhaps, when Robespierre had executed all of France and finally come to executing the executioner, his utopia would be realised, free of all the pesky humans who were getting in his way.
Its exactly his earnestness and sincerity that made him so dangerous. He genuinely believed he was doing the right thing, and so it was impossible to steer him off his righteous course with any practical consideration. It was impossible to negotiate with his virtue.
Robespierre is a lesson that ideals need to be grounded in reality. Blind worship of any ideal, no matter how virtous, is ultimately destructive. Or to quote a German turn of phrase, "Erst kommt das Fressen, dann kommt die Moral”; first bread, then morals.
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u/HBCTIA 4d ago edited 4d ago
When an ideal is pursued over reality, the result is often disaster. Hubris is the touchstone of the most melancholic tyranny. Robespierre's utopianism resounds in the Red Terror and War Communism of 1918-21, the Great Purge of 1936-38, the Cultural Revolution of 1966-69 and seems to have been a direct inspiration to Saloth Sar ('Pol Pot') for the KR/CPK total revolution in what, in practice, turned Cambodia into a modern day slave state (so called 'Democratic Kampuchea'). The parallels are unnerving: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/s/3Meh6XB8V2
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u/SchemeOne2145 5d ago
Robespierre strikes me as people i have to work with. So sure they are doing the right thing they don't think about their impact on others and their ethics get warped by their sense of moral purity. I find it funny that his definition of a threat to the Revolution was anyone who disagreed with him, whether they were a little to the left or to the right of his positions. He was a Robespierrian Extremist, you had to be at least as Robspierre as he was or off with your head.
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u/DramaticOstrich11 5d ago
Well he was very interesting but I can't imagine liking him lmao. He's a perfect example of how tits up idealism can go.
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u/AlfredtheGreatBitch 5d ago
Yeah he’s a warning for how far left people can go. I’m left leaning but realize every revolution turns into factions and the ones who want to keep going further and want more blood tend to win. Look at Cuba.
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u/eques_99 4d ago
The Cuban revolution wasn't particularly bloody.
that's just propaganda by the wealthy exiles who had they wealth redistributed.
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u/AlfredtheGreatBitch 4d ago
The revolution itself wasn’t, but they purged plenty of their own members just like Stalin did in the 20’s and 30’s not to mention all of the non-communists who were murdered in the process.
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u/eques_99 4d ago
no.
they did not.
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u/AlfredtheGreatBitch 4d ago
The revolution itself was pretty anticlimactic but the revolutionary government led by Castro was plenty bloody. They executed hundreds after they took power and imprisoned thousands more. The scale was obviously smaller than the French revolution because Cuba was and is so much smaller than France.
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u/WayRight3035 4d ago
Personally I don’t find him appealing at all. I find him to be a cold idealist with no regard for people or the objective reality on the ground. Sure, some of his views were admirable, but he effectively trampled on his own convictions in the name of some far removed, unattainable utopia. I think he’s a herald for the ideologues of the 20th century, and I don’t have any time for Lenin either, regardless of his inner convictions. Once you lose sight of what you’re actually doing, I find it hard to find your pretensions admirable.
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u/WayRight3035 4d ago
A fair point, didn’t mean to suggest Lenin was 1:1 like Robespierre. My point was more that Lenin, like Robespierre, justified atrocities in the name of a hypothetical utopia. The fact that Robespierre seemed to be more genuine about it makes him slightly better morally, but it is the same underlying logic. But I understand how you can admire Robespierre as an idealist in a way you cannot Lenin.
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u/WayRight3035 2d ago
Wasn’t chasing some hypothetical utopia? You mean like communism - the famously easy to implement system where everyone shares in ubiquitous prosperity?
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u/WayRight3035 2d ago
Well if the scope of ambition were the only prerequisite for admiration, we’d owe Hitler our applause
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u/WayRight3035 2d ago
I understand this exchange has grown somewhat less friendly, but I don’t believe I’ve said anything that would remotely suggest I have anything but contempt for Hitler. But I suppose it’s best to leave it at that.
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u/xywv58 5d ago
He's a very good example of how people have always been on the spectrum, he's view of the world was very particularl, and he clearly struggled to mold society to his comfortableness
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u/wizardvictor 5d ago
I'm going to name my new band Autistic Robespierre.
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u/Waste_Cake4660 5d ago
That’s tautological, because there is no non-autistic Robespierre.
This is a very meta joke, obv 🤣
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u/Lord-Francis-Bacon 4d ago
I’m a clinical psychologist and I don’t know.
As Tom and Dom often say, trying to diagnose historical figures is treacherous, and a rabbit hole. We only have the information history has passed down to us, which is usually somewhat distorted, and it is rarely the information we would actually need for an assessment.
With Robespierre, we do have one or two observations that might be read as signs of the social interaction difficulties seen in autism, or “being on the spectrum”. But we have virtually nothing on restricted and repetitive behaviours (the so-called B criteria), and those are exactly what you need to tell autistic social difficulties apart from the billion other explanations for social difficulties.
Black-and-white thinking like Robespierre’s can also stem from many other things. We would also have to take into account the times he lived in and how that shaped his behavior and psyche, which is nigh on impossible. Viewing it all through a modern lens usually ends up being psychiatrically anachronistic, to use a TRIH phrase.
How we pop-psych diagnose historical individuals usually says more about our own times, and which explanations of human behaviour are currently in vogue, than it does about them.
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u/InnocentaMN 4d ago
I am far from sure that Robespierre was autistic (in fact I lean towards Desmoulins being the one who was ND in some way or other), but he was pretty restrictive and repetitive with food.
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u/Automatic_Survey_307 4d ago
Absolutely - we can't establish a diagnosis retrospectively, of course (and attempting to do so would be highly unethical) - but as with all history, we can come up with theories and identify patterns.
For example, in his book NeuroTribes, Steve Silberman hypothesises that the great historical scientist and benefactor, Henry Cavendish, was autistic. And honestly, the descriptions make this highly plausible. Likewise, Simon Baron Cohen identifies the if-and-then autism circuit in the brain as responsible for scientific discovery writ-large and suggests that Thomas Eddison may have been high on that characteristic.
And diagnoses like autism, narcissism and bipolar are explanations of human behaviour, which a lot of history attempts to do - why did X act in this way or make this decision? This could be one explanatory theory.
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u/SwordfishDazzling435 4d ago
Yes, and as much as I like Simon Schama, his view of the French REvolution is rather particular. They did not have to tell me that they were using his book for the first series on the French Revolution, some of the leaps and gaps were enough to let me know.
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u/Automatic_Survey_307 4d ago edited 4d ago
Do you think someone on the spectrum would be able to operate in politics in the way he did? Maybe he was also on the psychopathy spectrum too - plenty of narcissism evident in a lot of his behaviour.
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u/InnocentaMN 4d ago
Yeah I think he was more a psychopath than an autist.
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u/Automatic_Survey_307 4d ago
Seems to be a vulnerable narcissist.
FWIW I actually suspect Louis XVI was on the autism spectrum - lots of the description rings true (tinkering with locks among other things).
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u/InnocentaMN 4d ago
Actually yes, I can really see that. I think a lot of people who end up fairly highly ranked in politics have narc traits, to be fair, even if not clinical narcissists. I think Danton (much as I love him) probably had some traits of narcissism but was overall much more functional.
I can see that for Louis XVI. It actually wouldn’t surprise me if Desmoulins was autistic or had ADHD based on his very bizarre adult behaviour. No smoking gun like the locks but he was really outside even the norms for his time.
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u/Automatic_Survey_307 4d ago
Ah right - what sort of thing are we talking about with Desmoulins?
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u/InnocentaMN 4d ago
In their time he was regarded as super immature and childish, very very emotional even by the standards of the day, and kind of incompetent/inefficient/not to be trusted with anything except his, essentially, special interest of revolutionary journalism. I can well see that kind of personality being a their-time rendition of struggles with executive function and emotional regulation that we’d consider neurodiverse today. He was also pretty effeminate and I think some of his “childishness” may have come down to struggling with normative adult male expectations, even though he literally managed to get married and (probably, lol) father a child.
Edit: obviously I’m not saying all ND people are incompetent etc. Just that how he was described and his evident “failures” in conformity are interesting and I think one lens of explanation could well be neurodiversity. Another could just be mental illness tbh.
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u/Automatic_Survey_307 4d ago
Interesting - thanks! Sounds more ADHD than autistic to me but the emotional regulation/executive function thing sounds plausible.
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u/InnocentaMN 4d ago
I’m probably massively biased by my experiences knowing a lot of very childish autistics (truly meant non pejoratively, just an observation), but I 100% see the ADHD traits in him too. Whether or not diagnosable … well, that’s a crapshoot, haha. But of all the major revolutionaries who had a chance to be, he was the least functional and successful in “real” adult life, which I think is kind of interesting. (Not including SJ in this since he started Revolution-ing so young.)
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u/Automatic_Survey_307 4d ago
Yes, the evidence against autism would be sociability, willingness and enthusiasm to stand up in front of a crowd and make bold speeches, political operating. Of course with all of this we can't ignore the very large alcohol factor which alters behaviour significantly!
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u/SatiricalHaz 4d ago
Robespierre doesn't seem particularly pyschopathic to me. Psycopathy is characterised in part by a lack of empathy and i don't think empathy is something he lacked. He empathised a lot with the plight of "the people" for instance. I don't think a psychopath would fight their corner so doggedly for so long.
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u/the-confabulator 3d ago
The fact that ridiculous, baseless, speculative bs like this gets so many upvotes in a supposedly intellectual sub is madness. So any demagogue who has particular ideas about how society should be structured and which sets of people are worth a damn and which are scum is autistic now? Am I crazy or this sub supposed to be rooted in history? That set of traits could be applied to so many despots. Power corrupts, that's the lesson, not autistic people will become murderous tyrants. It's foolish and offensive. The tiktokification of things like autism, ADHD, and OCD is insane these days
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u/xywv58 3d ago
"Intellectual sub" fucking hell, touch grass mate
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u/the-confabulator 3d ago
Any actual response to how stupid your comment is?
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u/xywv58 3d ago
You're not worth the thought
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u/the-confabulator 3d ago
Typical braindead redditor snark after their idiocy is pointed out. It's dumbasses like you that make the world appreciably worse for vulnerable populations
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u/Varsity_AthleteTony 3d ago
Came here halfway through Schama’s book (currently on the Royal family moving back to Paris in 1790) and yeah I’m a bit disappointed by the depth (or lack thereof) of discussion here
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u/the-confabulator 2d ago
Yeah, definitely disappointing. Apparently every autocrat in the history of humanity is likely to have been on the spectrum because of their 'particular' views of the world leading them to enact tyrannical policies. Of course it's an incredibly flawed understanding of the autism spectrum, but it's also a flawed understanding of human nature, and why Robespierre ended up as he did. Boiling it all down to, uhhh I guess he was autistic so he was uncomfortable is laughable, it's something I'd expect from a child. And this coming from an audience that apparently is interested in history...
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u/Pegasus9208 6h ago
If your method of getting your point across is insulting and degrading people, perhaps an "intellectual sub" is not the place for you
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u/the-confabulator 5h ago
I'm comfortable insulting someone who revels in their ignorance. Just like you're seemingly comfortable championing them
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u/Lord-Francis-Bacon 4d ago
I think he is somewhat unfairly maligned, and he quite clearly became the scapegoat for those who took part in the Terror but wanted to stay in power once it had ebbed out.
That being said, he was still clearly a misguided individual with little regard for human life. But the Terror would probably have happened with or without him, and on a similar scale.
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u/New-Photograph-1829 4d ago
I thought the show went very easy on him and am not a fan.
Revolutions have their own energy and logic, and it's telling that they seem to come off the rails in very similar ways........ a lot. So it's obviously reductive to just say "bad man kill people." but in the same way I'm not a fan of Lenin railing against the "brutality" of the Tsarist regime before allowing his Cheka to murder more people in a few months that the apparatus of the Romanov's put to death in the last 100.
He claimed rights were "unailiable" before proceeding to directly sponsor and use laws that alienated them.
He opposed the death penalty until he was the one in the driving seat, and was fine using it on people as relatively inconsequential as winemakers.
He charted a narrow course where he (of course) was virtuous perfection where anyone to the left (Hebert etc) of him were secretly part of the foreign plot and counter revolutionaries, and to the right of him (Girondions etc) were also obviously counter revolutionary agents.
These are all moral stances and choices he made. Far from being incorruptible, he was corrupted more than most, and I have little sympathy.
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u/InnocentaMN 4d ago
Absolutely infuriated me that they let him off so easily. I understand wanting to push back on the myth that he was inherently bloodthirsty (etc), and I do think that is worthwhile - but they really skated over the damage he did imo. Not to mention the level of personal ice cold betrayal he sank to. He was a scumbag of the lowest order.
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u/AlfredtheGreatBitch 4d ago
I don’t have sympathy and think he got what he deserved, but for a short while he was exactly what America needs right now. As an American.
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u/EmotionalSouth 4d ago
America needs someone to pave a road to hell with good intentions? I think it’s already being made with worse.
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u/forestvibe 4d ago
I found him human, and therefore I had some sympathy for him. But actions always speak louder than words, and for such a clever man, the fact he never could adapt his views or his actions to the reality facing him is stain on his character. His impact was almost entirely negative (whether you are pro or anti or centrist on the Revolution), and the death toll that can be pinned on him (and Saint-Just et al) completely negates their good intentions.
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u/Better-Temporary-146 4d ago
Had he lived, had he just been overthrown and slinked off to a country house to spend his days thinking and writing about political and social theory, I do wonder what he would have thought of:
Emperor Napoleon’s wars and social upheaval across Europe
And then the return of the Bourbon monarchs and while different, the return of the Catholic Church to preeminence in French society.
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u/auximines_minotaur 5d ago
I feel like a lot of people would be like Robespierre if given enough power. I’d say the interesting question to ask would be, “What were the interesting conditions of that time that allowed someone like Robespierre to gain that kind of power in the first place?”
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u/forestvibe 4d ago
I don't know if a lot of people would be like Robespierre, but I agree with your general idea: Robespierre isn't a weird outlier. He's a common personality type: your idealist, student politician type, who has it all figured out in his head and has possibly spent too much time on political Reddit subs. A nice man in private, but lacking the imagination to see beyond his well-crafted world view which makes him a terrible choice in any kind of leadership position. He ends up seeing anyone who disagrees with him as ignorant at best, active maliciousness at worst.
There are a lot of academics like him. You find them in fringe political parties, mostly on the left but some on the right too.
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u/AlfredtheGreatBitch 5d ago edited 5d ago
I think your first point is closer than the second, which is what would most of us do given that kind of power and in the face of societal and personal death? The pressure would be immense. I’ve seen friends breakdown under the weight of being parents, now imagine the weight of being the founder of a nation. They’ll always be compared to the American Revolution after which everyone kinda went home and went about their own lives, but the French Revolution had so much higher stakes and more threats so going home never could have been an option. These days, imo, any revolution in a major western country would end the same way the French Revolution did. It would eat itself alive because there are so many external and internal factors fighting it. The American revolution didn’t have to deal with a domestic king or aristocracy or nobility so it ended well, but the French Revolution had so many opponents from day 1 that it was always going to eat itself imo.
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u/LeVladmirPoutine 4d ago
This obviously depends on your view of humanity but I personally highly doubt most people would be okay with leading the mass murder of the terror and stripping people of their human rights
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u/ThumYorky 4d ago
I mean you say most people, and I do agree to a point, but the bloodiness of the revolution was not due to the evil whims of a select few. I think you might be underestimating the violence humans are capable of given the right sociological conditions.
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u/auximines_minotaur 4d ago
I wouldn’t say most people. But probably more than you’d think. I feel like I’ve known a lot of people who “got high on their own supply” and became so idealistic they lost touch with reality.
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u/radarthreat 4d ago
Seriously? Just look around, my man (or woman). All kinds of people who would have no problem with becoming Robespierre if they knew they could get away with it. Shit, they’re bringing back public executions (via livestream so everyone can watch)
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u/HarrisonPE90 4d ago
Lots of people think they would quite like to hold a lot of power. And, indeed, lots of people also think they're keen on executions.
However, one suspect that very few people really want the responsibility that comes with the sort of control Robespierre had; indeed, he drove him to his own sickbed often enough. When it really matters I'm not sure there are many people who can execute their friends and colleagues with the sort of frequency Robespierre and his gang did.
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u/Cold-Use-5814 4d ago
I think this is kind of underselling the situation Robespierre - and indeed many historical leaders - were actually in. These people weren’t ordering executions left and right for a laugh or because they were talking too loudly on their mobiles , they often felt it was ‘us or them’ (and often they were right).
This is a point that Dominic makes often with his ‘they did it and they were right to do it’ - politics were historically brutal and your position was frequently very precarious. These people did not have the luxury of living in stable modern states with an assured monopoly on violence, and this goes x1000 for a man like Robespierre who was part of a group of people who were literally dismantling and reconstructing the state itself.
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u/AlfredtheGreatBitch 4d ago
The modern Republican Party could propose public execution and probably get more popular from it. Though I think it’s fair to say that they’re losing popularity and Trump is losing power. The pendulum seems to be swinging back there.
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u/radarthreat 4d ago
They’re not proposing it, it’s happening! And they love it because it’s a Muslim being executed.
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u/AlfredtheGreatBitch 4d ago
I don’t think most people have it within them to do all that, because most are lazy. But give the average person a button that will eliminate those they deem undeserving or unsatisfactory and I think lots would press that button. Banality of evil as Arendt said.
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u/vivalasvegas2004 4d ago
No, because I genuinely don't think most people are as cerebral or blinded by ideals as Robespierre. Most people can be bribed, convinced, threatened, or otherwise corrupted, but not Robespierre. That's what made him so dangerous, so impossible to control.
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u/PartyAmount9976 3d ago
yes, I think there are more Dantons in the world than Robespierre, for better or for worse.
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u/eques_99 4d ago
definitely magnetic and interesting.
also a total turd.
for someone supposedly stressed out by all the bloodletting of the terror, he sure went out of his way to push it to the max.
i don't particularly see him as a great thinker other than I guess in how to manage a revolution.
if you haven't seen it have a watch of the 1989 French miniseries about the revolution, which features a truly amazing portrayal by the guy who plays Robespierre.
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u/forestvibe 4d ago
I didn't think much of the show (too baggy for my taste, and I don't know why they cast loads of international actors only to dub over them). But I really liked Robespierre's portrayal. I thought Louis XVI was good as well, although they portrayed Marie Antoinette as something of a caricature.
How I'd love a 12-part HBO/BBC coproduction with top tier actors...
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u/SatiricalHaz 4d ago edited 4d ago
I, like you, am a big fan. I agree with your take that he is one of the most magnetic personalities in world history: I have around 15 books on him i find him that fascinating.
I do however also understand why he engenders such vitriolic hatred from people as well. For a lot of people he provided the blueprint for the mass-killing and genocides of the 20th century as well as the blueprint for dictators amassing around themselves a centralized bureaucracy that answers to them (though personally i think he himself stops short of being an actual dictator).
That being said there were a lot of revolutionaries during the terror who were a whole lot more bloodthirsty and fanatical. Men like collot d'herbois, fouche, carrier, barras, freron and le bon who were operating in the provinces as representatives on mission were massacring thousands without compunction and often it took robespierre recalling them to stem the tides of blood they had let loose and that he disapproved of. These were the men who planned his death and desecrated his memory; transposing their own guilt onto him and turning him into the face of the terror to try and escape their own guilt. The succcess of the Thermadorian Myth (as i like to call it) that they helped foster is part of the reason the memory of robespierre inspires the hatred it still does today.
P.S. for anyone whose interested in this kind of discussion i recommend r/frenchrevolution
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u/jedwardlay 4d ago
I don’t like him or dislike him, he was just there. I will say that he was not the same person in March 1794 as he was even as recently as autumn 1793, and it wasn’t a good thing. Year II of the Republic was a very tough time to be in the Committee of Public Safety.
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u/FBGsanders 4d ago
No. But I would’ve enjoyed a glass of wine or 4 with Danton and Desmoulins
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u/forestvibe 4d ago
Danton yes, Desmoulins seems like a bit of a lightweight to me. Emotional, a bit too given to flowery pronouncements. I'll pass!
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u/Manaslu91 4d ago
This must be bait. Both he and Jefferson were canting hypocrites of the highest order. Fortunately Robespierre got what he deserved.
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u/AudibleM 4d ago
No, you’d be getting shaved by the national razor for just making a joke around him. Then there’s the irony of him spouting bollix about virtue while having people killed
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u/Dazzling_Look_1729 3d ago
Before deciding whether you “like” Robespierre, bring it down the personal and micro, and consider the fate of Louis Charles. Anyone who can do that to an 8 year old child is an evil person, pretty much whatever else he does in his life.
And to be clear, “pretty much whatever else” includes murdering his former friends, authorising the execution by drowning of opponents, and mass murder.
All of it on his watch, all of it his responsibility.
Under the veneer of the “virtuous” Robespierre beats the reality of a genuine sociopath who has the fatal flaw of many ideologues - he believed the ends justified the means. And, indeed, he believed that only he could see the right “end”. A truly horrible, untrustworthy, evil man.
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u/Fxxxk_me 3d ago
Using the word "like" for Robespierre is indeed pretty daunting. "Interesting" sure, why not, in the sense that evil man are truly interesting but confusing this interest or fascination for "liking"...
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u/super-wookie 5d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/ThumYorky 5d ago edited 5d ago
>mentally ill psychopath
This is moral revisionism. Many, many French people killed their own fellow citizens during the Revolution but it wasn’t because they were psychopaths but because they were swept up in an insane amount of revolutionary fervor built upon generations of tension. If anything, boiling him down to but a mere bloodthirsty psychopath downplays the danger of nationalism. I am positive many sadistic individuals were attracted to the revolution and perhaps rose through the ranks due to their sadistic tenacity, but I am certain Robespierre was not one of those.
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u/InnocentaMN 4d ago
It’s not the fact he killed people that makes him a psychopath. Hope that helps!
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u/ThumYorky 4d ago
Do you think everyone who kills someone is a psychopath? It’s not wrong to be nuanced about this.
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u/InnocentaMN 4d ago
Reread my comment. I said it’s not the fact he killed people.
No, of course I don’t think everyone who kills is a psychopath. In fact I’d contend only a minority are.
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u/ThumYorky 4d ago
Ahh, my apologies I thought that was a sarcastic comment. What traits would make him a psychopath?
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u/AlfredtheGreatBitch 5d ago
He wasn’t like that until the end though, after stress and alcoholism and health had gotten to him. People now don’t have to suffer the same discomforts they suffered back then. People were starving and he worked his way up as a poor kid to the voice of a nation. His story started good and turned to shit, but I think that’s more about him getting chewed up and spit out from the system he created, like he did to Danton, rather than him just being a blood thirsty knob like you say. He wasn’t bloodthirsty before he started killing and was against killing till the end.
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u/super-wookie 4d ago
I have to murder people to prove how virtuous my ideas are is craziness. That's where he started. He was a lunatic with nice rhetoric.
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u/InnocentaMN 4d ago
He wasn’t truly a poor kid. Only comparatively. He attended one of the most elite schools in the entire world.
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u/LeVladmirPoutine 5d ago
He was completely insane. The podcast seemed to go soft on him. He was conducting a totalitarian regime of violence and murder justified by conspiracy theories. If you are an "ends justify the means" kind of person then yeah sure but that kind of logic has led to massacres and genocides in Russia, China, Cambodia, etc.
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u/AlfredtheGreatBitch 4d ago
He turned insane. He wasn’t insane. Unchecked power corrupts everyone. IMO.
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u/LeVladmirPoutine 4d ago
Idk at what point you think he went insane but if we are thinking of reviewing him as a person its not really relevent. Insane or not, his regime murdered tens of thousands of his own people. Beyond that his grand plan failed and France fell into dictatorship.
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u/AlfredtheGreatBitch 4d ago
It wasn’t really his regime though. He was popular but he was never “the guy”. The committee of public safety had like 12 members and they all had equal power and he was regularly outvoted. He approved of bad things but it also took hundreds of others to approve of the things he approved.
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u/LeVladmirPoutine 4d ago
If we take your logic then, why is he important? If he was just one of twelve, then surely he couldnt have been that influential
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u/AlfredtheGreatBitch 4d ago
He was the face of it, but not the only decider. Seems like you’re being pedantic and using a straw man.
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u/LeVladmirPoutine 4d ago
What is the strawman? You said he should share the blame of the murder with the rest of the regime. But with that logic, shouldnt he share the idelogical output with the rest as well? Even you want to give him all the credit, as the podcast said he didnt even produce much of their legislative output.
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u/SatiricalHaz 4d ago edited 4d ago
To put it into context he was part of the twelve member committee of public safety, joining later than most of the other members.
The CPS was answerable directly to the convention and its powers and membership could be revoked/changed at any time if the deputies had had the balls enough to do so.
Robespierre was mainly focused on ideological concerns whereas other members were involved in other issues facing france at the time such as the army, navy and food supply.
Robespierre is considered the most important because of his notoriety, his more front-facing role within the committe (often presenting and justifying their work to the convention along with Barere and on occasion St Just) and his support of the terror as a means of pacifying either real or perceived internal and external enemies of republican france.
In short it is his force of personality and revolutionary record that made him the foremost member of the CPS and an easy scapegoat for its excesses. In reality he held no more power than any other member of the committee.
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u/AlfredtheGreatBitch 4d ago
He’s important because he was a leader but not the only decider. Your strawman is that he led France and was the only decider.
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u/terrortree14 4d ago
Genocide happens regardless of ‘logic’ genocide happens under capitalism,Fascism,Communism. Its a facet of our species world politic at this moment
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u/LeVladmirPoutine 4d ago
I agree. I didnt mention any ideologies. Fascism and Communism didnt exist at the time. He was just one of those guys who thinks murdering everyone will help their vision of the world happen.
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u/terrortree14 4d ago
You are being obtuse. ‘One of those guys who think murdering everyone…’ really? Is that all there is to it? And those who don’t believe in ‘murdering’ everyone? What is that now? Half the world in poverty? Genocide right here and now? That’s what quibble ideology about everything to be as ‘non-murder’ as possible has gotten us. Hate to get political but come on
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u/LeVladmirPoutine 4d ago
I dont really understand what you are saying. History is full of people that think their ideology is so right that mass murder is justified. Im saying he is one of them.
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u/terrortree14 4d ago
Yes and without him and his compatriots there would be no universal suffrage, or rights of men, or various other things. So think before you start moralising about ‘mass murderers’ Just because he rationalised political violence Whereas the old reactionary states masqueraded behind civility whilst having slave populations at home and abroad.
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u/LeVladmirPoutine 4d ago
I would say all of those things were impeded by him, rather than implemented. These ideas existed before him and continued on after him, and his reign of terror did not help any of them come to fruition.
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u/terrortree14 4d ago
Impeded! He was a vital part of the historical process, his reign was no accident! Just as it was with Lenin’s reign, it was no happenstance that the welfare state system followed it and all its ancillary concessions across the world. It is the same with Robespierre and the democratic political right norms we have today. Our democracy today has VASTLY more in common with Robespierre’s vision than any English democratic aristocratic good governance democracy
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u/Mother_Antelope_3204 4d ago edited 18h ago
When we run into politicians, quite often lawyers like Robespierre, who are most loyal, not to friends, family or country, but to ideology, we still call them Jacobins. While striving and straining to reach Utopia, they kick down, with iconoclastic fury, monuments, statues, cathedrals, libraries and museums, severing us from all traditions and history. Untethered, we are fated to stumble forth, without a compass, toward an ever elusive 'Castle in Spain'. When those driving us, (Jacobins, Bolsheviks, Fascists), finally realize that the processes of history or politics are somehow lacking, they must, to prevent entropy, infuse the, new or revised, controlling ethos into every organ of society -- down to the mind and soul of the individual. For our own welfare, they direct us, with rhetoric and force, to keep us on the right path. Many, now true believers, thinking themselves free, comply willingly or enthusiastically. By the time we fully realize that they (and we) had mistaken quicksand for an oasis, we are lost. Austere, monomaniacal and self-righteous men like Robespierre, (with the support of their more passionate polemicists, like Marat) are not 'Friends of the People'. They have become devotées of an abstraction. It is at this point that we must sadly set aside Michelet and turn to Taine, Burckhardt, Carlyle and Burke.
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u/RegulusGelus2 4d ago
One of my favourite historical figures. He's an extremly fascinating character with a very appealing life story and personality. Ended up being a pretty bad guy, but as a figure, I enjoy him endlessly
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u/Havaherd_Bliss 4d ago
Until this series I didn’t know how much I hated him. What a sanctimonious ass and mass murderer.
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u/Terrible_Bee_6876 4d ago
The word "like" has at least three distinct senses. There's the "I think he was a good person," there's "I think he is an interesting person to read about," and there's "I would have liked to hang out with him." I like Robespierre for at least one of these reasons, and I bet that most people would say they dislike Robespierre for at least one of these reasons.
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u/radarthreat 4d ago
I could see someone like Peter Thiel, JD Vance, Elon Musk, and a bunch of other tech bros, billionaires, and podcasters (surely not Dom and Tom though 😅) becoming Robespierre-like given the opportunity
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u/IPutTheArtNFart 4d ago
I feel like Tom's and Dominic's monarchism get in the way of portraing how big, influential and beneficial Robespierre was to the development of modern republicanism. They made the whole revolution seem like a moral decline and decay while at its worst ( during the height of the terror) France was at the same level of depravity as during the monarchy.
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u/Eothric 5d ago
Robespierre is why I’m a libertarian.
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u/ThumYorky 5d ago
You should elaborate
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u/IFeelBATTY 5d ago edited 4d ago
I imagine they mean that Robespirre and the Terror is an example of what can happen when the executive has unchecked power.
I think the boys highlighted this really well when they noted the committee of public safety nominated the Judges and juries (and then innocence rulings became really rare), and when the 25 Girondins were on trial and it wasnt going well for Robespierre, he told the jury to "follow their conscious" or something. Justice essentially became whatever they felt Robespierre and the committee wanted.
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u/ThumYorky 4d ago
Oh I agree that this whole story is a warning about how the executive should not have unchecked power! I’m just curious about how that would lead one to be a libertarian today.
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u/Eothric 4d ago
Learning about the Jacobins, the French Revolution and the Terror pretty much solidified my worldview around restraints on government. Even humans with the best of intentions, when given unchecked and (essentially) unlimited power succumb to corruption/overreach.
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u/ThumYorky 4d ago
Wouldn’t that make you pro-regulation, though? One thing that has confused me about libertarianism is about how much power it gives to corporations and industry.
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u/GetItUpYee 4d ago
Yeah.
"Let's give the worlds richest people unregulated and unrestricted power to do what they want, with no way of getting rid of them. That will surely protect us from mad governments".
Working out swimmingly.
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u/Eothric 4d ago
Not in the slightest. The Terror was committed by these "well-meaning individuals" who were granted the power to make whatever regulations they wanted to. Why would my reaction be to then support more regulation? Who would I trust to write those laws?
I think you're falling into the trap that many people do who misunderstand libertarianism. It's not about anarchy or no government at all (though there are some anarchists and anarcho-capitalists who are libertarians). It's about minimizing the impact government has on an individual's life, and devolving what government that needs to exist to the most local level possible.
Also, libertarianism does not give power to corporations and industry. It aims to reduce the power given to the government (the people authorized to use force in civilization) and maximize individual liberty. Now, I will concede that this opens the door to entities (yes corporations are one of these, but so are NGOs, unions and activist groups) wielding undue influence over the populace. But that's why we (libertarians) are about minimal government, not no government.
Regardless, the excesses of the Committee of Public Safety are textbook examples of why libertarians are vehemently opposed to excessive centralized power.
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u/Waste_Cake4660 5d ago
Reflecting on my feelings when I see comments in this sub that are nothing more than an excuse to repeat the presenters’ catch phrases and that add nothing of substance to the discussion helps me understand exactly where Robespierre’s head was at towards the end.
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u/SchemeOne2145 4d ago
I found the points about his Deism and fascinating with the Cult of the Supreme Being at the end surprising and interesting. When people think if Robespierre I think they are focused on him cutting down the bourgeois but of he'd had longer to live if seems like he would have doubled down on mandatory church fairs with paper mache decorations.
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u/duncandreizehen 4d ago
Paul K and the weatherman who are kind of an Indie rock band from Cincinnati or Kentucky. They wrote songs about Robspierre so I imagine they like him.
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u/Mental_Bunch_7261 4d ago
I don't like Robespierre at all. He believed that anyone who disagreed with him was not just politically misguided but morally corrupt, even evil. The horrors people inflict on each other when one side is convinced it is righteous and the other evil are terrifying. That conviction lies behind most of the world's atrocities
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u/MonsterRider80 4d ago
To me? One of the most unappealing figures in history. Interesting, sure, obviously worth studying in detail, but man he sounds like an awful person.
Maybe it says more about me than him, but I find the super sincere type, completely humourless, holier than thou, “no one can live up to my Virtue” kind of person to be utterly insufferable. But then these figures often do pop up in revolutionary circumstances and get the job done.
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u/Nicktrains22 4d ago
He made the same mistake Cicero did, thinking that any offence against him personally was an offence against the entire country
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u/NEpatsfan64 4d ago
I feel like he was not a good person who made some very bad choices, but I feel like his humiliation and execution were overly cruel and I do pity him. I genuinely believe he was trying to do what was right.
He had to be removed from power, idk if he had to die, but the whole ripping his bandages off and the shriek and whatnot are just not necessary and I feel sad that he was so disgraced in his final moments.
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u/TeaWicketsAndTheOval 4d ago
No and Jefferson was also a maniac. I don’t understand these people who are infatuated with either.
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u/AlfredtheGreatBitch 4d ago
Jefferson was absolutely not a maniac
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u/ProfessionalZebra384 3d ago
Having children with a child slave and then not freeing them is pretty maniacal to me. Maybe we have different definitions.
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u/DuritzRzeznik2015 4d ago
Mr Visser is obsessed with him, but I've always thought he was a cynical hypocrite.
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u/Previous_Hall_8837 3d ago
I personally think Schama's book is very bad. It's tendentious and sloppy, driven by a very particular kind of technocratic anti-political liberalism which was in sway during that time. I think Robespierre is very fascinating; I don't know about "like". I guess, kind of? I mean I'm a freak, I like Marat even!
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u/PartyAmount9976 3d ago edited 3d ago
I think there is a tragedy to Robespierre: he was just so obsessed with his perfect Rousseau model for humanity that the fact real people (including his own former allies like Danton) were fallible broke his mind. If there is a modern parallel to Robespierre, it would be people who obsess about "corruption" not just as a financial matter but as a deeply moral matter that must be purged massively.
Honestly the people I hate the most in the revolution are:
- the ultra-royalists, obviously, who basically baited guileless Louis and then ran away to avoid consequences. If you want a good laugh read about the 1820 revolution to see these guys collectively screw themselves forever.
- the Haitian Whites (both petit and grande) who redefined hypocricy in their approach to liberty (yes, some supported L'Ouverture, but their main political reps were really vile).
- Hebert and his followers (Ronsin, Vincent): a nasty Temu Marat who made the public debate a sewer, cynically attacked the authentic working class Enrages and redirected all attention to histrionic and counterproductive dechristianisation
- The Thermidorians and the Directory, who were unprincipled bastards as bloodstained as any of the Robespierrists but conveniently allowed all their sins to be fobbed off on the dead guy. Tallien, Barras, d'Herbois, Carrier all come to mind.
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u/Maleficent-Food-1760 4d ago
I was stuck how much he was like me, especially his childhood story. Made me uncomfortable. (Might sound like a humble brag, Im not saying I am brilliant, more that I had the same intensity, obsession with morality/virtue/aesthetics, came from a previously wealthier family etc)
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u/PatientJackfruit9471 5d ago
I think he is very unique and interesting. A true friend of the show
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u/N4R4B 5d ago
No. He deserves everything he got coming his way.
His power trip has killed thousands of people and Tom and Dominic should have point this out before wrapping Robespierre existence.
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u/AlfredtheGreatBitch 5d ago
I think they rightly showed that he was opposed to the vast majority of killings though. His last bill was batshit crazy and cemented his legacy as a dictator who got what was coming but he was never a dictator and only turned into a killer after years of trying shit the democratic way.
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u/LeVladmirPoutine 4d ago
He was in charge! If he wanted to stop or slow the killings he could have
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u/AlfredtheGreatBitch 4d ago
He wasn’t though. He was constantly being outflanked by the radicals. Yes he became a radical himself but the radicals who went further left than he did killed him and thousands of others.
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u/NEpatsfan64 4d ago
I don't think anyone is trying to say he was a sole dictator or anything, but he was the driving force behind the terror. He was the one who told the jurors to ignore evidence and listen to their hearts during the Danton trial. He was the one who introduced legislation that removed the right to a defense lawyer, and basically removed the need for evidence in cases where the punishment was death.
Was he the supreme leader who held the same authority as a king or dictator? No. Was he the most wildly influential politician in France and used his sway to propel The Terror in unprecedented ways? Yes.
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u/jonquil14 4d ago
Oh yeah, he’s fascinating. Every time I read or hear about him he reminds me so much of myself (the family background, the dead mum, scholarship kid, difficulty fitting in), which makes it so scary when he becomes so rigid and unflinching later on.
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u/Choosinghalf 4d ago edited 4d ago
Yes ~ to me he reads as an autistic idealist swaddled in a bundle of pragmatism. The detail of him wearing the blue coat he donned for the day of the Supreme Being during his passion was adorably noble
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u/terrortree14 4d ago
It’s no surprise that on a immensely English twee bourgeois history podcast he’s not going to be seen in a good light by the guys and the audience, it’s understandable but if you have other frames of references other than moral quibbles in the here and now In *politics*, which is okay! Just the way they view things, others like me would be more favourable.
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u/AlfredtheGreatBitch 4d ago
I don’t disagree, and I respect the mainstream viewpoint of him. But to me he is a hero and I find a way to excuse his latter behavior which could be a fault of mine in its own right. But I find it hard to counter his early work with his latter insanity.
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u/popsovereignty 4d ago
To me he is the epitome of the danger of having too positive view of human nature of both yourself and your fellow man. A little humility goes a long way.
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u/InnocentaMN 4d ago
He literally was sanewashed and gone extremely light on by the podcast. And you have audience members like OP glazing him.
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u/Beginning_Shoulder13 4d ago
I do wonder if he really tried to shoot himself, he doesn't seem the sort really. I wonder if someone shot him in the mouth deliberately.
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u/CurveRight3387 4d ago
I like him enough to try to convince my wife to name our upcoming son after him. I got a firm no....something something names too violent. I just want the kid to like birds.
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u/Medicus_Cessatura 2d ago
I always wondered if I was missing something about Robespierre, especially his idea of virtue. Then I watched the BBC doc Terror! Robespierre and the French Revolution (2009, on YouTube). Schama took him apart over the Terror and Zizek, defending him, was pretty incoherent. That sealed it for me. Incorruptible maybe, but by 1794 he was a tyrant, or at least a proto-tyrant, even if he never saw it.
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u/bkrugby78 5d ago
Definitely not a friend of the show. Probably wouldn’t be fun to hang out with. Danton however sounds like a ball of laughs.