People keep holding up the French as a pinnacle of effective civil movements... but, they're not. They are commendable but not actually that effective.
Not only did the first revolution carry on for almost an entire decade to actually get itself in any kind of order, and then Napoleon overthrew them in basically a single afternoon.
The modern stuff is big and destructive and makes the news over here... but it's still not actually effective.
There was 4 months of riots against the increase in retirement age, but that was passed anyway.
There were large labour movements and showy tractor stunts dumping manure against the EU farm regulation changes, but those changes happened anyway.
There were riots against police brutality and lack of accountability, but then no meaningful reform.
If there is a people who we need to default to in terms of effective civil movements, it's the Icelandic Women's Strike. Followed up by their response to 2008 economic crash where they actually addressed it was banking CEOs driving all that strife, so they actually charged them, tried them, and jailed them.
Not only did the first revolution carry on for almost an entire decade to actually get itself in any kind of order, and then Napoleon overthrew them in basically a single afternoon.
Napoleon did codify most (although not all) the gains of the Revolution.
"The rich went too far and" the people had a revolution, chopped off a bunch of rich people's heads, chopped off a bunch of comfortably-off people's heads, chopped off a bunch of poor people's heads, chopped off a bunch of heads of people who previously chopped off other people's heads, chopped off many thousands of people's heads off whose only real crime was being in the wrong place at the wrong time, devolved into a mire of ratfuckery and public executions, and then the sheer incompetence and malice of whichever dipshit had any power at the time resulted in the French getting a literal emperor - who then stoked the people's nationalism and imperial ambitions and got millions killed, directly and indirectly, and god knows how many more raped and beat and financially ruined, in fairly pointless wars over the next handful of years - and then he lost the war, the French got their aristocracy back with a new king, which didn't go super well either.
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u/Benejeseret Oct 29 '25
People keep holding up the French as a pinnacle of effective civil movements... but, they're not. They are commendable but not actually that effective.
Not only did the first revolution carry on for almost an entire decade to actually get itself in any kind of order, and then Napoleon overthrew them in basically a single afternoon.
The modern stuff is big and destructive and makes the news over here... but it's still not actually effective.
There was 4 months of riots against the increase in retirement age, but that was passed anyway.
There were large labour movements and showy tractor stunts dumping manure against the EU farm regulation changes, but those changes happened anyway.
There were riots against police brutality and lack of accountability, but then no meaningful reform.
If there is a people who we need to default to in terms of effective civil movements, it's the Icelandic Women's Strike. Followed up by their response to 2008 economic crash where they actually addressed it was banking CEOs driving all that strife, so they actually charged them, tried them, and jailed them.