Turning Point

The cancel culture revolutionaries are now the ones in the tumbrils

A contemporary engraving of the execution of Robespierre, his headless body on the ground while his head is displayed to the crowd. The wagons filled with condemned prisoners are called ‘tumbrils’. Note the armed soldiers with cannons outnumber the celebrants cheering the demise of the bloody tyrant

Maximilien François Marie Isidore de Robespierre led the bloody terror of the French Revolution until his fall from power in 1794, a turning point that historians refer to as the Thermidor. No revolution ever reaches its Thermidor phase without consuming its revolutionary vanguard first. Those who had ruled by the guillotine had to die by the guillotine before the tumbrils could stop rolling.

Mao’s Red Guards had his sanction to terrorize their perceived enemies in the name of defeating the ‘Four Olds’ until they became factional and violent, whereupon the PLA shut down the Red Guards and sent them off to reeducation camps. Mao had to expire before Deng Xiaoping could open the economy even a…