{"version": "1.0", "type": "rich", "title": "Do you know of a handy list and/or discussion of revolutions that (1) won and (2) didn't subsequently transform into vicious...", "author_name": "kontextmaschine", "author_url": "https://kontextmaschine.com", "provider_name": "kontextmaschine", "provider_url": "https://kontextmaschine.com", "url": "https://kontextmaschine.com/post/156193115033/", "html": "
wmb-salticidae asked: Do you know of a handy list and/or discussion of revolutions that (1) won and (2) didn't subsequently transform into vicious mockeries of their ideals? Sometimes I feel more optimistic about the first part, but I'm always hella pessimistic about the second part and I'd like to counter that with More Information. Thanks.
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Do I know of such a list? No.

I\u2019d be a little suspicious of the impulse to take this as something to be conclusively resolved through \u201cMore Information\u201d tho, because \u201cwhat are the ideals of this revolution\u201d is itself a site of contest to which any possible answer is cold and congealed power more than prior-to-human truth.

Like, what were the ideals of the American Revolution? What was the Civil War fought over?

I\u2019m aware of several answers to these questions, affiliated with several different factions, that have jostled and eclipsed each other and waxed and waned just within my lifetime, and more dramatically still before.

There was a fluff a few years ago over a fucking Assassin\u2019s Creed game, of all things, the one set in the French Revolution. Because the game - which for most of the world is the most prominent representation of the Revolution this generation - had the revolution starting with popular unrest, then manipulated by bloodthirsty Jacobin schemers, with opportunist cynic Napoleon Bonaparte putting things back together again. Which is the standard Anglophone interpretation, taught as a given in UK and America but civic\u00a0sacrilege in France, where these aren\u2019t seen as distinct and rivalrous successions but part of a continuous process of realizing the Revolution\u2019s ideals.

(That this was a Quebecer studio pushing the Anglosphere over the Francophonie take was a source of further cultural anxiety.)

And this was taken, well, seriously enough, because \u201cwhat did the French Revolution mean\u201d is one of the most important ideological disputes of the modern era. The Revolutions of 1848\u2026 hell, the Cold War was fought to a significant extent over \u201cwhat did the French revolution mean\u201d. So if you\u2019re trying to work things out by analytically matching them with a list the first step is to resolve all that and good fucking luck.

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