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Accelerationist [RULE]
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this post was submitted on 02 Mar 2024
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I used to know a poli-sci researcher who was trying to take a big-data look at the success and failure of revolutions, taking in variables like "how many demonstrators rallied against the government?" "How many dissidents were disappeared by internal security forces?" and even things like "how many bullet holes are there on the buildings around the main protest venue in the capital?"
I asked him once if he'd discovered the secret to a successful revolution, and he just grimaced at me.
I love how people take the Soviet revolution as some sort of example of success, when what actually happened was that the original government collapsed because it was getting the shit kicked out of it by Germany, then a new government took over and got the shit kicked out it of by Germany before also collapsing, then the Bolsheviks strolled into literally empty government buildings and took over - against the judgement of most of the Bolsheviks who still thought the time wasn't right to take over. Hardly a replicable or generalizable sequence of events.
Even the American and French revolutions weren't successful
American here, asking genuinely: how was the American revolution unsuccessful? My understanding is that the goal was to make the British go away, and that they did accomplish that in the end. What am I missing?
The goal wasn't to make the British go away, the goal was to have representation and more than half of the people in the colonies weren't even for the revolution. This is why they dressed up as natives for the Boston tea party so they could blame that shit on the natives.
The support of independence wasn't much till Paul Revere demonized the Boston massacre into being much more villainous than it was.
The colonies kinda got what they want in revolution with the articles of confederation but with the rise of the federalists the US was created as a V2 of the British empire.
That's a take
I don't see how history is a take. I literally wrote papers in college about this.
The "more villainous" part is odd to me, but the subjective claim that the federalists were just v2.0 of the British empire is strong "don't tread on me" libertarian vibes ngl
Now that's a take
Most of history is made up of stories.
We can tell different stories of history and many even conflicting ones can be true, but they don't all have the same weight in their impact to the course of events.
Yeah just like how Paul Revere made up the story about the Boston massacre to sell papers.
The Boston Massacre was a real event. British soldiers fired into a crowd of hundreds, killing several. Maybe Paul Revere embellished it, but it's not made-up.
It's unintended consequences all the way down, isn't it
What's a little Third Reich here or Reign of Terror there between friends, eh? Besides , it's not like a little bit of anti-intellectual purging or nationwide famine isn't worth enduring to get to a better world for the people left afterwards!
re the reign of terror. Extremely bad yes but I think this quote by mark Twain highlights flaws in how we think about this stuff.
Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
They were trying to throw off a horrifically oppressive system that had been going on centuries. Defs killed too many innocents, defs had problems with paranoia. Also the lesser violence in the struggle between nobles and everyone else.
The book is awesome btw
I'm told there will be cake.