Robespierre, Stalin, Mao, Mangos and A Future That Must Not Be

“Soviet Union suffers worst wheat harvest in 55 years… Labor and food riots in Poland. Soviet troops invade… Cuba and Nicaragua reach troop strength goals of 500,000. El Salvador and Honduras fall… Greens Party gains control of West German Parliament. Demands withdrawal of nuclear weapons from European soil… Mexico plunged into revolution… “ – Red Dawn (1984)

Maximillian Robespierre, the guy who started it all . . .

On December 3, 1792, Maximillian Robespierre, a lawyer and French revolutionary, gave a speech about the fate of the King, Louis XVI.  Robespierre complained that he was totally against the death penalty in all cases, except this one.  He ended his speech:  “With regret I pronounce this fatal truth: Louis must die so that the nation may live.”

Eventually, it came to a vote on January 18, 1793 – Louis was convicted to die.  Two days later, Louis XVI, King of France, was executed.  But the precedent was huge.  A monarch could be arrested by his people and could be executed based on a public vote.

Who, then, was safe?

Robespierre and the leftist (this is where the name “leftist” comes from – the revolutionaries sat on the left side of the assembly before the revolution) government had a strong bent that advocated communes, and nothing less than the complete and total repudiation and remaking of all of French society.  Religion was abolished and replaced by “rationality” – the statues of Saints were actually guillotined.  Common measurements were replaced by the metric system (you see why I’m suspicious of it).  You could no longer refer to a man as “monsieur,” or a woman as “madame” – they were now simply, “citizen.”  Even the names of the months weren’t sufficiently revolutionary – they had to be replaced with new names, and each month would consist of three 10 day weeks.

The idea that replacement of all social norms would be difficult led to a simple solution:  kill anyone who opposes you.  Robespierre said:

If the basis of popular government in peacetime is virtue, the basis of popular government during a revolution is both virtue and terror; virtue, without which terror is baneful; terror, without which virtue is powerless. Terror is nothing more than speedy, severe and inflexible justice; it is thus an emanation of virtue; it is less a principle in itself, than a consequence of the general principle of democracy, applied to the most pressing needs of the fatherland.

So, we’re killing you because it’s virtuous.  And boy, were the French virtuous!  The definition of a good revolutionary kept changing as the social norms of France kept changing.  Between June of 1793 and a year later (they were calling July “Thermidor” by then) nearly 17,000 had been executed because they were insufficiently committed to the revolution and the shifting definitions of a good revolutionary.

The last victim?  Robespierre himself.  He was executed on July 28, 1794, along with his 21 closest buddies.  When Napoleon Bonaparte took over a few years later – everyone was pretty happy when he called himself Emperor – it seemed far better than the tyranny of the leftists.

Robespierre’s execution.  Looks festive!

But the French were amateurs when it comes terror.  For real downward death spirals, you have to get to the Russians and the Chinese . . .

This might look familiar . . .

I blame Marx.  Marx was born some 200 years ago (as of this writing) and has been, in my opinion, the worst thing to happen to the world since they invented Spandex®.  Thankfully, Marx and Stalin never wore Spandex®, though rumor has it Mao wore it when he pretended to be Aquaman®.

After the Soviets finally took over Russia, for twenty years Stalin waged a purge against his own people in his attempt to create a perfect Marxist society.  People who had “a little more” – Kulaks, were killed, starved on purpose.  This was called the Holodomor, and killed between 4 million and 10 million of his own citizens.  Stalin’s totals?  During his lifetime it is likely that he was responsible for deaths (often brutal) of 15 million (low end) to 25 million (upper end).  And it came about from the same sort of internal purification that the French demanded – Stalin even compared himself to Robespierre on more than one occasion.  One story, popular during the day, was of a young Soviet boy, Pavlik Morozov, who supposedly denounced his father to authorities.  It was said that Pavlik was then killed by his family, who were then . . . executed.  Statues of Pavlik were erected everywhere.  His school was a shrine that students from across the Soviet Union would visit to see such a heroic boy.  Stalin himself was reported to have said, “What a little swine, denouncing his own father.”

The heroic little swine.

For a great taste of what Soviet life must have been like during Stalin – have a read of an excerpt from a novel here (LINK).  It’s what leftism turns into over time, and the deaths are only a part of it – it’s the ultimate ripping apart of social and family structures that allow any sort of resistance to complete government control.  Stalin was excellent.

But if the French invented it and Stalin made use of it, Mao made a life of it.

Mao, at a meeting to learn from the master . . . .

Mao was responsible for 40 to 80 million deaths during his lifetime.

And in Mao’s China, families were ripped apart, and the structure was ripped apart.  His “Hundred Flowers” campaign appeared to ask for other ways to govern China.  In reality, it was looking for anyone who disagreed with Mao, so they could be killed.  Mao’s cult reached its height of absurdity with Mao’s Mangoes.  Yes, you read that right – Mao’s Mangos.

Pictured:  One of Mao’s Mangos.  Really.

In 1968, the minister from Pakistan gave Mao some mangoes.  Why?  We don’t know.  But Mao didn’t like mangos, so he split them up and sent them to various places (colleges, factories, government offices) and they exploded like a cultural grenade.  People wrote songs.  They formed up in lines to praise the mangos.  They made perfect replications of the mangos when the mangos began to rot.

How bad was it?  A dentist was executed when he said that the mango he saw “looked like a sweet potato.”

Executed.  And not for being a bad dentist.

Because he made a crack about a Pakistani fruit.

Posts occur to me sometimes because I had a thought that struck me as funny.  Or a memory I though it might be helpful to share.  Or an observation that might change a life.

In the last few weeks I’ve seen several editorials in several newspapers and magazines lionizing Marx and communism – some saying that his ideas are the ideas that will save the planet.  And I hear politicians and television announcers saying nearly the same words as Stalin or Lenin or Mao.  And I read that we need to give Marx another look.  I find particular horror in this failure to learn anything from history – as communism is a slow death – a death first of morals, and then of truth, and then of millions of citizens.

The verdict of history, by the numbers shows that no ideology ever, ever, has proven to provide more death to the people it governs than Marxism.  By any mechanism of objective judgement, it is by far the most reprehensible system of government ever created.  Nothing else is even close.

But we keep coming back to this idea – that others should take responsibility for us, and that we should create a society based on envy.  Thankfully the Marxist paradise of Venezuela, gifted with nearly limitless oil wealth shows that Marxism can work.  Oh, grinding poverty?  Malnutrition?  Immense corruption?  Guess the right people aren’t in charge.  It isn’t real communism.

Well, maybe someday if the Marxists kill enough people it will end up working . . . I bet they get it right in California – they’ll be there soon . . .