By Thomas Buckley
The Point
December 12, 2024
Virtue without terror is impotent.
Terror without virtue is blind.
This Jacobin creed, first put forth by Robespierre during the French Revolution, has been the construct underlying the past few years, with the socialite socialist censorship state providing the terror and the woke providing the virtue.
The globalist censors - including the QUANGOs, academia, the international diplomatic corps, and all and sundry state policing services from Germany to Britain to the US and Canada and Australia and beyond and most of social media - have been providing the terror.
Possibly not quite with the razor's edge of the guillotine, but with nearly as socially and legally horrifying that result in the same grisly end. Once declared an "other," at the very least the process becomes the punishment - "guilty" or not, the grinding maw of the oppressor state/culture is not satisfied until its object is at the very least bankrupted, subjugated, and quieted forever.
The creation of "Do it to Julia!" as the only acceptable answer - if one wishes to survive - has been the ultimate goal.
And the woke, the commuitarians, the equitable, the inclusive, and the diverse have been providing the virtue.
The legal, social, and cultural terror that has reigned supreme has been carried out in the name of justice, in the name of guilt, and in the name of righteousness. From the pointlessly mundane - trans bathroom debates - to the creation of an entire taxpayer industry to enforce the new rules under the color of rainbow of DEI, this new putatively virtuous society intentionally ripped Western culture from its moorings.
As the DEI industry - one paid for government and academia - and government censorship face their own death and the terror from above may soon be ended (in the US, at least), it is as if the anger, rage, and fear of the mob turned, overnight, into a realization by society that it cannot continue.
Robespierre lost his power and his life on 9 Thermidor, or more reality-based July 27, 1794. Along with his cohorts, he attempted to change the calendar itself to rob the public of an understanding of the past. Like Robespierre, the Soviets tried to modify the past by changing the calendar, as did Pol Pot, but none succeeded.
The woke in the US tried it, albeit obliquely, with re-setting the date of the founding of America to 1619 from 1776 - that too failed. Resetting the concept of time and history should always be a warning sign - every revolution (and do not be dissuaded because of its velveteen nature, what has occurred over the past few years has been such an attempt, though from top down, at a global revolution) that has tried to change the very concept of time has failed.
The 1619 project - as with the actual calendar changes - was not about history, it was not about positive change, it was not about scholarly debate - it was an intentional attempt to detach the public from history, to create an uncertain space a grey area, into which any and all sorts of ideas and nonsense can be inserted And will be accepted by the inculcated, though false, pre-guilt.
A society adrift upon uncertainty will naturally look toward those claiming certainty and those who created the questions of guilt and shame intentionally will be the only people who can answer them.
And this would not have been possible without the both the terror and the virtue living symbiotically, reinforcing one another. It can be argued that the vision created by the overlord class was anti-political -right and wrong, right and left no longer mattered, let alone actual public participation.
Or it could be argued that the controlled Recency is post-political - the managers manage, the cultural constables control, and the public is left with promises of an easy enforced complacency and minimally acceptable comfort.
Both the enforcers and the managers know that creating dependence can create a useful public dependability.
This state of being was supposed to be never-ending and self-reinforcing.
It was meant to be controlled by techno-Robespierres, an updated version of his personnel Catechism:
Robespierre had a personal "catechism" he followed; though a noted public speaker who was normally willing to tell the world exactly what he thought, he did keep this to himself:
What is our aim?
It is the use of the constitution for the benefit of the people.
Who is likely to oppose us?
The rich and the corrupt. (Note - Not so much this time...)
What methods will they employ?
Slander and hypocrisy.
What factors will encourage the use of such means?
The ignorance of the sans-culottes. (The people must therefore be instructed).
What are the obstacles to their enlightenment?
The paid journalists who mislead the people everyday by shameless distortions. (Also, not so much this time.)
What conclusion follows?
That we ought to proscribe these writers as the most dangerous enemies of the country and to circulate an abundance of good literature.
What other obstacles are there to the achievement of freedom?
The war at home and abroad.
By what means can the foreign war be ended?
By placing republican generals at the head of our armies and by punishing those who have betrayed us.
How can we end the civil war?
By punishing traitors and conspirators... and by making a terrible example of all the criminals who have outraged liberty and spilled the blood of patriots. (Note - that has been occurring for the past four years.)
He concluded this list with a rather chilling (partially edited) codicil:
What other obstacle is there to the enlightenment of the people?
Misery.
When will the people be enlightened?
When (they) will have bread, and when the rich and the government will stop paying for perfidious pens and language in order to deceive (them).
When will their interest be confounded with the one of the people?
NEVER.
In other words, the Revolution can never end, liberty and free speech can never be restored, the Terror - if the nation is to be transformed - can never stop.
But like the ultimate uprising against the terror and Robespierre, it eventually does and must stop. In 1794, the scared and/or complicit and/or uncertain and/or just the regular people who just wanted to get on with their lives ripped the blinders from their own eyes - mob fear turned into mob courage instantaneously and the Terror was ended.
And that's what happened on November 5.
This originally appeared on The Point.