The French Revolution invented radical nationalism and socialism, and launched the first modern genocide, aimed at Christians.
Tuesday, July 14 probably passes without much fanfare in your home,
but the date, Bastille Day, marks the beginning of the greatest
organized persecution of Christians since the Emperor Diocletian.
This day, the beginning of the French Revolution, also planted the
seeds for the murderous ideologies of socialism and nationalism that
would poison the next two centuries, murdering millions of believers and
other innocent civilians. Between them, those two political movements
racked up quite a body count: In Death By Government, scholar R. J. Rummel pointed out that
during the first 88 years of this
century, almost 170,000,000 men, women and children have been shot,
beaten, tortured, knifed, burned, starved, frozen, crushed, or worked to
death; or buried alive, drowned, hung, bombed, or killed in any other
of the myriad ways governments have inflicted death on unarmed, helpless
citizens or foreigners.
But the first such modern genocide in the West took place in France,
beginning in 1793. It was undertaken by modern, progressive apostles of
Enlightenment and aimed at pious peasants in the Vendée region of
France. By its end up to 300,000 civilians had been killed by the armies
of the Republic.
This story
is little discussed in France. Indeed, a devout historian who teaches
at a French university once told me, “We are not to mention the Vendée.
Anyone who brings up what was done there has no prospect of an academic
career. So we keep silent.”
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