The Terribles: The Plot Against Civilization pp. 58-62

 One of the most perplexing accomplishments that the conspiratorial right wing has pulled off over the last century was in convincing the poor to vote against their own interest. In contemporary times, this has been done by called the ultra-wealthy “job creators” even though they don’t really do that. People like 2012 US presidential candidate Mitt Romney, tried to frame his money as coming from all of the labor that he created when in fact most of his money came from investments whose value increased when companies were bought, gutted, and sold piece by piece. Jack Welch, infamously did this at GE, which once employed something like 1/5 of the US population. The stock goes up when there is less overhead, so it’s in the investors’ interest to lessen overhead at the expense of the quality and quantity of jobs. Just look at Circuit City’s demise.

Those examples are symptoms. That people cheer for this is also a symptom. The cause is the demonization of the worker’s interest. Today’s section opens with an example of it. Underneath all of this Illuminati bullshit, Webster is attempting to argue that the French Revolution was bad. France would have been better if the aristocracy had remained, and she means better for everyone. The problem that she has is that the popular understanding of the French Revolution is that there were lots of poor, starving people that watched the Rich live in opulence so they overthrew it. Victor Hugo has his story about it, it runs in the background of the Count of Monte Cristo, there’s a Tale of Two Cities, etc. classic fiction has etched this into our brains.

She’s tried so far to demonize the motto, “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity;” and that really hasn’t stuck. Wisely she kind of dropped it, but that was only a few pages ago so it may come back.

Here she’s got to erase the heroic image of the poor working man in his open vest, holding a musket, following the bare-chested “liberty.” It’s tough to erase this image so she has to make the claim that the working man was not better off during the revolutionary years.

Webster tells us that because the Revolutionary government eliminated all religious holidays that increased the number of work days for the laborer. It must be admitted that the revolutionary reforms were a bit weird. They tried to change the calendar to conform to a version of the metric system…yes, there were mistakes. Removing religion was a goal, not because of religion per se, but because of religion’s role in suppressing the peasantry. She provides a long quote from a newspaper (page 59 of the PDF) which explains that now the people have permission to work on days that were normally forbidden by edict of the Pope and his “Elder Son” which is what they called the king of France.

I’m not sure why she includes the news article since it argues that the removal of religious holidays was a good thing. Nevertheless she laments it because “the result of this legislation was to reduce the number of hands required and leave the vast reserve of labour which enables the employer to make his own terms with the workers.”

In an aristocratic system there are no terms, you just have to work because you are tied to the land. You’re not allowed to not work. It’s odd that the people were denied all of the previous holidays but if Webster is really trying to argue that this made the employers less free she’s just wrong. The employer can still give the workers the day off, they just no longer have to.

“It will be seen that this expedient which State Socialists are fond of denouncing as one of the evils of Capitalism was practised under the regime of that first experiments in State Socialism—Maximilien Robespierre.”

Conspiracy theorists always use the person’s full name like it’s a shock. We haven’t forgotten that the last several pages have been about Robespierre. There’s this fake “honoring” that people like her do when they say “George Soros,” “Barack Hussein Obama,” or “William Jefferson Clinton.” It’s the imitation of an honorific, because they do not actually understand how these things are supposed to go.

Further, it’s tough to for me to understand what she’s talking about. Nothing she’s described has been compulsory work, and it wouldn’t be hard either. She could just say that the Revolutionary government mandated that all people worked all of the time except on every tenth day; but she didn’t.

The revolutionary government wasn’t working economically. She blames it on the elimination of holidays, calling it the final attack on the manufacturing towns, no trade was occurring, and there was mass unemployment. So then they decided to go about the dreaded “system of depopulation.”

I must confess I was bit excited to read this phrase. Modern conspiracy theorists are obsessed with this idea and I am curious if this is the origin point of their worry. Webster was an influential person in these circles with legitimate academic clout so maybe. The idea is that “the they” in charge wants to cut the human population down. They don’t give a reason why this is their desire or why this is necessarily bad. If they’re actively going around culling the population that is bad, but if it’s lowering birthrates or raising people out of poverty (which has the side effect of lowering birthrates) I fail to see the problem.

The issue with this claim is that I cannot find any evidence of it outside Webster’s writings. Even in articles talking about conspiracy theories and the French revolution there is no mention of depopulation plans. The further problem is that she uses two sources that both claim a man named Dubois Crance was the author of the plan. This seems unlikely because Crance also claimed that any African slave who set foot on French soil should be considered a French citizen. I’m very confused here and cannot find any evidence either in support of Webster’s claim or saying that she made it up. I’ll have to suspend judgment and say that, at best, she’s reporting hearsay.

Then we get to the murders. Historical estimates place the total loss of people due to “The Terror” as around 16,594. This is based on official records. Historians then disagree with the next range 10-12000. These are people that died in prison, awaiting trial, or some other cause. I’ll include the higher number so we’re looking at 29k people dead. If Webster was correct and that the Terror was part of a depopulation scheme then her two quoted estimations of either reducing the population of France by 1/3 or to 1/3 (she adeptly points out that this could be a confusion); is grossly underserved. Again, we have the all powerful organization, pulling all of the strings; but in execution is so inept and incompetent that it’s amazing they could even run a local school board.

She includes a larger number, in her words, “the total number of victims downed, guillotined, or shot all over France amounted to 300,000…”

But that’s a total number of dead concurrent with the Terror not because of it. The Revolution is still happening and it’s a war. She’s trying to lump in coincidental deaths with being part of the “depopulation scheme” and if you aren’t paying attention this kind of thing works.

Webster hasn’t given us much, but I think she has given us the “depopulation” claim that modern conspiracy theorists seem to fixate on. The best part is that she’s going to close the chapter by accidentally advocating for Socialism.