The problem of whitewashing the Jacobin left and what happened in France in 1793

@ElentirENG ES 1·03·2024 · 19:19 0

The Hispanophobic drift of a large part of the Spanish left has led a large part of the right to miss a patriotic left.

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The Jacobin left presents a new party

Yesterday we met the appearance of Izquierda Española, a party formed by people from around Izquierda Unida, socialists and former members of Ciudadanos. This party arises from a platform called "El Jacobino", which on its site web, which includes a manifesto (see PDF) titled "30 points for a Jacobin left", in which he defends a secular State, proposes "combat hate crimes and the apology of extreme right" (he does not talk about the extreme left) and affirms his "defense of the right to abortion", among other things.

That there are people on the right who are excited about the appearance of this party seems like a paradox to me. To start, and as Francisco José Contreras rightly pointed out today, that this left declares itself "Jacobin" should cause us alarm more than joy due to the fact that a more or less patriotic left is emerging. "I know that today "Jacobinism" passes for "centralist left" or "left against peripheral nationalisms." But it is as if we were calling "Nazis" those in favor of creating national parks and building good highways", Contreras has pointed out. An opinion that I share.

The totalitarian regime established by the Jacobin Club in 1793

We have a certain tendency to forget history and that puts us at risk of repeating the mistakes of the past. The Jacobin Terror, established in September 1793, was the first totalitarian regime of the Contemporary Age. It was established by the so-called Jacobin Club, the left wing of the National Convention (coincidentally, the platform of "El Jacobino" called itself "Club Jacobino" (Jacobin Club) a year ago). That dictatorship was led by the Committee of Public Safety, among whose most influential members were Jacobins such as Maximilien Robespierre.

The more than 30,000 executions of the Jacobin Terror in 10 months

In "The Incidence of the Terror during the French Revolution: A Statistical Interpretation" (1935), the American historian Donald Greer calculated that in the 10 months that the Jacobin Terror lasted, that dictatorship executed between 30,000 and 40,000 people, many of them beheaded by guillotine. To give us an idea of the dimensions of the massacre, the British historian Geoffrey Parker, in "Some Recent Work on the Inquisition in Spain and Italy" (1982), noted that there were some 5,000 executed by the Spanish Inquisition in its 350 years of existence. However, today the Inquisition has a disastrous reputation that Jacobinism does not have, something very incongruous.

The Jacobin Terror began the anti-Catholic genocide of La Vendée

On the other hand, the Jacobin Terror began the first genocide of the Contemporary Age, that of La Vendée, with some 130,000 Catholics dead, according to the French historian Jacques Hussenet ("«Détruisez la Vendée! »Regards croisés sur les victims et destructions de la guerre de Vendée", 2007). As we can see, Contreras does not exaggerate when comparing Jacobinism with Nazism. What is difficult to understand is that there is a certain right that sees the adjective "Jacobin" and not only does not feel chills, but also finds the appearance of a party that claims such a macabre political legacy a cause for celebration.

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Image: Lullaby pit. Exécution de la guillotine pendant la Révolution française.