BBC Documentary about The Terror.

[Andy Bowden]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00lrcy4/Terror%21_Robespierre_and_the_French_Revolution/

Anyone watch this? I haven't read anything about the French Revolution and my understanding of it is very basic, wiki timeline stuff but this still looked pish.

Even if you take the point that The Terror was some planned out attempt to massacre folk it's still clear it is attacked for reasons that don't have anything to do with opposition to massacre, but because it was revolutionaries who did it.

[politics student]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00lrcy4/Terror%21_Robespierre_and_the_French_Revolution/

Anyone watch this? I haven't read anything about the French Revolution and my understanding of it is very basic, wiki timeline stuff but this still looked pish.

Even if you take the point that The Terror was some planned out attempt to massacre folk it's still clear it is attacked for reasons that don't have anything to do with opposition to massacre, but because it was revolutionaries who did it.

Sounds good.

I will give it a go. Its the BBC, so I expect the content to be a high standard.

[ComradeOm]

Ack, can't watch it outside the UK. I know of a way to get around that though so I'll try again tomorrow

I don't have huge expectations though. Over the past two centuries the Terror has taken on a cultural existence of its own that has little to do with historical events. It now exists in a countless series of plays, novels, and TV documentaries that have their own conventions, their narrative, independent of any academic or historical analysis. I mean, the figures/caricatures that we all associate with the Revolution (think of Robespierre, Danton, Marat, Saint-Just) nearly all rose to prominence during this brief period and it tends to dominate all discourse or perceptions of the subject. No one remembers the faceless politicians who preceded or followed the Terror

Of course this is no coincidence. From the very first revolutionary stirrings in Paris countless conservative polemicists have condemned it utterly, and often quite brilliantly. Better to remember the Terror (itself an artificial creation) than the very real achievements of the Jacobins

(For example, its rarely pointed out for example that the 17,000 who went to the guillotine during the 14 month reign of Robespierre compares very favourably to the tens of thousands killed during the single Semaine Sanglante in 1871)

[thejambo1]

i watched it and i quite enjoyed it,only on an entertainment way. it is pretty much as you would expect in its characterisation of the main people.

[Module]

It's a docu-drama, I'm not sure it will leave a skeptical mind with more than a basic understanding, after watching it.

[Andy Bowden]

ComradeOm you didn't miss anything bar Simon Schama looking like he was having a fit and comparing the French Revolution to the Gulag and the Third Reich.#

I don't know a lot about the French Revolution or the Terror but that does appear to stink of pish overwhelmingly.

It is on you tube here though - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qcZxrb_L0_M

[Killfacer]

Yeah it was a pretty interesting documentary. Fucking Schama was pretty angry about the whole thing.

[Led Zeppelin]

Simon Schama was such an epitomized portrayal of liberalism. He personifies it.

In dictionaries next to the word "liberalism" they should put his picture.

Also, what I said about Chomsky recently in another thread applies here perfectly as well.

I just have to change the name:

Schama didn't bother at all to consider the historical context of what he was saying. This is the hallmark of liberals. They speak of phrases like "democracy", "equality" and "freedom" without bothering to take into account the material circumstances. Yes, you can have all these values in any society in whatever political or economic shape it may be, as long as you really really really want it.

If you don't, you're representative of an evil terroristic dictatorship.

[Killfacer]

I still like Schama, i thought that the "History of Britain" series was fucking great.

[Led Zeppelin]

Well, apparently he's also a hypocritical Zionist piece of shit:


In 2006 on the BBC, Schama debated with Vivienne Westwood the morality of Israel's actions in the Israel-Lebanon war. He characterized Israel's bombing of Lebanese city centers as unhelpful in Israel's attempt to "get rid of" Hezbollah. With regard to the bombing he said: "Of course the spectacle and suffering makes us grieve. Who wouldn't grieve? But it's not enough to do that. We've got to understand. You've even got to understand Israel's point of view."

Oh right, so when it concerns your previous Zionist Israel, we have to "understand their point of view", which is him basically asking people to understand the motivation behind state terror. Yet, when the French Jacobins did it, it was evil and inhumane.

Another hallmark of liberals; hypocrisy.

[Killfacer]

In fairness he didn't condone anything bombing. Stop twisting peoples words. He's simply saying it's important to understand both sides in order to stop the conflict.

Where you invented "zionist piece of shit" from is beyond me.

[Led Zeppelin]

In fairness he didn't condone anything bombing. Stop twisting peoples words. He's simply saying it's important to understand both sides in order to stop the conflict.

I wasn't "twisting anyone's words", I was repeating his quote. He said that people should understand Israel's point of view concerning the bombing, and their point of view in that instance was that of state terror.

Let me post the quote in full:


Of course the spectacle and suffering makes us grieve. Who wouldn't grieve? But it's not enough to do that. We've got to understand.
You've even got to understand Israel's point of view. I did; I lived in Haifa, a bit. But, look: supposing you were in Aberdeen or Inverness, and rockets were raining down on you every day, sent by people who didn't accept the right of your country to exist.

In reply, what would you do?
Link (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/this_week/5210018.stm)

When discussing the Jacobins, he never said such a thing. He called them evil without any hesitation and had no reservation about it whatsoever. The irony here is astounding given the fact that France was being attacked from all sides at the time.

That makes him a hypocrite.


Where you invented "zionist piece of shit" from is beyond me.

Perhaps I invented it from his own words? That is a nice place to "invent" such things from isn't it? He wrote a whole article apologizing for Zionism and extolling the "democratic" Israel.

Here are some nice excerpts from it:


Second, it [call to boycott Israel] is one-eyed. It complains of violations of the Lebanon ceasefire by Israel but says nothing of the cause of that war nor the violations of the Gaza ceasefire by Palestinian terrorists, who continue to fire their rockets into Israel's villages, deliberately targeting civilians. It says nothing about the kidnapped soldiers. It ignores the Israeli children murdered by suicide bombers. It puts in quotation marks "Israel's legitimate right of self-defence," as if to deny that right. It is utterly ahistorical. It casts the Palestinians as pure victims, the Israelis as pure aggressors. The very language it uses when addressing Israeli casualties is obfuscatory. "Ten Palestinians are killed," they write, "for every Israeli death." And from what is it that these Israelis have died?

[...]

The Palestinian cause, still less the cause of peace, is not served by promoting discrimination against Jews. It is indecent to call for the shunning of the Jewish state.
Link (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2006/dec/22/bergerboycott)

Equating anti-Zionism with anti-semitism, saying that the Zionist state has a "right to defend itself" and so on and so forth.

Perhaps in the future before you defend one of your favorite liberal documentary makers you can check your facts.

[Killfacer]

I wasn't defending anyone. Simply put, the quotes you posted before were completely inadequate for the condemnation you gave. However what you just posted is completely different.

[Killfacer]

I mean in your first quote all he says is that you have to understand both sides. I disagree but it doesn't make him a zionist piece of shit. Then you come out with some other stuff, which still doesn't prove he's zionist. All it shows is that he has some dodgy veiws regarding the Isreali-Hesbollah conflict. Frankly the word zionist is thrown around too much on this site and i question whether you would have accused him off it if it weren't for his jewish heritage.

[Led Zeppelin]

Do you even know what the term Zionist means? It means a person who believes that the current Zionist state of Israel has a right to existence and has a "legitimate right to self-defense".

He is by definition a Zionist.

Jeeze, you must like his documentaries a lot if you are willing to go to such lengths to defends his moronic views and politics, which are quintessentially liberal.

Also, I had no idea what his heritage was, nor do I give a shit about it. Perhaps that question entered your mind (for whatever reason), it didn't enter mine.

[Bitter Ashes]

I watched it. I had never heard of The Terror before, so it was intresting to learn something new. Shocking stuff.

Think it just goes to show that paranoia is a very dangerous thing.

[ComradeOm]

I still like Schama, i thought that the "History of Britain" series was fucking great.That was a great series and probably the thing that first got me really interested in social history. That said, it was a very liberal history of a very liberal nation. In that regard Schama is really the last/latest in a long, long line of Whig historians

Just from watching the first part on youTube (I might get time to watch the rest later) Zizek comes out of this very well in my eyes. You can tell that the program does not agree but I have a new found respect for the man. He makes the excellent point that it was that "zero level of Jacobinism" was absolutely necessary for the survival of the French Revolution. Amazing how the same battles are being fought along the same moderate/radical lines some two centuries after the event

I can see from the first clip that my suspicions are correct - witness the sight of the CPS cackling away like schoolboys in the queen's bedroom. But perhaps that's just a tendency of TV histories - they're not explaining history but constructing a narrative. TV needs its villains, it needs its bitesized snippets of information, and it needs some emotional pull with which to trap the viewer


I watched it. I had never heard of The Terror before, so it was intresting to learn something new. Shocking stuff.

Think it just goes to show that paranoia is a very dangerous thing. Just be aware that you're getting a very one sided (and traditional) portrayal, as I note in above posts. In the first place Schama is entirely incorrect when he speaks of the murder of "tens of thousands of innocents" or places this all down to the 'fatal purity' (the paraphrase Ruth Scurr) of misplaced idealism. It is simply dishonest for a historian, who should know better, to make a comparison with the Gulag or Third Reich

Hobsbawm, a much better historian, provides some context and relief from Schama's Little England approach:

"For the solid middle class Frenchman who stood behind the Terror, it was neither pathological nor apocalyptic, but first and foremost the only effective method of preserving their country. This the Jacobin Republic did and its achievement was superhuman. In June 1793 sixty out of the eighty departments of France were in revolt against Paris; the armies of German princes were invading France from the north and east; the British attacked from the south and west: the country was helpless and bankrupt. Fourteen months later all France was under firm control, the invaders had been expelled, the French armies in turn occupied Belgium and were about to embark on twenty years of almost unbroken and effortless military triumph"

[Killfacer]

Do you even know what the term Zionist means? It means a person who believes that the current Zionist state of Israel has a right to existence and has a "legitimate right to self-defense".

He is by definition a Zionist.

Jeeze, you must like his documentaries a lot if you are willing to go to such lengths to defends his moronic views and politics, which are quintessentially liberal.

Also, I had no idea what his heritage was, nor do I give a shit about it. Perhaps that question entered your mind (for whatever reason), it didn't enter mine.

Strangely, when someone screams "zionist shit" at a harmless liberal historian, ethnicity did cross my mind.

[Led Zeppelin]

Strangely, when someone screams "zionist shit" at a harmless liberal historian, ethnicity did cross my mind.

And how did you imagine I knew of his Jewish background? Should I have been able to tell from his appearance? :rolleyes:

I called him a Zionist and backed it up with quotations from him which proved it. In fact that's how I formed my opinion of him as one; by reading what he wrote on the subject. So yes, he is indeed quite harmless and a liberal, but also a Zionist piece of shit.

You on the other hand have done nothing except post some irrelevancies about how much you like some of his documentaries (which from what ComradeOm said are probably shitty), and make ridiculous veiled accusations of anti-semitism which is probably just you projecting.

[Killfacer]

Well he wears one of them skull caps in loads of his programs, i assumed you would know.

I didn't accuse you of anti-semetism. You're far from anti-semetic, thats pretty fucking obvious otherwise you wouldn't be a global moderator on a site called Revleft.

However, there are people on this site who do always link being jewish with being zionist. I can't remember the exact thread but it was pretty sickening when i saw it. Obviously that isn't what you meant if you didn't know he was jewish.

[Led Zeppelin]

No, I had never heard of this person before and it was the first time I saw him in this documentary.

But even so, I wouldn't call a person a Zionist based on them being Jewish. I had skimmed his wiki page when I saw the "Israel" section, and then read the article he wrote, and then knew that he was one.

Just one example of a person I have mentioned many times here before and who has Jewish heritage but is very staunchly anti-Zionist is Norman Finkelstein. There's also Chomsky of course, who I criticized yesterday in the other thread for being a liberal (as I did with this person) but did not call a Zionist, even though I know he has Jewish heritage. I didn't call him a Zionist because I know he isn't one.

Anyone who calls people Zionists based on their ethnicity is a racist and anti-semite, and should be restricted or banned. I'm not sure who you saw doing that but if you can remember it or see it happening again then bring it to the attention of the forum and something will be done about it, because that is unnacceptable behavior.

[YKTMX]

It was embarrassing guff. You'd learn more from a Carry On film.

[Trystan]

I watched it. It was OK, but Schama irritated me and so did the off-topic references to other historical Terrors . . . but Zizek made some interesting points. I'm reading Mark Steel's book about the Revolution now. It's much better stuff, and he points out that the Terror was a rather minor thing, really. Only a few thousand died, which is inexcusable of course - but plenty of worse things have happened through history. It makes you wonder what the fuss is all about . . .

[fabilius]

This is a truly interesting historical event. I agree that Zizek made good points. His way of speaking annoys me, and I don´t think he is the best representative for a revolutionary viewpoint, but I must admit I like some of his writing. (Though not all).

Anyway, I watched the documentary, I liked some of the reenactments. (Especially the speeches)

Does anyone know about a better documentary or perhaps a book on this period that is better.

Of course feel free to recommend a book about the french revolution. I´m really in the mood for reading about it. (I´m right now in the middle of 93 by Victor Hugo).

[Rakhmetov]

This is a truly interesting historical event. I agree that Zizek made good points. His way of speaking annoys me, and I don´t think he is the best representative for a revolutionary viewpoint, but I must admit I like some of his writing. (Though not all).

Anyway, I watched the documentary, I liked some of the reenactments. (Especially the speeches)

Does anyone know about a better documentary or perhaps a book on this period that is better.

Of course feel free to recommend a book about the french revolution. I´m really in the mood for reading about it. (I´m right now in the middle of 93 by Victor Hugo).

Remember what Mark Twain said comparing the Terror of the French Revolution with the Terror of the Monarchy which preceded it:

There were two "Reigns of Terror," if we would but remember it and consider it; the one wrought murder in hot passion, the other in heartless cold blood; the one lasted mere months, the other had lasted a thousand years; the one inflicted death upon ten thousand persons, the other upon a hundred millions; but our shudders are all for the "horrors" of the minor Terror, the momentary Terror, so to speak; whereas, what is the horror of swift death by the axe, compared with lifelong death from hunger, cold, insult, cruelty, and heart-break? What is swift death by lightning compared with death by slow fire at the stake? A city cemetery could contain the coffins filled by that brief Terror which we have all been so diligently taught to shiver at and mourn over; but all France could hardly contain the coffins filled by that older and real Terror -- that unspeakably bitter and awful Terror which none of us has been taught to see in its vastness or pity as it deserves

Mark Twain, writing about the French Revolution,
in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. Chapter XIII

There is another documentary about the French Revolution by the History channel available on youtube.