I used to know a poli-sci researcher who was trying to take a big-data look at the success and failure of revolutions, taking in variables like "how many demonstrators rallied against the government?" "How many dissidents were disappeared by internal security forces?" and even things like "how many bullet holes are there on the buildings around the main protest venue in the capital?"

I asked him once if he'd discovered the secret to a successful revolution, and he just grimaced at me.

[–] [email protected] 30 points 7 months ago

I love how people take the Soviet revolution as some sort of example of success, when what actually happened was that the original government collapsed because it was getting the shit kicked out of it by Germany, then a new government took over and got the shit kicked out it of by Germany before also collapsing, then the Bolsheviks strolled into literally empty government buildings and took over - against the judgement of most of the Bolsheviks who still thought the time wasn't right to take over. Hardly a replicable or generalizable sequence of events.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago (1 children)

It's unintended consequences all the way down, isn't it

[–] [email protected] 7 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (2 children)

What's a little Third Reich here or Reign of Terror there between friends, eh? Besides , it's not like a little bit of anti-intellectual purging or nationwide famine isn't worth enduring to get to a better world for the people left afterwards!

[–] [email protected] 8 points 7 months ago

re the reign of terror. Extremely bad yes but I think this quote by mark Twain highlights flaws in how we think about this stuff.

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, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court

They were trying to throw off a horrifically oppressive system that had been going on centuries. Defs killed too many innocents, defs had problems with paranoia. Also the lesser violence in the struggle between nobles and everyone else.

The book is awesome btw

[–] mindbleach 3 points 7 months ago

I'm told there will be cake.