““White terror” has always been the twin brother of “revolutionary” or “red terror.” Modern history since the French Revolution has witnessed an effervescent parade of rebellions, insurrections, insurgencies, and proper coups – but they almost always came in pairs, as, for example, with revolutionary terror (against sitting feudal, authoritarian regimes) and white terror, counter-revolutionary violence, directed against the alleged revolutionary (or socialist, after 1917) activists and dissidents. Applying this dichotomy of terror to the current wave of insurrection (in the United States and elsewhere) helps us to put its dynamics in a broader historical context.”
Category Archives: terror
Beatrice de Graaf: “Red, White, and Blood: White Terror and Great Fear, 1789-2021”
Posted in defeat, Nota Bene, revolution, terror, violence
Tagged French Revolution, insurrection
Daniel Herwitz: “Good ideals gone bad or bad ideals made good?”
“one wonders if freedom meant to them the freedom to take on the responsibility of creating an equitable and dignified society for all, or if in their heart of hearts freedom meant … freedom as a surge of power, power of self over others, power to command, power to become, to have things and control things.”
Posted in freedom, governance, hubris, Nota Bene, power, revolution, terror, tragic politics, tyranny, violence
Tagged African National Congress, Soth Africa
Murtaza Hussain: “The Far-Right Revolution Was Waiting for an Opportunity. Now, It’s Here.”
“Mutated through new information technologies and drawing strength from feelings of economic and demographic dislocation, fascist and sectarian ideologies have found a home in the hearts of members of a new generation of Americans. Whether most people have connected the dots or not, a violent struggle is already playing out. Over the past few years, a steady drumbeat of massacres have been carried out by extremists associated with the new far-right.”
Posted in disobedience, freedom, Nota Bene, revolution, terror, tyranny, violence
Anonymous: “Between Looted Targets And Trillionaires: Solidarity With The Rebels In Minneapolis”
“The order of things is crushing us. Our jobs are disappearing, they’re paying us shit for throwing our lives into a charnel house, they’re murdering the unruly in the streets and stealing the lives of black people on camera for all the world to see. This is a world we must refuse because it never gave a damn thing for us. This is a world we must destroy.”
Posted in disobedience, emergency, In The News, revolution, terror, violence
Jeremy Popkin: “Vive la révolution!”
“Must radical political change generate uncontainable violence? The French Revolution is both a cautionary and inspiring tale.”
Posted in defeat, gender, governance, Nota Bene, revolution, rights, terror, tragic politics, violence
Tagged French Revolution, Haiti
Kylo V. Nèr: “Delenda est”
“There is no need to redeem the sins of the world in this way; there is nothing to redeem. There is no need to work for better days, to offer generations to come a haven purified of our turpitude, to make ourselves worthy of who has not yet come. There is nothing but to destroy. Let it be destroyed. Without hatred, but without hesitation. Without acrimony, but without trembling. Delenda est.”
Posted in emergency, Nota Bene, revolution, terror, violence
Alex von Tunzelmann: “The Evil Repercussions of the American Revolution”
A review of TO BEGIN THE WORLD OVER AGAIN: How the American Revolution Devastated the Globe (2019) by Matthew Lockwood. “He finds it at the root of a long list of ills, including increasing authoritarianism within Britain itself and the wider British Empire, the failure of Irish, Indian and Peruvian movements against imperialism, the Russian conquest of Crimea, the establishment of penal colonies in Australia and the growth of the global opium trade.”
Posted in Blog, defeat, hubris, melancholy, terror, tragic politics, tyranny
Tagged American Revolution
“Why the Turkish Invasion Matters”
“The invasion of Rojava is taking place against a global backdrop of intensifying nationalism, strife, and authoritarianism. We have to understand this as a single battle in a much larger conflict.”
Posted in governance, In The News, revolution, terror
Tagged Rojava
Jeffrey Ostler: “The Great Fear of 1776”
“It may be unsettling to consider the creation of the United States as a genocidal project, but the experiences of many of eastern North America’s Indigenous people led them to think of it in precisely this way. Examining their reasons does not necessarily mandate agreement with their conclusion, but it does ask us to take their fears more seriously than we have.”
Posted in founding, Nota Bene, revolution, terror, tyranny, violence
Tagged American Revolution, Indigenous people
Luis Hessel: “Women and a revolution betrayed: Nicaragua”
‘During the revolution we knew situations that we disapproved of, but we were not aware of the damage they would eventually cause by not correcting them in time. The “defence” of the Revolution, the early and fierce attack of the US, the economic and military blockade, the formation of the counterrevolution, the emotional commitment and the personal and collective cost that was necessary to pay to achieve Somoza’s departure, as well as many other factors, affected the lack of criticism or its limits of those who had already committed abuses since the beginning of the Revolution.’
Posted in anarchism, autonomy, governance, hubris, Nota Bene, revolution, terror, tragic politics
Tagged Nicaragua
