Jonah Goldberg Quote
Given the benefit of hindsight, it’s difficult to understand why anyone doubts the fascist nature of the French Revolution. Few dispute that it was totalitarian, terrorist, nationalist, conspiratorial, and populist. It produced the first modern dictators, Robespierre and Napoleon, and worked on the premise that the nation had to be ruled by an enlightened avant-garde who would serve as the authentic, organic voice of the general will. The paranoid Jacobin mentality made the revolutionaries more savage and cruel than the king they replaced. Some fifty thousand people ultimately died in the Terror, many in political show trials that Simon Schama describes as the founding charter of totalitarian justice. Robespierre summed up the totalitarian logic of the Revolution: There are only two parties in France: the people and its enemies. We must exterminate those miserable villains who are eternally conspiring against the rights of man…[W]e must exterminate all our enemies.
Given the benefit of hindsight, it’s difficult to understand why anyone doubts the fascist nature of the French Revolution. Few dispute that it was totalitarian, terrorist, nationalist, conspiratorial, and populist. It produced the first modern dictators, Robespierre and Napoleon, and worked on the premise that the nation had to be ruled by an enlightened avant-garde who would serve as the authentic, organic voice of the general will. The paranoid Jacobin mentality made the revolutionaries more savage and cruel than the king they replaced. Some fifty thousand people ultimately died in the Terror, many in political show trials that Simon Schama describes as the founding charter of totalitarian justice. Robespierre summed up the totalitarian logic of the Revolution: There are only two parties in France: the people and its enemies. We must exterminate those miserable villains who are eternally conspiring against the rights of man…[W]e must exterminate all our enemies.
Related Quotes
About Jonah Goldberg
Goldberg was a regular contributor on news networks such as CNN and MSNBC, appearing on various television programs including Good Morning America, Nightline, Hardball with Chris Matthews, Real Time with Bill Maher, Larry King Live, Your World with Neil Cavuto, the Glenn Beck Program, and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Goldberg was an occasional guest on a number of Fox News shows such as The Five, The Greg Gutfeld Show, and Outnumbered. He was also a frequent panelist on Special Report with Bret Baier. From 2006 to 2010, Goldberg was a frequent participant on bloggingheads.tv. Goldberg has been a noted critic of President Donald Trump, fellow Republicans, and the conservative media complex during and after the Trump's first term as president. In November 2021, Goldberg and his colleague Steve Hayes resigned from Fox News in protest over Tucker Carlson's documentary Patriot Purge. Goldberg described the documentary as "a collection of incoherent conspiracy-mongering, riddled with factual inaccuracies, half-truths, deceptive imagery, and damning omissions."