But what makes the French Revolution the first fascist revolution was its effort to turn politics into a religion. (In this the revolutionaries were inspired by Rousseau, whose concept of the general will divinized the people while rendering the person an afterthought.) Accordingly, they declared war on Christianity, attempting to purge it from society and replace it with a "secular" faith whose tenets were synonymous with the Jacobin agenda. Hundreds of pagan-themed festivals were launched across the country celebrating Nation, Reason, Brotherhood, Liberty, and other abstractions in order to bathe the state and the general will in an aura of sanctity....-- Jonah Goldberg, Liberal Fascism, "Introduction"
I'm still in the "Introduction" of Goldberg's Liberal Fascism. By way of coincidence, I happened upon two disparate pieces (one being Goldberg's book, the other an article by a young Joseph Ratzinger) that placed the birth of the modern world in 1789 -- the beginning of the French Revolution. Being almost ignorant of any history after 1600, I decided I needed to learn something about the French Revolution before continuing in Liberal Fascism.
Now, I've found the best way to learn quickly is by watching a documentary or two. Of course, you have to expect ideologies to influence any documentary (or piece of writing, for that matter), but if you go in expecting the piece of lean one way, you can learn quite a bit without being influenced to think they way the filmmakers think. So I watched The French Revolution: A New Republic is Born in Blood, which was produced by the (leftist) History Channel.
It's not a bad film, though it ends on a completely pragmatic note -- namely, that sometimes violence is necessary to overthrow a tyrant. Well, yes, I suppose that's true. I'm not sure how we could have stopped Hitler, for example, had we not entered WWII. But any thinking person has to conclude that 800 deaths by guillotine a day (which was the average when The Terror reached its peak), sometimes for nothing more than complaining about the price of bread, isn't the kind of violence that overthrows tyrants. That's the violence of tyrants.
At any rate, after watching the French Revolution, I went back and reread the page where Goldberg talks about the Robespierre and his Jacobin cohorts. The passage I cited above struck me anew.
One of the ways the Jacobins waged war on Christianity was to change the calendar. They changed the names of the days and months -- which is pretty innocuous, really. The sinister part is that they changed the length of the week from 7 days to 10 days. This did two things: first, it made it almost impossible to tell when it was Sunday; and second, it undermined the Christian view that God made the world in seven days. It was a blatant attack not only on how Christians worship, but on the fundamental Christian doctrine that God created all things.
I suppose it's because we're close to Christmas that all of this seems more important than it probably is. Yet, every December I'm struck at the ever-growing anti-Christian sentiments in our culture. Battles over elementary-school Christmas programs; battles over nativity scenes on government property; colleges doing away with giving-trees and replacing them with ugly-scarf days. The ubiquitous use of "Happy Holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas." What the hell is going on?
This trend, more than anything else, makes me think that Goldberg may very well be right in saying that we're moving toward a fascist state. It's not the over-the-top fascism of the French Revolution. I suppose I should have ended that sentence with a "thank God." But I'm not so sure. The radical ideas and practices of the Jacobins are scary, but at least you know what you're dealing with.
The smilie-face fascism of in our country is much more sinister. We're being lulled by the gentle baa-ing of sheep. Will anyone be awake when the wolves reveal themselves?
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