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What Arendt claims is not that revolutionaries are not organized, it's that only with popular discontent they were able to succeed. This discontent is caused by
by publyjusz 9y ago
What Arendt claims is not that revolutionaries are not organized, it's that only with popular discontent they were able to succeed. This discontent is caused by structural weakness and degeneration of ancient regime, and to a large extent cannot be engineered. Which is shown by cases when either revolutionary parties or foreign governments really wanted to make a popular revolution artificially, put many resources and failed.
But truth be told, there were cases when power lied on the streets and was left untaken by (often even organized) revolutionaries. The examples would be Italy and Germany after WW1, when technically socialdemocrats could assume power violently, but they chose not to for various ideological reasons.
Of course, it is in interest of ancien regimes, however we define them, to make people believe that it's all secret societies. It starts at least with the royalist "theory" of French revolution caused entirely by Freemasons and such.
As to your link, demonizing a queen by itself is very far from delegitimizing monarchy and autocratic government in general. It was even possible in such prototypical monarchies as Byzantine Empire. But even you seem to concede that there is no evidence for an "Antoinette porn conspiracy" and its existence is something we need to guess. I'd say "sex sells" is an easier explanation here.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- woodandsteel 9y agoI agree. A government can't be overthrown by revolutionaries, no matter how clever and well-disciplined, unless it has already become greatly weakened through factors such as poor leadership, technological and economic changes, and religious disputes.