Matt Yglesias, Intellectual

That number is far off from the accurate one. In the Vendee region alone (a region of Western France, on the Atlantic Ocean), there was a slaughter of spectacular size.

The French Revolution is really better thought of as the Paris Revolution, because Paris was the capital of the Revolution and the Terror, and most of the revolutionary fervor was in Paris.

Out in places like the Vendee, the peasants did not want to slaughter their lords or their clergy -- and fought back against the troops sent by Paris to "pacify" them.

The "Infernal Columns," as they were called, ravaged the Vendee in a butcherie called by many the first genocide.

With this came formal orders for forced evacuation; also, a 'scorched earth' policy was initiated: farms were destroyed, crops and forests burned and villages razed. There were many reported atrocities and a campaign of mass killing universally targeted at residents of the Vendee regardless of combatant status, political affiliation, age or gender.

From January to May 1794, 20,000 to 50,000 Vendean civilians were massacred by the Infernal columns of the general Louis Marie Turreau.

...

General Westermann reported to his political masters at the Convention: "The Vendee is no more... According to your orders, I have trampled their children beneath our horses' feet; I have massacred their women, so they will no longer give birth to brigands. I do not have a single prisoner to reproach me. I have exterminated them all."

Some historians believe this letter never existed. [Um, you should know there are a lot of Jacobin apologists, to this day: Actual fans of Robspierre's mass slaughters.-- ace.]

...

Estimates of those killed in the Vendean conflict -- on both sides --- range between 117,000 and 450,000, out of a population of around 800,000.

And remember, that's the Vendee alone, a not-terribly-large or populous area (it's basically a good-sized county). That doesn't include all the guillotines working every day and night in Paris (I think women were guillotined at night, to not upset spectators), nor the other big burgs around the place.

But then, Yglesias has already outed himself as a Jacobin:

So, Matt Yglesias is now doing pig-ignorant, Aren't-I-Daringly-Contrarian #HotTakes about events he just learned about, but which happened over 220 years ago.

But that was just the amuse-bouche for the entree of stupid he had planned for later in the day.

Later on, Jonathan Chait, a fellow lefty, wrote an article protesting the claims from some on the left that any support for Joe Biden was ipso facto sexist -- because why would you oppose Hillary, if not for sexism?

So he criticized another lefty making that claim, and suggested that some lefties were a little too quick to claim that all political disagreements were due to sexism or racism.

Well! That upset our little dumb Jacobin, who immediately began protesting that some people (hint, hint) were too quick to claim that there were reasons besides sexism and racism for opposing leftist policies.

Which led to Chait asking Yglesias to defend the article making the assertion that any pro-Biden agitation was sexist.

Eliciting this typically Ygelsian response:

Well.

I keep asking this, and I know it's rhetorical, but: Aren't alleged, soi-disant Elite Intellectuals required to read a f***ing book on occasion, or at least be casually familiar with easily-adduced and well-known facts?

Or is it just a matter of wearing Asshole Spectacles and being a member of the Jacobin Left?

Rhetorical, I know. I know full well what the answer is.

posted by Ace at 06:02 PM

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