Feast of the Cannibals

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Saturn devouring one of his sons, by Flemish artist Peter Paul Rubens

Three revolutions in France, Russia, and Iran legitimized destruction and violence with a narrative of political persecution, inequality, and social injustice under monarchical governments. After power struggles and cannibalistic purges, however, they all ended in tyrannical oppression of totalitarian proportions, characterized by ideological extremism and utter contempt for human life.

Swiss publicist Jacques Mallet du Pan (1749-1800) is known for the following reflection:

“Like Saturn, the Revolution devours its children.”

Mallet du Pan was a hard-working, moderate man with an aversion to political extremes. During the French Revolution, he sided with the monarchy and undertook diplomatic duties on behalf of the king abroad. Undoubtedly, he was a man with a deep love of prose and philosophy, but he refused to act against his better judgment and be seduced by the siren song of utopia. A keen observer of the revolution that emanated from Paris, he expressly distanced himself from its hysterical self-glorification and violent excesses.

Under the influence of highly dramatic events playing out at the National Convention, driven by shifting alliances — both inside and outside Salle du Manège — and unpredictable from day to day, Mallet du Pan (a) noted with disgust the weakness of the church, (b) expressed his contempt for the “barbarians” (i.e. the “sans-culottes”), who threatened the survival of civilized institutions, and (c) seriously feared the degradation of the handed-down culture as a whole.

At the height of the Reign of Terror, it was as if the gates of hell were about to open. Not so much the theatrical debates between Girondins and Jacobins (Montagnards) — contrasting with the secret intrigues of the Committee of Public Safety — as (a) the accelerating commitment to ideological purity, (b) mutual suspicion of counter-revolutionary crimes (and threats of retaliatory purges), and (c) excessive blood sacrifice in public places induced an apocalyptic atmosphere of mass psychosis.

The Red Terror (1917–22), which followed the October Revolution of 1917, was like a repetition of the arbitrary purges ordered by Maximilien Robespierre, but on a completely different scale, the sadistic product of gangsterism and devoid of ideals. In the process, Bolsheviks exterminated their revolutionary rivals from the tsarist era — anarchists, Socialist Revolutionaries, and Mensheviks.

Along the same lines as vengeful Montagnards, who took advantage of the murder of political theorist Jean-Paul Marat to intensify the purge of Girondins, Bolsheviks availed themselves of the murder of Petrograd Cheka leader Moisei Uritsky and the attempted murder of Vladimir Lenin himself to exterminate, not only political activists accused of standing in the way of the “dictatorship of the proletariat”, but also entire social classes of designated “class enemies” — tsarists, clergy, and kulaks. (By the way, Bolsheviks set a criminal-style example to Nazis; the latter avenged the murders of “Obergruppenführer” Reinhard Heydrich and “Sturmbannführer” Martin Kämpfe by committing massacres in the Czech and French villages of Lidice and Oradour-sur-Glane, respectively.)

With utter contempt for ideas of personal freedom and democracy, determined to secure the monopoly of power for his party, which is why he disbanded the Constituent Assembly in 1918, approving the widespread practice of hostage-taking and ordering indiscriminate executions (e.g. by shooting, hanging, and drowning) of civilians who opposed Bolshevik demands (e.g. handing over crops), Lenin laid the foundation for an “evil empire” (i.e. in the words of President Ronald Reagan) whose vast network of slave camps (i.e. the Siberian Gulag archipelago) was taken over and expanded by Joseph Stalin. 

Obviously, Stalin never invented the Red Terror. A cold-blooded and devious plotter, however, he showed a natural talent for organizing campaigns against “counter-revolutionaries” and cowing the rural population, indifferent to the human cost. In his younger days, like some Western European “revolutionaries” (i.e. terrorists) of the 1970s, he distinguished himself by his criminal ingenuity, raising funds for Bolsheviks by means of (a) robberies, (b) kidnappings, and (c) protection rackets. 

Thanks to his efficiency, acknowledged by Lenin, Stalin rose through the ranks, outsmarting his rivals along the way. With the paranoid disposition and cynical precautions of a gang lord, he got rid of any party member who might conceivably challenge his rule (e.g. Leon Trotsky). A few books were published in his name, but he was no real theorist and had little else at heart but his own apotheosis. The sanguine mottos of the revolution were but a fig leaf for his personal pursuit of total dominance.

The year 1979 was discouraging for Western ideals of personal freedom and the rule of law. At the beginning of the year, the revolution broke out in Iran. The shah, who had tried to modernize his country according to the Western model, was equally hated by socialists and Islamists. Towards the end of the year, Soviet troops invaded Afghanistan. Back in those days, Westerners were inclined to take the side of devout Muslims in the fight against world communism, swayed by experiences of political persecution, unrestricted violence, and forced conformity (including bans on religious worship) in the Soviet Union and its satellite states.

When toppling the Pahlavi dynasty, several political movements in Iranian society stood together. The revolutionaries who took to the streets and marched in protest ranged from communists to Islamists. What united them on the edge of a new era, however, was hatred of the tyrant on the Peacock Throne, considered a Western puppet, his clique of privileged few, and his secret police.

Many enthusiastic participants in the Iranian revolution had hoped for freedom in some form after the fall of tyranny. Instead, the undisputed Islamist leader, Ruhollah Khomeini, whose followers were uncompromising, well-organized, and ready to use violence, waged a cynical power struggle. His own party, the Islamic Republic Party, usurped absolute power while allies — and perceived “rivals”, as it should turn out — from the revolution (e.g. members of the National Democratic Front, the provisional government, the People’s Mujahedin of Iran, the Muslim People’s Republican Party, and the Tudeh Party), realizing their gullibility too late and rightly fearing the emergence of a theocratic tyranny, were put out of the game one by one.

During bloody purges in the revolutionary ranks, inspiration from French and Russian precedents was conspicuous. In the case of left-wing (communist) members of the Tudeh Party, the Islamists in charge did not even shy away from staging old-style show trials (i.e. remorseful confessions broadcast on national television) as in the Stalin era. In doing so, they demonstrated to the Iranian public how emphatically the opposition to the theocratic regime had been crushed. Like another Trotsky, President Abolhassan Banisadr, an “Islamist intellectual”, but in opposition to the Islamic Republic Party, eventually had to flee the country in order not to share the fate of other moderates.

To conceive of the “unholy” alliance between socialists and Islamists worldwide as an anomaly is a misunderstanding. Far from being contradictory, it is meaningful. What unites the ideological opposites is (a) hatred of Western civilization and (b) willingness to resort to violence to promote a totalitarian world order. In the long run, of course, peace is not going to last between them. They remain ideological arch-rivals. Strictly speaking, their alliance represents a pragmatic arrangement. The deadline for their pragmatism expires as soon as the last vestiges of the free world have been obliterated. Then one of them will make away with the other. The stronger eats the weaker party.

Basically, the same Saturnal rules apply during revolutions and showdowns in the criminal underworld: Those with the (a) cunning, (b) weapons, and (c) resolve to take or keep power, whatever the price in human blood and suffering, are going to prevail.