Scholar says Black Lives Matter movement now more akin to the French Revolution – is a Reign of Terror next?

07/25/2020 / By Michael Alexander

The Black Lives Matter movement may be on its way to becoming a mass movement similar to the French Revolution, Hoover Institution senior fellow Victor Davis Hanson said.

In an interview with author and conservative radio show host Eric Metaxas, Hanson cited glaring similarities between the ongoing Black Lives Matter movement and the French Revolution’s Jacobin dictatorship, which is known for its “reign of terror.”

According to Hanson, the similarities between the two become even more apparent once their ideologies get inspected, noting that Black Lives Matter takes after the French Revolution’s values of “egalitarianism and fraternity,” which sought to change every aspect of the citizens’ life.

“Everything is on the table. I never imagined that NPR would be telling listeners to decolonize their library or there would be women to shave their heads so they wouldn’t have non-African American hair, or they wouldn’t privilege their whiteness,” Hanson said, describing the acts as reflective of “reeducation camp mentalities.”

“That’s what we are witnessing now with this movement,” Hanson said, echoing statements he made during a prior appearance at Fox’s The Ingraham Angle.

Hanson, during his Ingraham Angle appearance, noted that while Black Lives Matter had legitimate concerns regarding African-American issues during the early days following George Floyd’s death at the hands of a White police officer, the movement has since devolved and become what he called a forum for “blanket condemnation” of law enforcement and authorities.

“…All of a sudden people were cutting their hair and saying ‘I’m not black.’ Children were accusing their parents of racism or suddenly it was ‘defund the police’ or you have to remove books from your bookshelf if they display inordinate attention to white authors,” Hanson said, referring to the social justice-related trends that have since emanated from the movement.

“You’ll never be able to satisfy the iteration as they get more radical,” Hanson told host Laura Ingraham.

This, Hanson said, stems in part from globalization and multiculturalism, noting that there are approximately 55 million people in the country who, due to their being born and raised abroad, may not be familiar with traditional American values.

Conservative editor: Black Lives Matter is similar to China’s Cultural Revolution

Breitbart editor Joel Pollak posited similar sentiments in a column, published on June 8.

In his column, Pollak noted that the Black Lives Matter movement is fast becoming the United States’ answer to China’s Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, which was a radical, youth-led purge of traditional feudal culture and authority within a one-party state.

The most striking similarity between the two movements, Pollak said, is the “ritual humiliation” of individuals who are seen to represent “the system,” citing an incident wherein Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, a staunch Democrat, was chased away by a mob after telling a crowd of protesters that he believes the city’s police department, instead of being defunded, must undergo “structural reforms” in order to revamp and get rid of its inherently racist system.

Actions such as these, Pollak said, are warnings that Black Lives Matter has moved far beyond its original grievance, and is instead demanding total obedience.

“These events recall the public humiliations of the Cultural Revolution, when intellectuals, dissidents, and Communist Party officials who had fallen out of favor were paraded before jeering crowds and made to wear signs confessing their supposed crimes before being banished from society,” Pollak explained.

Revolutions, riots will die out soon – scholar

Hanson, in a column for the Las Vegas Review Journal, warned conservatives that the violence imposed by the Black Lives Matter movement, despite being on the verge of waning, may get a second wind once it gets co-opted by opportunists looking for a vulnerable group to take advantage of.

“The present madness will wane like a virus, as it eats its own and terrifies its sympathizers that they may be next — unless, of course, a would-be Napoleon uses a “whiff of grapeshot” and turns the mob into his personal cult,” Hanson said, citing instances such as the rise of Nazism in Germany and the Bolshevik revolution in Russia.

Despite the seemingly dire straits faced by the nation because of the violence espoused by Black Lives Matter and similar groups such as Antifa, Hanson stressed that such movements will eventually fizzle out in the end – especially once their leaders lose steam.

“Once cultural revolutions turn anarchic and eat their own, they lose support. When quiet sympathizers conclude that they too may be targeted, to survive they turn on their former icons,” Hanson said.

This, Hanson said, would effectively lead to the movement’s sputtering into irrelevance.

“Revolutionaries are now sowing the wind, but they have little idea of the reactive whirlwind they may soon reap,” Hanson said.

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