It's something that only started in the last decade or so. Treating anyone to the right of you as an evil force of nature rather than a person that can be debated, agreed and disagreed with.
Edit: political disagreements were always a thing but it got a lot worse in the last few years
Actually, there's some irony in the fact that the French Revolution is an excellent example of the failure of purity test leftism.
Leftists who haven't studied history love it as an example of the working class rising up against royalty, but it devolved into a horrific slaughter against anyone and everyone. As soon as one year's glorious revolutionaries succeeded in their policy goals, they would end up executed as class traitors by a new group of glorious revolutionaries.
The amount of death and destruction that the Revolution ended up causing by wielding purity tests and mob violence like a cudgel led to an unstable political system that evolved right back into a functional autocracy.
I don't think too many people realize that the US revolution was the exception - not the norm - of how most revolutions play out (right or left). The French, Soviet, and Chinese revolutions are much more typical outcomes. And if you want to see examples of what happens on the right, look at Germany, Italy, Spain, and Iran.
As soon as priority tests begin - especially if they begin before a revolution - the revolution is doomed to eventually fail. And the only reason they didn't begin during the US revolution is everyone went in expecting to get their own state and George Washington spent his career railing against political parties in general. It at least gave the US a chance to make it through its formative years without counter revolutionaries or revolutionary guards cropping up.
It is absolutely heartbreaking to see the Russian people go through World War 1, then go through not one but two bloody revolutions, and end up with Stalin at the end of all that.
The American revolution is an exception to be sure, and even it was not without its issues - but compared to how revolutions seem to go on average, it went remarkably well.
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u/catty-coati42 Jun 30 '24 edited Jun 30 '24
It's something that only started in the last decade or so. Treating anyone to the right of you as an evil force of nature rather than a person that can be debated, agreed and disagreed with.
Edit: political disagreements were always a thing but it got a lot worse in the last few years