• Melllvar@startrek.website
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    15 days ago

    The overwhelming majority of the people guillotined during the French revolution were innocent commoners.

    • The point of The Terror was to burn the Révolution into the skulls of generations to come by making it so horrible the ownership class would be terrified into treating the working class nicely (this was before class consciousness, so it was the Petit Bourgeoisie that actually formed the Assemblée nationale representing the third estate. They, too, are ownership class, once Marx sorted it all out.)

      This is why heads had to be piled high. We were supposed to be scared into civility. But as the early 20th century demonstrated to us, it didn’t work, and we still have people voting for far-right parties in order to vote against neoliberalism (which is happening a lot in Europe right now, and is a sound explanation of why Trump still got so many votes.)

  • nonentity
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    15 days ago

    Every ethical society requires a healthy and robust guillotine maintenance and repair workforce.

  • mEEGal@lemmy.world
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    15 days ago

    here’s a “fun” (read “insane”) fact: France abolished the death penalty in 1981; the last execution by guillotine took place in 1977

  • UrPartnerInCrime
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    15 days ago

    Another fun fact: The blade wasn’t sharpened during the revolution properly, so they would have to drop the blade multiple times to get a full cut.

    • zoey@lemmy.librebun.com
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      15 days ago

      Oh this is actual nightmare territory… Wish my brain’s imagination wasn’t so good