I was thinking about how the American and French Revolutions are sometimes seen, especially by Marxists, as more ‘successful’ versions of the English Civil War and the Commonwealth.
Nowadays, whenever people suggest even mild leftwing ideas, someone pops up and says ‘Sure if you want to end up with STALINISM’ so, I was wondering if people said the same thing about Cromwell and the Roundheads before the American Revolution? Like, ‘If we get rid of the British, next thing you know they’ll be cancelling CHRISTMAS!’
The parallels between Cromwell and Washington are pretty obvious: ‘successful revolutionary general defeats the monarch’s forces in a war that started as a dispute about tax, then becomes the new head of state’ applies to both. Did people at the time see the comparison or were the two men and the two conflicts seen as very different?
Cromwell was a dumbass though… that was the real problem.
https://historylearning.com/stuart-england/cromwell-england/
"The Puritans encouraged industriousness: it was believed that hard work helped a person reach heaven. As such Cromwell believed that ‘pointless’ enjoyment was a sin while sports and entertainment were banned - theatres and inns were also closed. Plain dress was also enforced.
Sunday was a holy day under Puritan rule, which meant that work was not allowed - people who were found to be doing unnecessary work on a Sunday could even be put in the stocks, while even a walk to anywhere that wasn’t church could result in a fine.
In Medieval England, feast days were held to celebrate saint’s lives. In Cromwell’s England, monthly fast days - when people abstained from food - were held to encourage the English people to focus on God."
. . .
"One of the most extreme examples of Cromwell’s Puritan rule was that Christmas was banned. He wanted Christmas to be a purely religious celebration in which people contemplated the birth of Jesus. Puritans viewed with consternation eating and drinking on Christmas day. Festive food was removed from the streets which meant that the smell of a roasting goose could also bring trouble, while decorations, too, were banned.
However, Cromwell himself did not live a life of rigid self-control. He enjoyed music, hunting and bowls. He even allowed entertainment at his daughter’s wedding.
Cromwell abhorred Irish Catholics. He believed that they were all potential traitors who would willingly help any Catholic nation that wanted to attack England. During Cromwell’s rule, he tried to ‘tame’ the Irish through military force and terror. English soldiers conducted brutal massacres at Drogheda (September 1649) and Wexford (October 1649). Irish children were sent to the Americas to work as slave labourers in the sugar plantations: more than 100,000 Irish children may have been sold as slaves in the 1650s."
Damn, you’d think after that the britbongers would have wised up and stomped out the puritans entirely. Would have saved America a lot of trouble if they did.
I mean, we Brits kind of did stamp them out. After Cromwell most of the Puritans were driven out or voluntarily went into exile… in America (sorry).
The Brits definitely did this. Cromwell was a proto-Bonaparte and bears the same stigma against the republican regime. It is the proof that power should never be given fully to the people and that part of it should always remain in the hands of people who were never chosen on their merit but because of their birth. Hence the royal family and the house of lords.
I just want to say we already have left wing policies in the USA. We have progressive income tax, social security, laws against turning people away from hospitals, government-funded food assistance, housing assistance, due process, etc etc.
The reason people associate the recent pushes with Stalinism isn’t because they’re left wing. It’s because they’re Marxist, and because they’re aimed at eradicating inequality.
They’re not Marxist; they’re not aimed at eradicating inequality; if they did aim at eradicating inequality, that wouldn’t necessarily make them Marxist, because Marxism did not aim at eradicating inequality.
Apart from that, yep, all good points.
