QAA - Premium Episode 107: Conspiracy Theories in Revolutionary & Napoleonic France w Everett Rummage smpl Aired: 2021-01-15 Duration: 09:11 === Conspiracy Theories in Revolution (03:06) === [00:00:00] Citizens! [00:00:00] Citizens! [00:00:01] I'm coming from Versailles! [00:00:04] The King has sent Necker back! [00:00:08] Citizens! [00:00:09] It's the sign! [00:00:10] It's the sign of a Saint-Barthélemy for the patriots! [00:00:15] Tonight, even the battalions, Swiss and German, will leave the Champ-de-Mars to slaughter us! [00:00:26] We have only one resource. [00:00:28] Les armes! [00:00:30] Aux armes! [00:00:31] Aux armes! [00:00:33] Tout Paris doit prendre les armes! [00:00:38] Welcome, listener, to Premium Chapter 107 of the QAnon Anonymous podcast, the Conspiracy Theories in Revolutionary and Napoleonic France episode. [00:00:47] As always, we are your hosts, Jake Rokitansky, Everett Rummage, Julian Fields, and Travis Fiume. [00:00:52] Let them eat Jake! [00:00:54] It's what I've always said when the unwashed crowds gather neath the palace window. [00:00:58] Complaining that bread prices are just too damn high. [00:01:01] I lecture them with the wisdom of my God-appointed brain, untouched by syphilis and crowned with a beautiful powdered wig. [00:01:08] And yet Jake remains uneaten, sitting across from me. [00:01:11] This week our guest is Everett Rumage from the Age of Napoleon podcast. [00:01:15] He has written a segment on conspiracy theories in revolutionary and Napoleonic France, in an era where bona fide conspiracies rocked the nation regularly. [00:01:25] Did a pamphlet exist on Fraise-le-Dryp? [00:01:27] Or were most of the stories just about royals doing poos on each other? [00:01:31] And what of the French Gitmo? [00:01:33] La Bastille. [00:01:34] We're going to learn more with our special guest, Everett Romage, whose name is reminiscent of an alcoholic English scientist crossing a jungle that will certainly kill him. [00:01:42] Some of you probably already know Everett for his great tweets under the pseudonym Trillburn, or even The Discord Lover. [00:01:49] Welcome to the podcast, Mr. Romage! [00:01:51] Thank you very much! [00:01:52] Theories of the conspiracy at the age of the French Revolution and Napoleon. [00:01:57] Conspiracy theories thrive in times of uncertainty and upheaval. [00:02:01] The period of the French Revolution and the rise of Napoleon Bonaparte were no exception. [00:02:05] Before we delve into the conspiracy theories of revolutionary and Napoleonic France, it is worth mentioning that this was a golden age for actual conspiracies. [00:02:15] During this era, words like émigré and terrorist entered wide usage for the first time. [00:02:21] Coups and counter-coups became a regular feature of revolutionary politics. [00:02:26] One of the most famous leaders of the early stages of the Revolution, the Comte de Mirabeau, turned out to be an agent provocateur in the pay of the king. [00:02:36] The suicide car bomb was invented for an assassination attempt on Napoleon on Christmas Eve 1800. [00:02:44] It's a good story. [00:02:44] They actually built it in an old abandoned monastery, and they built a prototype. [00:02:50] And when they blew it up, the guys who built it were so terrified, they just ran out of the monastery. === Secret Plots and Public Opinion (05:39) === [00:02:56] And so they didn't actually do the proper... Because they were so scared by their own creation, they didn't actually do the proper investigation. [00:03:04] Did it go off right? [00:03:05] Would it have killed Napoleon? [00:03:06] Anyway, before his execution, it had come to light that Louis XVI had been working in secret with France's enemies to ensure his own country's defeat on the battlefield. [00:03:17] These are just a few examples. [00:03:19] One big reason people in this era seemed convinced they were surrounded by secret plots is that there really was a lot of secret plotting going on. [00:03:29] So basically, yeah, not a mirror for our age at all. [00:03:34] On top of these real conspiracies, there were imagined ones, produced by the anxiety of changing times. [00:03:41] During this period, European states mobilized their people and their economies for total war in unprecedented ways. [00:03:49] The abstract forces of politics, finance, and international trade became far more powerful, and encroached on spheres of life where they had never been present before. [00:04:01] Many people found this experience disruptive and alienating, and some naturally looked for someone to blame. [00:04:08] This is also the period when we see something like modern public opinion emerging in Western countries for the first time. [00:04:15] It is still too early to talk about something like mass media as we know it, but there was an active print culture which held real influence. [00:04:23] Particularly in big cities with relatively literate populations, like London and Paris. [00:04:29] You could almost compare the press in the 18th century to the internet today. [00:04:33] People who read it, or listened to someone else reading it out loud, had access to far more information and news than previous generations. [00:04:42] However, a lot of that information was bad, a mix of polemic, entertainment, and gossip, which privileged sensationalism over accuracy. [00:04:51] Worse, societies and political systems had no real way to deal with this new class of informed, or misinformed, Members of the public. [00:05:00] Just one moment before you go on. [00:05:02] Did you just mention that people would read the kind of, like, pamphlets or even the news out loud so that non-literate people would go and listen to somebody? [00:05:12] Oh yeah, that was actually, like, probably people in Paris who knew, like, you know, what was going on in the world. [00:05:18] Probably more of them, it was from hearing someone else than from reading it themselves. [00:05:23] Because of illiteracy and just because, you know, with the level of technology, these pamphlets, they're not producing very many of them. [00:05:29] So they're changing hands, people are gathering around to hear them read out loud, that kind of thing. [00:05:34] So yeah, you guys are, you guys would have been right in the zeitgeist. [00:05:37] So there were podcasters back then. [00:05:38] Exactly. [00:05:39] They were like local, you would have your local regional podcaster, he would read Wikipedia for you, and he would make a podcast episode. [00:05:46] One important phenomenon of this era was a process historians call desacralization, in which something formerly considered sacred, the monarchy, was rendered profane and ordinary. [00:05:58] In past centuries, European monarchs were viewed with great reference, not quite as gods, but so favored by God that they were nearly superhuman. [00:06:08] To take one example, well into the 18th century, it was believed that the touch of a king could cure certain diseases. [00:06:16] By the time of the French Revolution, this image of divine monarchy was fading away. [00:06:21] Kings, queens, and emperors were increasingly seen as more or less normal people who just happened to be born into lives of power and privilege. [00:06:30] Print culture was a major driver of this process. [00:06:34] In early eras of history, people only really had contact with their monarchs through public displays of state power. [00:06:41] But by the mid-18th century, it was relatively easy for someone in Paris to find a newspaper or a pamphlet full of court gossip, or even speculation about the king's private life, or the sex lives of the royal family. [00:06:55] Satirical songs, stories, and cartoons were very popular, and their favorite targets were the royals and their relatives and friends. [00:07:04] For whatever reason, people farting or shitting on each other seems to have been the most popular motif in these caricatures. [00:07:13] Eh oui, que veux-tu, on aime la merde. [00:07:16] I'm not kidding you guys. [00:07:18] I would guess probably 40% of the ones I've seen have someone farting or shitting on each other. [00:07:22] That's right, because that's it. [00:07:24] You very literally just want to see someone throw shit at the king. [00:07:28] And so you're like, ah, what if the queen was propelling it from her asshole on top of it all? [00:07:32] Yeah, it's just the most basic, like, you know, that impulse that we all have to see, you know, someone with an authority get shat on. [00:07:39] And, you know, these guys were the pioneers of it. [00:07:41] So that's what they've depicted. [00:07:42] Obviously, none of these pamphlets were very politically important in and of themselves. [00:07:47] But over the course of decades, they helped erode the mystique of the monarchy. [00:07:52] Quite simply, it's hard to think of the king as a nearly divine figure when you know all about his sexual affairs and drunken debauchery, and have had a good chuckle at the idea of someone farting on him. [00:08:05] Without this shift in public attitudes, it never would have been possible for people to rise up and directly challenge the monarchy. [00:08:13] So to sum up, this was an era of unprecedented ideological and geopolitical turbulence, rife with real conspiracies. === Perfect Conduit for Conspiracy (00:55) === [00:08:22] It was also an era of profound social and political change, exactly the type of phenomena people are tempted to explain with conspiracism. [00:08:31] And the emerging popular press provided the perfect conduit for conspiracy theories to reach a wide audience. [00:08:39] If you were deliberately working to create a perfect environment to foster the growth of conspiracy theories, these are exactly the type of conditions you would want to create. [00:08:48] You have been listening to a sample of a premium episode of QAnon Anonymous. [00:08:53] We don't run any advertising on the show, and we'd like to keep it that way. [00:08:57] For five bucks a month, you'll get access to this episode, a new one each week, and our entire library of premium episodes. [00:09:05] So head on over to patreon.com slash QAnon Anonymous and subscribe. [00:09:09] Thank you. [00:09:10] Thanks. [00:09:10] I love you.