Thread by @JoshJPhilipp

Thread on Notre Dame:

History time: when socialists burned Paris and nearly destroyed Notre Dame, in an attempt to wipe out relics and memory of the past.

Column here: theepochtimes.com/how-notre-dame…

The world watched together on April 15, as the Notre Dame Cathedral burned. It all happened very slowly, starting with a spark that seemed easy to extinguish, yet grew until the blaze engulfed the whole roof, until its spire fell. (1)

While the damage wasn’t as devastating as it could have been, and people came together to finance its repairs, that moment when a symbol of Western civilization burned before the world’s eyes is something many won’t soon forget. (2)

Notre Dame is the heart of Paris. Other temples and churches at its site go back to the 4th century of Saint-Étienne during the Roman Empire, then into a cathedral in 857, and mostly into its current form in 1260 after more than 100 years of construction. (3)

Notre Dame is a relic of history—a place that has witnessed the development of Western civilization as we know it. (4)

And Notre Dame is also a place that has endured all the fury of the new movements that have looked to wipe out history, religion, and culture, including the French Revolution, various socialist uprisings, and the Paris Commune of 1871, when communism first took power. (5)

A shift took place in Europe during the French Revolution that began in 1789. People, believing in the new age of “enlightenment,” believed they could throw out all the things of the old world, and that in the reason of the modern age men could form something better. (6)

That movement of “reason” launched the Reign of Terror, which saw the guillotine as a new and reasonable way to end the lives of between 18,000 and 40,000 people—after the king and queen were beheaded. (7) theepochtimes.com/the-dark-origi…

A frenzy took over the hearts of men, driving a desire to not just abandon the past, but to destroy it in spirit and in form. The leaders of the French Revolution set up their new “Cult of Reason,” deemed the first state religion of atheism. (8)

Notre Dame was among their targets for destruction. They took 28 stone statues of the Kings of Judah from the cathedral and beheaded them. They dressed farm animals in the clothes of priests, placed prostitutes at the heads of churches to represent the “Goddess of Reason.” (9)

During the Reign of Terror, the Notre Dame cathedral was turned by these radicals from a place of worship to a place of debauchery. (10)

When Napoleon brought an end to the French Revolution, and banned the atheist Cult of Reason, he brought life to the cathedral again with his coronation in 1804. Yet, Notre Dame would witness more terrible things still. (11)

The new age of the “Cult of Reason” soon gave rise to the new ideologies of socialism and communism—terms that were until Lenin’s Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 used mostly interchangeably. (12)

The idea of destroying tradition in the name of socialist revolution was carried out by Gracchus Babeuf, whom Marx named the first revolutionary communist. (13) theepochtimes.com/the-dark-origi…

This helped form the ideas of “communism” by Filippo Buonarroti in 1828, which would lead to the League of Outlaws in 1834, which became the League of the Just in 1847. This would merge with the German Worker’s Club, where Karl Marx would send his terror onto the world. (14)

France, at the time, was still reeling from the aftermath of the French Revolution when, as Marx put it, the “specter” of communism had begun “haunting Europe.” (15)

The French socialists had launched additional uprisings in 1789, 1830, and 1848 before Napoleon III launched his own movement with a coup d’etat in December 1851, which sought to end the chaos that had enveloped France and seeped through Europe. (16)

The law included a ban of organizations such as the Cult of Reason; and restrictions on bodies the socialists were using, including unions and news outlets. (17)

Yet, in 1863 Napoleon III lightened these restrictions, and according to “The Terrible Year,” by Alistair Horne, French unions sent their representatives to join the first meeting of the Communist International in 1863, which was being promoted by Karl Marx. (18)

This was followed by Marx’s Second International in 1867, along with Marx’s publication of “Das Kapital,” and the staging of a new revolt in Paris by Marx’s followers. (19)

When Napoleon III again lightened restrictions, the socialists took full advantage. Their newspapers began pushing a new slogan that “Moderation is Death,” according to Horne, “and passions seemed to be mounting towards an explosion comparable to that of 1848.” (20)

And explode these passions did, with the creation of the Paris Commune of 1871. Spurred by Marx’s ideas that united the socialist factions across Europe, groups including the Jacobins and the Blanquists took control of Paris. (21) theepochtimes.com/the-dark-origi…

These socialists launched a new terror that would in just over two months between March 18 and May 28 kill innocents, desecrate temples, and destroy a large portion of the art and architecture that Paris was known for. (22)

Regarding their persecutions of priests and their destruction of temples, the Commune leaders issued a notice, according to “The Proletarian Revolt” by G.B. Benham, stating “priests are thieves, and churches are haunts where the masses have been morally assassinated.” (23)

What began as a movement to replace traditions and belief with modernism and atheism, quickly led to Commune leaders acting out the same terrors they claimed to oppose. And when they saw their hold on power was coming to a rapid end, they launched brazen acts of terror. (24)

Calls for media censorship, attacks on religion, tearing down statues, cursing tradition, calls for violence against people who thought differently... the socialists then weren't much different from the socialists of today. (25)

Amid their talk of confiscating all private property in true socialist fashion, the Commune censored all rival newspapers, and began arresting anyone suspected of opposing their aims. Then, they moved to destroy what they saw as symbols of the old world. (26)

The destruction started with the tearing down of the 840-foot Vendome Column. Benham notes the Commune’s proclamation, which called the column “a monument of barbarism, a symbol of brute force and false glory.” (27)

Yet, the destruction would not end there. On May 23, as government forces moved in to stop them, the Commune leaders would set fire to as much of Paris as they could reach. (28)

Dozens of historic buildings were destroyed by them, with fires spreading along the Rue Saint-Florentin, Rue de Rivoli, Rue de Bac, and Rue de Lille, and burning the famed Tuileries Palace. (29)

These were its remains:

When they gutted the Tuileries Palace, according to “The Paris Commune 1871,” by Robert Tombs, a Commune leader named Bergeret declared “The last vestiges of royalty have just disappeared. I wish that the same will happen to all the monuments of Paris.” (30)

The Palais de Justice, the Prefecture de Police, the theaters of Châtelet and Porte-Saint-Martin would soon join the Tuileries in ruins. The Church of Saint-Eustache would be damaged, but would survive. (31)

Their destruction also included the torching of the Richelieu library of the Louvre; and the Louvre itself would have been lost were it not for the government soldiers who saved it. (32)

Among other buildings that would have been lost, but were saved by people who extinguished the flames, were the Palais-Royal and Notre Dame. (33)

This was the Rue de Rivoli after the socialists in the Commune had their way with it:

The Commune leaders then destroyed their own headquarters on May 24 with the torching of the historic Hotel de Ville, before their reign of terror was finally brought to a brutal end by incoming forces. Yet, the terror and goals of the movement they began were far from over. (35)

Marx used the Paris Commune of 1871 to further spread communism, and laid a curse on France in a 1871 pamphlet saying there could be “neither peace nor truce” between the new factions in France, and “the battle must break out again and again in ever-growing dimensions.” (36)

Communism’s desire to destroy history would continue under all its systems that would follow—including under the Soviet Union and the CCP. Its a system, as Marx envisioned, to not only destroy belief, culture, and traditions, but even the memory of such things. (37)

And now, Notre Dame has burned again, in an age where again socialism has enchanted many young people, and where calls for the destruction of statues and monuments are again being heard using much of the same language as in the 19th century. (38)

Yes, we watched as the flames slowly engulfed the roof of Notre Dame. But we also witnessed how people moved by this disaster joined, as mourners for a piece of their heritage that was nearly lost, to sing hymns. (39)

And while Notre Dame again burned, many of its true things had been left unharmed by the flames in its past and also survived the flames of today. (40)

/end/ of thread.