Thread by @Tinkzorg

The big secret to history that nobody really tells you and that you have to find out by actually researching it yourself is that having 0 "revolutionary organization" is pretty much a prerequisite for having a revolution.

I'm not joking about this, by the way.

https://twitter.com/jamesmurray69/status/1447530110517661698

The absolutely most standard way these historical events play out is that ordinary people get fed up and give the system a shove it doesn't survive, at which point the "leaders" of the putative revolution have to hurriedly get out of bed and pretend they planned it all along.

The french revolution is a masterclass in this, because this dynamic repeats from the very beginning of it until basically the directory. From the day of the tiles to the great panic to the storming of the bastille to the women's march on versailles, and even beyond.

Organized revolutionaries staging a pre-planned coup de main is about as rare as finding a four leaf clover. They exist, and we tend to remember them more than the three leaf clovers, but they are the exception that prove the rule.

Revolutions are by their nature *unorganized* political events (though they are succeeded by new governments whose task it then is to reorganize society). Military coups, on the other hand, are usually organized and planned to spec.