Thread by @Thesis90

🧵The #DildoOfConsequences in history

Wishing the Dildo of Consequences upon Russia is not a new phenomenon. Its history stretches all the way back to the 18th century…

18th century Scottish poet Robert Burns hated Catherine the Great of Russia so much, in 1792 he wrote an obscene poem hoping that the Devil would fuck her in the ass with a huge metal dildo in hell.

Let’s explore what motivated him to write that.

(2/15)

Like many Enlightenment thinkers of his day, Burns was an admirer of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, which in 1791 became the first European state ever to adopt a written constitution.

(3/15)

Unlike Revolutionary France, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth achieved major progressive constitutional reform without violence. For Enlightenment intellectuals like Burns, this was one of the highest goals to which a European state could aspire.

(4/15)

Meanwhile in Russia, Catherine the Great restricted access to modern knowledge to the upper classes, keeping her empire’s population in ignorance and medieval serfdom.

For Burns and his contemporaries, this represented the lowest depths to which humanity could sink.

(5/15)

Catherine declared Warsaw “a brazier of Jacobinism” (18th C for “gay Nazi satanists”) and in 1792 invaded Poland and Lithuania.

It was the conquest of Europe’s highest aspirations by its lowest dregs: the defeat of Enlightenment constitutionalism by medieval feudalism.

(6/15)

If you only know Robert Burns from “Auld Lang Syne”, and cute poems about red red roses and mice and men, you might be surprised that he weighed in on something like this.

But Burns was a prolific poet who engaged in a great deal of social and political commentary…

(7/15)

Here’s Burns’ “When Princes and Prelates” (1792), read by Robert Carlyle. Full text of poem in YouTube description; summary follows.

Glossary: “mowe” is an archaic Scots term for “fuck”.

(8/15)

One-sentence summary of the poem: it’s a comical celebration of the joys of poor people fucking, which also ridicules various European leaders for trying and failing to suppress the French Revolution when they should have just stayed home and fucked.

Good earthy stuff.

(9/15)

Then this:

“Auld Kate laid her claws on poor Stanislaus,
And Poland has bent like a bow:
May the deil in her arse ram a huge prick of brass!
And damn her in hell with a mowe!”

[“May the devil in her ass ram a huge prick of brass!
And damn her in hell with a fuck!”]

(10/15)

“Poor Stanislaus” is King Stanisław of Poland, while “Auld [old] Kate” is of course Kate the Great of Russia – history’s first official intended recipient of the #DildoOfConsequences.

(11/15)

Robert Burns has long been iconic in Russia.

The 19th century Russian intelligentsia adored him. So did the Soviets, whose 20th century translations creatively reinterpreted him as something of a proto-communist.

(12/15)

But for centuries, Russian admirers of Robert Burns have avoided acknowledging the truth: he despised the Russian Empire. He despised its Tsarist autocracy, he despised its conquest of more advanced societies, and he very explicitly despised Catherine the Great.

(13/15)

Russians thus kept missing the opportunity to grasp from Burns a deeper truth about Europe: Europeans ALWAYS exhibit very strong “russophobia” whenever one of Russia’s medieval god-emperors tries to impose their slave armies on European nations. Always have, always will.

(14/15)

Today, “Mother Russia” once again tries to put her medieval claws into a European nation. And European still have the same reply – that of the #DildoOfConsequences, as first voiced by Robert Burns in 1792:

“May the deil in her arse ram a huge prick of brass!”

Slava Ukraini!
/🧵