Brief Introduction – Back in early 2018 I finished reading an autobiography by Victor Serge titled Memoirs of a Revolutionary and, in my usual style, typed up twenty-two pages of notes on/from it. (If you don’t know Serge, I highly recommend this and The Case of Comrade Tulayev, for starters.) Many times over the years since I have put more than a little thought into a weekly post from those notes over at the legacy site. Unfortunately, the more I delayed the more that neighborhood strayed from the broader intellectual curiosity that drew me there to an (informal) class structure that (mostly) only conversed from the Lower toward the Upper Member Feed. (All part of the lifecycle of a place like that. But I digress.) Alas, that series of posts never came to be.

In the final hours of 2024, I finished reading The Revolutionary: Samuel Adams by Stacy Schiff. This morning – now that I am beginning to finally leverage the benefits of the permanent ban from the legacy site; I do not spend way too much time commenting on…well, let’s just say commenting – I began to type up the notes. It was not long into that exercise before it struck me that there may be a series of posts to be made on being a revolutionary using these references. In general, and especially this first one, I expect it all to be very heavy on quotes…but, as is usually the case, added topic selective commentary will be supplied as I see fit. (Who am I kidding? Targeted commentary on whatever I feel like saying is not going to be avoided.)

Well, let’s see where this goes…

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I was first introduced to the first revolutionary referenced above in a Christopher Hitchens essay titled Vector Serge: Pictures from an Inquisition as reproduced in the book Arguably. From there I read Tulayev a couple of times and then moved on to Memoirs. I believe the Hitchens piece provides the best introduction to the man:

Serge himself was one of the few to refuse [the logic of the qrand inquisitor (admitting to inconceivable offenses, self-abasement in service to the Party)], and this probably saved his life. There came a time when the agitation abroad in his behalf became too much to overlook, and when a campaign for his release – led by Romain Rolland – had embarrassed even the intellectual prostitutes of the French fellow-traveling classes. Stalin decided to examine the case in person, but before doing so he asked his police chiefs what crimes Serge had confessed to while in the Orenburg camp. He must have been somewhat startled to be told that the prisoner had confessed to nothing at all (a distinct rarity in those times), and this made it easier to release and deport Serge without too much of loss of face. – Page 593

[Emphasis added]

A rare character indeed. As this is just the introductory post, I will hold off commentary on more modern examples of forced confessions / self-abasement to the narrative and the all-powerful allied entities behind it…but you don’t have to think too hard to get my drift. (And don’t think I didn’t make note of that term “intellectual prostitutes” hidden in the middle of that. I can think of no better term for the TDS warriors of the sort-of-center-right-ish blogosphere I have encountered in recent years. But I digress.)

As for that narrative and the powers behind it, the following quote from the forward of Memoirs – sorry for the extreme length but I think it is worth it – gives an excellent overview of the world Serge was in:

What moves us in this book is not so much Serge’s vision of what the Revolution might have been. It is, rather, two qualities of the man himself.

The first is his ability to see the world with unflinching clarity. In the Soviet Union’s first decade and a half, despite arrests, ostracism, theft of his manuscripts, and not having enough to eat, he bore witness. This was rare. Although other totalitarian regimes, left and right, have had naïve, besotted admirers before and since, never has there been a tyranny praised by so many otherwise sane intellectuals. George Bernard Shaw traveled to Russia in the midst of the manmade famine of the 1930s and declared that there was food enough for everyone. Walter Duranty, the Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times correspondent in Moscow, downplayed reports of famine as a gross exaggeration. In Soviet Russia the great muckraking journalist Lincoln Steffens saw, in his famous phrase, the future that worked. An astonishing variety of other Westerners, from the Dean of Canterbury to American ambassador Joseph Davies, saw mainly a society full of happy workers and laughing children. American vice president Henry Wallace made an official visit during World War II to the Kolyma region, on the Soviet Union’s Pacific coast. It was then the site of the densest concentration of forced labor camps ever seen on earth, but Wallace and his entourage never noticed anything amiss. By contrast with all these cheerful visitors, Victor Serge had what Orwell, in another context, called the “power of facing unpleasant facts.”

Serge’s other great virtue is his novelist’s eye for human character. … … Page xii-xiii

[Emphasis added]

The modernized version of that litany literally writes itself: Russia collusion hoax (coordinated through the Obama Oval Office and continued via a Deep State loyal the Team Obama even while out of office), Charlottesville hoax, Impeachment I, J6 insurrections (what about the pipe bomber?), Impeachment II, lawfare (coordinated through the Biden Oval Office and, therefore, with Team Obama), silence and denial on FJB cognitive decline…all validated through the “credibility” of the old media complex. There is no credibility left.

While I intend no insult by comparison to a human tragedy orders of magnitude greater, I will hedge greatly with my revision for modern comparison’s sake: Never has there been a budding tyranny praised by so many otherwise sane intellectuals as we have witnessed through the many seasons of undefined Hope and Change. (The anti-intellectualism displayed throughout that extended Un-Serious Era in America should fill books – as in, should be exposed and mocked – for decades to come. It better.)

For Samuel Adams I only have notes through the first dozen pages or so, but I like this passage regarding a proposed bribe to first introduce his character:

Were rebellion to break out, they should be executed. Adams topped his helpful list. Already Gage had attempted by other means to eliminate the problem that was Samuel Adams. He had sent a British colonel to call on Adams, at home. The two were acquainted: the officer asked if he might speak in confidence and without interruption. Adams’s conduct left him vulnerable to a treason conviction. Might he rethink his stance? He could both make peace with his king and expect a handsome reward. Adams listened in silence to the elegantly packaged bribe. He rose when the colonel had finished. “Tell Governor Gage,” he glowered, “it is the advice of Samuel Adams to him no longer to insult the feelings of an exasperated people.” – Page 12

[Emphasis added]

Again, to borrow and “an exasperated people” without the obvious insult in scope and magnitude…in we were not exasperated in 2016, I think 2024 definitely qualifies.

This one adds a different shade of revolutionary character that might be familiar to some these days:

Deeply idealistic – a moral people, Adams held, would elect moral leaders – he believed virtue the soul of democracy. To have a villainous ruler imposed upon you was a misfortune. To elect him yourself was a disgrace. At the same time he was unremittingly pragmatic. Adams saw no reason why the high-minded ideals should shy from underhanded tactics. Power worried him; no one ever believed he possessed too much of the stuff. A friend distilled his politics to two maxims: “Rulers should have little, the people much.” And privilege should make way for genius and industry. … – Page 2

Sounds a bit like a street fighting populist. Go figure.

And, yes, the “high-minded ideals” of the go-along-to-get-along uni-Party establishment crowd served us so well through the big-tent-ism era (as fostered by those of the “compassionate conservative” marketing gimmick) and the aforementioned intentionally destructive Obama era.

Well, there is (what I hope is) a foundation for more posting from my notes on these two revolutionaries. Unfortunately, I cannot commit to a set schedule so these will appear intermittently as events on the ground allow. Check back often for future volumes…