Beware of the model...................

 

     In France, as it turned out, the actual people (in contrast with the abstract notion of 'The People') wanted justice from their rulers rather than their beheading.  Their aim, if they could be said to have one, was to make customary ways work better for them, not to overthrow them all from the bottom up.  The elite Revolutionaries, though, had other ideas:  those 'customary ways' were obstacles to be swept away, and once that was achieved, a new world would triumph.  It's an old story now, and it usually leads to the same destination: the mass liquidation of those who don't fit the model.

-Paul Kingsnorth, Against the Machine: On the Unmaking of Humanity