THE rIGHT IS THE lEFT:

Any number of revolutionary uprisings -- or journées-- bear a similarity to what we've just gone through. On September 5, 1793, for instance, thousands of Parisians, goaded by the journalist Jacques-René Hébert and enraged by sharp rises in grain prices, stormed the Republic's legislative chambers.

Inside the halls of the Convention, they made demands to turn the revolutionary army against grain hoarders in the countryside and "unpatriotic" enemies throughout the nation.

Ominously, the mob pressed the assembled deputies to "make terror the order of the day."

The most radicalized deputies responded with enthusiasm, while their more moderate colleagues cowered in fear. In the proceedings that followed, extremist deputies were appointed to the infamous Committee of Public Safety, a quasi-executive body. Maximilien Robespierre had joined in late July. Now, in September, with the addition of men like Jacques Nicolas Billaud-Varenne and Jean Marie Collot d'Herbois, the Committee would become, in the formulation of R. R. Palmer, a dictatorship of "Twelve Who Ruled."

The principal beneficiaries and, soon enough, the victims of this journée were the Jacobins, self-described "friends of the constitution" and erstwhile moderates.

Jacobinism was not merely an ideology, nor was the Jacobin Club simply a proto-political party. In the short-lived First Republic, Jacobinism was a process, with a logic driven by the necessity of ever-increasing radicalism.

Earlier in the spring of 1793, the mob had been the blunt instrument of Jacobin deputies. After repeated instigations by Jean Paul Marat and others, enraged Parisians had overthrown the defenses of the city. Two days later, on June 2, tens of thousands surrounded the Convention and demanded the expulsion of the Jacobins' political rivals, the so-called Girondins. The charge, when boiled down, was treason. Twenty-two deputies were arrested.

Once deprived of more moderate or even just temporizing voices, the Convention hurtled toward the extremism of September.

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Throughout the First Republic, the process of radicalization was fostered by the 18th-century equivalent of our partisan media ecosystems.

The Jacobins were initially loath to sponsor their own newspaper. Instead, they offered support to journalists like Choderlos de Laclos and allowed non-affiliated papers such as the Courrier extraordinaire to report from within the Club.

But in June, 1793, following the expulsion of the Girondins, the Jacobins created the short-lived Journal de la Montagne, an official mouthpiece that exposed the fractious nature of Jacobinism.

More extreme revolutionary papers, meanwhile, enflamed the populace.

Throughout the spring and early summer of 1793, Marat's L'Ami du peuple had decried Girondin policies while pressing fantastical conspiracies. In September, Hébert was the leader of an army of sans culottes, because his Père Duchêne spewed bloodthirsty bile. By the fall, Père Duchêne and its imitators were among the most vociferous proponents of violent purges and terrorism.

Journalists like Marat and Hébert spoke to and for "the people," and they created an atmosphere of fear inside the Convention. In the mix, deputies found themselves preening before a vast public that they could barely control.

It is eerie to see the parallels with today, a time in which any number of elected Republicans stoke the rage of voters, often by advancing baseless conspiracies that then get repeated in partisan media and reposted endlessly in the echo chambers of social media.

In the weeks before January 6, for instance, Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz emerged as the leaders of a dozen U.S. Senators -- a latter-day "twelve who would rule" -- by spreading the fiction that president-elect Joe Biden's victory was the product of fraud. This despite the certification of the election results as valid, free, and fair in all 50 states.

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