Virtue and Terror

Robespierre's defense of the French Revolution remains one of the most powerful and unnerving justifications for political violence ever written, and has extraordinary resonance in a world obsessed with terrorism and appalled by the language of its proponents.

Yet today, the French Revolution is celebrated as the event which gave birth to a nation built on the principles of enlightenment...So how should a contemporary audience approach Robespierre's vindication of revolutionary terror?

Zizek takes a helter-skelter route through these contradictions, marshalling all the breadth of analogy for which he is famous.