Today is the anniversary of the storming of the Bastille, a public holiday in France more casually referred to as Bastille Day. This dramatic event in French history is looked on with as much respect and reverence in France as Americans view the colonists taking on the British troops in the “shot heard ‘round the world.” However, contrary to the romanticized image, the people that seized the Bastille were not endowed with altruistic ideals and tempered by principled actions. They were motivated by fear, as well as primitive desires to unleash pent-up anger and frustration. Also, more practical concerns by “shadow” leaders aimed to seize any weapons the mob could capture. Actually, comparisons between recent mob violence of Antifa and the militant faction of the Black Lives Matter mobs and the mob violence of Paris in the summer of 1789 are appropriate. Young anarchists and older hardened leaders of these organized mobs would likely look upon their own violence as necessary for the “revolution.” The intent behind their violence may have similar roots in the intent behind the storming of the Bastille. Nevertheless, the comparison between the violence of the mobs and the violence initiated by the colonists in what escalated into the War for Independence, is overly simplistic and betrays an ignorance of history.

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