Just go with me–I promise it will make sense.

Maximilian Francois Marie Isodore de Robespierre (1758-1794) was a lawyer and extremely influential member of the French Revolution. He was a member of the Constitutional Assembly and the Jacobin Club, and initially wanted France to allow universal manhood suffrage, and end celibacy of the clergy. By 1791 he wanted all male citizens to join the equivalent of the National Guard, hold public office and have the right to carry weapons for self-defense. The he demanded that King Louis XVI and his family be stripped to their titles and end up in jail–and ultimately guillotined. He also called for a National Convention. In fact, in September 1792 he was elected as one of the Deputies of the French Convention.

By April 1793, Robespierre tried to set up a “sans culotte army” that would enforce all “revolutionary laws” and deal with counter-revolutionaries (all who disagreed with his group) often with jail or execution. He was deeply involved in the law of 22 Preiral that basically got rid of what was left of the rule of law. In July he became a member of the Committee of Public Safety and later the Revolutionary Tribunal. He and a small group suppressed the Girondins (the right), the Hebertists (the left) and the Dantonists (center). You were with him or against him. In just a few months, he signed 542 arrest warrants, part of the Reign of Terror, in which thousands were executed, often by guillotine.

Gradually, even members of the Committee of Public Safety understood that he was going too far, developing what we now call a Cult of Personality. If you were not in lock step with his group, you were in trouble. On July 26, 1794, he was arrested. He didn’t go quietly, being dragged off to jail with a wound to his jaw. Within a few days, he and about 90 members of his inner circle were executed. That started to wind down the Reign of Terror, but ultimately it wasn’t until 1815, and the end of Napoleon’s reign, that France returned to an even keel.

Martin Niemoller (1892-1984) began his career as a German Imperial Naval Officer. During World War I he had assignments throughout the Mediterranean, from Gibraltar to Port Said, during which he received the Iron Cross First Class. After the war he resigned his commission and attended the School of Theology in Westphalia Wilhelm University in Munster where he was ordained as a Lutheran pastor in June 1924.

Like millions of Germans, he initially thought that Hitler would do well for the country. However, Niemoller was horrified by his attitude toward the Jews. In 1933 he founded the Pfarrernotbund (Emergency Covenant of Pastors) in opposition to a Reign Church that would be based on Nazi ideology. The following year, he was one of the founders of the Confessing Church, set up to oppose the pro-Nazi German Evangelical Church. Ultimately Niemoller spent years in Sachsenhausen and Dachau.

Beginning in 1946, Niemoller often spoke about the ways in which Germans, and he included himself, had turned a blind eye to the persecutions of so many people on the run up to the war–the ill, infirm, communists, socialists, trade unionists, Jews, gypsies, priests, nuns, professors, and so many other innocents. He believed that it was easy to ignore others.

Pastor Niemoller’s poem goes right to the essence of the issue.

First they came for . . .

First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist

Then they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist

Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist

Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew

Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me

And that brings me to Cancel Culture. Apparently these days it’s fine to destroy the lives of people with whom we disagree. (Of course WE never did anything wrong or stupid!!) I bet Robespierre felt the same way. He was “cancelling” people left and right–until he became such an extremist that he had to be cancelled for the good of the country. Pastor Niemoller was plagued for the rest of his life over the way people in Germany were “cancelled.” Yes, Robespierre and the Nazis were extreme versions of their cancel culture, but it doesn’t take too long to go from “cancelling” someone for what they said on Facebook as a teenager, and adult loosing a job, or more. Think long and hard before you take part in cancelling anyone. You don’t have to like them. You don’t have to spend time with them. You don’t need to agree with them. Just remember, none of us are perfect, and the day may come when people decide to cancel you.