History sometimes turns on a single moment.

Such a moment happened in 404 AD at the Colosseum in Rome. The crowd, as usual, had come to see blood. The two gladiators squared off against each other, each of them knowing that their lives may be measured in minutes.

Suddenly, a small, plainly dressed man jumped into the arena, positioned himself between the men, and urged them to not fight in the name of Christ. Enraged, the crowd erupted in anger and immediately stoned him to death.

That man was a Christian monk by the name of Telemachus, who no one had ever heard of. He had travelled from the East (possibly from modern-day Turkey or Syria) to Rome, feeling called by God.

His martyrdom had a profound effect, as shortly after this, the emperor (Honorius) banned gladiatorial fights. The exact reasons for this are unknown of course, but perhaps the spectacle of an innocent man being killed, whose his only crime was attempting to stop two other men trying to kill each other, brought to the fore the levels of utter barbarism that the empire had sunk to.

It is easy for us in the cultured West to look at the Roman Empire at this time and dismiss them as uncivilised barbarians. However, it is an act of naivety to look at any point in history and imagine that we would not be capable of the same things, given the right circumstances, and particularly as Rome was the most advanced culture of the day. The book of Ecclesiastes says, ‘There is nothing new under the sun.’

This concept was the central theme of William Golding’s seminal The Lord of the Flies in which schoolboys, in the absence of adults, descended into utter barbarism. This book appears to have struck a chord, as it became an international bestseller.

This phenomenon was confirmed by a benchmark (and highly controversial) experiment called the Milgram Experiment, where people were tested to the degree that they would abandon moral judgment in the face of an authority figure.

The subjects were placed in a room in front of a TV monitor. On the monitor was another person with electrodes attached to their body. The theory behind the experiment was that the people with the electrodes were given a series of questions. When they got one wrong, the subject was invited to press a button to give them an electric shock. This ranged from 15 volts initially, ramping up to 450 volts. As it happened the people on the TV screens were actors and the electrodes were not connected to any electrical supply. When the subjects pressed the button to administer an electric shock, the screams of pain from the people with the electrodes had been prerecorded.

The purpose of the experiment to see how many people, under instruction from the person supervising the experiment (dressed in a white lab coat to portray authority) would administer the next level of electric shock. To their astonishment, 65 per cent of people administered the shocks up to the highest level, despite the fact that they had the perception that the person was experiencing extreme pain.

In broad terms, this experiment established the principle that a large proportion of the population has no problem with the administration of violence, provided it can be morally justified.

This was brought into sharp relief during the French Revolution, by the Jacobins (so named because they met at ‘le Couvent des Jacobins’). These were, in the most literal sense of the term, of the extreme left. The French government was divided into three estates: the first estate (the clergy) the second estate (the nobility), and the third estate (everyone else).

After the third estate realised that they were not going to get any fair representation from the first two estates, they formed their own National Assembly. This was composed of the right wing (those who sat to the right of the president) and the left wing (those that sat to the left of the president).

The right wanted to work with the king and the nobility as far as was possible in an attempt to work out their differences, and the left wanted nothing less than revolution. And of the left, the Jacobins were the most extreme.

The violence that they would resort to was fomented by a Jean-Paul Marat. Marat unleashed virulent criticism against the clergy, the nobility, the monarchy, and anyone perceived as an enemy of the revolution. His rhetoric was deeply violent and radical. He was not afraid to endorse the use of force and terror, including execution, to achieve his revolutionary goals.

He accused people of being vampires, tyrants, traitors, enemies of the people, debauched, and corrupt. Marat’s language was calculated to stir emotions and mobilise the masses. He dehumanised his enemies and framed the conflict in binary terms: the people (good, pure, and revolutionary) versus the aristocracy (evil, corrupt, and tyrannical).

And central to this was the process of dehumanisation. They were not people with families, with loved ones, with hopes and dreams and fears and ambitions. They were nothing more than the sum of the pejoratives being used to describe them. This kind of rhetoric fuelled the Reign of Terror, a period in which thousands of people were executed under the charge of simply being enemies of the revolution. Marat’s writings pushed the French Revolution into a phase where violence and excessive punishment became the morally justifiable means to achieve political and social change.

In other words, by murdering thousands they were doing good. Maximilien Robespierre, the Jacobin leader, was a key figure during this period. He argued that violence was necessary to protect the revolution from both internal and external enemies. During this time, it was well-known that the bar for being a ‘counter-revolutionary’ was very low. In just the same way it was to occur in Soviet bloc countries almost 200 years later, people were often executed on the report of a neighbour or stranger for the most trivial matter.

These included anything said in private conversation that was even mildly critical of the revolution, having a picture of the king in your house, wearing the wrong clothing, a colour, or a symbol that might be associated with the old monarchy (such as a certain type of ribbon or a garment), or even being related to, or a friend of, someone that had already been executed.

And the church wasn’t spared. They set about in an effort to de-Christianise France. Churches were closed, religious symbols were ceremoniously defaced, and church property (including land and buildings) confiscated. Priests that did not swear allegiance to the revolution were executed or exiled, if they hadn’t already gone into hiding.

And they weren’t even done there with their attempts to remove Christ. They even changed the calendar. They couldn’t have historical dates revolving around the birth of Christ, so 1792 now became Year 1, and even changed the months and made time metric. This nonsense was to persist until 1806.

But the Reign of Terror wasn’t promulgated for what it was, of course. It was ostensibly done in the interest of ‘public safety’. The Jacobins used the ‘Committee of Public Safety’ to oversee the arrest and execution of suspected counter-revolutionaries.

Public safety? Where have we heard that before? Right across the world, this is the cry of the modern-day extreme left. In Australia we have the ‘Online Safety Act’. People need to be ‘protected’ from hate speech. And of course, this goes way beyond simply closing social media platforms to conservatives. It has now, astonishingly, come to violence – justifiable violence.

Astonishingly, we saw this in the public response to the murder of Charlie Kirk. Left-wing media outlets, and of course Tik-Tok, were flooded with people openly celebrating it. And in just the same way that people would attend the public beheadings in France, does anyone think that if open violence and murder was now practised against conservatives it would not be openly embraced with public approbation? Indeed, a meme circulating online expresses it beautifully.

After two unsuccessful assassination attempts on Donald Trump, many were openly publicly bemoaning their failure. Few people realised the implications of this. Those implications are straightforward – the new Jacobins – the new barbarians, walk among us. Our society is every bit as depraved as the Romans turning up at the Colosseum to see blood, or the baying French crowd turning up to watch heads being lopped off.

This has been confirmed by recent surveys. In April, the Network Contagion Research Institute, along with Rutgers University, found that 55 per cent of self-identified left-of-center respondents said that it was at least somewhat justified to murder President Trump. Forty-eight per cent said the same of Elon Musk, and 40 per cent of respondents, including 59.6 per cent of left-of-center respondents, said it was at least somewhat acceptable to destroy a Tesla dealership in protest.

The question was asked on a scale of 1-7 as to how justified these different acts were, with 1 being not at all justified and 7 being completely justified. Nearly 15 per cent of left-of-center respondents said that the murder of Donald Trump was a 7 – completely justified – and 10.7 per cent said the same of Elon Musk.

That’s right – a majority of left of centre voters who were surveyed could justify the murder of Donald Trump. The Jacobins walk among us.

How do they justify this? Well, it’s simple. They use the same strategy that the Jacobins did. They dehumanise their opponents. Donald Trump isn’t just a Republican or conservative – he is ‘literally Hitler’. And who couldn’t justify killing Hitler?

This sentiment now extends to any conservative. We are now ‘fascists’. And of course, who could not justify killing a fascist? The response to the cold-blooded murder of Charlie Kirk is a case in point.

We see what has happened to the left – the most unspeakably evil action is now painted as morally virtuous, in just the same way it was for the Jacobins. These people see themselves as Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg, the man responsible for the failed attempt to assassinate Hitler. They see the only difference between him and Charlie Kirk’s killer as the outcome, not the intent or morality.

But, to the astonishment of the left, the backlash to the response of these people has been swift and decisive. In what is now being described as the ‘Charlie Kirk effect’ people are leaving the Democrat party in droves. Normal people that are Democrat voters have had the scales removed from their eyes. They now see the vile hatred that the Democrats embody.

Moreover, it’s hard to escape the possible conclusion that one of the reasons that Kirk was killed was because he was a Christian. Tucker Carlson pointed this out at the memorial service – that Charlie was killed for the things he said, just like Christ was. And it’s also hard not to link this hardcore Christophobia to that of the Jacobins. The consequence of this, according to many sources, has been a Christian revival, with many churches reporting massively increased attendance following Kirk’s death.

The Jacobins began as idealists, committed to liberty and equality. But in their pursuit of ideological purity, they turned violent, executing political opponents in the name of progress. To them, disagreement was not just dissent – it was treason. In today’s polarised climate, that same logic is resurfacing. For those cheering Kirk’s murder, he wasn’t just a political opponent – he was seen as an enemy of the ‘greater good’, a target whose death brought satisfaction, not sorrow.

This is ideological fanaticism, not justice. Celebrating political violence, regardless of the target, is a betrayal of democratic values. It reflects a dangerous belief that some lives are unworthy based solely on their views. And, like the Jacobins, these modern radicals weaponise morality to justify cruelty, believing that history will absolve them for atrocities committed in service of a cause.

Whether you admired or opposed Charlie Kirk, celebrating his murder is not resistance. It’s regression – back to the guillotine, back to the mob, and back to the terror.

Indeed, we could make the argument that Charlie Kirk is a modern-day St Telemachus. In just the same way that the martyrdom of Telemachus showed the world what the Romans had become, the martyrdom of Charlie Kirk has done the same thing to modern day Democrats.

But here is the astonishing thing. The Democrats, at least those in power, seem blissfully unaware of the damage they are doing. In a vote in Congress, a motion to condemn the murder of Charlie Kirk did not receive unanimous support. That’s the first time this has happened. There have been motions similar to this in the past, where high-profile figures have been murdered, and without exception they have passed the house unanimously. On this occasion, 58 of the 368 delegates voted against it.

So why are conservatives now fascists?

If we turn back time to the 1930s it is difficult to escape the conclusion that fascism was a phenomenon of the left. They sought to control the media, education, and the arts. And free speech of course was verboten.

Consider these two quotes:

‘It is the absolute right of the state to supervise the formation of public opinion.’

Joseph Goebbels

‘If social media doesn’t moderate content, then we lose total control.’

Hillary Clinton

The definition of fascist has changed. There is no mention of curbing free speech, or controlling the media or education or the arts. Being a modern fascist is wholly concerned with ‘ultra nationalism’. That is, you can be accused of being a fascist by simply flying our national flag. And given the rabid anti-Christian sentiment of the Jacobins, we may now add being a Christian to the definition of fascist.

The other thing associated with modern-day fascism is authoritarianism, and an opposition to democratic processes. Again, is this more an instrument of the left or the right? Who is it that is attempting to stop free expression? Up until Elon Musk bought Twitter, it was very much the domain of the left. The notion that conservatives are fascists collapses after about five seconds of scrutiny.

A question I have asked many times on social media, and have yet to receive an answer to is this: suppose you are lawfully conducting a meeting in a public space that you have hired for the occasion. Suddenly, a bunch of thugs storm into the building, march to the front, take over the microphone, intimidate the attendees, and break up the meeting. How do you know whether they are Hitler’s ‘brownshirts’ or Antifa?

The answer to that question is obvious. The brownshirts wore snappy uniforms and you could see their faces. Antifa are a pack of faceless cowards who wear masks.

And so, to the present day. Is it unreasonable to describe the far-left as modern-day Jacobins? Not according to Lenin. Lenin admired the Jacobin period of the French Revolution, particularly its radicalism and commitment to revolutionary change. He viewed the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 as a similar radical break from the old order, and he openly referred to the Bolsheviks as the ‘Russian Jacobins’ or sometimes as ‘the Jacobins of the Russian Revolution’.

And just in case there is any doubt that this is exactly who Antifa are, they removed all doubt by actually turning up at the Portland anti-ICE riots with a guillotine…

NOW — Antifa militants roll out a guillotine outside the ICE facility in Portland.

A flag has been set on fire. Hundreds of protesters are holding the line, equipped with riot gear and shields. pic.twitter.com/qwPOjWaV2a

— Katie Daviscourt ? (@KatieDaviscourt) September 2, 2025

So where does that leave us today? You could argue that the French Revolution ultimately failed, as the Jacobins were ultimately seen for the barbarians as that they were. In just the same way, the celebration by the left of the murder of Charlie Kirk has revealed the left for the barbarians that they are.

It is still too early of course to predict any long term trends from this, but as conservatives we need to respond to the modern-day Saint Telemachus moment that the assassination of Charlie Kirk has embodied.

How do we do it? Well, it’s fair to say that the ball is already rolling. The Democrats are in disarray, their numbers are cratering, and Republicans are surging. Likewise many churches are reporting swelling numbers in the wake of the ‘Charlie Kirk effect’.

We can follow on from this by calling out the dehumanising of conservatives by the use of pejoratives. When this is done in any context – social media, mainstream media, personal interactions, call them out. And it’s easy to do because these people don’t even believe the jeers themselves. Take any one of these people, strap them to a polygraph, and ask them whether Trump is ‘literally Hitler’ and not a one of them would give an honest answer.

The French Revolution ultimately failed. Robespierre was executed, the Jacobins came to nothing, and France returned to the rule of a single sovereign. Let us hope that the same thing happens in the western world, that the modern-day Jacobins lose their teeth, and the tenets of our Western liberal democracy return.

The bloodlust of the Colosseum. The guillotine of the Revolution. The silencing of dissent today. History may not repeat, but it certainly rhymes. In every age, the test is the same: will we stand by as the mob demands blood, or will we, like Telemachus, step into the arena – not with violence, but with courage, truth, and conviction? The Jacobins may walk among us, but so too must the saints.