Full-Circle Revolution: Difference between revisions

 

Contrast [[Reign of Terror]], when revolutionary zeal is causing tyranny and blood-letting. One can be the consequence of the other: the people are so sick of the [[Reign of Terror]] that they will put up with the old injustices just to be done with the revolution. See also [[Meet the New Boss]], for when the new villain doesn't start out different and goes straight to being the same.

 

== Anime ==

 

== Comic Books ==

** Executed subtly in ''Tintin and the Picaros'': during the course of the book, the heroes help Tintin's friend General Alcazar overthrow the despotic General Tapioca from the leadership of [[Banana Republic|San Theodoros]] (mostly because said despot imprisioned Madame Castafiore and sentenced Thomson and Thompson to death). However, the penultimate panel of the book is almost a carbon copy of an earlier one (showing soldiers patrolling a slum filled with starving people), only a sign now reads "Viva Alcazar" instead of "Viva Tapioca" and the police's uniforms are slightly different, hinting that nothing important has changed.<br /><br />Also, Alcazar wants to execute a whole lot of people, starting with Tapioca of course, and is only kept in bay because Tintin is his [[Morality Pet]], showing that Alcazar and Tapioca are as bad as each other. Tapioca actually consoles Alcazar over being stopped -that is, ''the man who just overthrew him and wants to shoot him.'' Similarly, the only reason Tintin became Alcazar's friend in the first place was because he ended up as his lieutenant. A few hours of slippage and he could have ended up as Tapioca's lieutenant just as easily.

** Earlier books such as ''Broken Ear'' would depict Alcazar and Tapioca committing ''multiple'' coups on a ''daily'' basis against each other.

* [[George Orwell]]:

** ''[[Animal Farm]]'' was all a big allegory for how it went down in Russia. One ominous sign is at the gruesome scene of [[The Purge]], where the animals consider that this is not what they had hoped to see after the revolution, and spontaneously start to sing the old revolutionary anthem "Beasts of England," only for the official propagandist Squealer to declare "Beasts of England" abolished. By the end of the tale, the pigs have become practically indistinguishable from their former human masters.

* ''L'Engrenage'' by Jean-Paul Sartre is about a country whose reactionary government is overthrown by a revolution, but before long the new regime realizes that it is unable to fulfill its promises, and goes back to the previous one's methods. Eventually it is itself overthrown by a new revolution, and the cycle starts anew.

* ''Les Justes'' by Albert Camus, about a group of idealistic students who engage in terrorist acts in order to overthrow a despotic regime, features the famous quote "One begins by desiring justice, and one ends up setting up a police."