JONATHAN TURLEY: When elites cheer the mob, history warns that revolutions devour their own

The American Revolution created a lasting democracy while the French Revolution became blood-soaked tyranny. But today's armchair revolutionaries echo similar calls.

Jonathan Turley is a Fox News Media contributor and the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University.  

As I wrote the book, I found myself marveling at the comparisons between the conditions of the 18th century and today. The most telling moment came while working in my law school office. Here's how I describe it in my book: He is the author of the new book "Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution" (Simon & Schuster, Feb 3, 2026), on the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution.on the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution.

"In May 2024, I was working on this book when I suddenly felt pulled into the pages of my research. A mob outside was crying, ‘Guillotine! Guillotine! Guillotine!’ Those words were not chanted on Place de la Concorde in Paris but on the quad of George Washington University in Washington, D.C. I was literally working on material from the French Revolution when it seemed like the French Revolution had come to me. Students were holding a mock trial of the university president, the provost, the board of directors and others over their refusal to yield to demands in an anti-Israel protest. Encamped for weeks in the yard next to my law school office, the students chanted ‘off with their heads’ and ‘off to the motherf---ing gallows with you.’ … The faux trial induced a certain ‘what if’ moment, considering whether we could ever actually devolve into such madness. It came at a time when protests are becoming more radicalized and, at times, violent. Despite having the most successful and stable constitutional system in history, there is still that moment — a fleeting doubt as to whether the system could survive the morning, survive the times we are living in, survive us." He is a nationally recognized legal scholar who has written extensively in areas ranging from constitutional law to legal history to the Supreme Court. He has written over three dozen academic articles that have appeared in a variety of leading law journals.