Robespierre's defense of the French Revolution remains one of the most powerful & unnerving justifications for political violence ever written & has extraordinary resonance in a world obsessed with terrorism & appalled by the language of its proponents Yet today the French Revolution is celebrated as the event which gave birth to a nation built on the principles of enlightenment So how should a contemporary audience approach Robespierre's vindication of revolutionary terror? Zizek takes a helter-skelter route through these contradictions marshaling all the breadth of analogy for which he is famous