A Killer Slogan

Posted by Masakim on December 10, 2002

In Reply to: A Killer Slogan posted by Word Camel on December 10, 2002

: : : Does anyone know who said something to the effect that true freedom/democracy could not exist until the last king had been strangled with the intestines of the last priest?

: : Google led me to a page (link below) where somebody attributes that to Denis Diderot.
: : news.bbc.co.uk/ 1/hi/talking_point/52730.stm
: : Strange stuff at top of page, hmm?

: The first time I came across this slogan was in reading about the Spanish Civil War in George Orwell', Homage to Catalonia the last politician by the guts of the last priest!" More recently I saw it displayed on an office bulletin board as "Hang the last Blairite with the guts of the last social worker!"

Et des boyaux du dernier pretre
Serrons le cou du dernier roi!
--Diderot, __Dithrambe ssur fete de rois_
[With the bowels of the last priest
We'll make a noose for the last king!]
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I remember, on this matter, the wish made once by an ignorant, uneducated man.... He said he wished ... that all the great mmen in the world and all the nobility could be hanged, and strangled with the guts of priests.
--Jean Meslier, _Testament_

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