As the French Revolution descended its version of Antifa/BLM riots, Burke publicly condemned the chaos in his address to Parliament, February 9, 1790:
“The French had shewn themselves the ablest architects of ruin that had hitherto existed in the world.
In that very short space of time they had completely pulled down to the ground, their monarchy; their church; their nobility; their law; their revenue; their army; their navy; their commerce; their arts; and their manufactures …
There was a danger of an imitation of the excesses of an irrational, unprincipled, proscribing, confiscating, plundering, ferocious, bloody and tyrannical democracy …
In religion, the danger of their example is no longer from intolerance, but from Atheism; a foul, unnatural vice, foe to all the dignity and consolation of mankind; which seems in France, for a long time, to have been embodied into a faction.”