To help understand what happened over at H-France today, we can return to Laurent Berlant's concept of "Diva Citizenship":

"Diva Citizenship occurs when a person stages a dramatic coup in a public sphere in which she does not have privilege."

"Flashing up and startling the public, she puts the dominant story into suspended animation; as though recording an estranging voice-over to a film we have already seen, she renarrates the dominant history as one that abjected people have once lived sotto voce, but no more;"

"and she challenges her audience to identify with the enormity of the suffering she has narrated and the courage she has had to produce, calling on people to change the social and institutional practices of citizenship to which they currently consent."

Laurent Berlant, The Queen of America Goes to Washington City: Essays on Sex and Citizenship (2002)

Some of the subscribers @ H-France do not want to hear about slavery & colonialism, they want to hear about France & the Am. revolutionary war; they do not want to hear about TJ's sexual exploits. I reminded them of all they hate in themselves, so they turned that hate onto me.

They are appalled that I dare to call myself a historian, that I dare to speak of France, and that I dared to do it in their forum. They seek to punish me for speaking truths that are not even up for debate by policing my "tone," my credentials, and my knowledge of history.

What they do not know is that I have been dealing w/ these kinds of comments for years. I am not afraid of them, so please do not worry for me all you kind & sensitive souls. H-France archives go back to 1991, so if that's how they really want to go down in history, so be it.