if you’re a revolutionary you’re allowed to give yourself a badass {nom de guerre} to conceal your identity or become a legend

I would undo all previous norms of noms de guerre and call myself something extremely silly, one, so that it wouldn’t be a surprise when I flop, second, cuz it’ll be funny if I actually pulled off the things I did, with such a silly moniker.

And just as they seem to be occupied with revolutionizing themselves and things, creating something that did not exist before, precisely in such epochs of revolutionary crisis they anxiously conjure up the spirits of the past to their service, borrowing from them names, battle slogans, and costumes in order to present this new scene in world history in time-honored disguise and borrowed language. Thus Luther put on the mask of the Apostle Paul, the Revolution of 1789-1814 draped itself alternately in the guise of the Roman Republic and the Roman Empire, and the Revolution of 1848 knew nothing better to do than to parody, now 1789, now the revolutionary tradition of 1793-95