A new biography of French revolutionary Jean-Paul Marat offers a lens through which to consider two very different reigns of terror – and what their histories might tell us about Donald Trump’s America.

President George W. Bush declared the War on Terror in 2001. The US has been stuck in the quagmire of its ‘forever war’ from then until now. Instead of getting out of it, successive presidents have dug in deeper, accusing new enemies of terrorism, and leaving a trail of destruction and failed states across the Middle East that have lasting consequences. Armed conflict with an emotion – ’terrorism’ – is nonsensical, so a war against terror can never be won, lost, nor abandoned.

Unlike the forever war from 2001, France’s Terreur lasted under a year (September 1793–July 1794), while the French Revolution was over in a decade (May 1789–November 1799). For centuries, Americans proudly recalled the inspiration their own Declaration of Independence gave to France’s Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen, claiming that US closeness to France developed from the friendship between Thomas Jefferson and the Marquis de Lafayette, who fought in both wars. But one revolution led to another. The French spent so much on America’s war against England that the resulting financial crisis eventually led to an uprising against the Bourbons and the execution of Louis XVI.

In the 20th century the US took the credit for liberating France twice from German occupation. Now, however, disaffection from NATO prevails in the US. France has refused to join Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s meeting of more than 60 countries to discuss the ‘resurgence of political terrorism’ among anarchist and anti-fascist groups. President Donald Trump’s predilection for dictators, monarchs, and billionaires makes a mockery of France’s liberté, égalité, fraternité. His plan for a rival Arch of Triumph in Washington – gilded like his self-commemorative $1 coin and all his other trophies – must outrage the French, even though in June this year they hosted him to celebrate the US sesquicentenary at Versailles. The palace was aggrandised by Louis XV, just as Trump is doing at the White House.

If Trump reads anything other than Truth Social, he may discover a like-minded French patriot in the journalist Jean-Paul Marat (1743–93). Both of them held elected office, both wanted to make their countries great again, both wrote and published obsessively at all hours, and both cultivated non-elite audiences – Trump with his populist tweets and Marat in his paper, L’Ami du Peuple, from 1789. For both, their peak decade was one of national turmoil, from which they sought social change and political advantage.

Both were revolutionaries, but Trump, with his own misogynistic, narcissistic, status-seeking behaviour, is no egalitarian. Yet neither was Marat, according to his new biographer, Keith Michael Baker (Jean-Paul Marat: Prophet of Terror, 2026). Trump urged his post-election supporters to attack Congress; Marat demanded the execution of thousands of ‘counter-revolutionaries’, which happened in 1792, the year of his election as a Jacobin. (The revolutionary party took its name from the rue Saint-Jacques – Jacobus – where a former Dominican convent was its meeting place.)

The differences between Trump and Marat are greater than their similarities. Marat grew up in modest circumstances, which Trump did not; Marat became a scientist and physician and lived in Switzerland, France and England, unlike Trump. Baker calls him “the classical republican martyr, the prophet of terror”, who in the National Convention enthusiastically called for lynching and mutilation of his jailed political opponents. Even ICE doesn’t match that, although Trump’s foreign wars do. Marat died at 50 suffering from a chronic, painful skin disease; Trump is likely to turn 82 in office unless he is assassinated, as Marat was.

Another bizarre similarity between Trump and Marat is how they have been depicted. Trump, alive, had himself represented as a Christ-like figure with his adoring faithful; Marat, stabbed to death in his bath by a political conservative, Charlotte Corday, was painted by Jacques-Louis David with Pietà-like hagiography. Marat became a martyr of liberty in France. What Trump becomes we wait to see.

Marat deployed the outrage of citizens in support of the revolution in France, nowhere else. In contrast, President Donald Trump’s erratic foreign policy, including the disastrous attacks on Iran at the behest of Benjamin Netanyahu, has lost him much public support, as have his cuts to health and education, his treatment of migrants, and his insouciance about inflation. If he interferes in the mid-term election, and the next presidential vote, another revolution may be the result.

The views expressed in this article may or may not reflect those of Pearls and Irritations.