Jacobins

Cultural  

1. An extreme radical party during the French Revolution named for the place where its founders first met, a convent of Jacobin friars. It was led by Robespierre.

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In general, a member of an extremist or radical group is often called a “Jacobin.”

Example Sentences

These aspiring Jacobins, in other words, wanted to silence an advocate of campus free speech—thereby proving his point.

From The Wall Street Journal • May 20, 2026

The currency was primarily supported by a political group known as the Jacobins, a party whose power waned throughout the revolution.

From Science Daily • Sep. 18, 2023

With France’s increasing radicalism, anticlericalism, and disorder, it seemed obvious to Morse that the French Jacobins, the political faction that seized control of the nation in 1792, were simply Illuminati by another name.

From Slate • Oct. 24, 2022

After he and many of his fellow Jacobins were released from prison, David claimed to have been only an artist, albeit one overwhelmed by the politics of the day.

From Washington Post • Mar. 24, 2022

Here is a comparison, sufficiently instructive in its banality, between the Jacobins and the Girondists from the pen of one of the bourgeois French historians: "Both one side and the other desired the republic."

From Dictatorship vs. Democracy (Terrorism and Communism) by Trotzky, Leon Davidovich