#Affaire Dreyfus

[jloisse]

« L’intervention d’un romancier, même fameux, dans une question de justice militaire m’a paru aussi déplacée que le serait, dans la question des origines du romantisme, l’intervention d’un colonel de gendarmerie. »

Ferdinand Brunetière (1848-1906), 

Après le procès (1898)

[eretzyisrael]

by Brendan O'Neill

Now, not even Israel’s most fervent defenders would describe it as ‘spotless’. Like every state, it makes mistakes, it does wrong. But the showtrial of the Jewish State eerily echoes the showtrial of the Jew Dreyfus. Again we see the deployment of ‘lurid imagination’, where every single thing Israel does is pored over and judged nefarious. Again we see men – or in this case, nations – that are ‘lost in debts and crime’ projecting their own sense of guilt on to a Jewish scapegoat. And again we see not one nation this time, but many nations seeking to distract attention from their own inner turmoil through the creation of a spectacle of accusation – only now it’s not a Jew in the dock; it’s the entire Jewish nation.

We have heard quite enough of your lurid accusations against Israel. Now it’s time you heard ours against you. I accuse South Africa of joining the holy war against Israel in order to cynically curry favour with the woke elites of the West. In order to try to repair its global image as a just, radical nation despite its cataclysmic failing of its own population who still await the enrichment and equality they were promised following the fall of Apartheid 30 years ago. I accuse Iran of backing the legal crusade against Israel as a furtherance of its violent anti-Semitism. As yet another opportunity to defame and isolate the Jewish State in order that the Jews there might feel compelled to leave.

I accuse Turkey of backing the showtrial in order to disguise its own past genocidal crimes. In order to pool its genocidal guilt, and project it on to others, in particular the supposedly evil ‘Zionist entity’. I accuse Turkey of spying in these kangaroo proceedings an opportunity to rearrange power relations in the Middle East to its own tyrannical advantage. To strengthen the Turkey-Iran alliance on the back of what they hope will be the international court’s reprimand of the Jewish State. I accuse Turkey of sacrificing the safety of Jews in Israel at the altar of its own demented regional ambitions.

And I accuse the Western left of being the running dogs of all this global Israelophobia. Of forfeiting their right to be treated as serious moral actors by aligning with the demagogues, Islamists and outright racists who have dragged the world’s only Jewish nation to court on the most trumped-up charge imaginable. Of flagrantly abandoning their supposed commitment to anti-racism by whitewashing Hamas’s orgy of racist violence that gave rise to the current war. And of emboldening the fascists of Hamas by promoting the libel that says Israel is a genocidal state. After all, if Israel is guilty of the worst crime known to man, why should Hamas not attack it again, and again, and again, until the Nazi-like threat it poses to the Palestinian people has been eradicated? I accuse you of giving moral succour to fascists.israe

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Noah Berlatsky at Everything Is Horrible:

In the Anglophone world, the intertwined issues of Jewish identity and antisemitism are connected in public memory obsessively, and almost solely, to the Holocaust. Occasionally, perhaps, people also mention the blood libels of the Middle Ages, or the pogroms of Eastern Europe.

The Dreyfus Affair, however, is almost entirely forgotten. It is not a moment revisited in movies or television shows. Politicians do not reference it; there are no public museums in its memory; it is not a part of school curriculum. Even Jewish people hardly discuss it. I doubt one in ten Americans, of any ethnicity or religion, could even tell you vaguely who Alfred Dreyfus was. The disappearance of Dreyfus memory is a real loss. That’s not because we need to remember antisemitism. We do, as I’ve mentioned, remember the Holocaust. The Dreyfus Affair, though, was a victory over antisemitism, and a victory particularly for the diaspora, in a way that World War II was not. The Holocaust has largely been interpreted as an object lesson in the untenability of the diaspora, and the necessity of a Zionist Jewish ethnonationalism. The outcome of Dreyfus’ story is considerably more ambivalent. As such, it is worth revisiting at a moment when Zionism is busily and horrifically delegitimizing itself.

The Affair

Since, the outlines of the Dreyfus Affair are probably little known to readers, it’s worth covering them briefly. My discussion here, and throughout the essay, is mostly based on Maurice Samuels new excellent biography/history, Alfred Dreyfus: The Man At the Center of the Affair, part of the Jewish Lives series. During the French Revolution, France put into practice its new ideals of liberty and equality by, among other things, making Jewish people full citizens of the republic. After legislation in 1791, Jews were suddenly—for the first time in any European country—able to live where they wished, attend the best schools, and work in every profession. The results were immediate and dramatic. Jews made rapid gains in political and economic life; some became quite wealthy and influential.

Among those wealthy Jews was the Dreyfus family. Alfred Dreyfus, born 1859, grew up, like most French Jews, with a passionate commitment to the French nation and to the principles of equality which had liberated them. Determined to serve his country, Dreyfus attended the French military academy. He excelled and became arguably the first Jewish officer ever on the General Staff. His future seemed bright. And then, it all fell apart. In 1894, the French army discovered that there was a traitor on the General Staff who had been passing top secret information to the Germans. Dreyfus was accused of treason. The evidence against him was weak to nonexistent; his handwriting was said to match that on the recovered documents, even though it obviously did not. Nonetheless, he was arrested, tried in a sham military trial, and sentenced to life imprisonment. He was sent to the horrific penal colony on Devil’s Island in French Guiana. He endured tortures almost certainly intended to kill him. His wife, contrary to law, was not allowed to accompany him.   Dreyfus was singled out because he was Jewish. The generals, once they had begun down the path of antisemitism, decided they could not turn back without undermining respect for the military. They forged more evidence, and stonewalled investigations as long as possible.

The Affair polarized sentiment in France, both on Dreyfus and on the place of Jews in French society. Liberal intellectuals like Émile Zola who believed in the Republic and a forward-looking, cosmopolitan, free and equal France sided with Dreyfus and demanded a new trial. The Catholic Church, the military, antisemites, and proto-Vichyites insisted that Dreyfus was guilty and should be punished—or, really, insisted that as a Jew he should be punished whether he was guilty or not. The hatred of Jews erupted into antisemitic riots throughout the country; Jews were beaten, their homes burned, their businesses destroyed. Several Jewish people were killed in Algiers, where there were violence against Jews occurred almost daily in 1898.   Dreyfus was brought back for a new trial in 1899; he was convicted again despite overwhelming evidence in his favor, and eventually exonerated completely in 1906. He was restored to the rank of Major, and served with distinction in World War I. He died in 1935. Jewish people in France still leave stones on his grave.

[...] It wasn’t just Dreyfus and Jewish people who fought for Dreyfus though. The Affair energized every corner of the left, calling them almost uniformly to their best selves. Zola, for example, believed in a number of antisemitic stereotypes at the beginning of the Affair; his first article on the case argued that Jewish people had an innate talent for making money. From that inauspicious beginning he quickly became one of the most passionate gentile opponents of antisemitism in history; his famous 1898 pamphlet J’accuse was a devastating denunciation of the military coverup intended to force a number of generals to sue for libel. They did, and Zola was forced to flee the country—but not before opening the case again and ensuring Dreyfus’ retrial.

The political left in France was also, initially, wary of standing with Dreyfus because of antisemitism. For many socialists, Jewish people symbolized the banking industry and the upper class. Dreyfus, a wealthy Jew serving in the military, seemed the wrong man to rally working class parties. But eventually Socialist leader Jean Jaurès, and others in his party, recognized that Dreyfus had become the man, and the issue, on which Catholic monarchist and capitalist forces had decided to fight for France’s soul. In 1898 Jaurès gave a speech in which he denounced antisemitism as a threat to France; shortly thereafter he published a book defending Dreyfus and presenting the Affair as a matter of socialist solidarity. Some on the left refused to join Jaurès, and the Socialists split. But as Samuels’ biography of Dreyfus notes, “Jaurès helped ensure that a large part of the political left in France would align itself with republican values and against antisemitism for decades to come.”

Noah Berlatsky wrote in his Everything Is Horrible Substack about how the Dreyfus Affair served as a victory against fascism and antisemitism, and how it gave the left a tool to fight back against oppression.

[postcard-from-the-past]

Dreyfus Affaire related vintage postcard

[nebylitsa]

tinkering with my oc's backstory to put off actually coming up with a plot for this fic (and yes, she is based on me of course)

[chicago-geniza]

Oh I guess we're doing eugenic criminal psychology now, which incidentally maps 1:1 onto the language of "mental age" and "mental competence" used to deny I/DD and mentally ill adults the right to full legal personhood and self-determination. It's also funny to see which nominally "scientific" ideas from the 19th century have retained their aura of credibility and "empiricism" into the present and which, like hypnotism, are now considered woo woo shit

Dracula is a book about the 19th century, the history of science/technology, and its inextricable relationship to the history of immigration + burgeoning European nationalisms + Orientalism & empire + oh my Gd the Dreyfus affair and Oscar Wilde's "gross indecency" trial

[waugh-bao]

*

[thatscarletflycatcher]

If Charles de Gaulle was a fictional character, he'd be the object of the most intense and insane fandom drama on tumblr dot com.

[insane-control-room]

read a historical fiction book set in the time period of the dreyfus affair (bitter draughts, by yves fey [i feel the romance of the book detracts from its merits, though that is an opinion of the book itself]). while i was aware of the rampant antisemitism that fueled the situation in the first place, i could not help but be breathless over how similar the statements made were the exact same ones i'm hearing today; that today there are no good jews except those that agree with you, and if you disagree you are a traitor and a war monger and deserve to rot on devils island.

it hits very close to home, and represents a sad reality, but also hope. lt. col. dreyfus was tried twice for treason- the first trial being an obvious sham, a closed military court martial, and the second only finding him guilty to protect the honor of the french army, though all evidence pointed to his innocence. the president pardoned dreyfus due to 'public opinion' (aka the embarrassing little fact that dreyfus was innocent), but this did not restore his position. it took another two years for the military to recognize his innocence and return his honor and position.

dreyfus was arrested in october of 1894. his total exoneration was officiated in july of 1906.

people can be wrong. people can be wrong twice, to cover up their initial misdeeds and protect their honor. and yet, at the end, this wrong will be recognized.

it's bittersweet.

[tristandelarkadien]

Presenting here some printed proof of the time-honoured pursuit of flinging dirt at people one doesn’t like.

These images were sold by newsagents and coal porters around the turn of the 20th century. They were not hung publicly in the street, but were rather hung up in cafés or meeting places.

They portray public figures of the period as part-animals. The mixing of human and animal would have hearkened to the demonic in a christian context, as it was seen as going against a ‘natural’ order created by the christian god. Many of them were anti-Dreyfusian, others represented the French republic.

[thejugheadparadox]

stigmata jazz hands lol

[audiemurphy1945]

Ben Shahn, "The Dreyfus Affair", 1930

[postcard-from-the-past]

Dreyfus Affaire themed French vintage postcard

[wordsmusicandstories]

Le  donne  del  mio  Vate  –  ☾CI ☽ 🖋️

Cap 13. Il delitto Murri (7) Il delitto Murri, coinvolgendo personaggi di primissimo piano appartenenti ad un’illustre famiglia, fece molto scalpore e mise in agitazione la stampa, occupando le pagine di cronaca nera per ben quattro anni. Il processo ben presto si trasformò in un’accusa nei confronti della politica socialista dell’imputato e delle attività di suo padre, un noto riformatore…

[whydotheheathenrage]

Alfred Dreyfus in his room on Devil's Island in 1898,stereoscopy sold by F. Hamel, Altona-Hamburg...; collection Fritz Lachmund