[Part 2/2]
A quick post on the Dreyfus Affair which I mentioned in Part 1 and said I’d come back to, because it’s linked to the events of the 1930s that shaped the beliefs of people like Déat and Mitterrand.
I am not conflating Déat and Mitterrand on this anti-Semitic issue BTW, we have no direct evidence to ascertain that Mitterrand was anti-Semitic. However, that accusation has been levelled at him, by moderate people, and it’s not difficult to see why as, throughout his life, Mitterrand had strong connections with anti-Semites, such as René Bousquet and Gabriel Jeantet, he joined anti-Semitic movements in his youth, he demonstrated with the fascists in 1935-37, worked for the Vichy administration for nearly a year ½ (one of his tasks was to compile lists of resistants IIRC), he admired Pétain, he even lauded Pétain’s ideology and strategy in writing (in far right anti-Semitic publications, right up to December 1942 – whereas he said that he entered the Resistance, while working for Vichy, in June 1942; he then justified the overlap by saying that it was a cover, that he was really a resistant and playing a double role as what's called a Vichysto-resistant) etc. So he is at least certainly guilty of that, although some historians say that these movements were more than just anti-Semitic so it makes it difficult to categorically label him anti-Semitic (debatable); there are many troubling signs then. We could add more recently this conversation he had with historian Jean D’ormesson a few months before he died where he talked about “the Jewish lobby in France”.
At his juncture, it is important to stress not just how divisive the Dreyfus Affair was in France but also how it heightened anti-Semitism throughout the ordinary French population, and how enduring and harmful its legacy was. Most historians agree that, as far as anti-Semitism in France is concerned, there is a before-Dreyfus and an after-Dreyfus in the way it developed and magnitude it took.
The Dreyfus Affair started in 1894 and was officially over in 1906 with the rehabilitation of Dreyfus (sadly, Zola never saw that as he died in 1902) but it profoundly divided France between the pro-Dreyfus and the anti-Dreyfus. It really was the Brexit of the day, you were defined along the same lines, you were either un Dreyfusard or un anti-Dreyfusard and it split families apart. There is this famous two-part cartoon in France called “Un dîner en famille” published in Le Figaro in 1898:
In the top drawing you see a family happily dining together with this warning as caption: “Above all, let us not discuss the Dreyfus Affair”; the bottom cartoon shows the family fighting and the caption goes: “They’ve discussed it”.
Anti-Semitism obviously existed before in France but was roughly limited to the intelligentsia and a small number of readers (that grew from the 1880s), although the Dreyfus case didn’t appear out of nowhere of course. The right and far right in particular had been actively waging anti-Semitic campaigns and the far right journalist-writer Édouard Drumont for instance became a successful propagator of anti-Semitism through his daily newspaper La Libre Parole and his books, particularly La France Juive (1886) which sold well. Drumont was probably the first in France to create “fake news” and propagate conspiracy theories on this Jewish issue, the first to do that on a wide scale anyhow. He also founded the Antisemitic League of France (also anti-communist) in 1889 and was even elected MP (for Algiers – but failed to be re-elected in 1902). The far right was also active, focusing particularly around the concept of race (“scientific racism” was then a popular theory throughout Europe), since the beginning of the Third Republic, so about 25 years before the Dreyfus Affair.
Circa 1880, religion issues became more prominent and the old anti-Judaic sentiment and prejudice held by Christianity leaders resurfaced. A few financial scandals were weaponised against the Jews too, such as the Panama Canal scandal (which involved two Jews), nationalism was on the rise (eg Boulangism) along with an anti-German sentiment (humiliating French defeat in the Franco-Prussian War), what was termed “revanchism” (was closely linked to Boulangisme).
But with the Dreyfus affair, the topic of anti-Semitism became a national issue, including with sections of the left for whom the Jews = imperialism, money, greed, therefore the enemy. Again, this wasn’t new. Eg the philosopher Pierre Leroux, one of the first champions of socialism in France, turned openly anti-Semitic in the middle of the 19th century when the industrial revolution and capitalism made some Jewish families wealthy. Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, a famous anarcho-socialist who greatly influenced working-class movements (he coined the slogan “Property is theft/La propriété, c'est le vol”), called in 1847 for the Jews “to be sent to Asia or be exterminated” (he was fiercely anticlerical of course as befits anarchists but hated Jews in particular).
The great socialist, intellectual and pacifist Jean Jaurès (1859-1914, assassinated on 31 July… The other assassination that led up to World War I), one of the historic figures and heroes of the left in France, co-founder of the communist daily L’Humanité etc., was somewhat anti-Semitic too, although he was a Dreyfusard and even defended Dreyfus in parliament despite the contrary instructions of the socialist leaders (such as Jules Guesde, the founder of the first socialist party in France in 1882, the Parti Ouvrier) who urged their members “not to take position in this conflict between two rival factions of the bourgeois class” (those 2 factions being Christians and Jews). Jaurès also hardened his position on the issue from 1905 post creation of the SFIO (the forerunner of the Parti Socialist, which established a strong anti-capitalist ideology in France).
However, even at that point, in the 1900s, open anti-Semitism was much more the preserve of the (far) right than the left, especially as the Dreyfus Affair and his rehabilitation was considered a success for the left (even if many of his detractors for most of this protracted affair were left-wingers) and one victory that enabled the left to regain some prestige and stave off the demons of anti-Semitism in its midst for a while. Twenty odd years later, those demons returned.
A quick post on the Dreyfus Affair which I mentioned in Part 1 and said I’d come back to, because it’s linked to the events of the 1930s that shaped the beliefs of people like Déat and Mitterrand.
I am not conflating Déat and Mitterrand on this anti-Semitic issue BTW, we have no direct evidence to ascertain that Mitterrand was anti-Semitic. However, that accusation has been levelled at him, by moderate people, and it’s not difficult to see why as, throughout his life, Mitterrand had strong connections with anti-Semites, such as René Bousquet and Gabriel Jeantet, he joined anti-Semitic movements in his youth, he demonstrated with the fascists in 1935-37, worked for the Vichy administration for nearly a year ½ (one of his tasks was to compile lists of resistants IIRC), he admired Pétain, he even lauded Pétain’s ideology and strategy in writing (in far right anti-Semitic publications, right up to December 1942 – whereas he said that he entered the Resistance, while working for Vichy, in June 1942; he then justified the overlap by saying that it was a cover, that he was really a resistant and playing a double role as what's called a Vichysto-resistant) etc. So he is at least certainly guilty of that, although some historians say that these movements were more than just anti-Semitic so it makes it difficult to categorically label him anti-Semitic (debatable); there are many troubling signs then. We could add more recently this conversation he had with historian Jean D’ormesson a few months before he died where he talked about “the Jewish lobby in France”.
At his juncture, it is important to stress not just how divisive the Dreyfus Affair was in France but also how it heightened anti-Semitism throughout the ordinary French population, and how enduring and harmful its legacy was. Most historians agree that, as far as anti-Semitism in France is concerned, there is a before-Dreyfus and an after-Dreyfus in the way it developed and magnitude it took.
The Dreyfus Affair started in 1894 and was officially over in 1906 with the rehabilitation of Dreyfus (sadly, Zola never saw that as he died in 1902) but it profoundly divided France between the pro-Dreyfus and the anti-Dreyfus. It really was the Brexit of the day, you were defined along the same lines, you were either un Dreyfusard or un anti-Dreyfusard and it split families apart. There is this famous two-part cartoon in France called “Un dîner en famille” published in Le Figaro in 1898:
In the top drawing you see a family happily dining together with this warning as caption: “Above all, let us not discuss the Dreyfus Affair”; the bottom cartoon shows the family fighting and the caption goes: “They’ve discussed it”.
Anti-Semitism obviously existed before in France but was roughly limited to the intelligentsia and a small number of readers (that grew from the 1880s), although the Dreyfus case didn’t appear out of nowhere of course. The right and far right in particular had been actively waging anti-Semitic campaigns and the far right journalist-writer Édouard Drumont for instance became a successful propagator of anti-Semitism through his daily newspaper La Libre Parole and his books, particularly La France Juive (1886) which sold well. Drumont was probably the first in France to create “fake news” and propagate conspiracy theories on this Jewish issue, the first to do that on a wide scale anyhow. He also founded the Antisemitic League of France (also anti-communist) in 1889 and was even elected MP (for Algiers – but failed to be re-elected in 1902). The far right was also active, focusing particularly around the concept of race (“scientific racism” was then a popular theory throughout Europe), since the beginning of the Third Republic, so about 25 years before the Dreyfus Affair.
Circa 1880, religion issues became more prominent and the old anti-Judaic sentiment and prejudice held by Christianity leaders resurfaced. A few financial scandals were weaponised against the Jews too, such as the Panama Canal scandal (which involved two Jews), nationalism was on the rise (eg Boulangism) along with an anti-German sentiment (humiliating French defeat in the Franco-Prussian War), what was termed “revanchism” (was closely linked to Boulangisme).
But with the Dreyfus affair, the topic of anti-Semitism became a national issue, including with sections of the left for whom the Jews = imperialism, money, greed, therefore the enemy. Again, this wasn’t new. Eg the philosopher Pierre Leroux, one of the first champions of socialism in France, turned openly anti-Semitic in the middle of the 19th century when the industrial revolution and capitalism made some Jewish families wealthy. Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, a famous anarcho-socialist who greatly influenced working-class movements (he coined the slogan “Property is theft/La propriété, c'est le vol”), called in 1847 for the Jews “to be sent to Asia or be exterminated” (he was fiercely anticlerical of course as befits anarchists but hated Jews in particular).
The great socialist, intellectual and pacifist Jean Jaurès (1859-1914, assassinated on 31 July… The other assassination that led up to World War I), one of the historic figures and heroes of the left in France, co-founder of the communist daily L’Humanité etc., was somewhat anti-Semitic too, although he was a Dreyfusard and even defended Dreyfus in parliament despite the contrary instructions of the socialist leaders (such as Jules Guesde, the founder of the first socialist party in France in 1882, the Parti Ouvrier) who urged their members “not to take position in this conflict between two rival factions of the bourgeois class” (those 2 factions being Christians and Jews). Jaurès also hardened his position on the issue from 1905 post creation of the SFIO (the forerunner of the Parti Socialist, which established a strong anti-capitalist ideology in France).
However, even at that point, in the 1900s, open anti-Semitism was much more the preserve of the (far) right than the left, especially as the Dreyfus Affair and his rehabilitation was considered a success for the left (even if many of his detractors for most of this protracted affair were left-wingers) and one victory that enabled the left to regain some prestige and stave off the demons of anti-Semitism in its midst for a while. Twenty odd years later, those demons returned.
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