Anti-Semitism, Nationalism and the Entire Story

An interesting concoction in the mixture for this occasion: two revolutions, a great civil war between two empires and one man, tried and convicted as guilty, before being found innocent twelve years after the man's original conviction. In addition, one interpretation on the existence and its long lasting effects since pre-history. I will start in order from the latter.

1. Bernard Lazare and the Causes of Anti-Semitism
Bernard Lazare, a Frenchman born in 1865 to a wealthy, if fairly secular, Jewish background had a passion of journalistic and literary affairs. Publishing texts such as Jewish France and Ancient Church had a knack for factual writings and an ironic leaning towards being sympathetic for the feelings of anarchists of his generation. Indeed, later on as the infamous trial of Alfred Dreyfus was to take place in France (as I will explain later), Lazare published some of his most regarded writings. This included his How to Condemn an Innocent Man (1898) which made a direct appeal for Dreyfus's pardon and the source of inspiration for Emile Zola's critically acclaimed article J'accuse. However, it is his other essay, Antisemitism: Its History and Causes (1894) which I will look at first in relation to this - his other essay will be considered with The Dreyfus Affair.

Bernard Lazare

In describing the many misfortunes of the Jewish faith - which there have been many since the days of the falling of Judah and Solomon's condemnation by God in the Old Testament - it has been argued that the city of Jerusalem will always be the ancestral of of the Jews. Lazare rather disturbingly comments that the city was "the only city where God might be worshipped and sacrifices offered in His Temple." It was despite their presumed ongoing hostility to Christianity since Roman times and their wealth as lawyers, merchants etc. that in 18th century Europe the Jew was subject as slaves and servants for the French and German aristocracy in court and as a result of the fall of Catholic influence in Europe, the Jews "spirit triumphed with Protestantism." However, it was Martin Luther who was to later comment in one of his personal pamphlets in a verbal assault against the Jews said "they are wicked beasts who ought to be driven out like dogs." It is frightening to think, with the rise of nationalism in Protestant Germany and secular France and the Pogroms in countries such as Russia, the continued isolation of this community against other parts in the world could not survive forever.

Nationalism presented its own challenges with the Jewish faith. Perhaps one of the most interesting elements of such times were the forms of communication the faith took. Lazare suggests in his essay that whilst Jews spoke the accepted national language in society, at home they would only speak Hebrew. It was just an example of the community's continued defiance and which Lazare supported this, if any crisis were to befall them, they were "the cause of their own ills." Moreover, Lazare contends that with a language, a form of hegemony takes hold in form of a united language for national unity to hold a country together. Race, purity and blood became the key constituents which seemed to hold a country together and it was unfortunately that the Jewish were seemingly determined to hold on to their old traditions, despite many abuses upon the culture, in which before embracing the French Revolution, were rampant. It was with this movement the circumstances of a transition from nationalism to internationalism takes place and the Jew was centre stage of a global shift in which they were the masterminds of their field at that time. Lazare (being a socialist as he was) said that if antisemitism was dissolving, so too was Catholicism and Protestantism and religion itself losing its influence on the social spectrum. In summary, Lazare associated this racial hatred as the old vestiges of Conservatism.

Although I think to a great extent Lazare is right, what is in place instead now is the battle to retain the forms of religion and a seemingly lack of resistance towards it, tough times as they are for many countries. When the partition of Israel-Palestine took place in 1948, why did events such as the Arab-Israeli war and the war of Israel's independence take place? Surely there was no justification for this if Lazare's theories were to be taken on face value. Only the optimist claims success of the end of prejudice in this world and even as Marx, a pertinent figure in this affair, said "history repeats itself, the first as a tragedy, then as farce" in relation to the Paris Revolution of 1848.

2. The Paris Commune and its Consequences
After France's all too various revolutions - the main being in 1789 - and later in the 1830s and 1848, when once again the House of Bourbon was thrown off its seat of power once again as Napoleon Bonaparte's nephew, Napoleon III, took on effective power as president (and, in my mind, dictator) of France. Indeed, both confident and Nationalist leaders of Otto Van Bismarck, of Germany, and Napoleon III engaged in the Franco-Prussian War that ensured France's bitter defeat only a year later and an impoverished population in Paris deciding to take matters into their own hands. A Communal Council formed (quite familiar in its name) and a resistance began against the ruling classes in Versailles with the working and middle classes uniting against the strive in which they lived in. Amongst a group of left-wing figureheads, socialists and Jacobean followers, the commune established some defining changes which reflect the many changes in secular France today:

• Separation of church and state.
• Female suffrage.
• Working conditions improved (especially nightshifts in bakeries and factories).
• Nationalised (or worker owned) factories. This was very much in line with Communist practise later on.

Lenin called this affair later the "festival of the oppressed" and Marx believing this was the first example of a Dictatorship of the Proletariat and the withering away of the state.This amount of freedom was not to last for too long and outside of Paris, it seemed to procure no damage to the powers who had been shaken but not fundamentally taken down. A month after it been established, Versailles took down the corners of the city which was sought to be taken back. Just as the citizens fought to stop the infantry taking the city back, no sooner was "work and security...reborn" afterwards. This did not last. A new wave of vengeful attacks ensured many citizens in Pris were tried promptly and condemned, shot or deported to a distant colony. An estimated figure of 50,000 were killed and France came under a lengthy spell of Martial Law.

In spite of the brevity of the commune, many figures who were soon later to rule their Communist nations (Lenin, Mao and the Kim dynasty) were clearly influenced for a state in which there would evidently be no class disparity - although the means these leaders took to remove some of the 'class enemies' can be assumed to be out of Paris and even Marxist intentions altogether. The church was to remain separated and many left wing, radical parties were to spring up and take government, legitimately, thanks to the newly established three-tier system of power in France. But, as with many of these reforms, there was still plenty of rough edges that needed to be sought to in France's transition to a fully functioning republic. 

3. The Dreyfus Affair

Alfred Dreyfus

"I accuse Commandant Esterhazy of having fabricated them, I accuse Colonel du Paty de Clam of having been his accomplice and of having composed this false dossier." And this was Lazare's, and not Zola's, extremely daring report in which he condemned the French justice system when they convicted an unremarkable French Captain, Alfred Dreyfus, was wrongfully accused of treason. Being a highly intellectual Jewish citizen in the country and, having access to sources of confidential information, the outcome of the Franco-Prussian War persisted in 1894 when, with tensions between the two empire seemingly running high still, secret papers of French national security were found in German wastebaskets, all apparently written in Dreyfus's handwriting. Dreyfus then suffered over twelve years of charade trials, deportation to Devil's Island (in which he lost his teeth, due to abysmal conditions) and a French war ministry which all it desired to do was to preserve its national image. I don't intend to retell the facts of the story, as this can easily be found by any general search of the affair, but rather the journalistic works which saved Dreyfus from languishing in a false conviction and the rise of the so called 'Dreyfusard', in which France was successful in breaking away from its past.

Emile Zola

When journalist Emile Zola, of the left-wing and radical newspaper L'Aurore, published an open letter in response to Dreyfus's second trial, where he was once again convicted and banished to Devil's Island, the article's title J'accuse (1898) was to take on a very similar tone to that of Lazare's How to Convict and Innocent Man (1896). Dreyfus's brother, who knew of Lazare's strong influence, had enlisted him to publish and campaign for the release of his sibling. Lazare's determination for equal rights for Jews saw to this and commented in his well-know article that "I spoke out because it had been demonstrated to me that right had been neglected and justice violated. I spoke out for the salvation of one man alone, but in the name of salvation for all, so that they render liberty to he who is in the penal colony, but also to safeguard the liberty of every individual." Zola later on went on a very similar lines and used the threat of the "dirty Jew" which many of the figureheads in the army were taking shelter "behind the odious Antisemitism". The real convict, a Major Esterhazy, was protected by the ministry and was acquitted a couple of years after the trial. In a rare approach by journalists of that time, Zola acknowledged he was putting himself at great risk of a charge of slander, and soon enough fled to England in exile. It was despite his own persecution by the French justice system, Dreyfus still cried out at his conviction in a passionate cry of "Long live France! Long live the army!" Even though the liberal Dreyfusard was born, Dreyfus portrayed himself as a passionate nationalist. It is this contradiction which has driven the works of Zola's list of accusations and the people, like Dreyfus, who still ensure conservative ways remain. He was freed in 1906.

And so there it is. Whilst much of this has a common link to the rise of liberation in the republic of France as we come to know it today, it only highlights the severe faults of those in power and the mistakes or preconceptions they have of many situations. The poor working classes, suppressed because of a desire for reform and Dreyfus, convicted because of only who he was. This makes Lazare's ambition of a classless and secular influenced state attractive, but in many ways unworkable (as seen with the Paris Commune). And it is the work of Zola and Lazare that remind the general public of the glimmers of hope we still have of quality and daring journalism.