In Costa-Gavras’s classic 1969 film Z, a reporter shouts a question at a Greek police general being taken into custody for the murder of a left-wing politician: “Is your arrest a new Dreyfus Affair?” The general, played impeccably by Pierre Dux, sputters back: “Dreyfus was guilty!”
We saw the Dreyfus exhibit at the Museum of Jewish Art and History and were quite moved by it. Thanks for bringing us up to date on the current state of play.
This was particularly well written and particularly timely, at least for me, as Im as I read this prepping a summer course on the Affair. (If you have no objection Ill assign this to the students.) The comment I can offer that might add a small bit of value is that I learned, just today, that the theme you explore her was addressed in a long essay published in ....July 1942 by ...Hannah Arendt!. "From the Dreyfus Affair to France Today" in a journal called "Jewish Social Studies". She had only fled France in May 41 so this was one of the first, possibly the first, articles she wrote in the US. And its amazingly ...Arendtian. and amazingly contemporary.
According to Samantha Rose Hill's biography, it was her first essay published in English (p 117) and was written at the suggestion of Salo Baron after she had raised with him thoughts she had about antisemitism in the context of liberal society and democratic politics. One thing she makes clear (and which the exhibit does as well) is that the "anti-Dreyfusard" movement/ idea was indistinguishable from -- even if was not reducible to -- the social and political expression of contemporary antisemitism. And even though anti-Dreyfusards included among them some Jews, of both the left and the right.
As one might have said in 1894, or 1942, its not antisemitism, just anti-Dreyfusardism.
A gratuitous reference to Donald Trump is off-putting and irrelevant. Have you no self-control?
We saw the Dreyfus exhibit at the Museum of Jewish Art and History and were quite moved by it. Thanks for bringing us up to date on the current state of play.
This was particularly well written and particularly timely, at least for me, as Im as I read this prepping a summer course on the Affair. (If you have no objection Ill assign this to the students.) The comment I can offer that might add a small bit of value is that I learned, just today, that the theme you explore her was addressed in a long essay published in ....July 1942 by ...Hannah Arendt!. "From the Dreyfus Affair to France Today" in a journal called "Jewish Social Studies". She had only fled France in May 41 so this was one of the first, possibly the first, articles she wrote in the US. And its amazingly ...Arendtian. and amazingly contemporary.
According to Samantha Rose Hill's biography, it was her first essay published in English (p 117) and was written at the suggestion of Salo Baron after she had raised with him thoughts she had about antisemitism in the context of liberal society and democratic politics. One thing she makes clear (and which the exhibit does as well) is that the "anti-Dreyfusard" movement/ idea was indistinguishable from -- even if was not reducible to -- the social and political expression of contemporary antisemitism. And even though anti-Dreyfusards included among them some Jews, of both the left and the right.
As one might have said in 1894, or 1942, its not antisemitism, just anti-Dreyfusardism.