French Anti-Semitism

Robert Gildea, Children of the Revolution: The French, 1799-1914 (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 2008), pp.353-354.

In the passage below Robert Gildea describes the beginning of modern anti-Semitism in France. This is a case in which it is particular important to realize that, as a historian, he is paraphrasing the ideas of individuals at the time, not presenting his own interpretation of conditions in late 19th century France

Much more  powerful  than social reform as a way to building  a bridge between Catholic conservatism and a popular base was anti­Semitism. Edouard  Drumont, whose father had been an  official at the Hotel de Ville and early in the Second Empire the boss of Henri Rochefort, was a journalist  who was increasingly unhappy  with the opportunist Republic and with the influence over it of the Rothschilds and Reinachs. In 1886  he  published  La  France  juive, which sold over 1oo,ooo copies in its first year alone and made his fortune. Singlehandedly, he transformed anti-Semitism from a socialist ideology that had  been peddled by Proudhon and certain Blanquists, which attacked the Jews as usurers  and  capitalists, into  an all­embracing condemnation of Jews for the evils of the modern  world. They were said to embody parasitic finance capital, promoting large department stores at the expense of small shopkeepers and  lending to peasants at extortionate rates.  They were exposed as the power behind the republican political class, as bankers, newspaper magnates, publishers, members of the Academie Française, the theatre, schools and universities, who were increasingly divorced  from  and  shamelessly exploited and deceived real, popular, eternal  France. Ever since they  crucified Christ   they  had  ceaselessly attacked the Catholic Church, hatching freemasonry to launch  the French Revolution. The divorce law of  1884 was the  work  of one Jew, Naquet, the law of 188o introducing lay education for young women  that  of another, Camille See. Most  of Drumont's ideas were entirely  ridiculous - the defeat of 187o  was said to be a conspiracy  of German Jews to take over France, Gambetta was a Jew from Genoa, Protestants were half Jewish  - but the idea of a Jewish plot behind  all  contemporary misfortunes was highly seductive. Reviewing  La  France  juive the socialist Benoit Malon  pointed  out that 'the  proletariat and petite bourgeoisie suffer from  capitalism  as a whole, whether  it is Jewish or non-Jewish.'45  And  yet La Croix  argued  in  1894  that  'the  social question is, fundamentally, the Jewish question.'46

Drumont gave focus to anti-Semitism in his slogan  'La France aux Française' [France to the French] and  in  the  arguments which were broadcast even more widely by the paper he founded  in 1892, La Libre Parole. His ideas were taken up by other movements, not  least by Catholics seeking to broaden their appeal and to find new weapons against the Republic. La Croix,  founded   by  the Assumptionists in  r88o  and  edited  by Vincent  de  Paul Bailly, became  a  daily  in  1883   and  by 1895  had eighty-six departmental editions, most of them weeklies. It was aimed not at the bourgeoisie but at the lower clergy and a popular clientele; La Croix  du  Nord  had a circulation of 23,ooo  in 1899  and was read  among  others  by textile  workers,  miners, small tradesmen and peasants. It embraced  anti-Semitism in 1889 and the following year proclaimed  itself 'the  most  anti-Jewish  paper  in France,  because it is emblazoned  by Christ, mark of  horror for  the Jew'.  Sales rose from 6o,ooo   in  1888   to  16o,ooo in 1892 and 2oo,ooo in 1899. Echoing  La France juive, it blamed Jews for the capitalism that was destroying hard-working, traditional France, the liberalism that eased them into positions of power, and  the Jewish  press and education system that was undermining   religion.  In  order to structure their support in the regions  the Assumptionists set  up  Comites Justice­Egalite after  1896. When Dreyfus  was  arrested  in  1894  it came as no surprise to the Assumptionists: Vincent de Paul Bailly described him as 'the  Jewish enemy betraying France'