Samuel Johnson famously said: "Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel." Unfortunately, it's often the first and habitual refuge of many scoundrels.
Captain Alfred Dreyfus, a French Alsatian Jewish artillery officer, was convicted for treason in November 1894 and sent to Devil’s Island in French Guiana where he spent almost 5 years in solitary confinement. Anti-Semitic prejudice, not factual evidence, was the motivation for the conviction. In 1896, clear evidence was produced which proved that Ferdinand Walsin Esterhazy was the actual traitor. Yet high-ranking military officials, claiming to be motivated by French patriotism, suppressed the new evidence, collaborated with the known traitor to rig his acquittal, and fabricated additional documents to not only confirm Dreyfus’s original conviction but to make additional charges. Major Georges Picquart, who had brought evidence to his superiors of the forgery which proved Esterhazy’s guilt and exonerated Dreyfus, was ordered to keep silent and then court-martialed when he refused. Overwhelming proof of Dreyfus’s innocence was brought to the French public’s attention by Zola. Émile Zola risked his career and more on 13 January 1898, when his "J'accuse", was published on the front page of the Paris daily L'Aurore. Zola was prosecuted and found guilty of libel on 23 February 1898. To avoid imprisonment, he fled to England, returning home in June 1899.
Yet the anti-Semitic military high-command, a rabidly anti-Semitic Catholic press, and millions of anti-Semitic Catholic parishioners refused to believe the exculpatory evidence and called for the death of Dreyfus, Emile Zola, and other pro-Dreyfus personalities. Mobs whipped up by the anti-Semitic, Catholic press screamed “Death to Zola” as he entered and exited the court. This cabal would rather collaborate with a known traitor under the guise of patriotism than admit that their anti-Semitism had caused an innocent, loyal officer to be convicted of treason.
Two of the most astonishing proofs of Dreyfus’s innocence concerned the actions of 1) Lieutenant-Colonel Hubert-Joseph Henry and 2) Esterhazy. Henry was, in effect, the French high-command’s hatchet man whose mission was to create false documents to ensure Dreyfus’ guilt. However, when it later became obvious that Henry had totally fabricated documents to exculpate Esterhazy, the military high-command who had ordered the cover-up had him arrested. While imprisoned, he despaired of being aided by his past collaborators, confessed his guilt, and slit his throat with a razor. At least, that was the official history. Given his superiors’ interest in having him be a dead scape-goat, and given that during the body-search upon his entry into prison he had no razor, there was suspicion that he may have been murdered or at least supplied the razor so he could fall on his sword to shield his superiors.
Yet his suicide, rather than opening the eyes of the anti-Semitic mobs to their errors, made Henry a hero in the estimation of the anti-Dreyfusards! The controversy became so fierce that it toppled the French government more than once. It became literally a spiritual war that would determine the national identity of the French nation. In 1905, for example, it led to the division of church and state. Anti-Dreyfusards felt that they were fighting to maintain France as a Catholic monarchy; Dreyfusards considered that they were fighting to maintain France as a Republican democracy. As a result, for years the Catholic press poured out a never ending stream of anti-Semitic, anti-Dreyfusard fury of the utmost violence while simultaneously championing proven liars and traitors as national heroes. For example, La Gazette de France praised Henry for sacrificing his life for the Fatherland. Charles Maurras, later a pro-Vichy, pro-Nazi collaborator, declared that the 'gallant soldier's' forgery stood among his "finest feats of war" [emphasis added]. A Henry Monument was erected after his death for the support of the anti-Dreyfusard's cause and for his 'heroic forgery' which enabled Dreyfus to be imprisoned. The monument was funded using donations which were sent in by the anti-Semitic French public. Joseph Reinach had shown that Henry collaborated with Esterhazy to frame both Dreyfus and Picquart. Thus, after Henry’s death, the anti-Semitic public and demagogues aided Henry’s wife monetarily in attacking Reinach legally. The contributors, more than 25,000 persons in less than a month, including 4,500 military men, 433 aristocrats, and 350 Catholic priests, accompanied their money with violent anti-Semitic calls to action, including the extermination of the Jews.
Even more astonishing was the fact that even after Esterhazy was unmasked as not only a traitor, but as someone who said he had total contempt for the French people, he was still wholeheartedly embraced by the anti-Dreyfusards! On November 28, 1897 Le Figaro published secret letters that Esterhazy had written to his mistress, Madame de Boulancy, between 1881 and 1884. In them he said: “I’m absolutely convinced that this people, [the French], is more worthless than the cartridge that it would take to kill them. . . . If, this evening, someone would predict to me that tomorrow I would be killed as captain of the cavalry while cutting down the French with my sword, I would be perfectly happy. . . . I wouldn’t bother to hurt a [mangy] little dog, but I would murder 100,000 French with pleasure.”
As Emile Zola said, this blind anti-Semitism was due to the fact that the Catholic press had poured out “an insane hatred of the Jews every morning for years and, . . . even more flabbergasting is the fact that they do it in the name of morality and in the name of Jesus Christ!” He chastised the anti-Dreyfusards proclaiming that: “It’s a crime to manipulate the virtue of patriotism in order to commit works of hate; it’s a crime to make of ‘military necessity’ the modern god.”[1]
The Catholic French anti-Semitism expressed during the Dreyfus Affair had profound and deep influence in French history and culture. It led directly to the death of thousands of French Jews during WWII because Vichy anti-Semitism was a virtual twin of Nazi anti-Semitism. The despised Nazi collaborators of the Vichy Regime contained many anti-Dreyfusards and their descendants. Just one poignant example is the fact that the anti-Semitic Vichy Regime would later close its eyes to the arrest of Dreyfus's Jewish granddaughter, Madeleine Levy, by the Gestapo. Madame Levy was imprisoned in Camp Drancy on 3 November 1943, and on 20 November of the same year she was deported to Auschwitz, where she died of typhus in January 1944.
Samuel Johnson famously said: “Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.” Unfortunately, all too often it is the first and habitual refuge of many scoundrels. The Dreyfus Affair occurred in the aftermath of the French losing an 1870 war to the Germans. Therefore, French nationalists were particularly amenable to the philosophy of: “My country, right or wrong.” During American wars the same dynamic occurs. Anyone who is “not supporting the troops,” not supporting a war time president, or not following a lemming-like mass movement in favor of going to war, is scape-goated as unpatriotic, even though the war may not be in the national interest. One only needs to think of Vietnam and Iraq.
The Dreyfus Affair demonstrates that just because the top political and military officials of a country claim that they are acting in the national interest, they are not infrequently acting for egoistical and/or ideological reasons. And, they are not above demonizing their opponents as unpatriotic. The same principle is applicable in regard to other national policies. For example, just because a particular interest group says they support a certain policy on behalf of the general welfare, not infrequently they are doing so because they have a financial or ideological interest in the policy they are lobbying for. I pointed this out in my blogs concerning 1st hand tobacco smoke, 2nd hand tobacco smoke, and global warming. In a future blog, I will point out how homosexuals often fulfill the same scape-goating function as Jews did in the Dreyfus Affair and the creation of St. Simon.
[1] Literally, the sword [sabre]. The sword being the symbol of military and patriotic necessity, in the name of which the military high-command, the government, anti-Semitic press, and the anti-Semitic mob demanded the blood of Dreyfus. Like in the case of Jesus, the political and religious authorities deemed that it was expedient that one man die so that the nation might live. The quotations for this blog come for my translation of the book “L’Affaire Dreyfus: ‘J’Accuse. . . !’ et autres textes” annoted by Henri Mitterand.
No comments:
Post a Comment