Lessons from the Dreyfus affair

 I have recently taken an interest in the Dreyfus affair, as have many others. The affair was huge in France between 1894 and (roughly) 1906. It split the country down the middle, with a bitterness and acrimony that, even in our divided times, are difficult to comprehend today. As such, I find it a relevant historical precedent to help us understand what is happening in the U.S. today.

Quick historical reminder

If you're like me, you've heard of the Dreyfus affair, but you may be a bit fuzzy on the details, so here are the Cliff's notes. 

1894: evidence is discovered that an officer in the French army has been sending highly classified documents to German intelligence. An investigation is conducted and concludes that Captain Alfred Dreyfus is the guilty party. A court-martial condemns him to twenty years of hard labor. As it turns out, Dreyfus is Jewish.

1896: a new chief of intelligence realizes that the investigation was botched, perhaps even on purpose, and that the real spy was in fact another officer, captain Esterhazy. His superiors don't want to hear about it. 

1897: word gets out that this entire affair has been badly mishandled. Several newspaper articles are published, people start to take notice.

1898: Emile Zola, famous novelist, publishes his article "J'Accuse!", denouncing Dreyfus' treatment and directly naming several generals. This creates an enormous amount of controversy. Zola is tried for libel, condemned to prison, and leaves into exile in England. Huge numbers of articles and books are now published for and against Dreyfus. Most people in France take a position, with conservatives tending to be against Dreyfus and liberals supporting him. Families are split, life-long friendships are ended. Esterhazy flees the country.

1899: Dreyfus is tried again, and found guilty again, with extenuating circumstances. The president pardons him shortly thereafter.

1900: The national assembly passes a law of amnesty for Dreyfus and Zola.

1906: After years of bitter controversy, Dreyfus is finally cleared of all wrongdoing, he is re-established in his rank and promoted to major.

What was that all about?

With historical distance, it seems like a relatively simple case. There was a mistake, the wrong man was accused and found guilty, but the real culprit was eventually found, and the innocent party was cleared. All's well that ends well.

But that doesn't come close to describing how profoundly this affair divided French society. Huge numbers of people, mostly on the conservative/royalist/military side, refused to accept that Dreyfus was not guilty. He had been tried by a court martial and found guilty, therefore he was guilty. There was also a lot of very nasty and crude antisemitism. Dreyfus was guilty because he was Jewish, no matter what the evidence said. "I can read his guilt on his face", wrote a particularly vicious journalist.

In the cold light of logic, this is really difficult to understand. The real spy was found, he eventually confessed. It took much longer than it should have to clear Dreyfus, but he was eventually cleared. So why did so many people continue to believe in his guilt, against all evidence?

I think cold logic is of no help here. Whenever two people are screaming at each other, with veins popping out on their foreheads, you can bet good money that whatever they're screaming about is not the true crux of the disagreement. They're mad (perhaps not even at each other) for some other, much deeper reason, and the argument is about something superficial that, to an observer, seems baffling.

The discord was not about Dreyfus, it was about national identity. The question was not "is Dreyfus guilty?", but rather "who are we as a people?". And for a disturbingly high number of people, that answer could not include a Jew, even one who dedicated his life to the defense of his country. France had suffered a humiliating defeat against Germany in 1871, and lost the province of Alsace to Germany (Dreyfus was born in Alsace when it was still French, which made his loyalty questionable to some). The loss of Alsace was hugely humiliating, and France nursed its resentment for decades afterwards, which contributed to World War I and the savage treatment of Germany in the Treaty Of Versailles in 1919, and I don't need to tell you where that led.

There were other forces at play. The failure of the Panama canal company (1893), which affected a lot of small investors, was blamed on Jewish speculators -- a more convenient target than the real reasons for the failure (the project was far more difficult and costly than anticipated).

It's hard to understand how ingrained antisemitism was at the time. It was everywhere, in a way comparable perhaps to the kind of crude, flagrant racism we had in the U.S. at the time. There were grotesque caricatures in newspapers, books were written about the supposed dangers of international jewry (whatever that means), and people were really quite adamant about this.

A dark portent

I believe our current situation has some similarities. The U.S. is changing rapidly. We used to be a white-dominated country, with non-white people tacitly understood to be tolerated but certainly not in charge -- a reality challenged like never before by the election of Obama. A high school graduate who was willing to work hard could make a decent living, afford a home and a couple of cars, and get a reasonable retirement. The U.S. used to be (by far) the dominating influence in the world. All of these factors are now changing, and a lot of people are anxious and upset. Donald Trump has found a way to tap into this boiling undercurrent of anger and anxiety, but he is only a symptom (he's just not that interesting). When we're screaming at each other about him, we're really expressing our anxieties about a changing world.

The Dreyfus affair, strictly speaking, ended in 1906 with the rehabilitation of Dreyfus, but in fact it lingered on for decades afterwards. Fifty years later, you could still find old animosities and bitterness about it. It truly ended when everyone involved died out.

That is probably the most depressing aspect of this whole business. It never went away, the tears in the social fabric were never repaired. It took the death of all the actors before this sad episode faded away and became a baffling bit of history.

I wish I could tell you that things are going to get better for us, and that we're going to experience a national reconciliation. But I just don't think that's going to happen. If the Dreyfus affair can teach us anything, it's that these deep divisions cannot be healed. They disappear when the people involved disappear. My hope is that the next generation will look back at us with the same bewilderment we feel when we look at the Dreyfus affair. May they be wiser than we were -- they're going to need it.