The ‘Affaire Dreyfus’

By David Bidussa*

“The Affaire Dreyfus” is a fairy tale with a happy ending only in appearance. With “The officer and the spy,” Roman Polanski opened up a reading of the present through the past. Once the credits finished rolling, it was time to go out on the street and go beyond the story. I’m going to make it very short.

In the culture of all current political regimes (2019), there is a constant return of the myth of a Jewish conspiracy. The Dreyfus affair is just an episode that marks a difference between before and after.

Before it was enough to have a put-up trial and the alleged plotters were punished. Afterward, instead, a court case has no longer been enough because a court case can also be lost (something that the conspiracy theorists can’t stand).

So the end of the Dreyfus Affair can be seen from two points of view by those who are watching to see how it ends, as always in times of persecution. Optimists will say that truth triumphs in the end. Pessimists will say that since they cannot sentence Dreyfus, then the conspiracy belief must be confirmed in another way. The history of that moment, considered from here and now, says that it was the second hypothesis that won.

This second theory explains an essential part of what that has come to us today, now. Dreyfus was released, while the public conspiracy syndrome was confirmed as a threat.

If you have any doubts, get out of the movie theater and ask Viktor Orban (and all his friends, of course, also those who are here, among us). Better if you speak their native languages or their jargon. There would be a much higher chance that they will give you straightforward and non-alluring answers.

*David Bidussa is a historian of social ideas.