ABSTRACT
The famous French writer, Charles Peguy, looking back on the Dreyfus affair in 1910, described it as une affaire elue. From his new-found vantage point as a French Catholic patriot, the affair appeared to be the crossroads in three eminent histories – of France, of Israel, and of Christianity. The socialist manifesto was the first attempt by the French Left at drawing up an official and coherent position towards the Dreyfus campaign. The proletarian revolution found its meaning in the defence of ‘humanity’, incarnated by Dreyfus – the victim of an inhuman social order, ‘a living witness to the military lie, to political cowardice and to the crimes of authority’. The socialist manifesto was the first attempt by the French Left at drawing up an official and coherent position towards the Dreyfus campaign. Socialist propaganda against Jewish capitalists and bankers had rebounded in the Dreyfus affair, encouraging hatred against Jews in general, including the immigrant Jewish workers of Paris.
