Bernard-Lazare (1865-1903) was a French Jewish writer and a prime mover in the Dreyfus Affair. After being involved in the Symbolist and anarchist movements, he took up the cause of Dreyfus in his brochure “Une erreur judiciaire” which anticipated Zola’s “J’accuse” by three years. He was an early analyst of antisemitism and in later years an ardent Zionist whose outspoken views provoked much controversy. The Dreyfus Affair lies at the center of this book as it was the turning-point in Bernard-Lazare’s life. The first part of the book traces Bernard-Lazare’s early career: his devotion to Mallarmé and defense of the Symbolist aesthetic as a philosophy of freedom; his adoption of anarchist principles which satisfied his love of freedom, his sympathy for oppressed individuality and minority groups, and his passion for social justice; above all his analysis of antisemitism where, at first, he argued for social assimilation only to reject this idea later in favor of cultural pluralism. The second part offers a history of the Dreyfus Affair and of how Bernard-Lazare drew attention to the grave irregularities of the case and convinced others of the threat posed to Republican democracy. Finally, Nelly Wilson shows how Bernard-Lazare came to espouse Jewish nationalism in a more radical and solitary way than did Herzl, the founder of Zionism, and how, after his death, his memory was kept alive by Péguy, who saw in Bernard-Lazare the embodiment of the prophetic spirit. “[A] finely-crafted study... Dr. Wilson has more than mastered her subject... Readers will benefit from her work” — Michael R. Marrus, University of Toronto

Bernard-Lazare (1865-1903) was a French Jewish writer who was the prime mover in the Dreyfus Affair. The Dreyfus Affair lies at the centre of this 1978 book as it was the turning point in Bernard-Lazare's life. In the first part of the book Dr Wilson traces his early career: his defence of the Symbolist aesthetic as a philosophy of freedom; his sympathy for oppressed individuality and minority groups, and his passion for social justice; above all his analysis of antisemitism where, initially, he argued for social assimilation only to reject such an idea later in favour of a concept of cultural pluralism. The second part offers a history of the Dreyfus Affair and the way Bernard-Lazare drew attention to its grave irregularities. Finally, the book explores how he came to espouse Jewish nationalism in a much more radical way than did Herzl, the founder of Zionism.

Provides the first sustained analysis of the collision between Marxism and nationalism in France at the time of the Dreyfus affair.

In Socialism of Fools, Michele Battini focuses on the critical moment during the Enlightenment in which anti-Jewish stereotypes morphed into a sophisticated, modern social anti-Semitism. He recovers the potent anti-Jewish, anticapitalist propaganda that cemented the idea of a Jewish conspiracy in the European mind and connects it to the atrocities that characterized the Jewish experience in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Beginning in the eighteenth century, counter-Enlightenment intellectuals and intransigent Catholic writers singled out Jews for conspiring to exploit self-sustaining markets and the liberal state. These ideas spread among socialist and labor movements in the nineteenth century and intensified during the Long Depression of the 1870s. Anti-Jewish anticapitalism then migrated to the Habsburg Empire with the Christian Social Party; to Germany with the Anti-Semitic Leagues; to France with the nationalist movements; and to Italy, where Revolutionary Syndicalists made anti-Jewish anticapitalism the basis of an alliance with the nationalists. Exemplified best in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the infamous document that "leaked" Jewish plans to conquer the world, the Jewish-conspiracy myth inverts reality and creates a perverse relationship to historical and judicial truth. Isolating the intellectual roots of this phenomenon and its contemporary resonances, Battini shows us why, so many decades after the Holocaust, Jewish people continue to be a powerful political target.

This book examines how left-wing political and cultural movements in Western Europe have considered Jews in the last two hundred years. The chapters seek to answer the following question: has there been a specific way in which the Left has considered Jewish minorities? The subject has taken various shapes in the different geographical contexts, influenced by national specificities. In tandem, this volume demonstrates the extent to which left-wing movements share common trends drawn from a collective repertoire of representations and meanings. Highlighting the different aspects of the subject matter, the chapters in this book are divided in three parts, each dedicated to a major theme: the contribution of the theorists of Socialism to the Jewish Question; Antisemitism and its representations in left-wing culture; and the perception of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Taken together, these three themes allow for a multidisciplinary analysis of the relationship between the Left and Jews from the second half of the nineteenth century to recent times.