Rise of far right puts Dreyfus affair into spotlight in French election race

Source: The Observer

Rise of far right puts Dreyfus affair into spotlight in French election race

As Emmanuel Macron opens a museum dedicated to the exonerated Jewish soldier, ultra-nationalists led by Éric Zemmour again question his innocence

Jon Henley
@jonhenley
Sat 30 Oct 2021 16.00 BST

More than a century after he was exonerated, Alfred Dreyfus, the Jewish army officer whose false conviction for treason sparked bitter controversy, has erupted into France’s presidential race amid far-right attempts to question his innocence.

Emmanuel Macron last week personally inaugurated the first museum dedicated to the Dreyfus affair, a historical collection exhibited in the house of Émile Zola, the writer and best-known defender of the persecuted officer, in Médan west of Paris.

In the presence of the artillery captain’s descendents, the French president said nothing could repair the humiliations and injustices Dreyfus had suffered, but added pointedly: “Let us not aggravate it by forgetting, deepening or repeating them.”

Macron particularly stressed the continuing need to combat the antisemitism behind the officer’s persecution. “I say to the young: forget nothing of these fights,” he said. “In the world in which we live, in our country and in our Republic, they are not over.”

The comments were widely interpreted as targeting Éric Zemmour, the far-right, anti-immigrant TV pundit and polemicist who, despite not having declared his candidacy, is predicted by some polls to reach the second round of April’s presidential election. Zemmour has claimed France’s collaborationist wartime leader, Philippe Pétain, saved the lives of French Jews, rather than assisting their deportation to Nazi death camps, and has repeatedly said the truth about Dreyfus was unclear.

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Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/global/2021/oct/30/rise-of-far-right-puts-dreyfus-affair-into-spotlight-in-french-election-race

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Earlier DU thread: The Alfred Dreyfus affair shocked Jews in France. Now there's a museum devoted to it.