#Alfred Dreyfus

[dailyhistoryposts]

On This Day In History

September 29th, 1902: Émile Zola was born. A French writer, he is best remembered for his participation in the literary naturalism movement, his work in liberalizing France, and his newspaper opinion J’accuse…! which helped to exonerate Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish-French army officer set up to take the fall by the army for a crime committed by a Catholic officer.

Zola was nominated for the first and second Nobel Prizes for Literature.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Noah Berlatsky at Everything Is Horrible:

In the Anglophone world, the intertwined issues of Jewish identity and antisemitism are connected in public memory obsessively, and almost solely, to the Holocaust. Occasionally, perhaps, people also mention the blood libels of the Middle Ages, or the pogroms of Eastern Europe.

The Dreyfus Affair, however, is almost entirely forgotten. It is not a moment revisited in movies or television shows. Politicians do not reference it; there are no public museums in its memory; it is not a part of school curriculum. Even Jewish people hardly discuss it. I doubt one in ten Americans, of any ethnicity or religion, could even tell you vaguely who Alfred Dreyfus was. The disappearance of Dreyfus memory is a real loss. That’s not because we need to remember antisemitism. We do, as I’ve mentioned, remember the Holocaust. The Dreyfus Affair, though, was a victory over antisemitism, and a victory particularly for the diaspora, in a way that World War II was not. The Holocaust has largely been interpreted as an object lesson in the untenability of the diaspora, and the necessity of a Zionist Jewish ethnonationalism. The outcome of Dreyfus’ story is considerably more ambivalent. As such, it is worth revisiting at a moment when Zionism is busily and horrifically delegitimizing itself.

The Affair

Since, the outlines of the Dreyfus Affair are probably little known to readers, it’s worth covering them briefly. My discussion here, and throughout the essay, is mostly based on Maurice Samuels new excellent biography/history, Alfred Dreyfus: The Man At the Center of the Affair, part of the Jewish Lives series. During the French Revolution, France put into practice its new ideals of liberty and equality by, among other things, making Jewish people full citizens of the republic. After legislation in 1791, Jews were suddenly—for the first time in any European country—able to live where they wished, attend the best schools, and work in every profession. The results were immediate and dramatic. Jews made rapid gains in political and economic life; some became quite wealthy and influential.

Among those wealthy Jews was the Dreyfus family. Alfred Dreyfus, born 1859, grew up, like most French Jews, with a passionate commitment to the French nation and to the principles of equality which had liberated them. Determined to serve his country, Dreyfus attended the French military academy. He excelled and became arguably the first Jewish officer ever on the General Staff. His future seemed bright. And then, it all fell apart. In 1894, the French army discovered that there was a traitor on the General Staff who had been passing top secret information to the Germans. Dreyfus was accused of treason. The evidence against him was weak to nonexistent; his handwriting was said to match that on the recovered documents, even though it obviously did not. Nonetheless, he was arrested, tried in a sham military trial, and sentenced to life imprisonment. He was sent to the horrific penal colony on Devil’s Island in French Guiana. He endured tortures almost certainly intended to kill him. His wife, contrary to law, was not allowed to accompany him.   Dreyfus was singled out because he was Jewish. The generals, once they had begun down the path of antisemitism, decided they could not turn back without undermining respect for the military. They forged more evidence, and stonewalled investigations as long as possible.

The Affair polarized sentiment in France, both on Dreyfus and on the place of Jews in French society. Liberal intellectuals like Émile Zola who believed in the Republic and a forward-looking, cosmopolitan, free and equal France sided with Dreyfus and demanded a new trial. The Catholic Church, the military, antisemites, and proto-Vichyites insisted that Dreyfus was guilty and should be punished—or, really, insisted that as a Jew he should be punished whether he was guilty or not. The hatred of Jews erupted into antisemitic riots throughout the country; Jews were beaten, their homes burned, their businesses destroyed. Several Jewish people were killed in Algiers, where there were violence against Jews occurred almost daily in 1898.   Dreyfus was brought back for a new trial in 1899; he was convicted again despite overwhelming evidence in his favor, and eventually exonerated completely in 1906. He was restored to the rank of Major, and served with distinction in World War I. He died in 1935. Jewish people in France still leave stones on his grave.

[...] It wasn’t just Dreyfus and Jewish people who fought for Dreyfus though. The Affair energized every corner of the left, calling them almost uniformly to their best selves. Zola, for example, believed in a number of antisemitic stereotypes at the beginning of the Affair; his first article on the case argued that Jewish people had an innate talent for making money. From that inauspicious beginning he quickly became one of the most passionate gentile opponents of antisemitism in history; his famous 1898 pamphlet J’accuse was a devastating denunciation of the military coverup intended to force a number of generals to sue for libel. They did, and Zola was forced to flee the country—but not before opening the case again and ensuring Dreyfus’ retrial.

The political left in France was also, initially, wary of standing with Dreyfus because of antisemitism. For many socialists, Jewish people symbolized the banking industry and the upper class. Dreyfus, a wealthy Jew serving in the military, seemed the wrong man to rally working class parties. But eventually Socialist leader Jean Jaurès, and others in his party, recognized that Dreyfus had become the man, and the issue, on which Catholic monarchist and capitalist forces had decided to fight for France’s soul. In 1898 Jaurès gave a speech in which he denounced antisemitism as a threat to France; shortly thereafter he published a book defending Dreyfus and presenting the Affair as a matter of socialist solidarity. Some on the left refused to join Jaurès, and the Socialists split. But as Samuels’ biography of Dreyfus notes, “Jaurès helped ensure that a large part of the political left in France would align itself with republican values and against antisemitism for decades to come.”

Noah Berlatsky wrote in his Everything Is Horrible Substack about how the Dreyfus Affair served as a victory against fascism and antisemitism, and how it gave the left a tool to fight back against oppression.

[postcard-from-the-past]

Alfred Dreyfus on a German vintage postcard

[thequietabsolute]

so i’ve just finished reading the ‘Oppenheimer trial’ section of the biography, which more or less takes up two-fifths of the book and (*… a scandalised, incredulous sigh), what you’re assailed with is a sort of endless series of increasingly rank, unlawful, calumnious, – i want to stress this also: above all fucking embarrassing – and indefatigably unscrupulous acts of towering corruption that by the time it’s all over the only thing I’m able to compare it to is the various repellent enormities you defeatedly read about in any half reputable history of the Soviet Union

it seems to me at least that Clio, the muse of history, loves her a bit of irony, eh?

[jloisse]

« L’intervention d’un romancier, même fameux, dans une question de justice militaire m’a paru aussi déplacée que le serait, dans la question des origines du romantisme, l’intervention d’un colonel de gendarmerie. »

Ferdinand Brunetière (1848-1906), 

Après le procès (1898)

[divulgatoriseriali]

Tour de france: la nascita di un mito

Il Tour de France, meglio definito anche come “Grande Boucle“: la più grande manifestazione sportiva del panorama ciclistico internazionale, si svolge ogni anno lungo le strade di Francia. Nasce nel 1903 da un’idea di Henri Desgrange, nel corso degli anni è diventato l’evento di spicco del calendario professionistico UCI Word Tour. Continue reading Tour de france: la nascita di un mito

[audiemurphy1945]

Ben Shahn, "The Dreyfus Affair", 1930

[whydotheheathenrage]

Alfred Dreyfus in his room on Devil's Island in 1898,stereoscopy sold by F. Hamel, Altona-Hamburg...; collection Fritz Lachmund

[spiderliliez]

Baela snaps with a clever reply! BAELA VS. THE GEEZERS OF THE BLACK COUNCIL

[+] BAELA TARGARYEN [GIF Collection] ✨ [+] RHAENYS TARGARYEN [GIF Collection] ✨ [+] ..more on “House of the Dragon” 🔥

[eretzyisrael]

by Brendan O'Neill

Now, not even Israel’s most fervent defenders would describe it as ‘spotless’. Like every state, it makes mistakes, it does wrong. But the showtrial of the Jewish State eerily echoes the showtrial of the Jew Dreyfus. Again we see the deployment of ‘lurid imagination’, where every single thing Israel does is pored over and judged nefarious. Again we see men – or in this case, nations – that are ‘lost in debts and crime’ projecting their own sense of guilt on to a Jewish scapegoat. And again we see not one nation this time, but many nations seeking to distract attention from their own inner turmoil through the creation of a spectacle of accusation – only now it’s not a Jew in the dock; it’s the entire Jewish nation.

We have heard quite enough of your lurid accusations against Israel. Now it’s time you heard ours against you. I accuse South Africa of joining the holy war against Israel in order to cynically curry favour with the woke elites of the West. In order to try to repair its global image as a just, radical nation despite its cataclysmic failing of its own population who still await the enrichment and equality they were promised following the fall of Apartheid 30 years ago. I accuse Iran of backing the legal crusade against Israel as a furtherance of its violent anti-Semitism. As yet another opportunity to defame and isolate the Jewish State in order that the Jews there might feel compelled to leave.

I accuse Turkey of backing the showtrial in order to disguise its own past genocidal crimes. In order to pool its genocidal guilt, and project it on to others, in particular the supposedly evil ‘Zionist entity’. I accuse Turkey of spying in these kangaroo proceedings an opportunity to rearrange power relations in the Middle East to its own tyrannical advantage. To strengthen the Turkey-Iran alliance on the back of what they hope will be the international court’s reprimand of the Jewish State. I accuse Turkey of sacrificing the safety of Jews in Israel at the altar of its own demented regional ambitions.

And I accuse the Western left of being the running dogs of all this global Israelophobia. Of forfeiting their right to be treated as serious moral actors by aligning with the demagogues, Islamists and outright racists who have dragged the world’s only Jewish nation to court on the most trumped-up charge imaginable. Of flagrantly abandoning their supposed commitment to anti-racism by whitewashing Hamas’s orgy of racist violence that gave rise to the current war. And of emboldening the fascists of Hamas by promoting the libel that says Israel is a genocidal state. After all, if Israel is guilty of the worst crime known to man, why should Hamas not attack it again, and again, and again, until the Nazi-like threat it poses to the Palestinian people has been eradicated? I accuse you of giving moral succour to fascists.israe

[manessha545]

Alfred Dreyfus

A French artillery officer of Jewish ancestry from Alsace

Alfred Dreyfus was a French artillery officer of Jewish ancestry from Alsace whose trial and conviction in 1894 on charges of treason became one of the most polarizing political dramas in modern French history. The incident has gone down in history as the Dreyfus affair, the reverberations from which were felt throughout Europe. It ultimately ended with Dreyfus' complete exoneration.

Born: October 9, 1859, Mulhouse

Died: July 12, 1935, Paris

Children: Pierre Dreyfus, Jeanne Dreyfus

Spouse: Lucie Dreyfus (m. 1891–1935)

Place of burial: Montparnasse Cemetery, Paris

Parents: Raphael Dreyfus, Jeannette Dreyfus

Dreyfus affair

Dreyfus affair, political crisis, beginning in 1894 and continuing through 1906, in France during the Third Republic. The controversy centred on the question of the guilt or innocence of army captain Alfred Dreyfus, who had been convicted of treason for allegedly selling military secrets to the Germans in December 1894. At first the public supported the conviction; it was willing to believe in the guilt of Dreyfus, who was Jewish. Much of the early publicity surrounding the case came from anti-Semitic groups (especially the newspaper La Libre Parole, edited by Édouard Drumont), to whom Dreyfus symbolized the supposed disloyalty of French Jews.

Zola, Émile: Newspaper depiction of Émile Zola in court during his trial for defamation of the French military, 1898.

The effort to reverse the sentence was at first limited to members of the Dreyfus family, but, as evidence pointing to the guilt of another French officer, Ferdinand Walsin-Esterhazy, came to light from 1896, the pro-Dreyfus side slowly gained adherents (among them journalists Joseph Reinach and Georges Clemenceau—the future World War I premier—and a senator, Auguste Scheurer-Kestner). The accusations against Esterhazy resulted in a court-martial that acquitted him of treason (January 1898). To protest against the verdict, the novelist Émile Zola wrote a letter titled “J’accuse,” published in Clemenceau’s newspaper L’Aurore. In it he attacked the army for covering up its mistaken conviction of Dreyfus, an action for which Zola was found guilty of libel.

The second court-martial of Alfred Dreyfus, illustration from Vanity Fair, Nov. 23, 1899.

By the time of the Zola letter, the Dreyfus case had attracted widespread public attention and had split France into two opposing camps. The anti-Dreyfusards (those against reopening the case) viewed the controversy as an attempt by the nation’s enemies to discredit the army and weaken France. The Dreyfusards (those seeking exoneration of Captain Dreyfus) saw the issue as the principle of the freedom of the individual subordinated to that of national security. They wanted to republicanize the army and put it under parliamentary control.

Front page of the newspaper L'Aurore, January 13, 1898, with the open letter “J'accuse” written by Émile Zola about the Dreyfus affair....(more) -From L'Aurore, January 13, 1898

From 1898 to 1899 the Dreyfusard cause gained in strength. In August 1898 an important document implicating Dreyfus was found to be a forgery. After Maj. Hubert-Joseph Henry of the intelligence section confessed to fabricating the document in order to strengthen the army’s position, revision was made almost certain. At the same time, the affair was becoming a question of vital concern to politicians. The republican parties in the Chamber of Deputies recognized that the increasingly vocal nationalist right posed a threat to the parliamentary regime. Led by the Radicals, a left-wing coalition was formed. In response to continuing disorders and demonstrations, a cabinet headed by the Radical René Waldeck-Rousseau was set up in June 1899 with the express purpose of defending the republic and with the hope of settling the judicial side of the Dreyfus case as soon as possible. When a new court-martial, held at Rennes, found Dreyfus guilty in September 1899, the president of the republic, in order to resolve the issue, pardoned him. In July 1906 a civilian court of appeals (the Cour d’Appel) set aside the judgment of the Rennes court and rehabilitated Dreyfus. The army, however, did not publicly declare his innocence until 1995.

Anti-Semitic caricature: Caricature from the anti-Semitic Viennese magazine Kikeriki. Its caption reads: “In the Dreyfus Affair, the more that is exposed, the more Judah is embarrassed.”...(more) © United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

With the Dreyfusards in the ascendant, the affair marked the start of a new phase in the history of the Third Republic, a phase in which a series of Radical-led governments pursued an anticlerical policy that culminated in the formal separation of church and state (1905). By intensifying antagonisms between right and left and by forcing individuals to choose sides, the case made a lasting impact on the consciousness of the French nation.

Félix Faure | French Republic, Politics, Legacy | Britannica

In 1894, this made the French Army's counter-intelligence section, led by Lieutenant Colonel Jean Sandherr, aware that information regarding new artillery parts was being passed to Maximilian von Schwartzkoppen, the German military attache in Paris, by a highly placed spy most likely on the General Staff. Suspicion quickly fell upon Dreyfus, who was arrested for treason on 15 October 1894.

Alfred Dreyfus in his room on Devil's Island in 1898, stereoscopy sold by F. Hamel, Altona-Hamburg…; collection Fritz Lachmund

On 5 January 1895, Dreyfus was summarily convicted in a secret court martial, publicly stripped of his army rank, and sentenced to life imprisonment on Devil's Island in French Guiana. Following French military custom of the time, Dreyfus was formally degraded (cashiered) by having the rank insignia, buttons and braid cut from his uniform and his sword broken, all in the courtyard of the École Militaire before silent ranks of soldiers, while a large crowd of onlookers shouted abuse from behind railings. Dreyfus cried out: "I swear that I am innocent. I remain worthy of serving in the Army. Long live France! Long live the Army!...Continue

The affair ultimately ended with Dreyfus' complete exoneration.

Dreyfus died in Paris aged 75, on 12 July 1935, exactly 29 years after his exoneration.

Alfred Dreyfus - Wikipedia

[postcard-from-the-past]

Ferdinand Walsin Esterhazy, spy for the German Empire, actual perpetrator of the act of treason of which Captain Alfred Dreyfus was wrongfully accused in 1894

French vintage postcard

[acornmaybe]

learning french to to translate wikipedia .i'm realLy Contributing Contributing To Society Here

[qsycomplainsalot]

Recently the French news cycle has been dominated by us patting ourselves on the back from refusing a racist law project from some dickhead in parliament, and a frankly shameful debacle where a teacher took their students to the Louvre and took them without warning to see a painting featuring naked people, with the students being eleven to twelve years old in that context. I invite you to read about it yourself although you should keep in mind that a lot of sources show a very strong bias in their language describing the event.

What we see with that whole nonsense is that 130y after Alfred Dreyfus' trial, we still have the proceedings over controversial facts and statements be ruled over by some clique with obvious conflicts of interest passing judgement by telling us that no everything's fine we swear, it's the minorities that we need to worry about. A teacher shows artistic nudes to 12yo's with no warning but no no it's their fault you see, and the fault of their religion, this eternal enemy of the Republic (except when it's fairweather catholicism)/s. The students complain that this is part of a pattern of hostility from said teacher, but it's okay because the teachers tell you that it's not. And now the minister of education wants to punish the students. Classy.

It's honestly not hard to see a pattern of abuse towards these kids and we don't need to have this teacher personally involved in it either, because if even a single student in this class was Muslim, or Jewish, or literally any other religion than Christian, there are laws that should be unconstitutional in nature that already bars them from even harmless outward displays of their religion, because of a fundamentally moronic, stunted understanding of what secularism and the separation of church and state was about. It was supposed to stop discrimination, but instead it hits on the head any and everything that might stick out to a white Christian point of view with absolutely no self-reflection on how hypocritical it is. France has had a deeply religious culture for as long as it existed, our national myth STARTS with our people's conversion to Christianity, but because it is our culture and we're used to it we do not see it, we do not question it, and any attempt to point it out is an attack on the values of the Republic, you filthy non-assimilated foreigners. Ignore over half of our holidays being literal Christian holy days, all of our stores legally having to close on sundays and wearing cross pendants in school literally never being prosecuted, we're so fucking secular it's beautiful.

Mind you this is borderline irrelevant in this context though, because a teacher decided to shoulder the responsibility to show nudity to children, not all of whom were Muslims and they were obviously made uncomfortable by the experience. There's probably an age at which one can expect students to look at tits in a painting and be able to contextualize them with their art history lesson, I'm going to be honest though it's not gonna be twelve years old. Reframed without the racist "their obscurantist beliefs can't handle our beautiful art of chubby ladies in what I can only assume are poses an Italian man four hundred years ago thought were sexy", it's not an attempt against the sanctity of the republic not to show tits to children without warning them and their parents. But apparently some fucking dullard did a dumb, and rather than address it or any of its systemic issue the French education system is circling the wagon and shitting on its students twice as hard.

“At French schools, we do not challenge authority, we respect it! At French schools, we do not contest secularism, we respect it! ! At French school, we don't look away from a painting, we don't cover our ears in music class, we don't wear religious dress, in short, in French schools we do not negotiate the authority of the teacher nor the authority of our rules and our values!”.

--Gabriel Attal, French minister of education/Macron simp, showing how becoming minister at age 34 might be a bad idea and an indictment to the institution you claim to represent by ignoring the past some two hundred and forty years of French history.

"Shut up and do as we say, after all the French system as an impeccable record of mediocrity so clearly we're doing everything to merit your obedience !!"

I cannot stress this enough, kids this age are NOT COMFORTABLE WITH NUDITY AND SEXUAL THEMES, it is not a purely religious thing and not all kids who complained were Muslim. The school and media are brushing over that because it doesn't fit their racist framing job, because it would not be convenient for them to report the news accurately because it would expose how the education system in France is rotten from top to bottom, from underpaid teachers who stopped giving a shit all the way to a political appointee minister who couldn't pour water out of a boot if the instructions were written on the heel.

[oldgayjew]

If you want to see how History is repeating itself read about the Alfred Dreyfus Affair of 1894 ...

[mariacallous]

After a period of relative quiescence, everyone has started talking about fascism again. This is, in part, due to the threat of a second term for Donald Trump, which has reactivated a highly polemical “fascism debate” in the United States. But there are plenty of other actual or quasi-fascists elsewhere. The Italian prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, is the leader of a genuine neo-fascist party. In Latin America, Argentina’s Javier Milei has picked up where Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro left off. And, in India, Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party was reelected in June, albeit with a much-reduced majority.

By contrast, much less has been said about anti-fascism. Most commentators and journalists—and even many academics—seem to have accepted that anti-fascism belongs to the 20th century. Which is a little strange. If fascism is real, why not its opposite? And what happened to all of those historical memories of fighting fascism, above all in Europe, but also further afield?

Fortunately, we still have France, the only country that continues to talk about anti-fascism in a consistent and meaningful way across the political spectrum—and one of the few places where this talk translates into a hard electoral reality.

The explanation for this anomaly lies in the concept of the so-called front républicain (republican front). This refers to any coalition or alliance that is designed to keep the far-right from power.

In the late 1880s and 1890s, the front républicain included those who were opposed to the rise of Boulangism, a militarist far-right movement, and those who defended the cause of Alfred Dreyfus, whose false conviction was one of the great republican causes at the time. The clash between an insurgent far-right and the massed republican forces of the moderate right, the center, and the left was subsequently repeated time and again.

There were echoes of the front républicain in the 1936 Popular Front, although this was in a more obviously left-wing key. The same logic was invoked in the 1950s, at the time of Poujadism, and again in the 1980s, when Jean-Marie Le Pen’s Front National began to make its first electoral breakthroughs.

By this time, the front républicain had taken on a clearly electoral dimension. The aim was to ensure that the best-placed candidates from “republican” parties would win in the second-round of an election. This involved strategic désistements (withdrawals) by weaker “republican” candidates, followed by tactical voting.

The most famous recent iteration of the front républicain is usually also considered to be its last hurrah. In 2002, Jean-Marie Le Pen squeezed past the socialist candidate, Lionel Jospin, in the first round of the presidential election. This was the first time that any far-right candidate had come so close to power, and it was a profound shock.

In response, the entire political class called on the French to vote for the center-right candidate, Jacques Chirac, in the second round. It worked spectacularly: Chirac was elected with more than 82 percent of the vote on a turnout of almost 80 percent. Left-wing voters massively supported a right-wing candidate in order to save the French Republic.

But, as we now know, Jean-Marie Le Pen’s success was only the beginning. Since then, his daughter Marine Le Pen has climbed ever higher in the polls. She qualified for the second round of the presidential elections in 2017 and 2022, when she received 41 percent of the vote. Le Pen’s party, too, has gone from strength to strength. Now rebaptized as the Rassemblement National, it has gradually developed its local and regional presence—and, in 2022, it made a major breakthrough when it won 89 seats in the National Assembly.

For most analysts, the success of Marine Le Pen and the Rassemblement National was easily explained by the atrophy of the front républicain. After 2002, fewer and fewer left-wing voters felt inclined to block the far-right, and a significant minority of right-wing voters embraced it. With each new election, the remnants of a century-old French anti-fascist tradition seemed to fall away. Indeed, many of the most pessimistic result forecasts of the 2024 elections were based on the assumption that it was essentially dead.

Imagine the surprise, then, when the results of the second round were announced on Sunday night. Despite increasing its seats and vote share, the far-right flopped compared to the polls. It was soon clear that voters had done everything they could to stop the Rassemblement National from winning a majority.

All of a sudden, the front républicain was back, and the phrase was plastered across the French mainstream media. Commentators and pollsters scrambled to explain themselves. For those with long memories, it felt as if the spirit of 2002 had been resurrected from the grave.

The simplest way to explain this remarkable revival of anti-fascism is to invoke something that all historians of modern France will recognize: the fear of disorder and social collapse. Modern French history is littered with regime changes, protests, revolutions, and civil wars. The constitutional settlement of the Fifth Republic, born in 1958 during the Algerian War, was specifically designed to ensure stability, and it survived the momentous protests of 1968 and the economic crisis of deindustrialization unscathed.

Still today, voters are scared of the consequences of bringing a far-right party to national power. They fear that a victory for Marine Le Pen or her prime-minister-in-waiting, Jordan Bardella, would unleash violence and instability across the country. On the three occasions when they have realistically faced this prospect—2017, 2022 and 2024—they have pulled back. Each time, they have invoked the front républicain as a defense mechanism.

But there was more to the 2024 elections than simply a kneejerk reaction to the threat of disorder. For the first time since the early 2000s, anti-fascism was imbued with a positive quality. People invested hope in the left-wing alliance, known as the Nouveau Front Populaire. They saw anti-fascism as the basis on which to build a fairer society, with more public spending, a higher minimum wage, a wealth tax, and a reversal of Macron’s pension reforms.

This process was especially striking amongst young people, some of whom were not even born in 2002. Theirs is not the same anti-fascism as those aged 50 or older, who remember the rise of Jean-Marie Le Pen and the Front National. Young activists still talk about “fascism” and “racism,” just like the elders from whom they have learnt their history, but they are doing more than replaying the political battles of the past. They know that they are only one front in a global anti-fascist universe that stretches from the Trump trials to the smooth authoritarianism of Hungary’s Viktor Orbán.

The campaigning of young anti-fascists has been made all the more intense by the fact that the Rassemblement National has succeeded in mobilizing a significant proportion of young people. The struggle to contain the far-right in France is not an intergenerational clash between youthful liberals and reactionary boomers. If anything, old people are the least likely to vote for Marine Le Pen and her acolytes. In fact, young people are fighting for the political soul of their own generation.

The most obvious symbol of this fight is Bardella himself. He is only 28 years old, and his meteoric rise has not passed unnoticed. Some voters in the 2024 elections even asked where the “Bardella” voting slip was when they arrived at the polling booth. They wanted to vote for him, even though he was not on the ballot.

Yet his youthful persona—and his facility with Tiktok—drew a committed response. During and after the elections, French social media was filled with a cascade of anti-fascist memes and counter-videos. Young people, often people of color, lampooned Bardella’s campaign tactics and press conferences. They pilloried his party and the—sometimes very inexperienced—candidates who ran for election, calling them out for their racism, homophobia, bigotry, or plain stupidity.

It helps that some of the emerging figures on the French left are also young. Clémence Guetté, of La France Insoumise, is 33. Marine Tondelier, the current leader of the main Greens party, is 37. And Raphaël Glucksmann, who led the center-left to second place in the 2024 European elections, is 44. They are all politicians who have cut their teeth in a political landscape where the far-right is a fixture, not an anomaly.

It is impossible to say whether this youthful French anti-fascism has a future. In his “letter to the French” after the elections, Macron referred to the front républicain, but it is not clear that he or his allies intend to adhere to it. In particular, the proposal to form a governing coalition without some or all of the left—which several members of Macron’s party have endorsed—would run counter to the spirit of the election results. Meanwhile, the RN is waiting patiently for its next opportunity to show off its electoral strength.

Nevertheless, the recent electoral cycle in France is a reminder that today’s anti-fascism is no longer beholden to the 1930s or 1990s. It has a life of its own—and a whole new generation of foot soldiers ready to go to war against their oldest enemy.