Sacred Bonds of Solidarity The Rise of Jewish Internationalism in Nineteenth-Century France Lisa Moses Leff STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS STANFORD, CALIFORNIA 2006200 Six The Myth of Jewish Power By the time the Third Republic was firmly established in the 1870s, Jew- ish international solidarity had become a central feature of French Jewish life. This rhetoric emerged initially as part of F strategy to secure their own equality by making Jewish. to the liberal agenda and later, the repul ; With this goal in mind, the creators of J ity never sought to create an exclusive form of J tionalism. On the contrary, they believed Jewish rights to be most se- ‘eties under secular institutions of governance, social, and economic integration of Jews in the places where they lived, including, of course, France. Like the other French republicans whose political rhetoric they shared, they worked at home and abroad for the practical realization of the French revolutionary ideals they deemed sacred, including most im- portantly, the protection of religious freedoms and the equal treat- ment of all citizens before the law. This agenda, in their minds, ne- cessarily entailed the destruction of all separate Jewish communal institutions burdened with the political functions of taxation, repre- sentation, and governance, In this sense, Jewish international solidar- ity was as much an expression of its proponents” dedication to repub- licanism, anticlericalism, and integration to the surrounding society as it was an expression of their strong sense of Jewish identity and their feeling of connectedness to Jews in the rest of the world. Yet in the 18808, Jewish international solidarity, its architects, the institutions established in its name and their leaders were iedina EEE ee as ‘The Myth of Jewish Power 201 nents. In a new political movement the very public expressions of Jewish interna- ry we have examined here served as evidence that French Jews saw themselves as a “tribe apart” in spite of their long-standing political rights and their apparent social assimilation, and worse, that they had organized a powerful conspiracy, working with Protestants and Freemasons through the corrupt republic to bring economic and ‘moral ruin to France and all gentiles. These charges became central in the construction of the new right-wing political movement that dis- tinguished itself from traditional Jew-hatred by calling itself “anti- semitic:” The movemnent was inspired by rhetoric developed in the German antisemitic parties founded in the late 1870s, and took recent events in Romania and Algeria as key eviclence. Yet while these foreign influences were certainly imporvant, French antisemitism was largely a homegrown affair, Edouard Dramont’s twelve-hundred-page trea- tise La France juve, first p layed an especially claims about the Jewish religion (the charges of blood libel and deicide were included, as were attacks on Jewish mystical texts and the Talmud), as well as traditional populist claims about Jews’ nefarious economic beha\ articulated in a way that resonated al position conceivable only in the context of the es over the role of the Church in state affairs. Pulling from some of the more vicious Catholic political writing of the 1860s and 18708 against the ical republican movement and infusing it ith traditional anti-Jewish prejudice, Drumont identified the revolu- tion, the anticletical tradition, and accordingly, the Third Republic as a modern manifestation of the etemal Jewish plot to destroy the Church and Christendom, beginning with France, with the help of the Protestants and the Freemasons. Critical to the argument of La France juive was an extensive ter, entitled “Crémieux and the Alliance Israélite Universelle? w202 Chapter 6 pointed an accusatory finger at Jewish international solidarity itself Here, Drumont outlined the supposed plot of Crémieux, the Jewish Prince, to confiscate the French Revolution for the profit (of Jewry, to give a strictly Jewish character to an idealist movement pes for a better world, At the end of his life, [Crémicux] prepared and proclaimed loudly the arrival of the messianic age, the long-awaited era in which all the nations of the world would be sub- ‘ordinate to Isracl, in which all men would work for the race blessed by Jehovah. In laying out the details of this supposed plot for world domina Draniont mentioned Crémicun’s legal eases against che maja, his support for secular education, n French Freemasonry, and his mentorship of the republican Léon Gambetta, whom Drumont falsely identified as Jewish and attacked throughout the book. Most im- portantly, Drumont focused at great length on Crémieus’s authorship of the Government of the National Defense’s decree of October 24, to the Jews of Algeria, as well as his work Istaélite Universelle. For Drumont and his followers, solidarity proved that Jews were using the institutions of French government to destroy gentiles (especially Christians and the Catholic Church) for their own material benefit? of La France juive represents an important market in the history of Jewish international solidarity, for with it, the myth of Jewish power was born, As conceived by Drumont and the move- ‘ment that developed under his leadership, this myth has three firnda- mental components: first, the persistence of Jewish separatism; sec- ond, the Jewish quest for world domination; and third, the republic itself (and liberalism more broadly) as a h-century cultural the nd, the myth of Jewish power rruer than trae, a fiction that Freud and Lévi-Strauss. On the one is untrue; and yet on the other hand, setves to organize reality for those who believe explored more Beta peeeeHe ‘The Myth of Jewish Power part ofa sadistic Jewish plot to dominate and destroy—became a force whose impact the history of Jewish international solidarity withour contending with the myth of Jewish power. The appearance of the myth in the 1880s jent awareness and anxiety over how their actions might be cas by their enemies, Solidarity was no longer ¢ mere rhetorical strategy; it was 2 mythic reali resents not only the end of the story we have examined here; it also represents an important analytic obstacle to understanding the con- struction of Jewish international solidarity itself. Because the myth of Jewish power cast solidarity as a Jewish takeover of the reput now have difficulty understanding solidarity for what it w: when we dismiss the myth as false. Far from a mere chimera, so ity was a rhetorical strategy Jewish leaders used to participate anticlerical struggles of the nineteenth century in a way that erased their Jewishness nor represented the persistence of an old ing of separatist Jewish corporatisen. Thus, while leavi thers the task of explaining the rise of antisemitism as a mass political move- ment in the last decades of the nineteenth century, this chaprer exam- snt in France and colonial Algeria cast 28 a conspiracy operating through the marking the end of an important era in the history self-defense. The Emergence of the Myth Antisemiric political parties, leagues, and newspapers emerged first in Algeria and central Europe in the 18708 and in metropolitan France in the mid-1880s. The myth of Jewish power is one key element that dis- tinguishes this organized political antisemitic movement from the more traditional forms of Jew hating it replaced, Historians agree that 203204 Chapter 6 this myth is as distinctive a marker of this new movement as its use of racial terminology, its economic critique of Jews as bankers and in- dustrial capitalists (the socialist August Bebel famously called anti- semitism the “socialism of fools”), and its strong, exclusive national- ist backbone, features from which it cannot fully be separated.* Like these other new elements, the myth transcended the boundaries sepa- rating the Romanian, German, Austrian, Hungarian, Algerian and French antisemitic movements, and would become especially impor tant in Russia, where the Protocol of the Elders of Zion, a forgery meant to substantiate this myth, first surfaced in the early twentieth century, itional prejudice of J ly new element designed to mobilize the Chs- ig that Jews were in the process of taking over ‘The myth that Jews were carrying our their quest for world domi- through the French republic in particular and other instieutions eralism more generally played a particularly important role in ral- ig support for the movement because it served as a link between tra- ional prejudice and contemporary political issues. In France, Alge- tia, and central Europe, the antisemitic parties and newspapers singled cout for special attack the Alliance Israélite Universelle and the 1870 Crémieux decree emancipating the Jews of Algeria, painting them as incontrovertible proof of the progress of the Jewish plot. The identi- fication of liberalism and the French republic as elements of a Jewish conspiracy made for a potent brew, drawing a level of support for this political movement that surprised French Jewish newspaper editors, consistory leaders, and Alliance members. Far from disappearing with the increasing social and political integration of Jews, the hatred lev- led against them appears to have increased, with detractors now at- tacking the very strategics of self-defense that Jewish leaders had only recently developed. By the end of the 1880s, these attacks were ubiq- sin the public area, taking center stage in the new pol ovement again: liberalism and republicanism. ‘The Myth of Jewish Power ings to prove that a conspiracy was in fact underway. The first French writer to take the liberal universalist language of contemporary Jewish international solidarity and depict it as proof of a sinister Jewish con- spiracy was the Catholic legitimist Henri Gougenot des Mousseau, in his Le Juif le judaicme, ot la judaisation des peupleschrétiens, published in 1869. Gougenot presented “proof? by way of directly citing an article in L°Univers Isradlite, that after centuries of persecution, Jews in the nineteenth century had become “a flourishing society with access to the ‘most powerful thrones.” This, he im to meeting their ultimate ambition for wealth and power, The Alliance Israélite Universelle was singled out as a key part of the plan. Gougenot presented much of the Alliance’s own rhetoric, culled from the pages of ies Bulletin, to prove that the organization used dogma from the Free- masons and the occult, and had sought to gain support from gentiles by that may appear innocuous or bet ing stitch of the immense web [réeau Economie power was crucial as well: “Gold is the master of the world” Gougenot wrote. “Gold owns us, and the Jew owns the gold”? Here t00 he supplied evidence of Jewish wealth from proud reports that had appeared in the Jewish press. A final part of the plot involved the recent persecutions of Jews in Romania, about which he also quoted directly from the Jewish press. This, Gougenot claimed, had provided an excuse for Jews in France and Germany to dictate the policy of their own lead- ers and through them, to oppress the innocent people of ‘According to historian Léon Poliakoy, charges of a Jewish-Masonic conspiracy against the entire human species, of the sort that Gougenot leveled against the Alliance in 1869, dated back to French Catholic legit imist writings from the First Empire, in which Jews replaced Protes warges had been made in Bera IE