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Rothschild & Cie. La bourgeoisie juive vue par Édouard Drumont

2009; Les Belles Lettres; Volume: Vol. 42; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.3917/aj.421.0051

1965-0531

Grégoire Kauffmann,

French Historical and Cultural Studies

The author of La France juive (1886) and the founder of the newspaper La Libre Parole (1892), Edouard Drumont (1844-1917) strongly contributed to give shape to the stereotype of the upper middle-class "Jew", the cornerstone of his anti-Semitic argument. A Catholic, early influenced by the counterrevolution thought, the polemist creates modern anti-Semitism by associating the Republic and the Jews and the Jews with money. The "infiltration" of the Jewish upper middle-class into the aristocratic world constitutes one of his principal leitmotivs for his argumentation. The "money Jew" is always the one who, according to Drumont, deprives the nobility of its attributes, symbols and bygone glories. Bracing himself on the "Rothschild myth ", he delivers a speech widely circulating in the years 1880-1890. Against the attacks coming from the anti-Semites, numerous Jews of this upper middle-class decide to take up the gauntlet. On the model of the aristocratic codes, they prove particularly haughty concerning honour and despise passiveness, the "silence of contempt" which is the answer of some of their coreligionists.