Dreyfus Affair Still Alive in 2026: Here’s Why
French President Emmanuel Macron presided over France's first national commemoration for Alfred Dreyfus, warning that antisemitism remains a threat to the Republic 120 years after the Jewish captain's exoneration.
Speaking at the event, Macron paid tribute to Dreyfus, his defenders, and those who continue fighting antisemitism today, as Causeur reports. The French president declared that Dreyfusism reminds us that antisemitism is the enemy of the Republic, adding that the old demons of antisemitism have never completely vanished from France, with antisemitic acts continuing to strike people based on who they are.
Macron also called on French municipalities to place the names of the Righteous Among the Nations on every location where Jews were hidden or saved during the Second World War. A statue of Alfred Dreyfus was installed as part of the commemoration.
According to Causeur, it took until 2026 for a French president to visit the Court of Cassation to solemnly remind the nation that antisemitism is an enemy of the Republic. The outlet characterizes this statement as stunning—comparable to a head of state having to gather the country to remind them that gravity exists or that the Earth revolves around the Sun.
From Historical Truth to Current Warning
The publication suggests that what Macron was ostensibly saying about 1906 was actually a message about 2026. Why commemorate the rehabilitation of an innocent man with such gravity 120 years after the fact? A confident Republic does not need to restate its foundational truths. When it feels compelled to do so, those truths are evidently wavering.
The Dreyfus Affair was never simply a judicial error, Causeur notes. It was the culmination of years of ideological preparation. Édouard Drumont had spent years establishing in public discourse a simple notion: behind defeats, scandals, economic crises, and political compromises, one should look for the Jew. Through his book La France juive, a publishing phenomenon of its time, and his newspaper La Libre Parole, he transformed an ancient prejudice into a comprehensive worldview.
When Society Chooses Its Narrative Over Facts
As historian Michel Winock demonstrated, antisemitism had become a complete political culture. When Dreyfus was arrested, part of the trial was already decided. The guilty party existed before the evidence. Then, when evidence began demonstrating his innocence, nothing changed.
This is the most troubling lesson from Jean-Denis Bredin‘s definitive work on the affair, according to Causeur. The great lawyer showed that the difficulty was not discovering the truth but getting it accepted. The facts were progressively established. Picquart had identified Esterhazy as the actual culprit. The forgeries were exposed. Yet part of the Army, the judiciary, the press, and public opinion continued to prefer fiction to reality. When a society has already chosen its narrative, facts become superfluous.
Old Mechanisms in New Clothing
This is why Dreyfus still speaks to the present, Causeur argues. History never repeats itself exactly, but it recycles its mechanisms. The old antisemitism accused Jews of being stateless, cosmopolitan, or traitors to the nation. The new antisemitism reproaches them for exactly the opposite: they now possess a state.
The publication observes that Jews are no longer asked to leave the national community; instead, they are expected to begin by condemning Israel, to distance themselves from it, to demonstrate they belong to the immaculate camp of goodness before hoping to benefit from common rules. The vocabulary has changed but the procedure remains.
There has been progress of a sort. Jews are no longer frontally designated as responsible for all misfortunes; instead, a climate is simply installed where they become the only citizens required to permanently justify their moral legitimacy.
The Manufacturing of Antisemitic Climates
Pierre Birnbaum has shown that antisemitic moments never arise spontaneously, Causeur notes. They are prepared by ideological entrepreneurs who progressively manufacture a figure of collective responsibility. Drumont was one of them.
The outlet emphasizes it would be absurd to claim France is reliving 1898—the country is obviously not there yet. But it would be equally reckless not to see certain mechanisms reappearing.
When part of the radical left maintains permanent confusion between Israel, Zionism, and Jews; when it systematically struggles to name antisemitism coming from its own camp; when it transforms a geopolitical conflict into a moral framework where a single state among all nations concentrates all the faults of the planet—it may not be creating antisemitism, but it is manufacturing the climate in which antisemitism thrives, according to Causeur. And history teaches precisely that climates often precede storms.
A Republic Relearning Old Lessons
The President of the Republic reminded France that Dreyfusism consisted of preferring facts to passions, truth to crowds, and law to mob rule. That such a reminder proved necessary in 2026 suggests the lesson has been imperfectly learned—or deliberately forgotten by those who should know better.
With information from Causeur
