Abstract
The focus of this essay is on Bernard Lazare as one of the first authors to speak of antisemitism as a movement that, despite the emancipatory laws, was seriously spreading not only in France, but also in other European countries and in North Africa, especially Algeria. The aim of this article is to focus the attention on the role of Lazare as the first Jewish intellectual who was aware of the danger for the Jews, and studied the phenomenon to understand it and contain it. The stress is on the origin and development of the analysis of the issue in young Lazare, to provide a clear indication of how the author himself still needed time to deal with some of the features that antisemitism was assuming, especially outside France.
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Notes
- 1.
Under the pseudonym of Agathon, author of “Les vraies causes de l’antisémitisme”, in Revue encyclopédique, according to Nelly Wilson (1978), would hide Charles Maurras and not Henri Massis, as had been hypothesized. Wilson remembers how Lazare is seen by Agathon as an antisemite and an Israelite fanatic, even using some expressions of the Antisemitisme by Lazare about modern Jews, against Dreyfus. Thus he defines him on Action française (newspaper) 15 September 1908 a «Juif antisémite mourut Zionist». And so, the same Maurras will use the figure of Lazare: «Recueils de jugements invraisemblables mais certains sévères mais justes et gênants, mais incontestables d’un Juif Bernard-Lazare sur le juif de tous les lieux et de tous les temps, insociable, anarchiste, cosmopolite, agent révolutionnaire mais conservateur vis-à-vis de lui-même (Maurras 1907: 177).
- 2.
Lazare reports in a note about Spinoza and atheism: Colerus 1706 one of the most important biographies of the Dutch philosopher written by a contemporary.
References
Colerus, Johannes. 1706. La Vie de B. Spinoza, tirèe des ecrits de ce fameux philosophe. La Haye.
Lazare, Bernard. 1894. Antisemitism: Its History and Causes. https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/jewish/lazare-anti.asp#PREFACE.
Maurras, Charles. 1910. Notre jeunesse. Paris: Gallimard.
Munk, Salomon. 1859. Mélanges de philosophie juive et arabe. Paris: Gallimard.
Peguy, Charles. 1910. Notre jeunesse. Paris: Gallimard.
Renan, Ernst. 1852. Averroès et l’averroisme. Paris: Gallimard.
Wilson, Nelly. 1978. Bernard Lazare: antisemitism and the problem of Jewish identity in late nineteenth century France. Cambridge: University Press.
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Mazzone, S. (2021). Anarchists and Jews: Bernard Lazare’s Analysis of Antisemitism. In: Tarquini, A. (eds) The European Left and the Jewish Question, 1848-1992. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56662-3_5
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