Édouard Adolphe Drumont (3 May 1844 – 5 February 1917) was a French

antisemitic Antisemitism (also spelled anti-semitism or anti-Semitism) is hostility to, prejudice towards, or discrimination against Jews. A person who holds such positions is called an antisemite. Antisemitism is considered to be a form of racism. Ant ...

journalist, author and politician. He initiated the Antisemitic League of France in 1889, and was the founder and editor of the newspaper ''

La Libre Parole ''La Libre Parole'' or ''La Libre Parole illustrée'' (French; ''Free Speech'') was a French antisemitic political newspaper founded in 1892 by journalist and polemicist Édouard Drumont. History Claiming to adhere to theses close to social ...

''. After spending years of research, he synthesised three major types of antisemitism. The first type was traditional Catholic attitudes toward the alien " Christ killers" augmented by vehement antipathy toward the

French Revolution The French Revolution ( ) was a period of radical political and societal change in France that began with the Estates General of 1789 and ended with the formation of the French Consulate in November 1799. Many of its ideas are conside ...

. The second type was hostility toward capitalism. The third type was so-called

scientific racism Scientific racism, sometimes termed biological racism, is the pseudoscience, pseudoscientific belief that empirical evidence exists to support or justify racism (racial discrimination), racial inferiority, or racial superiority.. "Few tragedies ...

, based on the argument that races have fixed characteristics, and asserting that Jews have negative characteristics. Drumont's biographer, Grégoire Kauffmann, places Drumont within the

counter-revolutionary A counter-revolutionary or an anti-revolutionary is anyone who opposes or resists a revolution, particularly one who acts after a revolution in order to try to overturn it or reverse its course, in full or in part. The adjective "counter-revolu ...

tradition of Louis Veuillot, Antoine Blanc de Saint-Bonnet, and anti-modern Catholicism. Socialist leader

Jean Jaurès Auguste Marie Joseph Jean Léon Jaurès (3 September 185931 July 1914), commonly referred to as Jean Jaurès (; oc, Joan Jaurés ), was a French Socialist leader. Initially a Moderate Republican, he later became one of the first social dem ...

stated that "all the ideas and arguments of Drumont were taken from certain clerical opponents of the

Early life

Drumont was born in Paris in 1844 to a family of

porcelain Porcelain () is a ceramic material made by heating substances, generally including materials such as kaolinite, in a kiln to temperatures between . The strength and translucence of porcelain, relative to other types of pottery, arises main ...

-painters from

Lille Lille ( , ; nl, Rijsel ; pcd, Lile; vls, Rysel) is a city in the northern part of France, in French Flanders. On the river Deûle, near France's border with Belgium, it is the capital of the Hauts-de-France region, the prefecture of the No ...

. He lost his father at the age of seventeen, and had to care for himself and earn his own livelihood from then onwards.Deutsch, Gotthard, and A.M. Friedenberg.
DRUMONT, EDOUARD ADOLPHE
JewishEncyclopedia.com (accessed 9 November 2007).

Public career

He first worked in government service, and later became a contributor to the press and was the author of a number of works, of which '' Mon vieux Paris'' (1879) was awarded by the

French Academy French (french: français(e), link=no) may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to France ** French language, which originated in France, and its various dialects and accents ** French people, a nation and ethnic group identified with France ...

. He also worked for Louis Veuillot's ''L'Univers''. Drumont's 1886 book, '' La France juive'' (''Jewish France''), attacked the role of Jews in France and argued for their exclusion from society. In 1892, Drumont initiated the newspaper the ''

'' which became known for intense

antisemitism Antisemitism (also spelled anti-semitism or anti-Semitism) is hostility to, prejudice towards, or discrimination against Jews. A person who holds such positions is called an antisemite. Antisemitism is considered to be a form of racism. Antis ...

Gaston Méry Gaston Méry (20 April 1866 – 15 July 1909) was a French author, translator and journalist. He was violently antisemitic and was also hostile to the people of the south of France, whom he saw as racially impure and inferior Latin peoples compar ...

was soon made editor in chief due to his skill in exploiting scandalous affairs and his daring invective. The newspaper took "France for the French" as its motto. The newspaper was sceptical of Léo Taxil's anti-Catholic '' Diana Vaughan'' hoax before Taxil admitted it in 1897. For the French legislative election of May 1898, the antisemitic activist

Max Régis Max Régis (8 June 1873 – 1950) was a French journalist and politician who promoted anti-semitism in French Algeria during the late 1890s. He was elected mayor of Algiers in 1898 but was soon dismissed from office. He campaigned unsuccessfully f ...

endorsed Drumont before this election from Algiers. On 8 May 1898, Édouard Drumont was elected triumphantly with 11,557 votes against 2,328 and 1,741 for his opponents. Of six Algerian national deputies, four were elected on the platform of Regis's Anti-Jewish League. Drumont represented

Algiers Algiers ( ; ar, الجزائر, al-Jazāʾir; ber, Dzayer, script=Latn; french: Alger, ) is the capital and largest city of Algeria. The city's population at the 2008 Census was 2,988,145Census 14 April 2008: Office National des Statistiques d ...

in the

Chamber of Deputies The chamber of deputies is the lower house in many bicameral legislatures and the sole house in some unicameral legislatures. Description Historically, French Chamber of Deputies was the lower house of the French Parliament during the Bourbon R ...

from 1898 to 1902. He was sued for accusing a parliamentary deputy of having accepted a bribe from the wealthy Jewish banker Édouard Alphonse de Rothschild to pass a piece of legislation the banker wanted. Drumont had many devotees. He exploited the Panama Company scandal Arendt, Hannah. The Origins of Totalitarianism. Harvest Books, 1973; , pp. 95-99. and reached the maximum of his notoriety during the

Dreyfus Affair The Dreyfus affair (french: affaire Dreyfus, ) was a political scandal that divided the French Third Republic from 1894 until its resolution in 1906. "L'Affaire", as it is known in French, has come to symbolise modern injustice in the Francop ...

, in which he was the most strident of

Alfred Dreyfus Alfred Dreyfus ( , also , ; 9 October 1859 – 12 July 1935) was a French artillery officer of Jewish ancestry whose trial and conviction in 1894 on charges of treason became one of the most polarizing political dramas in modern French history. ...

' accusers. For his anti-Panama articles, Drumont was condemned to three months' imprisonment. In 1893, he was an unsuccessful candidate for the representation of

Amiens Amiens (English: or ; ; pcd, Anmien, or ) is a city and commune in northern France, located north of Paris and south-west of Lille. It is the capital of the Somme department in the region of Hauts-de-France. In 2021, the population of ...

; the next year he retired to

Brussels Brussels (french: Bruxelles or ; nl, Brussel ), officially the Brussels-Capital Region (All text and all but one graphic show the English name as Brussels-Capital Region.) (french: link=no, Région de Bruxelles-Capitale; nl, link=no, Bruss ...

. The Dreyfus affair helped him to regain popularity, and in 1898, he returned to France and was elected deputy for the first division of Algiers, but was defeated as a candidate for re-election in April–May 1902.

Works

* ''Mon vieux Paris'' (1878) * ''Les Fêtes nationales à Paris'' (1878) * ''Le Dernier des Trémolin'' (1879) * ''Papiers inédits du Duc de Saint-Simon'' (1880) * ''La Mort de Louis XIV'' (1880) * ''La France juive'' ( Jewish France, 1886) * ''La France Juive devant l'opinion'' (1886) * ''La Fin d'un monde : Étude psychologique et sociale'' (1889) * ''La Dernière Bataille'' (1890) * ''Le Testament d'un antisémite'' (1891) * ''Le Secret de Fourmies'' (1892) * ''De l'or, de la boue, du sang : Du Panama à l'anarchie'' (1896) * ''Mon vieux Paris. Deuxième série'' (1897) * ''La Tyrannie maçonnique'' (1899) * ''Les Juifs contre la France'' (1899) * ''Les Tréteaux du succès. Figures de bronze ou statues de neige'' (1900) * ''Les Tréteaux du succès. Les héros et les pitres'' (1900) * ''Le Peuple juif'' (1900) * ''Vieux portraits, vieux cadres'' (1903) * ''Sur le chemin de la vie'' (1914)

References

Sources

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External links

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Drumont, Edouard 1844 births 1917 deaths Writers from Paris Antisemitism in France Burials at Père Lachaise Cemetery French political writers French journalists French male non-fiction writers Late modern Christian antisemitism Antidreyfusards Roman Catholic conspiracy theorists Proto-fascists Far-right politics in France French duellists French conspiracy theorists