Brad DeLong's Semi-Daily Journal: A Weblog

Ummm...I think that it is stretching to compare Dreyfuss to Franklin.

Dreyfuss captivated all of Europe, and created the modern Zionist movement.

This will be some lawyers filing some papers.

One thing I never understood about the Dreyfus case; who was this Jock Hughes guy and where did he fit in?

For starters, Dreyfuss was convicted while Franklin has yet to be charged.

Second, the evidence against Dreyfuss was false while the evidence against Franklin has yet to be presented.

Only the Swift Boat Veterans for Israel could advance this story.

Not just Zionism, but a lot of other key Republican philosophies are being hidden
behind the smoking curtain, in favor of
swift bashing and gay baiting.

What about Free Trade, the sine qua non of
Republican life and NeoCon thinking? Is it
because of Seattle, where WTO was dealt its
first fatal blow, or the recent collapse of
Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) talks
in Cancun and Geneva, now being resurrected?

What about China, our joined-at-the-hip US$
trading partner, (human rights violator and central military economy?) Is it because the
trade deficit with China keeps ballooning up?

Is it because China is putting those US$'s
not into US manufactured goods and services,
but Australian real estate, strategic arms,
and hard commodities, driving prices upward?

Is it because the only return on the China
plan is a tidal wave of black plastic wampum
washing over our shores into Wal-Mart stores?
Black plastic because it violates EPA reg's
on its toxic emissions and formulations, and
wampum because it's no more than beads and
trinkets in return for hard-earned US bucks.

Is it because China is bent on centralized
economic planning and development of its
own trade incubation zones, not the fabled
city of gold at the end of Kantor/Gingrich's
rainbow, but instead our American nightmare?

Stories from hell are coming out of China
of their mad-capped investment schemes,
half-fleshed out and twice over-hyped plans
seeking "American venture capital partners,"
calls and tenders for goods and equipment
turned away, paid months later, if at all.

Everything coming in has to be run past
the PRC's Central Committee for approval.
Their country is sealed off against US.
Everything tendered or offered is simply
stolen and used to beat down the next guy,
or simply copied and then made in China.

The story of Free Trade, the main plank
of the Republican Party, is a story of
disaster, a melt down like Iraq and the
failed Bush/Rove Judeo-Christian Crusade.

No wonder they won't mention trade in NYC.

My old man lived and died in marketing
and sales. He told me the most pathetic
guy in the world is the one who believes
in his own product line enough to drag his
entire company (or country) down to sell it.

Evangelical marketing, he used to call it.
Believing God would grant you a profit, if
you just believed in your own sales pitch,
no matter how low the price you finally got.

Remember Peter Pan, when Tinkerbell was dying?
You gotta believe! It's the Republican Way!!!

Yes, indeed the Dreyfus affair has a lot of similarities with the present (think WMD, budget figures, Kerry's medals,...), but the best history of the times like ours is a satire. So I looked up one of my favorite satirical pieces – Penguin Island by Anatole France, the chapter about Dreyfus – Pyrot, who was accused of stealing from the Penguinian Army 80,000 trusses of hay. Sorry for long excerpts, the full text is at http://www.readbookonline.net/title/307/
....
That Pyrot had stolen the eighty thousand trusses of hay nobody hesitated for a moment to believe. No one doubted because the general ignorance in which everybody was concerning the affair did not allow of doubt, for doubt is a thing that demands motives. People do not doubt without reasons in the same way that people believe without reasons. The thing was not doubted because it was repeated everywhere and, with the public, to repeat is to prove. It was not doubted because people wished to believe Pyrot guilty and one believes
what one wishes to believe. Finally, it was not doubted because the faculty of doubt is rare amongst men; very few minds carry in them its germs and these are not developed without cultivation. Doubt is singular, exquisite,
philosophic, immoral, transcendent, monstrous, full of malignity, injurious to persons and to property, contrary to the good order of governments, and to the prosperity of empires, fatal to humanity, destructive of the gods, held in horror by heaven and earth. The mass of the Penguins were ignorant of doubt: it believed in Pyrot's guilt and this conviction immediately became one of its chief national beliefs and an essential truth in its patriotic creed.
Pyrot was tried secretly and condemned.
General Panther immediately went to the Minister of War to tell him the result.
"Luckily," said he, "the judges were certain, for they had no proofs."
.....
It seemed as if Pyrot was destined to remain for ever shut in the cage on which the ravens perched. But all the Penguins being anxious to know and prove that this Jew was guilty, all the proofs brought forward were found not to be
good, while some of them were also contradictory. The officers of the Staff showed zeal but lacked prudence. Whilst Greatauk kept an admirable silence, General Panther made inexhaustible speeches and every morning demonstrated in
the newspapers that the condemned man was guilty. He would have done better, perhaps, if he had said nothing. The guilt was evident and what is evident cannot be demonstrated. So much reasoning disturbed people's minds; their faith, though still alive, became less serene. The more proofs one gives a crowd the more they ask for.
Nevertheless the danger of proving too much would not have been great if there had not been in Penguinia, as there are, indeed, everywhere, minds framed for free inquiry, capable of studying a difficult question, and inclined to
philosophic doubt. They were few; they were not all inclined to speak, and the public was by no means inclined to listen to them. Still, they did not always meet with deaf ears.
......
Forthwith [Colomban] composed a memorandum in which he clearly showed that Pyrot could not have stolen from the Ministry of War the eighty thousand trusses of hay which it had never received, for the reason that Maubec had never delivered them, though he had received the money. Colomban caused this statement to be distributed in the streets of Alca. The people refused to read it and tore it up in anger….
Some of the more enthusiastic among them went and broke the windows of the house in which Colomban had lived in perfect tranquillity during his forty
years of work.
Parliament was roused and asked the Chief of the Government what measures he proposed to take in order to repel the odious attacks made by Colomban upon the honour of the National Arm and the safety of Penguinia. Robin Mielleux
denounced Colomban's impious audacity and proclaimed amid the cheers of the legislators that the man would be summoned before the Courts to answer for his infamous libel.
The Minister of War was called to the tribune ...
In the august silence of the assembly he pronounced these words only:
"I swear that Pyrot is a rascal."
This speech of Greatauk was reported all over Penguinia and satisfied the public conscience.
................................
About this time the Minister of War happening to visit one day his Chief of Staff, saw with surprise that the large room where General Panther worked, which was formerly quite bare, had now along each wall from floor to ceiling
in sets of deep pigeon-holes, triple and quadruple rows of paper bundles of every as form and colour. These sudden and monstrous records had in a few days reached the dimensions of a pile of archives such as it takes centuries to
accumulate.
"What is this?" asked the astonished minister.
"Proofs against Pyrot," answered General Panther with patriotic satisfaction.
"We had not got them when we convicted him, but we have plenty of them now."
The door was open, and Greatauk saw coming up the stair-case a long file of porters who were unloading heavy bales of papers in the hall, and he saw the lift slowly rising heavily loaded with paper packets.
"What are those others?" said he.
"They are fresh proofs against Pyrot that are now reaching us," said Panther.
"I have asked for them in every county of Penguinia, in every Staff Office and in every Court in Europe. I have ordered them in every town in America and in Australia, and in every factory in Africa, and I am expecting bales of them from Bremen and a ship-load from Melbourne." And Panther turned towards the Minister of War the tranquil and radiant look of a hero. However, Greatauk, his eye-glass in his eye, was looking at the formidable pile of papers with
less satisfaction than uneasiness.
"Very good," said he, "very good! but I am afraid that this Pyrot business may lose its beautiful simplicity. It was limpid; like a rock-crystal its value lay in its transparency. You could have searched it in vain with a magnifying-glass for a straw, a bend, a blot, for the least fault. When it left my hands it was as pure as the light. Indeed it was the light. I give you a pearl and you make a mountain out of it. To tell you the truth I am afraid that by wishing to do too well you have done less well. Proofs! of course it
is good to have proofs, but perhaps it is better to have none at all. I have already told you, Panther, there is only one irrefutable proof, the confession of the guilty person (or if the innocent what matter!). The Pyrot affair, as I
arranged it, left no room for criticism; there was no spot where it could be touched. It defied assault. t was invulnerable because it was invisible. Now it gives an enormous handle for discussion. I advise you, Panther, to use your
paper packets with great reserve. I should be particularly grateful if you would be more sparing of your communications to journalists. You speak well, but you say too much. Tell me, Panther, are there any forged documents among
these?"
"There are some adapted ones."
"That is what I meant. There are some adapted ones. So much the better. As proofs, forged documents, in general, are better than genuine ones, first of all because they have been expressly made to suit the needs of the case, to
order and measure, and therefore they are fitting and exact. They are also preferable because they carry the mind into an ideal world and turn it aside from the reality which, alas! in this world is never without some alloy. . . .
Nevertheless, I think I should have preferred, Panther, that we had no proofs
at all."

I've gotta confess. Every time I hear "J'accuse!" I think of the "Coach Fussel's Lament" episode of The Tick, where The Tick is transformed into a two-headed bluebird who only speaks high school French. Of course, he shrieks "J'accuse!" at his tormentor.

It's frightening how strongly that cartoon has been burned into my somewhat addled brain.

Hmm. Well, the theory that George W Bush is a useless git still seems operative.

So we have that angle covered.

Huzzah.

So Josh Marshall is part of an anti-Semitic conspiracy?

"In the meantime, the obsession of the most dedicated anti-Bush crusaders with the Five-Sided White Whale gives us this first installment in a long-awaited investigative series, entitled Iran-Contra II?"

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2004/0410.marshallrozen.html

Go figure.

"For my own part, I find myself both outraged over the falsehoods that took us to Iraq, and sickened by the nasty, antisemitic undertones of a certain critique of the war party."

Such centrist fortitude. It appears that any mention of Israeli influence over our foreign policy is anti-Semitic, and all Jews are just a newspaper aricle away from another pogrom.

IOW, the "Clean Break" paper does not exist; Karen Kwiatkowski did not see Israeli generals given the run of the Pentagon; and it is Jews -- not Arabs -- who are the ones most likely to be thrown in jail based on flimsy evidence.

Maybe the charges against Franklin are baseless, but this Squirrel man is hardly one to judge. He's either a fantasist or a smear artist.

"....the neocon cabal is the imagining of our Revisionists, not of our Nationalists. "

This is new. I had thought that the neocon cabal was real; its existence was established by its own websites. Were those names forged onto the document that prescribed actions for israel? Is there some possibility that the neocon cabal in reality does not exist?

Extremely important, if he's right that neocons are all in our imagination then we need to get the news out as quick as possible.

Brad, it's not good. You should always be skeptical whenever an author starts by complaining that he's sleepy and then proceeds on for a couple dozen paragraphs.

Anti-Semitism fueled the Dreyfuss affair, but it is not at the root of the criticism of the neocons. In fact, most American Jews find the actions of Feith, AIPAC, and Likud dispicable. Wobetide the brave soul who publicly criticizes these folks; accusations of anti-Semitim are guaranteed to follow.

If you really buy into the Squirrel's argument, then you must count your self among the ranks of the anti-Semites.

I know the internet speeds things up, but beyond that, maybe it ain't so specially special, at least as regards its influence over political dialog.

Squirrel quoting Tuckman --

"Variegated, virulent, turbulent, literary, inventive, personal, conscienceless and often vicious, the daily newspapers of Paris were the liveliest and most important element in public life. The dailies numbered between twenty-five and thirty-five at a given time. They represented every conceiveable shade of opinion..."

"Newspapers could be founded overnight by anyone with energy, financial support and a set of opinions to plead. Writing talent was hardly a special requirement, because everyone in the politico-literary world of Paris could write--and did, instantly, speedily, voluminously. Columns of opinion, criticism, controversy, poured out like water."

Read Juan Cole's insightful and courageous postings about AIPAC and the Likud party ties of people like Wolfowitz and Feith. Those who bandy about bogus charges of antisemitism know what they are doing: they are deliberately (and successfully) working to shut down any attempt to question whether Bush admin foreign policy has been unduly influenced by agents of a PARTICULAR Israeli political party, a party that most American jews do not support and a party that will eventually be defeated in Israel as well. J'accuse!

Why oh why do so many otherwise intelligent people conflate any and everything critical of a Jewish person with antisemitism? Really, it gets boring after a while.

Exactly, JR. Perhaps you'd like to revise and extend your comments, Brad?

Why oh why do so many otherwise intelligent people conflate any and everything critical of a Jewish person with antisemitism? Really, it gets boring after a while.

Perhaps because they are not necessarily otherwise so intelligent.

"Anti-Antisemitism" represents one of the great cultural taboos of modern American society. As such, it is fundamentally irrational and represents an inability of major parts of American society to deal constructively with reality.

I remember several months ago several conservatives pushing the Criticism-Of-Neocons-Equals-Disgusting-AntiSemitism canard. I had assumed that they abandoned the project when they saw that no one was buying it.

For what it's worth, when I read the Squirrel Cage's description of The Syndicate, I thought of the SCLM and not PNAC.

The Squirrel misses the forest for the trees.

After two disastrous wars with Prussia, the French bent their efforts towards fighting a third war. Parallels our defeat in Vietnam, and the subsequent roll-back by democratic forces of the dictatorships we supported around the world, which apparently has only stimulated our determination to establish imperial bases and dominate brown-skinned peoples.

The French became so bound-up in their fantasy views of the world that, in the actual event of the 1914 war, they were completely blindsided by the technical advances of the modern world. Paralleling our persistent inability to comprehend the obsolescence of military force.

The big picture offers fascinating parallels, the Suirrel, IMHO, is spinning a cage that's going nowhere.

You are not going to like this Professor DeLong but the article you should be citing is on counterpunch.org !
http://www.counterpunch.org/husseini08302004.html

Should selective memory or cognitive dissonance prevent one from seeing obvious connections to Iran Contra (uh, Ghorbanifar...) Sam Husseini has presented a list of past espionage activities that was compiled in 1997. These incidents are described by the GAO, the Office of Naval Intelligence, the Defense Intelligence Service, FBI, Hersh,.....well, you get the idea. Much more reliable sources than the squirrel dude, wouldn't you say ?

By the way, just for kickers he includes the Lavon affair, the USS Liberty attack, Tennenbaum's missile info leaks, and other "isolated incidents" of compromised intelligence.

I'm afraid without some further commentary you have damaged your reputation as an academically motivated history scholar by referencing squirrel dude rather than Husseini. "Read it. It's good" is not an obviously sarcastic statement.

>>
Surely something along these lines should have appeared by now in the pages of the New Yorker...
>>

It must be that Adam Gopnik can't swing the expense account stay at the Ritz in Paris to do the story.

This isn't the first article I've seen in recent months to offer an analogy between current events in America and the events of the Dreyfus Affair. I don't have a link to the earlier one at the moment. If I find it later today, I'll post a follow-up.

(I don't think this one is as good as the last one I saw.)

KHarris

Balzac gives just the same sense of the Paris press from the Revolution on as Barbara Tuchman. Bloggers be aware, Balzac knew you 200 hundred years ago.

"I know the internet speeds things up, but beyond that, maybe it ain't so specially special, at least as regards its influence over political dialog."

Here it is: http://www.ericmargolis.com/archives/2004/01/jaccuse_americas_drefus_affaire.php

Eric Margolis begins by saying, "Hatred of Muslims has become the anti-semitism of our era." He then goes on to compare Captains James Yee and Alfred Dreyfus.

Blogger doesn't have Trackback yet, so here you go:
Parallels from literature, history

Catowner, I see your point, but I'm confused about "two disasterous wars with Prussia." Two? 1870-71 was one, but what was the other? Perhaps Napoleon I vs The Rest of Europe? Sure, Prussia participated in that, but came rather late to the game, having been nearly wiped off the map in 1806. I'd give the Russians, Brits, and Austrians more credit for 1812-1814 (ok, 1815, counting Waterloo). I'd even entertain "the bleeding ulcer" in Spain as telling more against the French than the Prussian effort.

I think the analogy is apt in this sense. The United States has become -- contrary to all we expected two decades ago -- an ideologically polarized democratic society. The polarization between the democratic center and left, and the reactionary right possesses an eerily close analogy to post-1871 France. After the defeat in 1870 France acquired a democratic regime whose operating philosophy was positivism -- read empiricism, not the narrow Comtean version. It had a left swing of socialists, Guedists and a few actual communists left over from 1848. The right was made up of monarchists, but its strength was the Church -- read Gide's Faux-Monnayeurs for the satire. It also fed on post-1871 nationalism, and on the gloomy view that war with Germany was inevitable.
The anti-semitism was just a vehicle for this deeper conflict over the future of French democracy.

We are reliving that debate. It came up on us unexpectedly, and many are still in denial that we are in fact debating the question whether a democracy -- equality of political influence, opportunity based to the extent possible on merit and hard work, rather than birth and wealth -- are possible or even desirable. Overlaying that is a further debate over the question whether issues of fact should be decided on the basis of superstition, or empirical protocols.

I think the analogy is apter than most of us are prepared to admit.