Daily Podcasts Video Research

Why the Dreyfus Affair has now become our affair

JL;DR SUMMARY Marking the 125th anniversary of Alfred Dreyfus's imprisonment on Devil's Island, Robert Zaretsky draws parallels between the Dreyfus Affair and contemporary American polarization, particularly in the post-Trump era. A way out west there was a fella, fella I want to tell you about, fella by the name of Jeff Lebowski. At least, that was the handle his lovin' parents gave him, but he never had much use for it himself. This Lebowski, he called himself the Dude. Now, Dude, that's a name no one would self-apply where I come from. But then, there was a lot about the Dude that didn't make a whole lot of sense to me. And a lot about where he lived, likewise. But then again, maybe that's why I found the place s'durned innarestin'.

JL;DR members get full summaries of all articles in the archive, including this one. Donate & start reading »

Tags

Donald TrumpPolarizationNationalismDreyfus AffairAlfred DreyfusEnlightenmentémile ZolaMaurice BarrèsRational Discourse

Places mentioned

Paris, France
"While the police struggled to contain the right-wing riots that broke out in the streets of Paris, Zola was hauled into court and found guilty of libeling the French army."
Houston, Texas, United States
"Robert Zaretsky teaches at the University of Houston."

Support this source

This item was indexed and curated by Cairo, JL;DR's web crawler.
Cairo Item ID 49841
Cairo Source ID 35
Retrieved 2025-04-22 05:31:38 UTC
Curated 2025-04-22 08:31:09 UTC