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Back to the Dreyfus Affair
8 Plays7 minutes ago
M is back in China with a functioning larynx, so we record a "Back to the Conspiracy" episode, taking another look at a subject we last covered ten years ago: the Dreyfus Affair. Why is a French soldier convicted of treason like Amber Heard? Listen and find out.
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Transcript
Ken Russell's Films and the Dreyfus Affair
00:00:00
Speaker
The only thing you need to know about this episode is that Ken Russell, whose masterpieces include Listomania, Roger D'Oltrie as Franz Liszt fights Hitler Nazi vampire Richard Wagner.
00:00:11
Speaker
What a sentence. Whilst Ringo Starr cameos as a Pope. And, Lair of the White Worm, Hugh Grant and Peter Capaldi, a sex dream on a plane that has to be seen to be believed, also directed a dramatization of the Dreyfus Affair for the BBC, and cast Richard Dreyfus not as his namesake, but rather as Colonel Picard.
00:00:33
Speaker
Which proves that by 1991, the world was already turning into a shambles. Speaking of a shambles, on with the show.
Introduction to The Podcaster's Guide to the Conspiracy
00:00:49
Speaker
The Podcaster's Guide to the Conspiracy, brought to you today by Josh Edison and Ian Denteth.
Catching Up with Dr. Dentist
00:01:09
Speaker
Hello and welcome to the Podcaster's Guide to the Conspiracy in Auckland, New Zealand. I am Josh Addison and in Guangzhou, China, they are Dr. MRX Dentist back in China. like and so we we were hoping to have recorded an episode while you were in in New Zealand, but that didn't work out due to filthy, filthy diseases.
00:01:28
Speaker
Yes, I had laryngitis at the time and had absolutely no voice, but as you can tell, I'm sounding a lot better now. Well, you're sounding like David Attenborough, which, yes, is a lot better in any circumstance. And eightyir now we watch the podcasters as they begin their mating ritual to produce a brand new podcast, something which happens, unfortunately, every 45 minutes.
00:01:51
Speaker
yeah But this so I suppose before we get into a thing, a report I actually can't remember Last time we recorded an episode, you were down in Dunedin doing your thing the Did you have any any final report from your time down there?
00:02:08
Speaker
Actually, so it was a very productive time when I was down Dunedin. So I gave a talk i i gave two talks. I'm kind of remembering exactly how much coverage is at the time.
00:02:19
Speaker
I gave a research talk, which is called Profligate Conspiracy Theorizing, that is about to be submitted to a journal under a new and revised title.
00:02:31
Speaker
Due to feedback, I got... between Dunedin and Auckland when giving the talks both in the Otago Philosophy Seminar Series and the Auckland Seminar Series.
00:02:43
Speaker
I wrote a completely new paper which looks at some of the ways in which people have articulated the thesis of particularism in the academic literature, and that's almost ready to be sent out.
00:02:57
Speaker
So from an academic perspective, it was incredibly productive. From a health and lifestyle perspective, perspective, however, I have to say that getting laryngitis in the third week of your four and a half week fellowship A makes life difficult as a podcaster and B makes life difficult as someone who's co-teaching a course.
00:03:19
Speaker
Because when students are giving seminars and you want to give them feedback, it's not helpful for the person to go, look, the point I want to make about your thing is that's not the point I was trying to make. The point...
00:03:33
Speaker
yeah It's just not a good time had by anyone. none No, no. And I should point out, I'm not ah not quite recovered yet, so actually doing the impression of laryngitis is actually not doing my respiratory system any good whatsoever.
00:03:49
Speaker
Right, well, let's let's put that one to rest then. Disease aside, it sounds like it was a ah profitable and useful trip. It was. Unfortunately, the laryngitis did mean the ten days I had devoted to being in Auckland, catching up with family and friends.
00:04:05
Speaker
ah Essentially became four days of cramming as much socialization as possible in because for six of those days, i was basically holed up in my mother's spare bedroom with the heaters on, trying to dry out my lungs.
00:04:21
Speaker
But anyway, you're all you had the the the fun and adventure of international travel once more. Yes, international travel all the way down to the region of Otago and the city of Dunedin in the south island of Aotoroa, New Zealand.
00:04:36
Speaker
Very exciting international travel. Actually, have to say, Dunedin actually is a lovely little town. I've been there once and quite enjoyed it, yes. But you're back now, back but back to the usual routine, presumably.
00:04:49
Speaker
And we're back, all the way back, all the way back to 2015, this episode, because we're doing another another Back to the Conspiracy to look at the topic.
Exploring the Dreyfus Affair
00:05:00
Speaker
That's pre-my first postdoc in Romania.
00:05:04
Speaker
It is. It is. it's the It's still the first year of the podcast, given... Oh, no, it's not. It's the second year of the podcast. We started May 2014, didn't we? Yep. So second year of the podcast, we were young and fresh-faced and full of piss and vinegar,
00:05:19
Speaker
And we thought that the funniest joke of all time would be to talk about the Dreyfus affair, but talk about Richard Dreyfus the entire time. Yeah. And so we sort of did that. But anyway, anyway, getting ahead of ourselves. We haven't even played a chime.
00:05:32
Speaker
Good Lord. How can we possibly discuss any serious topic without some sort of a jingly bingly thing on the front of it? Let's do that now. but I'll give you a go now. Bingle, bangle, boo.
00:05:44
Speaker
Got anything else? Wacka, dacka, hacka, whacka. Yeah, we'll come up with something, I'm sure.
00:05:52
Speaker
Buckle up. We're going back to the conspiracy.
00:06:00
Speaker
Yes, so We are going today to revisit to the Dreyfus Affair. Now, of course, the first thing to say about the Dreyfus Affair is that it happened in France, and in France they would not have said Dreyfus. It was something along the lines of Treyfus.
00:06:12
Speaker
But neither of us speaks French and is going to try a French accent. You're not going – you would. No, no, no, no, no. You would not speak to do a French accent. This is my usual – Boilerplate here. Also, as New Zealanders, we have absolutely no respect whatsoever for the Republic of France.
00:06:30
Speaker
France is the only country in recent memory to have committed a terrorist attack upon New Zealand soil with the bombing of the Rainbow Warrior.
00:06:43
Speaker
The French Republic is a... Terrible, terrible institution which not only tried to cover up the state's involvement in the bombing of the Rainbow Warrior, but also celebrated the terrorists upon their return to France when they're meant to be returning in shackles and not be given a military parade. It is our patriotic duty as New Zealanders to mangle every single French word that we can.
00:07:10
Speaker
So this will be the Dreyfus Affair, and it will always be the Dreyfus Affair. I'd say Dreyfus myself, but anyway, we can mangle it differently. say Dreyfus, mag I say Dreyfus, dreyphfus Dreyfus, Dreyfus.
00:07:23
Speaker
Let's call the whole thing off. Well, but I bet they wish they had, because, yes, as we will see, the Dreyfus Affair did not reflect well on many people in France and and and and whats was quite the to-do So back back in December of 2015, we were actually writing the preambles to our own episodes. Do you want to you want to relate what we said originally the last time?
00:07:47
Speaker
Certainly. Let's go back in time to December of 2015, episode started which started worse The story of the Dreyfus Affair is both stunningly simple and deceptively complex.
00:08:01
Speaker
Let's start with the simple. In September 1894, letter was found which proved that someone within the French military was selling secrets to the Germans. captain alfred dreyfus was blamed because he was the perfect victor he was jewish he came from a germanic part of france and was a member of the general staff in short he had the right background to be considered a traitor to the fledgling third french republic The problem was, he was not a traitor.
00:08:31
Speaker
The real culprit was French army Major Ferdinand Walson-Asterhazy, who was selling minor secrets to foreign powers to cover his gambling debts. Still, this did not trouble the various courts which tried and retried Dreyfus.
00:08:45
Speaker
Once the initial verdict of guilty was in, the courts refused for five years to recognize that a miscarriage of justice had been carried out. Why? Well, politics, basically.
00:08:58
Speaker
Both the politics of who should be the final arbiters of justice about matters militare, as well as the politics of race. The military did not want to admit they'd got it wrong, and virulent antisemitism made it hard for people to accept that Dreyfus was not a traitor, despite the lack of actual evidence.
00:09:19
Speaker
That, then, is the simple story. Yet this is the podcaster's guide to the conspiracy, and we don't like simple stories. We like complex tales of conspiratorial explanation.
00:09:32
Speaker
So sit back and let us tell you just how deep the rabbit hole goes on this particular matter. It's true 10 years ago as it is today. yeah, the Draphis of Fear, it was over 100 ago, over 120 years ago
00:09:47
Speaker
It was a very significant affair in France. it um Added several terms to the to the English lexicon. if If you've ever heard someone slightly pretentiously say j'accuse when they're accusing somebody of something, it comes out of the Dreyfus affair. The term intellectual, at least as a noun, I think intellectual as an adjective had probably been used widely before that, but referring to someone as an intellectual and particularly a public intellectual, the idea of that,
00:10:18
Speaker
came out of the Dreyfus Affair as well, as we will see. And it had long-term consequences because the flow-on effect of how the French Republic dealt with the consequences of the Dreyfus Affair went all the way up to the nineteen eighty s a But it starts in the 1890s with the conviction of a man called Captain Alfred Dreyfus.
00:10:46
Speaker
Josh, I told you, we're not doing any proper French pronunciations. Captain Alfred Dreyfus. No, i know i so I actually now require you to really mangle that name. Really, really mangle that name. Even the bit that looks like it's in English, you need to mangle it.
00:11:00
Speaker
No, or to a French person, pronouncing something as though it were English is the greatest mangling that you could possibly do. I think Alfred Dreyfus. Alfred Dreyfus.
00:11:14
Speaker
He was a French artillery officer of Alsatian and Jewish descent. And yes, as the introduction said, there was this this letter, this bordereau,
00:11:25
Speaker
which was found, it is is like it was it was fished out of a wastebasket or something, wasn't it? it was They found this letter, which was proof that someone, someone had been selling military secrets to the Germans.
00:11:38
Speaker
Now, they didn't know who, and from what I can gather, the manner ah that that unfortunately persists persists to this day, the law enforcement's main tactic was to find someone who fit the bill,
00:11:54
Speaker
Yeah, it was a classic case of look for the usual suspects. And the usual suspects are people who aren't white French men. People with ah suspect backgrounds. People born in border regions, belonging to an ethnic minority that everybody's a bit suspicious of. Because it is This is...
00:12:16
Speaker
this is I'm about to say the height, one of the heights of virulent and anti-Semitism in European history. I mean, this is... It never really goes away, but... we've got We've got the whole background of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion also percolating away at this time.
00:12:35
Speaker
So, yeah, they basically go and look for someone who fits the bill of a cartoon villain as opposed to engage in a real investigation. So, yes, in December of 1894, he gets convicted. He's he's convicted of treason.
00:12:52
Speaker
He's sentenced to life in prison. um He was imprisoned on Devil's Island in French Guyana, ah which I assume is not called Devil's Island because they particularly... Because it's devilishly good time. Yeah, yeah, No.
00:13:07
Speaker
um He would end up spending nearly five years there under particularly severe conditions. But in the meantime, um some people, who I assume right from the start, had not been happy with the way this guy had been convicted based on um basically no real evidence, as far as I'm aware at the time. Well, I mean, there was... There was definitely evidence that came up in the second trial. I don't know how much...
00:13:33
Speaker
Well, no, i mean so I mean, the evidence per se, as we'll get into, is graphology. And we get this really... to cut a long story story short...
00:13:44
Speaker
They take the handwriting on the letter and they go, who does this handwriting belong to And a graphologist by the name of Major de Patte de Clam, which sounds like Patte de Clam to me, ah goes, well, actually, ah this handwriting belongs...
00:14:05
Speaker
to Dreyfus. I mean, it doesn't look like it belongs to Dreyfus. But that's because Dreyfus has been faking his own handwriting, that when we would find evidence of his real handwriting, it wouldn't look like his handwriting, therefore proving his absolute guilt.
00:14:24
Speaker
Now, that was an argument that was taken seriously by the military courts. It really was, yes. So, yeah, actually, yeah. Well, was that the first trial? Because the point is he he does get tried a second and convicted a second time. But that man, that man, Major Dupati-Duclam, that is Major Charles Armand Auguste Ferdinand Mercier Dupati-Duclam. That's the the most concentrated Frenchness I think I've ever seen.
00:14:50
Speaker
I'm surprised he didn't collapse in on himself and turn into some sort of ah and sort of a French black hole. ah he He was, ah as he as as the name the title suggests, he was a major in the army. He was not a handwriting expert because there was no such thing as a handwriting expert at that time.
00:15:06
Speaker
I don't know if there really is these days. I don't know how reliable hand... It always seems like... ah We're finding out all these things that that courts have relied on, like blood spatter evidence and bite mark evidence. Most forensic science is pseudoscience.
00:15:23
Speaker
Yeah, and i'm I'm assuming graphology is the same. I mean, because i mean at one point in time, they using graphology to be able to predict people's internal emotional states. Oh, the loop on your handwriting is far too extravagant, thus showing a homosexual urge.
00:15:41
Speaker
And the dangling J indicates a large penis is the kind of things that people were doing with graphology throughout the last century. And so certainly this this guy was was very much an amateur graphologist. He was not he was not from the school of graphology or however ah people would would would try to in qualifications. But he he he set himself up as this handwriting expert.
00:16:05
Speaker
he I believe he did a he did he did this sort of a clever little um ah cleverve little trick where he got Dreyfus it and and it was like, Oh, hey, hey, Dreyfus, while you're here, I've hurt my hand.
00:16:19
Speaker
um i can't I need to write this note down, but i can't I can't write at the moment. So would you mind writing this down as I dictate it And then basically dictated the wording that was on this mysterious letter so that here they would have Dreyfus's handwriting writing the exact same text that was in the text on the letter.
00:16:38
Speaker
And as you say, the handwriting appeared to not match, and yet he was still able to spin this as proof that it was the right handwriting by somehow saying that, ah, that just shows how clever he was, that he faked his own fake handwriting or something.
00:16:56
Speaker
Which indicates that either he he realized, oh, my clever trick didn't work, or my clever trick worked a little bit too well. And now I have to come up with an explanation to explain why my trick actually didn't entrap anyone.
00:17:10
Speaker
Yes, and as we' we'll talk about in a minute, he he had a bunch of schemes that I can only really describe as harebrained. ah for for proving Dreyfus' guilt. But it turned out it didn't really matter because, as we suggest, he was he was the guy they wanted to be guilty and they were going to find him guilty.
00:17:28
Speaker
And that's that's basically all all it came down to. But... That wasn't a – there were at least some people who were like, this guy, the the the evidence against this dude was really flimsy, and presumably people who were like, you know, if if people someone's selling secrets secrets to the Germans, it really is actually important that we get the right guy because if we get the wrong guy, then the guy who was actually doing it is still going to do it and the Germans are still going to be getting our secrets.
Colonel Piccard's Investigation
00:17:52
Speaker
I mean, the the best case scenario if you imprison the wrong person is the person who's selling the secrets go, oh, I should probably stop selling secrets for a little while. for me yeah let Let things kind of calm down and then get back to it.
00:18:07
Speaker
And yeah, so the person who kind of leads the charge, which is why we have the term Jacuz, is the famed writer Emile. So it's... As you know, we're mangling the French, Emily Zola.
00:18:22
Speaker
I realize it's actually not pronounced Emily at all, but Emily Zola is a person who writes a a letter that's published in a Parisian newspaper in 1898 and basically says, look, there's a cover-up.
00:18:37
Speaker
They arrested someone because this person fitted the stereotype of who they thought a traitor should be. The evidence used in court was ridiculous.
00:18:49
Speaker
We really should be looking for the real traitor here, Free Dreyfus. Yeah. so So, yeah, Dreyfus is convicted in 1894. In 1896, and ninety six um a man called Georges Piccard, who was the head of counterespionage in the French... Colonel. Colonel.
00:19:09
Speaker
Yeah, as I say, he was one of these people who was like, we really want to be sure that we actually get this right, and had continued his investigating and came up with evidence that there was that the person who had actually been selling secrets to the German was a major called Ferdinand Walsen Esterhazy.
00:19:25
Speaker
And the military kind of didn't want to know. why not just that. They suppressed the evidence. Yeah. They were like, no, no, no, that's it. We're good, thanks. We've got a guy for this crime. um you can You can take your facts and evidence and and stick with me the sun don't shine. So they they um suppressed this new evidence. Esterhazy was taken to court but ah yeah on on the on ah but because he had this colonel fingering him.
00:19:52
Speaker
Oh, I've turned into you, fingering people left and right. But he was he was immediately acquitted. He he was he was tried and acquitted straight away. was like, no, no, no, he's he's he's not guilty. Get out look get out get get out of here.
00:20:03
Speaker
And he ended up, I believe, court-martialing Picard in the end, didn't he? When he wouldn't let it lie. Yeah, yeah. I mean, this is, it's it's it's a series of tragedies after tragedies.
00:20:15
Speaker
So yeah, after this initial initial conviction based basically on racism or anti-Semitism, um they had no interest in in revisiting it in any way. So 1896, that comes up. And then by 1898, you know, work has got out, it's gone around, and 1898,
00:20:33
Speaker
is when Emile Zola pens Jacques Hughes, which is yes this open letter that gets published um in ah in a newspaper January 1898. So at this point, it's it's a big deal. Activists are getting onto the government to have another look at it the it. And it's a giant social issue that people feel compelled address.
00:20:57
Speaker
take a side on and really, really stick to it. They sort themselves into groups. People who are supporters of Dreyfus call themselves Dreyfusards and people who believe he's guilty call themselves anti-Dreyfusards.
00:21:10
Speaker
And i wanted to talk about this a bit later because but it really does remind me of the sort of crap you still see to this day. on whatever the internet de jore issue du jour is on the internet, where there's this, a case will come along and people see and seem to sort of make it part of their identity as to what side they supported, which meant that evidence really wasn't an issue. You know, yeah these people, had they they had decided, I'm an anti-Dreyfusade, I think he's guilty, I think the military's right, I'm not interested in hearing anything to the contrary, and would would argue ah vociferously against people who thought, no no, no, he's been framed, he's innocent, it's all, you know, it was this massive, massive issue.
00:21:53
Speaker
And part of it is due to the fact that the French military and the military courts, you were very, very powerful under the Third Republic.
00:22:05
Speaker
And so, to a certain extent, the issue wasn't Dreyfus per se. It was the role of the military in the Third Republic. You had the Dreyfussards who were going, well, look, we think this is a group of people who are basically acting as despots in our Republican system because they there's no oversight, there's no checks and balances to what they do.
00:22:29
Speaker
They can just get away well with whatever they like. And the anti-Dreyfussards who are going... Yeah, but we kind of like that. We like a strong military in our republic.
00:22:41
Speaker
So that's kind of why it becomes the identity of so many people here. It's not about Dreyfus per se. It's about the nature of the political system these people are living in and under.
00:22:54
Speaker
Yeah. ah So at any rate, the the social turmoil was enough that they um they recalled Dreyfus was taken back to France and put on trial again. And again, he was convicted.
00:23:07
Speaker
um they they still They still weren't willing to to countenance the idea that um the initial conviction was bad. But this time, rather than being given a life sentence, he was given a 10-year sentence. And then on top of that, again, um what was the case we were looking at Oh, the Scopes Monkey Trial, where at the end of that, it seemed very much as though the authorities just wanted the whole thing to go away.
00:23:31
Speaker
And so it seemed like in this case, it was it was similar in that he was convicted, given a 10-year sentence, but was then given a pardon and set free. Now, This was a bit sort of contentious because in order to accept the pardon, Dreyfus had to give up the appeal against his conviction.
00:23:51
Speaker
So but it's it looked a bit like, and it certainly was taken as by his opponents as an admission that he was guilty but was accepting the pardon because a pardon isn't saying you didn't do it. A pardon is saying you were convicted, but we're just going to let it slide.
00:24:06
Speaker
Yeah, it's which does seem like the state is going, look, You got away with a bit of treason. Good for you Good for you. Yeah. Eventually, eventually, this this is 1899. In 1906, it would eventually all be sorted out that yes it was actually nonsense. He was never guilty. Esther Harvey was the guilty part but party. He was.
00:24:31
Speaker
He was reinstated as a major at the French Army. served for all of World War one in ending up as a lieutenant colonel, died in 1935. But let's talk about the trial a bit, shall we? Because evidence, evidence is the thing we like to talk about.
00:24:47
Speaker
but yes. And so we've we've already talked about the graphology. But the graphology is not the only thing that Pâté de Clame was engaged in, was it?
00:24:59
Speaker
Yes. No. So, I mean, Zola and in the Jacquesille's letter, he talks about the stuff that i miss yeah I don't know where he'd got his information from, but assuming it's true, it makes Major depaty de Pati de Clam sound borderline unhinged in his efforts to to prove Dreyfus's guilt. um ah for fro for This is from the the letter translated into English, obviously.
00:25:23
Speaker
Talking about, Dupati de Clamzola says, he was the one who came up with the scheme of dictating the text of the bordereau to dreyfus which he talked about just before he was the one who had the idea of observing him in a mirror-lined roome and he was the one who made fazeniti caught carrying a shuttered lantern that he planned to throw open on the accused man while he slept hoping that jolted awake by the sudden flash of light dreyfus would blurt out his guilt which as far as schemes go, i stand by my description of harebrained, trying to wake someone up in the middle of the night and hope they're going to go, I'm guilty. died I did it. I did it all.
00:26:00
Speaker
that's That's... But no, no, but Josh, yeah it has to be a very specific admission of guilt. Because, I mean, Dreyfus could be guilty of all sorts of things. He has to be woken up suddenly and oh, I am guilty of selling secrets to the Germans. Because he might go, I'm guilty. He goes, of what?
00:26:16
Speaker
Uh... Having and thingo little tug last night. who can yeah so Yeah, so he had a whole bunch of ideas that tried to get him confess and what have you. I believe Dreyfuss, of course, had been leaned on very heavily to confess and apparently... I mean, to the point where... Yeah, to commit suicide.
00:26:36
Speaker
But the evidence was basically your character evidence, or at least originally... Well, yeah, because he had, they said, look, you you're suspiciously expert in Germany, as if living on a border region between France and Germany wouldn't have kind of naturally gained you that expertise anyway.
00:26:59
Speaker
They alleged he had gambling debts, although I don't actually know whether he had any of those debts at all. I think they just went, oh, the reason why he would do it would be Seems like everyone has deadly deaths these days. it's true.
00:27:12
Speaker
And apparently one of the things against him was his really good memory. Yes, i don't I don't quite see how that... Does it that just prove how cunning he is? How he's able to put together these... I mean, I guess on one level you might go, well, look, he's got a good memory so he wouldn't have to write things down, which would explain the lack of written evidence.
00:27:33
Speaker
Yeah. You'll just be able to memorize all the secrets and then translate transfer them to the Germans in their native tongue. But accusing someone of having a remarkably good memory and saying, oh, that's a character defect seems like a very strange thing to do.
00:27:52
Speaker
Unless you imagine a court where everyone's, I'm sorry, my lord, I've forgotten. What are the procedural rules for introducing evidence? i I have no idea. We must go, ask Dreyfus. He'll know because he's a traitor. He'll remember that kind of thing.
00:28:08
Speaker
Yes, I don't get that. And then obviously there was the handwriting handwriting issue that we've talked about and and how circular the whole thing was with the with the fact that the handwriting didn't match just proves that it really was his handwriting.
00:28:21
Speaker
The trial itself was apparently quite unusual. it was It was a closed trial and non-standard to the point of possibly being illegal, like if it was it was that they'd done things so strangely.
00:28:34
Speaker
But even then... Even then, the the the fact was that they had very little in the way of actual evidence against the guy. So the general staff i gave the judges a secret dossier that had been created by the statistics section, um which claimed so contained some fabricated information.
00:28:56
Speaker
um and a letter which they claimed proved Dreyfus was the leak, even though they knew it was all fabricated. This sounds an awful lot like the dodgy dossier that justified the invasion of Iraq all the way back in 2003. Yeah, yeah, The case for invading Iraq isn't going particularly well. The public isn't really but buying it.
00:29:19
Speaker
So an element of the government fabricates information to go, oh, no, no, no, the case is really good. Look at our fake evidence here. It's great.
00:29:30
Speaker
Yes, I mean, so so the the trial seemed dodgy from start to finish, but it gave them the result that they wanted. um And then, as we say, after evidence appeared to come out that the trial that this this conviction was completely unsound and that indeed there was another person who was guilty and we knew who it was, ah then we get into the cover-ups.
00:29:51
Speaker
Yeah, so basically after the trial, Picard continues to investigate, and he receives the stolen documents that had been passed to the German embassy and discovers that the only person who could have passed these documents on was Esterhase.
00:30:12
Speaker
So he begins investigating the person who seems to be the only viable culprit to be the traitor. But Picard's deputy, one Major hey Henry, was going, well, look, we are we need this prosecution of Dreyfus to stand.
00:30:30
Speaker
So... If Esterhazy is going to be convicted of e anything, it can't be for the reasons that Dreyfus was convicted, passing the documents on to the Germans. It has to be for some other particular matter.
00:30:47
Speaker
And so... Henry creates a document which is now called the faux Henry, which in translation reads, I read that a deputy will call on Dreyfus. If you ask further explanations from Rome, i would say that id never had relations with the Jew.
00:31:05
Speaker
That is understood. If asked, speak like that, because that person should never know what happened with him. I don't quite know what that means, and I assume it would have sounded better in French.
00:31:17
Speaker
Would you like me to read it out in a fake French accent? Well, no, it's just... ah So was this this... This document is something that... Is this Henry's testimony, or is this something that he was saying that Esterhazy supposedly said?
00:31:30
Speaker
No, it's just a document that kind of added into the dossier to make it look like Dreyfus was the person passing the information along rather than someone else.
00:31:43
Speaker
Ah, so it was meant to be something Dreyfus had written. No, was something written about Dreyfus to indicate that Dreyfus was the source. Right. it's yeah It's weird. it was ah It was a fairly obvious forgery in any case, and yet it was it was it was enough.
00:32:01
Speaker
i mean and I mean, really was a very crude forgery. It's put on the wrong bit of paper for the first part. ah So it doesn't look in any way authentic, but it was enough to damn Dreyfus and also make it look like Picard was actually...
00:32:23
Speaker
in some way involved in the affair, which is why essentially they start going after Picard, because they're going, well, look, why has Picard got these documents and why is he blaming the source of these documents on innocent victim Astahazi?
00:32:41
Speaker
Maybe Picard is also revealing state secrets. Maybe he's almost as bad as Dreyfus himself. Yes, so they they ended up um prosecuting Picard.
00:32:53
Speaker
for for revealing these secrets that had been going on. So we have what one figure, Godfrey Kavagnac, who was the Minister of War in 1898. um So he he wanted to show that Dreyfus was guilty, and he wanted to to just um write Esterhazy up as a blackmailer. So again, a completely
Dreyfus's Conviction and Public Unrest
00:33:11
Speaker
different crime. Nothing to do with what Dreyfus did, but just, you know, they they need to convict him of something because he's been the the subject of this investigation.
00:33:18
Speaker
But unfortunately... When he's looking into all of this, he he reveals this faux-Henri-Henri document as as being an obvious, obvious forgery.
00:33:30
Speaker
Henry is confronted with this, reveals his deception, reveals that everybody knew that he that that he had put this obvious forgery in it. um and And Major Henry himself ended up committing suicide over being found out. so man given that we know that they tried to pressure Dreyfus to commit suicide, there's a distinct possibility that Henry was kind of pressured into the same to go, well, look, we just need to make sure the evidence kind of stops here.
00:34:03
Speaker
But, you know, as we say, so this gets out, the Supreme Court ends up overturning the initial conviction of Dreyfus based on the evidence that showed that Esterhazy was the real culprit.
00:34:13
Speaker
But, as we said, he's tried again and convicted again. Now, at this stage, because it had become such a... Like, I've read some things that suggest that this could have kicked off a civil war in France. Well, I mean, remember, this is the third glorious republic.
00:34:28
Speaker
The first was due to a revolution. Second was due to a revolution. We're in the Fifth Republic now. These kind of things happen in France. Every so often you just need a bit of social upheaval and then a reconstitution of the Republic.
00:34:43
Speaker
So, I mean, there were there were riots at this stage of people either protesting one way or the other, and I'm assuming fighting with each other in the streets. so And so this is when, again, this is now when the pardon comes in. They want to put a lid on the whole thing.
00:34:57
Speaker
um He's pardoned. He can go. Everybody shut up about it now. which, and and again, his side wasn't super about that because, again, a pardon is not ah is not an acquittal. They're they're not they're not saying he shouldn't have been convicted. They're just saying we're going to let him off. But that was it for the court cases, I believe. But eventually, eventually, everything um everything came out. So and you got a new left-wing government was formed in 1902.
00:35:27
Speaker
They reopened the case um By 1905, a formal investigation found him not guilty. His convictions were quashed, and as we say, by 1906, he was reinstated in the army.
00:35:38
Speaker
And the this report also argued that because these charges should never have been brought against him he couldn't be charged by the courts again. And um this this this was the start, was it, of of a sort of a lessening of the military's power in France, which would carry on until the present age Yes, so this goes on through, as we say, several republics, but essentially as a consequence of the way the military courts acted to first charge Dreyfus and then cover up any evidence that suggests that the charges should never have been laid in the first place, successive governments in France basically start weakening the power of the military and the military courts,
00:36:26
Speaker
in order to stop such an injustice from happening again. That being said, the military courts are one of the reasons why the terrorists who bombed the Rainbow Warrior ended up being celebrated as heroes when they returned back to France, so it wasn't a perfect system.
Emile Zola and 'J'accuse'
00:36:41
Speaker
no Now, just looking at the wider the wider the wider effects and and context of the whole thing, a bit about Emile Zola. I found this quite interesting. um So because because he wrote this pro-Dreyfus letter, Jacuzzi,
00:36:57
Speaker
um he He was then tried and convicted of criminal libel in 1898. Now, that judgment was originally overturned and a new trial started. But Zola's lawyer said, you probably want to get out of Dodge because I don't see that your your trial is going to go another way. And so he fled the country in 1898 before the trial ended. And sure enough, the trial did end with him being convicted, i guess, in absentia.
00:37:22
Speaker
So he was lived in England for about a year, was apparently quite unhappy, living living in exile over there, and then returned to France. He died in his sleep in 1902.
00:37:35
Speaker
So this was after the second trial and the pardon and all that, but before the formal investigation which which quashed the convictions. So in 1902, he dies in his sleep from carbon monoxide poisoning due to a blocked chimney.
00:37:50
Speaker
um There was ah there was ah a bit of a to-do at his funeral. Apparently, Dreyfus... A bit of a to-do? bit of a to-do, but yeah i'm I'm understating. um Dreyfus apparently initially had said he wouldn't at attend to the funeral, but I assume because he didn't want to you know make it all about him. He did didn't want to inflame the situation more.
00:38:10
Speaker
But then Zola's wife had said, no, no, it's fine. you you know He was one of your biggest supporters. You should come. Dreyfus attends the funeral. Someone tries to assassinate him at Zola's funeral. This disgruntled journalist shot him shot at him, hit him and the hit him in the arm, but did not shoot him fatally. that was one thing.
00:38:29
Speaker
um Now, at the time, when news got out that he died, um his his enemies, the anti-Dreyfusar, celebrated his death. They were like, good, our our opponents did.
00:38:40
Speaker
His supporters suggested that it could have been murder. Maybe maybe he'd actually been killed. One anti-Dreyfusard writer, Henri Rochefort, he, based on absolutely nothing as far as I'm aware, claimed that the reason what had actually happened was that Zola had found evidence that Dreyfus was guilty and had committed suicide over the revelation.
00:39:00
Speaker
which gives you some some idea of the the the state of the discourse. The interesting thing is, in 1953, 51 years after his death, a journalist's investigation suggested that maybe Zola had been murdered because apparently this journalist found out that a chimney sweep claimed on his deathbed to have been paid to deliberately block Zola's chimney, thereby causing him to die of carbon di monoxide poisoning.
00:39:28
Speaker
I'm always suspicious of deathbed conditions. We always have to worry about deathbeds. We've had quite a few of them, yeah. And also because if I know the date and time that I'm going to die, I am going to confess to so many different things on my deathbed.
00:39:41
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, who knows? Maybe this guy was a Dreyfusard from way back and wanted to paint the Dreyfusards in a bad light or something. we've We've seen plenty of cases of people claiming all sorts of things on their deathbeds, but it was interesting.
00:39:54
Speaker
Interesting that that claim came up. So that's the details of the whole thing, just as the wider thing.
The Political Impact of the Dreyfus Affair
00:40:01
Speaker
Like, it very much, it it really wasn't about Dreyfus in the end, was it?
00:40:05
Speaker
No, it really was about the political situation in France. Dreyfus was simply a symbol of the rot at the core of the fledgling Third Republic.
00:40:16
Speaker
Or, if you were an anti-Dreyfusard, evidence that there a strong military was precisely what the Third Republic needed. And that there are these elements within who are who are words seeking to weaken it.
00:40:30
Speaker
So, I mean, I'm assuming that's why the military courts didn't want to accept that they got it wrong in the first place or anything. It was that they didn't want to have their position, their strength questioned at all. So they figured stick to your guns.
00:40:45
Speaker
I mean, I think that's a very plausible interpretation. It was a saving of face. We've convicted someone of a crime. The crime is now dealt with. We really don't want to talk about the evidence.
00:40:58
Speaker
I mean, yeah, it kind of speaks to the idea of knowing that they, or at least believing that they have enough power that they can make the truth be whatever they want it to be, and also recognizing that their power would be threatened by it coming out, that they'd got it wrong.
00:41:14
Speaker
Now, I believe, you know, it was 10 years since we've talked about this. I really don't remember what we concluded. But last last time we talked about this, apparently we thought at the end, what would we have believed at the time?
00:41:27
Speaker
would Hearing about this, would we have believed that Dreyfus was actually innocent? Or would we have thought that the people defending him who were conspiracy theorists, these were people saying there's been this conspiracy within the military to convict the wrong man and to cover everything up, would we have thought they were, quote unquote, just conspiracy theorists?
00:41:50
Speaker
I mean, as someone who belongs to the group of people who thinks that all cops are bastards, and that includes military police, I'm going to assume that my my political instincts, if they were the same as they are now, would be i'd just be very doubtful.
00:42:06
Speaker
that the military, who had just conducted a trial in secret, were doing things above board. Now, that's a political explanation as to why I wouldn't trust what was going on.
00:42:22
Speaker
I actually don't know how much discussion of the evidence was going on in French newspapers at the time, in part because... If the trial was being undertaken in kind of an unusual level of secrecy, there probably actually wasn't a lot of discussion as to the reasons why Dreyfus shouldn't be found guilty.
00:42:44
Speaker
because there wouldn't be much evidence to discuss. Yeah, I mean, maybe it comes down to the sort of thing that you've talked about plenty of times in the past, about it being... it comes down to what sort of society you believe you live in Yeah. I guess if you if you believed that the military, with with a sort to overstep their mark and would do anything to protect their power, then you would perhaps be more inclined to believe a conspiracy theory against them. And and if you didn't, you wouldn't. But yeah, it is difficult to say.
00:43:15
Speaker
I have to say that the social aspect of it, as I said before, it it was it was that reading about Zola, it was reading about a guy, here's a person on the other side of a discover of a disagreement to him has died and immediately cooks up a story that he found out he was wrong and I'm right and he committed suicide rather than than than admit that he was wrong all along.
00:43:35
Speaker
That really felt to me like something I would expect to hear out of ah out of a Gamer Gator or the the The whole Johnny Depp Amber Heard thing was sorted immediately. I honestly could imagine ah Johnny Depp supporter hearing that an Amber Heard supporter had died and said, I bet you found out that Amber Heard was wrong all along and couldn't couldn't take the revelation or something.
00:43:55
Speaker
the the The social side of the whole making making what side you take on a disagreement so part of your own identity that vet Evidence isn't really so much of a consideration or you're you're willing to to bend whatever you hear into into fitting your own political worldview does sound very familiar to the sort of thing we still see to this very day Indeed it does the more things change the more they stay the same whether it be fabricating evidence to invade a country or making a dispute part of your core character
00:44:31
Speaker
We're not that different from the French of 18th century or even the century.
Closing Remarks and AI Discussion
00:44:37
Speaker
Not in any way. were we We are essentially French is what I'm hearing. So i it's it's in that case, it's time to say au revoir.
00:44:45
Speaker
But first, of course, we have to we have to we have to tickle your taste buds. Is the right phrase? With with with with a bonus episode, we're going to be um recording for our patrons in just a moment. The tastiest of all people.
00:44:58
Speaker
Hang on, sorry. Are we tasting them or are we tasting the content of the bonus episode? I've confused myself. The fours got out of control. What I do know is we're going to talk about a bunch of stuff. we're going to talk about the fact that that people were saying that that Trump was possibly dead over the weekend. I'll own a fair amount of wishful thinking perhaps went went into that, but there was there's a few things people pointed to. ah We'll talk about a bit of news. We'll talk about a bit of other podcasts. We'll talk about a bunch of the usual stuff, I expect.
00:45:25
Speaker
We will indeed. And that material is available to patrons who go and sign up to our Patreon, which is the podcast's guide to the conspiracy.
00:45:36
Speaker
I recently discovered that Patreon introduced this thing called autopilot. Yeah.
00:45:47
Speaker
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00:46:12
Speaker
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00:46:23
Speaker
So, until next time we record, assuming neither of our larynxes explodes in the interim, Or implodes. Or implodes. You never know tricky things, larynxes. Just remains for me to say, conspiracy-u-later.
00:46:37
Speaker
J'cules! Sorry, sneezed.
00:46:47
Speaker
The podcast's guide to the conspiracy features Josh Addison and Associate Professor M.R. Extentis. Our producers are a mysterious cabal of conspirators known as Tom, Philip, and another who is so mysterious that they remain anonymous.
00:47:01
Speaker
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00:47:28
Speaker
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