In 1886, Édouard Drumont published his book Jewish France (La France Juive), advertised as an essay on contemporary history. This became his most famous anti-Semitic writing and gathered enormous success. The book focused on anti-Semitism and why the Jews were at fault for everything bad in all of Europe. In this book, Drumont is very open about his prejudice towards the Jews and analyzes their race as, not only inferior, but as a “chef source of the contemporary degeneracy was the Jews” (Drumont, 32). The main arguments presented in La France Juive was that the Jewish race are lower class people and the reason for …show more content…
The Aryan race was believed to be the first-class race throughout Europe. We see this in The Superior Anglo-Saxon Race by Cecil Rhodes as well as in The Importance of Race by Houston Stewart Chamberlain. Although the specifics of each document may differ, Jewish France also reveals how anti-Semitic many people thought out Europe were around that time. It show that many people in France really believed that “the chief source of contemporary degeneracy was the Jews” (Drumont, 32). In his book he compares the Jews with the Aryans. Furthermore, page 33 of the passage about La France Juive, states how his book shaped the public opinion for the conviction of treason of the first Jewish officer of the General Staff of the French army, Captain Alfred Dreyfus. The evidence was all faked, yet the public was convinced otherwise, since he was a Jew. This only shows that Drumont’s effort to spread anti-Semitism were very