The Ligue des droits de l’homme’s Dreyfusard origins shape its present stance on antisemitism

Evidence

Straight away, striking paradoxes emerge. The Ligue appeared in 2004 to fall near pole one, yet its history places it nearer pole two. The organisation would see any suggestion that it is soft on antisemitism as unthinkable given its origins. The oldest of the four, it was founded in 1898 by campaigners seeking to prove that Alfred Dreyfus was innocent, embuing the organisation thereafter with the moral mantle of ‘Dreyfusard’. At its height during the inter-war period, when it was the largest human rights organisation in the world and larger than most French political parties, the Ligue developed a reputation as a doughty defender of the rights of Jewish and other immigrants. This reputation was enhanced during the Occupation, when many of its leading figures were killed by the Nazis— or by the French collaborationist militia the Milice, in the case of the Hungarian-born Victor Basch, the LDH’s president from 1925 until his assassination in 1944 at the age of eighty. — James Renton, Ben Gidley (eds.), Antisemitism and Islamophobia in Europe, 1338