the dreyfusards believed the jesuits were controlling everything, anti-dreyfusards believed it was some combination of masons, jews, department stores
the thing is the Russians were actually kinda behind spreading reactionary ideas to France! read Faith Hillis's incredible essay on this! journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.10…
I would say the biggest problem I have with academic history writing is not the prose, but the organization: Argument is often favored over narrative for the sake of rigor I guess, the result being that neither are easy to grasp on first reading
There's also so much repetition of the argument that's trying to disguise itself as specification, but it's not: it's restatement
but the repetition doesn't make things clearer: it makes you think that you are missing some development of the themes and then you realize, "oh that's the same point"
i mean no one *has to* accept an apology, if there's a public apology anyone in the public has a right to decide they don't accept it, the problem is that the public is so amorphous and open ended there will always be someone who doesn't want to accept it on principle
you can't apologize to the public, and any apology made in public people will think is an apology *to the public* and they have a right to accept it or reject it, even if strictly speaking it might not concern them
so my advice is dont apologize in public or to the public because that doesnt work; yelling at the public to stop acting like the public probably wont work. everyone arrogates the right to be a member of the public at some point or another
fellow small substackers, join my land reform movement to break up the big estates! subscription redistribution now!
the big substacks oppress the smaller ones: they are well known and they are suck up people's budgets for blogs, people may spend 15, even 20 dollars for substacks a month, but they are not going to spend 25, 30, 40!
how can we compete with the titled aristocracy of media, who trade on the privilege of an old name?
In the US we tend to give people a pass if they don't demonstrate personal prejudice or take efforts to hide them but subscribe to racist political ideologies; this seems totally backwards to me: racist ideology is way more dangerous than prejudice
Studying the Dreyfus Affair there are many examples of people who had some anti-Jewish prejudice but would not go along with insane conspiracy theories , and examples of people with Jewish friends who became ideological antisemites
Lt. Colonel Picquart expressed prejudiced feelings toward Jews, so his superiors thought he could be trusted, but he wouldn't go along with antisemitic plotting, and did his job honorably. Degas relied had many Jewish friends and patrons, but became a fanatical anti-Dreyfusard