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Indeed. Those who focus solely on the Moslem population in France and the rise of radical Islam among that population ignore at their peril the long French tradition of antisemitism. It was after all the Dreyfus Affair that focused the world's attention on modern antisemitism for the first time, and the Action Francais fascist movement came far closer than most people realize to taking power in France in the 1930's. The pillars of antisemitism in France, sad to say, have been the ultramontagne wing of the Roman Catholic clergy and the old nobility, both of which groups blamed the Jews for, variously, the Enlightenment, the French Revolution, the Revolution of 1848, and the defeat of Napoleon III in the Franco-Prussian War in 1870-71.

Was L'Affaire Dreyfuss really about anti-semitism first and foremost? I understand that the French have either had their country's political system either be dominated by Huguenots & Jewish French families, or by the Catholic industrialists lke Schneider-Creusot etc., as happened under Napoleon III & Vichy, at least until the 60s.

An understanding that I find credible is that at the time, circles within circles existed in the French army, to keep practicing & devout Catholics out of the officers' corps. The fear was that their loyalty to Rome transcended that of faith and morals. The affaire des fiches, in the early 1910s, during the course of which it was revealed that a NGO outside of the army had or had access to files on all the soldiers whose main content was their religous beliefs come to mind. In the time of Ultramontagnism and the like this was a prudent, if very controversial, policy.

Anyway, the gist of this alternative explanation is that there was clear evidence that someone had been selling out aux Boches, and the politicians demanded that someone go to Devil's Island. The perp, being a member of this unofficial army within an army whose protection went all the way to the top, threatened to spill the beans, and thus someone else had to be a fall guy. Captain Dreyfuss just happened to be semi-plausibly linkable with the crime, less-connected, and have a German surname.

Rather than to open the can of worms of an unreligious republic having circles within circles to prevent a "Catholic" takeover, Dreyfuss' defenders, rightfully aghast that an innocent man was found guilty, chose, in the spirit of the times, to portray his struggle as part of the struggle for Jewish emancipation, which it was not.

The idea of having a reactionary pope of the likes of Pius X, installed at the request of the Habsburgs, command his minions in the French government gives me the shivers; I can comprehend at that time the need for religious discrimination. I do, however, wonder at the same time, if World War 1 would have been the same senseless meat-grinder had there been Catholics in the officers corps who had the informal means to confer with their counterparts in the other armies, and declare que ca suffit! France's victory in that war was greatly Pyrrhic.

In my opinion, it is not an irony of history, but a correlation of cause and effect that Pius X, installed against the wishes of the conclave during a time of anarchists, lived to see the war that would destroy the empire whose mouthpiece he'd been erupt. His kingdom should not have been of this world.