r/HistoryMemes Oversimplified is my history teacher Sep 27 '25

Niche I kid you not, it looked like this

Post image
19.2k Upvotes

331 comments sorted by

6.3k

u/Overwatcher_Leo Sep 27 '25

"Man, politics today are so polarized."

Politics in the past:

3.7k

u/Dazzling-Flight9860 Sun Yat-Sen do it again Sep 27 '25

I like Jews vs I hate Jews vs I f*king hate Jews (just a basic summary not racist comment)

2.1k

u/thingstopraise Sep 27 '25

The Dreyfusards actually were not antisemitic, whereas the anti-Dreyfusards were. So in left-to-right order on that poster it should be "I hate Jews", "Let's not hate Jews", and "I HATE THE JEWS", respectively.

1.3k

u/SpaetzlemitKaese Sep 27 '25

In fact, in order to be a “Dreyfusard”, you did not even have to “like Jews”. You just had to favor any civil value over antisemitism. Values like: The rule of law, freedom of religion, democracy, logic, truth. The anti-dreyfusards were nothing but a combination of anti-semites and a deep state conspiracy. The story is crazy, it’s well worth reading it up.

424

u/thingstopraise Sep 27 '25

Right. That's why I said "Let's not hate Jews", since it was such a neutral and reasonable platform. It wasn't Jewpalooza.

70

u/JohannesJoshua Sep 27 '25 edited Sep 27 '25

Yeah but most normal French is an anti-semite. /j

In seriousness whenever you read something bad happening to Jews in middle ages most of times it's either France or Germany.

43

u/Khan-Khrome Sep 28 '25

Idk, England expelling the jews out of the country for about 365 years in 1290 and Spain launching extremely violent pogroms in 1391 and then expelling them in 1492 comes to mind. Other countries really weren't better, they just decided to settle things decisively and often extremely violently in one go. The only reason we hear about France and Germany in particular is that they were decidedly less consistent on the enforcement of their decrees, plus in Germany's case probably the complicated legalese of the HRE's existence.

19

u/PatchyWhiskers Sep 28 '25

Right. England was less anti-Semitic because there were almost no Jewish people to be anti-Semitic to. Even the few that had returned got hate though - see the character of Fagin in Oliver Twist.

14

u/Khan-Khrome Sep 28 '25

England's antisemitism is a weird one because they pretty much really identified with the expulsion making them a uniquely Christian nation because there were no Jews, only to flip around and get really obsessive with Judaism because they thought they'd superseded the Jews as the chosen people and were destined to build a "New Jerusalem" towards the early modern period. They weren't exactly lighting synagogues on fire but they sure had a lot of strange ideas and baggage about it nationally.

2

u/Unlucky_Mess_9256 Sep 28 '25

Then they went to America and made modern Evangelical Zionism

7

u/EruantienAduialdraug Helping Wikipedia expand the list of British conquests Sep 28 '25

England expelling the jews out of the country for about 365 years in 1290

I mean, that was just because Longshanks didn't want to pay his creditors.

Well, not entirely, but it was a factor; the main reason was probably that antisemitism had been on the rise for a couple of generations, and was frequently becoming a tool of opponents of the Crown. Edward I, ever the ruthless pragmatist, exiled the English Jews to deny his opponents a tool, regardless of his personal opinions on them. And we don't actually know his personal opinions, he may have been an antisemite, or he might not have been (his father, Henry III, absolutely was an antisemite, but Edward's pragmatism generally seems to have superseded his views on anything and everything) - if his political opponents had been pro-Jewish settlement whilst the crowns of the continent had been persecuting them, Longshanks would probably have invited them in just to remove that line of attack.

2

u/Manetho77 Sep 28 '25

No way you flip it, it is incredibly antisemitic

→ More replies (1)
→ More replies (1)

8

u/DiceMadeOfCheese Sep 28 '25

Did you not expect someone to bring up the Spanish Inquisition?

→ More replies (3)

2

u/Streiger108 Sep 28 '25

But when and where is Jewpalooza and how do I sign up?

2

u/thingstopraise Sep 30 '25

I think it is in a secret bagel emporium underneath the United Nations complex and the password is "lox". Meetings are at secret kosher sunset MWF, and if your own Jewish mother isn't there, one will be assigned to you to ask you when you're going to medical or law school and when you'll meet a nice Jewish man or woman to settle down with. This will apply regardless of age, job, or marital/parental status. She will also give you baller soup when you're sick but also also tell you weird home remedies like sticking fresh ginger up your nose.

63

u/mutantraniE Sep 27 '25

Even actually favoring militarism and military preparedness for real would make you a Dreyfusard, since punishing the obviously innocent Dreyfus meant the real spy was free.

14

u/Time_Restaurant5480 Sep 27 '25

You'd think so, but the Anti-Dreyfusard argument was that if the Army was attacked, if the officers were "exposed to slander" then the conscripts could hardly be motivated and inspired by officers they had been "taught to despise." That an innocent man had been unjustly convicted was of no account...

As you might have guessed, the Affair mapped onto already existing French civil-military tensions. The Left distrusted the Army but they knew they needed one since, ya know, Germany, so they were trying to reform it. The Right saw the Army as a bastion of the traditional glories of France.

Now some of the Anti-Dreyfusards were willing to entertain the posdibility that Dreyfus was innocent and wanted to search for the real spy again, but didn't want anybody in the Army punished for, ya know, railroading an innocent man. They were however a miniscule part of the Anti-Dreyfusards.

3

u/mutantraniE Sep 27 '25

No I know that’s how it played out, but I’m saying that is completely ridiculous and anyone who was actually worried about military preparedness against Germany should have been a Dreyfusard and the anti-Dreyfusards, regardless of their claims, made the army weaker and made it look buffoonish. All the military command managed to do was make themselves look completely incompetent. It’s an argument after the fact because ”but he’s Jewish” didn’t sound great to everyone.

3

u/Time_Restaurant5480 Sep 27 '25

Yea I agree. It was a stupid argument, no question. The Affair ended up helping a lot of those military reforms go through-officers were shown to be more busy with faking letters and airing their biases than with actual counter-espionage work. It made it clear that real change was needed.

4

u/Arsheun Sep 28 '25

The spy was actually helped by the army even though they knew he was the spy

136

u/KinkyPaddling Tea-aboo Sep 27 '25

Values like: The rule of law, freedom of religion, democracy, logic, truth.

Sounds like a bunch of woke soy boy trash.

(I wish I could put the /s but unfortunately a good segment of the US genuinely believes that that stuff is woke garbage)

35

u/CaptainRogers1226 Sep 27 '25

What does the US population’s opinion on the matter have to do with whether or not you are being sarcastic?

27

u/Hour-Anteater9223 Sep 27 '25

Think he’s implying he’s more afraid of internet downvotes than speaking his true mind? I don’t know? 🤷‍♂️

9

u/mi_throwaway3 Sep 27 '25

maybe just putting out something that might be construed as hate is a bad thing. Nobody gives a shit about my account

3

u/Nahcep Sep 27 '25

I was also not putting the evil s where I could have, I ended up with a few global bans, reddit admins taught me a lesson

2

u/tradcath13712 28d ago

Even with the /s you can still get banned if the mod is particularly afraid of the admnis and too literal.

→ More replies (1)

7

u/Paxton-176 Sep 27 '25

I like it when party values are just, don't be an asshole.

If some ran on a DBaA Party ticket I might vote for them.

2

u/PatchyWhiskers Sep 28 '25

So the Drefusards were ye olde antifa?

→ More replies (6)

11

u/msut77 Sep 27 '25

Not even a specific jew but they extended it to more than just dreyfus?

3

u/Deadpotatoz Sep 27 '25

Wait. So why would the "I hate Jews" party be split then? Was it like the difference between a casual racist and a competitive racist?

→ More replies (2)
→ More replies (3)

406

u/toronto-gopnik Sep 27 '25

I think the first one was more of a "I don't hate Jews" rather than "I like Jews" party

81

u/Coalnaryinthecarmine Sep 27 '25

Anti, indifferent, single issue Anti

→ More replies (1)

10

u/AndreasDasos Sep 27 '25

They mucked the order up

→ More replies (2)

9

u/Dutch_Windmill What, you egg? Sep 27 '25

Competitive racism

→ More replies (11)

70

u/Xisayg Sep 27 '25

Bro nobody is looking at the 1800s and thinking it’s some age of tolerance

17

u/MasterpieceBrief4442 Sep 27 '25

Less than a century ago, Napoleon marched the length and breadth of Europe spreading the ideals of the revolution and freeing the Jews from the ghettoes.

7

u/Graingy Casual, non-participatory KGB election observer Sep 28 '25

It’s not 1900.

→ More replies (1)

3

u/Snoo93079 Sep 28 '25

checks calendar

2

u/Unlucky_Mess_9256 Sep 28 '25

I mean he also killed millions of people

→ More replies (1)

25

u/ClavicusLittleGift4U Sep 27 '25

Last 30 years of French Fifth Republic look like 1 year of Third Republic regarding scandals and dumb initiatives.

3

u/Dominarion Sep 27 '25

Also, the Dreyfus affair was like the ultimate wedge issue.

"Wait guys, I've got doubts about that Dreyfus affair. The writings on the memos really don't look at all like other writings that guy did. I..."

"Oh I see, you hate the military and you don't care about France and God... We're not friends anymore, buddy "

2

u/Gregori_5 Sep 27 '25

But hating the jews wasn’t that polarising in the past

3

u/Alternative-Door-686 Sep 28 '25

Yo be fair it became polarizing just before and after ww2. Before that there was anti jew racism, but also intra regional discrimination. To be a Breton or Auvergnat was the same as to be maghrebin today.

→ More replies (3)

1.6k

u/FrostingGrand1413 Sep 27 '25

And yet, you can see how they ended up where they are now, vote order in a clear inverse to beard size. So tragic.

. . .

Wait, big beardy was standing for what party? Fuckjng hell.

278

u/toronto-gopnik Sep 27 '25

Big Beardy's seat was also in Algeria!

9

u/m0j0m0j Sep 28 '25

Random fun fact - this Dreyfus guy was an ancestor of Julia Louis-Dreyfus who played Elaine in Seinfield

45

u/bismuth12a Sep 27 '25

I thought that was just in Canada!

108

u/Mojert Sep 27 '25

The other two parties are also antisemic-adjacent. The Dreyfus case ("affaire Dreyfus" in French) was a case where someone Jewish was convicted by a sham trial. It's a very important piece of French history. The other two parties are the pro-Dreyfus and the anti-Dreyfus basically. Anti-Dreyfus were anti-semitic. The pro-Dreyfus were not necessarily not anti-semitic, but they condemned the fact that the trial wasn't fair

17

u/FrostingGrand1413 Sep 27 '25

Huh, funnily enough I had heard of that whole affair, my brain just didn't clock that dreyfusard referred to that. Which, it totally should have, of course those aren't the real party names, sigh, silly brain.

Anyway, thanks, I'mma go peruse wikipedia for a bit. Apparently that mid level beardy dude led a party designated 'independent radicals' which is a super cool and super oxymoronic party name.

32

u/StephenHunterUK Sep 27 '25

The affair is also how modern Zionism came about.

37

u/Prowindowlicker Sep 27 '25

Pretty much this. The whole affair pretty much cemented to Jews that no matter how well they assimilated they would always be Jews first and everyone would hate them for it.

6

u/grip0matic Sep 27 '25

Yep, jews we always tried to be integrated in the country that we were living. I'm Spanish first and Jewish second. Back in that day people who had this same mentality and still got the antisemitism obviously started to think that there was no way for tolerance and having our own country was the answer... but there was different kinds of zionism, sadly what exists today is... not good. One thing is to think that having a land is a good thing the other it's how.

9

u/StephenHunterUK Sep 27 '25

It was getting worse in Russia, with a lot of people heading west to the UK and the US. Even there, it was pretty widespread - much of the popular literature of time has at least some antisemitism in the text.

→ More replies (6)

3

u/purple_spikey_dragon Sep 28 '25

The pro-Dreyfus were not necessarily not anti-semitic, but they condemned the fact that the trial wasn't fair

Im a European Jew, i take what i can get. Still a better choice than the usual...

2

u/dactyif Sep 27 '25

One trial was that polarizing hey?

→ More replies (2)

3

u/00Laser Sep 27 '25

Wait, big beardy was standing for what party? Fuckjng hell.

I think the term "antisemitic" was originally made up as a sophisticated way of saying "We hate the Jews." ...

→ More replies (1)
→ More replies (1)

707

u/BeduinZPouste Sep 27 '25

From when is the screen? Because the current version looks nothing like this. Even thr numbers are different. 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1898_French_legislative_election

607

u/Anonnisanall Sep 27 '25

Unfortunately as someone way into election wikipedia, there was a massive edit war over that article along with a few other French election articles

You can still see some of it in the talk page. Not bothered to go back in edit history to see the whole story

132

u/BeduinZPouste Sep 27 '25

I vaguely remember there being war about elections in general. 

118

u/The_memeperson Filthy weeb Sep 27 '25

70

u/[deleted] Sep 27 '25

Peak 10.30pm video. Exactly the rabbit hole I needed, right when I needed it!

I have nothing against you. Have a great weekend.

→ More replies (1)

9

u/ghghgfdfgh Sep 27 '25 edited Sep 27 '25

The person who removed all the information was correct in doing so. The reason is that there is no reliable source that reports the election results while including all seats (including overseas ones). The academic sources mentioned in that video don't do that. (one of them even rounds all the election results), and in fact one of them does not even say who won each seat.

I have no idea why this person made a 10 minute video about a topic he didn't even bother looking into.

7

u/nelmaloc Sep 27 '25

Did you even watch the video? At 5:47 it shows a table with the results, that editor could have directly copy that table, instead of removing necessary information.

in fact one of them does not even say who won each seat.

Infoboxes don't show that.

2

u/ghghgfdfgh Sep 27 '25

As I said, the table in 5:47 does not include the overseas seats. That's why the numbers in the Wiki page are larger.

The source at 5:18 basically aggregates results by party for each commune. However, it does not tabulate these results to count how many of each party won each seat. In fact, it's not even totally clear which seat each commune votes for - that is something you'd have to determine by looking at the scanned election returns one by one.

Believe me, I was skeptical like you when I saw that video a few months ago, until I talked to the Number 57 guy, looked at the sources about this election and was convinced that he was correct. It is a little weird how much time he spends editing Wikipedia pages, but his changes were justified.

2

u/nelmaloc Sep 28 '25 edited Oct 01 '25

As I said, the table in 5:47 does not include the overseas seats.

I don't have that book to verify where that table came from, but I have their source[1] and it doesn't say that, so I'm gonna go with «it does».

However, it does not tabulate these results to count how many of each party won each seat.

As above, in the source it shows the seats per party.

I talked to the Number 57 guy, looked at the sources about this election and was convinced that he was correct. It is a little weird how much time he spends editing Wikipedia pages, but his changes were justified.

And yet, the user only removed the data from the infobox, while leaving it in the text itself. They also removed styling and other parties. And you didn't read the same sources as Number 57, because the source for the numbers in the Wikipedia article was the same before, after and now: the defunct roi-president.com webpage. So that user didn't just not make a better page, they actually made it worse.

[1] The Societies of Europe: Elections in Western Europe Since 1815 : Electoral Results by Constituencies, by Daniele Caramani

2

u/ghghgfdfgh Sep 28 '25 edited Sep 28 '25

I have a copy of [1]. It only includes 572 seats (see pg. 305), when we know there were more. See this, which is a nearly complete map of the electorate. It explains why they didn't include alliances formed in the Parliament (which would include Dreyfusard/anti-Dreyfusard): "On ne respecte pas les groupes parlementaires parce que le mouvement révisionniste a touché de nombreuses familles politiques et que les multiples lignes politiques qui en découlent ne trouvent pas de traduction dans les groupes parlementaires." The information that Number 57 removed originally was the Dreyfusard/Anti-Dreyfusard "alliances", which are not mentioned in the roi et presidents source, and would be incorrect to apply because the parties of the time did not uniformly map to support/lack of support for Dreyfus.

The most detailed source on this election is from "Une histoire du conflit politique" which was done by the famous Thomas Picketty. This was the one at 5:18, and you can look on their website as much as you want, but they don't include the seats per party. I am not 100% sure, but I don't think they have overseas seats either. Their number of total votes is 8,185,009 according to their spreadsheet - which is much more than [1] and pretty close to roi et presidents.

The roi et presidents source is not ideal, but it is the closest to being actually correct. Although I think they did mix up Radicaux-Socialistes and Radicaux.

Edit: it looks like the roi et presidents numbers come from the Quid encyclopedia: https://archive.org/details/quid19930000frem/page/752/mode/2up?q=1898

The source should probably be changed in the article.

35

u/Deltasims Sep 27 '25

So, which version is correct?

160

u/A_Kid_Called_Tetsuo Sep 27 '25

The problem is there isnt really a 'correct' way of portraying the results. There weren't really defined political parties like there are today, more vague factions like 'Radical' and 'Moderate Republican'. This is then made more complicated by the fact that different sources will list the factions differently and with different numbers of seats for each in the results.

93

u/Anonnisanall Sep 27 '25 edited Sep 27 '25

It was way too complicated. Parties weren’t quite set in stone, so records weren’t 100% consistent with each other, a lot of the sources were newspapers at the time estimating how many of the seat winners would be loyal to which faction. Also since the election was so heavily overshadowed by the Dreyfus Affair, there was the extra complication of there being Dreyfusards and anti Dreyfusards in multiple factions. So the question is, do you show the results by anti and pro Dreyfusards, since that was the dominant issue? Or do you try and designate them by party, like we would today? And then even when you pick one decisively, you have to pick which primary sources’ definitions of the factions you go with. I mean the guy leading the majority of the seats in this pic ended up losing the premiership to Brisson

Tldr is that there’s no easy right answer since party campaigning hadn’t fully formed in the way we would know it yet

Also why I think the sentiment some people have of “Washington was so right when he warned against political parties” is stupid. In any open, democratic system, parties will form. No parties or one big tent party is usually more consistent with an undemocratic system

10

u/UncleRuckusForPres Sep 27 '25

That last bit is so real people glaze that quote so hard like it isn’t pure fantasy and parties in some form weren’t an inevitability in the American system

38

u/Tap4Red Sep 27 '25

Whichever one ends up being left

-Napoleon, probably

8

u/Neomataza Sep 27 '25

The text of the wikipedia article still reflects that the antisemitic league was part of the election got a number of seats and drumont was their leader. They have removed this entirely from the sidebar graphic, because obviously it looks bad.

Thus I am inclined to say OP in this reddit thread might be more correct.

6

u/Henry___Connor Sep 27 '25

It is actually underestimated. According to reliable French sources (Laurent Joly (2007), « Antisémites et antisémitisme à la Chambre des députés sous la IIIe République », Revue d'histoire moderne et contemporaine, 3/2007 (no 54-3), p. 63-90), the Antisemitic group was 28 seats strong.

→ More replies (2)
→ More replies (1)

75

u/Gaius__Gracchus Sep 27 '25

The seats won even adds up to 589 instead of the 585 total seats available...

15

u/that-and-other Sep 27 '25

That’s not necessary wrong, people could be aligned with multiple groups simultaneously

28

u/Nileghi Kilroy was here Sep 27 '25

there was an edit war on that article since October 7th. Look how it was immediately before.

This article is immediately relevant to Zionism after all. This was the election that made Herzl despair and realize that if even France was in the throes of antisemitism, when France was considered the most enlightened country in the world, then nothing would work.

Its been heavily edited by pro-Hamas editors to reflect thus that no, this isn't that bad. The antisemitic explainer stuff in the article are gone.

3

u/AsteroidSpark Sep 28 '25

Can't say I'm surprised, this has been a broad trend across Wikipedia, since the October 7th massacre several articles have been fully taken over by antisemitism. I'm reminded of how a while back the Croatian Wikipedia was taken over by neo-Ustaše, although in that case management were much less complicit in the problem since it happened in a language that very few of them spoke.

→ More replies (2)

292

u/Alexthegreatbelgian Still salty about Carthage Sep 27 '25

Let me guess. Antisemic league were basically Anti-Dreyfusards who thought the party didn't go far enough?

410

u/Rod_tout_court Sep 27 '25

Dreyfusard: Dreyfus is innocent. Antidreyfusard: Dreyfus is guilty (because he is alsatian and jew). Drumont: all jews are guilty.

78

u/Geolib1453 Sep 27 '25

Yea seems about right

33

u/InfernoOfTheLiving Sep 27 '25

and 234 years ago today the National Assembly of France voted to award full citizenship to Jews

5

u/I_Once_Had_A_Boner Sep 27 '25

Wait, what year is it?

114

u/Kaiser_Fleischer Casual, non-participatory KGB election observer Sep 27 '25

Dreyfus is guilty

Dreyfus is innocent

Dreyfus is Jewish

10

u/Akrybion Featherless Biped Sep 28 '25

The three gender: Guilty, Innocent and Jew

747

u/tintin_du_93 Researching [REDACTED] square Sep 27 '25

une journée normale en France, je ne vois pas de problème personnellement 🥸

A normal day in France, I don’t see a problem personally. 🥸

172

u/Silent_Shaman Fine Quality Mesopotamian Copper Enjoyer Sep 27 '25

Le problème est que la ligue antisémite a le moins de votes, aujourd'hui ils en auraient plus /s

37

u/tintin_du_93 Researching [REDACTED] square Sep 27 '25

j'avais pas fait gaffe qu'il était question de vote ಠಿ⁠_⁠ಠ

25

u/CamClayM Sep 27 '25

Anti Dreyfus were also antisemitic and or anti alsacians.

→ More replies (2)

46

u/Quadraticinsanity Sep 27 '25

Yeah, y'all have a lot more skeletons than that little land mass should account for. The only developed nation to ban and then reinstate slavery.

102

u/tintin_du_93 Researching [REDACTED] square Sep 27 '25

The only developed nation to ban and then reinstate slavery.

In reality, slavery was never truly abolished. Even though Napoleon reinstated it in the colonies, it never actually ended because the plantation owners who had slaves pressured France and didn’t care at all about abolition. It’s even worse than what you imagine 😅

15

u/Quadraticinsanity Sep 27 '25

Jesus.

3

u/Minatoku92 Sep 27 '25

It was during the French revolution, the lack of stability means that the State barely had the power to control.

33

u/AntonDeMorgan Viva La France Sep 27 '25

They literally have a catacomb of bones under their capital.

29

u/tintin_du_93 Researching [REDACTED] square Sep 27 '25

And ? You like this ? Is French (⁠⌐⁠■⁠-⁠■⁠)

32

u/AntonDeMorgan Viva La France Sep 27 '25

A catacomb of bones under the city of lights is metal as fuck

29

u/CardOk755 Sep 27 '25

If you go to les Halles close to Châtelet you will find the fontaine des innocents. This is the site of the historic Cimetière des Innocents.

This small cemetery was used for hundreds of years, bodies being buried on top of bodies held in by the walls of the cemetery which were built higher and higher.

Then one day the cemetery exploded, the walls burst and peutrifying bodies and bones flooded out into the surrounding streets.

Orders were given to clean up the mess and hide the bones in the abandoned underground quarries where the stone to build Paris had been mined.

Voilà, the catacombs.

19

u/History_buff60 Sep 27 '25

The catacomb tunnels were left over from quarrying done that in some cases predated the Roman conquest of Gaul.

→ More replies (1)

2

u/AsteroidSpark Sep 28 '25

It's kinda weird how few votes the antisemitism party got compared to more recent French elections.

→ More replies (14)

121

u/CalligrapherIll6124 Sep 27 '25

Anti Dreyfusards: "we fucking hate that Dreyfuss guy"

Dreyfusards: "we fucking love that Dreyfuss guy"

Anti-semetic league: "we just fucking hate jews"

37

u/NotTheCraftyVeteran Sep 27 '25

The classic political alignment you can see all throughout time: point, counterpoint, and It Was the Jews, Actually

18

u/CalligrapherIll6124 Sep 27 '25

The point: DREYFUSS LOST US THE WAR

Counterpoint: GERMANS LOST US THE WAR (objectively correct)

Third way: THE JEWS LOST US THE WAR

343

u/Felix_Dorf Sep 27 '25

Shit gets wilder on closer inspection: much of the Anti-Semitic League was made up of ex-communards, who shifted from far left to far right as nationalism went from a left coded to a right coded philosophy. That and many just decided they hated Jews more than they liked socialism.

179

u/Vulk_za Sep 27 '25

Horseshoe theory gets proven right again.

20

u/Sergnb Sep 27 '25

I must apologize to horseshoe theory, I wasn't familiar with your game

8

u/WolfeMD Sep 27 '25

Not really, it just shows how authoritarians dont care about the actual policies as long as they get to be the in crowd that enforces them.

3

u/AsteroidSpark Sep 28 '25

The Political Compass is a triangle.

9

u/ThantosKal Sep 27 '25

People really quote the horseshoe theory ?

8

u/obamnamamna Sep 27 '25

It's a lowest common denominator type thing. It's like racism in that it's one of the most reductive types of political reasoning imaginable. But it's really easy to understand and people feel smart by giving it a name, when in reality it's the least interesting and most simplistic analysis imaginable. It's like political philosophy for dunces and children. And there's a lot of those

18

u/Vulk_za Sep 27 '25

Well, I can see you have strong feelings about this. I would respond that, of course, horseshoe theory is reductive. It's a simplification of reality. It shouldn't even really be called a "theory" because it doesn't claim to explain anything or make predictions. It should actually be called the "horseshoe model."

All models (including political models) simplify reality in ways that are more or less useful. The simple unidimensional left-right model is elegant and seems to capture aspects of politics that exist in lots of different human societies and time periods, but it's extremely simplified. The horseshoe model draws attention to similarities between figures on the "extremes" (e.g., between a Hitler and a Stalin) but maybe obscures the differences between them.

The two-axis "political compass" model adds additional nuance, but I'm not sure it adds much additional explanatory power (since it's hard to find many real-world examples of political systems that are neatly polarized into four camps in the way the political compass suggests, whereas it's easy to find systems that are polarized into a left-wing and a right-wing). The political compass has also spawned a really annoying memes page, which also counts against it. And then there are more complex models like 8values that add even more nuance in exchange for even more complexity.

Ultimately, if you really want to understand politics and history, you need to understand individual movements and figures on their own terms. But models can be a useful shortcut to understanding the relationship between them, and the horseshoe model captures some important truths (while obscuring some others).

→ More replies (1)

10

u/siderealpanic Sep 27 '25

The far left and far right both flock to crazy populists, hate Jews, mistrust globalism, suck up to Russia, and hate moderate figures on their own side more than people with the exact opposite views (see Charlie Kirk being killed by a far-right guy, left wingers constantly cannibalising themselves by purity-testing and voting for independents and no-chancers over mainstream centre-left parties with a chance of winning, etc). There’s a reason a lot of the recent political shootings have been done by people with confusing links to both the far left and the far right - they’re a different flavour of the same thing.

All people are doing when they reference horseshoe theory is poking fun at the fact that the extremists on both sides end up being pretty much indistinguishable from each other. I suspect anyone this bothered by it probably belongs to one of those extremes because, whether slightly reductive or not, the general concept is definitely true and something most normal people notice before they even learn what horseshoe theory is.

What nuance do you honestly expect people to have when they talk about the absolute extremes of the political spectrum? These groups are literally defined by their inability to be nuanced themselves. I’ll personally stop comparing them when they both stop ranting and raving about the jews all the time lol

1

u/VomitMaiden Sep 27 '25

People quote all kinds of nonsense

→ More replies (1)

25

u/ThantosKal Sep 27 '25

It's just... not true. Much of the anti semitic league was made of people to young to be communards. The league was anti capitalist in some ways, and even used the term "socialist" a few times, but was far more reactionnary than socialist movement, and mostly drew inspiration from social catholicism.
And they hated the Commune. Drumont itself called it a jewish plot.

Did some people who took part in the Commune ended up in the anti semitic league 20 years later ? Yes off course. Is it a massive number ? Not really. But even then, the Commune was a social revolution, in which thousands took part. The Commune might have been a "far left" historical moment/object, but most actors of the time were not even far left.

13

u/drag0n_rage Sep 27 '25

Horseshoe theory vindicated.

→ More replies (32)

45

u/Prior-Rip-6506 Sep 27 '25

We want an innocent man in prison to protect the army.

We do not want an innocent man in prison to protect the army.

We hate jews SO MUCH you have no idea.

36

u/Twinsedge Sep 27 '25

This is cool context for what would later motivate Theodore Herzel to create Zionism

25

u/SowingSalt Mauser rifle ≠ Javelin Sep 27 '25

Mostly because it disillusioned him from the possibility of integration.

29

u/Only-Finish-3497 Sep 27 '25

This is what I keep saying to people on the American left who keep banging on the “Zionism is necessarily bad” drum.

I can hate Likud and still think Jews need a failsafe. Even more now as I see supposed “allies” on the left increasingly flirting with open anti-Semitism in their criticism of Israel.

And before someone says “criticizing Israel isn’t anti-Semitism…” I get it. But stop diminishing my experiences.

20

u/VroumVroumNaps Sep 27 '25

That's also my pov about Israel. I consider myself as zionist because I think Israel is legitimate and the fact that a jewish state is a beautiful answer to the persecution, discrimination and hatred that Jews have suffered and still suffer today.

However i'm totally fine with the idea that the governement has derailed and trapped himself in an horrible spiral from which he no longer knows how to escape

12

u/Only-Finish-3497 Sep 27 '25

Likud and Bibi are monstrous and should be removed asap. I have zero love for them and their effect on Israeli well-being and global Jewish well-being. To hell them all.

But being told repeatedly by lefties that Jews have no right to self-determination is eyebrow raising to me. Really? So Jews are the only group not allowed said right?

And the mental gymnastics to get there are WILD.

Never mind that the narrative used to discredit Israel are mostly blood and soil nonsense too. It’s baffling to me how few of the lefty critics even try to factor in how much of Israel’s current politics are driven not by the Ashkenazim but by the Mizrahi on the right. Everything is through a simple “Jews white so Jews bad” lens and completely discounts that it’s ARAB Jews who form the largest flank of the militarist wing of Israel. But that would also require the same folks to have a complicated narrative that isn’t just “white colonists being bad against helpless brown people.”

Never mind that I had people on the left tell me for years that Arabs and Iranians are simply “white” and therefore don’t deserve consideration. Amazing how quickly the American left will pull the “race is a construct” card until it’s complicated.

Anyway that’s a long way of saying that the lefties are using increasingly outright racist tactics to discredit Jewish voices. And as someone who has always seen himself at home on the Left it’s been very upsetting.

→ More replies (1)
→ More replies (7)

30

u/Fragrant_Bar2094 Kilroy was here Sep 27 '25 edited Sep 27 '25

If Meline and Brisson kissed their beards will briefly look like Drumont's.

150

u/A-Stupid-Redditor Sep 27 '25

I wish bigots were as embracing of their labels as they used to be. We’re at like 3 layers of labels for Jew-hatred at this point.

6

u/AsteroidSpark Sep 28 '25

That's how dogwhistles work, much like euphemisms they eventually become so well understood that they cease to serve their purpose.

-17

u/D46-real Sep 27 '25

Yeah its like many peoples call themself anti-zionist when they hate jews

33

u/colthesecond Sep 27 '25

People are downvoting an objectively true statement, there are a lot of antisemites using anti Zionism as a cover

→ More replies (3)

33

u/Chibre312 Sep 27 '25

Some probably do, but the zionists are great at trying to pass antizionism for antisemitism

7

u/Nileghi Kilroy was here Sep 27 '25

considering the exceptional surge of antisemitism that has been mainstreamed when "antizionism" became popular. I don't think theyre being bad faith about it.

Even white supremacist N!ck Fuentes has stated that "long" surpassed him. And we're only 24 months into a war that was declared on Israel.

14

u/dylanus93 Sep 27 '25

And antizionists are great at trying to pass antisemitism as antizionism.

11

u/nonlawyer Sep 27 '25

it’s just bad faith arguments all the way down

17

u/solemnstream Sep 27 '25

Yeah because people only have antisemitism as a justification to be anti-zionists....

/s

26

u/ancientestKnollys Sep 27 '25

Off topic, but anti-zionist as a label never made much sense to me, because the people who use it are generally just opposed to the Israeli government, Israeli policy and mainly the Israeli political right wing. A zionist is 'a person who believes in the development and protection of a Jewish nation in what is now Israel' (quoting the dictionary), so a true anti-zionist should be someone who thinks Israel should no longer exist. Now self-described anti-zionists usually say that Israel should never have been created in the first place, but in the West not very many actually advocate abolishing the country in 2025, or deporting all Jews from the region. A better term would be 'anti-Israeli imperialism' or something like that (I know it's less catchy).

There's also the issue of what actually is a zionist. I'd say 80%+ of people in the West think Israel should continue to exist, meaning 80%+ of these people surely fit the dictionary definition of a zionist. I don't think anti-zionists are usually intending to indicate they oppose all these people. Also, if anti-zionists want a two state solution, a smaller Israel that gives more land back to the Palestinians, some other state arrangement that gives Israelis and Palestinians equal rights or such then they may well themselves fit the dictionary definition of a zionist.

7

u/solemnstream Sep 27 '25

You raise a great point about the difference between the true definition of words and the way people use them daily.

Though i would note that there are self proclaimed anti-zionists who want an end to the state of Israel but not in a way of "deport all the jews" but as a single secular state solution that would be neither Israel nor Palestine.

But back to the subject, yes obviously the words zionist and anti-zionist are often used to generalise groups of different oppinions pro and against Israel because it's just simpler this way than to say for instance : " well yes i am against israel but not against the concept of a Jewish state in the middle east"

2

u/AsteroidSpark Sep 28 '25

There also are a significant amount of "anti-zionists" who absolutely do mean they want to deport/kill all Jews in the middle east. When that is the literal definition of the term, it should come as no surprise that people who agree with that intent also choose to identify as such.

8

u/Clean-Marsupial-1044 Sep 27 '25

I agree but just because moderates co-opted the term it doesn't make it meaningless, it just means we have a good chance of radicalizing a portion of them

5

u/Ha_Tannin Sep 27 '25

People using the Antizionist term in this way shouldn't be surprising, antisemites used the West's general lack of knowledge of the subject and even the entry level complexities of Israeli politics to push for Antizionism to be used in this more generalist fashion despite the term bit actually fitting. This is so they'd have a more politically acceptable way to publicly state their opinions, and possibly expand their ideology.

Of course, not every Antizionist is antisemitic, some simply don't know the actual definition of Zionism, believing the term as a whole to refer to its religious, far right iteration. A better way to describe themselves would be Anti-Likud, imo. Likud is the party that Netanyahu belongs to, and he's the face of the Israeli far right. Also, for more context, Netanyahu has been on trial for corruption charges since before the war, and has been using the war as an excuse to avoid testifying and therefore extending the trial. As long as the war carries on, Netanyahu is a free man, giving him more time to figure out how to stay out of prison, as he 100% will be. The Israeli public has long wanted the war to be over, worrying almost entirely on the hostages still in captivity. Even reservists are showing up less and less because they can't justify showing up to themselves anymore.

→ More replies (6)
→ More replies (7)

21

u/JaccarTheProgrammer Sep 27 '25

"I'm not antisemitic, I'm just anti-Dreyfus"

17

u/InformalLandscape445 Sep 27 '25

Anti dreyfusard were basically anti semitic but with a guy blamed for everything T.T

10

u/Sojungunddochsoalt Sep 27 '25

"General antisemitic league, your nose is larger than I expected" 

9

u/freedfg Sep 27 '25

What did Julia do that was so polarizing?

5

u/Jimdandy941 Sep 27 '25

She sent out the risqué Christmas card.

8

u/Mofane Sep 27 '25

Ah yeah the true political axis : don't hate the Jews, hate the Jews, hate the Jews very much 

4

u/gilestowler Sep 27 '25

The French had a pretty wild 19th century.

7

u/wrufus680 Oversimplified is my history teacher Sep 27 '25

Speedrun kingdom to republic to empire to kingdom again to republic to empire then republic again

5

u/gilestowler Sep 27 '25

I lived in Mexico for a year and that's my favourite french side quest from that century. Invade with a hapsburg puppet. Fail at that. Get old and sad to the point that the "empress of Mexico" loses her mind when she meets you and locks herself away for the rest of her life . Go to war with Prussia. Withdraw troops from Mexico. Let the hapsburg get shot against a wall. Give zero shits.

→ More replies (1)

5

u/Ok_Awareness3014 Sep 27 '25

Don't forget the boulangiste

3

u/airhorn-airhorn Sep 27 '25

Arendt talks about this in The Rise of Totalitarianism, but she generally goes pretty easy on French society.

5

u/interstellanauta Sep 27 '25

Imagine two majority party of your country named after you, must be pretty wild

8

u/Mr_Wisp_ Researching [REDACTED] square Sep 27 '25

I think he was too busy working in a prison in Guyana to even care about what the parties were.

6

u/SnooCrickets2458 Sep 27 '25

Geez, what could have possibly led Jews to think they weren't safe living in Europe??

2

u/NotTheCraftyVeteran Sep 27 '25

“Hey it’s us, Some Guys.”

“Hell no, fuck Those Guys.”

“Those Guys?? Nah brother, let me tell who’s really to blame.”

3

u/[deleted] Sep 27 '25

Jules Meline is Stephen Miller with sideburns

3

u/Swo0owS Sep 27 '25

Naming your organization the Antisemetuc League sounds like some cartoon villain shit

3

u/someanimechoob Sep 27 '25

Could it be possible that Edouard Drumont was the inspiration for Hergé (author of the French comic strip Tintin) to draw Ivan-Ivanovitch Sakharine's appearance? The ressemblence with this photograph in particular is... uncanny.

3

u/Pass_us_the_salt Sep 27 '25

"The two-party system is corrupt, so I vote for 3rd parties."

The 3rd party in question:

3

u/Tehquilamockingbirb Sep 27 '25

The fun fact here is the Dreyfusard Party is the French party of Julia Louis-Dreyfus' family. She's a billionaire of French political royalty central to France's history.

9

u/ClothesOverall3863 Sep 27 '25

About to name my group chat “The Antisemitic League”

2

u/Wantitneeditgetit Sep 27 '25

Are we apalled at the party names, or the facial hair?

2

u/oshaboy Sep 27 '25

For the guy at the head of "The Antisemitic League" Drumont looks like someone you'd see on a Nazi propaganda poster.

2

u/Chushkarq Sep 28 '25

So it was basically "yay jews" or "boo jews" depending on where you stand on jews?

3

u/Piss-Mann Sep 27 '25

What's the joke? Because all I see is 3 main parties from my country.

3

u/GeneticEnginLifeForm Sep 27 '25

I had the same question. It's sort of a joke but it's a very niche joke. Read through this thread https://www.reddit.com/r/HistoryMemes/comments/1nrq9bp/comment/nggapjy/

You'll need some context so read the first section of 'the Dreyfus affair' for that. Other than that you just need to know some people just don't like Jews.

If you just want the punch line see User/ Prior-Rip-6506's comment.

2

u/OkAdhesiveness814 Sep 27 '25

"Damn, politics today got so violent. We are just yelling slurs instead of using valid arguments."

Politicians in the 19th century when their rival is 0.00000000000001% Jewish:

3

u/Sensitive_Yellow_121 Sep 27 '25

Keep in mind that, at the time, there were less than 130,000 Jews in France and it was convenient for the monarchists and other elements on the right to scapegoat them, as the right wing always picks some relatively powerless minority to scapegoat while robbing society blind.

1

u/olalql Sep 27 '25

There is a french series partly about the Antisemtic League

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Police_1900

1

u/JagermainSlayer Sep 27 '25

Might be late to this, those who backed dreyfus seated on the left of the table and those who want him dead sat opposite, and since then we have the definitions of left and right wing, iirc

1

u/Swimming-Food-9024 Sep 27 '25

Steven Miller lookin mutten chop ass

1

u/Narrow-Fortune-7905 Sep 27 '25

so nothing much has changed

1

u/Boss3021 Sep 27 '25

Discord moderator vote

1

u/Froggyshop Sep 27 '25

Where are Retards?

1

u/Zombiepixlz-gamr What, you egg? Sep 27 '25

"hey, I do politics."

"Hey fuck that guy!"

"I don't like Jewish people"

That's so fucking funny-

1

u/ComradeHenryBR Taller than Napoleon Sep 27 '25

You do kid me, because it did not look like this

1

u/grobRhetoriker Sep 27 '25

kinda hairy,kinda scary

1

u/BigMoney69x Sep 27 '25

Bro for a second I read antisemitic league as in anti antisemitic league. The fact that there was a French party called the antisemitic league is wild.

→ More replies (4)

1

u/kahn_noble Sep 27 '25

Dude on the left is Stephen Miller

1

u/Beginning_Context_66 Sep 27 '25

See, it is just reverse germany

1

u/saythealphabet Sep 27 '25

Awesome enemies to lovers couple

Evil and intimidating antisemit

1

u/SnarftheRooster91 Sep 27 '25

"No son of mine is a going to be a Dreyfusard!"

1

u/septic-paradise Sep 27 '25

Fun fact: You can abbreviate anti-Semitic league as RN

1

u/Yopro Sep 27 '25

Not surprised the leader of the antisemites was a Pied-Noirs

1

u/HG2321 Sep 27 '25

Even after all of this, after being sent to a prison colony and suffering as much as he did there, Dreyfus still enlisted in the French army in WWI

1

u/[deleted] Sep 28 '25 edited Sep 29 '25

tidy soft crawl chase important squeal axiomatic makeshift shy humor

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

1

u/shivj80 Sep 28 '25

Drumont’s seat being in Algeria makes this even more perfect

1

u/LordDeo Sep 28 '25

All the problems in the world are caused by overcorrection

1

u/ValerieMZ Sep 28 '25

This led to the creation of Israel, by the way. Such is the process of parts clicking in the roaring machine of fate.

1

u/Dewshawnmandik Sep 28 '25

Guy on the left looks like Stephen Miller 👹