In fact, the period was profoundly marked by that [Dreyfus] Affair: it gave rise to a confused turmoil in which a revolutionary cat would have had great difficulty identifying her kittens! The root cause of it all was the unjust conviction of a captain, (a millionaire and son of a millionaire in the francs of the day) on account of his Jewish faith. Many anarchists let themselves be dragged into this questionable episode; Sébastien Faure even set up a daily newspaper with the backing of Jewish capital, and good comrades wrote for it. It is questionable whether libertarians seized upon the issue the better to attack and discredit the army, the very army whose commanders had waded deep in the blood of the Communards. This, it was a sort of revenge from beyond the grave, albeit in a very roundabout fashion. But let us move on.
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from Alexandre Skirda, Facing the Enemy: A History of Anarchist Organization from Proudhon to May 1968, translated Paul Sharkey. (Edinburgh & Oakland: AK Press, 2002), p 70 footnote 5.
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