In his latest Bastiat’s Window post, Bob Graboyes explores a very interesting connection — between Émile Zola’s J’Accuse and the talk that writer Bari Weiss gave recently to a Federalist Society gathering.
He begins,
125 years ago, Émile Zola’s open letter, “J’Accuse…!”, ripped the scabs off the skin of France and revealed the festering pus beneath; a week ago, Bari Weiss’s speech, “You Are the Last Line of Defense”, did the same for today’s America. I can’t say whether Weiss’s speech will attain the immortality of Zola’s letter, but it ought to. Attorney/blogger Ilya Shapiro attended the speech and called it “Bari Weiss’s Speech for the Ages.” The parallels between Zola’s letter and Weiss’s speech are sufficient that I have taken to calling the latter “J’Accuse 2023.”
The parallels are indeed striking.
Here’s a sample:
Both said antisemitism is always a symptom, never the disease
ZOLA: “It is a crime to mislead public opinion, to use this opinion which has been perverted to the point of delirium for a death task. It is a crime to poison the small and the humble, to exasperate the passions of reaction and intolerance, by sheltering behind the odious anti-Semitism, of which the great liberal France of human rights will die, if she is not cured of it. It is a crime to exploit patriotism for works of hate, and it is a crime, finally, to make the saber the modern god, when all human science is at work for the next work of truth and justice.”
WEISS: “[T]he proliferation of antisemitism, as always, is a symptom. … When antisemitism moves from the shameful fringe into the public square, it is not about Jews. It is never about Jews. It is about everyone else. It is about the surrounding society or the culture or the country. It is an early warning system—a sign that the society itself is breaking down. That it is dying.”
I recommend reading the whole thing. Share it with any leftists you might know who have an even slightly open mind to the terrible damage that’s being done to our society by “progressive” educators.