File Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words - 1

File - Essay Example For a long time, those who supported Dreyfus had not been able to make any objections but the publication of Zola’s article gave them the much needed boost to challenge the affair. The emergence of two opposing camps definitely had a great impact on the Third Republic. It is rather hard to determine when the Dreyfusard camp came into existence. The truth is that a large section of public opinion, together with a large section of intellectuals, politicians, journalists and writers were sure that Dreyfus was guilty by the time his trial came into an end in 1894. If anything, the court had declared him guilty and the newspapers had broadcasted this guilty sentence. Even though individuals such as Zola were dismayed by the anti-Semitism direction that the trial had taken in dying years of 1894, no one came out publicly to challenge the outcome of the sentence. In addition to this, from the moment that Dreyfus had been arrested, a very small number of individuals were convinced of his innocence. After the conviction, several individuals led by Edgar Demange, a criminal lawyer soon began to see the conviction as a case of racial profiling. Upon the passage of the guilty verdict, Demange held a press conference where he declared that the incarceration wa s a judicial mistake. On the other hand, the anti-Dreyfusard’s were the individuals who were convinced that Dreyfus was guilty of the charges brought against him and was therefore fit to be in prison. For the Dreyfusard’s, their main issue at the beginning of the affair was calling for a revision of the issue. At first, revisionism only meant for the review of Dreyfus sentence but with the passage of time it generated into a larger fight against anti-Semitism, militarism, nationalism, and conservatism. In later years, revision turned into a call for the change in ideology. As the movement grew, Dreyfusard’s started addressing the issue of French anti-Semitism that had not been