Should we appoint Captain Dreyfus general posthumously? Not in principle, but perhaps for this particular case, Emmanuel Macron positioned himself on Tuesday evening, during a “Protestant dinner” after the inauguration of the Alfred Dreyfus museum in the Zola House in Médan.
“Is it up to the President of the Republic to make Dreyfus a general today?” My answer in principle would be no ”, first replied the Head of State, questioned by the Chief Rabbi of France Haim Korsia on this way of“ repairing ”the Dreyfus affair.
Avoid a wave of revisionism
“For a first reason, which would be to avoid trouble,” he smiled. For a second, more profound, which is that we would then open a possibility for the President of the Republic to restore or degrade anyone depending on the time. Because tomorrow I would have requests from such and such to degrade generals who participated in colonization or in such and such a war ”. “The great risk is to revisit the military hierarchy or history, with today’s perspective,” continued the Head of State, during a question-and-answer session with the audience. .
“But the difficulty with the Dreyfus case is that you base your remarks on an irrefutable reality which is to reconstitute the career that we have suspended”, nuance Emmanuel Macron. “When hatred comes out of its bed in a society, it takes a long time to come back to it, it suffices to see the years that Dreyfus lived afterwards: forbidden to participate in the pantheonization of Zola, we shoot him and we whitewash the author of the shooting ”, he noted, recognizing a“ singular case ”.
A subject since 2019
“But it is undoubtedly the military institution, in a dialogue with the representatives of the French people, which can do it, more than the president as a sovereign decision, as a fact of the prince. I think it would be inappropriate. “The position of the Head of State seemed as firm as it was neutral, before concluding:” But in pectore [dans mon cœur], it is, the chief of the armies that I am can tell you that ”.
In July 2019, the Minister of the Armed Forces Florence Parly had already opened the door to a promotion of Alfred Dreyfus. “120 years later, there is still time for the Armies to give Alfred Dreyfus all the honor and all the years that have been taken from him. And I will take care of it personally, ”she announced. LR MP Eric Ciotti then said he was in favor of his promotion to the rank of general.