Antisémitisme d'État

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State antisemitism is a concept associated with Charles Maurras. He argued it is political, not biological or religious, and tried to distinguish it from racial antisemitism.

Maurras viewed France as containing four “confederated states”—Jewish, Protestant, Freemason, and foreign—and he wanted to limit their influence. He believed a Jewish “problem” existed because Jews, in his view, supported Palestine more than France. He thought some Jews were loyal to France (the “good Jews” who fought in World War I) while others harmed national interests.

He rejected racial antisemitism as immoral and incompatible with Catholic teaching and French nationalism. He said the state should curb Jewish influence in areas like public administration and education, but it should not physically or religiously persecute Jews. Maurras denounced biological antisemitism as a moral evil and argued for a distinction between political antisemitism and racist ideologies.

After the Holocaust, Maurras still argued for state antisemitism but with changes. He acknowledged the Nazi crimes and said France should have protected its Jewish citizens. Some Jewish members of Action Française, such as René Groos and Louis Latzarus, supported him. He distinguished between assimilated “well-born” Jews and foreign Jews, and he admired Catholicism as a stabilizing force, even though he was agnostic. His plan focused on limiting Jewish influence in secular life rather than converting or persecuting them.

In current historical discussion, scholars debate how to study Maurras’s ideas. Laurent Joly criticizes methods that rely mainly on printed sources and neglect context, arguing that antisemitism existed in France before Action Française and spanned both left and right. Huguenin notes that some historians try to neutralize the antisemitic aspects of Maurras’s thought and points to earlier antisemitic ideas in figures like Voltaire, Marx, Jaurès, and Clemenceau.

Michel Dreyfus also references Alphonse Toussenel’s 1845 work linking Jews to banking stereotypes, arguing that antisemitism appeared across socialist and anarchist thought as well.