The Origins of Totalitarianism (Penguin Modern Classics)

by Hannah Arendt

And all accounts agree that if Zola, when once charged, had been acquitted he would never have left the courtroom alive. The cry, ‘Death to the Jews,’ swept the country. In Lyon, Rennes, Nantes, Tours, Bordeaux, Clermont-Ferrant, and Marseille – everywhere, in fact – antisemitic riots broke out and were invariably traceable to the same source. Popular indignation broke out everywhere on the same day and at precisely the same hour.fn75 Under the leadership of Guérin the mob took on a military complexion. Antisemitic shock troops appeared on the streets and made certain that every pro-Dreyfus meeting should end in bloodshed. The complicity of the police was everywhere patent.