How to tell the story of Anti-Semitism and Intellectuals who Challenge it: Reflecting on reading Michael Rosen’s (2017) ‘The Disappearance of Émile Zola: Love, Literature and the Dreyfus Case’ London, Faber & Faber.

How to tell the story of Anti-Semitism and Intellectuals who Challenge it: Reflecting on reading Michael Rosen’s (2017) The Disappearance of Émile Zola: Love, Literature and the Dreyfus Case London, Faber & Faber.

This is a book with far larger themes than can be imagined before we not only read it but reflect on it. I have always admired Michael Rosen as before him I admired his father Harold Rosen. This is a family embedded in the cultural and intellectual life not only of Great Britain but of socialism conceived as a European tradition.

During the 2019 election, Michael Rosen was highly prominent on social media, challenging anti-Semitism but also challenging large unspecified claims against some on the left who were being called anti-Semitic with very little evidence. He challenged in particular the Anti-semitism Tsar, Lord John Mann, who had appeared, to many of us on the left…