Au nom des valeurs républicaines et de la mémoire des leurs. Les militants de la laïcité face à l'affaire Finaly

Abstract

As soon as the beginning of 1953, the Finaly affair gave rise to a burst of articles and satirical cartoons in the secularist and anticlerical press, among which the harshest were those of La Calotte and Le Canard enchaine. Their authors denounced the permanency of behaviors inherited from medieval anti-Judaism and the anti-Semitism of the XIXth century (the Mortara affair), a contradiction to their benefits of the French Revolution as concerns freedom of conscience and equality, an international catholic plot, the taking over of the still fresh Nazi persecutions. Far beyond the caustic exultation of insults and satirical cartoons, can be underlined here one of the misadventures of the multisecular fight between the spirit of the Age of Enlightment and that of Faith, totally impenetrable one by the other. Freemasonry described it as a sign of the decay of a republican government unable to make its decisions respected. In the press the stir died down as rapidly as it was aroused ; Franc-Tireur alone, which had refused to admit that the rescue of children could bestow some sort of power upon them, persisted in its concern about the Finaly children.