John Galliano, Anti-Semitism, and the Power of Words

In just days, one of the greatest names in modern fashion has seen his reputation scrambled, from cheeky enfant terrible to accused bigot.

Last Thursday night, John Galliano, Christian Dior's star designer, was drinking at the Paris watering hole and fashionista favorite La Perle, when he allegedly tore into a 35-year-old gallery owner named Geraldine Bloch. He's accused of calling her an "ugly Jew face" with bad eyebrows and cheap boots and threatening her friend with equally noxious epithets (the friend, apparently, is Asian).

At first, Galliano was simply suspended from the House of Dior, where he has worked the runway since 1996, pending an investigation. The French police, who briefly took Galliano into custody following a complaint filed by Bloch, said Galliano's blood-alcohol level was alarmingly high.

Reuters reported Thursday that French prosecutors have charged Galliano with making racist comments to three people -- in two separate incidents. If found guilty he could face up to six months in prison and a fine of 22,500 euros (about $31,000).

"The House of Dior confirms, with the greatest firmness, its policy of zero tolerance for any anti-Semitic or racist comments," Dior CEO, Sidney Toledano, told the press.

LICRA (The International League Against Hatred and Anti-Semitism) applauded the move by Dior. "The message of zero-tolerance in the face of racism and anti-Semitism addressed by the CEO of Dior, Sidney Toledano, is important because LVMH [Louis Vuitton-Moët Hennessey, Dior's parent group] has the attention of public opinion."

In a statement released Wednesday by his lawyers, Galliano said, "Anti-Semitism and racism have no part in our society. I unreservedly apologize for my behavior in causing any offence." But he added that he had been "subjected to verbal harassment and an unprovoked assault when an individual tried to hit me with a chair having taken violent exception to my look and my clothing" at the Paris bar.

"For these reasons," The statement said , "I have commenced proceedings for defamation and the threats made against me."

Published reports also indicated that Galliano has or will soon enter rehab.

SOS Racisme, a French group that combats hate speech and action, didn't buy the designer's defense. "Mr. Galliano seems to have added to the ignominy of his words the cowardice of a [weak] denial," the group said in a statement.

Dior moved to dismiss the designer soon after a grainy cell-phone video surfaced Monday. The video, reportedly made several months ago and first posted on the website of the U.K. tabloid The Sun, appears to show a slurring Galliano at a bar professing his love for Hitler and saying the woman he was talking to "should be dead" and that her parents and grandparents would have been "[expletive] gassed." The reference, should it not be obvious, is to the killing of Jews during the Holocaust.

Actress Natalie Portman, the Jerusalem-born Jew who just became the next face of Miss Cherie Dior perfume, issued a statement late Monday, saying she was "deeply shocked and disgusted by the video." She added, "As an individual who is proud to be Jewish, I will not be associated with Mr. Galliano in any way." She said she hoped the incident would "remind us to reflect and act upon combating these still-existing prejudices that are the opposite of all that is beautiful."

Racist and anti-Semitic remarks are punishable with jail time in France. The zero-tolerance policy at Dior is actually reflective of a society-wide, post-Holocaust anxiety about the power of words. Denying the Holocaust, for example, is illegal in several countries, including Germany, France and Austria, where the punishment can be as high as 20 years in jail. By clamping down, there is some sense that the rise of racially movitivated right-wing extremism can be contained.

But laws and policies have not stopped anti-Semitism. In the U.K., the Simon Wiesenthal Center recently reported a steady increase in anti-Semitic incidents over the last 25 years. In 2009, anti-Semitic incidents in France rose 75 percent from the previous year to a total of 839, according to the most recent statistics. That was after a brief dip -- though there has never been a clean year. Sometimes the incidents are small, sometimes not. In 2006 a young Jewish man named Ilan Halemi was kidnapped and murdered; his death was ruled an anti-Semitic act and thousands marched against bigotry in his name.

Anton Pelinka is a professor of political science and nationalism studies at the Central European University in Budapest and director of the Institute of Conflict Research in Vienna. He told me a few years ago: "Europe has to be much more careful [than the United States] with respect to right-wing extremism, and for that reason, right-wing extremists claim to be something else -- they claim to be much more moderate than they are in reality."

But does "careful" mean that thinking has really changed? Has anti-Semitism disappeared simply because it is illegal to express it? It has not.

Old epithets often bubble up. Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the head of the International Monetary Fund, is often mentioned as a potential successor to French president Nicolas Sarkozy. Yet the strike against him is that he "doesn't represent the French people." It is a phrase, many on the left in France believe, that is meant to ever so subtly nudge at his Jewishness. He doesn't represent "le terroir"-- the French soil. Le monde reported that the word "juif" -- Jew -- and Dominique Strauss-Kahn come up often in Google searches -- as though his heritage were a "preoccupation" of the French people.

What is shocking about the Galliano case is not what he's accused of saying -- such words are often uttered -- but that it involves someone who is supposed to "know better." Someone we liked. Someone we might have wanted to know, or so we thought. It shows that laws or no laws, hate still bubbles up.

As Alana Newhouse, editor of the online Jewish magazine Tablet wrote in a mock-letter to the ADL:

Dear ADL,

I'll give up Sheen and Gibson, but can I keep Galliano? Pretty please? He didn't mean it, I swear. He's just . . . British.

Signed,

Alana