The following is from the Indpednent but other papes have covered the story:
Take a book of just 13 pages, written by a relatively obscure 93-year-old man, which contains no sex, no jokes, no fine writing and no startlingly original message. A publishing disaster? No, a publishing phenomenon.
Indignez vous! (Cry out!), a slim pamphlet by a wartime French resistance hero, St?©phane Hessel, is smashing all publishing records in France. The book urges the French, and everyone else, to recapture the wartime spirit of resistance to the Nazis by rejecting the "insolent, selfish" power of money and markets and by defending the social "values of modern democracy".
The book, which costs €3, has sold 600,000 copies in three months and another 200,000 have just been printed. Its original print run was 8,000. In the run-up to Christmas, Mr Hessel's call for a "peaceful insurrection" not only topped the French bestsellers list, it sold eight times more copies than the second most popular book, a Goncourt prize-winning novel by Michel Houellebecq.
As the Independent notes
As a political tract, the book contains no especially original analysis of the world's problems.
"They dare to tell us that the State can no longer afford policies to support its citizens," Mr Hessel says. "But how can money be lacking ... when the production of wealth has enormously increased since the Liberation (of France), at a time when Europe was ruined? The only explanation is that the power of money ... has never been so great or so insolent or so selfish and that its servants are placed in the highest reaches of the State."
The originality of the book is the suggestion that an organised "Resistance" is now called for, just like in 1940. "We, veterans of the resistance ... call on young people to revive and pass on the heritage and ideals of the Resistance," the book says.
But:
How people should resist the power of money and the markets — by peaceful means, the book insists — is not made entirely clear.
The Independent selected the following key messages from the text:
* "I would like everyone — everyone of us — to find his or her own reason to cry out. That is a precious gift. When something makes you want to cry out, as I cried out against Nazism, you become a militant, tough and committed. You become part of the great stream of history ... and this stream leads us towards more justice and more freedom but not the uncontrolled freedom of the fox in the hen-house."
* "It's true that reasons to cry out can seem less obvious today. The world appears too complex. But in this world, there are things we should not tolerate... I say to the young, look around you a little and you will find them. The worst of all attitudes is indifference..."
* "The productivist obsession of the West has plunged the world into a crisis which can only be resolved by a radical shift away from the 'ever more', in the world of finance but also in science and technology. It is high time that ethics, justice and a sustainable balance prevailed..."
So what's this all about? You could dismiss it as romanticism, but that would be wrong, I am sure. This is about the fact that a person has had the courage to say "It is high time that ethics, justice and a sustainable balance prevailed..." and a great many agree.
Tr?®s bon, I say. Because the message is right.
But I would reiterate that opposition must be by peaceful means.
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“But I would reiterate that opposition must be by peaceful means.”…. but can you reiterate with certainty that the opposition to the opposition will be by peaceful means.
I am increasingly concerned that the ‘Maoist’ tendency of the Conservative government is not in just in the speed and abandon that they are dismantling the Welfare state….. some young advocates of this government hector and bully at public meetings reminiscent of ways that Godwin prevents me from describing. I hope that I am unnecessarily pessimistic.
@Syzygy
I hope you are unnecessarily pessimistic…..
Leave Mao out of it. The nearer analogue is Ceaucescu’s Romania – because the priority (cut debts, no matter how much it wrecked people’s lives) is the same, as is the thuggish behaviour of its supporters.
On non-violence: have a look at this. What the article doesn’t mention is that when the Nazis forced the wearing of yellow stars on Jews, some Zazous started wearing them too – except theirs said “Jazz” in the middle of the star, not “Juif”.
James in Jersey
“some young advocates of this government hector and bully at public meetings reminiscent of ways that Godwin prevents me from describing. I hope that I am unnecessarily pessimistic.”
@Syzygy, do you have personal experience of this, or a link to news about this? Reading about the behaviour of Tea Party “activists” in the States this wouldn’t surprise me at all. The right over there and here haven’t accepted the moral and intellectual bankruptcy of their position, because they either never cared about it, or they are, as I’ve said before, the kind of people who are only interested in winning, by whatever means necessary.
So they try to drown out debate (both actuial and web based), physically intimidate, lie, tell half truths and use every trick in the propogandists book that they can get their hands on. Like every other fanatic in history, you are either with them or against them.