“The society which has abolished every kind of adventure makes its own abolition the only possible adventure.” Paris, May 1968


Monday 2 December 2013

Time For Outrage.

Someone gave me a copy of Stephane Hessel's little pamphlet. It escaped me when it was first published but is credited with being a prime motivator for the Occupy Movement. Hessler was 93 when he wrote this and had had what you might call a full life. A true hero of the Resistance he twice escaped from the Nazis having endured torture and the dreadful conditions of Buchenwald.  After the war Hessel was involved in the drafting of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and throughout his long life remained an outspoken defender of the oppressed. What surprised me about Time For Outrage was not that this old fighter was able to so eloquently equate today's anti-capitalism with the struggles of the Resistance or that Hessel in his advanced years could still proclaim , "To create is to resist - To resist is to create". No, what amazes me is that this little pamphlet should have topped the bestseller list in France. I fear that a UK equivalent would have sold a couple of hundred with the rest of the print run gathering dust in Houseman's. C'est la vie.

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