In France, a "little red book" calls out for a new "resistance"

The little red book that swept France

 

The latest call to (non-violent) arms has turned a 93-year-old war hero into a publishing phenomenon. John Lichfield reports

 

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/the-little-red-book-that-swept-france-2174676.html

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, Stéphane 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.

The extraordinary success of the book can be interpreted in several ways.
Its low price and slender size - 29 pages including blurbs and notes but
just 13 pages of text - has made it a popular stocking-filler among
left-wing members of the French chattering classes. Bookshops report many
instances of people buying a dozen copies for family and friends.

But Mr Hessel and his small left-wing publisher (which is used to print
runs in the hundreds) say that he has evidently struck a national, and
international nerve, at a time of market tyranny, bankers' bonuses and
budget threats to the survival of the post-war welfare state. They also
suggest that the success of the book could be an important straw in the
wind as France enters a political cycle leading to the presidential
elections of May 2012.

In a New Year message Mr Hessel, who survived Nazi concentration camps to
become a French diplomat, said he was "profoundly touched" by the success
of his book. Just as he "cried out" against Nazism in the 1940s, he said,
young people today should "cry out against the complicity between
politicians and economic and financial powers" and "defend our democratic
rights acquired over two centuries".

In a party-political aside which might or might not undermine his new
status as political prophet, Mr Hessel went on to imply that "resistance"
should begin with a rejection of President Nicolas Sarkozy and a vote for
the Parti Socialiste.

The book has not pleased everyone. It also contains a lengthy denunciation
of Israeli government policies, especially in the Gaza Strip. Although the
final chapter calls vaguely for a "non-violent" solution to the world's
problems, the book also suggests that "non-violence" is not "sufficient" in
the Middle East. Mr Hessel, whose father was a German jew who emigrated to
France, has been accused by French jewish organisations of "anti-semitism".

Mr Hessel was born in Berlin in 1917. He emigrated to France with his
family when he was seven. He joined General Charles de Gaulle in London in
1941 and was sent back to France to help organise the resistance. He was
captured, tortured and sent to concentration camps in Germany. After the
war, he helped to draft the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights in
1948.

Jean-Pierre Barou, the joint head of the small Montpellier-based publishing
house Indigène, which commissioned the book, said Mr Hessel had revealed
a "deep sense of indignation in France".

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.

How people should resist the power of money and the markets - by peaceful
means, the book insists - is not made entirely clear.

A message of resistance

* "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..."

 

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