Time for Outrage! by Stephane Hessel

One could be forgiven for thinking the age of the seditious pamphlet had ended 100 years ago, but the success of Stephane Hessel’s little tract says otherwise. Time for Outrage! or Indignez Vous! in the more satisfying French original, was a surprise bestseller in late 2010 in France. I’ve been meaning to read it, and now I have.

Stephane Hessel is an interesting character. He was born in 1917, and was a soldier in the Second World War. He was imprisoned when France fell, but escaped from a concentration camp and joined the Free French in London. He parachuted back into France ahead of the Normandy invasion, was captured again, escaped again, and survived the war to become a diplomat.

Hessel went on to help draft the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and became a writer and campaigner on democracy and justice issues. In many ways, he never stopped his resistance campaign. The French resistance didn’t just want to reclaim France from the Nazis. That was just the start. There was a whole vision behind it, including social security, retirement benefits, and a true social and economic democracy.

Those later battles are still being fought. It was his outrage that moved Hessel to resist the Nazis, he says, “and my long life has given me a steady succession of reasons for outrage.”

As far as Hessel is concerned, “history’s direction is towards more justice and more freedom”, but in the last decade we have moved backwards. So much progress has been made since the 1940s, but rampant materialism, gross inequality, and unjust post-9/11 wars have seen justice and freedom eroded. The power of money is stronger now than it has been for a long time, and the gap between the rich and poor continues to widen. We are all in danger of being “overwhelmed by the international dictatorship of financial markets.”

We must face this crisis, Hessel goes on. We must do so boldly, hopefully, non-violently. “Ethics, justice and sustainability” must prevail, and “the worst possible outlook is indifference”.

He ends with a call to a peaceful insurrection against “the means of mass communication that offer nothing but mass consumption for our youth, contempt for the least powerful in society and for culture, general amnesia and the outrageous competition of all against all.”

At 93 years of age, Hessel knows it is not his task to make any of this happen, although he continues to write and speak. Instead, his little book is “to you who will create the twenty-first century.” That message has been heard. It was the Spanish translation that inspired last year’s protests across Spain, which in turn birthed the Occupy movement.

Time for Outrage is inspiring, life-affirming, and uncomplicated. It’s only 20 pages, so you can read it in half an hour. Pick up a copy. I think you will find it enriching.