[update below] [2nd update below]
His death has been the lead story on the news here today and has been positively burning up my FB news feed, with a torrent of eulogies all day such that I haven’t seen in I don’t know how long. Stéphane Hessel was a good, decent man and did good, exemplary things in his life. And he remained in top mental and physical shape to the very end (I read his Le Monde op-eds with interest over the years and saw him a few times at public talks, plus watched him, in 2006, racing on the street to catch a bus as it had pulled away from the stop; not bad for a man of 89). The best tribute I’ve seen today, on FB at least, is this one by Patrick Weil.
The reason why Hessel was known to the grand public, including the majority of those on FB who are eulogizing him, is, of course, on account of the pamphlet he signed in 2010, Indignez-vous !, which became a mega-best seller, a veritable phénomène de société (if it hadn’t been for this pamphlet the vast majority of those who are singing the praises of Hessel today would have likely never heard of him). At €3 and 13 pages of text, it didn’t exactly put anyone out, either money or time-wise. Just about everyone on the left read the thing and praised it to the heavens. At 93 Hessel became a star and for those young enough to be his great-grandchildren. But at the risk of being a party pooper, I thought the pamphlet was inane and simple-minded, reflecting a sloppy way of thinking that is all too courant on the bien pensant French left. I was mystified that so many people could take it seriously. The passages on the WWII French Resistance were irrelevant to anything happening today and carried no lessons for anything. The pages on Palestine—the only conflict today that apparently aroused Hessel’s indignation—should have been highlighted on the computer screen and deleted. Sent straight to the poubelle. And the expressions of indignation were accompanied by no plan of action. Expressing indignation was an end in itself. I’m sorry but the pamphlet was worthless. Fortunately there was some push back on the op-ed pages at the time, by Pierre Assouline, Luc Ferry, and others. And in English, Christopher Caldwell had a good takedown.
But like I said, Monsieur Hessel was a good man and whose heart was in the right place. R.I.P.
UPDATE: France Inter political editorialist Thomas Legrand had a good commentary this morning on Stéphane Hessel and his Indignez-vous ! (February 28)
2nd UPDATE: Haaretz has an obituary of Hessel here.
I just read Hessel’s pamphlet and your and Caldwell’s critique. I actually do not entirely agree entirely with the criticisms; Hessel is simply connecting the principles of the resistance to the application of human rights to the defense of a range of “rights” in the modern era. While it is not as philosophically profound as it maybe could have been, the logical “leaps” are only unacceptable if you already don’t accept them a priori. Hessel’s goal is not to convince detractors, but to preach to the converted but inactive. The sections on the resistance were not irrelevant to his core message, and the ‘case study’ of Palestine was not irrelevant either. I think the pamphlet is at its weakest, however, as you and Caldwell indicate, when he seems to say that indignation is good on its own merits. While pragmatically, he probably is right that there is always something to indignant about when it comes to inequality and human rights violations, implying that there is no standard or that indignation is a good in and of itself for all young people is philosophically problematic. So in that I agree with the critiques.
Bill: I reread Indignez-vous, which gave me no cause to modify my assessment one iota. As Christopher Caldwell aptly put it, Hessel’s tract is “a meandering collection of a half-dozen slack-minded high-school-newspaper-level op-eds.” The thing is rambling – décousu, en français -, with not a single original idea and replete with dubious and/or peculiar assertions. One could take apart every other sentence in the pamphlet, which I’m not about to do (who has the time and for what?). Just two points. First, Hessel wants to explain the WWII Resistance as driven by indignation (against the Nazi occupation). In fact, there was little resistance during the first two years of the occupation, during which time the Statut des Juifs was implemented by Vichy and the deportations began. If there was anything to be indignant about back then, it was this. But what happened to the Jews did not swell the ranks of the Resistance, let alone send it into action. The Resistance snowballed with the STO in 1943, increasing material privations, the Germans behaving badly toward the population, and the prospect of an Allied victory. Indignation was not, stricto sensu, the driving force. Secondly, there are hundreds, indeed thousands of things to be indignant about in this crappy world we live in, not just today but yesterday, ten years ago, twenty years ago, a century ago, etc, aren’t there? Has there ever been a time when one couldn’t feel indignant about all sorts of things? As for the defense of rights – which needs to be precisely defined – what’s new about that?
On Gaza/Palestine, to call this part simple minded would be charitable. The conflict there is, shall we say, complex, it is not black and white, and pace the Palestinian Amen Corner, is not about horrible bad Israelis doing horrible bad things to civilians in Gaza because they feel like doing horrible bad things to them. The Israel-Hamas conflict is political and involves two parties that are sworn enemies. And one can easily come up with an analysis of the 2008-09 war – or the 2012 one – that pins the blame largely on Hamas, that indeed holds Hamas responsible for the miserable state Gaza finds itself in. If you want me to argue this point – to exaggerate and un-nuance my own position – I will do it. It was also interesting that Hessel invoked the Goldstone report, that Goldstone himself largely repudiated and before Hessel signed his pamphlet. Looks like someone forgot to tell him, or he didn’t read Le Monde that day.
I agree with all the above. I feel that Arun was a bit severe with Hessel’s pamphlet. I welcomed the booklet. I have always been flabbergasted and somehow horrified facing the passivity of a huge part of the youth. The way they focused on their self and didn’t really give a damn about anything political happening in the world. Everything was rotten, WTF, à quoi bon, don’t waste your energy, it is never going to change, etc. and they put back their earplugs on. It was (still is ?) a softporn version of punk. Sort of NoFuture 2.0. Add the french blues on top. Then n elegant very old man came out of nowhere and distinctly screamed “Indignez-vous !” (Remember Peter Finch : “I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore” ?). “What ?” said the people. “Indignez-vous ! God dammit you lazy fools !” answered the old man. He developped that in 13 pages in his own way that remained irrelevent to most readers. But not the title. I offered the book to my kids because of the title. I wanted them to remember the title. Now, what the elegant old gentleman did was just telling something like “Look at yourself ! Look what you have done to yourself ! Your pants are down brothers and sisters ! ” in other terms : Le roi est nu. Call it what you want, I say his vision was right on. Yes, he didn’t come up with a program in 10 points, a list of proposals and reforms, a thorough analysis of what was wrong and how to build a better world. It was just a spark. It was heard. In Spain, in the US with Occupy Wall Street. Here and there more weakly. Of course, the political elites of the left liked none of it. It was not serious, it was amateurish, didn’t address the real issue, etc…Yeah Hessel, great old man, sure, they don’t make them like that anymore, ok, let’s proceed to the serious stuff, how do we get rid of Sarkozy in 2012 ? We are in 20123 still no vision, no program. The populists collect the indignation. I wonder the score a french Beppe Grillo would achieve, if we had one instead of Marine Le Pen and Melenchon. No, Arun, I believe Hessel was more than a good man, he was also a brave man. A true “Mensch” in yiddish.
Massilian: As you will note in my reply to Bill, I piled it on Hessel’s pamphlet even more. I agree with you that the world sucks but I’m not quite sure what to do about it, except work through the classic channels. E.g. there was report on Envoyé Spécial this evening on new forms of management that are making workplaces in France – and certainly most other places – hellish places to work in. If there was anything to stoke my indignation today, it was this. My response (as I told my daughter): les syndicats. Everyone join a union. Fight back the good old fashioned way.
Peter Finch in Network: his character repulsed me when I saw the film back then (in my extrême gauchiste days). I thought he was a fascist demagogue. Mass populist outbursts invariably lead to nothing, or at least nothing good (maybe it’s my youthful Leninist reflexes speaking here; the people need professional leadership…)
On Indignez-vous and Occupy Wall Street, we haven’t heard much about either of late, have we? OWS sort of petered out, without a whimper.
On a French Beppe Grillo, we did have one here five decades back. His name was Pierre Poujade. His movement fizzled out less than a year and a half after his 1956 electoral success. It did, however, launch the political career of one of its members: Jean-Marie Le Pen.
You are most unfair to young people, who are actually as politically engaged as in our generation. The engagement takes different forms though. I spend time with the younger generation (my students), so can attest to this first hand.
My reactions to Hessel’s pamphlet and especially to the way it was taken in by friends on the Left was the same, I must admit, than Arun’s. Here we go again: indignation for indignation’s sake. Silly old ideas, but also essential ones, empowering ones, rejuvenating ones. I wouldn’t say the pamphlet was useless, far from it; to take it on-board indiscriminately would just take more idealism than I could muster. But for many people, Hessel worked as a way into dealing with the world like Harry Potter can work as a way to get a kid to read. In that, certainly it was not useless.
A pity Hessel became a household name only with this pamphlet, though. France Culture broadcast yesterday evening an interview where Laure Adler discussed with Hessel. What a life! He was an incredible witness of 20th century Europe, a cultivated old man with much on his mind and no fear. I didn’t agree on everything, but if you have to pick up the good guys, then Hessel is a better one than most.
And, during this interview, his comments on Palestine and Israel were spot on: nobody denies Israel’s right to exist as a state, and Palestine is the only place that makes sense for a Jewish state, but what the Israelis have done in Palestine since the 1950s is a crime, a negation of basic human rights, a poison in the heart of Israeli society, only hedged by more criminal behavior on the part of the Hamas. After hearing that, the CRIF’s reaction to Hessel’s death seems absolutely overblown. Anything I should know?
He discussed also his origins as the son of a non-religious Jewish father, and many other things. Great stuff.
Louis: I agree about Hessel’s life, which was a full one and most interesting. It’s too bad – from my standpoint, at least – that he put his name on that pamphlet, that this is what made him a household name.
On Israel-Palestine, it is not precisely the case that nobody denies Israel’s right to exist as a state. All sorts of people do, starting with Hamas and its many apologists. Yes, the Israelis have done bad things to the Palestinians – and continue to – but it’s not as if the latter lack agency. They possess it and are actors in their fate. Palestinians as individuals may be victims but collectively speaking – as a nation in formation and with a political leadership – they are not. They bear considerable responsibility for the condition they find themselves in, today and throughout the past six decades.
The CRIF statement on Hessel’s death, while not necessarily inaccurate in most of its content, was petty and mean-spirited. The CRIF did not enhance its stature with it, that’s for sure.
Thank you for that. Of course you are right on both accounts: there are those who deny Israel’s right to exist, and the Palestinians have largely been instruments to their own fate. On the former, I was trying to summarize Hessel’s words, and he certainly did not deny Israel’s existence. On the latter: ok, the Palestinians have agency, and the Palestinian leadership has done much to hurt its own cause in previous decades. But agency is a tricky thing. It seems to me the Palestinians have, at the moment, considerably less agency than other forces, both in hurting their own cause and in contributing to a solution to their problems with the Israelis. I understand your being annoyed by one-sidedly pro-Palestinian accounts of the situation, but just telling me that the Palestinians are free to do the right thing seems about as unsatisfying.
But of course, from Hessel’s point of view, this was not the point. He saw the issue at the grassroots level as a story of individual sufferings, denial of rights, abuse. The more global you get, the more difficult things become, and the more unsavory the necessary compromises. This is what kept me away from Hessel’s book: while I sympathized with his feelings, it lacked complexity, and thus from my point of view credibility. But there is a logic here, coming from someone who had approached human suffering so close. If I had been in a death camp, suffering human beings might also be my level of analysis.
As to the CRIF’s reaction, yeah, pretty much.
OK. Just a few observations. I didn’t argue about the objective content of Hessel’s booklet. I saw the Envoyé spécial you mention, human benchmarking is a rampant form of social darwinism, it is creeping in many companies. You can outlow it, it’ll come back, especially in this economic context. Yes, one can join the union and sing We shall overcome. Some day. That might be the (long) way. I wasn’t arguing about who Peter Finch was in Network, I was quoting a memorable phrase. That illustrated in my mind the moment you blow a fuse and declare that this is it, you had enough. And I wouldn’t say that as soon as you scream and blow a fuse you become a dangerous populist. It is the beginning of something. To me Hessel offered a good lead to Edgar Morin, but maybe you are ready to trash Morin as well, as an eclectic amateur ? As for Beppe Grillo being the modern italian Poujade… that’s quite a raccourci. Maybe you can agree that almost 20 years of Berlusconi without any convincing opposition on the left, can trigger such a ras le bol. I feel that the ras le bol explosions are like the pain you feel in your body, it is an alarm signal for something much more important, if you take too much painkiller, you shut the alarm off…. I believe that I am not “most unfair” to the youth in general, and I don’t think of university level (your students ?) students in Paris as representative of the average french youth… I maintain, that I am preoccupied at their general lack of concern for what is going on, here, there and everywhere. When you write “I agree with you that the world sucks but I’m not quite sure what to do about it, except work through the classic channels.”, I want to tell you that the “classic channels” have fully demonstrated that they are obsolete, blind and powerless, totally unable to bring new answers and solutions. We urgently need to create new channels, broaden our views, stimulate our imagination… Indignez-vous !… was an imperative. An alarm. It is what come next that matters. Start thinking ! Mis à part the nonagenerian Edgar Morin, everything looks quite on the western front.
Sorry ! I am confused, please read the last line as: “Everything looks quiet on the western front”.