By Chloe Leprince and Pascal Riche late Wednesday afternoon when his work had exceeded 450,000 copies. Following the interview Rue89 which published the first part of Thursday, December 30.
Rue89: In your little book, you call for a reduction in inequality, a better environment, human rights are better respected, but you do not attack frontally the heart of the system, the market economy. Stéphane Hessel
: I am in no way conducive to market development, and I consider the functioning of the economy financialized as the true evil of our time. However, I know we will need a market social content. 
And next to this "social market economy, we need a social economy based on cooperation, sharing, and which, if I may say, the economy of profit. You credit program of the National Council of Resistance (NCR) as base values to defend. Is not this a little inappropriate to bring this dark period in the current period?
On the program of the National Council of Resistance, I'm just saying it's wonderful that a dozen good men and good women, who meet at a time when they have no power of any kind which are underground, who observe the country and wonder "what will we do once we have won this war? "Have noted in a program that values still appear as legitimate and fundamental! It is a moment in the history of France is quite extraordinary. In what they said, there is not much to set aside, and there is much to take.
This is not to say that we live under a regime so painful than were the Nazis or even Vichy. It was natural that the French resistant say, in this program, not the economy of Vichy which was very capitalist society and that Vichy did not include Social Security. We are not in the same situation. But if we have opponents who are not as clear as were Petain or Laval, or Hitler, these opponents exist: one must know them, decrypt them and they must be resisted with the same energy, even if these opponents n longer have the same violence.
you think that?
A Sarkozy, the current government in Europe today. Because I think that this is not only to resist what is wrong in France but also in Europe and worldwide.
Why go back that far? Since the CNR program, has there been no other political acts as strong?
Since 1948, we've worked hard and progressed. At the end of the war, we defined the fundamental freedoms and fundamental rights which all people can aspire: it was the Universal Declaration. It was completed in 1966 by two covenants: the covenant of social economic and cultural rights and the covenant of civil and political rights, there was the European Convention on Human Rights, the construction of Europe, decolonization ... All this marked a tremendous change in the functioning of the planet.
There is now more of apartheid, most of Soviet totalitarianism, most of Maoism in China - even if what wonder what its successor ... It moves, but much remains to , the program is not yet completed. We are in a roll, but during the last decade the movement has faltered. This is one reason that pushes the indignation: there were positive forces at work, why these forces do not they continue to play?
What is the first factor "negative" of the past ten years?
In my opinion, the word "terrorism". The Terrorism has always existed: it décanillait the tsars. But this was not comparable to what we are experiencing now, with small groups that engage in violence, committing destruction, and bring into people's minds the idea that they are threatened.
We did not find a way to cope intelligently. Tap the Taliban with war bombs hit Iraq on the pretext that there are weapons of mass destruction - which are not even - it is not good policy.
An intelligent policy would be, as has attempted to do by Obama's speech in Cairo in June 2009, to find that when the different cultures that exist in the world collide, it only results in disaster, so that say "Look, Islam is exciting, there are good things Christianity is interesting, also secular atheism, Buddhism ... "Let's work together to civilizations and cultures ... It would be for the coming decade a formidable task.
This cultural harmony is still a utopia. It seems very important to overcome the resistance to utopia: there is no reason that the vision we have of the future of the human species, our future is not exciting.
But what we lack, and I regret very much, they are Pierre Mendes-France of de Gaulle's ... figures that arouse enthusiasm.
Has ceased to be indignant because they lacked the commitment thinkers, great figures?
It would be unfair to say that lack of major figures - major figures, they are discovered elsewhere when they are dead. Thinkers, there are: Edgar Morin, Joseph Stiglitz, Amartya Sen, Mary Robinson ...
But at "statemanship [as a statesman, ed], we have neither Roosevelt nor Gaulle, or Mendes ... Where are those who, when they stand up, raise a movement of real trust? It could have been the case with Barack Obama, who gave a terrific way to his first book, "The Audacity of Hope" ("The Audacity of Hope"). This reminds me of two verses of Guillaume Apollinaire, in "Le Pont Mirabeau"
"As life is slow. And as hope is violent. "
So I think what we need, they are women and men who would exciting vision of what may be the twenty-first century. I think of Brazil Dilma Rousseff, or even to Lula. Today, these people can not be derived Quartier Latin or London, they may very well appear in India, China, Brazil.
Remember that it is fear of the owners, terrified by the rise of Bolshevism, which led to the rise of Nazism. Would you say that today there is a danger of the same type, linked to the behavior of the wealthy?
I think there is now a serious complicity between the haves and the haves can finance. The proprietors of finance have taken fright, suddenly, two years ago, with the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers, which announced the crisis.
Their boyfriends, the haves of power, told them:
"Do not worry, you will be refloated to allow you to resume as before. "This complicity
then perhaps what I am saying the most. If we had socialist governments or sufficiently anchored to the left, they could say to the bankers and financiers:
"You have demonstrated your incompetence, we'll nationalize and deal with the public interest as a compass, and not, like you, the interest of profit. "
For now, these governments do not exist, but that may change: I am very interested in what the Mercosur countries and more generally in Latin America, where people like Chavez, Morales, Lula and Rousseff now, can play a role. This complicity between financial and political drama will continue maybe not.
Meanwhile, the state is a prisoner of financial and economic forces. Which state is defending itself? None. Instead, they support the economic power. The few measures that were taken during the banking crisis are just a tiny keys, so you should have told them: "You went to the disaster, you takes all. "Nobody has said.
Nicolas Sarkozy is it that a "president who is wasting time "as claimed by the journalist Thomas Legrand, or translated Sarkozyism there a deeper phenomenon in French political history?
Sarkozy demonstrates first, by the way it operates, overly personal, our Fifth Republic was founded on a constitution dangerous because it gives all power to an elected president. What is not very democratic.
Sarkozy is a man who lacks culture, and was still elected. It is this trade necessarily evil, but because of how our Constitution, it would not necessarily more successful with another person, or Fillon Lagarde, for instance.
I do not like Sarkozy, I did not vote for him and I will never vote for him, but the French system is more critical than men.
Following your statements on Israel and Palestine, you were rudely attacked by people such as Pierre-André Taguieff. How did you feel about these very personal attacks?
With profound indifference. No outrage. My classmates, because I have many more friends than I thought, what are outraged, them.
Mr. Taguieff does not scare me. It's so absurd to say, like him, I'm on the side of the "guards slave drivers" when you know that I was in deportation. But many people took this very seriously and six thousand people have signed an appeal.
With this call, I went to see the new Justice Minister, Michel Mercier. I told him that his predecessor had made a mistake in saying that we could condemn people who simply wanted to boycott Israeli investments. Oppose a foreign government does not merit naturally that one is immersed in unnecessary legal proceedings.
I think he understood and that person shall be prosecuted, even if, personally, I would rather be pursued pleasure it would give me the opportunity to remember why Israel is acting against international law, violates the Geneva Conventions, killing innocent people. It is high time we do not continue to benefit from this government a scandalous impunity. The guilt is
Europe vis-à-vis the Jewish people she weighs still prevents this debate and she's outrage at Israeli policies?
The bad conscience of the Holocaust is certainly. The bad conscience is obviously very strong in Germany and quite strong in France where we have been "culpably "Obedient to the orders from Berlin. But the others? Scandinavians, Britons guilty conscience ... what do we talk?
There is a second reason for the lack of outrage: everything revolves around Islam and terrorism. Is allowed to say that, faced with these people supposedly dangerous, it is fortunate that Israel exists for the West. Help Israel to live but in the framework of international law, by which it was created!
What are your views on French policy vis-à-vis Israel?
I think our government is very loose. When he was at the Quai d'Orsay, Kouchner said, Of course, like everyone else, there should be a Palestinian state. But what did you do, exactly?
, France does not even question its trade agreement with Israel. This would at least be a way of saying we disagreed on how Israel behaves.
When we send fleets to supply Gaza and that these fleets are attacked by the Israeli fleet, it said nothing. When Goldstone notes that committed war crimes in Gaza, says nothing. There is at least guilty of a lack of reaction.
You advocate non-violence but in a conflict like this, Palestinians can they win by being Non-violent?
When they are violent, and they were from time to time, this does not bring them much. When they are non-violent people around the world come to help. Non-violence can pay. This Accruing perhaps Mahmoud Abbas is in all cases more than what obtained so far Hamas. The violence of the weak against the strong is not an effective policy. The nonviolence of the weak against the strong is more.
For nearly an hour as we speak and you have not uttered a single time on the term "civil disobedience". Now for désobéisseurs, you became a model ... I
the difference between legitimacy and legality. I testified in favor of José Bové in the trial of GMO activists by saying that what he did was illegal but legitimate because it was fully protect us against GMOs. I think désobéisseurs civilians have often reason for a fundamental legitimacy to their actions.
But I also say to be careful: civic disobedience is not necessarily to support. We live in a democracy and the laws of democracy should normally be applied. When these laws become unlawful unless it can withstand.
Photo Stéphane Hessel (Audrey Cerdan/Rue89).
