Resistance mattered

French existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre demonstrates against racism in 1971.
(Michel Ginfray / Sygma via Getty Images). From Jacobin

I'm enjoying At the Existentialist Cafe by Sarah Bakewell.  (I enjoyed her book on Montaigne How to Live, too).  She relates that Sartre escaped from POW camp during WWII and immediately looked for ways to resist the occupying Nazis.

... he was adamant that he had come back to do something.  He assembled a dozen friends into a new Resistance group under the name 'Socialisme et liberte' and wrote a manifesto for them. The group spent most of its time writing or discussing manifestos and polemical articles....

After dismissing their actions, she goes on to relate a story about where a misplaced briefcase was "dangerous enough."  Still, the resistance mattered -- both to their own morale, but also -- even when attempts seemed "fey or futile" to gently encourage each other.

The group foundered eventually — of not knowing what to do, wrote Sartre later. But being involved had a positive effect on their morale, as did other attempts at resistance, even those that seemed fey or futile. There was much encouragement to be found in miniature rebellions such as those of Jean Paulhan - one of their group-who left small anti-collaborationist poems signed only with his initials lying around on café tables or post-office counters. Other Parisians made similar gestures: forbidden to fly tricolour flags on Bastille Day, for example, people would find ways of bringing red, white and blue together, perhaps on a colourful scarf, or by wearing a red jacket together with a blue purse and white gloves. It all mattered.