What happens when the average citizen accuses a government of injustice? What about when the same citizen leaks
Copy of original print, January 13, 1898
information that he is told that he shouldn’t, hoping that his accusations may elicit accountability? These actions have been all over the news for the past months, following the highly publicized WikiLeaks scandal. The idea of governmental accountability is a pressing issue around the world today. Questions range on the grand spectrum from where and how our taxes are spent to the truth behind the existence of extraterrestrial intelligence. On this day in 1898, French naturalist author Emile Zola accused the French President Felix Faure and his administration of a gross indecency against not only an individual French citizen but the French nation as a whole. Entitled “J’Accuse (I Accuse)”, Zola’s open letter to the government was published as a front page article in future Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau’s liberal newspaper, L’Aurore. Read more »
