Occupy Wall Street: Outrage! and the Movement's European Roots - by Daniel Tovrov

At its onset, the Occupy Wall Street movement was designed to mirror the Arab Spring protests of 2011, in particular the regime-toppling demonstrations in Egypt's Tahrir Square. But despite the creators' intentions, Occupy has much more in common with a growing European unrest that started in France in 2006, then spread to England, Spain and across the continent.

The current Eurozone crisis has shown that the United States is not alone in its financial woes. Spain -- like Greece, Ireland and Portugal -- is massively in debt, and unemployment has risen to 20 percent -- the highest jobless rate in Europe. Nearly 50 percent of all young Spaniards out of work.

Additionally, much of Occupy's rhetoric can be found in a small, 2010 French book by Stéphane Hessel titled "Time for Outrage!" Hessel, whose impressive resume includes the Bilbao Prize for the Promotion of a Culture of Human Rights and working with Eleanor Roosevelt to edit the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, was a French resistance fighter in WWII who was tortured in Nazi concentration camps.

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