On violence – Etan Nechin in Haaretz:

‘The writings of this Martinique-born philosopher, psychiatrist and leftist, who is noted for his work on racism, anti-colonialism and violence, have become emblematic of Algeria's struggle for independence from France in the 1950s and early '60s. On Black Saturday, his quotes were used to argue that the massacre conducted by Hamas was a direct and inevitable reaction to "colonial" oppression by Israel. One of the most-quoted lines that day, taken from Fanon's seminal work "The Wretched of the Earth," states: "Colonialism is not a thinking machine, nor a body endowed with reasoning faculties. It is violence in its natural state, and it will only yield when confronted with greater violence."’

(…)

‘Fanon was born in the French West Indies to a middle class family in July 1925. Initially, he did not even perceive himself as Black; he identified as French – a sentiment echoed by all of his peers on the island of Martinique. The phrase "nos ancêtres les Gaulois" ("Our ancestors the Gauls") was a mantra for Martinican children like Fanon, despite their African heritage.
The complexities of race and class on the island influenced Fanon, particularly the "pigmentocracy" that permeated society. However, his family's relative comfort shielded him to some extent – until the Vichy government's arrival in 1940 unveiled a more sinister side of France characterized by racism and fascism.
This prompted the teenage Fanon to volunteer for the Free French Forces, where he confronted a colonial army rife with racial hierarchies. Despite being treated as an "honorary European" (Fanon was injured and received the Croix de Guerre military decoration), he saw firsthand the disparities in how Arabs and Africans were treated, and grappled with the irony of fighting against Nazism in an army practicing its own form of racial supremacy.’

(…)
‘"A pivotal moment for Fanon occurred in France, described in 'Black Skin, White Masks,' when a little white boy is traveling on the train with his mother and points to Fanon and says 'Look maman, a nègre.' Here's a little boy and yet he's already a 'racial expert': he already comes to associate a Black man like Fanon with danger, with menace, and Fanon realizes that in the eyes of the French, he is a Black man," Shatz says. "He is not simply a French man of color, as he was raised to believe; he does not enjoy the anonymity of a typical French person. And I think that is certainly the primal scene in Fanon's work."’

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‘He also maintains a profound interest in the psyche of the individual, advocating for the liberation of colonized individuals from psychological complexes such as despair, passivity, feelings of futility and a perceived incapacity to influence historical events," he says. "It's important to recall that Fanon is not simply a revolutionary who infuses his political writings with psychiatric insights. He is a revolutionary critic of psychiatry."
Although Fanon's first book, 1952's "Black Skin, White Masks," was born from this period, Shatz writes that "it is neither a memoir nor a clinical study, but rather an unusual mixture of genres and discursive registers: analytic and poetic, despairing and hopeful, solemn and sarcastic."’

(…)

‘Shatz paints a broad picture of the region and portrays Fanon's relationships with Algerian revolutionaries, white French Marxists who came to support the revolution, and African leaders such as Patrice Lumumba. He also highlights the blind spots that Fanon, in his zeal, either overlooked or dismissed – including the Islamic component of the Algerian struggle.’

(…)

‘In Shatz' understanding of Fanon's thinking, there is a tension between Fanon the doctor, whose first commandment is "do no harm," to the revolutionary for whom violence is a way of achieving liberation.
"The longest chapter in the book is 'On Violence.' But the second longest chapter is 'Colonial Warfare and Mental Disorders,' which is an absolutely wrenching chapter where he writes not only about the impact of colonial violence on the colonized after independence. He also writes about the impact of anti-colonial violence on anti-colonial fighters who are haunted by the acts that they've committed," the author says.
Shatz doesn't argue that Fanon shies away from violence, but that his exploration of violence is phenomenological, focusing on the lived experience and the psychological transformation it brings about – such as a sense of empowerment or regeneration. This viewpoint is not unique to Fanon and is common in nationalist movements.’

(…)

‘"It's impossible to know what Fanon would have said about the Oct. 7 attack," Shatz continues. "But I don't think Fanon would have been surprised by the fact that it happened. That the violence of oppression inevitably provokes the counterviolence of the oppressed is, after all, a Fanonian theme. As he writes in 'The Wretched of the Earth': 'The colonized person is a persecuted person who dreams constantly of becoming the persecutor.' Whether he would have endorsed this kind of attack, however, one can only speculate. A militant reader of Fanon might say that he would have, and there are grounds for making this claim. But 'The Wretched of the Earth' is also full of warnings about the danger of turning hatred and revenge into a political program, and Fanon insists that an anti-colonial struggle must overcome the 'primitive Manichaeism' of the colonial system."’

Read the article here.

Substituting ontology for history is one of the problems of what used to be called identity politics.

The question under what conditions violence against the state is permitted remains an urgent one.

As I wrote a couple of months ago in a Dutch newspaper most revolutionary violence provokes strong counterrevolutionary state violence. A good example is Peru.

Effectiveness is not the only criterion, but’s important since we understand that violence is a means not an end.

The problem with most revolutionary and counterrevolutionary is that violence turns into an end.