The writer who coined the term “decolonization” thought he was talking to “the wretched of the earth.” Instead, his work was read by elites—to disastrous effect.
“Fanon goes further in his analysis. He not only believes that violence is inevitable in a liberation struggle; he also writes that the act of killing purifies the killer in a war against a colonial oppressor. Fanon writes in the “On Violence” chapter: “At the individual level, violence is a cleansing force. It rids the colonized of their inferiority complex, of their passive and despairing attitude. It emboldens them, and restores their self-confidence.”
Perhaps I’m wrong in my interpretation and analysis, but it’s a justification for vengeance and at the same time, almost a religious practice to purge oneself by sacrificing through killing the perceived scapegoat—the person, people, or thing that causes all your ills. And by doing so, renews the mind and body from that which has been suffocating (oppressing) it.
An excellent read illuminating where some of this rot is coming from.
Excellent explanation of why we are where we are today! Just to clarify, the Jewish State was created by the United Nations in May 1948, not by a war. The Arab nations attacked the next day , and like you so accurately state, “ it was a struggle between a people who had survived a genocide and the entire Arab world .” Keep up the excellent work!
As an undergraduate I was forced to read Wretched of the Earth and remember thinking "how am I going to be able to endure reading the entirety of this tripe and trash" after throwing it across the room in disgust. That the insipid, latte sipping dolts who populate our universities continue to inflict Fanon's sick garbage on undergraduates who lap it up explains much of the modern madness.
The ultimate irony? By any metric - historical, archeological, genetic, even Biblical (if one accepts its validity) - the Jews (from "Judea", hence the name) are the indigenous people, and the Arabs (from Arabia) the colonial power. The decolonization narrative will never apply to the hated Jews.
I consider producing graduates with useless degrees as part of extremism. The absence of teaching real history results in support of whatever is the current agenda presented by the establishment.
This Hamas attack and reaction from college students in this country begs the question, what other brainwashing of extremism is taking place on college campuses?
Coleman Hughes has a fascinating debate on his podcast with a gentleman explaining the Palestinian side of the conflict. His explanation of the historical perspective, IMHO, is entirely flawed, naive, and wrong, but rooted in the notion that Jews came from nowhere and simply took what what never belonged to them. Even the Balfour Declaration is further evidence of white colonizers ruining this great thing the Arabs had till the bad colonizers took it all away.
When viewed in this fashion, there's no debate or discussion. There is one and only one premise: The Jews invaded and therefore must be eliminated. Everything else is fruit from a poisoned tree.
Jews are used to having targets on our backs, but if there's one thing history has taught us it's that it never ever ends with the Jews. When I read this article all I think, who's next?
If you read the Regents of California university response to the faculty letter demanding that the university retract statements condemning the Hamas attacks, it is clear that those in charge clearly acknowledge and understand that the majority of faculty are teaching “dangerous ideas” to the students, but still do nothing to purge them from the university. The Regent Jay Sures states that the thought of these 300 faculty members shaping the thinking of students, sickens him. Yet, nothing is done to remove these lunatics.
People always have the right to move someplace to where they are more comfortable in their skin. So the question is; have we arrived at a point in time to where the immigrants are now the colonizers and demanding the locals change for them? If so, then we have truly learned nothing and I suspect that is exactly it. Mankind never learns from their mistakes.
Reading this article was an education. I had never heard of Fanon or his writings and I am glad to know one part (though certainly not the entirety) of the source of the barbarism in our country today. I feel for Fanon and what he experienced, tho it's always in extremity that we are radicalized either for good or for evil. Thereby perpetuating the very insanity he claimed to be raging against.
However, the first several paragraphs, listing of elite institutions, was most enlightening, bc therein lies the problem. Perception vs Reality. There needs to be an avalanche shift in human consciousness of what true intelligence is. Wisdom vs knowledge. Truth vs propaganda. We are seeing the results of decades of the garbage which has poisoned so many minds and then reproduced and spread them at an alarming rate. There are consequences to ignorance, and the rest of us are guilty by association in allowing this false education to go on so long untrammeled.
Churches, synagogues have not kept pace with the deeper, spiritual needs of humanity and when "progress" has been left to human intellectualism, we see the carnage it leaves in its path. I dealy hope this awakening is not too late.
"At the individual level, violence is a cleansing force. It rids the colonized of their inferiority complex, of their passive and despairing attitude. It emboldens them, and restores their self-confidence.”
And this dude was a psychiatrist? What world was he living in? Violence makes you violent. Brutality makes you brutal. You don't need to go to school to know that, just try raising a couple kids past the age of five.
What's kind of interesting about all these left wing academics--whose rhetorical pretensions are that they are burly and tough cultural warriors, but whose reality is that they are sad, physically weak, lonely cat people--is that they FAIL TO LOOK AT THE OUTCOMES OF ALL THE CONFLICTS OF THE 60'S.
Look at Algeria. It was better off in many respects under French rule. Certainly abuses, violence and oppression have not disappeared.
Look at Vietnam. Like Cuba, it has essentially stopped economically. It's people are employed as low wage laborers for a connected Party elite who have all the detriments of "Capitalists" without the intelligence or even a pretense of honesty or accountability. And this, after hundreds of thousands of people were summarily executed, and million of families broken apart--parents sent to labor camps, children to be brainwashed--and a thousand years of culture completely destroyed. For what? Nothing. Something worse than the South, at least, had.
Everywhere you look you see people making the claim that if something is bad, anything has to be better. This is stupid. It is a creed articulated by stupid people, for stupid people. Things can ALWAYS get worse.
Look at MLK Jr. Did those who followed his likely assassination by some element of the US government GENUINELY build something good for black folks in this country? No. Not at all. The ghettos are still there, blacks in general are still ignorant and thus make less money than most of us, and crime has gotten vastly, vastly worse. It didn't used to be like that. Black neighborhoods were not unusually dangerous in 1930. Urban crime just wasn't REMOTELY close to what it has become.
Even Saint Gandhi--which in effect is what both Mahatma and Gandhiji mean--led to the partition of India, which led to MILLIONS of deaths, at that time, and in later times, like the brutal conflict in Bangladesh in the early 1970's.
Everywhere you look you see unserious people making stupid plans and then LYING about them, to themselves and others. This is not decency. This is not human goodness. If the world would have been better of had you done nothing, you are the bad guy.
And honest mistakes are one thing, but if you don't learn from your mistakes, the mistakes were not honest.
I doubt most people who use the word “decolonization” on social media have ever read a book, much less Fanon’s. They just robotically repeat words they don’t understand but sound good, like genocide, apartheid, resistance, occupation, etc.
I emphatically reject the teaching of hated and violence towards Jews.. However, progressive liberal Jews have never spoken out as Women studies have preached hatred towards men, black studies towards whites and queer studies against hetero-normative people. I hope they & others will speak out now. Stop contributing to these academic snake pits of hated. They are poisoning our children's minds. We need to stop it now!
It is bizarre to hear anyone argue that acts of barbarism constitute the moral high ground, but why not have a debate on the topic. Seems like there are plenty of academics who are prepared to argue the side of barbarism.
“Fanon goes further in his analysis. He not only believes that violence is inevitable in a liberation struggle; he also writes that the act of killing purifies the killer in a war against a colonial oppressor. Fanon writes in the “On Violence” chapter: “At the individual level, violence is a cleansing force. It rids the colonized of their inferiority complex, of their passive and despairing attitude. It emboldens them, and restores their self-confidence.”
Perhaps I’m wrong in my interpretation and analysis, but it’s a justification for vengeance and at the same time, almost a religious practice to purge oneself by sacrificing through killing the perceived scapegoat—the person, people, or thing that causes all your ills. And by doing so, renews the mind and body from that which has been suffocating (oppressing) it.
An excellent read illuminating where some of this rot is coming from.
Excellent explanation of why we are where we are today! Just to clarify, the Jewish State was created by the United Nations in May 1948, not by a war. The Arab nations attacked the next day , and like you so accurately state, “ it was a struggle between a people who had survived a genocide and the entire Arab world .” Keep up the excellent work!
As an undergraduate I was forced to read Wretched of the Earth and remember thinking "how am I going to be able to endure reading the entirety of this tripe and trash" after throwing it across the room in disgust. That the insipid, latte sipping dolts who populate our universities continue to inflict Fanon's sick garbage on undergraduates who lap it up explains much of the modern madness.
The ultimate irony? By any metric - historical, archeological, genetic, even Biblical (if one accepts its validity) - the Jews (from "Judea", hence the name) are the indigenous people, and the Arabs (from Arabia) the colonial power. The decolonization narrative will never apply to the hated Jews.
I consider producing graduates with useless degrees as part of extremism. The absence of teaching real history results in support of whatever is the current agenda presented by the establishment.
Time to rethink our colleges and what they are and should be doing. This is the real THREAT TO OUR DEMOCRACY.
This Hamas attack and reaction from college students in this country begs the question, what other brainwashing of extremism is taking place on college campuses?
Coleman Hughes has a fascinating debate on his podcast with a gentleman explaining the Palestinian side of the conflict. His explanation of the historical perspective, IMHO, is entirely flawed, naive, and wrong, but rooted in the notion that Jews came from nowhere and simply took what what never belonged to them. Even the Balfour Declaration is further evidence of white colonizers ruining this great thing the Arabs had till the bad colonizers took it all away.
When viewed in this fashion, there's no debate or discussion. There is one and only one premise: The Jews invaded and therefore must be eliminated. Everything else is fruit from a poisoned tree.
Jews are used to having targets on our backs, but if there's one thing history has taught us it's that it never ever ends with the Jews. When I read this article all I think, who's next?
If you read the Regents of California university response to the faculty letter demanding that the university retract statements condemning the Hamas attacks, it is clear that those in charge clearly acknowledge and understand that the majority of faculty are teaching “dangerous ideas” to the students, but still do nothing to purge them from the university. The Regent Jay Sures states that the thought of these 300 faculty members shaping the thinking of students, sickens him. Yet, nothing is done to remove these lunatics.
People always have the right to move someplace to where they are more comfortable in their skin. So the question is; have we arrived at a point in time to where the immigrants are now the colonizers and demanding the locals change for them? If so, then we have truly learned nothing and I suspect that is exactly it. Mankind never learns from their mistakes.
Reading this article was an education. I had never heard of Fanon or his writings and I am glad to know one part (though certainly not the entirety) of the source of the barbarism in our country today. I feel for Fanon and what he experienced, tho it's always in extremity that we are radicalized either for good or for evil. Thereby perpetuating the very insanity he claimed to be raging against.
However, the first several paragraphs, listing of elite institutions, was most enlightening, bc therein lies the problem. Perception vs Reality. There needs to be an avalanche shift in human consciousness of what true intelligence is. Wisdom vs knowledge. Truth vs propaganda. We are seeing the results of decades of the garbage which has poisoned so many minds and then reproduced and spread them at an alarming rate. There are consequences to ignorance, and the rest of us are guilty by association in allowing this false education to go on so long untrammeled.
Churches, synagogues have not kept pace with the deeper, spiritual needs of humanity and when "progress" has been left to human intellectualism, we see the carnage it leaves in its path. I dealy hope this awakening is not too late.
"At the individual level, violence is a cleansing force. It rids the colonized of their inferiority complex, of their passive and despairing attitude. It emboldens them, and restores their self-confidence.”
And this dude was a psychiatrist? What world was he living in? Violence makes you violent. Brutality makes you brutal. You don't need to go to school to know that, just try raising a couple kids past the age of five.
What's kind of interesting about all these left wing academics--whose rhetorical pretensions are that they are burly and tough cultural warriors, but whose reality is that they are sad, physically weak, lonely cat people--is that they FAIL TO LOOK AT THE OUTCOMES OF ALL THE CONFLICTS OF THE 60'S.
Look at Algeria. It was better off in many respects under French rule. Certainly abuses, violence and oppression have not disappeared.
Look at Vietnam. Like Cuba, it has essentially stopped economically. It's people are employed as low wage laborers for a connected Party elite who have all the detriments of "Capitalists" without the intelligence or even a pretense of honesty or accountability. And this, after hundreds of thousands of people were summarily executed, and million of families broken apart--parents sent to labor camps, children to be brainwashed--and a thousand years of culture completely destroyed. For what? Nothing. Something worse than the South, at least, had.
Everywhere you look you see people making the claim that if something is bad, anything has to be better. This is stupid. It is a creed articulated by stupid people, for stupid people. Things can ALWAYS get worse.
Look at MLK Jr. Did those who followed his likely assassination by some element of the US government GENUINELY build something good for black folks in this country? No. Not at all. The ghettos are still there, blacks in general are still ignorant and thus make less money than most of us, and crime has gotten vastly, vastly worse. It didn't used to be like that. Black neighborhoods were not unusually dangerous in 1930. Urban crime just wasn't REMOTELY close to what it has become.
Even Saint Gandhi--which in effect is what both Mahatma and Gandhiji mean--led to the partition of India, which led to MILLIONS of deaths, at that time, and in later times, like the brutal conflict in Bangladesh in the early 1970's.
Everywhere you look you see unserious people making stupid plans and then LYING about them, to themselves and others. This is not decency. This is not human goodness. If the world would have been better of had you done nothing, you are the bad guy.
And honest mistakes are one thing, but if you don't learn from your mistakes, the mistakes were not honest.
I doubt most people who use the word “decolonization” on social media have ever read a book, much less Fanon’s. They just robotically repeat words they don’t understand but sound good, like genocide, apartheid, resistance, occupation, etc.
I emphatically reject the teaching of hated and violence towards Jews.. However, progressive liberal Jews have never spoken out as Women studies have preached hatred towards men, black studies towards whites and queer studies against hetero-normative people. I hope they & others will speak out now. Stop contributing to these academic snake pits of hated. They are poisoning our children's minds. We need to stop it now!
It is bizarre to hear anyone argue that acts of barbarism constitute the moral high ground, but why not have a debate on the topic. Seems like there are plenty of academics who are prepared to argue the side of barbarism.