On Violence

The Wretched of the Earth, Chapter One

I just listened to American Prometheus, the book about J. Robert Oppenheimer and the creation of the atomic bomb that the recent movie was based on. This reflection on Fanon’s chapter On Violence is the perfect spot for a mini book review since the nuclear bomb is the most violent thing that human beings have created. Multiple times Oppenheimer described it as a “genocidal weapon.”

By the way, I’m getting closer to dropping all the billionaire-owned platforms. It’s been a while since I mentioned this, but Amazon has such a monopoly on online selling that it drives up prices across the entire internet, forcing independent sellers to have higher prices on both Amazon and any separate websites they own because they take such a a large cut of the profits. Instead of Amazon, you can support local book stores through bookshop.org, the platform I use for my book recommendations. On top of this, I just learned about StoryGraph which is a good alternative to Goodreads (purchased by Amazon in 2013). If you sign in on the website on a computer first, they’ll direct you to a link to download your entire Goodreads list and easily upload it. It took me about 5 minutes to do, and now all of my read and wishlisted books are on StoryGraph. They also provide more detailed statistics and, you guessed it, graphs of the types of books you've been reading each year.

Since this is a mini-review, I’ll just note my key takeaways from American Prometheus.

1. The Red Scare and McCarthy trials decimated the entire left-wing organizing structure in the U.S., using accusations of Communism and un-American activities to silence anyone who was advocating for a more just society. This is a strong “cancel culture” whose effects are still felt today. Another good book on the subject is The Cold War At Home: The Red Scare in Pennsylvania, 1945-1960, which focuses specifically on Pennsylvania and details the union organizers, religious leaders, teachers, and many others who lost their jobs because of their left-wing ideas. Internationally, The Jakarta Method details the incredible violence (there’s that word again) of the U.S. and U.S.-backed regimes as they committed mass-murder and disappeared people, including large numbers of the unarmed communist party in Indonesia. The incredible violence of this anticommunist crusade still reverberates today in many countries around the world who have not reconciled with the U.S.-backed dictatorships that foreclosed the real possibilities of a world of varied economic and social systems.

2. Japan would have surrendered to the U.S. under basically the same conditions without bombing them. There was no legitimate reason to drop the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Truman was arrogant, brash, and idiotic. Had he been president during the Cuban missile crisis, who knows what would have happened. After being briefed on the power of atomic bombs, “Kruschev later recalled: “I couldn’t sleep for several days. Then I became convinced that we could never possibly use these weapons.” Another great book on this subject is Hiroshima in America, which examines the long effort to cover up the intelligence briefings and pretend that the bombings were somehow justified.

3. Hoover was awful. Maybe the only good thing that came out of the FBI is that the absurd number of illegal wiretaps they did of left-wing movements is a boon for historians. Much of the research in this book and in the recently released King: A Life relies on transcripts of FBI interrogations and wiretaps, giving an even more intimate look into the lives of movements and their leaders. A small consolation. The authoritarian history of federal law enforcement is important to keep in mind as cameras and microphones have become ubiquitous.

Reading Recommendations

1. This 2015 paper I just read shows that the existence of a strong Communist Bloc of countries provided enough of a threat/common enemy to capitalist (OECD) countries to influence income inequality. Once the Soviet Union disintegrated, there was little incentive for governments of capitalist countries to show that their economic system was better for workers, so they started cutting taxes on the wealthy. They also followed the wishes of the financial sector and set the world on a path toward increased globalization, which for this purpose is defined as trade agreements that facilitate the flow of capital while continuing to regulate workers. In other words a highly limited view of “free trade.” This arrangement benefited the owners, but not the workers and led to the increasing inequality we see today. Of note in the piece is the overview of rising wealth inequality and the state of research on the causes of inequality. From the paper:

As a matter of fact, inequality has increased in most developed countries, and especially in Anglo-Saxon countries, since the eighties. In the USA, for example, the share of the top percentile was 9.1% in 1986. In 2012, this share amounted to 19.3%. Although less pronounced, this trend was general among developed countries1 . As a result, as shown by Piketty (2014), inequality has resumed to levels comparable to the beginning of the [20]th century. (p3)

2. Here are two articles, one from the Wall Street Journal and one from ProPublica about the wildly immoral (and illegal) things that companies (read their executives and employees) do to defraud Medicare and steal money from both elderly patients and the public. This is about as clear an example of two justice systems as you could imagine. Executives knowingly steal billions from patients and public funds while coercing low-level employees to do the same and the company is fined sometimes (often less than the amount they stole). A poor person steals some soap or baby formula from a convenience store and they are imprisoned, lose their job, owe court fees, and face many other consequences. According to the WSJ:

Medicare Advantage, the $450-billion-a-year system in which private insurers oversee Medicare benefits, grew out of the idea that the private sector could provide healthcare more economically. It has swelled over the last two decades to cover more than half of the 67 million seniors and disabled people on Medicare. Instead of saving taxpayers money, Medicare Advantage has added tens of billions of dollars in costs, researchers and some government officials have said. One reason is that insurers can add diagnoses to ones that patients’ own doctors submit. Medicare gave insurers that option so they could catch conditions that doctors neglected to record. The Journal’s analysis, however, found many diagnoses were added for which patients received no treatment, or that contradicted their doctors’ views.

So much for market efficiencies.

3. In case you missed it, the “tough on crime” cop mayor of New York has allegedly committed many crimes over his political career. This Defector article has a good summary, but he has also had several high-level resignations as other staffers of his are investigated for crimes. My favorite part is that he received so many free flights from Turkish Airlines that he tried to see if had routes to Easter Island.

On Violence

I said in my first post on The Wretched of the Earth that I had complicated feelings about the use of violence. I feel strongly that the violence of our policing and criminal punishment bureaucracy contribute to cycles of violence that can only be interrupted by care, support, and compassion. I am also inspired by Martin Luther King, Jr. and I believe there was real strength in his nonviolent organizing. However, I recognize that the disparate movements of the period, including those considered more threatening to white people and the status quo, contributed to a shift in culture and policy in favor of increased civil rights.

Where Fanon excels in this chapter, is in highlighting the daily structural violence of the colonial regime in Algeria to show that violent resistance was justified. However, near the end of the book he will talk about the negative psychological effects that this violence has on colonizers, the colonized, and freedom fighters alike. Even revolutionary violence that leads to the freedom of an entire nation of people creates cycles of violence that echo down through the generations in the form of interpersonal, familial, and continued political violence. This suggests that, upon determining that violence is necessary, a group must be very careful to understand that it is a means to a nonviolent end goal, and to recognize how easily it can turn into an end in itself. It also suggests that upon achieving the end goal (liberation, sovereignty, new economic system), there must be a process of reconciliation, accounting for past harms, and a lot of personal and societal work to recognize the violence done and commit to ending the cycle immediately.

Fanon’s main argument, however, is that the French colonists (a word denoting not just original colonizers, but those who continue to live in and impose the colonial system on a people) give the colonized no choice but to resort to violence. The colonized people’s every movement and action is constrained by the colonial violence imposed on them for so long that they eventually see no other possible solution but to fight. Through police and military force, the colonists violently subjugate the colonized. Some are faced with the daily violence of starvation as their wages are kept absurdly low and food prices high to extract wealth for the metropole (France). Others might be able to scrape by, but the second they attempt to question the ruling order they are kidnapped, tortured, or arrested. Following this argument, it is the French who compel such violence and as Fanon so eloquently puts it:

It is the colonist who fabricated and continues to fabricate the colonized subject. The colonist derives his validity, i.e., his wealth, from the colonial system. (p2)

The very same people who had it constantly drummed into them that the only language they understood was that of force, now decide to express themselves with force. In fact the colonist has always shown them the path they should follow to liberation. The argument chosen by the colonized was conveyed to them by the colonist, and by an ironic twist of fate it is now the colonized who state that it is the colonizer who only understand the language of force. The colonial regime owes its legitimacy to force and at no time does it ever endeavor to cover up this nature of things. (p42)

This is the danger of controlling a people so much that you take away their agency. When you seek to control others, you must take responsibility for their actions under your control. I could write several pages on this chapter, as it contains a wealth of observations about the colonial order, not only in Algeria, but internationally. However, in light of my current projects, I would like to highlight parallels to the U.S. and specifically to the criminal justice system. Before that, I think it’s worth addressing the question “Is violence ever justified?”

Barring the groups of devoted pacifists around the world, the answer to this question in almost every country is a resounding “yes!” At the very least, most people justify self-defense in the face of imminent danger. This argument can then be stretched and twisted until it is almost unrecognizable as in states in the U.S. with “stand your ground” laws. Wherein a person can resort to deadly violence immediately and claim self-defense. This is not the only way that violence is justified in our society though.

The Wretched of the United States

At its core, in spite of, or more accurately because so many claim to be guided by Christianity, the United States is a deeply violent country. Fanon knowingly shines a light on the hypocrisy of the Christian West by stating that decolonization can “be summed up in the well-known words: ‘The last shall be first.’” (p2) This is a clear reference to the Bible and only one of many ways he emphasizes the gap between the stated and lived values of colonizers. He also tears down much of the humanist rhetoric around equality of man. On Violence speaks of the colonized people around the world whose

“world is a world divided in two. The dividing line, the border, is represented by the barracks and the police stations. In the colonies, the official, legitimate agent, the spokesperson for the colonizer, and the regime of oppression, is the police officer or the soldier.”

Considering this idea of colonization, there are many current geopolitical situations that one could draw parallels to around the world. Because of the limitations of my knowledge and the space in this blog, I will focus on the U.S., where I believe Fanon’s categorization of colonists and colonized parallels the distinction we make between the criminalized and others.

Considering historical cycles of violence, the U.S. was founded on the violent genocide of Native Americans in the pursuit of land and financial gain. Alongside this was the horrific slave trade, which created the wealth of the country and led to long years of Jim Crow segregation, and discrimination in both government policy and civil society that continues today (and is frequently very violent still today). The United States is one of 55 countries with capital punishment and one of 32 that have actually executed people within the last 10 years, and many likely innocent people have been murdered by the state. For example, according to ProPublica’s reporting on criminal judges in Louisiana,

“Since 1976, 82% of Louisiana’s death sentences have been overturned by appeals judges after defense attorneys exposed serious violations that occurred at trial. Most sentences were reduced to life; some prisoners were exonerated.”

It is clear that violence is structured into our society, and it seems unlikely to change as long as it is serving who we think it should be serving. That is mainly wealthy, mainly white people. Fanon’s words are apt today:

In capitalist countries a multitude of sermonizers, counselors, and “confusion-mongers” intervene between the exploited and the authorities. In colonial regions, however, the proximity and frequent, direct intervention by the police and the military ensure the colonized are kept under close scrutiny, and contained by rifle butts and napalm. (p4)

What is interesting to me is that this description applies very well within a capitalist country like the United States. It is no great stretch of the imagination to say that there are “colonial regions” inside the United States. Think of what people refer to as “ghettoes” or more euphemistically “the inner city.” These are areas under regular police surveillance where the force of law (including often deadly force) will come down on folks to “contain them.” This often leads to imprisonment where prisoners are forced to labor for the benefit of the colonists. To make this parallel even clearer Fanon goes on to say

The colonist’s sector is a sector built to last, all stone and steel. It’s a sector of lights and paved roads, where the trash cans constantly overflow with strange and wonderful garbage, undreamed-of leftovers. The colonist’s feet can never be glimpsed, except perhaps in the sea, but then you can never get close enough. They are protected by solid shoes in a sector where the streets are clean and smooth, without a pothole, without a stone. The colonist’s sector is a sated, sluggish sector, its belly is permanently full of good things. The colonist’s sector is a white folks’ sector, a sector of foreigners.

The colonized’s sector, or at least the “native” quarters, the shanty town, the Medina, the reservation, is a disreputable place inhabited by disreputable people. (p4)

As noted in my reading recommendations, inequality is now near the levels of the beginning of the 20th century, a time period before decolonization had occurred. I argue below that decolonization never fully happened due to the unequal global trade regimes, but now we can also see that a form of colonization is happening in the U.S. In our case it is more aptly referred to as criminalization, but follows the same patterns that Fanon describes of French Algeria. The last line of the above quotation enforces the previous idea that the colonists define the colonized. The people are defined as disreputable and can never be otherwise because of the colonists. Throughout the chapter there are many references to crime and criminality because policing is the main method of enforcing the inequality of colonization.

The colonized subject is constantly on his guard: Confused by the myriad signs of the colonial world he never knows whether he is out of line. Confronted with a world configured by the colonizer, the colonized subject is always presumed guilty. (p16)

and, after detailing how revolutionary fighters retell stories of resistance to colonial powers and “heroes” who kill colonial officials, Fanon notes:

there is no point, obviously, in saying that such a hero is a thief, a thug, or a degenerate. If the act for which this man is prosecuted by the colonial authorities is an act exclusively directed against a colonial individual or colonial asset, then the demarcation line is clear and manifest.

The process of identification is automatic. (p30)

I will caveat my prior statements by noting that in the U.S. we have such safeguards as freedom of speech and other rights that are supposed to protect us from tyranny. As shown by the House Committee on Unamerican Activities and the domestic surveillance done by the FBI these freedoms can be curtailed and in essence removed for a time. As Fanon attempts to show the Europeans, they cannot continue using violence to keep the colonized down or they will soon reap the consequences. In the same manner, I warn my fellow citizens that the more restrictive we make policing, and the more we foreclose nonviolent forms of protest, or any possibility of progress through the legislative or judicial system, the stronger is the message that this is a colonized country, where the colonists rule and the criminalized are ruled over.

There is so much depth to this chapter, and Fanon does not shy away from the many pitfalls that revolutionaries and national liberationists fall into in their struggle for self-determination. He attempts to provide warnings and a broad guide to true liberation, while also noting the many ways in which colonial powers offer concessions that cement their unequal economic positions and perpetuate the colonial power dynamics. This was, perhaps, the most accurate observation Fanon makes in this chapter as we continue to see colonial dynamics today in global economic relations.

I have many more disjointed thoughts, so I will leave things there for now and invite the reader to consider what the world would look like if we truly embodied the phrase “the last shall be first.”

Purchase the Book

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Here is the link to my store page, with all of my recommendations.

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