on violence

all quotes from the wretched of the earth by frantz fanon

"decolonization is always a violent event."

"the colonized 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 soldier. in capitalist societies, education, whether secular or religious, the teaching of moral reflexes handed down from father to son, the exemplary integrity of workers decorated after fifty years of loyal and faithful service, the fostering of love for harmony and wisdom, those aesthetic forms of respect for the status quo, instill in the exploited a mood of submission and inhibition which considerably eases the task of the agents of law and order."

"the 'native' sector is not complementary to the european sector. the two confront each other, but not in the service of a higher unity. governed by a purely aristotelian logic, they follow the dictates of mutual exclusion: there is no conciliation possible, one of them is superfluous."

"challenging the colonial world is not a rational confrontation of viewpoints. it is not a discourse on the universal, but the impassioned claim by the colonized that their world is fundamentally different."

"the intellectual who, for his part, has adopted the abstract, universal values of the colonizer is prepared to fight so that colonist and colonized can live in peace in a new world. but what he does not see, because precisely colonialism and all its modes of thought have seeped into him, is that the colonist is no longer interested in staying on and coexisting once the colonial context has disappeared."

"the colonized intellectual learned from his masters that the individual must assert himself. the colonialist bourgeoisie hammered into the colonized mind the notion of a society of individuals where each is locked in his subjectivity, where wealth lies in thought. but the colonized intellectual who is lucky enough to bunker down with the people during the liberation struggle, will soon discover the falsity of this theory. . the colonized intellectual witnesses the destruction of all his idols: egoism, arrogant recrimination, and the idiotic, childish need to have the last word."

"whether it be in the djemaas of north africa or the palavers of west africa, tradition has it that disputes which break out in a village are worked out in public. by this i mean collective self-criticism with a touch of humor because everyone is relaxed, because in the end we all want the same thing. the intellectual sheds all that calculating, all those strange silences, those ulterior motives, that devious thinking and secrecy as he gradually plunges deeper among the people. in this respect then we can genuinely say that the community has already triumphed and exudes its own light, its own reason."

"the colonized subject is a persecuted man who is forever dreaming of becoming the persecutor. . . this impulse to take the colonist's place maintains a constant muscular tonus. it is a known fact that under certain emotional circumstances an obstacle actually escalates action."

"in the colonial world, the colonized's affectivity is kept on edge like a running sore flinching from a caustic agent."

"stating the principle 'it's them or us' is not a paradox since colonialism, as we have seen, is precisely the organization of a manichaean world, of a compartmentalized world."

"the existence of an armed struggle is indicative that the people are determined to put their faith only in violent methods. 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 understands 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."

"the violence of the colonial regime and the counterviolence of the colonized balance each other and respond to each other in an extraordinary reciprocal homogeneity. . . the colonist's logic is unrelenting and one is only baffled by the counterlogic of the colonized's behavior if one has remained out of touch with the colonists' way of thinking."

"to the expression 'all natives are the same,' the colonized reply: 'all colonists are the same'. . .the theory of the 'absolute evil of the colonist' is in response to the theory of the 'absolute evil of the native'."

"the work of the colonist is to make even dreams of liberty impossible for the colonized. . . for the colonized, life can only materialize from the rotting cadaver of the colonist."

"europe's well-being and progress were built with the sweat and corpses of blacks, arabs, indians, and asians. this we are determined never to forget."

"the basic confrontation which seemed to be colonialism versus anticolonialism, indeed capitalism versus socialism, is already losing its importance. what matters today, the issue which blocks the horizon, is the need for a redistribution of wealth. humanity will have to address this question, no matter how devastating the consequences."

"colonialism and imperialism have not settled their debt to us once they have withdrawn their flag and their police force from our territories. for centuries the capitalists have behaved like real war criminals in the underdeveloped world. deportation, massacres, forced labor, and slavery were the primary methods used by capitalism to increase its gold and diamond reserves, and establish its wealth and power. . . and when we hear the head of a european nation declare with hand on heart that he must come to the aid of the unfortunate peoples of the underdeveloped world, we do not tremble with gratitude. on the contrary, we say among ourselves, 'it is a just reparation we are getting.' so we will not accept aid for the underdeveloped countries as 'charity'. such aid must be considered the final stage of a dual consciousness - the consciousness of the colonized that it is their due and consciousness of the capitalist powers that effectively they must pay up."

"it is clear therefore that the young nations of the third world are wrong to grovel at the feet of the capitalist countries. we are powerful in our own right and the justness of our position."