National liberation, national renaissance, the restoration of nationhood to the people,
commonwealth: whatever may be the headings used or the new formulas introduced,
decolonization is always a violent phenomenon.
…
Decolonization is the veritable creation of new men. But this creation
owes nothing of its legitimacy to any supernatural power; the
“thing” which has been colonized becomes man during the same process by which it frees
itself.
In decolonization, there is therefore the need of a complete calling in question of the
colonial situation. If we wish to describe it precisely, we might find it in the wellknown
words: “The last shall be first and the first last.” Decolonization is the putting into
practice of this sentence. That is why, if we try to describe it, all decolonization is
successful.
The naked truth of decolonization evokes for us the searing bullets and bloodstained
knives which emanate from it. For if the last shall be first, this will only come to pass
after a murderous and decisive struggle between the two protagonists. That affirmed
intention to place the last at the head of things, and to make them climb at a pace (too
quickly, some say) the well-known steps which characterize an organized society, can
only triumph if we use all means to turn the scale, including, of course, that of violence.
You do not turn any society, however primitive it may be, upside down with such a
program if you have not decided from the very beginning, that is to say from the actual
formulation of that program, to overcome all the obstacles that you will come across in so
doing. The native who decides to put the program into practice, and to become its moving
force, is ready for violence at all times. From birth it is clear to him that this narrow
world, strewn with prohibitions, can only be called in question by absolute violence.
~ Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth
Your point, that the oppressed should stay subservient and exploited because the struggle for liberation will bring about violence from the oppressor, ignores the generations of violence done onto the vast majority of the world and the violence that continues to weigh upon and threatens to crush everyone under this capitalist-imperialist hellscape. You should fight because of that violence.
National liberation, national renaissance, the restoration of nationhood to the people, commonwealth: whatever may be the headings used or the new formulas introduced, decolonization is always a violent phenomenon.
…
Decolonization is the veritable creation of new men. But this creation owes nothing of its legitimacy to any supernatural power; the “thing” which has been colonized becomes man during the same process by which it frees itself.
In decolonization, there is therefore the need of a complete calling in question of the colonial situation. If we wish to describe it precisely, we might find it in the wellknown words: “The last shall be first and the first last.” Decolonization is the putting into practice of this sentence. That is why, if we try to describe it, all decolonization is successful.
The naked truth of decolonization evokes for us the searing bullets and bloodstained knives which emanate from it. For if the last shall be first, this will only come to pass after a murderous and decisive struggle between the two protagonists. That affirmed intention to place the last at the head of things, and to make them climb at a pace (too quickly, some say) the well-known steps which characterize an organized society, can only triumph if we use all means to turn the scale, including, of course, that of violence.
You do not turn any society, however primitive it may be, upside down with such a program if you have not decided from the very beginning, that is to say from the actual formulation of that program, to overcome all the obstacles that you will come across in so doing. The native who decides to put the program into practice, and to become its moving force, is ready for violence at all times. From birth it is clear to him that this narrow world, strewn with prohibitions, can only be called in question by absolute violence.
~ Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth
Your point, that the oppressed should stay subservient and exploited because the struggle for liberation will bring about violence from the oppressor, ignores the generations of violence done onto the vast majority of the world and the violence that continues to weigh upon and threatens to crush everyone under this capitalist-imperialist hellscape. You should fight because of that violence.