As a student I was a fan of Frantz Fanon, a black Frenchman born in Martinique. He was a psychiatrist, philosopher, revolutionary, and writer whose work was and remains influential in the fields of post-colonial studies, critical theory, and Marxism. For more than five decades, the life and works of Fanon have inspired national movements both political and racial.
A good friend knowing of my youthful admiration of Fanon (yes, I too was a student rebel in my day) sent me a copy of a new biography Rebel’s Clinic: The Revolutionary Lives of Frantz Fanon, by Adam Shatz. An excellent book and a necessary depiction of the struggle against racism and the effects of colonialism primarily in Algeria. A delight to read. Interestingly Shatz mentions Palestine only twice in passing and then in his own comments, not Fanon’s.
Fanon has been adopted by all left-Wing anti colonialists and is one of the ideological heroes of Black Lives Matter, and the academic fools who rule the Universities. As if all struggles are same. As a Marxist he despised the Muslim Brotherhood and the kind of Jihadis who are now supported by the naïve, indoctrinated Western world. He never wrote about the Palestinians and in fact saw Jews as equally despised and disadvantaged by prejudice. He would not have agreed with the ridiculous theory that all struggles could be reduced to one and the same definition of colonialism. Or that genocide is what anyone decides it is.
The adoption of Fanon by Edward Saeed of Columbia University, one of the proponents of misidentifying Israelis as colonialists and of the modern race theory, is why Fanon is so popular currently. And a perfect example of expropriation and muddying of ideological waters. The brutality of the Algerian war and ultimate triumph, have been adopted by Hamas and Jihadis elsewhere as a model of Islamism’s victory over colonial opposition, particularly applicable to Israel, rather than a conflict between two rival nationalisms.
Fanon’s family was middle class and sent him to the most prestigious school in Martinique. There he began to rebel against the racism of the different strata of Martinique society. When he was 18 Fanon left Martinique in 1943 to join the Free French Army fighting the Nazis. In 1944 he was wounded and decorated. In 1945, Fanon returned to Martinique. He lasted a short time there and then went to metropolitan France, where he studied medicine and psychiatry at Lyon. And in Europe again Fanon was exposed to more racism.
Fanon published his first book, Black Skin, White Masks (1952), an analysis of the negative psychological effects of racism and prejudice and how it engendered a sense of inferiority when facing white people. Fanon believed that they could not fully integrate into the life and environment of white people.
He qualified in psychiatry and practiced in France. He opposed old fashioned hidebound methods of treating mental illness. He thought patients would respond better to treatment if they were integrated into their families and communities instead of being institutionalized. Fanon’s methods of treatment started evolving, particularly by connecting treatment with his patients’ cultural backgrounds.
In 1953 he was recruited to run the Psychiatric Hospital in Algeria. Initially he was only concerned with updating the psychiatric methods.
Fanon got caught up in the cruelty of the civil war between rival Muslims and the French Algerians supported by a violent French army. By summer 1956 Fanon realized that he could no longer continue to support French methods of control. He openly supported rebellion and added Omar to his name.
Together with Jean Paul Sartre he condemned the anti-Semitism manifest on both sides of the Algerian conflict and supported the idea of a Jewish homeland. His outspokenness resulted in his expulsion from Algeria, and he moved to Tunis where he joined the FLN the secular, liberation party. As opposed to the Islamist, Jihadi party the AMN whose methods and ideology were later adopted by Hamas. He was part of an editorial collective for which he wrote until the end of his life. He also served as the ambassador to Ghana for the Provisional Algerian Government.
In 1958 Fanon was diagnosed with leukemia. He went to the Soviet Union for treatment which proved unsuccessful. He came back to Tunis where he dictated his testament and final work, The Wretched of the Earth (1959).
Fanon’s comrades urged him to seek treatment in the U.S.A as his Soviet doctors had suggested. In 1961, the CIA arranged a trip for further leukemia treatment. The circumstances of Fanon’s stay are disputed. It was claimed that he was kept in a hotel without treatment for several days until he contracted pneumonia and died in December 1961.It was claimed by the Russians that the CIA was responsible for his death as they were for several left wing Black African leaders most famously Patrice Lumumba of the Congo but as with so many Russian claims there was no evidence to support this.
I admired him enormously not just as a polemicist, but also as a moral, caring, if complex human being. I like to think he might have been a moderating influence for peace and tolerance had he lived and might even have been able to curb some of the violence that has ensued. One can dream.
Strange how we all see other people and situations through our own traumas and experiences. I respect caring human beings regardless of background. Fanon was one of them. He would not have approved of the violence directed at Israel and Jews today.
20th June 2024
