Comment by giraffe_lady | Hacker News Reader

Comment by giraffe_lady | Hacker News Reader

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This seems like a really limited reading of Fanon tbh. His works basically address most of these arguments, which you can then disagree with or not but it's not like he doesn't have a refutation.

In fact at one point you're pointing a fanon-like argument back at him without acknowledging it or its original point:

> the societies liberated by such ideologies become unruly as they essentially condone violence as means to an end

Fanon's claims are consistent with this, he addresses it directly. Except he of course is talking about societies that use colonialist violence as a means to their ends, not those reaching for liberation through violence. Seems relevant here. If those who use violence for liberation are corrupted by it, what does it do to those of us who use it for no great purpose except our own benefit, as our societies certainly have?

You're also conflating military conflict with violence per se, an error that Fanon doesn't make. This elision allows you to draw distinctions between resistance and civilians that doesn't exist as we're seeing so so clearly in gaza right now.

And then, finally, this distinction between "good" peaceful nonviolent resistance and "bad" actively violent resistance is ahistorical. None of these groups or figures consistently considered themselves to be divided in this way. Malcolm X and MLK were allies, that disagreed and opposed each other on some issues, and respected and abetted on others. Successful nonviolent resistance movements generally, certainly the two you mention specifically, are effective because of a radical movement with the will to violence at its flank.

White people negotiate with MLK so that Malcolm X doesn't burn their businesses down. Look at the environmentalist movement for what you can accomplish through peaceful protest without the threat of violence behind it: global scale and decades of mobilization accomplishing almost nothing.

> Fanon's claims are consistent with this, he addresses it directly. Except he of course is talking about societies that use colonialist violence as a means to their ends, not those reaching for liberation through violence. Seems relevant here. If those who use violence for liberation are corrupted by it, what does it do to those of us who use it for no great purpose except our own benefit, as our societies certainly have?

Empirically, societies that employed violence for their own benefit (e.g. the British, the French, the Americans, the Israelis) seem to have suffered very few consequences, whereas the societies that have employed violence to remove them (e.g. the Chinese, the Haitians, the Iranians, the Palestinians) have done very poorly in the aftermath. While there are certainly some negative consequences for strong countries which violently impose themselves on the weak, (e.g. Americans pay for their Middle-East policy by having to take their shoes off at the airport), on the whole it seems like a successful invasion, however bloody it may be for the country invaded, tends to cause relatively few material problems for the invader. If there's any repayment for evil, it must happen in heaven and hell, because hardly anywhere is justice visible on Earth. Like Thucydides said, "The strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must."

I agree that for example Malcolm X and MLK were in large part allies in the Civil Rights Movement, but that is no reason to gloss over their differences. There is obviously a marked difference between the expressed non-violence of Gandhi and MLK vs the militancy of Malcom X and Fanon, the latter who, among other things wrote how "at the level of individuals, violence is a cleansing force" [0].

He goes on to justify terrorism against civilians, simply for their inadvertent sharing in the profits of oppression. This line of argumentation did not only justify terrorism in the anti-colonial struggle, it is the hallmark of all terrorists everywhere.

I find it insidious, if not uncommon, to claim that pacifist struggle is somehow dependent on violence, that non-violent struggle is only "effective because of a radical movement with the will to violence at its flank". As if violence, or the threat of it, is the only force that can cause movement. There is no such requirement for a non-violent struggle, there are plenty of other pressures beyond violence that can be applied, as MLK demonstrated. Violence is in fact the laziest and most cowardly solution in comparison, one that gives up on human ingenuity and creativity and simply utilizes our basest instincts.

Fanon may or may not have addressed these points in his writing; I confess to having read only "The Wretched of the Earth", and that was quite a few years ago, and at the time bought his arguments, lock, stock, and barrel.

But regardless of his arguments, he was of a different age, one where armed struggle was a thing of outrage and awe. It is a different world now: an age where any teenager can, and do, start a murderous massacre without anyone hardly lifting as much as an eyebrow, and the whole world stands on the precipice of a disastrous nuclear war by pure accident because of our subservience to violence as the only way of solving conflict. The context has shifted and we need other methods than the barrel of a gun. I submit that Gandhi and MLK can be inspirations, if not directly copied.

[0] http://academics.wellesley.edu/Polisci/wj/204/204-Readings/f...

Reading fanon today, the main thing I get from him that the colonized will lead the struggle for freedom. If we aren't going to help them we should at least get out of the way. Standing in safety and scolding them about their methods is nothing. Just nothing.

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