Nonviolence And Decolonization

Using nonviolence to settle the colonial problem around a negotiating table is ineffective because the colonial problem is solved by the colonized intellectual rather than the majority of people in a colonized country and the colonized intellectual is careful not to break ties with colonialism and colludes with the colonial elites. The reason why Fanon advocated for violence over nonviolence in the decolonization process is because he believed that nonviolence was used by colonized intellectuals that tried to maintain the colonial relationship with the colonialist in order to further their own interests and the colonists interests, which undermines decolonization. Frantz Fanon argued that during the Cold War the U.S. and Soviet Union were interested …show more content…
The reason that Fanon does not note the effects that the Algerian war had on military men was because Fanon died before he was able to analyze the effects. Aaronette M. White argues that violence during decolonization was not liberating as Fanon believed because soldiers who had close combat experiences suffered mental disorders, had high drug and alcohol addiction and suffered from high blood pressure and heart disease due to the violent acts of torture they committed during the war. In the Battle of Algiers, the negative effects of violence can be seen when the FLN bombs store fronts in Algeria because many innocent French men, women, and children are killed from the bombings. These acts of terror were pointless and a negative effect of using violence because random civilians were killed rather than the FLN targeting the French army. The film Mon Colonel, demonstrates how during the Algerian war, the French and the FLN used torture against enemies, but the use of torture goes against Fanon’s theory of violence being a liberating process because the men that committed violence faced a wide range of psychological disorders and did not feel …show more content…
Fanon advocated for violence in the decolonization struggle over nonviolence because he believed that the use of non-violence was unacceptable because colonized intellectuals formed relationships with the colonized in order to enrich themselves and allow the colonist to once again exploit the new independent country. Fanon also believed that during the Cold War the U.S. and Soviet Union supported countries in decolonization because they wanted to practise neo-colonialism whereby they exploited the independent country, which made former colonized countries dependent on either the communist Soviet Union or the capitalist United States for economic aid. However, ‘The Wretched of the Earth’ does not take into account the negative effects that violence had on the colonized person’s mental state or the social structures in societies that resorted to violence as a means of governing in the new independent nation. Fanon also does not take into account the major role that women had during the violent decolonization process or how they were systematically targeted by sexual violence, which was a negative aspect of violence in decolonization