Could We Do Otherwise? Frantz Fanon and Ideological Confusion

Added: 2026-05-30

[00:00:00]Now, from Jared's point of view, cuz Jared Jared is a contrarian by nature.

[00:00:07]Um one could ask one could ask from Jared's point of view, well, why did Fanon, if he knew this, and there's a question whether he knew this about the death of his friend, who people considered his mentor in some some sense, who was murdered, why did he continue to work within the FLN?

[00:00:30]And um that would be a important point, because they the FLN went along with Fanon's proposal to open up a southern front to Mali into Algeria to bring arms into into Algeria, into the Algerian Revolution.

[00:00:52]And they went along with it, and we have in we have Fanon's logbook from his trip to Mali with Cameroon, Mali.

[00:01:02]I think those are the two countries. And so he's looking for bringing in arms, because the French had set up, literally, it's crazy, an electrified fence on the Algerian-Moroccan border and then the Algerian-Tunisian border.

[00:01:18]So the FL the ALN, the army, really saw no saw no combat to speak of during the revolution.

[00:01:26]Aba's position, as was Fanon's position, that the revolution need to come from within, not from the military. It needed to be a mass movement from within.

[00:01:37]Uh but the mass movement from within had gotten frozen out in terms of arms, and so Fanon, you know, cuz Fanon put a lot of stock on the peasantry and blah blah blah, this is work uh with that. So he he convinced the FLN to uh to back a reconnaissance mission that he went on to open up a southern front through Mali since they were frozen out on the east and west. And um Fanon goes through some of the early, you know, um countries that have gained independence and that's when he gives his pretty sad and um blistering critique. He says, "The further I go into the um the circles of the independence movement." He says, "Africa He says, I can see that Africa will soon be independent. It will soon be free of colonialism. But the deeper I go into the circles, the political circles of the independence movement of the nations, the greater uh fear that the the greater danger to Africa uh is the lack of ideology."

[00:02:50]And that was I mean, it's it's not written in an article. It's written in his personal diary, his logbook. It It appears near the end of the the posthumously published works of Fanon called Toward the African Revolution. By the way, in the very last article in Toward the African Revolution, those right to the point of what he's raising.

[00:03:11]It was about the murder of Lumumba. It's called Could We Have Done Otherwise?

[00:03:16]Could We Do Otherwise? And it was a critique of the African leadership.

[00:03:21]Because they got played. They got They They believed in the United Nations as some kind of arbiter as the Lumumba by the way by the way. And uh so they got played. And um it was Lenin called the League of Nations a thieves' kitchen of imperialism. And that's what the UN was.

[00:03:38]And so the very last article of Fanon's in Toward the African Revolution was about Lumumba. And so when Fanon comes in the summer of 1961, the year that he ultimately dies at the end of the year.

[00:03:53]He comes to Rome in 1961 to meet with Sartre uh to write the preface to Wretched of the Earth, which Sartre's studies scholars say is the most revolutionary thing Sartre ever wrote, and it is.

[00:04:09]Um Um Simone de Beauvoir, Sartre's partner, in her memoir talks about the meeting. And Fanon, who's dying of leukemia at the time, is really wasted, exhausted. He's He's in Rome in in um summer of 1961.

[00:04:26]And Fanon comes in, he says, "The two deaths that he has on his conscience is the death of Abane and the death of Lumumba."

[00:04:35]Two people that he knew.

[00:04:37]And what's on his conscience is, we can speculate, and I think it's a reasonable speculation, was that they were killed from within the movement. I mean, certainly it was the CIA and with Lumumba and whatnot, but it was these the um the contradictions within the revolutionary movement that he was talking about. So, when he comes, he has written the the manuscript pretty much of Wretched.

[00:05:10]The chapters for Wretched of the Earth, and as you know, Wretched of the Earth, the title comes from the first line of the Internationale, right? Arise, you prisoners of starvation. Arise, you the wretched or the damned of the Earth.

[00:05:24]Um the the the the chapters actually come from lectures he gave to cadre in Morocco and Tunisia um of the FLN and the ALN. And so, I mean, it doesn't it doesn't come from a a scholar sitting down individu- you know, separated, isolated, or something.

[00:05:47]Uh but actually comes from lectures he gave to the FLN and ALN cadre and whatnot. So it comes right out of his practice, right out of revolutionary practice.

[00:06:01]And I I think I told you last time I said Fanon's work is spoken word. He He often spoke his uh his his books and somebody wrote them down. So it's one reason why it has this kind of immediacy to his language. I think I've only come across one articles by a brother who talks about who studies who analyzes Fanon's rhetoric. And you know, I don't know that he knew when he wrote the article that Fanon's work was actually spoken. But he talks about the uniqueness of Fanon's rhetoric in his books and his writings.

[00:06:38]>> That's amazing and uh similar to I know Walter Rodney speaks uh is is another one. Although Rodney did have his writings. Uh it reads like a book cuz he's so brilliant, but it's actually all an interview which is amazing to think about.

[00:06:54]>> I heard Rodney at UCLA back in the day, back in the 70s.

[00:06:57]>> [laughter] >> It's I think it was late 70s, early 80s.

[00:07:01]But then when he got kicked out of Jamaica and was doing the the Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:07:05]>> Wow. Yeah. Jared, I see you started commenting and it's related to where we left off last time. So if you want to raise that.

[00:07:12]>> Yeah, sure. No, it's something that I've been always looking for better answers to and and I would love to hear your thoughts on. Why do you all think Fanon met with the CIA in Maryland?