"for a long time history is made without them" Re: Terror Inc.

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

>The extent of abridgement of civil rights & liberties _alone_, to say
>nothing of the scope of military adventurism on the part of the US
>government (_even_ if _no_ Afghan had died due to the war), would
>warrant a general strike or something like that as a response from US
>leftists (if "the Left" had existed here).
>
>However, what Frantz Fanon said of the French Left during the
>Algerian War applies to US leftists in the last several decades: "for
>a long time history is made without them."
>--
>Yoshie
>-----------------
>Was that said before or after '68 when the French government
>was almost brought down by the left?
>
>Peter

Frantz Fanon (1925-1961).  The Algerian war (1954-62).  The quotation 
comes from _A Dying Colonialism_ (Trans. Haakon Chevalier, NY: Grove 
Press, 1965, p.149), originally published in 1959 in France as _L'An 
V de la révolution algérienne_.

The point of Fanon's remark is to highlight the difficulty that 
leftists who live in an imperial metropolis face in mounting an 
effective opposition to imperialism: "They [= "the French parties of 
the Left"] were unable to prevent the sending of contingents to 
Algeria, unable to prevent Guy Mollet's capitulation.  They were 
passive under Lacoste, powerless before the military coup of the 13th 
of May" (_A Dying Colonialism_, p. 149).  What the French Left did 
manage to do, according to Fanon, was to force "the neo-fascists of 
Algeria and France to be on the defensive" and, "by its action, its 
denunciations, and its analysis," to prevent "a certain number of 
things."

'68 in France is an index of the salutary effects that the 
dissolution of an empire (in this case, losses of Indochina, Algeria, 
etc.) has upon leftists, youths, and workers who live at the heart of 
the former empire.  (Cf. The French Revolution happened _after, or 
rather because_ France lost many of its colonies in North America -- 
remember that in 1755 France held most of North America -- and India 
during the Seven Years' War, the New World aspect of which is known 
as the French and Indian War here).

In short, leftists at the heart of an empire get a fighting chance 
when it _loses_ its colonies.
-- 
Yoshie

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