<!doctype html public "-//W3C//DTD W3 HTML//EN"> <html><head><style type="text/css"></style><title>Re: [lbo-talk] Richard Wright, Frantz Fanon, and Amiri</title></head><body> <div>M. Pugliese posted a 3-year-old Village Voice article containing</div> <div>the following:</div> <div><br></div> <div>"...<font face="Charcoal" size="-2" color="#000000">arriving just in time for the anticolonial war launched by Front de Liberation National guerrillas against France in 1954,  Fanon, who would go on to become an FLN propagandist..."</font></div> <div><font face="Charcoal" size="-2" color="#000000"><br></font></div> <div><font face="Charcoal" size="-2" color="#000000">The FLN did not exist in 1954.  The "toussaints sanglant" was launched by the CRUA (comite revolutionnaire d'unité</font></div> <div><font face="Charcoal" size="-2" color="#000000">d'action),  a group of young militants in the MTLD (mouvement pour la triomph des libertes democratiques) who</font></div> <div><font face="Charcoal" size="-2" color="#000000">had become impatient with what they saw as factional bickering, rather than a principled political struggle,</font></div> <div><font face="Charcoal" size="-2" color="#000000">between the overtly socialist followers of the imprisoned Messali Hadj, the historic leader of Algerian</font></div> <div><font face="Charcoal" size="-2" color="#000000">nationalism, and the majority of the MTLD central committee (the "centralists"), led by Ben Kedda and</font></div> <div><font face="Charcoal" size="-2" color="#000000">ensconsed in the Algiers municipal government.  The provocative terrorist action worked as intended--</font></div> <div><font face="Charcoal" size="-2" color="#000000">French violent repression precipitated a broadening guerrilla. In 1955 The FLN was established as a</font></div> <div><font face="Charcoal" size="-2" color="#000000">bloc between the CRUA and the Centralists, while the Messalists formed the MNA (mouvement</font></div> <div><font face="Charcoal" size="-2" color="#000000">nationale algerienne) .  In the hexagon,  where the algerian proletariat mainly worked,  the split was reproduced         <span ></span>       on the trade union level between the trotskyist-influenced Messalist USTA and the stalinist influenced</font></div> <div><font face="Charcoal" size="-2" color="#000000">FLN-led UGTA.  UGTA terrorism against the USTA succeeded in crushing the Algerian proletarian</font></div> <div><font face="Charcoal" size="-2" color="#000000">movement in the hexagon.  Meanwhile the French kidnapped the most leftist of the CRUA leaders</font></div> <div><font face="Charcoal" size="-2" color="#000000">(Ait-Ahmed, Boudiaf,  BenBella), confiding the FLN to the control of Ben Kedda and, over</font></div> <div><font face="Charcoal" size="-2" color="#000000">the Tunisian border, the fascist Boumedienne, who while the Algerian people were being bled</font></div> <div><font face="Charcoal" size="-2" color="#000000">white in a futile internecine struggle,  involving the liquidation of the Messalists as well as such Berber FLN</font></div> <div><font face="Charcoal" size="-2" color="#000000">cadres as Ramdane Abbane,  prepared his "Algerian National Army" to take over once deGaulle had</font></div> <div><font face="Charcoal" size="-2" color="#000000">crushed the French Algerian working class ("pieds noirs").  Thus the fascistic rule imposed by Boumedienne</font></div> <div><font face="Charcoal" size="-2" color="#000000">a couple of years after "full independence" and continuing under his military successors in slightly</font></div> <div><font face="Charcoal" size="-2" color="#000000">"liberalized" form until this day.  The reponsibility of FLN apologists like Fanon, Pablo, Mandel, et. al. is crushing.</font></div> <div><font face="Charcoal" size="-2" color="#000000"><br></font></div> <div>Shane Mage<br> <br> "Thunderbolt steers all things."         <span ></span >           <span ></span >           <span ></span >           <span ></span >           <span ></span>    <br> </div> <div>Herakleitos of Ephesos, fr. 64</div> <div><font face="Charcoal" size="-2" color="#000000">the trotskyist influenced</font></div> </body> </html>