OLSON. 2015.

CONCERNING VIOLENCE

Frantz Fanon died in 1961, aged 36

The same week, The Wretched of the Earth was published.

And on the very same day, the book was confiscated and
banned in France.

This film is based on that book.

CONCERNING VIOLENCE
Nine Scenes from the Anti-Imperialistic Self-Defense
text by Frantz Fanon
narrated by Ms. Lauryn Hill
directed by Goran Hugo Olsson

MPLA fought against the Portuguese army in the Angolan War of Independence from
1961 to 1974

1. Decolonization
With the MPLA in Angola, 1974
Decolonization or decolonisation is the undoing of colonialism
Decolonization refers to the process, often long, tortuous, and violent,
by which colonies achieve their national aspirations for political independence
from the colonial metropolitan power.

Indifference - lack of concern about, unconcerned, not showing sympathy

2. Indifference
Interview with Tonderai Makoni, Ph.D.
Rhodesia/Zimbabwe
Conducted in Stockholm, 1970

3. Rhodesia
A settler colony, in southern-central Africa.

4. A World Cut in Two

The colonial world is a world cut in two. The dividing line,
the frontiers are shown by barracks and police stations.
In the colonies it is the policeman and the soldier who are the official,
instituted go-betweens, the spokesmen of the settler and his rule of oppression.

The settlers' town is a strongly built town, all made of stone and steel.
It is a brightly lit town; the streets are covered with asphalt, and the garbage
cans
swallow all the leavings, unseen, unknown and hardly thought about.
The settler's feet are never visible, except perhaps in the sea; but there you're
never
close enough to see them. His feet are protected by strong shoes although the
streets of
his town are clean and even, with no holes or stones. The settler's town is a well-
fed
town, an easygoing town; its belly is always full of good things.
The settlers' town is a town of white people, of foreigners.

They are born there, it matters little where or how; they die there,
it matters not where, nor how. It is a world without spaciousness;
men live there on top of each other, and their huts are built one on top of the
other.
The native town is a hungry town, starved of bread, of meat, of shoes, of coal, of
light.

5. Lamco, Liberia, 1966

A strike has erupted at Swedish-American mining company LAMCO's site in Nimba.
A Swedish television team happened to be present.
Crew: Ingrid Dahlgberg, Roland Hjelte & Lars ----??

Nimba - a county in northeastern Liberia that shares borders with

the Republic of Côte d'Ivoire in the East and the Republic of Guinea
in the Northwest.

A normal working day. But today, soldiers are posted at the workplace.
The work is down. The Liberians in Nimba have gone on strike.

Henry Monger, chairman of the LAMCO workers' union.

Jailed and accused of having led a few thousand Liberians to demonstrate
for higher pay. A strike which was declared illegal before it began.
He awaits his fate outside the mess hall in Nimba.

The LAMCO management takes the union leaders to a number of cars.

Also present are representatives of Liberian government who have
already disclosed the journey's destination: the notorious prison Belle Yella.
Infamous for being the country's worst torture prison, from where few return.

....

6. That Poverty of Spirit

All values, in fact, are irrevocably poisoned and diseased as soon as they are
allowed in contact with the colonized race. The customs of the colonized people,
their traditions, their myths -- above all, their myths--are the very sign of
that poverty of spirit and of their constitutional depravity.

I speak of the Christian religion, and no one need be astonished.

The Church in the colonies is the white people's Church, the foreigner's Church.
She does not call the native to God's ways but to the ways of the white man,
of the master, of the oppressor. And as we know, in this matter many are called
but few chosen.

In the colonial context the settler only ends his work of breaking in the native
when the latter admits loudly and intelligibly the supremacy of the white man's
values.

For a colonized people the most essential value, because the most concrete,
is first and foremost the land: the land which will bring them bread and,
above all, dignity. But this dignity has nothing to do with the dignity of the
human individual: for that human individual has never heard tell of it.
All that the native has seen in his country is that they can freely arrest him,
beat him, starve him: and no professor of ethics, no priest has ever come to be
beaten in his place, nor to share their bread with him.

The wellknown principle that all men are equal will be illustrated in the
colonies from the moment that the native claims that he is the equal of the
settler.
The colonialist bourgeoisie( a social class equivalent to the middle or upper
middle class)
had hammered into the native's mind the idea of a society of individuals where
each person shuts himself up in his own subjectivity, and whose only wealth is
individual thought.

7. The Fiat G.91

With the FRELIMO in Mozambique 1972
RELIMO began as a nationalist movement fighting for the self-determination and
independence of Mozambique from Portuguese colonial rule.

How long did Portugal rule Mozambique?

Portuguese Mozambique (1498–1975)

The immobility to which the native is condemned can only be called in question
if the native decides to put an end to the history of colonization--the history
of pillage -and to bring into existence the history of the nation--the history of
decolonization.

The starving peasant, outside the class system, is the first among the exploited
to discover that only violence pays. For him there is no compromise, no possible
coming to terms; colonization and decolonization are simply a question of relative
strength.
The exploited man sees that his liberation implies the use of all means, and that
of force first and foremost.

8. Defeat
Ginea-Bissau War of Independence

The colonized man finds his freedom in and through violence.

Violence enlightens, because it indicates to the means and the end.
At the level of individuals, violence is a cleansing force.
It frees the native from his inferiority complex and from his despair and inaction;
it makes him fearless and restores his self-respect.

When a colonialist country, embarrassed by the claims for independence made by a

colony, proclaims to the nationalist leaders:
"If you wish for independence,take it, and go back to the Middle Ages,"

Decolonization never takes place unnoticed,

for it influences individuals and modifies them fundamentally.

It brings a natural rhythm into existence, introduced by new men,

and with it a new language and a new humanity.

9. Raw Materials

Capitalism, in its early days, saw in the colonies a source of raw materials
which, once turned into manufactured goods, could be distributed on the European
market. After a phase of accumulation of capital, capitalism has today come to
modify its conception of the profit-earning capacity of a commercial enterprise.

A blind domination founded on slavery is not economically speaking worthwhile.

The colonies have become a market.

Today, however, the colonized countries' national struggle crops up in a

completely new international situation.
What the factory owners and finance magnates of the mother country expect from
their government is not that it should decimate the colonial peoples, but that
it should safeguard with the help of economic conventions their own
"legitimate interests."

For centuries the capitalists have behaved in the underdeveloped world like
nothing more than war criminals. Deportations, massacres, forced labor, and
slavery have been the main methods used by capitalism to increase its wealth,
its gold or diamond reserves, and to establish its power.

Not long ago Nazism transformed the whole of Europe into a veritable colony.
The governments of the various Europan nations called for reparations and
demanded the restitution in kind and money of the wealth which had been stolen
from them: cultural treasures, pictures, sculptures, and stained glass have
been given back to their owners.

Europe has stuffed herself inordinately with the gold and raw materials of the
colonial countries: Latin America, China, and Africa. From all these continents,
under whose eyes Europe today raises up her tower of opulence, there has flowed
out for centuries toward that same Europe diamonds and oil, silk and cotton, wood
and exotic products.

Europe is literally the creation of the Third World.

The wealth which smothers her is that which was stolen from the underdeveloped
peoples.

This help should be the ratification of a double realization:

the realization by the colonized peoples that it is their due,
and the realization by the capitalist powers that in fact they must pay.

This huge task which consists of reintroducing mankind into the world,
the whole of mankind, will be carried out with the indispensable help,
of the European peoples, who themselves must realize that in the past they
have often joined the ranks of our common masters where colonial questions were
concerned. To achieve this, the European peoples must first decide to wake up
and shake themselves, use their brains,
and stop playing the stupid game of the Sleeping Beauty.

CONCLUSION

Come, comrades, the European game is finally over, we must look for something else.
We can do anything today provided we do not ape Europe. Provided we are not
obsessed with catching up with Europe. Europe has gained such a mad and
reckless momentum, that it has lost control and reason and is heading at a
dizzying speed towards the brink from which we would be advised to remove
ourselves as quickly as possible.

Europe undertook the leadership of the world with ardor, cynicism and violence.
Look at how the shadow of its palaces stretches and multiplies.
We must shake off the heavy darkness in which we were cast, and leave it behind.
Yet it is very true that we need a model, and that we want blueprints and
examples. For many among us, the European model was the most inspiring.
But when we search for humanity in the technique and style of Europe, we see only
a succession of negations of humanity and an avalanche of murders.
The human condition, plans for mankind, and collaboration between people in those
tasks which increase the sum total of humanity are new problems, which
demand true inventions.
Let us decide not to imitate Europe. Let us combine our muscles and our
brains in a new direction. Let us try to create the whole human being, whom
Europe has been incapable of bringing to triumph birth.

SOURCES:
http://www.openanthropology.org/fanonviolence.htm
Concerning Violence (2014)