wretched-of-the-earth-frantz-fanon

lxiiPREFACEmy fellow countrymen, you who know all the crimes committedour name, it is really not right not to breathe a wordabout them to anybody, not even to your own soul, for fear ofhaving to pass judgment on yourselves. At first you had no idea,I am prepared to believe it, then you suspected, and now youknow, but you still keep silent. Eight years ofsilence have a damagingeffect. And in vain: the blinding glare of torture is high inthe sky, flooding the entire country; under this blaze oflight, nota single laugh rings true any longer, not a single face that is notpainted to mask the anger and the fear, no longer a single actthat does not betray our disgust and our complicity. Todayever two Frenchmen meet, there is a dead body between them.And did I say one ... ? France was once the name of a country;be carefullest it become the name of a neurosis 1961.Will we recover? Yes. Violence, like Achilles' spear, can healwounds it has inflicted. Today we are in chains, humiliated,sick with fyar: at our lowest ebb. Fortunately for us, this is stillnot enough for the colonialist aristocracy: it cannot accomplishits rearguard mission in Algeria until it has first finished colonizingthe French. Every day we shrink back from the fight,rest assured it will be inevitable. The killers, they need it; theywill swoop down on us and lash out haphazardly. The time forillusionists and wizardry is over: either you fight or rot in thecamps. This is the last stage of the dialectic: you condemn thiswar but you don't yet dare declare your support for the Algerianfighters; have no fear, you can count on the colonists and mercenariesto help you up your mind. Perhaps, then,your back to the wall, you will finally unleash this new violencearoused in you by old, rehashed crimes. But, as they say, that isanother story. The history of man. The time is corning, I am convinced,when we shall join the ranks of those who are making it.The Wretched of the Earth September 1961