Frantz Fanon, born on this day in 1925, was a West Indian Pan-Africanist philosopher and Algerian revolutionary most known for his text The Wretched of the Earth.

Fanon was born to an affluent family on the Caribbean island of Martinique, then a French colony which is still under French control today. As a teenager, he was taught by communist anti-colonial thinker Aimé Césaire (1913 - 2008).

Fanon was exposed to much European racism during World War II. After France fell to the Nazis in 1940, a Nazi government was set up in Martinique by French collaborators, whom he describedas taking off their masks and behaving like "authentic racists".

Fighting for the Allied forces, Fanon also observed European women liberated by black soldiers preferring to dance with fascist Italian prisoners rather than fraternize with their liberators.

While completing a residency in psychiatry in France completing, Fanon wrote and published his first book, "Black Skin, White Masks" (1952), an analysis of the negative psychological effects of colonial subjugation upon black people.

Following the outbreak of the Algerian revolution in November 1954, Fanon joined the Front de Libération Nationale, a nationalist Algerian party. Working at a French hospital in Algeria, Fanon became responsible for treating the psychological distress of the French troops who carried out torture to suppress anti-colonial resistance, as well as their Algerian victims.

While organizing for Algerian independence in Ghana, Fanon was diagnosed with leukemia that would ultimately kill him. He spent the last year of his life writing his most famous work, "The Wretched of the Earth" (French: Les Damnés de la Terre). The text provides a psychiatric analysis of the dehumanizing effects of colonization and examines the possibilities of anti-colonial liberation

Following a trip to the Soviet Union to treat his leukemia, Fanon came to the U.S. in 1961 for further treatment in a visit arranged by the CIA. Fanon died in Bethesda, Maryland on December 6th, 1961 under the name of "Ibrahim Fanon", a Libyan nom de guerre he had assumed in order to enter a hospital after being wounded during a mission for the Algerian National Liberation Front.

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  • Kanna [she/her]
    ·
    2 years ago

    To be clear I'm not counting from when I turned 21! Not that old lol. I broke it in my mid 20s. So I'm not sure how to count it really 🤔 it's not like I was gonna drink when I was 5

    • aaaaaaadjsf [he/him, comrade/them]
      ·
      2 years ago

      Oh ok that makesa lot more sense 😂.

      I'd say count it from the first time you had the choice to drink or get high (legal or not) and refused I guess.

      South Africa is pretty fucked with underage drinking so I was first exposed to drugs and alcohol at 15/16, which was actually old for my friend group 💀.

      I think it's some kind of miracle I didn't become an addict and just a habitual user, a "blessing" of being broke I guess. Got addicted to things other than drugs and alcohol unfortunately. But I kicked those now as well.

      • Kanna [she/her]
        ·
        2 years ago

        In that case it was like 10 years cause I definitely could have drank early high school. I was just friendly with some people who were in a straight edge hardcore band, so I did the same for a while

        I'm glad you've gotten past those negative things! I haven't drank much, but I've been sure not to go too crazy with it