Fanon actually talks about the role that radicalized settlers can play in the decolonial struggle. The settler can smuggle weapons to the colonized or hide fugitives in her residence because she isn't going to be searched by the colonial occupation. Nothing to see here, just an ordinary French citizen!
Settlers is much more pessimistic, seeing settlers as inherently untrustworthy because of their material relation to colonialism. It essentially forecloses on the idea of settlers class traitors.
I think the events of the last 96 hours adequately justifies the utter lack of faith in the western settler, frankly; between exit polls and all of the "enjoy deportation" said settlers have been posting to all corners of the internet.
:this:
All criticism of settlers is basically “not all men” for white leftists.
There’s a big jump to “inherently” while immediately noting the very real material conditions that lead settlers to behave a certain way. It’s not saying white settlers are inherently anything, it’s correctly pointing out that have a material position that is exploited by capital and that only settlers themselves can deal with that and to do that you have to acknowledge it as a real problem.
Settlers are still settlers, yeah.
Fanon's point was that settlers can be reached by the decolonial struggle and join it. I'm reading Huey P. Newton's biography right now and he actually has a similar observation about white radicals. The danger, of course, is that settlers will take over the struggle and sheepdog it into electoralism. I think the true role of settlers in the decolonial struggle must be subordinate to the colonized.
Not even just settlers, plenty of Black folks coming out with similar takes about Palestinians and Arabs, someone posted abunch of screenshots of comments about buying Starbucks and not feeling guilty about funding the genocide because Arab voters didn't get Kamala in office. The settlerfication has taken root deep into even colonized subjects, not even just the bourgeois comprador strata as it was when Fanon was writing about them.
"Skin folk aren't kinfolk" right? Westoids, regardless of skin color, won't support the liberation of the global south. Those few living in the west that do support the global south and can see past privilege don't have 1 kind of skin color.
They (poc that wanted kamala to win and resorted to throwing immigrants and Palestinians under the bus) want to be part of the club so bad.
The only thing keeping my optimism in check regarding this hellhole of a nation is that the Black Excellence™ crowd will one day get burned badly enough by the crackers to remember the faces of their mothers tbh; I think I'd hit a point of terminal jokerfication if that fell through too
Just playing devils advocate here, but at least Kamala’s anti-immigrant campaign lost and only a max of 2/3 USians support it.
Devil's advocacy recognized: my response runs something to the lines of finding that somewhat hollow comfort when both wings of the duopoly are treading anti-immigrant planks as we speak; and 2/3s of the country is still a whole fucking lot of settlers-- even those settlers against anti-immigration policy could be interpreted as ghoulishly knowing where their produce comes from and who staffs their construction lots-- and these settler ghouls cynically know they're not gonna go replace them.
Not that this helps but a lot of non-white folks also voted for both :/. For the most part everyone’s just scared of losing what they already have… and willing to (consciously or not) put others under the bus at their expense.
Tbf under the Settlers model a lot of the 1/3 that didn’t vote are internally colonised people, not considered settlers themselves
Sure only a small fraction of indigenous people voted but a lot of Latinos voted for trump and a lot of black people voted for Harris. A lot of each probably didn’t vote. While I think a lot of value is contained in settlers, I can see why critics would point to such idealist tendencies as assuming all colonized are conscious actors and all settlers are wealthy and invested in the status quo or fascism.
Admittedly it’s been years and years since I read Settlers but I’m not sure if I’d consider it idealism, more like a vulgar simplified materialism.
A lot of Latinos are white tho I'm surprised I haven't seen more people pointing this out with all the recent rhetoric around who voted for Trump.
A surprising amount of internally colonized people went pro-Trump though, some openly for anti-immigration reasons.
This is why we do class analysis and not just identity politics. Plenty of those colonised have ascended to a petit-boug or boug position within the colony (this concept is ever-present in Fanon).
That’s without addressing the huge issue of false consciousness.
Is it not in the Bourgeois’ material interest to support capitalism, regardless if there are bourgeois class traitors?
Fanon doesn't go into the distinctions, per se, but I have my own.
Being bourgeois is always a choice and they can stop being bourgeois any time they want. Some are born into their material relations by inheritance, of course, but any business owner can get a real job whenever they want or could give up their ownership of the means of production to their workforce. Being bourgeois is not just something they are, it's something they choose to do.
Settlers, by contrast, can only stop being settlers if they leave the settler colony. The ones that migrated obviously can just go back home, but what about their children? For a settler born on the settlement, being a settler is something they are and was never something they chose to do. If the child of settlers wants to stop being a settler, the only choice is to become a traitor.
I think that puts settlement-born-settlers into a distinct material position that can't be related to being bourgeois.
I've been reading both Settlers and Wretched of the Earth since last week and it jokerfied me. Now that the election has passed I keep thinking about the US calling Venezuelans election illegitimate a couple months ago meanwhile my ballot has still not been counted.
I've been reading both Settlers and Wretched of the Earth
This is the way. The real answer to the question is: por que no los dos
The journey of knowledge isn’t about reading a bunch of “correct” books. Read anything and everything, critically, and take what knowledge you can. Sakai’s work isn’t as useful as Fanon’s imo but I definitely got something out of it.
Read anything and everything, critically, and take what knowledge you can.
Didn't realize all the erotic Sonic the Hedgehog fanfics I read were part of my political education.
Fanon will teach you the theory of hating crackers, Sakai will teach you the praxis.
Why go on a nature walk when you can go on a nature walk and jerk it?
Why go on a nature walk and jerk it when you can get put in timeout by the volcel vanguard and be forced to look at cute cat pictures for a fortnight.
Why be forced to look at cute cat pics when you can be forced to look at cute catgirl pics
well, dune is, like, fiction and one of the colonizers allows himself to be considered a god to the colonized
haven't read either but its my impression that settlers is basically a polemic while Fanon's work is more like hard theory?
I think that’s valid, but tbf most of all of parenti work is also polemics but he’s universally loved around here for the most part. It’s not perfect but most criticism against it is overblown. I’ve known a lot of poc communists who like it, tho probably not as much as fanon. Like someone else said one can just take what they feel is useful or whatever
yeah i didn't mean it in any negative sense, polemics can obviously be very useful. just im pretty sure thats the category it fits in
I think Fanon is more compelling and providing material evidence whereas settlers wasn't saying anything I hadn't already gathered from studying other works, Fanon especially
The US history that Settlers covers is really useful especially when paired with Gerald Horne's books and can help you build that material conception of whiteness and settlerism. I also appreciate that it breaks the orthodox view on the white American proletariat that they're simply "tricked by racist lies" with no material interest in siding with the bourgeoisie. Labor aristocracy is a very useful concept in the Marxist conception of classes.
Honestly for white communists especially in America it's a topic severly undereducated on despite how important it is for them to learn, so the more the better. I see that a lot of people aren't aware of their settler colonial biases and it obfuscates praxis, tricks people into joining deeply settler orgs (ACP, CPUSA), and infects the platforms of more advanced orgs but with large settler bases like PSL and FRSO's platform which includes Chicano Nationalism.
On top of Fanon and Settlers I would also suggest Marx at the Margins and EFF theorist Lwazi Lushaba's decolonial lectures on youtube (his book too) on top of the aformentioned Gerald Horne's books and just generally being more open to this applying settler colonialism as the principle contradiction -- starting with native/black liberation and using dialectical materialism as the mode towards achieving it, reading texts even marxist critical texts from these perspectives, and seeing the failures of euro-american marxist theory and practice that have allowed it to be co-opted, declawed, and even perpetuate the "civilizing mission of progressive society" such as the case of the labor Zionists that carried out the nakba and the LaRouchites/MAGAcom grifters.
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
