Frantz Omar Fanon was born July 20, 1925, in the Caribbean nation of Martinique. He was a revolutionary philosopher, writer and psychiatrist who participated and influenced political processes for liberation across the world. His work has marked decolonial thought and anti-colonial struggles for the globally oppressed, especially African nations and people of the African diaspora.
Fanon was also a psychologist and political theorist whose influence on generations of anti-colonial revolutionaries cannot be understated, with figures ranging from Malcolm X to Steve Biko, even Che Guevara.
Fanon was a powerful writer, whose books “Wretched of the Earth” and “Black Skin, White Masks” discussed the implications of colonialism on the human psyche, and the material conditions and practices that would lead to the self-liberation of colonized peoples.
Fanon’s political thought encompassed the implications and consequences of colonization. He focused considerably on anti-colonial struggles of the time and people’s transforming consciousness. He focused on language, land and other factors that were utilized by the colonizer to oppress people around the world.
Fanon detailed the connections between the systematic colonization of people, land and language. For example, Fanon declared that “Imperialism leaves behind germs of rot which we must clinically detect and remove from our land but from our minds as well.” As such, he defended that “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.”
Fanon was also an early critic of the postcolonial governments, which failed to achieve freedom from colonial influences. For him, the rise of corruption, ethnic division, racism, and economic dependence on former colonial states resulted from the “mediocrity” of Africa’s elite leadership.
In 1960, Fanon was diagnosed with leukemia. He received treatment for the disease in the United States, where he died on December 6, 1961, in Bethesda, Maryland. Fanon’s body was buried with honors by the National Liberation Front and his body currently rests at the martyrs’ graveyard in Ain Kerma, Algeria.
Happy Birthday comrade! 🎂 Rest in power! 🔥
Wisconsin Bail Out the People Movement 