The colonial regime makes sure, often with the help of surrogates, that radical leaders and those honest principled intellectuals and activists who refuse to compromise their principles of independence are eliminated, so that the postcolonial regime (and especially its resources) remains accessible. The result has been a disaster for the (post)colonial world.

Violence is used to suppress a people in a most blatantly crude way. We can historicize and contextualize it. We can analyze the Algerian situation, its history and so forth, and question whether that is anything like the situation we face today. But, this is only one way to understand why violence becomes so important.

Counter-violence against the colonial regime is liberatory because it is an act, and by acting, the absolute power of colonialism, internalized by the colonized, is shaken.

The colonial power tended to be France or Britain, and the Soviets were proclaimed as anti-imperialists. So, if you align yourself with the Soviets, it fits nicely with that kind of rhetorical division, but in reality it does not get you anywhere.

Manicheanism is like a vacuum, it is an either or situation that curtails or destroys the development of liberatory thought.

What is interesting about the revolts is that they show that there is never anything purely spontaneous, and there is always some thinking and discussion, and thus some kind of organization involved in it.

Fanon calls his ideology a new humanism, not only in contrast to the elite humanism of the West, but also on the axiom that the wretched of the earth, understood socially, think and thus must be a basis of a new politics. This, of course, is not achieved immediately, but it must become an explicit element of the struggle for liberation.