Rev Left Radio - Red Menace: The Battle of Algiers (1966)

Episode Date: December 22, 2019

Check out, learn about, and support our sister podcast Red Menace here: https://www.revolutionaryleftradio.com/#/redmenace/ ------- LEARN MORE ABOUT REV LEFT RADIO: www.revolutionaryleftradio.com SUPPORT REV LEFT RADIO: www.patreon.com/revleftradio Our logo was made by BARB, a communist graphic design collective: @Barbaradical Intro music by DJ Captain Planet. --------------- This podcast is affiliated with: The Nebraska Left Coalition, Omaha Tenants United, FORGE, Socialist Rifle Association (SRA), Feed The People - Omaha, and the Marxist Center.

Hello everybody and welcome back to Revolutionary Left Radio slash Red Menace. Today's episode's a little different. We're basically unlocking a Patreon bonus episode that we put out last month on our Red Menace show. And it is on the Battle of Algiers, the 1966 film depicting the decolonial struggle on the part of the Algerians against the French colonialists. The film the Battle of Algiers is really inspired by and goes hand in hand. with the text, the France Fanon text, the Wretched of the Earth. And so in this episode, my co-host for Red Menace, Alison Escalante, and myself, talk about the film, and we relate it to the text, Wretched of the Earth, and then just pull out a bunch of other key concepts

in this terrain of political thought and action. So we wanted to unlock this. We wanted to really let our revolutionary left radio audience know what we're doing over on Red Menace, so if you're interested in moving over there, or at least checking us out. I just want to quickly explain what we do on Red Menace for those who don't know. Allison and I really take theoretical text, Lenin's Imperialism, France Fanon's The Wrette of the Earth, text by Angles and Marks, and we worked through them systematically. The first section of our episodes is Allison and I explaining the text, so literally going through it and telling you what the author is writing, basically teaching the text to people. And then the second and third section of every episode is Allison and I discussing the text and then applying its lessons to our contemporary conditions.

So that's what we do over on Red Menace, and we thought by releasing this cool little bonus episode on a film that I think most people should be aware of, and if not, go check it out. But you don't actually have to watch the film to enjoy Allison and I's discussion. And you don't even have to have read France Fanon's Wretched of the Earth to enjoy our discussion.

What we hope this little episode does is allow people to listen to what Allison and I are talking about. And if you find that conversation interesting on its face, then you can go either watch the film or engage with our three episodes series on France Fanon's The Wretched of the Earth, which is, of course, public and free on our Red Menace feed. So I'll link to all of that in the show notes.

And again, if you're a Rev. Left listener, definitely go check out Red Menace. It's a little more intellectually advanced in that we are tackling political theory. But it is sort of the next step for people's political development. If you want to sort of even get beyond what we do here at Rev. Left and go a little bit deeper into the intellectual weeds, if you will. So without further ado, here is our unlocked Red Menace Patreon episode with Allison Escalante and myself talking about the 1966, masterpiece film, The Battle of Algiers. Enjoy. Hello everybody and welcome to Red Menace's bonus Patreon episode of the month.

So as everybody probably knows, listening to this, we've been working through Franz Fanon's The Wretched of the Earth on our public feed. And so our Patreon feed, we're trying to find stuff adjacent to that book. and we decided for this month to watch the famous 1966 film, the Battle of Algiers, and just basically have a free-flowing, unstructured conversation about the film. I know Allison had seen this film before, but for me this was the first time watching,

and I watched it literally today, sort of down to my little basement and dungeon, and I absolutely loved it. I think it's a masterpiece of a film in every way, but Allison, what were your original opening thoughts about this film and your take on it? I first saw this movie a few years ago in undergraduate, actually, for a philosophy of film course, where we actually watched it alongside reading a little bit of Phenon.

So the first time I watched this film, I was introduced to it in that context, actually. But, you know, rewatching it after having done much deeper of a study of Phenon now than I did in undergraduate. I'm really shocked by how much a lot of what he talks about is present in this, especially, I think, seeing the working out of a lot of his theories about the Lumpin Proletariat and the role of the Lumpin Proletariat in a Revolution, because obviously the central protagonist in this is a criminal who becomes a member of the National Liberation Front and seeing sort of what Fanon talks about with the difficulties of the Lumpin Proletariat needing to be hashed out, the Lump and Proletariat needing to be radicalized and turned into party members, really playing out in this film,

I think is really cool. I think there's a lot happening in this movie, but definitely I think there's an incredible overlap with a part of Phenon's writing. We don't see a lot of the sort of post-independent stuff, this movie, right up at the point of discussing Algerian independence. But for the stuff leading up to independence, there's a lot of overlap. Yeah, and that led to the question that I was asking myself, and I didn't really look this up. Maybe you don't know or maybe you do,

but did Fanon's text directly or indirectly inspire this film? Because as you were saying, the development of the sort of decolonizing process that Fanon traces out in extreme detail in his text is pretty much the structure of the film itself. Yeah, so I'm not really sure how, like, specifically the interaction between Fanon's theory and this would have been. I mean, my guess is that the people making this film had to have some familiarity with this, because, again, it's based fairly directly on a book written by an FLN soldier, and again, Fanon had that close relationship to the struggle itself.

So I don't know if there's direct, like, they were reading Fanon, and that's what they were thinking, but definitely Fanon and this film are drawing on the exact same struggle with overlaps there, so I'm not totally sure. Yeah, the main character. character Ali LaPont. I love the acting overall. It's just amazing. I thought he kind of looked like a mixture of Huey P. Newton and Phenon, which was interesting. Right. A really interesting character. But one thing about this film that is so fascinating to me and it sort of transcends the boundaries of the film itself is that this film is a sort of strategic handbook on really how not

only how a sort of guerrilla urban warfare is waged, but also on how a counterinsurgency warfare is raised. The director really, you could tell that the film itself and the director were sympathetic towards the guerrillas, the Algerian liberation fighters, but it was also presented pretty neutrally with regards to, it wasn't a heavy-handed moral tome, is what I'm saying. It was presented as like, here's the objective facts of the French colonial side, and here's sort of the objective facts of the guerrilla side. The film, just by the way the score is used, just by the way the shots are filmed, it indicates heavy, obviously, sympathy towards the rebels.

But to this day, especially during the Iraq War, the United States, the Pentagon, they use this film, I assume still to this day, to actually teach about counterinsurgency. The film became really important during the Iraq War because a lot of the things depicted in the film were taking place in the Iraqi context, which is interesting. And then the flip side of that, right, the imperialists are using it to figure out how to put down these guerrilla warfare tactics. But organizations like the Black Panther Party and the IRA specifically are well known

to have used this film as a sort of, like, you know, they get their comrades together and show it to their members sort of systematically making sure everybody engages with this film because they saw its revolutionary potential, the sort of Maoist guerrilla warfare undertones to do it all. So it's just fascinating how, beyond the film itself,

it's still used by both sides of the conflict and sort of this this dialectical interplay. Yeah, so that's just fascinating. Yeah, no, definitely. And I think part of it is like, you know, the film is generally noted as an example of like Italian neorealism as a genre. And I think that neorealist trapping

of the sort of mostly non-professional actors, very straightforward telling of the narrative, makes it feel really instructional in the way that you're getting at. Like, especially there's moments of this movie that feel like watching an instructional lecture on revolution and counterinsurgency when the sort of antagonist of the film,

the French general, is explaining how to understand the structure of a guerrilla movement and how to suppress it. It feels like you're sitting in a room getting a lecture about counterinsurgency. Yeah, it truly does. One thing that stood out to me was the use of the guillotine

and it's particularly relevant because the guillotine as a sort of revolutionary image touchstone was really developed, obviously, with the French Revolution and the use of the guillotine to, like, kill, you know, kings and queens and topple the monarchy, etc. But something interesting is happening, given the fact that the modern, you know, Western left, the U.S. and Canadian left, we make a lot of this use, too. I mean, I used to have a podcast called the guillotine. It's, you know, it's used a lot. But there's an interesting depiction of it here to be a tool of the colonizer against the colonized to behead liberation fighters.

and that is sort of the main critique of that imagery still on the left today is that while it might have some revolutionary undertones at the beginning, the French revolutionaries themselves came to view the guillotine as ultimately an instrument of reaction and repression. So the way that it was depicted in this film was absolutely in that reactionary way, which made me like really viscerally pull away from that imagery, you know? Yeah, and I think that part of, for me, I saw that paralleled a lot actually in, again, or the antagonist character, the French general, who himself was a revolutionary in a sense

once upon a time, because his background is as part of the French resistance to the Nazis. It's how he knows how to do counterinsurgency is because of his experience in an insurgency. And similar to how we see the guillotine as this once revolutionary symbol now being used for state oppression, we have someone who basically used to be a revolutionary partisan now leading the counterinsurgency. And I think it gets at this idea that progressing, forces in a non-colonial context can act really repressively and as reactionary forces once they move into a colonial context. You know, that general was a hero in the context of the European war, but when we move into the context of colonialism, finds himself in a very villainous position.

Yeah, no, totally. In fact, one of my favorite scenes in this film is when, you know, that general, the sort of architect of the counterinsurgency colonial put-down of this movement is being interviewed by the broad media and he sort of has this get real moment where he says some who call us fascists they need to remember that many of us were on the front lines of the resistance against the Nazi occupiers and to those of them that say that we're Nazis you know many of us were in the concentration camps and so he's using his revolutionary past to justify and sort of defend himself from his reactionary present but yeah you're right he's depicted as a very sort of calm objective figure but there is that contradiction

You know, you went from fighting the oppressor to becoming it. But psychologically, I mean, as a French fighter, a French military person, you can't really make sense of that contradiction. You can't, you know, equalize that dissidents. That is fundamental. And so you paper over it and you actually begin using it as an excuse to be the oppressor. Right. And his whole character, I think, is really fascinatingly, like, colored by that contradiction.

Because sort of one of the things I think is interesting about this movie is that, again, this was produced by the FLN to a certain extent. FLN leadership helped produce this film. And the general is not portrayed as like an obvious monster in the ways that we might expect. He is this contradictory character. And we even see moments where when he hears the news of the death of FLN leaders, he expresses like his respect and admiration for them, even up to that situation. And so his whole character, I think, is a surprisingly dynamic sort of antagonistic.

his character, where constantly he seems to almost be able to sympathize with where the FLN is coming from while recognizing that he's on the other side of that divide. Yeah, yeah. And then that was also highlighted when he got the sort of ringleader Jafar arrested him and his, in his comrade, they were driving and they had this discussion between the two. And the French general basically said, I know, I've had a picture of you two on my desk for months. It almost feels like I know you. you know and it's like i constantly there's this sort of sense of respect and like he i think he even says

like i've grown to kind of like you like he sees certainly he sees part of himself in the freedom fighter but yeah his psychology won't allow him to sort of bridge that gap it's fascinating right yeah and i think it's interesting too his character i think is used i think because he has that objective view to call attention to the realities of colonialism in an interesting way i really like that scene previously that you were mentioning when he's talking to the the press, where he sort of says, like, whatever human rights issues you have with the torture that we're using, if the question is posed to you, should the French stay in Algeria, you don't have a right to contest our techniques if your answer to that is yes, because the

reality of colonial occupation is doing that. If you want it to change, go change your mind. Exactly, exactly. It's interesting, because he's kind of acting as unveiling, no, this is the brutality of it, and you as the French people have kind of hidden from that fact, because you weren't the ones who had to execute it. Right. And that's interesting because in the in the preface to Franz Fanon's The Wrette of the Earth, you have Sartre talking about these very themes. And then in the film itself, which blew my mind. I really was taken aback by this. They explicit, and I shouldn't be because it makes sense historically. But they brought up Sartre as a writer. And he was like, you know, how is Paris responding to this? And they're like, not much. You know, a few new articles

from Sartra. And then the general says basically, like, you know, he says something. And they say, what you you don't like sartre and he's like no i don't like him but i hate him as a foe even more you know sort of gesturing towards uh some level of respect to the power um and bravado that sartra's critique carries and again hinting at that dissonance a fundamental to the french character at that time yeah it's interesting too because in that scene he also he he he ends talking the reporters with a question sort of where he says why aren't there any sarts on our side you know He said, I think he said, why are the Sartras always born on the other side? Yeah.

I love that line. Well, maybe my favorite line. Yeah, no, I thought that was interesting. And it reminds me, too, of just a general dynamic in guerrilla warfare. Sort of an outside text that I've been working through is at War of the Flea, which is like a really good sort of assessment of guerrilla warfare from a journalist who was present for a lot of the revolutionary struggle in Cuba and Vietnam. And so he's sort of just synthesizing. a lot of his experiences. And one thing that he states is sort of counterinsurgency is difficult because you don't get to have the great sort of heroic intellectuals if you're the counterinsurgent.

That's not a sort of icon that exists within that. They're all on the side of the insurgency. And he says that's one of the strengths of the guerrilla war is that you have these sort of heroic intellectual figures who are public figures sympathetic to the struggle, but not part of the struggle, similar to kind of how SART was viewed in the context of this. Yeah, I loved it. wanted to talk about, too, you mentioned the torture aspect, and I think it's worth really sort of emphasizing this a little bit, because in the film, there's a depiction of brutality on both sides. And I want to get in a little bit about the question of innocence and the

role of bombings in these struggles, but certainly on the side of the colonizers, there was this systematic attempt to torture. I mean, there was a systematic torturing, even down to literal, like, more, slightly more primitive forms of waterboarding. And this whole film got a lot more sort of notice in the in the iraq years precisely for this reason it was so prophetic in that it not only predicted the sort of machinations of the oppressed rising up and trying to kick out occupiers but it shows the exact sort of development of the occupying force you have to have if the sort of logic demands something like torture being the logical outcome of this struggle and to just see that in light of this film being made in the in the late 60s and then

seeing that that exact sort of controversy reappear in the American Iraq War. It's just really interesting. It speaks to the prophetic vision of this film. And it was also some of the hardest to watch. Yeah. Thinking what is like, even as like a somebody who is a committed communist and who knows one day shit might deteriorate to the point where we have to do some crazy shit and just thinking of how your own psyche would hold up in the context of torture like that and just

the brutality, but the necessary logic of it. I don't know. It was a brutal part of the film for me. Yeah, I think the depiction of torture is really interesting because it's so not personal in how the film depicts it. Like, you don't see the French taking like a ton of joy during the torture scenes. They're very kind of disaffected for the entire time. And it very much, I think, gets at this whole just like, no torture is the tool of colonialism and counterinsurgency. And we don't even need to necessarily moralize about that because this is a violent struggle.

but that's what that type of repression and suppression looks like. And it's almost more disturbing how depersonalized its depiction is, I think. Yeah, absolutely, yeah. It's bone-chilling in that way. And that leads on to this other question, which, so I want to set it up this way, and I'm really super excited to hear your thoughts on this because I've been thinking about it all day. I wonder what Allison has to say on this. So to set it up in the film, and I urge people, if you're listening to this conversation,

it would definitely help to watch the film first. And, you know, you won't regret it. It's a great film. A lot of this will make a lot more sense if you do. But in the film, after the first initial systematic coordinated attacks on colonial police that the FLN conducted, there's this retaliation, I think, from the chief of police and his sort of reactionary French colonial buddies. They sneak out past curfew. And they basically, you know, they set up a big bomb between a very tightly packed sort of neighborhood apartment area.

So it just destroys the buildings, kills people indiscriminately, women, children, everything, you know, and people are pulling people out of the rubble. A scene that we have seen a million times, right? Whether it's in Palestine or anywhere else around the world, we've seen this scene in our news feeds, which is an interesting part of it. But of course, the reactionary violence is cowardly. It's done under the cloak of darkness. It's carried out against innocent men, women, and children and not people with actual power.

And it is in that way indicative of the overall fascist violence that we see broadly, which is this indiscriminate killing of anybody. I mean, you know, women, children, innocent people just going to work. It's brutal and cowardly in that way. They never go after actual sources of power. On the other side, though, this film, and I actually applaud it for this, right? It doesn't over-romanticize the insurgency because it shows the indiscriminate killings of French men, women, and children at, you know, these places of relaxation, of restaurants, you know, bars, a little dance hall. and it really, for me, thrust this question into my mind, which is becoming a Marxist has fundamentally altered my view of violence, but I've never, ever, ever even given an inch of ground on this innocence question. Never. It's never justified to kill an innocent person in my mind, and you can never really convince me otherwise, but it plays a role in these things. So yeah, basically just what are your thoughts on that? How should we think about the bombing of innocence? How did you think it was portrayed, etc.? Yeah, so I think the

portrayal of those bombings in particular is interesting. So there's sort of some context that the film gives around them too, which is that immediately after the French bomb, the Muslim quarter, there's like sort of an impulse to riot that Ali ends up, you know, leading those rioters for a little bit. And then FLN leadership basically tells them like, no, this is not a good solution. Rioting is not going to get you vengeance. Let the FLN avenge you, essentially. And so it's sort of interesting, right? Because these aren't the kind of terror attacks that you see in an insurgency that are meant to take out some sort of strategic target or something like that. These attacks are just pretty much purely about revenge. And strategically, I mean, I can

understand how that fits into the FLN's framework, because if you really need the loyalty of the people of the Muslim quarter, that sure is going to be a pretty quick way to win their loyalty, is to actually avenge that bombing. And, you know, it's just tricky, right? I think that Marxism has within it a critique of terrorism that is very important, like Lenin gets very into just the limits of terrorism and the petty bourgeois function, that it plays at a lot of revolutionary context. But I think the film really forces us to wrestle with the fact that these attacks were part of a broader strategy of winning over the colonized masses, and that that was a necessary

step potentially. Ultimately, I, you know, I don't support terror attacks that target innocence, but I think this film contextualizes how a struggle gets to that point. And one thing that I think obviously is important to think about is that even in the most organized revolutionary struggles, we have things like this that happen. There are excesses that break out. And if we're opposed to those excesses, understanding how we even get to that point in the first place, I think is very crucial. And this film gives us a recognition of that. I think the other thing, though, that's important is to recognize that, like, even though the FLN committed these attacks that attacked innocents and we have our

disagreements with that, that isn't reason to throw out the FLN, right? This is kind of the mistake that Camus made in his analysis of Algeria, where he basically said, I kind of refused to pick aside because the FLN kills civilians, so how can I condemn the French? And so I think we have to avoid that kind of, they did this thing, and now there can be no support. We have to understand it in context, and I think the film challenges us to do that. Yeah, beautifully said that that Camus reference as well was really good. I didn't think of that. Yeah, no, I totally, I totally, I'm hear that and I think it's challenging and wonderful because it's challenging. And there is a sort of, you know, I overuse this term because I think about it all the time these days, which

is this dialectic of violence. And this dialectic has its own contradiction and it has its own logic. And the logic of this conflict is first and foremost premised on the violence of the colonizer. This entire contradiction exists precisely because of the occupying force. So any and all violence in this conflict overall, regardless of who, you know, through that, that bomb or that one is, in my opinion, ultimately laid at the feet of the colonizer for starting that dialectical problem. That does not mean do whatever you want on the side of the rebellion. I think the fact that the left historically in terroristic and urban guerrilla contexts have been super restrained is really important. And I think, you know, maybe even given the fact that here or there, there might be

some contextual situations that might, you know, go some way in understanding why that happened. I think when it can be avoided, it absolutely should. And for the most part, the destruction of innocent lives doesn't work ideologically. And as a recruiting tool, it's sort of something that in most context will turn the masses off to what you're doing if they feel like that their lives aren't cared about at all. Like, you know, I could have easily been at that cafe and been killed myself now. In this movie, it wasn't like that, right? because the city was so heavily segregated, the attacks took part in the European quarter,

which was 100% as far as I could tell, populated by the French. But that dialectic of violence and the fact that the colonizer's violence starts the dialectic, I think, is an essential part of understanding this whole thing and this film and just conflict broadly. And then the last thing I'll say on this specific topic, and I'll toss it back over to you,

is another thing that this film sort of broke my heart was the depiction of, overall, the depiction of like the pain of the mothers, the older women, the sort of matriarchs of the society, constantly the film and the camera would pause or even zoom in on the tear-filled eyes of a random woman in the crowd. And to me, that was tethering all of this violence to this sort of psychological affliction that it presents to the most innocent people and the people that are most powerless to fight back in. And so that really, understanding the violence is necessary, it still breaks my heart, and I think it should temper any violent impulse to realize,

like, this shit is devastating to the people who deserve it the least, you know? Right. Well, and I think in the context of the bombings in particular, I think you bring up one really good point, which is that, yeah, the segregation of the city was such that they didn't really need to worry about the possibility of killing Algerians themselves because those cafes were populated primarily by the French. And yeah, in a colonial context, it is slightly different. You know, the FLN was not particularly interested in winning over the French masses who were in Algeria. Right. And so that affects the sort of calculus that's happening there.

But I think that also the scenes regarding the bombing are really interesting in relation to this idea of how it cuts to the pain of women, because the bombers are all women in this particular scene. And I think one of the really powerful instances of it is that one of the bombers is an older mother, who in order to be able to get through the checkpoints in the first place brings her, you know, very young toddler son with her, holding his hand as she has the bomb in the basket the entire time. And I think that scene really just, again, gets at this desperation that everyone in the struggle is flung into. And, you know, to carry your kid in one hand and a bomb in another is a horrible situation to have to be in in the first place. And it just really

hits home how these acts of violence, even if they're part of a struggle that is overwhelmingly heroic, they're not something to romanticize. They're a horrifying reality. even if they might be necessary in the long term. Exactly, yeah. And I definitely think that's one of the principal points of this film. And I think it's what the film wants you to walk away thinking about, like, deeply. But certainly in the case of using, like, mothers and women as, like, the procurers to get bombs across checkpoints, was an interesting thing that made me think about, you know, thinking about Mao's on guerrilla warfare,

where, you know, he has that famous line where he's like the militant, the gorilla should be able to swim amongst the people like a fish swim, through the sea and for a successful movement of this kind i mean for it to be successful it does absolutely require that in time and time again we saw exactly as you say uh the masses partaking in this struggle same as in vietnam um where the people rose up same as in cuba i mean this happens again and again and it's really that mass support that undergirds and makes ultimately successful this entire movement without that mass support i mean just imagine this this film with with a hostile domestic population to the FLN, it wouldn't have happened. Yeah, and I think that, like, the film raises an interesting question of the FLN's relationship

to the masses and the Muslim quarter in general, because one thing that I thought was really interesting is sort of the scenes depicting the FLN purging the Muslim quarter of drunks and sort of getting rid of what they saw as the backwards element sort of of the Lumpin proletariat within that quarter. And we talk about the need to find the progressive parts of the Lumpin proletariat. and oppose the reactionary parts of the Lumpin proletariat. And there's like a good, you know, 10-minute part of this movie where we see that in violent detail,

how it played out in the context of the FLN. And I was wondering if you had any thoughts on that. Yeah, no, I wrote it down on my notes. It was something I was going to actually ask you about. But so it's interesting, right? Because it is explicitly, they said they're banning drugs, alcohol, and prostitution specifically. Those three things were imprecures, right?

So pimps and stuff like that. And they said it was because that shit is a manifestation. of the colonized sort of situation that we're in, the poverty, the sort of systematic limitations on what you can achieve in life, the constant sense of oppression, the way that the psyche is sort of split into two, dealing with the oppressor and dealing with your own people. It's a heavy burden on any psyche. And so in these contexts, again and again and again, we see these social ills manifest in the soil of rotten material conditions, the conditions of being colonized or even just the

conditions of being poor in a capitalist society, the poorer segments of pretty much all societies these problems arise because they really are these sort of symptoms of an underlying class society disease. But the cracking down on it is interesting because it's something on the Marxist left that we even get into it to this day. Like people will say, you know, don't bring, I mean, people shouldn't be doing drugs. If you're a real Marxist, you're not drinking, you're doing drugs. And there have been historical movements. The FLN included, I think, if I'm remembering right, There was some of this with Sankara, but I can't totally, maybe just his personal choices. But there has been this sense of like our duty and obligation to, I think even in the Black Panther

parties might have happened. Yeah, there was. Yeah. So there's this attempt to be like, we have to really rise to the challenge here and we can't be sloppy in this way. And so it's tough for me. And it raises the whole question of sex work. It raises the question of drugs in a, in a revolutionary context.

I don't have any answers. I just have more questions, I think. Yeah, no, I feel that tough. And, I mean, it's a very powerful set of scenes also. And I think it's interesting, too, how it also sort of mirrors the transformation of the main character from a criminal to a revolutionary when he shoots the gang leader who he had kind of run with before. And how that's kind of this moment of transformation where he's risen above those sort of reactionary social elements and decided something's more important than money. Allison, is that not Malcolm X? Right.

No, exactly. It's really incredible. But yeah, that whole scene was just really, I think, cool reflecting the sort of political struggle along with the personal evolution that was happening there. Absolutely, yeah. And again, the thing that makes this film so great, I think, is because it will challenge you and it will give you a set of questions and no easy answer because there is no easy answer. It takes you wrestling with these problems. The film almost becomes so objective. I think I've even read a little bit about this that people sometimes thought that maybe there was archival footage put in.

he used non-actors like the masses were the masses he didn't really you know he wasn't like filling it with a bunch of extras and so that that sort of vague border between am i watching a dramatization of events or am i watching an actual objective you know observation of these events the film was masterful in walking that line and that's part of it you know it feels like a documentary at several periods honestly truly one more thing that i had in my notes um i have maybe two more things was i thought it was interesting so you have a context of occupation of its colonization settler colonialism right um and there is a uprising that strikes at the the french forces and then you see the french citizenry internalize that as more racism and a couple times in the film you saw french citizens i assume they were just people in the in the french quarter or the european quarters um you know you obviously have work like proletarian people from the other side of the town if you will the other side of the tracks coming over so you have Algerians coming over and like maybe selling newspapers or being taxi drivers or something. And after one of the attacks from the FLN, the French citizens would come out on their balconies

and like any sort of brown person would just be yelled at, you know, filthy Arabs, slurs, all this shit. And in another scene later in the film after the bombings, a little boy, like, I mean, you're looking at a 10-year-old little boy selling newspapers gets attacked by an adult white French mob. And like, I think the colonial officers had to break it up and like rush the boy out before he was like killed by these fucking adults. And that really struck a chord with me because I see so many similarities between that and like look how that exact sort of psychology manifests in Israel with the Palestine situation where, you know, a soldier that even kills little children is like glorified by the far right segment of Israel. And in America, it's it's a similar thing. I mean, the history of lynching, the history even today of police killing unarmed men and then the reactionary segments of our society immediately find. ways to say that they deserved it implicitly, you know, explicitly, even just so much as black

athletes taking a knee to protest the fact that unarmed black men are being systematically shot by police gets this racist anger built up in the reactionary elements of a settler colonial society. So I just really thought that that psychology, the fact that it manifests in pretty much the exact same way in all of these settler colonial contexts is really a, I mean, almost psychoanalytic way of seeing how the psychology is affected by the underlying material conditions and how, you know, the human being, the human psyche is a sort of mediator between the internal and the external in that way and how they're constantly playing off each other. I don't know. That stuck out to me. Yeah, no, totally. And I think the other thing,

too, is like, in addition to the psychological component, I think this sort of fits in with somewhat phenon talks about where as the decolonial movement picks up, the repression really picks up, not just from the police, but from the settlers themselves. And it's sort of just, once you hit that point, the contradiction just gets cyclically more antagonistic. Because once the settlers are behaving that way, FLN has more legitimacy. It has more ability to recruit and the ability to carry out larger attacks,

which in turn causes further suppression. And it just keeps this sort of dialectic moving towards its eventual rupture that has to happen eventually. And I think the film is interesting because you see that mutual escalation of sort of enmity. that occurs there that can't be broken up without really decolonization occurring. Absolutely, yeah. And I found those scenes to like almost be the most repulsive.

There's a certain objective distance that you saw the French colonial military forces operate under. But when it came to the just the brutal racism of the French citizenry and just how relatable it is today, oh my God. Like it just hit a cord with me and it was like it was hard to watch. And that little boy getting beat up. I mean, fuck, that shit killed me, you know. Well, and it just kind of reminds. me, like watching it, I thought, again, like you brought up the United States, where we have, you know, an occupying colonial government here, even though most people won't think about it that way, with a militarized police force that regularly kills colonized people. And beyond that, it's not just that the settler, you know, sort of portion the society will rally around those police. But, I mean, thinking of the kid, it makes me think of Trayvon as well, which again, he wasn't killed by a police officer. He was killed by a settler, defending settler colonialism. Exactly right. Fuck. Yeah, I didn't even make that connection, but it's it's right there. God damn. And yeah, just the prophetic nature. The fact that this film is so bitterly gut-wrenchingly relevant that, you know, it's shot in black and white. So you do get this immediate aesthetic sense of historical distance, but the content of the film is so bone-shatteringly close to you that it's just, it's a masterpiece for that reason alone. There was there was that sense of overall.

overall, I think I talked about this a little bit, or we talked about it with drugs and booze, but it's on my list of notes, this overall sense of deep hyperalienation in the colonized context, the fact that that gives rise to many neurotic symptoms, anxiety, depression, addiction among colonized people. I mean, that fact also is just so, I mean, so true, like go to the poorest parts of the United States, probably the reservations on one hand or like, you know, black quote unquote ghettos, on the other hand. where the poorest, most marginalized, most oppressed segments of the disgusting American society are up to their, you know, faces in this level of alienation.

And these exact problems permeate these cultures. And then the white establishment, white supremacy turns around and say, look at them. They need our help. Look at them. They can't take care of themselves. We need to come in here and, you know, they should be thanking us, if anything. And just that cycle and just the way it's weaponized. by white supremacist's forces and shoved back into the faces of oppressed people.

I mean, it just gets my fucking, you know, blood pumping. It pisses me off. It hurts my heart, you know. No, definitely. Yeah, no. I mean, this film hits shockingly close to home, really. Absolutely. Well, that's all my notes.

Do you have anything left that you wanted to cover? Let me see. I had a few other things, I think. So one that I was going to bring up, interestingly, is the depiction of the killing of the police officers early in the film. I think that was an interesting moment. One, because sort of killing a cop or the pretense of killing a cop was sort of the betting process for Ali joining the FLN in the first place because they needed to know,

you know, that he was loyal. And, you know, we've heard this in real life with other revolutionary groups, like famously, regardless of what you think of them, Sandero Luminiso required that of Codra, if they want to become part of Central Codra. And I just think it's interesting because, again, those killing scenes are not Roman. We see revolutionaries get killed in the process of killing all those police, and it's not like some heroic moment in its depiction. It's people killing a cop, grabbing their gun, and running scared. And just sort of, I really love that unromanticized objective. This is just what the beginnings of a revolution in building a cadre look like. And, you know, take it or leave it more or less. It's not going to be presented to you as pretty, and it's also not going to be moralized about. It's just these are the early days of a revolutionary movement. Yeah, and that's, I think, I love the neutrality of the film when it comes to that depiction, because I agree with you 100%. And it did stand out to me the test of Ali from Jafar was, you know, we're going to give you this gun.

You're going to kill this cop. And later, Jafar says, like, you know, I instructed you to shoot him in the back because when you realize there wasn't any bullets, you could walk away from the situation. Right. But Ali was so pumped and so ready to do it that he made the cop turn around and, like, said, brothers, look. You wanted to make it into a scene Which I just made me laugh out loud But it was also really interesting I don't know

Yeah and I like that about his character Is that he always seems to throughout his development Be balancing sort of this maybe Over-excitement about parts of the revolutionary violence We see that in the rioting scene too With more tactical restraint from the FL in itself Totally yeah I love the I love the character of Ali for sure

And at the end when they're all in that They're hidden in the wall and the colonial forces are going to fuck him up. I mean, Ali says to everybody else, you know, like, you guys can, like, you guys can definitely leave. Like, you know, I don't want you guys to die. And they say, no, we're basically sticking with you, even a little kid, heart-wrenching. But just to see his eyes looking sort of vacantly and, like, saying that his comrades can

leave and that he'll take the death. I don't know. It is just like it's heart-wrenching in that way. And the whole situation, him having to be walled up in his own country with his family and everybody around him is going to die. That entire situation. shouldn't fucking exist and that's what that's what struck me at that moment is like the very fact that this is even playing out is fucking repulsive no exactly and i mean it just reminds me of sort of you know

there's just i think this is what's interesting i have my problems with phenons humanism but the sort of just fact that like colonel like settler colonialism creates these sort of mutually dehumanizing situations where you're hiding inside of a wall in that desperation but also Also, the colonizers are mutilating themselves in a sense with this intense, horrific violence that they're learning to commit without any sort of care in the world about it. And you really see that sort of mutual destruction of a shared humanity that Settler colonialism creates that I think Phenon really gets at. Exactly right. You mentioned, we don't have to go into this. This is a detour, but the whole concept of humanism, I just recorded an hour and a half episode with Max Alvarez from Working People Pod.

basically his position is a very like Marxist humanist one and so he explocates and defends the Marxist humanist position and we touch on the sort of anti-humanist Marxism maybe you and I either on Red Menace or one of our patrons can have that discussion because having really dived into the Marxist humanist side of the argument I'm urgent to jump into the other side and sort of engage with the Althusarian anti-humanist side of the Marxist equation on that specific question I don't really know that where that's going

I just want to put a pin in that because I hope you and I can discuss that at some point on some flower. Totally. Yeah. And it's a complicated one. And it's sort of one of those things where it's like, well, theoretically I find the sort of Althusarian side of things much more compelling. The humanist side of things has a real sort of pathos-based rhetorical power to it, regardless of sort of the theoretical level. Like even if I have these problems with, you know, humanity as a concept and the human as a normative idea on a less theoretical, more real level, I can understand this idea of like, oh, we're being made inhuman by this situation. And there's definitely, I think, at the very least, a propagandistic value to that kind of approach to things because it really connects to people. Totally. And that was kind of like one of my main conclusions was that exact argument is like, you know, whatever we think theoretically, the fact is not only is it a mechanism by which you can

recruit and touch people and relate to them, but it's also oftentimes the inspiring catalyst for people to get involved, the subjective sense of outreach. rage at injustice, the burning, searing sense of empathy and compassion and the need to end unjust suffering from innocent people. It's also the catalyst. So, yeah, so regardless of the theoretical sides of it, I think it can be marshaled strategically. And it's sort of inseparable anyways, even if we aim to have a fully anti-humanist movement. I think it's really embedded in, it's so embedded in the way humans think and talk and relate to one another, that it'd be hard to purge those aspects at the very least. Definitely. Well, did you have anything else

on your list? Yeah, I guess the last thing that I thought was interesting is that the movie ends really with a set of riots breaking out after, sometime quite after, all of our main characters have been killed, which I think is interesting. Like the characters who we've been following in this are captured, in prison, or killed in various ways, and taken out of this movement. And we end with a triumphant national liberation movement, but also the individual people that we've seen gone. And I think that there's something interesting in that just symbolically about the reminder that the movement extends beyond the individual personalities in leadership and the various revolutionaries, that while those people are central to making it happen,

there's also just the movement of the masses, which is primary in that, and which continues on even absent the presence of individual revolutionaries or leaders. And I think that was a powerful way to end it de-emphasizing sort of the personal heroism and getting back to the masses in the street after all the characters we already know about are gone. Absolutely. And it's summed up by Che and I think by Fred Hampton when they said in their own way, like you can kill a revolutionary, but you can't kill the revolution. And that is summed up in that last scene, I think, beautifully and movingly.

And the last scene I think you see is a woman close up on a woman waving the nationalist Algerian flag. And so, and then, yeah, so a beautiful way to end a complex. and beautiful and challenging film. Yeah, I love the film. 10 out of 10 for me, one of the best films I've ever personally seen. Of course, the political content sways it, but just as a fucking piece of art in the sense of cinema,

just as that, I think it's a wonderfully, wonderfully made movie and a beautiful and important and educational story. Everybody on the revolutionary principled left, I think should engage with it. And that's why the Black Panthers and the IRA did, you know? Yeah, no, definitely. I mean, there's, there's no excuse for not watching this movie as far as I'm concerned. It is profoundly instructive in a way that, you know, you might not even know that a film can be to a certain extent.

Yep, absolutely. All right. Well, I think that that sums up our episode today. Are you cool with that? Yeah, sounds good. All right, you definitely watch the Battle of Algiers. You can find it online. It's not that hard.

Thank you so much to all of our Patreon supporters. We deeply love and appreciate all of you. And we will be back soon with another Patreon episode and a public episode, finessexie. finishing out France Fanon's The Wretched of the Earth. So thanks again for supporting the show. Definitely watch this film, and we'll talk to you soon. Mr. Backlash, Mr. Backlash, Just who do you think I am? You raise my taxes, freeze my wages, and send my son to Vietnam.

You give me second-class houses and second-class schools. Do you think that all colored folks are just second-class fools Mr. Backlach I'm going to leave you with a backlash blow When I try to find a job To earn a little cash

All you got to offer Is your mean or white back Backlash But the world is big Big and bright and round And it's full of folks like me You're black, yellow, beige and brown Mr. Backlash

I'm going to leave you with a backlash blue Oh. Mr. Backlash, Mr. Backlash, just what do you think I got to lose? I'm going to deep you with the Backlash Blues. You're the one will have the blues, not me. Just wait and see