Frantz Fanon was a Black psychiatrist from Martinique (a French colony, surprise) who went to Algeria during their war of independence and realized that treating the mental health of colonized people was a joke. A complete fucking joke. He had to treat the cause instead (the cause being colonialism, in case that was not obvious).
His diagnosis is that colonialism is a psychiatric disorder. Not a metaphor. He literally treated patients who were driven insane by living under colonial rule. His prescription: revolutionary violence is not a political strategy, it is a therapy (try putting that on a bumper sticker). Killing your oppressor is how you become a person again.
This is the part everyone uses to dismiss him, and it is the laziest fucking argument against him. But when you read him carefully you will see he is not glorifying violence. He is describing it as a historical inevitability when all other avenues are closed. He is saying dignity requires action. And if the system will not give you dignity, you must take it (by any means necessary, as the man said).
The Wretched of the Earth was written in a fever in 1961 while Fanon was dying of leukemia. It has a preface by Jean-Paul Sartre that is almost as famous as the book itself. It was banned in multiple countries. It was read by revolutionaries from Palestine to South Africa to the Black Panther Party. It is still banned in some places today (which tells you everything you need to know about how fucking dangerous it is).
Starter book: The Wretched of the Earth (1961).
