Muhammad
A Reluctant Settler?
Pied Noirs or in english the Black Feets were French settlers who set up shop in Algeria and started living there as a population exploiting and colonizing the native Amazigh and Arab North Africans -deluding themselves to believe in their so-called superiority over the colonized Algerians, the term refers to children of French occupiers born in colonised Algeria.
While Pieds Rouges or Red Feets are the same set of people from a privileged position but who abandoned their primitive colonial way of thought and embraced the Algerian struggle for Independence, this strata of comrades also includes deserters from the French colonial army, pied noirs who supported Algerian independence, socialists and progressives of all sorts who renounced their privileges as well as europeans or americans who worked extensively for the Algerian National Liberation Front.
Belonging to the former category our resident absurdist scholar Albert Camus has garnered praise amongst progressive students, North Africans and otherwise, for having been a so-called human rights activist and “rebel”, Having personally read voraciously about the Algerian Revolution its material causes, events, and conclusions I would like to dispute the claims that Camus (and his supporters) through their actions deserve this reverence and debate whether his status as a progressive intellectual especially in regards to the country he was born in is legitimate or not.
Being a pied-noir by birth more privileged than the people whose colonized land he was born unto Camus himself was relatively destitute and had to live -gasp, shock and horror- in the Arab quarters.
Brought up racist like most other pied noir children he thought Algérie française (French Algeria) was the correct administration for the North African state and that “Algeria was a fundamental part (settler colony) of France, the empire that brought the Arabs civilization and modernity.” While he may have dispelled his overtly racist beliefs, he carried his want of Algérie française to the grave — Not to show this information in a biased manner I suppose I’ll say that this wasn’t in the blood-hounding manner that racist colonialists would use this rhetoric in, In fact as Sartre said Camus was probably just too -innocent- of a soul to understand the implications.
The problem is that Camus had no stance on Algeria and its future.
Revolutionaries cannot allow space for half-heartedness – If Camus’s contemporaries such as Satre and Francis Jeanson can not only write for the FLN as the former did so in the shape of “Les Temps modernes” being a paper started by Sartre alongside other intellectuals. infact these europeans, sons of colonizers lent material support to us; as the latter did by constructing an entire illegal support network to help the FLN in various ways, why could not Camus and his followers?1
Why then do we care for a Reluctant Settler and his inability to take action, when we have our heroes our Anti colonialists our Revolutionaries who Supported our just progressive struggle to alter the material reality for millions of colonised North Africans and smash French colonialism.
We have our revolutionaries Zohra Drif, Mokhtar and Elaine Mokhtefi, Yacef Saadi and more so we have our martyrs Ali La Pointe, Hassiba Ben Bou Ali, brother Larbi Ben M’hidi, our brothers Zabana and Ferradj.
When they brought Zabana from his cell, all the imprisoned brothers sang our song “Min Djibalina.” (Nationalist Anthem), The executioner released the guillotine blade, but it jammed twice. The colonial government did not stop him from releasing it the third time.
Ahmed Zabana cried out, ‘Tahya El Djazair! With us or without us, free Algeria will live!’ Our brothers replied by chanting ‘Tahya El Djazair! Tahya El Djazair!’ [Long live Algeria!]
When the martyr’s head finally rolled to a stop at the foot of the guillotine, the brothers were crying out, ‘Tahya El Djazair! Allah Akbar! Allah Akbar!’ “And in one uninterrupted chorus, the women of the Casbah roared out tens of thousands of you-yous that left the prison staff quaking in fear. The next day and the days that followed, thanks to the FLN, all of Algiers and then all of Algeria were sharing Zabana’s last message:
Tell my mother that I am not dying for nothing, and thus, I am not really dying at all.
By executing Zabana and Ferradj on June 19, 1956, the colonizers got the opposite of what they were looking for: thousands of men and women sought to join the FLN’s ranks, especially youth who had vowed to avenge our martyrs:
‘Tahya El Djazair! With us or without us, free Algeria will live!’ 2
We have our non-Algerian comrades who are like us at heart; Frantz Fanon, Elaine Mokhtef from Turtle Island (North America). Deserters from the French colonial forces
“To Raymonde, Danielle, and all the Europeans who took up the cause of our liberation struggle and participated actively, I would like to express our infinite gratitude and our eternal appreciation. Danielle Mine, Raymonde Peschard, and their whole group were in the eastern maquis, near Constantine. In November 1957, Raymonde would fall as a true martyr of our revolution, and Danielle would be arrested alongside N’fissa Hamoud. I must note that Danielle and her mother Jacqueline are full-fledged Algerians, if not more Algerian than most—because, along with dozens of other activists like them, they chose Algeria and its cause.”
and while all this was taking place Charles Geromini, a French doctor who sided with the FLN writes what Philosopher sahab Camus was doing:
Then it was Camus’s turn. We had gone to his lecture to hear one of our elders and if need be, protect him from the fascists. On this point we were not called on to intervene. Camus’s audience had been carefully screened and the approaches to the hall were guarded by the helmeted C.R.S. We expected that Camus would take a clear position on the Algerian problem.
What we were treated to was a sweet-sister speech. He explained to us at length that the innocent civilian population must be protected, but he was categorically against fundraising in favor of the innocent families of political prisoners. We in the hall were dumbfounded. Outside, the mob of fascists was rhythmically yelling: “Algerie Francaise!“ and screaming: “Camus to the gallows! “But these demonstrations seemed to us to be the dying spasms of the colonialist beast.“ 3
While I do not in any way want to take away from what he “did do”, Camus “contributions” to the Anti-Colonial progressive socialist uprising remain parse, he did his study of the situation in the Kabylie region – Showing it off as a humanitarian disaster caused by poverty without commenting on the fact that this was engineered by the colonial inhumane backward uncivilised authorities as punishment for the Kabiyles for putting up the foremost resistance to French colonialism. In Letter to an Algerian Militant – he does the average run of the mill both sides lip service ” bad actions are being taken by both French (colonisers) and the Algerians (colonized).4
Nevertheless, it certainly makes sense for his class interests to show in him caring for and supporting the Pied Noir settler population in Algeria. But eventually due to his lack of understanding regarding Socialist thought he was unable to grasp such as Sartre did the material reality of the colonised and that Fanon made us all understand thoroughly.5 Which made Camus nothing but a wrench of the colonial empire. Reform while existing within the exact same exploitative, oppressing, dehumanizing system for the Algerians was what Camus advocated, on multiple occasions all his callings even if were heeded to would provide the colonial system more ability to continue its exploitation.6 And already his racist literature built upon pied-noir prejudices was carrying guilt as well as a sully recognition of the system in its conscience.7
Do understand a reluctant settler is still a settler.
I shall quote a passage from the book Inside the Battle of Algiers where Samia Lakhdari, A revolutionary of the FLN confronts a liberal “pacifist” supporter of Camus’:
In early 1956, we had such a harsh discussion with our friend Mimi that we almost reached the breaking point. She arrived one morning bursting with excitement and announced to us the “big news” that a group of French intellectuals, headed by the pied-noir writer Albert Camus, had launched a so-called “appeal for a civil truce.” She explained to us that these intellectuals were very influential in France and that, since the Front Républicain had won the elections, everything would change for our people.
Samia reminded her that “Camus is fully French, while we are ‘natives,’ that is to say beings with inferior rights, with no access to citizenship or French nationality. And since we are colonized, we also don’t have the right to be Algerian. In short, we are neither French nor Algerian; we are ‘nothing to the French government. We are a people denied even its essence and its existence, a people that has undergone a system of absolute and intolerable domination for 126 years! To top it all off, this system declares that Algeria is part of France. Which means that the Europeans and Camus are at home here and that we are strangers in our own land.” I added,
Does your ‘appeal for a civil truce’ pose problems in these terms?
Does it say that the colonial system is the origin and cause of our plight?
Does it say that the only solution is the abolition of that system—its demise by any means necessary?”
Mimi, shaken by so much virulence, retorted, “You are extremists and your position will get us nowhere. Read Camus’s coverage of the living conditions of our people in Kabylie and you will see that he is sincere. He is on our side.”
Samia, with false calm, shot back, “Ask your friend Camus how his country, france, was freed from Nazi occupation. It was the ‘extremists,’ the resistance, who liberated france, not any calls for a civil truce. Why didn’t Camus and his friends propose a civil truce to the Germans to resolve their country’s occupation? And as for Camus’s reports in Alger Républicain, we have read them. In his eyes, our problem is poverty due to unemployment and illiteracy, while for us, the misery is only a consequence of our true problem, which is called French colonization. For him, systemic reforms are sufficient, while for us, the solution lies in the death of the system that he is part of.”2
References:
1- Birchall, Ian. https://jacobin.com/2021/03/jean-paul-sartre-algerian-war-les-temps-modernes-journal.
2- Drif, Zohra. Inside the Battle of Algiers, https://drive.google.com/file/d/1hkN-R5gpq67zmL6yoBN0OhO9R1BHNuS9/view?usp=sharing
3- Mokhtefi, Mokhtar. I was a french Muslim. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1CWW64qiUwxZ6ni7ZCoXaCxlolM3y2sR_/view?usp=sharing
4- Camus, Albert. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1aFUhjL27eb0CJVHyao_1n3zgxkoZuS0s/view?usp=sharing
5- Drake, David. “Sartre, Camus and the Algerian War.” Sartre Studies International, vol. 5, no. 1, 1999, pp. http://www.jstor.org/stable/23512792
6- Gloag, Oliver. https://jacobin.com/2020/10/colonialism-albert-camus-france-algeria-sartre.
7- Kulkarni, Mangesh. “The Ambiguous Fate of a Pied-Noir: Albert Camus and Colonialism., http://www.jstor.org/stable/4405561
