IN his seminal work, The Wretched of the Earth, Frantz Fanon paints a dismal picture of the Manichean world of colonial Algeria. In the suburbs, large boulevards run through neighbourhoods, imparting a sense of calm and order. In contrast, the cramped streets home to the natives are chaotic, plagued with anomie, dissolution, and lawlessness.

Recently released pictures from Gaza depicting Palestinian men stripped and paraded in the streets reveal similar juxtapositions. These images, however, highlight a deeper tension that permeates colonised spaces — one that goes beyond the marked differences in infrastructure, public services, law and order. This tension extends beyond the physical, and spills over into the realm of the psychological, where it draws a sharp distinction between the humanity and individual dignity of the native and coloniser.

For Fanon, colonialism was as much psychological warfare as it was physical occupation. Colonising a territory meant breaking the minds of its inhabitants, instilling fear and a sense of inferiority in relation to the white ‘civiliser’.

Central to this were notions of ‘primitive’ natives who in all aspects — culture, language, lifestyle — remained inferior to the colonisers. At its core, colonialism was an exercise in dehumanisation, denominating entire populations in racist and offensive terminology.

Colonialism was an exercise in dehumanisation

The dehumanisation of Palestinian men reveals continuity in these colonial thought patterns. The Israeli Defence Forces claimed the men belonged to Hamas and had surrendered to the IDF. In an instant, individual identities were eroded. The men were now part of a nameless horde, their guilt predetermined and hence undeserving of human dignity.

Guilt is an interesting emotion in colonial trauma, which Edward Said explored more fully than Frantz Fanon. Author of the seminal text in post-colonial thought, Oriental­ism, the former revealed how brown and black men were often identified as guilty simply on account of their race and religion.

These denominators of identity made them predisposed to violence and disorder in the eyes of the white coloniser, thus requiring surveillance and control.

Notice again the erosion of the black and brown man’s humanity and individualism. He is seen as more inclined towards violence, harbouring lust for white women and posing a threat to the social order, traits that make him less human and more primal. These tendencies are seen as ubiquitous in black and brown male population, undermining any delineation at the individual level.

Fanon and Said allow us to don a lens which helps us see the Israel-Palestine conflict in a different light. It is not simply about nation states, the return of refugees or access to holy sites. At its core, the conflict carries substantial reverberations for the psyches of communities, questions of human dignity and how race and power continue to define and shape humanity. This explains why the conflict elicits such divergent responses and sympathy around the world in terms of the violence unleashed on Palestine and the losses suffered by Israel.

Dehumanisation and the systemic control of brown populations is not limited to this conflict. The entire edifice of the modern ‘war on terror’, in fact, rests on these Orientalist perceptions. Thus, the pictures of Palestinian men being paraded in their underwear evokes the same sense of melancholy and hopelessness that emanated from Abu Ghraib — the infamous sight of torture inflicted on the bodies of brown men seen as less than human.

On the flip side, this de­­humanisat­i­­on is used to justify violent in­­­vasions of sovereign coun­­tries, as Laura Bush, then first lady of the US. claimed when she said America’s war against Afghanistan made Afghan women ‘safer’ — overtly revealing implicit Orientalist tendencies to view brown, black or Muslim men as dangerous.

These biases underpin the Patriot Act and the mass surveillance of Pakistani and Muslim men in the US. An internalisation of these biases percolates the minds of Pakistani and other brown men, who are forced to exercise immense reticence while expressing opinions in a Western setting, all the while shouldering a collective guilt over the actions of their governments.

It is hesitation that stalks black and brown men in public spaces, lest they be viewed as suspicious and accosted by law-enforcement officials. It is everywhere in the American justice system, where African Americans are indicted with far heavier penalties than their white counterparts for similar charges.

Control is therefore psychological, while power is multifaceted. As we mourn the loss of life and hold out hope for a ceasefire, let us remain cognisant of how the very essence of human dignity is at stake.

The writer is a civil servant currently pursuing graduate studies at the University of Oxford.

Published in Dawn, December 14th, 2023