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The recent shooting at a Mormon chapel in Michigan is part
of a disturbing trend: the growing justification of violence. A Catholic church
was recently attacked, Charlie Kirk was assassinated, and the murderer of a
health care CEO is treated as a romantic figure because of his looks. Even Lori
Vallow, the “doomsday mom,” defended her killings by invoking Nephi’s slaying
of Laban.
These examples reveal how dangerously blurred the moral line
has become between justified violence and terrorism. Increasingly, those who
commit crimes are excused, while ordinary law-abiding people, working
unglamorous jobs in average towns or simply attending church, are painted as
guilty of society’s ills and, in some eyes, worthy of death. Such thinking only
makes sense when guilt and innocence are determined not by individual actions
but by membership in a group.
This logic can be traced through intellectual traditions
that divide the world into two hostile camps: the oppressors vs. oppressed of
Marx, or the colonizers vs. colonized of Frantz Fanon. Fanon’s The Wretched of
the Earth, praised by Jean-Paul Sartre and Cornel West as a revolutionary
manual, has become particularly influential. Its vision of collective struggle
and sanctioned violence echoes today in the defense of Hamas atrocities, the
celebration of political assassinations, and even in some strands of leftist
Mormon thought.
This post examines Fanon’s Wretched of the Earth to
show how violence is sanctioned when individual responsibility is erased and
why Just War theory provides a much needed moral antidote.
Violence
The Wretched of the Earth both justifies and
minimizes intense violence. The first line of the book said, “decolonization is
always a violent event” (1). Then, “decolonization reeks of red-hot cannonballs
and bloody knives” (3). Fanon warned of a “human tide” that sounded like the
French Reign of Terror
(13.) Fanon says the colonized are filled with “blood feuds” and “fratricidal
blood bath(s)” (17, 21). “It is clearly and plainly an armed struggle” (42).
“For the colonized, this violence represents the absolute praxis” (43). And
finally, “For the colonized, life can only materialize from the rotting cadaver
of the colonialist.”
His theories result in a Manichean view, his words, that erase
individual moral virtue and justified murder. Because if a colonized person
kills colonizer cops, he is a hero. As Fanon wrote “If the act for which this
man is prosecuted by the colonial authorities is an act exclusively directed
against a colonial individual or colonial asset, then the demarcation line
[between right and wrong] is clear and manifest (30).”
Minimize Western Religion and Values
When he does quote Christian teachings, he either invalidates
or perverts them. According to Fanon, the teachings of love and harmony (3) are
simply part of the “confusion mongers” that make exploitation easier (4). Fanon said, “The last can be first only after
a murderous and decisive confrontation” (3).
Fanon says Christianity is the white man’s church, “as we
know in this story, many are called but few are chosen” (8). After he told
story of rebel that killed colonizers Fanon said it was a “baptism by blood” (46).
He ignored Western values the same way. Without evidence he
asserted that “government agents use the language of pure violence” (4). Discussions
of Western values cause the natives to tense their muscles and grab a machete and
sharpen their weapons (8). Fanon said the West wages a war in values, that the
people don’t care about. All they care about is land appropriation and blowing
the colonial world to smithereens (6).
Putting It All Together
All the above matters because the Western values that he
diminishes, which were often promulgated by Christian thinkers, established
guardrails against the kind of bloodbath Fanon justified and unleashed and
provides moral correction against the abuses that supposedly justify the
violent outbursts of the colonized.[1]
Salamanca school scholar Francisco Suarez wrote that revolt
is only violence is just only “if essential for liberty, because if there is
any less drastic means of removing him it is not lawful to kill him…always
provided that there is no danger of the same or worse evils falling on
community as result of the tyrants death.[2]
Early modern scholar Hugo Grotius wrote about the same right
to revolt if the king alienates his people, but also warned potential usurpers
that it would lead to gory factionalism and “dangerous, bloody conflict.”[3]
In similar language, Mosiah recognized the danger of revolt
when he argued for the end of the monarchy: [Y]e cannot dethrone an iniquitous
king save it be through much contention, and the shedding of much blood (Mosiah
29:21).
In contrast to Fanon, Christian writers espousing what
eventually became notable Western values recognized the same danger in revolution
and warned against slaughter. At the same time, they recognized the
rights of the oppressed and just war often became a catalyst for reform. Fanon dismissed
the talk of rights as the “erstatz,” or fake struggle of the elite for the
people “insipid humanitarianism” (28). Yet those supposedly insipid beliefs
according to Fanon, or beliefs that are insufficient according to multiple LDS
scholars,[4]
are stronger than any of Fanon’s theories because they clearly address the
morality of revolution.
Despite being minimized by Fanon as abstract values that
don’t matter, the Salamanca school scholars advocating for human rights of
natives, the Grimke sisters arguing for abolition, the missionaries arguing for
abolition, and the Christian missionaries that reported the abuses in the
Belgian Congo suggest religion was often a reforming counter agent to
colonialism. A focus on individual morality instead of collective guilt
promoted by Fanon noticed the stark differences between the philosopher that
opposed colonization compared to the politicians that wanted it, the ministers
that built roads and bridges and the rapacious tax collectors, and the leaders
of the Western Concession in Shanghai that shielded dissidents.
Using collective accusations that erases individual moral
responsibility is why we end up with Hamas apologists. Cornell West said the Palestinians
most embody the “spirit of Fanon” (xii), so when they killed, they were simply
part of the colonized oppressed and their actions turn them in to “heroes.” I
quoted this earlier, but it is worth repeating what Fanon wrote regarding the
morality of violence against the colonizers, “If the act for which this man is
prosecuted by the colonial authorities is an act exclusively directed against a
colonial individual or colonial asset, then the demarcation line is clear and
manifest.” Even though their violence was a barbaric campaign of mass slaughter
and rape against innocent families, the ideas of Fanon made all Jews guilty and
all terrorists innocent.
That is why Americans witnessed the bizarre spectacle of
liberal groups making gliders
their logo. (Gliders are how the terrorists travelled to the massacre at the
Nova music festival.) And this confused moral logic led to tweets which argued
the barbaric savagery of Hamas was “what
decolonization looks like.”
This collective guilt theory is why so many rationalized
away the assassination of health care CEO Brian Thompson. (The other reason was
the killer’s attractiveness.) He never killed anyone and arguably worked to
provide health care to millions. But he was part of a hated industry, attacked
for killing thousands. Thus, the nominal morality that opposes murder held less
sway for the masses of morally confused. It’s true that the health care system
really stinks but relying on collective guilt to indict one person as guilty
and worthy of death and justify murder by another, is a dangerous slope and
signals a dangerous erosion of clear moral standards.
Bad Categories Escape Morality
In short, the problem was summarized from my post about the Visions
of Glory. As I wrote about Visions of Glory, once a person starts
labelling yourself as part of a righteous group, and their opponents as
zombies, it becomes easier to justify killing them. When Fanon described an
event as naturally violent (1) and a population existing in an “atmosphere of
violence” (31) it’s natural to strike out.[5]
The antidote is not to invent new theories or indulge in
vague moralizing, but to return to the clarity of Just War principles and the
wisdom of earlier thinkers. As both Christian tradition and the Book of Mormon
warn, revolution comes only “through much contention, and the shedding of much
blood.” That is not a license to glorify violence but a sober caution to resist
collective guilt and hold fast to individual responsibility.
We are judged by our own sins, not by the accidents of
class, race, or category. If we truly wish to resist the age of blurred lines
and confused morality, we must recover the values of love, harmony, and
conciliation that Fanon dismissed, and recognize that peace is found not in
collective vengeance, and random shootings, but in clear moral standards rooted
in justice.
Thanks for reading. If you found value in this work please consider donating using the paypal button below, or purchase one of my books linked in the top left.
[1] Morgan
Deane, To Stop a Slaughter: Just War and the Book of Mormon, (Arsenal of
Venice Press, 2024,) 104-106.
[2] Andre Azevedo Alves, Jose Moreira, John Meadowcroft, The Salamanca School, (Bloomsbury Academic Pro, 2013), 53.
[3] Grotius , 73-76. Grotius also placed limits on potential usurpers that included another warning that it is difficult to determine the morality of a rebellion. He suggested that individual shouldn’t take it upon themselves to decide a question on their own, which involves the whole people.
[4]
Patrick Q. Mason and J. David Pulsipher, Proclaim Peace: The Restoration’s
Answer to an Age of Conflict (Provo, UT: Neal A. Maxwell Institute for
Religious Scholarship; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2021), 135. Duane Boyce, Even
Unto Bloodshed: An LDS Perspective on War (Salt Lake City: Greg Kofford
Books, 2015), 223. Boyce states “modern just war framework…makes no explicit
use of scripture…it seems obvious that it cannot be sufficient to address the
concerns of Latter-day Saints.”
[5]
There is an absurd double standard here as well. When conservatives do
something as simple as enforce immigration law, they are attacked
as evil for creating a “climate of fear.” But when a third world nation is on
the verge of a horrific orgy of violence they honor scholars that call that
violence natural, necessary, and heroic.
