Agreed. Very insightful into Hitchens’ psychology and his unresolved two-mindedness about Said. Honestly one of the best pieces I have read on Substack, both in terms of substance and style.
There are so many african countries plagued with that nonsensical belief. Some larp as a third worldist to win elections or stay popular, but it's sad that some countries keep that faith alive. Besides Algeria, i would say South Africa's ANC believes it.
Its like Christianity, but without the forgiveness, self sacrifice or acts of humble service. Everything inverted through the lens that venerates victimhood.
From this side of the pond I know little about Mamdani's political philosophy, so it will be interesting to see how that plays out. Civilisations generally benefit from the stimulus of imported ideas, even if they do not adopt them.
I feel you are glossing over an important aspect of the French era in Algeria when you say that "During the Algerian War of Independence, that same struggle against Europe often blurred into hostility toward Jewish communities."
As a Moroccan, I don't need to tell you that the North African Jewish communities had been established and coexisting with Amazigh and later Arabs, Christians and then Muslims, either for some two thousand years, or for 500 years after being expelled from the Iberian peninsula by the Christian conquistadores. In a deliberately divisive move in 1870, France's Crémieux Decree granted French citizenship to Algeria's Jews, but not to its Muslims. This had the obvious and intended effect of creating an intractable fracture, in a truly ancient equilibrium, that falsely aligned the Jews with Europe, with predictable consequences when the State of Israel was founded and Algeria won its independence.
I don’t know how Mamdani will actually govern when he wins; he wouldn’t be the first to moderate some hard edges once in office. But taking him at his word, it’s a linear exercise to project abject failure and deeper disillusionment for dems entering 2024.
Sorry to say it, as I vote D every time and would even vote for this guy if necessary. But to repeat two key points that are well known: Americans don’t like terrorists (Hamas) and don’t like socialism (Mamdami). Whatever legitimately cataloged abuses and colonial terrors of the past, and even with abhorrent recent behavior of Israel’s government; nevertheless, these two points tend to win elections in the USA. Which is one reasons Democrats tend to lose elections.
I’m not making a value judgment. I’m just reading the scoreboard. Dems should read it more often. Like, every day.
Perhaps not the right word - status quo, arrangement - whatever it was that permitted the Jews to remain in place for hundreds if not thousands of years, until the French swept it away with the stroke of a pen.
No, at times there was ethnic cleansing (if you consider pogroms a kind of ethnic cleansing, which I do).
At the same time, Jews such as Isma'il ibn Naghrilla "served as grand vizier of the Taifa of Granada, commander of its army in battle, and leader of the local Jewish community. Rising to unprecedented prominence in both Muslim and Jewish spheres, he became one of the most powerful and influential Jews in medieval Spain."
More recently, Jewish Berber André Azoulay, born in Essaouira, has served as financial adviser to two Moroccan monarchs over the last 40 years.
In today's polarised, binary mentalité, a lot of people struggle to reconcile facts like these.
As attributed to F.Scott Fitzgerald, "the test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function."
That's very fair, though I still don't like the framing in terms of a kinda-sorta equality that the Europeans destroyed from outside, rather than the Muslims, who were always the ones with the power, reneging on.
For Algeria's Jews the 1870 Crémieux Decree offered them "la belle vie" and integration, but after 1890 there were French/pied-noir Organisations Anti-Juives carrying out attacks across Algeria, and anti-semitic parties winning elections. 28 Jews were murdered in anti-Jewish riots in 1934. In 1940 the Vichy régime abrogates Crémieux and Jews are hounded out of the civil service and the entire education system. Jewish doctors and lawyers are struck off. A census is held in 1941 to "re-Aryanise" the economy. By 1962 all of Algeria's Jews have fled to France or Palestine.
So yes, in just this one location, in less than 100 years the Europeans did destroy, from outside, the Jews' 3,000 year old position in their ecosystem (the last 1,200 years of it under Muslim rule). Ecosystems have hierarchies and predators, but they enable survival.
The thing is, though, that other Arab countries like Iraq and Egypt also kicked out the Jews, or slowly made it impossible for them to stay, around the same time. The European colonisers also favoured other minorities, like the Alawites and Christians in Syria, without them being literally thrown out after independence. So I think that antisemitism accelerated by the conflict with Israel must be part of what led to the expulsion of the Jews in Algeria.
I think that’s what I was trying to say - in this instance with the Crémieux decree not only triggering Muslim resentment, for obvious reasons, but also French settler resentment 20 years later in the form of the Organisation Anti-Juive, inter alia, as Jews increasingly gained access to colonial Algeria’s professional cadres. This also relates to French internal politics i.e. the Dreyfus affair.
This is a really interesting and important of of view and I think there is a lot to it. I think it is also important to note that the Soviet Union deliberately stoked this "third worldism," especially in the early 60's and continuing even to this day when it is no longer the Soviet Union. A few questions. Why Israel has become the last western fortress of colonialism given the continued efforts of larger western nations. Related to that - why focus almost exclusively on Palestine while other "struggles" are left largely ignored. And finally how they reconcile the merging of their movement with Islamism which is historically and to this day clearly a colonialist movement (Iran as a case study)
None of his policies in his platform were any bit derivative of fanon. He doesn't come across as a psychopath. He's more optimistic in disposition. I have to assume his platform represents his views. Fanon is definitely an add-on.
The US does not/did not have colonies? The Philippines? Hawaii? Puerto Rico? And please, fair to point out that North-African Jews were in a bit of a pickle when those countries became independent, but not fair not to mention the divide and rule tactics of French colonialism under which unlike Muslims native Jews were given French citizenship in 1870. That leads to an explanation that is a bit more subtle than the pro-Zionist dogma of supposedly eternal antisemitism. The problem with Mamdani is that just like every other socialist he has a gazillion ideas about playing Santa Claus with tax money but zero interest for the economic practicability and consequences. No need to take him more seriously than he deserves and come up with another culture war pamphlet that moreover manages to mention Israel and forget the Gaza genocide.
I admit I find it hard, from a strictly historical perspective, to consider Algerian Independence (or similar examples) de or post- colonial. It re-instated an Arab and Muslim majority into governance, which then expelled and suppressed existing minority communities and solidified the Arab/Muslim colonial identity violently imposed on much of the MENA through the Islamic conquests. Neither Arabic nor Islam are indigenous outside of the Arabian peninsula. When ppl talk of decolonizing Palestine, I often wonder if they understand that, under no historical circumstances, would such a place be Arab or Muslim. The Arab fight with European colonial powers is really a matter of picking one’s poison, or imperialist force.
It's an interesting essay because it's filled with personal perspective and a different worldview. That's why I gave it a like. And it's also true that both Algeria and Morocco experienced rapid post-colonial improvements in areas like health and education, and both countries had a literacy rates of 10% in the colonial/protectorate days, and rapid gains in literacy are generally sure to produce a positive economic effect.
It certainly didn't help that both countries were subjects of French colonialism, which suffered from over-centralised statist approaches. The British decentralised approach of indirect rule and missionary schools produced better outcomes: 30–50% of school-age boys in British Africa were enrolled in school, compared to 5–15% in French Africa.
Here's the problem. Resentment and grievance will only get a country or a community so far. In some ways if a country is in absolutely dire straits it can act as a galvanising force, acting like the fuel in a tractor to accomplish sweeping changes. However, this only works up to the beginnings of the middle income level, beyond which almost all positive change is slow, incremental and amounts to fine-tuned improvements. It's why it's relatively easy for countries to get themselves up to a middle income level, but much more difficult to raise standards of living beyond this. Both countries are also good examples of why it's usually better to use PPP than nominal figures for most purposes, because PPP is a better reflections of living standards on the ground.
The problem is that socialists don't do decentralised or small, incremental, slow improvements. Their natural preference is for bold moves which are based upon narrative beliefs rather than empirical observation. This can be fine if the people are stricken by absolute poverty and coming out of colonial rule and drastic changes in the form of bold improvements are exactly what's needed, but as a country develops and becomes wealthier any change risks removing processes and solutions, public or private, which were markedly better than the new change being proposed- in effect, throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
It doesn't help that most socialist change is centralising in nature,, with the market-driven solutions it seeks to replace generally twice as good on a per dollar basis. Policymakers are also usually blissfully unaware that when positive and negative changes are of equal magnitude, the negative change will, on average, have long-term impacts five times worse than any benefit from the positive change- a critical factor when evaluating second and third-order effects.
However, there is one area which is an exception for advanced economies. Milei's shock therapy in Argentina was initially brutal, causing a sharp rise in poverty. However, because he drastically deregulated the rent sector this caused a rebound in living standards, especially for households which were struggling. Post-deregulation monthly listings rose +170% from 4,000 a month to 11,000. Rents shrunk by 40%. This countered the early poverty rise by improving affordability for 2-3 million urban poor. Drastic changes can work in more advanced economies provided they are deregulatory in nature.
The potential for change through rental sector deregulation is lower in New York, but it's not unrealistic to expect a 10-20% reduction in rents through deregulation and the increased supply which would result.
The problem is that out of 12 major policy changes Mamdani has proposed 9 out of 12 proposals involve displacing market-driven or community-led systems with a greater degree of centralisation. The other three are mixed. None focus on devolving power to communities or individuals, at least when one looks at the detail layer. It's a sure fire recipe for disastrous results.
Perhaps one of the most tortured bits of writing I’ve ever seen trying to smear anti-Israeli sentiment as somehow unfair or misguided when it mostly stems from watching the country commit the most widely covered genocide of the 21st century.
And the successful decolonisation movements of the 1960's ended in the rise of oppressive authoritarianism and those countries are faring far, far worse than say India which adopted the ideals of liberal enlightenment.
Have you ever seen the documentary L'avocat de la terreur?
It's about Jacques Verges and is a perfect exploration of the third worldist mindset, full off resentful victim mentality and the excusing of terrorism.
Pure slop and buzzwords. Not even trying to justify the connection between Mamdani, Fanon, and Algeria. No wonder conservatives and conservative adjacents routinely get their brains completely broken when this is the garbage they routinely consume like pigs eating out of a trough
I don’t think Mandami’s views go that deep. My guess is that it’s more simple that that: his parents locked into their core beliefs in the late 1970s or early 80s when they were probably in their early 20s. At that time, anticolonial Franz Fanon type views were fresh and popular and reasonably mainstream. But then they never changed their beliefs or apparently learned anything new. Zohran absorbed this growing up in Columbia faculty housing and never did his own thinking. I have a close friend of around the same age as Mira Nair (as am I). My friend is intelligent but really has not had a new thought about politics or economics since 1983. And I would add that for lefty types or my vintage, it’s a stretch to say they even had thoughts on economics. Most of them avoided Ec classes because the classes supposedly were “evil” but really because the students themselves were uncomfortable with math and didn’t want to end up drawing supply and demand curves. It’s easy to be a true believer in constraining markets (eg government run supermarkets or rent control) if you have no way of calculating or even understanding what the impact is.
Mamdani is the spiritual child of Edward Said.
Interesting, how so? Could you elaborate?
https://open.substack.com/pub/maralsalmassi/p/hitchens-and-said-on-envy-guilt-and?r=4pbde0&utm_medium=ios
Thank you for sharing that, I'll read it more closely.
Tour de force article on Said. Thank you for posting that link.
You are welcome! I thought so too…I especially loved the contrast to Hitchens, just very on-point.
Agreed. Very insightful into Hitchens’ psychology and his unresolved two-mindedness about Said. Honestly one of the best pieces I have read on Substack, both in terms of substance and style.
There are so many african countries plagued with that nonsensical belief. Some larp as a third worldist to win elections or stay popular, but it's sad that some countries keep that faith alive. Besides Algeria, i would say South Africa's ANC believes it.
Its like Christianity, but without the forgiveness, self sacrifice or acts of humble service. Everything inverted through the lens that venerates victimhood.
It's like what Christianity would be if the point was for Jesus to pull himself off the cross and start massacring everyone around him.
Hysterical
From this side of the pond I know little about Mamdani's political philosophy, so it will be interesting to see how that plays out. Civilisations generally benefit from the stimulus of imported ideas, even if they do not adopt them.
I feel you are glossing over an important aspect of the French era in Algeria when you say that "During the Algerian War of Independence, that same struggle against Europe often blurred into hostility toward Jewish communities."
As a Moroccan, I don't need to tell you that the North African Jewish communities had been established and coexisting with Amazigh and later Arabs, Christians and then Muslims, either for some two thousand years, or for 500 years after being expelled from the Iberian peninsula by the Christian conquistadores. In a deliberately divisive move in 1870, France's Crémieux Decree granted French citizenship to Algeria's Jews, but not to its Muslims. This had the obvious and intended effect of creating an intractable fracture, in a truly ancient equilibrium, that falsely aligned the Jews with Europe, with predictable consequences when the State of Israel was founded and Algeria won its independence.
The "equilibrium" of dhimma?
I don’t know how Mamdani will actually govern when he wins; he wouldn’t be the first to moderate some hard edges once in office. But taking him at his word, it’s a linear exercise to project abject failure and deeper disillusionment for dems entering 2024.
Sorry to say it, as I vote D every time and would even vote for this guy if necessary. But to repeat two key points that are well known: Americans don’t like terrorists (Hamas) and don’t like socialism (Mamdami). Whatever legitimately cataloged abuses and colonial terrors of the past, and even with abhorrent recent behavior of Israel’s government; nevertheless, these two points tend to win elections in the USA. Which is one reasons Democrats tend to lose elections.
I’m not making a value judgment. I’m just reading the scoreboard. Dems should read it more often. Like, every day.
Perhaps not the right word - status quo, arrangement - whatever it was that permitted the Jews to remain in place for hundreds if not thousands of years, until the French swept it away with the stroke of a pen.
The right word would be "oppression without ethnic cleansing".
No, at times there was ethnic cleansing (if you consider pogroms a kind of ethnic cleansing, which I do).
At the same time, Jews such as Isma'il ibn Naghrilla "served as grand vizier of the Taifa of Granada, commander of its army in battle, and leader of the local Jewish community. Rising to unprecedented prominence in both Muslim and Jewish spheres, he became one of the most powerful and influential Jews in medieval Spain."
More recently, Jewish Berber André Azoulay, born in Essaouira, has served as financial adviser to two Moroccan monarchs over the last 40 years.
In today's polarised, binary mentalité, a lot of people struggle to reconcile facts like these.
As attributed to F.Scott Fitzgerald, "the test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function."
That's very fair, though I still don't like the framing in terms of a kinda-sorta equality that the Europeans destroyed from outside, rather than the Muslims, who were always the ones with the power, reneging on.
For Algeria's Jews the 1870 Crémieux Decree offered them "la belle vie" and integration, but after 1890 there were French/pied-noir Organisations Anti-Juives carrying out attacks across Algeria, and anti-semitic parties winning elections. 28 Jews were murdered in anti-Jewish riots in 1934. In 1940 the Vichy régime abrogates Crémieux and Jews are hounded out of the civil service and the entire education system. Jewish doctors and lawyers are struck off. A census is held in 1941 to "re-Aryanise" the economy. By 1962 all of Algeria's Jews have fled to France or Palestine.
So yes, in just this one location, in less than 100 years the Europeans did destroy, from outside, the Jews' 3,000 year old position in their ecosystem (the last 1,200 years of it under Muslim rule). Ecosystems have hierarchies and predators, but they enable survival.
The thing is, though, that other Arab countries like Iraq and Egypt also kicked out the Jews, or slowly made it impossible for them to stay, around the same time. The European colonisers also favoured other minorities, like the Alawites and Christians in Syria, without them being literally thrown out after independence. So I think that antisemitism accelerated by the conflict with Israel must be part of what led to the expulsion of the Jews in Algeria.
I think that’s what I was trying to say - in this instance with the Crémieux decree not only triggering Muslim resentment, for obvious reasons, but also French settler resentment 20 years later in the form of the Organisation Anti-Juive, inter alia, as Jews increasingly gained access to colonial Algeria’s professional cadres. This also relates to French internal politics i.e. the Dreyfus affair.
That was helpful information. Thank you.
This is a really interesting and important of of view and I think there is a lot to it. I think it is also important to note that the Soviet Union deliberately stoked this "third worldism," especially in the early 60's and continuing even to this day when it is no longer the Soviet Union. A few questions. Why Israel has become the last western fortress of colonialism given the continued efforts of larger western nations. Related to that - why focus almost exclusively on Palestine while other "struggles" are left largely ignored. And finally how they reconcile the merging of their movement with Islamism which is historically and to this day clearly a colonialist movement (Iran as a case study)
None of his policies in his platform were any bit derivative of fanon. He doesn't come across as a psychopath. He's more optimistic in disposition. I have to assume his platform represents his views. Fanon is definitely an add-on.
The US does not/did not have colonies? The Philippines? Hawaii? Puerto Rico? And please, fair to point out that North-African Jews were in a bit of a pickle when those countries became independent, but not fair not to mention the divide and rule tactics of French colonialism under which unlike Muslims native Jews were given French citizenship in 1870. That leads to an explanation that is a bit more subtle than the pro-Zionist dogma of supposedly eternal antisemitism. The problem with Mamdani is that just like every other socialist he has a gazillion ideas about playing Santa Claus with tax money but zero interest for the economic practicability and consequences. No need to take him more seriously than he deserves and come up with another culture war pamphlet that moreover manages to mention Israel and forget the Gaza genocide.
There was no Genocide in Gaza.
😂
I admit I find it hard, from a strictly historical perspective, to consider Algerian Independence (or similar examples) de or post- colonial. It re-instated an Arab and Muslim majority into governance, which then expelled and suppressed existing minority communities and solidified the Arab/Muslim colonial identity violently imposed on much of the MENA through the Islamic conquests. Neither Arabic nor Islam are indigenous outside of the Arabian peninsula. When ppl talk of decolonizing Palestine, I often wonder if they understand that, under no historical circumstances, would such a place be Arab or Muslim. The Arab fight with European colonial powers is really a matter of picking one’s poison, or imperialist force.
It's an interesting essay because it's filled with personal perspective and a different worldview. That's why I gave it a like. And it's also true that both Algeria and Morocco experienced rapid post-colonial improvements in areas like health and education, and both countries had a literacy rates of 10% in the colonial/protectorate days, and rapid gains in literacy are generally sure to produce a positive economic effect.
It certainly didn't help that both countries were subjects of French colonialism, which suffered from over-centralised statist approaches. The British decentralised approach of indirect rule and missionary schools produced better outcomes: 30–50% of school-age boys in British Africa were enrolled in school, compared to 5–15% in French Africa.
Here's the problem. Resentment and grievance will only get a country or a community so far. In some ways if a country is in absolutely dire straits it can act as a galvanising force, acting like the fuel in a tractor to accomplish sweeping changes. However, this only works up to the beginnings of the middle income level, beyond which almost all positive change is slow, incremental and amounts to fine-tuned improvements. It's why it's relatively easy for countries to get themselves up to a middle income level, but much more difficult to raise standards of living beyond this. Both countries are also good examples of why it's usually better to use PPP than nominal figures for most purposes, because PPP is a better reflections of living standards on the ground.
The problem is that socialists don't do decentralised or small, incremental, slow improvements. Their natural preference is for bold moves which are based upon narrative beliefs rather than empirical observation. This can be fine if the people are stricken by absolute poverty and coming out of colonial rule and drastic changes in the form of bold improvements are exactly what's needed, but as a country develops and becomes wealthier any change risks removing processes and solutions, public or private, which were markedly better than the new change being proposed- in effect, throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
It doesn't help that most socialist change is centralising in nature,, with the market-driven solutions it seeks to replace generally twice as good on a per dollar basis. Policymakers are also usually blissfully unaware that when positive and negative changes are of equal magnitude, the negative change will, on average, have long-term impacts five times worse than any benefit from the positive change- a critical factor when evaluating second and third-order effects.
However, there is one area which is an exception for advanced economies. Milei's shock therapy in Argentina was initially brutal, causing a sharp rise in poverty. However, because he drastically deregulated the rent sector this caused a rebound in living standards, especially for households which were struggling. Post-deregulation monthly listings rose +170% from 4,000 a month to 11,000. Rents shrunk by 40%. This countered the early poverty rise by improving affordability for 2-3 million urban poor. Drastic changes can work in more advanced economies provided they are deregulatory in nature.
The potential for change through rental sector deregulation is lower in New York, but it's not unrealistic to expect a 10-20% reduction in rents through deregulation and the increased supply which would result.
The problem is that out of 12 major policy changes Mamdani has proposed 9 out of 12 proposals involve displacing market-driven or community-led systems with a greater degree of centralisation. The other three are mixed. None focus on devolving power to communities or individuals, at least when one looks at the detail layer. It's a sure fire recipe for disastrous results.
An under-analyzed strand of the DSA program—thank you.
Perhaps one of the most tortured bits of writing I’ve ever seen trying to smear anti-Israeli sentiment as somehow unfair or misguided when it mostly stems from watching the country commit the most widely covered genocide of the 21st century.
And the successful decolonisation movements of the 1960's ended in the rise of oppressive authoritarianism and those countries are faring far, far worse than say India which adopted the ideals of liberal enlightenment.
Great essay.
Have you ever seen the documentary L'avocat de la terreur?
It's about Jacques Verges and is a perfect exploration of the third worldist mindset, full off resentful victim mentality and the excusing of terrorism.
Pure slop and buzzwords. Not even trying to justify the connection between Mamdani, Fanon, and Algeria. No wonder conservatives and conservative adjacents routinely get their brains completely broken when this is the garbage they routinely consume like pigs eating out of a trough
Brilliant incisive article.
I don’t think Mandami’s views go that deep. My guess is that it’s more simple that that: his parents locked into their core beliefs in the late 1970s or early 80s when they were probably in their early 20s. At that time, anticolonial Franz Fanon type views were fresh and popular and reasonably mainstream. But then they never changed their beliefs or apparently learned anything new. Zohran absorbed this growing up in Columbia faculty housing and never did his own thinking. I have a close friend of around the same age as Mira Nair (as am I). My friend is intelligent but really has not had a new thought about politics or economics since 1983. And I would add that for lefty types or my vintage, it’s a stretch to say they even had thoughts on economics. Most of them avoided Ec classes because the classes supposedly were “evil” but really because the students themselves were uncomfortable with math and didn’t want to end up drawing supply and demand curves. It’s easy to be a true believer in constraining markets (eg government run supermarkets or rent control) if you have no way of calculating or even understanding what the impact is.