Khalil Dahbi, German Institute for Global and Area Studies and Montassir Sakhi, IAS-UM6P
This paper examines the influence of Frantz Fanon’s decolonial thought within the Moroccan Left, spanning from the late 1960s to the Arab uprisings’ era. Drawing on an analysis of published texts and firsthand interviews, it traces the ways in which pivotal figures and movements of the Moroccan Left, the social democratic Ittihadi tradition and the Marxists of Ila al-Amam, engaged with Fanon’s ideas. Through this exploration, the research not only underscores the direct engagement with Fanon’s oeuvre, but also the more subtle underground currents through which that influence endured and contributed to shaping Moroccan political thought. Finally, it concludes with a brief overview and questioning of the notable absences and more recent timid reemergence of Fanonian thought in some corners of the Moroccan Left.
- The Relationship with the National Movement and the Socialist Left (UNFP-USFP)[1]
Two primary hypotheses guide our understanding of the intricate relationships between Moroccan socialist intellectuals and their organizations with Fanon and his decolonial thought. The first hypothesis centers on Abdallah Laroui’s pioneering work, L’Idéologie Arabe Contemporaine, and sees it primarily as a response to Fanon and the decolonial thought he shares with Mehdi Ben Barka and many other national liberation leaders.[2] Laroui suggests a new direction that the Arab Left should pursue to establish its political stance and its inherent conflicts. The work signifies a break between two paths. Fanon is seen by Laroui as the architect of a failed revolution because it couldn’t overcome the cultural and national challenges specific to each country. Fanon’s revolution is rooted in a critique of imperialism. As Laroui points out, Fanon’s understanding of imperialism is abstractly and universally centered on inequality, unlike Lenin’s, which is situated in a historical context and a stage of European capitalism’s development.[3] This latter, analyzed by Fanon as a distortion of the colonized’s bodies, doesn’t account for the reactions and structures of “consciousness.” Indeed, unlike the slave’s body, which is compelled to rebel against the colonizer in all its forms, consciousness has other collective arrangements that often lead it down more complex and reactionary paths.
Laroui thus describes Fanon’s work as primarily read by Arab Leftists:
Frantz Fanon’s book, which aimed to be the Bible for all underdeveloped humanity, remains, nonetheless, confined to a singular experience. Some Westerners mistakenly attribute to it a universal significance it cannot possess; its thematic focus is distinct, even if it appears to delve deep into all situations of domination. It does not, in any way, facilitate an understanding of Arab cultural issues. The European reader, primarily acquainted with economic analysis and prone to equating all third-world countries, must set aside many of his biases if he wishes to grasp the nuances of certain issues that, at first glance, might seem of theological subtlety.[4]
Furthermore, Laroui criticizes Fanon and his Moroccan readers, like historian Mohamed Zniber, for holding an anti-nation-state political stance.[5] That is to say, a critique of the inability to address the national question as a necessary superstructure and, above all, as a historical element constitutive of the new post-independence nation-state. In short, Laroui criticizes Fanon’s “anti-historicism. This is why he categorizes Fanon and Ben Barka as “technophiles” within his typology: they prioritize a new vision of social transformation over history and the specific consciousness of each nation-state and the broader Arab-Muslim nation.
The implications of Laroui’s analysis are significant: they announce a break, at the moment of independence, between the time of anti-colonial struggle and the beginning of national reconstruction. Among the intellectuals and the Arab Left, it gives voice to a statist form of socialism that, for decades, only superficially inherited Fanon’s anti-imperialism: an image of distancing from the West in the name of a nationalist conception of sovereignty. Hence, it is unsurprising that some of Fanon’s works are translated into Arabic by intellectuals from pan-Arab and authoritarian regimes, and sometimes adopted in national education systems, as in Syria.[6]
Why haven’t Arab intellectuals successfully integrated Fanon’s work as an integral part of their political tradition and intellectual heritage? It initially seems puzzling that Laroui, initially published by Maspero in Paris, was widely and controversially received in the Arab world. Fanon, on the other hand, re-emerges with La Découverte, Maspero’s successor, deeply marking anti-racist and anti-imperialist movements in the West but without inspiring the same level of engagement among Arab thinkers. Laroui offers one answer: “Resorting to folklore does not serve the same role among Arabs as Négritude does among Africans, even though, through F. Fanon, it has influenced some of them, especially the Algerians. The goal of the Arabs is not to devalue written and rational expression, but rather to broaden its social significance.”[7]
This phenomenological contradiction dissipates when one examines Fanon’s theory of imperialism itself and understands the nature of the works of those organic intellectuals from the Left whose thought centers on the colonial question. Indeed, it is not in Laroui’s work that one finds Fanon’s impact, even though one can point to a competitive tendency or simply a recognition of Fanon’s contribution highlighted. This Gramscian observation, indicating the centrality of the cultural question, is precisely taken up by another socialist school of thought in Morocco, embodied in the project of Mohamed Abid al-Jabiri and intermediaries like Mohamed Berrada, Mohamed Zniber, and Mouloud Maamri. Thus, the second hypothesis to be explored is that there exists a subterranean and recycled reception of Fanon within the Moroccan Socialist Left: his decolonial theories and his critique of the Western model serve as an essential background in the oppositional construction of the left.
It is among these thinkers of the UNFP and later the USFP that the connection with Fanon’s thought and action is realized, albeit in a complex manner. The “underground work” hypothesis presupposes a discontinuity in Fanon’s reception, or a circulation of his thought using a different language and terminology that does not necessarily reproduce his concepts. Moreover, it assumes, within the Left emerging from the independence struggle, a suspension of the critique of European society and colonial activity (neo-colonialism or colonial hegemony) in favor of a new focus on struggle marked by the specificity of “national” and local issues.
A key date in Morocco, 1975, marked by the birth of the USFP, can be seen as a national turning point. Under the pen of Mohamed Abid al-Jabiri and Omar Bendjelloun, the USFP’s founding congress claimed a break from Mehdi Ben Barka’s Revolutionary Option in favor of adopting a Democratic Option focused inward. This moment offers a dual marking, of the “interior,” namely Morocco, and of the “the Sahara question.”[8] These two events, on the one hand, distanced the Ittihadi Left (representing the dominant opposition in Morocco) from Ben Barka’s revolutionary thought, which aligns with Fanon’s political action. On the other hand, they announce a fixation on the Moroccan national question, especially concerning what was considered the nerve center of national liberation movements, namely Algiers.
These two events immersed the main Moroccan opposition movement, along with intellectuals, in a quest for a new discourse focused on internal critique. They abandoned the spirit of the Tricontinental and the antiracism that were challenging the structures of European hegemony, in favor of new national urgencies. This suspension of the previous sequence was further reinforced by the establishment of a new border order and a new relationship between Europe and its former colonies: the recognition of new sovereignties undoubtedly dealt a heavy blow to international solidarity movements. Similarly, the attainment of independence dragged many movements into the new logic of power exercise and reaction.
However, this observation of “suspension” remains incomplete if one does not consider the continuities, including the underground ones, with Fanon’s thought. Politically, socialist intellectuals and activists kept the figure of Ben Barka at the center of their legacy (fight against the Makhzen, the centrality of organization, national unity, Pan-Arab and Pan-African solidarity, classism, and Marxism, etc.). Fanon’s thought, on the other hand, takes a completely renewed direction, which we summarize in three major actions in the case of Moroccan intellectuals and the Left.
First, the early translation of Fanon’s works, especially his uptake by influential Leftists like Mohamed Berrada[9], irrigated the new post-1975 sequence of debates revisiting analyses on colonial hegemony. Berrada’s book – co-written with Moroccan historian and USFP activist Mohamed Zniber and Algerian linguist Mouloud Mammeri – summarizes aspects of the cultural struggle introduced by Fanon in his three works Black Skin, White Masks, The Wretched of the Earth, and The Fifth Year of the Algerian Revolution. It opened a new perspective that revitalized the reception of Marxism in Morocco by integrating a deconstructivist and postcolonial line and endowing it with a renewed capacity to grasp – and confront – the cultural question in its generality, and the question of Islam in particular. Berrada’s book describes and presents a form of resistance indicated by Fanon in his study of colonization and its acculturation effects and mimicry trapping future postcolonial elites:
“Fanon’s response to the colonial desire for domination and hegemony will only be fruitful if the colonized turns to the resurrection of elements affirming the genius and greatness of the people. It is through this resurrection that a thick barrier is formed that protects the people from the toxins and deceptive narratives disseminated by the colonizer in the minds of the inhabitants of his colonies (…) returning to the past to explore a national civilization is one of the foundations of the cultural struggle, as it helps establish a solid defense to preserve the culture of peoples against the domination of Western culture and its standards, and because it allows intellectuals to break out of the circle of concepts they acquired in Western universities and their institutions (…) The colonized who writes for his people must use the past as a means to foresee the future, to call for action, and to establish the foundations of hope.”[10]
Second, therefore, Fanon’s legacy is not abandoned but recycled: it allows for a departure from the well-trodden paths of economism and continues the movement of warning against the nationalist temptation. Can we say that it is taken up as a method of producing a politics of critique and deconstruction of the various forms of power in the new independent state? Mohamed Achâari, in an interview, put it this way:
“It’s not just the question of colonization, and especially of the new colonization, that disappears within our movement (USFP). After 1975, the question for us was to keep an eye on the critical theory of the West, but to focus action on democracy. We all had an awareness of the exploitation practiced by the new colonization. Al-Jabiri kept reminding us of it in the party. But we knew that only democracy would allow us to challenge it again. So yes, our intellectuals read and translated Fanon, but while agreeing with his findings, we took a completely different tactic.” (interview with Mohamed Achâari, 08/2024)
Finally, it is in the work of Mohamed Abid al-Jabiri, who, to our knowledge, does not make a direct reference to Fanon, that the latter’s project finds a fulfilled translation not only in Morocco but in the Arab world, given the aura and spread of al-Jabiri’s intellectual and political project. Indeed, the cultural question and the Gramscian foundation are undeniable in both authors. We know that Mehdi Ben Barka, having recruited al-Jabiri in 1957[11], allows this inter-knowledge between the two projects. Al-Jabiri has a keen understanding and adherence to Ben Barka’s action (the Tricontinental, Morocco’s internal and external struggle). This connection through coexistence in a common field is reproduced in al-Jabiri’s long project marking the history of the Moroccan Left and various movements – including Islamic ones. Al-Jabiri responds to Fanon’s quest for the “new man” and a “Third World not mimicking Europe” with a genealogical dive into the Arab-Muslim tradition and reason, aiming to establish a new historical bloc against the same Europe described and studied by Fanon.
- The Relationship with the radical Left and the Moroccan Marxist Leninist Movement (Ila al-Amam):
Fanon significantly influenced the radical left in Morocco. During the emergence of groups that would later constitute the organization Ila al-Amam, Fanon’s Wretched of the Earth was a pivotal read for many amidst the dynamic radical environment of 1965 Morocco. The newly introduced cultural magazine, Souffles, frequently cited Fanon across various subjects, in several contributions from both Moroccan and international writers.[12] Fanon’s ideas were central in the extensive critique of the cultural magazine’s Négritude movement. Similarly, when it came to arguments on the importance of culture in the decolonization process, as well as on the role of intellectuals in it, the Fanonian imprints were hard to miss. Not only were there numerous direct or indirect references, but the very writing style and tone of many of the texts found in the magazine reflected the significant influence of Fanon’s ideas. The artistic and poetic background of the magazine’s founders, as well as their prior personal trajectories, made it so that their personal encounter with Fanon’s thoughts, their readings and understandings of it, all came through a deep affective and emotional encounter. As stated by Abdellatif Laabi[13]:
“Later, during my studies at the University of Rabat, I encountered ‘The Wretched of the Earth.’ Reading it, I felt as though I was reading my own history, or at least the history that my people, like all colonized peoples, had experienced. This history I had observed with my child’s eyes, and its scars still mark my flesh and memory, for I narrowly escaped death during a nationalist protest in Fès when I was seven or eight years old. Marx’s text had provided me with a kind of social cosmogony, allowing me to identify the contending forces in the world. Fanon’s work, on the other hand, enlightened me about my own social body and both my past and present memory. It made me articulate my identity, vigorously stirred my roots, and instilled in me a fervor to exist, to assert, and to resist.” (p. 31-32)
Fanon’s ideas played a pivotal role in the introspection of the soon-to-be leaders of the Moroccan Marxist Leninist Movement (MMLM) regarding their prior political affiliations. In a context marked by numerous radical shifts both locally and globally—such as the onset of the Years of Lead, the mysterious disappearance of Ben Barka, the brutal crackdown in 1965, the emergence of Tricontinentalism, the waning of Pan-Arabism post-1967, and the rise of global Maoism—their analysis steered them towards two primary paths.
Firstly, recognizing the significance of culture in revolutionary and decolonial contexts, they introduced the French-language cultural magazine, Souffles, which was later complemented by Anfass in Arabic. Secondly, the deep personal connection they felt with Fanon’s ideas and life journey, which remained evident in both magazines even as they shifted towards a more Marxist-Leninist stance, can be seen as the driving force behind their venture into revolutionary political action. This aligns with the aforementioned hypothesis suggesting an underlying influence that subtly shapes the interpretation, direction, and application of Marxist-Leninist principles.
Abraham Serfaty’s initial contributions to Souffles serve as a prime example. In his dual-article analysis titled “Culture and Scientific Progress,”[14] Serfaty primarily focused on demystifying and critiquing the notions of “western culture” and European supremacy. As his argument unfolded, especially in its concluding sections, he directed his criticism towards Abdellah Laroui. He portrayed Laroui’s Marxist approach as fundamentally flawed, constrained by a positivist and binary view of Marxism and its perception of national culture. This view, according to Serfaty, was deeply influenced by the West’s self-representation and its portrayal of Arab culture.
Serfaty’s stance here echoed Fanon’s perspectives. He contended against the perceived “Western” modern essence of Marxism, advocating for its modification to align with the unique cultural nuances of the Moroccan setting. This included recognizing the country’s Islamic traditions not as regressive, but as potent sources of liberation, in contract to the pseudo-traditional hegemonic interpretation advanced by Hassan II at the time. To underscore his point about the significance of religion as a reservoir of popular resistance and its compatibility with a humanist Marxist decolonial project, Serfaty specifically referenced the Islamic tradition. After citing a Hadith and referencing the life of the prophet, he further added “Man can only realize himself within the framework of the Community, the Ummah, a community based on justice and equality.”[15]
While references to the Marxist-Leninist canon were prevalent, the documents of Ila al-Amam and the political direction they advocated unmistakably reveal an underlying Fanonian influence guiding their critiques and decisions. One of Ila al-Amam’s foundational documents, “Saqaṭat al-aqniʿa, falnafṭaḥ al-ṭarīq al-ṯawrī”[16] (published in 1970), emphasizes the importance of national culture, including its Islamic dimension, which it perceives as imbued with a fundamental concern for social justice and resistance in the face of self-interested domination by both local and foreign forces.
This inclination is also evident in “Muswada ḥawl al-istrātījiyya al-ṯawriyya,”[17] a document circulated in 1972 by Ila al-Amam‘s National Committee, which delves into the topic of revolutionary violence and its prerequisites. In this document, the organization chronicles the history of popular uprisings dating back to precolonial times. It concludes that assimilating this legacy and merging it with Marxist-Leninist ideology is a duty for revolutionaries, referring specifically to the organization’s members. Given that Serfaty and Laabi, who were the founding figures and principal ideologists of the organization, explicitly expressed their Fanonian influences in their more intellectual writings in Souffles/Anfass, the roots of Ila al-Amam’s somewhat unorthodox stances on these matters can be more clearly connected with that same undercurrent.
- Absence and Resurgence
Fanon’s thought subtly influenced Moroccan Leftist movements between 1975 and the late 1990s. During the Years of Lead, it diversified the Marxist framework by tempering universalist tendencies, warning against totalitarian drifts, and highlighting the uniqueness of the colonized world and the challenges of emerging national bourgeoisies. Alongside the “French theory” championed by Michel Foucault on one side, and a humanist approach to the Marxist-Leninist cannon on the other, it made a generation of Moroccan Leftist intellectuals recognize the intricacies of both revolutionary action and postcolonial modes of domination. This complexity led many to explore diverse aspects of culture, religion, and tradition. Serving as a brake against the excesses of postcolonial power, Fanon’s legacy prompted introspection within that intellectual and political milieu.
However, from 2000 to 2011, there was a noticeable silence regarding Fanon’s ideas in Morocco and the broader region. The Iraq invasion and the War on Terror gave rise to narratives that initially struggled to produce a decolonial critique in the Fanonian sense. Instead, the discourse mirrored the warnings in The Wretched of the Earth, a retaliation through religious competition, tribalism, and ethnic conflicts. During this period, Fanon’s writings were mainly taken up within the diaspora and postcolonial immigrant movements in Europe. One hypothesis for this silence and discontinuity suggests that Fanon’s work was most potent when analyzing colonization mechanisms and “whiteness” during direct colonial confrontations. While his concepts were immediate blueprints for liberation movements under colonization, in the post-independence phase, Fanon’s writings became invaluable for studying the effects of “new colonization” and the pitfalls of national governance and bourgeoisie. However, these latter concepts appear as a program yet to be fully developed. A former leader and intellectual of the USFP attests to this:
“The questions raised and problematized by Fanon were also debated by the party’s intellectuals in the 1980s. Topics like the new colonization, the role of the national bourgeoisie in the new phase, and the relationship with the West were indeed discussed. Yet, these issues weren’t seen as resonating with or mobilizing people, both within the party and in society. They were viewed as matters for the party’s intellectuals. In fact, in the 1985 party congress, the text set for adoption was entirely focused on the relationship with the new colonization. However, it was dismissed by the congress’s presidency before being presented to the party. Why? It was deemed too “intellectual” and “abstract.” I believe these issues were central in thought but confined within the party.” (Interview with Mohamed Achâari, 08/2024).
The MMLM, particularly with Annahj Addimocraty—which sees itself as a continuation of Ila al-Amam’s political legacy—also exhibits a noticeable absence of Fanonian references. Explicit mentions of Fanon are infrequent and often lack depth. The perspective that views religion and tradition as potential sources of emancipation in a Marxist sense has similarly faded. The rise of Islamist actors, coupled with the tensions and conflicts between them and the radical left, especially on university campuses, might have influenced this shift. Additionally, the subsequent war on terror and its repercussions could have further steered Annahj’s discourse away from invoking religion or tradition.
It wasn’t until the post-Arab uprisings phase, with a new generation distanced from strict partisan views, that Fanon’s concerns were revisited. This generation drew from work already undertaken within the diaspora and postcolonial immigrant movements in Europe during the 1980s-1990s, where Fanon’s writings found a new resonance. Notably, the European branches of Moroccan leftist parties revived this legacy, striving to analyze both the postcolonial state of Morocco and the condition of immigrants[18] from former colonies. For instance, recent activities and publications from FGD Europe[19], PSU Belgium[20], and USFP-Paris have embraced Fanon’s work.[21] Within Morocco, the rapprochement between Annahj and Al Adl wa Al Ihssane, which started in the context of the 20th February Movement and continues to this day, inaugurated a return to a more Fanon-friendly approach to the questions of national identity and religion within the Moroccan Marxist Left.
In conclusion, this paper illustrates how Fanon’s thought significantly shaped the narratives within the Moroccan Left, offering a framework for revolutionary and anti-imperialist discourses. Fanon’s ideas helped craft a powerful narrative that resonated across both the Ittihadi and the Marxist Lefts in the country. However, as the Moroccan Left’s focus shifted toward local issues, these global, Fanonian narratives receded, revealing notable absences in the political discourse. The recent revival of Fanon’s thought, particularly in response to the Arab uprisings, not only reintroduces these global themes but also sheds light on the gaps left by their earlier neglect. This resurgence underscores Fanon’s continued relevance in shaping narratives of resistance, while also pointing to the critical areas where the Moroccan Left’s discourse had once fallen silent.
[1] Union Nationale des Forces Populaires and Union Socialiste des Forces Populaires
[2] While adopting, in several sections, the same writing style as the conclusion of “The Wretched of the Earth” and using the term “essay,” this contrasts with the assessment of its foreword writer and thesis supervisor, Maxime Rodinson.
[3] Laroui : « L’imperialisme retrouve sa tonalité romaine : possession intemporelle du monde connu ; aucune chose n’échappe à son désir, aucune place à son ombre. Abstrait, il résume toutes les formes de l’inegalite, etc. » (p.51) In a footnote, Laroui notes: “c’est cette notion qui est au centre de la pensée de F. Fanon, non la définition concrète de Hobson et de Lénine”, Laroui, Abdallah, L’idéologie arabe contemporaine, Maspero, Paris, 1967, (p.52).
[4] ibid, p.5. This critique can also be found among some Algerian readers of Fanon, see for instance Muriam Haleh Davis study in this volume.
[5] ibid, p.55.
[6] By Syrian Nasserists Sami Mesbah ed-Deroubi and Jaman al Attassi in that case. Their translation was distributed by Lebanese publisher Dar Attali`a.
[7] ibid, p.179.
[8] Especially after the “Green March” and the assassination of USFP leader Omar Benjelloun.
[9]Mohammed Berrada, Mouloud Maamri, and Mohammed Zniber, Frānz Fānūn Aw Maʿrakat Al-Shuʿūb al-Mutakhallifa (Rabat: Dar al Kitab, 1963).
[10]See for instance Idrīs al-Khaḍrāwī, “Idrīs al-Khaḍrāwī, “Mā al-laḏī yuthīr al-shaghaf bi-fikr Frānz Fānūn? Ṣafaḥāt Sūriyya,” Ṣafḥāt Sūriyya, January 1, 2022, https://www.alsafahat.net/2022/01/01/ما-الذي-يثير-الشغف-بفكر-فرانز-فانون؟-إد/.
[11]Nūr al-Dīn Ikjān, “al-Jābrī shāhidan.. ʿalāqāt ʿamīqa maʿ al-qāʾid al-ummī al-Mahdī bin Barka,” Hespress, June 17, 2018, https://www.hespress.com/الجابري-شاهدا-علاقات-عميقة-مع-القائد-433950.html.
[12] See Kenza Sefrioui’s article “« Encore un qui a tout dit ! ». Le groupe de ‘Souffles’, lecteur des ‘Damnés de la terre’ de Frantz Fanon,” Politique africaine 143, no. 3 (2016): 73.
[13] Abdellatif Laâbi, La brûlure des interrogations: Entretiens avec Laabi (Paris: Editions L’Harmattan, 1985).
[14] Published in Souffles issues 12 and 13-14 (1968-1969).
[15] Souffles, 13-14, 1969, p. 12-13. It is worth noting here that Abraham Serfaty was a Moroccan Jew.
[16] In English “The masks have fallen, let us open the revolutionary path.”
[17] In english, “Draft on the Revolutionary Strategy.”
[18] Wael Garnaoui’s contribution in this volume deploys a Fanonian framework to explore the topic of migration. For a deeper dive, see also his recent book, Harga et désir d’Occident: étude psychoanalytique des migrants clandestins tunisiens (Cité El Ghazala: Nirvana, 2022).
[19] Montassir Sakhi, “Risāla ilā al-Muʾtamar al-Indimājī li-Fidrāliyyat al-Yasār,” لكم-lakome2, accessed December 1, 2023, https://lakome2.com/opinion/291994/?fbrefresh=5.
[20] Public meeting on Migration organised by the PSU, with its then secretary general, Nabila Mounib.
[21] Interview with two USFP-France members. See also the communique by the USFP-France, published in early 2023, drawing on Fanon to interrogate the role of a Moroccan party abroad and the paralyzing tendency to idealize past party achievements.