Here we go . . .

Thomas Meaney, 2019: "Frantz Fanon and the CIA Man" (full text)

https://academic.oup.com/ahr/article/124/3/983/5509740?guestAccessKey=482804d3-9218-4a7e-962e-155f7c542ecc

Among other things, this article reveals that there was a failed attempt to produce a Frantz Fanon biopic on the part of Universal Studios, initiated by one of Fanon's critics . . .

"Universal Pictures took on the project, though the executives demanded more character and color. 'Did [Fanon] enjoy dancing...?” [an] executive asked..'Did he display any.. physical belligerence before or after his involvement in the anti-colonial movements?'"

"The studio also wanted 'as much information as possible on [Fanon’s] personal relationship with the CIA man.' 'Frantz Fanon' the motion picture was eventually dropped . . ."

Meaney actually INTERVIEWED Fanon's CIA handler, a man named Oliver Iselin, who, as of 2016, was STILL ALIVE . . .

Iselin's first response to Meaney, before the eventual interview . . .

Fanon's CIA handler was born only 2 years after Fanon--in 1927. Today, he'd be 93 years old. He lives in a mansion on a 500 acre property.

Fanon died at the age of 36 in 1961 in the "care" provided by this agent.

Unsurprising, Iselin went to Harvard . . . Perhaps surprisingly, he referred to himself as an "anti-imperialist".

Fanon's CIA handler described himself as "100 percent with the nationalists" and opposed to French colonial policy . . .

(This is the first I've ever heard of JFK's Algeria speech. A quick detour to examine the full text, available here: https://www.jfklibrary.org/archives/other-resources/john-f-kennedy-speeches/united-states-senate-imperialism-19570702)

For context: Senator John F. Kennedy delivered his speech on Algeria and French colonialism in July of 1957 -- not even a full year after Fanon delivered his "Racism and Culture" speech in September of 1956.

JFK: "..the single most important test of [U.S.] foreign policy today is how we meet the challenge of imperialism, what we do to further man's desire to be free. On this test more than any other, this Nation shall be critically judged by..uncommitted millions in Asia and Africa"

Kennedy: "There are many cases of the clash between independence and imperialism in the Western World that demand our attention. But again, one, above all the rest, is critically outstanding today - Algeria."

"The war in Algeria, engaging more than 400,000 French soldiers, has stripped the continental forces of NATO to the bone. It has dimmed Western hopes for a European common market.. It has undermined our relations with Tunisia and Morocco.. It has diluted the..Eisenhower doctrine"

In which, unbelievably, JFK critiques French colonial policy and disenfranchisement of the Algerian people at a time (1957!) where Black people had not been granted civil rights and indigenous people were being dispossessed by the settler colonial violence of the United States!

Kennedy ends his speech proposing a resolution to the Committee on Foreign Relations "That, if no substantial progress has been noted by the time of the next UN General Assembly.. the U.S. support an international effort to derive for Algeria the basis for.. independence."

The cynical "pro-nationalism" (strictly with regard to colonized people outside of the U.S. and not within its borders) expressed by Fanon's CIA handler aligns with the agenda described by JFK Jr. in his 1957 speech.

Kennedy was POTUS when Fanon was brought to the U.S. in 1961.

Shiiiiiiit. This is getting curiouser and curiouser . . .

Back to Meaney's article: "Iselin’s feelings toward French colonialism were not untypical of the hard-nosed Kennedy-style realism common among the American CIA officers he worked with."

Emphasis on "French". These hawks were very much pro U.S. colonialism and imperialism . . .

"French authorities in Algeria were aware of the CIA’s interest in national liberation movements across North Africa . . . The CIA first became interested in Fanon sometime in the late 1950s."

I wonder if there was an op in the audience in Paris during Fanon's 1956 speech . . .

Fanon's "CIA man" admits to reading "some of his literature and books."

(Of course he did. That was well within the purview of his job.)

"The CIA case file on Fanon remains classified, though it was not the only intelligence agency that was interested in him. The first unclassified, but heavily redacted, FBI file dates from 1961 . . ."

[Why is the CIA's Fanon case file still classified?]

The FBI "tried to account for Fanon’s influence on black radicals at home and abroad. An in-house FBI book review of David Caute’s 1970 biography of Fanon claimed that The Wretched of the Earth 'is often quoted and misquoted by Stokely Carmichael and other black power advocates'"

Iselin's account of Fanon's entry to the United States, which occurred as he was seeking treatment for (and dying from) leukemia:

"Fanon . . . believed that American power represented the interest of capital more purely than its European counterparts. 'The Americans take their role as the barons of international capitalism very seriously,' he wrote in The Wretched of the Earth . . ."

Here, Meaney quotes Fanon's analysis in "Wretched" describing five stages of U.S. foreign policy toward colonized societies in the context of the Cold War:

"'Americans should be told,” Fanon wrote, “that if they want to fight communism they must, in certain sectors, adopt Communist attitudes.'"

Fascinating . . .

Meaney: "Iselin was . . . determined to revise the established view on Fanon’s time in the U.S., which still relies on Claude Lanzmann and Simone de Beauvoir’s secondhand accounts of Fanon being 'left to rot in his hotel for ten days, alone and without medical attention.'"

"Iselin told me that he first arranged for Fanon and his family to stay at the Dupont Circle Hotel in Washington, D.C."

Medical care was, indeed, withheld for at least a week:

"Bureaucratic hurdles". What does this even mean? The man was dying -- so they just left him at the hotel? We're really to believe there was no intelligence gathering? If this is the best a CIA agent could come up with after having 55 YEARS to develop a better story . . . Phew.

I'm also intrigued by the agent's bizarre reference to "establishing rapport" with Fanon. What does this mean? Fanon was literally in the custody of the CIA, dying of leukemia and being denied medical care. "Establishing rapport" sounds like an interrogation to me.

In which the agent presents himself as "a good Samaritan" . . . after just admitting that Fanon had, indeed, been held up in a D.C. hotel room FOR A WEEK without receiving medical attention as he was DYING in agony from complications of leukemia.

"Iselin claims to have developed a rapport with Fanon, but it is unclear what and how much they discussed."

Did Meaney *ask* the agent what he discussed with Fanon, since he claims to have avoided the subject of politics? This entire section reads like poorly written propaganda.

I don't buy this timeline . . . at all.

The CIA agent claims that he met a "prized contact" for the very first time in Fanon's hospital room . . . the same hospital room *he* arranged for Fanon. lol

This timeline is also super weird.

"When Fanon died in December 1961, his body was transported by the U.S. Air Force to Tunis...Iselin, who had been sent back to the North Africa desk at the time, had arrived the day before to take over temporarily for the Tunis station chief"

To recap: Fanon arrives in the U.S. in September for treatment, which even the CIA agent admits was denied for at least a week. By December, he's dead--and his body was transported to Tunis, where his handler . . .

*checks notes*

. . . just happened to arrive, the day before.

The CIA agent describes his presence in Tunis (and his presence at FANON'S GOTDAMN FUNERAL) as just being the confluence of chance and circumstance.

Wow, they really think we're fools. Wow . . .

Gonna go out on a limb and take a wild guess that the CIA case file on Fanon is still classified in part due to the fact that his handler is still alive (or at least was at the time of this interview in 2016). Whatever he did to and with Fanon is still being protected.

Fanon's CIA agent not only attended his funeral, he also attended the burial in Algeria and then had dinner with the Algerian army . . . All of which we're supposed to believe was just an "unexpected" happenstance. lol

Strangely enough (as if this tale was not already bizarre) - the CIA agent STILL has photographs of himself at Fanon's funeral. He's kept them all these years. Why would he keep these photographs for over five decades if he was just there by happenstance and it was all unplanned?

"News of Iselin’s attendance was reported in the local press. Le Petit Matin, a Tunis newspaper, published an account of Fanon’s funeral...'The publication of my presence created quite a diplomatic stir, and I left Tunis immediately for Morocco.'"

"The following year, in 1962, Iselin and his family moved to Algiers, the capital of the newly independent state of Algeria."

That would be the same independent state that JFK called for five years earlier -- in 1957.

" . . . after he moved on to other desks in Africa, he looked with less and less favor at the outcomes of independence around him on the continent, in particular in Algeria, whose liberation movement he had, in his own small way, participated in."

A stunning passage in which Fanon's CIA agent openly expresses support for a coup and disdain for Africans' interest in "collective farms" and "trying to build a steel industry". "They made it very difficult for us, the West...They could have had everything.. they messed it up."

"Iselin interpreted Algeria’s pursuit of industrialization as..a slap in the face of a future that could have transformed the land into promising tourist territory..where decolonization was supposed to remake [the] colonized.. into..concierges catering to..the capitalist core.."

(wow, wow, wow, wow, wowwwwwwwww . . .

The naked instrumentalism and capitalist exploitation of it all . . . being packaged as benevolence . . . without any irony for the colonial racism of this pseudo-pro-nationalist agenda. Didn't Iselin claim to have read Fanon?)

While Fanon died of leukemia in 1961, his CIA agent has been living in "medical retirement" in his mansion on 500 acres for the last 47 years.

"In the newspapers, he read of the ascent of former contacts in the FLN, including his old acquaintance Abdelaziz Bouteflika..."

"Iselin’s 'disappointment' with national liberation movements is a common refrain among American liberals—academics, diplomats, businesspeople...intelligence operatives, aid workers—who felt they had dedicated their lives to the decolonizing world of the 1950s and 1960s"

"Iselin’s story contains many standard features.. the tight weave of anticolonialism and anti-communism.. the conviction that other peoples..deserve their revolutions; the sense of having “good friends” in the regions.. the sense that they--the decolonized--“messed it up.”"

"Fanon, too, would have been..critical of the.. outcome of the Algerian Revolution. Not necessarily in its earlier years..but certainly the Algeria of the past three decades.. Fanon wrote of 'the race for jobs and handouts that is symptomatic of the aftermath of independence.'"

Fanon's "concern was that the same nationalist bourgeois elite that Iselin wanted to rule and prosper would not be effectively combated. This class was not a mirror of the European version but, significantly for Fanon, a caricature . . ."

Fanon: "'Mediocre in its winnings, in its achievements and its thinking, this bourgeoisie attempts to mask its mediocrity by ostentatious projects for individual prestige, chromium-plated American cars, vacations on the French Riviera and weekends in neon-lit nightclubs.'"

"The year after I met Iselin, I traveled across Algeria for an unrelated project. Fanon’s old journalistic home El Moudjahid is now the desiccated organ of the Algerian state...At the city center, some of Fanon’s books are for sale...as tourist souvenirs, near the postcard racks"

"History books..from the..revolution are in no short supply, but there is a notable silence about the October 1988 protests against the regime, which forced the.. government to make democratic reforms..and revealed a rift in society that.. deepened in the ensuing civil war.."

[The October 1988 Algerian protests saw thousands of young people take to the streets to stand up against an oppressive regime. The military responded by murdering over 500 people and wounding a thousand more.] https://www.rfi.fr/en/africa/20191004-algeria-mark-black-october-riots-amid-ongoing-protests

Meaney points out, rather ominously, that "No Algerian history department has yet overseen a thesis devoted to the period of post-independence."

Meaney on contemporary Algeria: ". . . it may be that the more Fanonist a visitor’s vision becomes, the more clearly appear the new forms of unfreedom that threaten the future, rather than the squandering of some pristine original freedom that only needed to be preserved."

"In contemporary Western commentary about Algeria, Iselin’s call for tourist development is a common refrain. “Tourism might help Algeria open up,” advised The Economist in 2017 . . . The message appears to be getting through to the ministries."

"I saw enormous posters featuring...plans for coastal villas and luxury condos.. privileged children of the revolution are offered.. images of.. segregated, comfortable lives, while the rest of the population tries to learn how to achieve the appropriate objects of desire."