Source : https://www.tni.org/en/article/vietnam-algeria-palestine
The 70th anniversary of Dien Bien Phu and Algeria’s revolution highlights their profound influence on global decolonization. This longread explores their impact on the Palestinian resistance, shedding light on their shared struggle against colonial oppression and their continuing inspiration to the world.
Introduction
‘Revolution is not a dinner party, or writing an essay, or painting a picture, or doing embroidery; it cannot be so refined, so leisurely and gentle.’ Mao Zedong, 1927 (Zedong 1953)
‘Colonialism is not a thinking machine, nor a body endowed with reasoning faculties. It is violence in its natural state, and it will only yield when confronted with greater violence.’ Frantz Fanon, 1961 (Fanon 1967)
‘Imperialism has laid its body over the world, the head in Eastern Asia, the heart in the Middle East, its arteries reaching Africa and Latin America. Wherever you strike it, you damage it, and you serve the World Revolution.’ Ghassan Kanafani, 1972 (Kanafani 2023)
This year, 2024, coincides with the 70th Anniversary of the Battle of Dien Bien Phu (May 1954), in which Vietnamese revolutionaries inflicted a crushing defeat on French colonialists. It also marks the 70th birthday of the Algerian revolution, which began in November of the same year. The Algerian and Vietnamese resisted colonial oppression for decades before leading two of the most significant revolutions in the twentieth century, against France (and its local collaborators), which was the second biggest European colonial power in the world at the time and which was also supported by NATO forces. No discussion of decolonisation and anti-imperialism can be complete without understanding the importance of Vietnam and Algeria, and how their revolutionary liberation struggles were (and continue to be) so inspiring to oppressed people all over the world, including the Palestinians.
No one revolution exactly resembles another. This is because all revolutions are rooted in a specific national or regional history, are led by particular social and generational forces, and happen at a given moment in the development of a country. However, revolutions all share a common element, without which they would not be called revolutions: the arrival of a new bloc of classes who take up leadership of the state, or the transition from colonial dependence to national independence. In Lenin’s words(external link), ‘For a revolution to take place, it is usually insufficient for the lower classes not to want to live in the old way; it is also necessary that the upper classes should be unable to live in the old way.’ Despite all the elements that might point to continuity, it is this rupture that marks a revolutionary change.
Against this backdrop and understanding, my objectives in this longread are five-fold:
- To share some historical reflections on the Algerian and Vietnamese anti-colonial struggles, so as to bring to light important chapters in anti-colonial history.
- To draw connections and parallels between the two struggles, and between them and the ongoing Palestinian liberation struggle, to understand how Palestinians have been inspired by both struggles and at the same time themselves continue to inspire the world with their resolute resistance to Zionist settler-colonialism.
- To challenge and debunk attempts to portray a false equivalence between colonisers and those who are colonised.
- To highlight transnational solidarities between those who are oppressed and colonised.
- To firmly place the Palestinian resistance and liberation struggle within the long line of anti-colonial and anti-imperialist struggles going back to the Haitian struggle at the end of the eighteenth century and start of the nineteenth century, when Haitian slaves rebelled against the French empire and established the first Black republic (James 2001)A SUIVE …
