Over the last few weeks, France has seen unrest at the death of Nahel Merzouk, a 17-year-old boy of Moroccan and Algerian origin shot and killed by police officers in a Paris suburb. The events dawn on the 98th birthday of Frantz Fanon, the Martinican psychiatrist who, educated in Paris, spent a critical part of his life in Algeria supporting its nationalist liberation movement against France, seeing the revolution as a ‘bridgehead’ of a pan-African vision.
Perhaps Frantz Fanon is most widely recognized for his theories on violence which he developed during the Algerian Revolution, one of the bloodiest wars in human history. These theories have proven timeless and more than 60 years later are ringing true on the Parisian streets. On 27 June, two French police officers approached Nahel Merzouk at a traffic stop in Marseilles, ‘the poorest big city in France.’ Driving without a license, Merzouk attempted to flee the scene before one of the police officers, only known as ‘Florian M,’ fatally, shot him in the chest as he pulled off. Though the officers originally claimed self-defence, video evidence has suggested otherwise, leading to mass outrage and even the surprising condemnation of the accused officer by French president Emmanuel Macron. Despite Macron’s declarations, those who occupy France’s less prosperous communities, but particularly the youth, including some as young as eleven, have taken to the streets leading to journalistic coverage that has painted narratives of looting, rioting and unbridled violence...
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