August 11, 2025

Reading Group Week 30

Hi, this week we're continuing A Dying Colonialism with Chapter 2: "This Is the Voice of Algeria".

If you haven't bought the book yet, you can buy it here. Purchases made through the Workshops4Gaza fundraiser give proceeds to The Sameer Project.

Israel is finally letting trucks into Gaza, so prices are finally coming down. A few days ago The Sameer Project reported that prices for lentils have gone down significantly

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Schedule and format

We're reading a chapter of A Dying Colonialism every 2 weeks. Here's where we are now:

Week	Date	Reading
Week 1	July 14	Introduction + Preface
Week 2	July 28	Chapter 1: "Algeria Unveiled"
Week 3	August 11	Chapter 2: "This is the Voice of Algeria"
Week 4	August 25	Chapter 3: "The Algerian Family"
Week 5	September 8	Chapter 4: "Medicine and Colonialism"
Week 6	September 22	Chapter 5: "Algeria's European Minority" + Conclusion

There are a few ways to follow along:

• follow these emails (which I send on Mondays)
• signal group chat, where we'll share links and chat about the readings
• video calls (Saturdays at 12pm ET, with email and link a few hours in advance)
• discuss on social media (you can find me on bluesky, mastodon, and twitter/x)

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Readings

Chapter 2: This Is the Voice of Algeria

The highly trained French services, rich with experience acquired in modern wars, past masters in the practice of "sound-wave warfare," were quick to detect the wave lengths of the broadcasting stations. The programs were then systematically jammed, and the Voice of Fighting Algeria soon became inaudible. A new form of struggle had come into being. Tracts were distributed telling the Algerians to keep tuned in for a period of two or three hours. In the course of a single broadcast a second station, broadcasting over a different wave-length, would relay the first jammed station. The listener, enrolled in the battle of the waves, had to figure out the tactics of the enemy, and in an almost physical way circumvent the strategy of the adversary. (page 85)

... claiming to have heard the Voice of Algeria was, in a certain sense, distorting the truth, but it was above all the occasion to proclaim one's clandestine participation in the essence of the Revolution. It meant making a deliberate choice, though it was not explicit during the first months, between the enemy's congenital lie and the people's own lie, which suddenly acquired a dimension of truth. (page 87)

... attention must be called to the acquisition of new values by the French language. The French language, language of occupation, a vehicle of the oppressing power, seemed doomed for eternity to judge the Algerian in a pejorative way. Every French expression referring to the Algerian had a humiliating content. Every French speech heard was an order, a threat, or an insult. (pg 89)

Before 1954, a radio in an Algerian house was the mark of Europeanization in progress, of vulnerability. It was the conscious opening to the influence of the dominator, to his pressure. It was the decision to give voice to the occupier. Having a radio meant accepting being besieged from within by the colonizer. It meant demonstrating that one chose cohabitation within the colonial framework. It meant, beyond any doubt, surrendering to the occupier.

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With the creation of a Voice of Fighting Algeria, the Algerian was vitally committed to listening to the message, to assimilating it, and soon to acting upon it. Buying a radio, getting down on one's knees with one's head against the speaker, was no longer just wanting to get the news concerning the formidable experience in progress in the country, it was hearing the first words of the nation. (page 92-93)

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I'm really interested to read anything I can about how the broadcasters did the work of bringing the Voice of Algeria to the people. Running a radio broadcast is no small feat, and it couldn't have been any easier, or any more commonplace, in the 1950s, let alone with a colonial empire trying to quash your voice. I couldn't help but imagine how dangerous and difficult it must have been to operate these broadcasts, to relay the signal of the Voice of Algeria to the people, and to get radios to people. I understand Fanon's reticence to reveal these particular kinds of details contemporaneously with Algeria's ongoing struggle against French colonialism; but I desperately wish I could hear the stories of the Algerian radio operators, hosts, technicians, and even the salesmen who sold radios. All of these people were undertaking unimaginable risks to help inform and bring together their country through the radio waves.

As I write this, it has recently emerged that Anas al-Sharif and four other journalists in Gaza were martyred by Israel. Israel has killed close to 270 Palestinian journalists and media workers in the last two years, and while I'm grateful that now there appears to be some outrage, I'm constantly confused by the occasions upon which westerners decide that this atrocity, or these killings of these specific journalists is a bridge too far. I keep hoping that there is some limit to the depravity of the governments in the West, some bottom to the indifference among western journalists.

I'm overcome with grief all the time, whenever I wake up and see the news; I'm overcome with sadness and desperation all the time. Reading this chapter didn't quite cure me of my grief, but it helped to try to think about the work of Palestinians by way of journalism as integral to the resistance against their annihilation with hardly a word about the people against whom a genocide is being committed by parties complicit in these crimes - the new york times, the atlantic, etc...

Al-Sharif and his colleagues produced a record of the truth that Israel doesn't want people to know: Palestine has an indigenous population called Palestinians, and those people are being annihilated, and Israel is guilty of the holocaust of Palestine. These are the witnesses and the voices of Palestine.

Anas al-Sharif posted a final message before being murdered. You can read it here:

Recently Johana Bhuiyan reported for The Guardian about the social media accounts of Palestinians being flagged and suspended. It's a good article, and I encourage you to read it if you haven't already.

I'm thinking a lot these days about the efforts to suppress Palestine's voice from Israel in the form of assassinations and from the US, the UK, Germany, and the rest of the western powers by criminalizing the support of Palestine and the objection against the genocide Israel is committing. I'm thinking a lot these days about the desperate work we're all doing to keep our ears close to the metaphorical speaker, to hear Palestine's voice and to be able to update one another on their collective fight for their life.

We must be close to a free Palestine. We must be nearing that future, because we cannot turn back from the horror zionism promises. We must be hearing the first sounds of a free Palestine, because this pain and all of this grief cannot be in vain. We must not give up.

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Tell me your thoughts

If you have any thoughts about this chapter or about recent events, please don't hesitate to share them.

If you want, the Signal group chat is a great place to talk about grief or struggles reading or any articles that make you draw connections. The group chat is also where we're discussing Capital: Volume 1 by Karl Marx more or less in parallel to A Dying Colonialism.

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That's everything. Please try to be safe, and help one another.