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Revolution Is Not Polite: Mao, Fanon

  • Writer: Gianna Mao  毛佳娜
    Gianna Mao 毛佳娜
  • May 4
  • 1 min read

The powerful tell us revolution is barbaric. That violence is always wrong—unless it's theirs.

Mao Zedong and Frantz Fanon knew better. Both spoke from the furnace of colonial and semi-colonial war. Both understood that the oppressed do not choose violence—the empire does. What the oppressed choose is to stop dying quietly.


Mao said: “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.” He wasn’t celebrating violence. He was stating a fact. China had been plundered by warlords, landlords, and foreign powers. No one voted them out. They had to be overthrown.


Fanon, writing from French-occupied Algeria, agreed. He saw that colonialism is not just economic—it is psychological. It deforms the colonized mind. Liberation, he argued, must be total. “Decolonization is always a violent phenomenon,” he wrote—not because the people are savage, but because the colonizer never leaves peacefully.


Today, we are told to be reasonable. To protest politely. To obey laws written by our enemies. But Fanon and Mao remind us: the system was built on violence. And it will not be dismantled by manners.


This doesn’t mean cruelty. It means discipline. Strategy. Clarity. Revolution is not chaos—it is order born of resistance. Mao gave us theory. Fanon gave us fire.

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