I've been reading Frantz Fanon and I feel both seen and condemned. Fanon describes a type of colonized intellectual, which was me once upon a time. He also describes a trajectory for their awakening, which I seem to be following. It's a bit annoying cause I could have just read this instead of making a fool of myself in public for decades.

The Colonized Intellectual

When I was 21, I returned to sender. I finished my education in Canada/America and moved 'back' to Sri Lanka. I put 'back' in quotes because I hadn't lived there since I was four. As a young man, I thought I knew it all, but I had no idea. I had an education but I didn't realize how much I had to unlearn, and how much sources I trusted were actively lying to me. It's only now, as an adult, finally reading Fanon at my wife's insistence, that I understand who I was. I was a certain sort of colonized man, and quite unconsciously. As Fanon said,

During decolonization, certain colonized intellectuals have established a dialogue with the bourgeoisie of the colonizing country. During this period the indigenous population is seen as a blurred mass. The few “native” personalities whom the colonialist bourgeois have chanced to encounter have had insufficient impact to alter their current perception and nuance their thinking. During the period of liberation, however, the colonialist bourgeoisie frantically seeks contact with the colonized “elite.” It is with this elite that the famous dialogue on values is established.

This is the position I found myself in, in ‘dialogue’ with western embassies and foreign correspondents, going to cocktails and dinner parties, because I spoke the language of English and the dialect of human rights, democracy, and free markets fluently. I thought myself highly original, despite repeating paper-thin insights from The Economist from the same hymn book as everyone else. As Fanon said, “The colonized intellectual accepted the cogency of these ideas and there in the back of his mind stood a sentinel on duty guarding the Greco-Roman pedestal.”

But I hadn't even read the classics, I just got those 'values' photocopied 10,000 times through the mass media, until they were a meaningless paste. This is what Fanon called “the famous dialogue on values.” It was really a monologue repeated between people at cocktail parties. I wish I'd read more widely back then, because I would have read my own story and perhaps skipped a few chapters. Back then, I was just a certain type of colonized man, the embarrassing one.

Fanon said, “When the colonialist bourgeoisie realizes it is impossible to maintain its domination over the colonies it decides to wage a rearguard campaign in the fields of culture, values, and technology, etc,” and I have seen all this in action. Those were precisely the points that I interfaced with the west. The US Embassy's cultural attaché invited me to do a photo exhibition (I declined because I couldn't afford printing anything), I did journalism training through the German Embassy, and I met people from Facebook, even after they'd killed people in my own country. This makes me cringe today, but at the time I was oblivious. I thought these were the good guys, because I still believed what they said and not what they did. Thus, I feel both seen and condemned by Fanon when he says,

In its narcissistic monologue the colonialist bourgeoisie, by way of its academics, had implanted in the minds of the colonized that the essential values—meaning Western values —remain eternal despite all errors attributable to man.

That really was the monologue implanted in my head. I remember having the shower thought, ‘well, America doesn't live up to its values, but it has them as a sort of map for the future.’ Like lying was important because it was at least aspirational. But I was being too clever by half. They were just lying, and I was lying to myself about it. I'd blame myself if I wasn't so utterly predictable.

The Color Revolutionary

Fanon said, “The intellectual who, for his part, has adopted the abstract, universal values of the colonizer is prepared to fight so that colonist and colonized can live in peace in a new world.” And, indeed, I unwittingly underwent training to be a color revolutionary.

[The Gene Sharp Trap]

One day, I was idly looking through some noticeboard for opportunities because journalists don't have many. I saw a free training trip to Spain, to study non-violent resistance. This was just after the Arab Spring and it was all very exciting. I applied, got in, and they paid my flight and hotel to Madrid, Spain. I could have never afforded this on my own and I felt quite lucky. In hindsight, I was just a mark.

That event was totally CIA, in hindsight. It was run by a guy from the US military and government, who was funded by some dodgy financier. As a journalist, did I look any of this up at the time? Uh, no, I was more interested in going to the Prado (which was excellent). At that training I met some cool people from Egypt and Yemen and Mexico (shout-out George Clooney), but in hindsight, holy shit! They were training sleeper cells for regime change, and they trained me! Writing all of this stuff is honestly quite implicating and embarrassing and my only excuse is that I wasn't thinking. All I really thought was a free trip to Madrid.

The carrot of flattery and the stick of blackmail, that's what the US calls this public diplomacy. Colonization has always been a resource light enterprise. They want the colonized to do the colonizing.

The Colonial History

In 20/20 hindsight that's how it always was. We always colonized ourselves. As Ian Barrow says in his history of the East India Company, “It is one of the great ironies of the Company’s history that its Indian empire was effectively won by its Indian troops.”The corporate army's officers were all British and the grunts were Indian. We've been cucking ourselves since day one. India's population was nearly 200 million but it was oppressed by less than 45,000 Britishers. As Barrow said, “In 1830, for example, the Company garrisoned 36,409 British soldiers but employed only 3,500 civil servants and permitted just 2,149 businessmen and other Europeans to live in India.”

The colonizers of the Raj played political Jenga, corrupting local elites with imported goods, education for their children, and filthy lucre from the enslavement of their own people. Splinter colonization is still the policy of the day, divide and conquer the masses using local elites. It goes back to the great grand pappy of White Empire. As Cornell and Matthews write about the Romans, “The political organization of the developing provinces was achieved through the existing upper classes.”It is, as my historical thesis goes, same shit, different day.

The British called this divide and conquer, and the Americans do the same thing with better marketing. They call the process democratizing, encouraging free speech, human rights, but it's really just divide and conquer. And colonized individuals like me were used to divide. I feel sick to be part of that history, but that was me.

Decolonization

But Fanon wrote about an arc for the colonized man, as the world decolonized around him. Fanon describes my own intellectual evolution when he says,

All the Mediterranean values, the triumph of the individual, of enlightenment and Beauty turn into pale, lifeless trinkets. All those discourses appear a jumble of dead words. Those values which seemed to ennoble the soul prove worthless because they have nothing in common with the real-life struggle in which the people are engaged.

As times get hard and money gets tight, western liberals are literally committing genocide. They piously look down on Trump as the 'greater evil', while not looking in a mirror while they commit genocide. What are you going to tell me about lesser evil while I see kids with their heads and eyes blown off every day? When Democrats just continue Republican policies with more pious banalities? Just a jumble of words atop a mountain of dead bodies.

Fanon said, “The colonized intellectual accepted the cogency of these ideas and there in the back of his mind stood a sentinel on duty guarding the Greco-Roman pedestal. But during the struggle for liberation, when the colonized intellectual touches base again with his people, this artificial sentinel is smashed to smithereens.” I have truly felt this smashing in my mind. We have arrived at a point where the conmen of history no longer even pretend to believe in any values, but the colonized men actually do.

Asides

Today, as James Baldwin says, “All the Western nations are caught in a lie, the lie of their pretended humanism: this means that their history has no moral justification, and that the West has no moral authority.” It cheers me to see such clarity but depresses me that Baldwin said this decades ago. How much time have we lost, how many lives, to see what was already seen?

Decolonization is not merely a political process, it's psychological. I don't even know if I'm better yet, the mind virus runs deep. When I read Fanon I feel both abominable and absolved. Abominable because I was a colonized intellectual for so long, and absolved because I can feel decolonization also coursing through me. I like to think I arrived at my own conclusions, but I increasingly think conclusions arrived at me.

Sri Lanka is finally having a Presidential election, after overthrowing our President and getting some unelected rogue to rob us for two years now. The stability the purchased with more loans has so impoverished the people that, for the first time in history, the 'commies' have a chance at electoral victory. I dunno if I'd put my money on it, but that's where I'll put my vote. My only worry is that they're not communist enough. This is an FAQ as to why I'm voting for the National People's Power alliance, led by Anura Kumara Dissanayake of the JVP.

Who is the NPP?

The NPP is a coalition of leftist parties in Sri Lanka, led by the JVP. Their Presidential candidate is Anura Kumara Dissanayake (commonly called AKD).

Hasn't the JVP killed a lot of people?

The JVP started as a revolutionary party which tried to seize power by force. They have killed a lot of people. However, the JVP has actually killed less people than the other parties, by a factor of 10 at least.

Both parties in the old two-party system united around killing commies and Tamil nationalists and they killed much, much more. The UNP and SLFP killed tens of thousands in both the south and north, both Sinhalese and Tamils. The JVP's anti-state violence pales in comparison to the state violence unleashed by the ruling class in response. It's a morbid metric, but if you're voting based on who's killed the least people, that's actually the JVP.

Isn't communism bad?

The JVP is no longer communist enough for me, but let's address the communism in the room. Communism is, historically, the fastest way to develop and delivers the best health, education, and other vital outcomes for the most people.

China is a communist country and they're the richest nation in the world now (PPP FTW). As Uncle Deng said in 1987, “Poverty is not socialism. We must support socialism, but we must move ahead in building a socialism which is truly superior to capitalism.” They've actually done it, ahead of schedule. Just look at any Chinese metro/car/train compared to the absolutely crumbling and stagnant western models. Capitalism tries to take credit for China's rise, but I invite you to read anything.

As Michael Hudson says, the main difference between communism and capitalism is that in communism the state controls capital and in capitalism capital controls the state. In China the Communist Party is quite in control and while they're not dictatorial, they do dictate. They call their model ‘socialism with Chinese characteristics,’ and Sri Lanka's official name is the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka. We shouldn't shy from declaring economic independence ourselves.

Historically, communism actually enabled countries to seize control of their resources and labor and to industrialize within one generation. Communism was a way to economic independence, not the illusion of political independence while still being debt slaves to the same people that colonized us. Communism has delivered better health, education, and housing to its people and many of the ills ascribed to communism are because of capitalists attacking and sanctioning them. Communism is not a bad word, it's just bad-mouthed by the worst people. The IMF, for example, is always headed by a European and has not actually developed anyone, they're just colonialism administrators under a new name. Communism of one sort or another is the surest way to decolonize your economy, and that's a step Sri Lanka has yet to take.

Is the JVP communist?

The JVP (the main part of the NPP), unfortunately, is not a very communist party. The JVP started as a revolutionary party which tried to violently overthrow the government, but they were killed pretty comprehensively and reformed as a regular political party. I'd describe them as more center-left than anything. The hardcore Marxists left for the FSP long ago, unfortunately. I guess you could call the JVP commies, I don't consider it an insult, but not enough for my taste.

What would the NPP do?

The NPP has said “Developing a production-based economy is our singular aim and guiding principle.” This addresses what plagues Sri Lanka, not debt per se but lack of productivity. As the NPP says, “due to the misappropriation of borrowed funds and the failure to invest them in economically productive projects, the economy did not grow in corresponding to the increase in debt.” Successive governments have taken out loans to fund bad infrastructure ideas (Mahinda Rajapaksa) or just new debt to pay off old debt (Ranil Wickremesinghe) without developing the productive capacity of the country at all. It was this unproductive regime that collapsed the country in 2022, and only the NPP identifies production as the core problem.

The unelected President (Ranil) currently running the place wants credit for stabilizing the country, but what has he done? He's stabilized the rich on the backs of the poor, while serving foreign moneylenders above all. Ranil took out most of the ruinous debt in the first place (rolling over the Rajapaksa loans) and he has not changed any real aspect of the economy at all. All he's done is rob 200x more than he did the first time, without even concrete to show for it.

Describing this sham stability, the NPP said, “it was mainly an outcome of unpaid interest, debt instalments in arrears, import restrictions, remittances from overseas Sri Lankans, and receipt of IMF extended fund facility, rather than a result of proactive and sustainable measures of the government.” And they continue, “Despite continued rhetoric about controlling inflation, the reality is that the prices of goods and services have risen to unaffordable levels. The ultimate result is that people’s real income has gone down so low that basic human needs cannot be fulfilled. As a result of destructive politics, about 26% of the population has been dragged below the poverty line.”

I find little to disagree with here. There is no productive economy without children that eat enough and most of our children are going hungry under this regime. There's no forward planning here, just more procrastinating. In order for things to change you have to actually change things. The state has to get involved with industry, that's the only way industrialization has ever happened! Not just in communist countries, but in the capitalist countries as well. Only the NPP even has a basic idea of this. Everyone else just says leave it up to the economists, as if there's some magic monetary settings we can change. But nothing works like that. To do something, you have to actually do some things.

This is the vital difference between political democracy and economic democracy. Countries can have political independence without economic independence, and right now, our economic policy is literally run by foreign bureaucrats from the IMF, with a comprador elite focused on their own corruption. They talk about state-owned enterprise or state planning being corrupt, but who's doing the corrupting! They're breaking the system and then saying the system needs to be sold off for parts because it's not working. This is why people protested for system change, which only the NPP comes close to delivering.

As their manifesto says, “The NPP’s economic policy framework focuses on economic democracy.” I know it takes a lot to deprogram neoliberal propaganda that people are too stupid to run economies and must leave everything to the capitalists, but just look at the capitalists countries today. America is desperately (and badly) trying state-led industrial policy themselves (in semiconductors, energy, and manufacturing), complete with tariffs and heavy subsidies. They tell us not to print money while printing the most money in their history! We have to, after decades of foolishly believing our former colonizers had changed, declare economic independence. We have to get the state deeply involved in the economy, that's the meaning of economic democracy. Taking control of the state, and using it to control our own destiny.

Especially with climate collapse and the need to marshal scarce resources towards what matters (health and education). To execute any big change of course you need a planned economy. Otherwise you're just planning to fail. I don't think the JVP goes far enough in this regard, but they at least have a concept of the general direction.

What else would the NPP do?

The country has many more issues, but you can read the manifesto yourself on those. I'll just highlight a few points that resonated with me. The bullet points are all theirs:

• NPP regards education, health, and transportation as essential public services and plans to increase resource allocation in all these fields.
• Strengthening the state share in public transport and creating an efficient public transport system in the country.

These points are important because, far from being costs to a government as foreign capitalists would have you believe, health and education are investments. If you don't invest in your people you have nothing, you're just selling off your country for parts and waiting to die. You have to invest your way out of a crisis, something western economists have known since the Great Depression, but they keep prescribing austerity to us colonies. It doesn't work. You have to invest your way out of crisis, and the base of all productivity is the health and education of your people.

If the NPP may continue,

• We will move away from anthropocentric thinking that places man as the sole owner of the earth.

I have never heard this anywhere in mainstream Sri Lankan politics and it's vitally important, that it's not just about people. We are not the owners of this island but mere custodians.

• For the first time in Sri Lanka’s post-independence history, governance will shift from the control of a few corrupt elite families to a people’s government. From the presidency to every representative body and operational mechanism in the country, all positions will be free from elite family connections and will be filled by the children of ordinary citizens produced through free education.
• Renegotiate with the IMF on the content of a more palatable and strengthened programme and how it is implemented for salvaging the poor and deprived people from that painful condition.
• State support for the local production of all possible food items within the country.

The JVP, as a party, is from the poor. Their candidate, Anura Kumara Dissanayake grew up poor whereas the other political leaders are from old feudal families and/or are literally the children/nephews of former Presidents. Only the JVP has any concept of how poor people live and suffer, and it is these masses that actually have to be mobilized to have a productive economy at all. One thing I must note is that the time for industrialization has probably passed, we are headed into a future where food and water will be the important resources, and the NPP at least has a sense that we need to, at a minimum, be able to feed ourselves. As they continue,

• We consider Sri Lanka must enhance local production and transition to an export-driven economy to navigate the current economic crisis successfully. This requires a comprehensive short and long-term industrial development plan.
• A rapid national program will be launched to add 2,000 MW of solar PV capacity within the next five (5) years, as a strategic measure to avert the impending energy crisis in the near future.
• Customers, including low income households and small and medium enterprises, whose electricity supply remains disconnected due to non-payment of exorbitant bills unjustly imposed over 2022-2024 will be reconnected, with remaining dues charged on a fair instalment plan.
• The contribution of the railway service has dropped to 5% in the transport sector. The portion of the SLTB in bus passenger service has dropped to 14%. Around 55% of the citizens opt to use private vehicles to fulfil their transport needs due to the decline in public transport, and they have to spend a large amount of their income on transport as a result. Hence the goal is to provide 70% of the public’s transport needs through public transportation within 5 years.

Sri Lanka's 2022 collapse meant, primarily, that we lost access to imported (dollar-denominated) energy. The current government has done nothing about the source of that problem, which is that we don't produce enough of our own energy and waste much of what we import on inefficient things cars. To avoid further crashes we can't just do financial jiggery-pokery like declaring meaningless accounting surpluses. We have to actually change the structure of the economy—specifically energy and transport—which the NPP is proposing.

In terms of rights and wrongs, the NPP says,

• The inefficiency of public service and the associated bribery, corruption, fraud, and misappropriation of public property are the inevitable results of the ruling class and the system. They are not tragedies brought by public servants on their own accord.
• Promptly completing investigations into political killings and abductions of journalists, sportspersons and others that have not been solved for a long time and implementing the law against the criminals
• Ensuring the quality of the food given to prisoners
• Investigating and serving justice to the political assassinations, disappearances and assaults that happened in the past in all areas including the North and East.
• Releasing all political prisoners and ensure their free socialisation.
• Abolition of all oppressive acts including the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA) and ensuring civil rights of people in all parts of the country

For decades Sri Lanka has been ruled by a rapacious class which has now handed power off to their children and grandchildren. All the ruling parties have stolen and killed and then blamed it on the inefficient government sector which they themselves have corrupted. This ruling class has become so greedy that they have even destroyed their own political parties and are running as independents. Now all the old rats are running between different ships while the country sinks. They can't even hold their own parties together and have no greater ideas for the country than more of the same. Why would you trust someone to hold a country together that can't even hold their own party? Which gets me to my next point.

Isn't the JVP too inexperienced?

The JVP is actually the oldest political party running in this election! The UNP, the feudal founding party, has splintered, and the SLFP doesn't exist anymore. The JVP are actually the most established political party, and they have the strongest grassroots network, the most active women's wing, and are by far the most organized around something other than personality and corruption.

How would they do it? Aren't we broke?

China developed from their lowest point. They started out poorer than us. The UK developed its (now decayed) social programs after World War II, when it was the most broke. Development is fundamentally a matter of will, and you absolutely can and should print your own currency to employ your own people. This does not have to cause inflation if you invest it in productive assets. People say government programs caused Sri Lanka's collapse but they did not, it was foreign borrowing from the same old colonizers. Economic independence is the way out, not how we got in at all. Remember that our crisis was denominated in dollars, not rupees. Internationally, we can hitch onto rising Asia instead of going down with the falling west. What the Sri Lanka lacks most urgently is leadership, which is why we need to fundamentally change leadership this election.

Will they take my second house/business/money?

Unfortunately, no. The JVP has become thoroughly domesticated and is no longer a revolutionary party at all. If they were a revolutionary party they would have takenpower during the protests, not waited over two years for elections.

Personally, I think they JVP should be much more ruthless than they are, but they're not. I think that foreign forces will try to destabilize/overthrow any leftist government and you can't trust elections. But the JVP simply isn't that party anymore, and haven't been for decades now. They will, unfortunately, govern like a center-left party within our existing constitution and laws. They're not going to tax or seize anyone's wealth away or smash the landed classes, though I wish they would. Sri Lanka's rich are deeply corrupt, blow away most of the country's foreign exchange, and I think they (we) deserve a slap. The NPP, unfortunately, won't deliver it.

Why are you voting NPP, in conclusion?

To me, the election breaks clearly along class lines. The rich (like me) will vote for Ranil or Sajith and the poor will vote for AKD. Both of the rich candidates will follow the same basic neoliberal policies of the past 40 years that caused the collapse in the first place. Borrowing, neglecting our own productive capacity, and kicking the can down the road. But this is the end of the road. It may be too late to turn, we may not turn hard enough, but the NPP are the only people that will even try a different direction. The reason they're even a possibility now is because so many more people have been made poor. The poor don't need to read this or anything else. They hear the truth from their children's rumbling tummies clear enough.

The stability that Ranil has given is on the backs of the poor. The poverty rate has doubled, most children do not eat enough, and many parents have not eaten an egg in years (any protein is given to the youngest child). Meanwhile, rich people like me are partying and consuming foreign exchange more than ever, and it makes me sick. I'm a class traitor and I'm with the poor. That's the big reason I'm voting NPP. They're from the poor, they're for the poor, and we're a poor country. We can't keep using the credit card so a few people can pretend to be rich on the backs of our children, we actually have to change leadership, change our economy, and change direction to achieve common prosperity for all. Call it communism if you want, the communists are rich now.

I don't want to be rich while Sri Lankan children are passing out in school cause they don't eat enough. That's no way to build a future, and the children, as James Baldwin said, belong to all of us. The NPP has a hard road ahead of them, but at least they have a compass. That's why I'm voting X . If you don't feel it in your own stomach, then check your heart.