This passage from Frantz Fanon's The Wretched of the Earth, from the chapter "The Pitfalls of National Consciousness," exposes how the ruling classes of the capitalist world use the language of democracy. Fanon observed that a strong, secure bourgeoisie can afford to proclaim universal ideals of freedom, equality, and human rights, because its power is not truly threatened. Those ideals cost it little as long as the economic order beneath them remains in its hands. Democracy, in this sense, is a luxury of the powerful: something they allow when it serves them, not a principle they will defend at any cost.

Fanon wrote from experience. The French Republic that celebrated liberty, equality, and fraternity at home carried out torture, massacre, and collective punishment in Algeria. The same was true across the colonial world: the European powers and the United States preached democracy while ruling colonies by force and backing dictatorships abroad. Aimé Césaire made the same point in Discourse on Colonialism when he argued that fascism was colonial violence brought home to Europe, the methods long used against colonized peoples turned against Europeans themselves. When the bourgeoisie feels its power slipping, through economic crisis, revolt in the colonies, or a rising working class at home, its humanist ideology falls away and the repression underneath is laid bare.

Fanon's insight remains a warning and a tool for analysis. Rights and freedoms granted by the ruling class can be withdrawn the moment they become inconvenient. We see this whenever protest is criminalized, emergency powers are declared, and governments that speak of human rights arm occupations and crush dissent. Real democracy cannot rest on the goodwill of the powerful. It must be built and defended by the organized people themselves, as part of the struggle to end the system that treats freedom as a privilege it can revoke.

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