The Ethicalities And Technicalities Of Violence In The Battle Of Algiers

The Ethicalities and Technicalities of Violence Imagine having all freedoms taken away, being forced to comply with a government that has asserted an oppressive and dominating rule, and even being tortured for resisting. Then, realize that this is exactly what the Algerians faced when dealing with the French’s tyrannical control over Algeria. The malicious prosecution that the Algerians faced both dehumanized and tormented them, creating an environment where retaliation was necessary. Within The Battle of Algiers, there are a few instances of ethical violence, used to both fight back against the violence that the French have enacted as well as re-humanize the Algerians. Frantz Fanon describes violence as a fundamental part of colonial rule,
By this notion, colonized people must use violence in order to defend themselves against the violence enacted against them, creating an ethical viewpoint in favor of counter-violence. The Algerians have no choice but to stand up for their rights in order to take their lives back from colonial rule, as not doing anything would mean continuous oppression. Domenico Losurdo reaffirms this belief through his criticism of nonviolence and advocating for violence as a means of change. Losurdo, when analyzing the American Peace Society’s dehumanization of people, remarked how, “Nonviolence had somehow been turned around, transformed into an even worse, extended form of violence” (Moral Dilemmas and Broken Promises, 93). Nonviolence created a paradox where people now began to associate others as animals in order to justify their aggressive actions towards them. Consequently, this transformed nonviolence into a form of violence that would allow any person to justify any act of violence so long as the process of dehumanization
The French did not care how many people were killed in this bombing and this motivated the Algerians to adopt the same attitude towards the French. However, the problem with this philosophy is that each act of violence will begin to reach higher and higher extremes. The continuation of violence within The Battle of Algiers from both sides drove the French and the Algerians to commit heinous acts that killed numerous civilians and increased societal hostility. Conversely, it could be speculated that counter-violence may have actually harmed society as a whole within The Battle of Algiers. While helpful to the Algerian struggle, the use of violence as a form of retaliation killed several French people, harming a portion of society with several being civilians. Someone like Kwame Gyeke may argue that “the common good cannot oppose the individual good of any member of society; individual and common goods depend on each other” (African Ethics, 192). Arguably, the common good for the Algerians caused harm within the French community through the use of