By any means necessary is a translation of a phrase used by

Martinican Martinique ( , ; gcf, label=Martinican Creole, Matinik or ; Kalinago: or ) is an island and an overseas department/region and single territorial collectivity of France. An integral part of the French Republic, Martinique is located in th ...

intellectual

Frantz Fanon Frantz Omar Fanon (, ; ; 20 July 1925 – 6 December 1961), also known as Ibrahim Frantz Fanon, was a French West Indian psychiatrist, and political philosopher from the French colony of Martinique (today a French department). His works have be ...

in his 1960 Address to the Accra Positive Action Conference, "Why we use violence". The phrase had also been used by French intellectual

Jean-Paul Sartre Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre (, ; ; 21 June 1905 – 15 April 1980) was one of the key figures in the philosophy of existentialism (and phenomenology), a French playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and litera ...

in his play ''

Dirty Hands ''Dirty Hands'' (french: Les Mains sales) is a play by Jean-Paul Sartre. It was first performed on 2 April 1948 at the Theatre Antoine in Paris, directed by Pierre Valde and starring François Périer, Marie Olivier and André Luguet. A politi ...

'' in 1948. Later, it entered the popular

civil rights Civil and political rights are a class of rights that protect individuals' freedom from infringement by governments, social organizations, and private individuals. They ensure one's entitlement to participate in the civil and political life of ...

culture through a speech given by

Malcolm X Malcolm X (born Malcolm Little, later Malik el-Shabazz; May 19, 1925 – February 21, 1965) was an American Muslim minister and human rights activist who was a prominent figure during the civil rights movement. A spokesman for the Nation of Is ...

at the

Organization of Afro-American Unity __NOTOC__ The Organization of Afro-American Unity (OAAU) was a Pan-Africanist organization founded by Malcolm X in 1964. The OAAU was modeled on the Organization of African Unity, which had impressed Malcolm X during his visit to Africa ...

founding rally on June 28, 1964. It is generally considered to leave open all available tactics for the desired ends, including

violence Violence is the use of physical force so as to injure, abuse, damage, or destroy. Other definitions are also used, such as the World Health Organization's definition of violence as "the intentional use of physical force or Power (social and p ...

Frantz Fanon

The phrase is a translation of a sentence used in revolutionary psychiatrist and philosopher Frantz Fanon's 1960 Address to the Accra Positive Action Conference, "Why we use violence":

Violence in everyday behaviour, violence against the past that is emptied of all substance, violence against the future, for the colonial regime presents itself as necessarily eternal. We see, therefore, that the colonized people, caught in a web of a three-dimensional violence, a meeting point of multiple, diverse, repeated, cumulative violences, are soon logically confronted by the problem of ending the colonial regime by any means necessary. —Frantz Fanon, ''Alienation and Freedom:'' part 3, chapter 22, "Why we use violence". 1960

Jean-Paul Sartre

The phrase is a translation of a sentence used in French intellectual Jean-Paul Sartre's 1948 play ''Dirty Hands'':

Malcolm X

It entered the popular culture through a speech given by Malcolm X in the last year of his life.

Mandela recusal

In the final scene of the 1992 movie ''

'',

Nelson Mandela Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela (; ; 18 July 1918 – 5 December 2013) was a South African Internal resistance to apartheid, anti-apartheid activist who served as the President of South Africa, first president of South Africa from 1994 to 1 ...

—then recently released after 27 years of political imprisonment—appears as a schoolteacher in a

Soweto Soweto () is a township of the City of Johannesburg Metropolitan Municipality in Gauteng, South Africa, bordering the city's mining belt in the south. Its name is an English syllabic abbreviation for ''South Western Townships''. Formerly a s ...

classroom reciting Malcolm X's speech. Yet Mandela informed director

Spike Lee Shelton Jackson "Spike" Lee (born March 20, 1957) is an American film director, producer, screenwriter, and actor. His production company, 40 Acres and a Mule Filmworks, has produced more than 35 films since 1983. He made his directorial debut ...

that he could not utter the famous final phrase ''"by any means necessary"'' on camera, fearing that the

apartheid Apartheid (, especially South African English: , ; , "aparthood") was a system of institutionalised racial segregation that existed in South Africa and South West Africa (now Namibia) from 1948 to the early 1990s. Apartheid was ...

government would use it against him if he did. Lee obliged, and the final seconds of the film feature black-and-white footage of Malcolm X himself delivering the phrase.

References

Political violence Political catchphrases Malcolm X {{poli-term-stub

Frantz Fanon

Jean-Paul Sartre

Malcolm X

Mandela recusal

See also

References