Frantz Fanon studied the psyche of Algerians during their wars against French colonists.

He concluded that the prevailing sentiment among those who had lost sovereignty over their own lives—as well as their personal freedom and independence—was a sense of worthlessness and inferiority, absorbed through the humiliation and contempt inflicted by the dominant group of tyrants.

Fanon wrote that the anger and aggression inevitably arising in the oppressed found no outlet; consequently, these emotions morphed into countless psychological issues, physical ailments, and—crucially—aggression directed at one another.

After years in Algeria, Fanon concluded that standard treatments and therapies were ineffective, leading him to formulate a stark axiom:

"To cease feeling like a slave, the oppressed must physically kill those who violate them."

In his writings, he argued theoretically that if a system is fundamentally built upon humiliation, no top-down reforms, political compromises, or peace negotiations will succeed.

The trauma of slavery and violence becomes so deeply ingrained in the psyche of successive generations that even if people are granted freedom "from above"—by some capricious whim of the oppressors—that freedom transforms into new forms of dependency on the former master's approval.

Freedom devoid of the taste of the oppressors' blood is a sham; it will never satisfy a people, serving only to render their enslavement more insidious and vile.